I'm going to undertake a six-month occult ritual - ask me anything

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
161

OK. It’s finished. (A day ahead of schedule, even!)

I can’t claim that I’ve achieved enlightenment or unlocked some higher spiritual plane or that I now have magic powers, but in the last week worth of the final rituals I definitely had an experience that was very meaningful to me. I’ve learned a lot about myself the past six months, I’ve learned a lot more about Judaism than it ever occurred to me to think about before, and I’ve decided to (for now) try attending a few services and continue with the Intro to Judaism class I’m in to decide whether it’s right for me.

Technically, the last step is that I now get to spend the next seven days resting from doing any kind of ritual or elaborate prayers (I’m all prayed out at this point!) and I’m to have a celebratory feast, which I’ll be doing this weekend by taking my mother down to Portland for a belated birthday dinner at a nice old-school steakhouse called El Gaucho. Going forward, in order to keep the “sacred magic” at my disposal I just have to use my prayer room once a week, on the Sabbath, to commune with my angel (I can’t really describe what that feels like but it feels very powerful to me, and I’m fully aware that it’s 100% in my head but that doesn’t change the fact that it feels significant). I get to consider today to be my spiritual re-birthday and every year I’m to celebrate it “as if it were the festival of Tabernacles”.

I can’t say that I got the full experience that someone doing this rite in an earlier era would have, seeing as I still had to go to work and interact with people on a regular basis and hear about the madness that our country has degenerated into while holding my tongue about it and doing my best not to let it get me angry. Maybe if I live long enough to retire in 20 years I’ll do it again and TRULY be a hermit for six months and see if it affects me any differently.

We now return to your regular scheduled programming.

162

How can it be ahead of schedule? Isn’t the schedule itself what determines when it’s finished?

163

I’m making etrogcello!

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This is a very interesting thread and I appreciate your sharing your experiences with us. I look forward to future developments.

165

Well, I wound up starting the final week a day earlier than I planned on. It’s still been exactly six months since the day I started.

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You’re one to talk :wink:

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Congrats. I’m glad it was meaningful to you.

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Thank you for sharing.

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Was waiting for this!
2 questions:
Are you healthier?
Did those two demons get summoned?
Glad you’re back.

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  1. I’ve lost about 20 pounds and my urge to drink is a lot easier to control now. I had to get some bloodwork done last week before I started the final operations and my liver enzymes are looking a lot better than they have in the past.

  2. In the sense that I could feel a hostile presence and my black cat started freaking out when I did the summoning, yes. I treated it as a manifestation of my negative emotions and I feel like the exercise helped me to establish control over them. (Also, it’s twelve demons, but who’s counting?)

171

I have to say, as an actual Jew I find this entire thread incredibly offensive. Go cosplay someone else’s religion.

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…or at least call it “Sukkot.”

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Moderating:

The first sentence of the above is a totally fair comment and observation. However, the second sentence borders on a personal insult. Please refrain from doing this except in the Pit. Thanks.

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Another question-did you miss The Dope?

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Yes. I lurked occasionally but stopping myself from posting was hard.

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I was just quoting the text of the book. Sukkot is a pretty interesting holiday IMO - it seems like it must have originated as an an agricultural fertility festival in VERY early proto-Judaism and developed its association with the exodus much later. The rabbi who taught the ancient history lesson in my Intro To Judaism class made it quite clear several times that there’s absolutely no archeological evidence of the exodus and that it almost certainly didn’t happen the way the Torah says, and it was very refreshing to hear that from an authority figure.