Combating diffraction spikes

I was tired of the six-pointed star-like artifacts in photos from my three-legged, bulky spider (mount), so I decided to try out some French "shamanism" I found via a link on Cloudy Nights. Surprisingly, it works quite well—just take a look at my previous photo of M33. The description is here: http://serge.bertorello.free.fr/antiaigr/antiaigr.html. The language is non-standard, but Google Translate handles it.