Recently, Nephilim Press published Seven Spheres, a book on Planetary Magick written by Rufus Opus. Rufus Opus is a Hermetic Magician who has developed a magical practice based on the teachings of the Corpus Hermeticum, Cornelius Agrippa, works attributed to Johannes Trithemius and his own experience and speculations. After over twenty years of studying modern occult materials ranging from the Golden Dawn, Crowley, and the Chaotic materials of the late twentieth century, he stumbled upon a simple grimoire of planetary magick from the 15th century. He spent the next few years working with the system of this grimoire to understand how the forces represented by the planets work together in the manifestation of the Will. We present an excerpt from the book below:
“Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
– LOGOS [Matthew 6:31-33]
I spent many years practicing Money Magic. I started with Archangels, who tried to tell me I needed to do some Work before they would help me. So I went to demons, and got an instant return on my efforts. And I also got the opportunities to do the Work the Archangels suggested. I tried Seals of Jupiter, and I tried Gator Hands, I did rites to gain favor of executive management, and rites of luck on my job searches.
And I was successful. I found a lot of different ways to make money. I could manifest up to $1500 in a couple of days, and opportunities for much more in a couple of weeks. The longer you’re willing to let your plan build, the more you can make. It turned out that making money through magic is really easy once you figure out the secrets. Even now, I’m working on a project that will net me millions.
But the nature of money magic is such that it is not terribly effective until it is not terribly necessary. Stressed out magicians aren’t thinking clearly, concisely, or effectively. They plan poorly, and as a result they do magic poorly. They have so many immediate needs that they end up spending all their time dealing with the little things instead of the bigger things that would solve all the smaller problems at the root.
I needed money all the time because I didn’t understand how money itself worked. That’s what the Archangels tried to tell me early on. I didn’t have time to listen, because I really thought money was my biggest issue that needed to be solved, the panacea to all my concerns. And I had bills to pay. I was living like a Pauper, and I wanted to live like a King, and the biggest difference I could see between my Pauper self and Kings was that Kings had money, and I didn’t.
What I needed to realize was that Kings aren’t Kings because they have money. Kings have money because they are Kings. They don’t get to collect taxes because they are rich and powerful, they are rich and powerful because they rule their kingdoms. Rulership is not simply telling people what to do. If you’ve ever worked for a boss that was like that, you know they were not very effective at leading their teams of people. No one wants to call the techniques of good management “Being a good ruler” because of the connotations that come with that, but the fact remains that if you rule your world like a good and wise King, you will find yourself receiving the benefits that come from Right Rulership.
The quote at the beginning of this introduction is attributed to Jesus “The LOGOS” Christ. He was basically talking to a bunch of people like me and you, all worried about bills and finances and things that have an expense. We need to pay taxes, we need to pay for clothes, housing, cars, food, and high speed internet. We need to pay for things.
So we go after money, because our desire for things is not a very good currency. We get focused on the things we need that we think will make us happy, and we go after the means to get those things. We go after money. Let’s get a better job, more revenue streams, more income, more, more, more.
But the LOGOS pointed out something really important. The things we seek, they are part of what automatically comes with a kingdom. They are secondary manifestations, the results. Look at Kings. They have everything they need, and then some. LOGOS was saying, look, don’t go after that stuff, that’s what other people do with their lives, people who have not been chosen to know who they are, who have not had their divine nature and true paternity revealed to them. Instead of going after all that stuff, or the means to get that stuff, focus instead on the Kingdom. Learn that you are a King already. Learn what that means, learn the art of being the Royal You. Train yourself, improve yourself, be Kingly, and you’ll find that you have a Kingdom of a God all around you, and that you are its ruler.
But what are Kings?
Kings are people who were personally (or the source of their noble lineage) positioned by fate and fortune and gifted with the quality required to lead their world naturally. They were linked to the gods either by favor or by blood, and they received a Kingdom as a result of their nature and the quality of their deeds. They were noble.
It wasn’t until I had turned my focus and attention on the establishment of my own kingdom that I began to realize what it meant to be noble. It came to me when I started doing intense work with Jupiter that released a large wave of the Greater Benefic’s forces into my life all at once. I received a great deal of good fortune, both spiritually and financially. I had joined the Gents of Jupiter, a semi-formal Mystery Cult dedicated to “sitting around in suits drinking whiskey and setting the world to rights… literally,” and was pursuing that motto full steam. I did weekly rites to Jupiter on Thursdays, seeking communion with its intelligences and deities, initiation into its sphere, and the integration of the forces it represented.
In typical Jupiterean fashion, I was flooded with inspiration, opportunities, and opulent extravagant experiences of great joy. What I received from the rite personally was a vision of the role of the Magician in his Sphere of influence.
I saw the Magician anointed as a King by the forces of Jupiter, and that the receipt of this anointing ennobled the magician. I saw that their “Kingdom” consisted of all the things, situations, objects, events and people that they interacted with daily. I saw how the forces of each subsequent planet in the chain of manifestation operated in different aspects of the Kingdom, and how initiations into the planetary spheres changed the magician, making him a more effective King as he grew in power and understanding of the forces of creation in each of the planets and the things they represent in the material realm.
In the following sections, we’ll be going through what that means in more detail. We’ll start with the very basics of the Hermetic system I practice and teach. You’ll be reminded of who you are and where you come from. You’ll understand why you are, regardless of your current situations, a noble person of royal birth. Then we’ll discuss the chain of manifestation, the secrets of how everything we experience in this material realm, from the color of our hair to our relationships to our career paths, to the cars we drive come into being from nothing, and how they return to the nothing they came from. Then we’ll go into the meat of the work of becoming a Magician King, and how you can activate the powers, wisdom, knowledge, and authority necessary to rule your Kingdom.
As you go through this process, you are going to experience a wide range of changes. We all want changes for the better, and in a year when you see where you end up as a result of doing this Work, you will be so happy…
But, as with every change, the process is not going to be always pleasant, or easy. Challenges arise, and you must face them. Consider yourself on a quest to become the King, and understand that you will face challenges along the way. These challenges change us, improving our skills. There is only on the job training in the Kingship game, unfortunately, but that’s ok. There’s nothing we can break that we can’t also fix. We learn the right way of doing things by doing them wrong, in a myriad of brilliant different ways.
This is why, when it came time to pick a name, Aleister Crowley chose for himself the motto, “Perdurabo,” Latin for “I will endure unto the end.” You are taking the steps to reclaim your essential divine nature, to become a Hero of legend. It isn’t a walk in the park, or even a trip to the grocery store at 9:00 a.m. when all the zombie humans and their offspring are fingering all the produce and getting in your way. It’s getting fired, and surviving months of unemployment miraculously, as you learn that money is easy and not what you really need at all. It’s “losing” a toxic person you’ve struggled to build a life around because you felt trapped by obligations, and finding that you’re now free to be with someone you can cherish, honor, respect, and live with in beauty and harmony in true partnership. It’s finding responsibilities that drag you down are secretly sources of great joy and fulfillment.
In other words, it’s not going to be what you think. It’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to be fun. You have the potential to lose everything you think you hold dear, and it might cost you your life as you know it.
Oh, but brothers and sisters, that is exactly what you need. The things we think of as “our lives” are why we want to become Kings in the first place! If we were happy, we wouldn’t want things to be better.
And chances are it won’t be nearly as bad as my warnings imply. I want to warn you, just in case.
Regardless of the pains on the journey, I swear this to you: when you have reached the end of the journey and have learned the skills of Kingship, you will be so happy and thrilled that you look back in fondness on the process you went through to get there, even the parts that hurt.
You can order Seven Spheres from here: http://nephilimpress.com/xstore/product.php?productid=17705
The Corpus Hermeticum teaches that humans descended through each of the planetary spheres as we slouched our way towards incarnation upon the Earth, and that we received a portion of each of the planetary sphere’s power to create and manifest the world. The process of incarnation resulted in humanity forgetting they have the ability to create and maintain their world, and the process of the Great Work is the process of returning to those spheres to remember how to use the forces they represent in our daily lives. Using the motif of Kings and Kingdoms, Seven Spheres provides a direct and practical method of ritual that transforms the magician, and helps position us to better understand our True Will and how to materialize it joyfully.
It should be noted that this book is not explicitly Thelemic. It is not based on Crowley’s writings or Qabalistic magick. It is based on the principles of Hermetics that form the foundation of our magickal tradition and is consequently harmonious with the teachings of Crowley, but you will not find any mention of Nuit, Hadit, or the Book of the Law. While R.O. is an initiate of both the OTO and the A:.A:., this book is intended for all Hermetic magicians, regardless of their affiliations.
