Procrastination

In the article "A living hell: The eerie twelfth house" from Asteria 2 I discussed Mr. Farrell's axiom with respect to the first year of magical practice and how it is influenced by Saturn, with the second year being influenced by Jupiter. I then linked this with twelfth house themes and further elaborated more on those themes. I left out several themes out of the need to make the article more compact, one such theme being procrastination. 

Procrastination is defined as "the action of delaying or postponing something". A quick look into the psychology behind procrastination made me come across information that has a lot in common with what I wrote in this article, being complementary to the latter, and together forming a great part of a person's mechanism of self sabotage. The same mechanism makes an individual both distance themselves from others as well as procrastinate. Some people are more prone to manifest one of these aspects to greater extent although there are certain individuals who manifest both of them roughly with the same intensity, yours truly having been part of the latter category for many years.

While solitude can be a good thing for a practicing occultist, especially someone seeking to expand their consciousness and experience mystical states, procrastination is a great enemy one must overcome in order for their work to improve. This is another reason the first year of magical practice is influenced by Saturn, since it's the time when one must train themselves to construct their magical mindset and use it fully, while at the same time become easily able to shift from their mundane mindset into their magical one whenever they have to practice or perform certain workings. 

As such, he or she must overcome their conditioning that had been formed while they were having solely a mundane mindset and recondition themselves to incorporate the newly forming magical component. This is hard and in many cases it can prove very hard because procrastination will usually kick in and prevent the person from moving on with their work. I think it's safe to say this can be one of the causes for becoming an armchair occultist and jumping straight into the philosophical side of the ninth house. 

The person who can't push through and fight off their procrastination will end up reading many occult books and could, in theory, become a researcher that would help unearth valuable information that had been lost over time, data that would allow for progress in this field. In many cases, however, they merely become someone who will try to come across as knowledgeable in occult debates and lecture others, when in reality they know next to nothing about practical magical work.

A good way to overcome procrastination in general is by coming up with a routine and diligently sticking to it, thus using the sixth house influences to one's advantage. The downside is the sixth house can soon become unpleasant due to the extent of the probable unpleasantness it brings from a physical perspective. The person could end up packing their schedule so tight to fit in their magical work, it leaves no room for them to do anything else besides that and their usual mundane duties. 

A better way would be to use the fifth house and try to view the magical work as entertainment, something that would allow you to enjoy doing it regardless of its repetitive nature - routine is part of the sixth house. People usually start off excited only to end up being bogged down in routine and their initial enthusiasm quickly fades away. It can often turn into boredom, even irritation.

The trick here is to experiment by incorporating newer methods into the practice in order to find the patterns that work best. The initial excitement of walking down the occult path will receive an extra boost with each newly incorporated method even if that would prove to be a bust later on. But with each method that improves the work the joy will increase and later on, when the influences of Saturn will start to decrease, the person will begin to see the fruit of their labor. From there there's but a few more steps towards the satisfaction of seeing all that hard labor manifest as a good harvest.

The problem is the influences of the twelfth house are present throughout one's lifetime, procrastination included. I've come across quite a few occultists with more than a couple of years or practical experience who felt like giving up for different reasons. Very few, if any, admitted they don't feel like doing the work anymore.

I too have encountered such issues over the years. However, for some reason I've always felt each year of my practice is influenced by a certain planet and the first one felt exactly as being influenced by Saturn, with the added hardships caused by my stupidity. But unlike others I embraced Saturn wholeheartedly and pushed on. My second year felt as if it were influenced by the Sun, however, but that's when I felt the huge relief of "enlightenment" brought to me by the fact I came across Scott's site and finally sarted conjuring spirits after all that LBRP-ing and LIRP-ing and MP-ing, etc. 

Then each new year started with me feeling bored until something new caught my attention and I decided to investigate it, which lead me to experimentation and so on. I'm usually childish and immature and proud of it, but whenever I came across something new and shiny I felt like a kid in ten candy shops stacked on top of each other. 

You can see the results in the links to the left of the page.

Even now I feel off some times and not in the mood to do any ritual, but then I start getting all sorts of evil thoughts about cursing someone in new ways and I get back on track soon enough. Everyone else would to find their own motivation, naturally, but remember you're on a path that has no end. Unless you stop walking - cue whiskey commercial for which I don't get paid.