Strategic Sorcery Blog

One of my teachings that people can find most vexing is my insistence on meditation as a cornerstone of the path. It can seem counter-intuitive to people that are magically minded. Meditation asks you to sit still, magic often asks you to move around and make potent gestures and signs. Meditation asks for silence, magic usually asks for arcane formula and grand invocations. Meditation asks that you treat all visions, messages from gods and spirits, and psychic experience as a distraction to be ignored, and return to the meditation itself. Magically minded people are often built specifically to experience such things, and tend to place great importance upon them.  For this reason, my insistence on meditation can be
For example, recently I got an e-mail from a student that simply does not want to meditate and does not see the point:

“I have to say that I find your insistence on meditation frustrating and I really don’t think it has as much to do with magic as you think. The magic I am interested in involves talking with spirits, traveling the astral, and raising and controlling the energies of the body. Meditation seems like a side issue.”

My answer: I think that talking with spirits, astral travelling, and energy work are great. Meditation is getting to know and control your own mind.  What part of those things do not involve your mind?

Spirits? Do you think you hear them only audibly with the normal ear?
Astral Travel? Is your mind not essential to this? Is the astral not a realm of mirror-like appearance that can fool and deceive?
Energy Work? There is no system of yoga, chi-gung, or anything else that does not recognize that the subtle winds are linked to mental processes. Literally none.

Setting all this aside, even just normal waking experience of reality itself is only known through the mind. Every day we all perceive reality through a deeply flawed lens. Not only are we a slave to the heuristics that we use to make sense of what we take in, but our mechanistic slavery to what can only be described as the programming we all hold, keeps us from seeing reality-as-such and acting accordingly. If this is the case with normal reality, how more susceptible are we when we start dealing with subtle realms and mystical states?

Meditation is the best way to know the tool that you interact with all experience through. It is the best way to clean that tool and keep it sharp. It is the best way to keep yourself from getting carried away by your own bullshit.

Still though, if we are not just mediators  but Sorcerer’s and Sorceresses’s, we need to know   how and when to let the visions in, when to listen to the gods, and when to make the potent signs and grand invocations. Another student of the course is doing a lot of meditation and mentioned that she knows she is supposed to ignore the awesome visions, but finds it hard.

The rick here is harmony in your practices. When I and other teachers tell people to ignore visions during meditation, it is mostly because we do not want people to confuse visionary and trance work with meditation. Once you know that, there is no reason that you cannot explore those visions outside of meditation. You can either finish your session and mentally attempt to revisit them or explore the vision right when it happens and make time afterwards for more meditation. The trick is knowing that you are departing the meditation in a mindful way for a purpose, not getting distracted from your meditation by shiny spirit baubles.

While potent and meaningful visions are not meditation itself, they are a sign of progress in meditation. By reducing clinging to old perceptions, surface level mental chatter, and base karmic traces, you are making room for deeper stuff to manifest. In fact, meditation can sometimes be a better way to generate such visions than specifically visionary or shamanic methods, as well as leaving you in a position to deal with them critically.

I will leave my thoughts on self-critique for my next post: The Usefulness of Doubt.

I was asked the other day by a dharma brother why I no longer hang out in Buddhist circles. In fact, most of the people I am closest to don’t. The reason is that while there are a sizable amount of people who get into Tibetan Buddhism from a magic/occult angle, most people approach from a meditation – psychology angle, or worse, a completely saccharine pseudo spiritual desire to be exotic. Those of us that approach it from the magic angle make the others uncomfortable to say the least.

The approach I took, and the teachers that I hold dear, have made my experience a little less like Kundun, and a little more like The Golden Child.

I thank them with all my heart. Strategic Sorcery would not be what it it without them.

In all the fuss getting the apprenticeship program together, I forgot all about the Equinox and the spring sale I had planned!

Spring is a time of resurrection and renewal. I myself have been re-evaluating and changing my daily and weekly practices to fit my current needs, something I try to do every quarter or so.

If you are trying to renew your practice, or add something new to it, I want to help you out. From now until Saturday the 30th, you can join the Strategic Sorcery Course for just $100!  

If interested in receiving the course, please send an e-mail to inominandum@gmail.com with the words STRATEGIC SORCERY in the Subject Line.

Here are a few words from people that have taken the course:

“I operate several websites and have done so for several years. Just recently I revisited the financial magic given in innominandums Sorcerers Secrets book, but in the light of what I learned so far in the course. Within two days of the working my income from my main money-making site went up by 420% and it has stayed there for the last two months!“
-Malcolm

“This course is brilliant.  Not only has it given me a broad and deep understanding of spirits, energies, and the self, it has also given me powerful tools to transform my life.  In just seven months I have identified and left a toxic relationship, earned funding to pursue my Master’s degree, and started a lifelong dream of writing and publishing a book.  This course will give any aspiring witch or wizard a comprehensive and effective framework to empower their practice.  I highly recommend it.”
-DK

“I had already been getting excellent results with Jason Miller’s books when I joined the course. It turns out it was a wise decision because I can now say that I’m ten times more successful. This stuff just works!”
-AK

I had been dealing with obnoxious, disturbing neighbors all last year, and had numerous confrontations with them. This summer, the loud bass started again, and the house -which seemed to be a “party house” was getting back into full swing for the summer. Utilizing the information from this course, I summoned Kammael, and felt the urge also to include Taphartharath to assist with the problem. I went to bed that night after performing the ritual. In the morning my daughter woke me up, to tell me that the police were next door. I looked out the window, and sure enough they were at the house. I am not sure what happened, but is seemed something had happened to them. After that, it has ceased to be the party house, in fact, it has now been quiet as a church for the last 3 months and my family and I have enjoyed a peaceful summer!
-Mark

“This course gave me a firm theoretical background, putting together everything I’ve known before and it also gave me a lot of new information and practical tools. So far this has been the luckiest year of my life – I am currently doing my internship in the headquarters of one of the biggest European banks and after one month I have got an amazing job offer from them. However, I turned it down because at the same time I’ve been offered a 5-year contract for a well-paid PhD dream job in one of the top Scandinavian universities where I will start in September. I have also met the best boyfriend in the world and we are very happy together. I have a feeling that all the best opportunities are being offered to me and I am very grateful for this, I’ve never felt so happy in my life before. Thank you so much!”
-Alisa

“As a traditionally trained Hindu Tantrick, the content of the course has allowed me to further consolidate my tradition from a sorcery perspective and become more innovative in its practical application. Many thanks from Australia”
-J

“The SS course is full of information and is intensely practical. It’s providing me with a solid foundation in actual ritual and magical practice. I currently have 40 odd lessons and not one contains “filler”, rather there’s enough stuff in them to take way more than a year to complete. In fact, it’s not one to complete, but to integrate into a life style if one so chooses. I am finding that I’m beginning to integrate other methods into my magical curriculum, and the SS course enables this to happen. And then there’s the forum. I’ve used it a few times and had well thought out answers and conversations with students and those who are far ahead in their own practices.”
-Foolishmagus

“I’m the Senior Instructor of the Hoshin Budo Ryu under Soke Rob Williams. What me and my students have started doing for about the last month or so is prior to beginning classes, is to make a personal offering to God and the spirits of the area.  Since we make every effort to train outdoors, what has begun happening is that the weather cooperates most days with nice breezes. The mosquitoes stay away from us, and we have begun picking up more and more spirits that hang with us. The spirits, a great deal of them are warriors are readily seen in our Auras by those that know how view Auras.

This has been a great course and one of the best decisions thus far that I
have made in a long time.  Keep it coming.  Thanks and feel free to use my
name.”
- JAMES F. ALEXANDER

“The Strategic Sorcery Course has kick started my work into a whole new level, its perfect for any kind of tradition practitioner, and you will be amazed with the results, and it gets easily integrated with other systems, it gets on a lot of aspects often neglected out there, and Jason’s eloquence will make sense of many subjects often obscured or confusing, rather than a particular system, this is a robust course on sorcery, on many aspects you will get your hands occupied for a long time even after completing it, do the homework, and get the most of SSC, don’t let this awesome material rest in filed, put it into practice, you gotta make it happen.”
-Jadean Lazuli

So there are a number of posts floating around about Why Evocation is important. Here is Aaron Leitch. Mike C. The commonality among them is an assertion that magic works through the agency of spirits and that any assertion otherwise is modern and incorrect.

I agree that the evocation of spirits is important in magic, and I teach it. Spirits also get invoked through prayer, simple calling, trance, astral projection, possession, and other manners as well. Each provides a different level and flavor of contact, and each of these can be useful for different things. For instance, when pulled over by a policeman, I might call upon a spirit in a whisper to help me influence my way out of a ticket – a full evocation at that point is neither useful nor possible.

Perhaps if we decide to limit our discussion of magic to only the western ceremonial tradition, than we can say that Spirits are the sole operating force in magic. I don’t limit my view of magic that way. Certainly in the west there is also an enormous amount of folk magic and sympathetic magic that is not relying directly upon spirits for their intercession. Perhaps there are prayers, often to simply to God, but the action of binding a figure, separating candles, beating a bag, or whatever it may be is the primary act of magic and it is thought that the practitioner if acting directly. This of course does not negate the use of spirits in magic, or the validity of the so-called “spirit model”. You see, we are spirits too. 

Yes, we have bodies, but within those bodies we have spirit and soul. People have power.

That’s why in Tibetan Magic you have training to raise the body temperature through breath, to breathe mantras into other people, even to switch bodies if the Yogas of Naropa are to believed! That is why people that try sex magic usually are successful with it. That is why some people can heal with their hands.

Even more interesting is that very often the spirits that get evoked in an evocation end up telling the exorcist (as Aaron notes in his post) HOW to do something rather than just doing it. Very often they tell you HOW To do the very type of thing with gesture, energy, breath, or materia that gets passed on in these traditions of yoga, Tantra, Witchcraft, and so on.

The Spirits are often reminding us that we are spirits too and can do what they do.

I learned magic mostly from mentors. People that knew who I was, worked with me one on one, and took into account my interests, schedule, and personality. As happy as I am with the Strategic Sorcery Course and the amazing success reports that I keep getting from students who take it, I have been hungry to teach deeper secrets in a more personal manner. Some mysteries can only be communicated mouth to ear, and mind to mind.

With that in mind, I have decided to open up a limited number of slots in an apprenticeship program. This will be for people that want regular communication with me by both e-mail and regular phone/video consultations. I will also be setting up in person meeting/initiations with apprentices that can travel, or who I can travel to see.

Anyone at any level of experience or training may apply to be accepted as an apprentice, spaces however are limited. If you are interested in this program, please write me ASAP at strategicsorcery@gmail.com with the words  APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM as the subject line.

Last night I gave a talk at Rutgers. It was a small talk, which enabled me to quickly abandon the lecture format and start talking to people one on one. It turned into more of a group coaching session than anything else, brainstorming side businesses for everyone there. As RO kindly noted on his blog, this morning someone on FB asked how to make a quick $400 and I buzzed out a quick idea on tutoring four people in something you know well and charging them $100 a piece.

That’s all well and good, but it still leaves the question: what am I going to teach? What am I going to sell?

Obviously unless I know you, I can’t answer that for you. What I can tell you is to approach it as we would in Strategic Sorcery, which often starts with breaking things down so you can take a look at what is really there.

1. First make a list of every job you have ever had. Add to this every hobby that you excel at. Now add your magic practice, not just as one item, but each individual task. Don’t worry about marketability yet, just get it down there.

2. Take each of those items and put them at the top of another piece of paper. Break down every skill used in those jobs and hobbies. Lets say you work at a warehouse. You have knowledge of proper lifting technique, safety requirements, how to read MSDS sheets, taking inventory, report generating, forklift driving, packing, etc. Do the same with your hobbies and your magic practice. Lets say that outside of work you like to practice martial arts and in your magic practice you specialize in energetic shielding.

3. Highlight the things that you like to do the most.

4. Reeces that stuff together! See what makes a good match. Perhaps a DVD on stretches (that you learned in Martial Arts training) aimed at people who do manual labor? Classes at your local continuing education program. Maybe Energy Shielding for Martial Artists? Maybe Energy Shielding for executives. Maybe breath work (learned from your shielding).

5. If your skills don’t match up perfectly, look a bit outside yourself at skills you can become competent in quickly, or at people who would be interested in what you do. Take the energy shielding thing and market it for Law Enforcement personel (you would be AMAZED at how many cops I know are into psychic/occult jazz).

Point being, by looking at yourself and breaking your skills down you can get a fresh perspective in just how much you have to offer, and perceive new ways to apply your skills.

So because Zeus did me a total solid yesterday, than completely doubled that today, he has been on my mind and tongue.

Talking with a reader today that has been trying to meet girls and date girls, but who has been striking out with Venus talismans. I suggest that perhaps he might give Zeus a spin.

His response: “Zeus?! Isn’t that Jupiter? Isn’t Jupiter about money not love”

My response: “Dude, have you ever looked at a family tree for the Greek Gods? He had sex with like, everyone.”

Seriously though people. Sometimes I think that too much focus through a planetary lens or Khabbalah lens can make you blind. You would think that there were only ever seven or ten Gods, seven or ten Archangels, and seven or ten spirits.

Learn to tackle the problem from different angles.

When I wrote the Strategic Sorcery Course I really struggled with whether or not to include a chapter on purely offensive magic. People usually fall into one of two camps on this issue, both of which I think are deeply mistaken. One the one hand you have the people who feel that any kind of magic aimed at causing harm is inherently evil and will cause nothing but ill to all involved. On the other hand you have people who revel in Dark Paganism, or Nightside magic, or Sinister whatever and who range from feeling that vengeance is a good thing that you should engage in whenever wronged to true sociopaths and just will use any means necessary to find love, wealth, or power.

To me baleful magic is not fundamentally different than a gun. Magicians and Witches should know they exist, and even if you never plan on using one yourself, you should understand what they do and how to at least defend yourself if needed. Those that do employ it should do so only in dire circumstances that truly call for such action.

When I did write the attack magic lesson for the course a funny thing happened. About half the people in the course did not receive it. I had to send it three times to get it out. On the one hand I felt strongly that this is a part of magic and should be dealt with in a sane and responsible manner. On the other hand, I hated the idea of putting ideas into peoples heads that would cause harm for ignoble reasons.

Today, I am thankful that I did include it, because I received the following field report.

I am student XXXX from cycle 2 of the course, and wanted to write you up a report. I believe that your attack magic lesson may have saved my husbands life. Three years ago my husband witnessed a crime and provided the testimony that ultimately led to a conviction. A little over 2 months ago, the guilty party was released from jail and we started to receive threatening phone calls. Though I employed protection magic, two weeks ago my husband was attacked outside the store where he works. Thankfully someone heard the attack and ran to his aid, but the criminal got away.

I remembered that you had mentioned that in cases where someone is threatening physical harm, using magic to attack first might be more effective than only using protection. I used three techniques, all suggested by the Attack Magic lesson. I am not going to lie: I went right past binding and into outright cursing. Yesterday I found out that my work was successful. I don’t want the details posted, but the person will not be in a position to bother us again for a LONG time. Thank you for being one of the few people who provide clear instructions on how to do this kind of work. I hope I never have to use it again, but I am glad I had access to it when I needed it. 

“We are made to bleed and scab and heal and bleed again and turn every scar into a joke. We are made to fight and fuck and talk and fight again and sit around and laugh until we choke.”
- Ani Difranco

This is a tough world. If you are able to read these words on a computer you should be thankful because you won the fucking birth lottery.  Still and all there is not a one of us that is not experiencing some amount of pain and sorrow. How to deal with that, and finding the reason for it is one of the biggest spiritual questions there is.

I come from a Buddhist background. If you know anything at all about Buddhism, you know it is all about liberation from suffering. It posits an entire existence that is manifested from ignorance. Christian Gnosticism posits a broken world created by a demiurge. Mainstream Christianity posits suffering as a result of original sin. The idea that existence should be peace and harmony and that suffering and pain are like breaks or infections in the perfection of things is a common thought throughout the world. It is also one that I do not agree with.

The idea that everything is gods plan is even more appalling. Graham Green once said that “You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God”. People who attempt to comfort suffering by explaining that their suffering is actually God’s mercy, make me want to punch them.

I don’t believe in an inherent peaceful, harmonic, and perfect world – either of the spirit or of the flesh. While I don’t believe in an outside creator god overseer as many do, I do think that we manifest for a reason. We are here to evolve and grow and experience, or in the words of Ms. Difranco, to “fight and fuck and fight again“.

When you are hurting it is hard to even think of suffering as something useful. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is a great quote to bandy about at the gym or even when getting laid off, but it is cold comfort when suffering something horrific like the loss a spouse or child.  Still and all, suffering is an experience and it is through experience that we grow.

Suffering and Pain are the fire through which consciousness forges ahead and grows. Does this mean that suffering and pain are good? Yes and no. Yes in that it is a tool for growth, but No in that we are not meant to wallow in it, or celebrate it. In fact, if you accept suffering outright, it kind of ceases to really be useful. It is only through the work of dealing with suffering that we grow. This means finding ways to help alleviate the outer cuases of suffering like poverty, ill health, etc. It also means finding ways to coping and using the suffering that comes in a contructive way and how not to let it take us down.
Take for example the self-inflicted suffering and pain that long distance runners endure. The dangers that mountain clinbers and explorers experience. They are strong steel forged through pain and trial. The types of sufferings that we all experience every day are not fundamentally different from these types of suffering IF we choose to look at them the same way.

The methods that I use for this are many, but the principals behind them are few.

1. I seek to fully experience whatever I am experiencing. If I am having sex, than I celebrate that I am getting to experience sex. If I am suffering a great loss, I look at my own mind and say this is what it is like to experience loss. If I am on a ship that is sinking I want to think “huh, so this is what it is like to be on a sinking ship…”

2. I seek non-attachment. People have a lot of mis-understandings about non-attachment. They think it means shutting down and not experiencing joy and love. That is completely incorrect. Non-attachment lets you fully experience the joy and love you get. It just also enables you to let go when the time is right. To know that all things are impermanent and fleeting helps you to divorce cause from effect. I had a teacher that told me that angry words are like an arrow that falls at your feet. Most people bend over, take up the arrow, and plunge it into their own heart because they are attached to the situation. You can however, choose to leave the arrow on the ground.

3. Channeling energy. Emotion is energy. You can feel it in the body. Passion is power. Learning to use and manipulate the winds and channels of the subtle body, and how to purify your mind with meditation, can be an amazing tool for transforming suffering into fuel. It is not about embracing anger or anything like that, It is about letting it arise and re-identifying it as an energy rather than something aimed at specific people you are upset with or bad situations of the moment. There is more to this, and the actual techniques cannot be taught in a blog post, but they are out there.

So, to close with another quote from the music of my teens:

“Don’t act like there is no tomorrow
You should use the pain and the sorrow
To fill you up with power
Life’s both sweet and sour!”
- The Sugarcubes

In case you were not yet aware, the Temple of Witchcraft in Salem NH has been trying to raise the money it needs for a parking lot. The Temple has purchased Grandview Manor, a beautiful late 19th-century house with detached barn and cottage and over five acres of land in Salem, NH. To comply with the town’s requirements for holding classes and religious services at the property, they need to put in additional parking between the house and the barn. They have a site plan, approved by the Salem Town Planning Board, and are attempting to raise the funds to hire a contractor to do the work to implement it.

I am a big supporter of Pagan and Occult groups establishing permanent buildings and dedicated properties whenever and wherever possible, and would like to lend a hand to the project.

From March 1st until March 10th, for every person that joins the Strategic Sorcery Course, I will donate $50 to the TOW parking lot project.

The course consists of 52 lessons arriving by e-mail every Tuesday morning for a year. In addition to this, there is a student’s forum, and access to me for questions. The cost is $150, less than three dollars a lesson!

So, if you want to get a years worth of intense instruction on practical magic AND support the Temple of Witchcraft parking lot drive, write me at inominandum@gmail.com for an information packet.

If you have already joined the course or don’t want to join the course, but want to donate to the TOW drive directly, you can do so here.