Mercury retrograde incarnate

The funniest thing happened to me this current Mercury retrograde. Actually, not to me per se, but to a woman I know and I found it funny I got to hear about it. The events she experienced over the past couple of days have left me to believe she had an encounter with the very physical personification of Mercury retrograde.

It all started at the beginning of the week when she was contacted by the school doctor who recommended she'd take her son to a certain specialist for a specific test. There's no need for me to go into details, but the school doctor recommended a specific specialist and she made the arrangements for the boy to have an appointment with the specialist the following day so he'd be tested, his mother attending as well, of course.

Venus in Libra warning

Venus is a few days away from entering its domicile in Libra where its power will be high. However, it will be combust (and there's no need for me to keep linking the several articles I've written to cover that subject)! Venus is combust even now, despite the applying conjunction to the Sun is out-of-sign, making its energies godawful for beneficial workings (because Venus is also in fall in Virgo).

Moreover, Venus will be combust most of the time it transits Libra. This is highly unfortunate for people who want to take advantage of that and perform beneficial Venus work because Venus' energies will be highly volatile and unpleasant due to the combustion. Therefore, I for one would not make any Venus talisman for beneficial purposes during this entire time (and I recommend you don't make or buy one that's made during this time either).

Carpet bombing VS surgical strike

Over the years I've come across various pompous terms occultists have been using to describe themselves either as qualities, or in some cases as unofficial titles. Besides proclaiming oneself a scholar or academic or expert or whatnot, I've also come across terms such as "strategic" to describe someone else's or their own magical thingy. A closer inspection of their work revealed that term to be incorrectly used, revealing the lack of knowledge of the individuals in question, and thus possibly making it yet another pompous term people use to describe themselves for marketing purposes. 

The reason I state the above is that people often confuse strategy and tactics. Strategy is the plan constructed to set goals while tactics are the actions taken in order for those plans to succeed. Both strategy and tactics depend on quite a few factors, ranging from one's own resources and assets in general to various chronological, social and geographical ones and so on. Both strategy and tactics are multilayered, from the topmost perspective over the situation to the individual smaller perspectives on the ground, so to speak. What I mean is, from the large campaign map in the war room to the individual soldier in the trenches.

The first example of strategy is Germany's invasion of Russia in WW2 where the strategy behind "Operation Barbarossa" called for a three pronged attack performed by three individual army groups that would conquer important industrial, agricultural and administrative regions and towns. A second example would be the Russian offensive at the battle of Stalingrad where the strategy behind "Operation Uranus" called for a massive pincer movement around the German army occupying most of the city and its outskirts. And a third example would be the American concept of "island hopping" in the Pacific war, where American commanders decided to capture only those islands that are most important and not waste men and equipment fighting through each and every small island occupied by Japanese troops. 

In each of these examples the tactics were left to the individual commanders of the army, division, regiment and so on that took part of the operation, as they had to attack enemy positions in certain ways based on actual circumstances on the battlefield. Some of them opted for encircling actions, others for frontal assaults, etc. 

Ye "experts"

Señor Shaman has recently written this article which I find most wonderful. Not only does it represent a bitch slap to all those wannabe guru figures that have been slicing their veins lengthwise ever since Asteria was published, but it's also a very informative article for occultists in general. As such, I couldn't help myself from adding another layer to it.

What makes someone be an expert? This unofficial title speaks of something close to the absolute, since it implies perfection. I for one am sick of it because of the way it's been used around here for a long time, and elsewhere too from what I've seen.

Lunar nodes in action

Earlier this year I was contacted by a man seeking my magical services to get a job. I told him he can get my ritual for employment and do it himself because a) it's much cheaper and b) most of the times these things work better if you're doing it on yourself rather than having someone else do it for you, especially since the link used is only a picture and not something stronger like handwriting. He insisted I do it and paid my usual fee of $75.

While I could've used the aforementioned ritual for employment, Jupiter was still strong in domicile and direct at the time and I selected a pretty good election for the ritual. Besides the force I'm detailing in that ritual, Jupiter is also very good at such things, especially for promotions and getting a job basically means you're getting promoted from being unemployed to becoming employed. But before I did the ritual I told him he should not rely solely on the spirits and instead be proactive. I give this exact example in Magic Words and it was written way before I encountered this person.

Product changes

This Mercury retrograde that began yesterday has finally allowed me to make a couple of changes to my products. As such, the ritual for a home is now $22 because I've added a detailed method that allows the user to change and/or improve the energies of their home (or that of another). Additionally, life ruining curses is now $499 because I've added yet another layer of means of causing horrible stuff to happen to the target for the long run.

That is all.

 

Steadfastness

Our farmer's done it again, only this time he's outdone himself!

I haven't asked him for permission to share his name so I'll simply refer to him as Jordan, especially since there's some dumbass Christians in the area where he lives who are likely to start acting like bitches toward him if they ever found out what he's been doing. Being a Christian myself, I think very low of such people, regardless of their sect...

But anyway, ever since Jordan became my client he and I have been having a very productive conversation in regards to occult related themes. More exactly, we've been discussing occult methods of improving farming, from the quality and quantity of crops to methods of protecting them from hazards. Truth be told this is new territory to me since aside from being very familiar with farm work, I had yet to explore magical workings for such goals. Moreover, we've been talking about other things such as apocryphal texts, Adam Kadmon and so on.

While Jordan's previous success in causing rain for his crops was notable, he told me there's more need for rain since his region is about to enter the most demanding time for crops in terms of water shortage. Turns out he lives in the Ohio valley and, although I went through that region by car during an awful downpour some time in late November, September is the driest month in that part of the US. This would obviously raise the need for irrigation, which in turn increases farmers' expenses.