I don’t usually post much about magic, but this… thing… happened yesterday and it was on my mind. I thought it was a pretty cool moment. For a variety of reasons, I haven’t done tai chi yet today; I’ll be writing about that shortly.
Yesterday, I happened to be on the highway during the hour of Mercury, on a day of Venus (otherwise known as Friday). Today is the full moon in the month of June, which is occurring on the Friday the 13th, in a Mercury retrograde period. I had a remarkable idea for work come into my head at the moment when I was stuck in traffic. I had the sense that this particular idea for damage might be from outside of myself, that is, a message from a spirit or outside force?
As I had these thoughts, I glanced at the clock. The car clock showed me that it was approximately the hour of Mercury. I was stuck in traffic, which I’ve come to associate with Mercury in retrograde. Was a Mercurial spirit possibly responsible for sending me this message?
As it so happened in the traffic, there was a car to my immediate left which turned out to be a Lincoln Mercury town car. On my right, a truck caught up to me improbably carrying racing pigeons… messenger birds, a symbol of Mercury. No! I thought to myself it couldn’t possibly be a message from Mercury. Almost at once, the song playing on my phone ended, and shifted by random chance to the next song: the Mercury movement from Gustav Holst’s The Panets suite — and the album art for this version of it, for some reason, is an incongruous painting by Hans Holbein… HH… the eighth letter of the alphabet. Glance ahead of me, and sure enough the car in front of me has the 8 logo on it, which I think is the Dale Earnhart number in NASCAR? The number 8 is the number of Mercury and of Hod in the Tree of Life. So, we had a truck from an inprobable farm for racing pigeons, a Mercury car, the 8 logo, and a piece of music associated with communication spirits, all while stuck in traffic. Highly improbable, but again here were a number of symbols of the god Mercury, during an hour associated with him, during a full moon associated with him. When I looked in the rearview mirror, I additionally saw an orange car. Orange is the color of Mercury.
With this broad array of symbols around me I gave renewed attention to the idea which had occurred to me, which seems to come from outside myself. I gave it quite a bit of consideration and decided that it might in fact be useful and important bits of unverified personal gnosis (UPG), if you will.
What is it true, though? Was this information which I have received genuinely from an outside, Mercurial spirit, or was it somehow more casually received? As if in answer to my question the Mercury movement of Holst ended, and my music selection shifted again, this time to a song from Porgy and Bess: “It ain’t necessarily so” by George Gershwin — two G’s, the 7th letter of the alphabet… remember, this happened on a Friday, the day of Venus (and coincidentally the day on which I posted the Kamea of Venus).
All of which is to say, that the magician should endeavor to be aware of correspondences, and use them as a way of converting UPG (unverified personal gnosis) into CPG (confirmed personal gnosis). The idea that I had is ‘mine’ in that it’s useful to me, and relevant to my work — but it doesn’t belong to everyone yet; in the meantime, though, I can use this highly-charged example of symbols collecting around me in a given instant as an example for beginning magicians.
It is important to build up a “library” of correspondences in one’s memory, as a magician. This library of matched and attuned ideas serves as a kind of reference catalog to relate one’s daily experiences to the larger themes of the higher realms. Just as we combine certain herbs and stones to work magic in the world according to our will, so does the universe send messages to us in the same way, the same language of meaning. It’s often the case that we learn to write in this language of stones and herbs and star-times and so on, before we learn to read it. But the more extraordinary powers of the magician develop after we have learned to read this language written in the Book of Nature. For then, we have gained a degree of insight which is not ordinarily perceived.
(Originally written for ceremonialmagic101.tumblr.com)
[…] Within the book, Mars rides by twice; between his chariots that ride on the wheels of Capricorn and Scorpio (symbols of passing time, and the necessity of putting one’s life in order and under one’s command, in a sense) is the Kamea or magic square of Mars — an ancient mathematical puzzle designed to teach complex addition and larger number theory in an age without calculators. Someday, additional Martial (Mars-like) symbolism shall appear here; for the moment, this seems to be sufficient (although we should always be conscious that coincidence doesn’t always mean correlation). […]
Interesting! In the spirit of “if this were my message” (i.e., it’s not, so ignore as you wish or accept as you wish) the Venus + Mercury combo catches my eye. Pigeons and doves share an intimacy with Venus (I think it was Shakespeare “Oh ten times faster Venus’s pigeons fly”–speaking of racing) –the fast Venus being Puella, the slow Mercury (Mercury retrograde) being Albus, which gets you Carcer, a traffic jam (though with potencies all its own; good for slowing down and thinking about things, like correspondences ;-).
Contrast what you get when you use fast Mercury (Conjunctio) and fast Venus (Puella)–Puer, Mars bursting through jam, cutting the knot like Alexander. Play the fast/slow rhythms and you get all kinds of interesting variations. Slow Mercury and Slow Venus? Joyful Jupiter. Which seems like an invitation to consider the tempo of the forces you are bringing to your work.