Secrets from Sorcerers, Il Volo Naked, and The Barone Brothers' Chests

Was recently reading Jason Miller’s The Sorcerer’s Secrets, doing my usual griping and whining about moronic titles, as in, “Well, if you’re going to publish a freakin’ book about them, they’re not quite secrets anymore ARE THEY??!!??”  And actually, they weren’t “secrets”, anyway – if you're  thinking of shelling out your hard-earned bucks for it, be warned that you’re not going to read something so unique and original, you’ll leap up and cry, “Eureka!” or something.  You won’t.

That said, I’ll give him credit for one thing:  taking practices that may read like a twisted garbled version of Latin and Old English from other sources, and printed backward at that, and making them much more comprehensible.  I particularly liked his Rite of General Offering (pages 53-55), even though – in goosestep with the Twinkies I always grumble loudly about – he didn’t cite any sources for it.  As I said on numerous occasions, I don’t care if he made it up himself!  Just say so.  If he took the general idea from other sources and revised it for the contemporary tongue, that’s fine, too.  But say so!

I mean, come on, people.  How difficult is it to cite your damn sources???  Do us all a favor and make THAT your “Sorcerer’s Secret” for the day.

(Deep breath)

Moving on ... as I said, I liked the idea of the Rite of General Offering.  Basically, the Rite involves offering a basic form of offering that all spirits could accept (he suggests incense and liquor), OR, making a gesture of energetic offering with your hands and allowing the spirits you’re inviting to take what they prefer from your energy offering.  What I particularly liked (in part) was the spoken invitation that supplemented the Rite – he basically invited every possible spirit he could think of to partake of the offering, the point being that even the crabby ones might think twice about messing with you if you’d treated them as an honored guest.  I liked that concept.  Open, non-judgmental, polite and (hopefully) beneficial for all concerned.

There were a few spots in his spoken invitation that I questioned, like “Spirits of the firmament of earth and of ether!”  That bothered me, so I double-checked “firmament” – and my memory was correct – “firmament” was the (now proven erroneous) biblical term to refer to the vault of the sky – and by that I mean the solid vault of the sky, from a time when everyone thought the sky was solid and arched over the earth, with the stars embedded in it (more or less) – a relic of geocentricity.  So how did he get “firmament of earth” out of that concept?

I can’t recite that line without wincing, so I may need to re-write it into something like, “Spirits of the cosmos and of ether”, or something along those lines.

The idea behind it, though, was to respectfully gain their good-will and attention, before invoking any of them.  I liked the idea.

Il Volo Naked
I recently looked at the blog stats for this blog and discovered why at least 2 people ended up here.  This tells me what they were searching for:

“Il Volo naked”???

Hey – whoever you are!!! – if you find photos of Il Volo naked, you let ME know!  At the present time, I can’t help you with that, I’m truly sorry to say.  No, really.  TRULY SORRY, you have no idea.  Even worse, I have the misfortune of living in the U.S. which has been overrun by a bunch of super-fundamentalist twits who see a naked body and call the local chapter of the Spanish Inquisition.  So I doubt I could post them, even if you did find photos of “Il Volo Naked”.

One of the other search terms was, “Piero Barone shirtless”.  That one I’m happy to say, I could provide.  Here.  Here. And here.

Wow, I had no idea I had such a collection of “Piero Barone Topless XXX” photos.

Anyway:  glad to help.  No, really.  VERY happy, you have no idea.  The guy inspires more fantasies with those shirtless photos than he could have possibly imagined when he took them.

Ahhhh, the joys of the human female imagination.  And mille grazie again for the photos, Piero ... women all over the world thank you for them!

Il Volo, by the way, naked or not, has not announced any appearances in New York or Boston during their June tour ... I’m only semi-devastated by that.  I’ll be in the middle of moving, unpacking, taking business trips, so it’s probably a good thing that they’re not contributing to the general state of chaos I’ll be experiencing in May and June, because – naturally – I’d be compelled to go see them.  And there’s always YouTube, so I hope everyone plans on doing what they usually do:  take videos of everything!

Back to business!

Synchronicity
 – I happened to catch a photo of the brother of the deliciously shirtless  l’uno e solo, by whom I mean the guy with the naked torso.  His brother: Francis or Francesco Barone by name.  Not important.  (Well, unless you’re him, and in that case – I apologize, your name is extremely important  to ... somebody, I’m sure; it’s just not relevant to this discussion.)

Anyway, he posted a photo of a tattoo he received on or about July 9th of last year, but I didn’t see it until a few days ago.  Apparently he has a beautifully constructed design of an ouroboros tattooed on his upper chest.

Francis Barone's Chest

Among the many things this symbol (“Ouroboros”) represents?

Reincarnation.

Now, Francis said it meant “eternal life”.  But it also stands for Kundalini energy, which is part of the ... chakra system.   Just as I’m getting ready to begin learning about chakras.

According to the second century Yoga Kundalini Upanishad, "The divine power, Kundalini, shines like the stem of a young lotus; like a snake, coiled round upon herself she holds her tail in her mouth and lies resting half asleep as the base of the body" (1.82). Another interpretation is that Kundalini equates to the entwined serpents of the caduceus, the entwined serpents representing medicine in the west or, esoterically, human DNA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros

I would love it if someone could read the letters on the belly of the snake’s body.  I cannot read them.

Looks mystical or even hermetic to me.  Damn!  Francis is as mysterious and interesting as his younger brother is vibrational, IMHO.

March
I woke up in the rain today
Gentle pearlescent jewels
Black twigs against leaden sky
Dark stains on cold Earth in pools

Slow slumbering spring awakens
Changing from snow to rain
Leaf and twig on burgeoning bough
Wheel of the year turns again

Gentle watery sunlight
Leaps and sparkles on rippling lake
As glistening ice retreats
Low cast light in pink cloud break

To wake to joyous chorus
Earth softens now free of ice
Nesting birds with eggs to hatch
The air a-twitter with expectant life

Light lasts longer now
Lingering late in the lane
And I will walk along the hedge
To the warmth of my hearth again

“Greenman”, http://www.pagan-heart.co.uk/poems/march.html

As pretty as that is, I’m used to my Corn-Maiden song ... which is sort of a combination of ancient Greek and native American mythology condensed into a song I’ve been singing every year since I learned it at Enchantments in Manhattan.  I tried to look it up, but can’t find who wrote it – my apologies to whoever did:

Hail to Koré, divine maiden
She who grows all things above the ground.
Hail Corn Maiden, lady of the fields,
She is beauty and bountiful love.
Koré, Koré, Koré,
Keep us all safe, keep the evil eye away.

Very simple melody; just a song of joy, really.  It went through my head a few days ago when I saw my first forsythia bush of the season, covered with yellow flowers.  If I hadn’t been on a bus at the time, I would have burst into song.

I still haven’t progressed beyond the fuzzy whitish-grey outline, but we did practice seeing auras in class.  I know I’m going to keep getting better at it, because I’m seeing a (very) slow but steady improvement already.

Vindication and Sex Magick

Another wonderful and incredibly timely book. Miller, Jason. Protection and Reversal Magick: A Witch’s Defense Manual. 2006. The Career Press, Pompton Plains, New Jersey. Right off the bat Miller quotes Robert Cochrane. No matter what you may think of Cochrane (and some didn’t like him very much), his point of view here made a lot of sense:

"If one who claims he or she is a witch can perform the tasks of witchcraft, that is, they can summon spirits and spirits will come, they can turn hot into cold and cold into hot, they can divine with rod, fingers and birds, they can claim the right to omens and have them. Above all they can tell the Maze and cross the Lethe. If they can do these things, then you have a witch."

First question we should all be asking ourselves: how many of the books I’ve been suffering through have taught me ANY of those things? Absolutely none. In fact, 100% of the wiccan nonsense I’ve read so far has done nothing but try to carve an immobile, inept, powerless twinkie out of me – and might have succeeded had I not begun to grate mightily under the emotional and childish silliness of the vast majority of these women writing books that taught me little beyond how to feel foolish.

If you’re like me, the first thing you need to do is either stop watching the television program called Paranormal State, or at least remember that the investigators on that program are christians, often handing out blessed medals and calling in priests and christian demonologists to clear the environment. (In their defense they also occasionally call in native Americans and witches, so they’re not exclusively christianity-oriented. But they seem to have an excessive fear of people conjuring spirits.)

Still, the few "exorcism" sort of programs they aired contained people who were frighteningly unbalanced – I recall watching one of their exorcism programs, where they had a priest try to drive a demon out of a young woman. After a few minutes of watching (and I admit, I could be wrong, but I doubt it), she struck me as being not possessed at all, but emotionally unbalanced to the point where she was the one causing damage to herself through the force of her own will – and if any christian "demons" were involved - again, which I seriously doubt - they were only standing around and watching her do all their work for them.

The point is, though, that even the word demon was corrupted by the JDI (judeo-christian-islamic) crowd to mean something frightening and horrible and eager to send you to hell, perdition and damnation, when in fact its true meaning was very different.

Here’s the Online Etymology Dictionary entry for "demon":

c.1200, from Latin daemon "spirit," from Greek daimon "deity, divine power; lesser god; guiding spirit, tutelary deity" (sometimes including souls of the dead); "one's genius, lot, or fortune;" from PIE *dai-mon- "divider, provider" (of fortunes or destinies), from root *da- "to divide" (see tide).

Used (with daimonion) in Christian Greek translations and Vulgate for "god of the heathen" and "unclean spirit." Jewish authors earlier had employed the Greek word in this sense, using it to render shedim "lords, idols" in the Septuagint, and Matt. viii:31 has daimones, translated as deofol in Old English, feend or deuil in Middle English. Another Old English word for this was hellcniht, literally "hell-knight."

The original mythological sense is sometimes written daemon for purposes of distinction. The Demon of Socrates was a daimonion, a "divine principle or inward oracle." His accusers, and later the Church Fathers, however, represented this otherwise. The Demon Star (1895) is Algol.

Even today, in popular culture, people hear the word "demon" and run around squealing in terror, flapping their hands and envisioning Linda Blair upchucking yards of green goo-ish split pea soup and scampering downstairs upside down, like a spider.

Interestingly enough, the visual representation of the stony (and fictional) bad boy ("Pazuzu") who possessed Linda Blair’s character in the movie was based on an actual Sumerian god of the same name, spirit of the southwest wind known for bringing famine during dry seasons, and locusts during rainy seasons. Pazuzu was said to be invoked in amulets, which combat the powers of his rival, the malicious goddess Lamashtu, who was believed to cause harm to mother and child during childbirth. Although Pazuzu is, himself, an "evil spirit", he drives away other evil spirits, therefore protecting humans against plagues and misfortunes. (courtesy of Wikipedia again.)

Point being that the phrase "evil spirit" was just a christian interpretation of the word "demon" in describing him initially, and was no doubt the Greek definition of ""deity, divine power; lesser god; guiding spirit, tutelary deity", and more of a supernatural power in bringing famine and locusts.

Still, he was apparently seen more as a deflective idol or protective deity, used to deflect evil, not represent it. So there you go. That statue you saw Father Marin digging up at the start of the film was actually the GOOD guy! Hollywood screws it up again. Or maybe it was Blatty, who knows.

But the fear of anything that even sounds demonic sends most of these women thundering around in aimless circles, squealing like stuck pigs. If you ever needed proof of that, go to Google and ask a question like, "How do I summon an incubus?" – and I only suggest that because someone had raised that question already, and when I looked up the question and answers I was so disgusted at the childish and idiotic responses I read that my jaw dropped a few times.

Examples: (and when I tell you that 99% of these stupid responses elicited the Spelling and Grammar Psycho Police Squad, I’m not kidding. If you’re too stupid to proofread your own work or at least use "spellcheck", you’re not worth paying attention to. So let’s review the real responses from "Ask.com", shall we?

The Spelling and Grammar Psycho Police Squad

(1) "Incubus? I'm sure there is "something" sexual humanilting your astral body already...If you feel insecure about yourself...its happening in the astral-planes...so when it manifest into this world(physicality) you feel humiliation and fear! I suggest you astral project to see whats your astral body is doing or what being than to it. I found out my astral body was in chains and "things" were being done to it....that were sick and twist. It doesn't happen anymore, so I don't feel fear anymore....just anger!" [Riiiiight. And yes, that was completely unintelligible. KA-BLAM! KER-POW! KER-BLOOEY!]

(2) "Step 1) First, you need it to be raining. If there is no rain, perform Souix Tribal Raindance in the proper Souix Tribe attire.Step 2) Purchase the following materials... 7 eggs, a wizards hat, Nike running shoes (must be Nike), a XXXL T-Shirt, and a rubber chicken.Step 3) Once Steps 1 & 2 are finished you may now perform the ritual...Wearing the proper attire, recite each of the 7 deadly sins except for one of your choice. After each sin, smash egg in face. For final sin, locate a human sacrifice. Once located, pound your chest three times while saying "DIABLOS!" repeatedly. Proceed to throw the final egg at the sacrifice as hard as possible. The Nike shoes are for running away from the sacrifice. Once out of sight in an isolated area, you will be greated by an incubus. The rubber chicken is a peace offering to the incubus so that he doesn't kill you.Good luck. My last summon was a doozie." [Uh-huh. By the way, the word you were looking for was the "Sioux", dumbass. So if you were trying to imply that a member of the Great Sioux Nation was posting the response – as though they had nothing better to do and gave enough of a shit to post responses to Ask.com – you might want to spell their tribal name correctly. Not to mention specifying which tribe within the Sioux you were referring to. They are located in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Montana in the United States; and in Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan in Canada. Sheesh.]

(3) "I just open up the door, lean out and start yelling, "Heeeeere incubus incubus incubus! Heeeeeer incubus! Haunting time! Heeeeeeere, incubus" [Okay, that one was funny. But retarded. But still funny.]

(4) "Click your ruby slippers together or wish really hard on your birthday when you blow your candles out." [OK, being gay and into "The Wizard of Oz" shouldn’t make you so dumb you forget the real reason for clicking your ruby slippers together, sweetie. Come on, Ru-Paul. THINK. Something about "homes" and "no places"?]

(5) "I´m not fooling around.....my advice is, don´t invite either an incubus or a succubus (both are demon lovers). Why not get a human lover?" [OMG! And why don’t YOU stop being such a pretentious and condescending idiot, you cow?? I guarantee you the responder was either a christian church lady or a twinkie wiccan one. Here are some possible reasons: the person posting the question could have been injured, crippled, unsightly, incarcerated, stationed in a remote location like the arctic circle, had an infectious disease, was unable to get a human lover for some other reason.

My own personal reason: due to a bad accident involving a bus I was riding on, I can’t hold a position for longer than a few seconds without developing horrible and crippling muscle and tendon cramps in my legs and feet, so painful I find it difficult to even walk the next day. Shot my sex life all to pieces. Someone suggested summoning a helpful spirit to solve the issue; hence my question. They were NOT of the opinion that such a spirit would be evil, because they had the intelligence to think outside of the unbalanced JCI (judeo-christian-islamic) box. Unlike you, you stupid bitch. I didn’t want to burden any "human lover" with the guilt of causing me so much pain, but apparently you have no such conscience, eh?]

(6) "Wipe off the white face-powder, get rid of the thick mascara and for god's sake sort your fingernails out. Go out, meet a few people, find a nice bloke/girl and indulge in whatever depraved fantasy suits you both best. Just leave behind the idea that the occult is a toy designed to serve whatever bizarre adolescent urge you are currently suffering from." [As to your assumption of depravity, see response to Question #5, above. But first – what could "sort your fingernails out" possibly mean? Must be a British thing.]

Back to the book.

They say that – and no, I don’t know who "they" are, I should look that up! - "When the disciple is ready, the master will appear." – ah. Buddha. Thanks! Often changed to "teacher" and "student" in today’s parlance. And no, I’m not saying that "Jason Miller" is my newly adopted teacher, although goodness knows he has a pretty cool blog and Enochian lessons link ... but that he wrote in 2006 something perfectly aligned with my discoveries in 2012-2013:

"I have seen it written that no real witch would ever do magick to harm someone or influence another’s will. I have seen it argued that no genuine ceremonial magician would harm another because he knows that the law of karma would turn his work back upon him. I have also heard the argument that anyone with the power it takes to launch a successful magickal attack would be evolved enough to be beyond doing such things. All I have to say is: don’t you believe it! Such arguments help sell books and help make witchcraft more acceptable to mainstream society, but it’s just wishful thinking on the part of people who should know better."
Miller, Jason. Protection & Reversal Magick. The Career Press, 2006. p. 24

THANK YOU!!! I love this guy! Although, quite honestly, I think he’s being extremely generous to suggest that they "should know better". Most of these women (and a few men) writing such appalling "Introduction to Witchcraft" books genuinely DON’T know better, which is why an entire generation of possible witches and wizards are being seriously shortchanged in the "witchcraft" craft, and deprived of their power. And because those women writing these appalling books DON’T know any better, they are downright dangerous.

So to the Tinkerbelles and Twinkies (and you know who you are) who have been wasting everyone’s valuable time with their "church ladies with pointy hats" nonsense:

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