FUTURE MAGICK

(ARS MAGICA)

By Shade Oroboros

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__________________________
Editor’s Note & Introduction:

I think I can say that I am likely Shade’s oldest friends, at least one of them. I am
in all but biological reality his brother. We met and became pals when our mutual
fascination and interest in things occult helped us collide in NYC in 1972- we
were 14. He was working at the Warlock Shop (soon to become the Magickal
Childe) and was already at that age immersed in, well, everything occult. Soon I
was a regular at Pagan Way gathering, sat at the Shop as he worked there
(volunteered...it was the 70s) and met a ton of heavy occult pagan and wicca
folks as they came through, only later did I realize what a nexus of the exploding
occult revival I was at. Soon I was an initiated Witch (at 14) and Shade was my
same-age High Priest! It was wild. We soon formed a magick nexus of other
‘kids’ and dove into everything occult- jumping off from Paganism and Wicca-
doing chaos magick before there was such a thing and essentially ignoring all
limits and restrictions and trying & learning everything occulty- Wicca,
Ceremonial Magick, Thelema, Gematria, Cabala,Tarot, I Ching, Runes, multiple-
pantheons & grimoires/BOSs, GD, ALL authors, Crowley, Spare, Grant- you
name it, we devoured and practiced it- and our very ‘unorthodox’ approach led to
amazing results. By 1979 we had an occult journal we were publishing
(Mandragore) and had discovered and been illuminated by Nema, her work and
her intensive correspondence as well as our growing involvement with so many
other groups such as several OTOs, Many Wicca trads, Pagan Way, Church of
All Worlds, CES, Fereferia, Cult of Isis and on and on- all very pre computers:) In
1979 we went to meet and pow wow with Nema and - bam- formed the Horus
Maat Lodge- all that can be found on the HML site- www.horusmaatlodge.com

ALL this time Shade was scribbling, we called him Frater Tahuti, and this insane,
brilliant, wretched, illuminating mess of a manuscript is the main nexus of ALL
his occult wisdom- which is/was VERY extensive. I can guarantee that no one
had a larger more complete occult library than he or more carefully filled journals
and notebooks.

Shade is now suffering from a terrible disease that has severely limited his ability
to continue his work. Someday, this manuscript needs to be severely edited and
then it will truly be a magnum opus on magick. Until that time, he has asked me
to make what is digitally existing or scannable of his work available, so here it is
in all its insanity.Just remember- it is a rough manuscript and he was interrupted
in the completion of this, his great work.
STILL! There is serious gold in these pages, as you'll see if you explore. Many of
the edited and polished sections have (and still) appear in various issues of
Silverstar at http://horusmaatlodge.com/silverstar/index.html

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So I, who have now become my dear friend’s voice some 48 years since we met,
offer this, to you, O seekers of the hidden magicks. Don’t let the chaos fool you,
there are treasures within waiting for you.

OM, BB, 93s- and much Love & Will to you.

Aion 131

____________________________________________________

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR

AN AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY OF SHADE
"The life which is unexamined is not worth living."
-Plato

Part I: Satan's Stud: The Early Years

"These metaphysics of magicians

And necromantic books are heavenly;
Lines, circles, letters and characters,
Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires."
Dr. Faustus, Christopher Marlowe

I was born in New York City on April 5th, 1957 at 8:24 AM EST; Aries sun and
Gemini moon, for whatever that may be worth.
I grew up in a great apartment with a fabulous harbor view in Brooklyn Heights, a
very nice old neighborhood, just a few blocks away from the brownstone
inhabited by the noted writer H.P. Lovecraft during his urban sojourn, and even
closer to the building which housed the gateway to Hell in the rather silly urban
horror film The Sentinel.
My father, Robert Clayton Carey, gave me his name, which made
me a junior; but I have long since forgiven him for that. My Dad grew up rough
in the coal mining country of Pennsylvania; his own family was mostly
Anglo/Irish. He never knew his mother, barely met his father; he and his brother
Andrew Jackson Carey were raised by an aunt. He served in the military police
during WWII, then attended Washington & Lee in Virginia and became a lawyer.
While in the district attorney's office in NYC he met my mother and raised our
family, and after private practice eventually became an administrative law judge
in Manhattan.
My Mom, Anne Hubert Carey, came from a large and fairly well-off family of
English and French descent; among my six sets of aunts and uncles on that side
were a physics professor, a publisher, an aeronautical engineer, a minister, a
bookseller and assorted business types. Naturally, this led to countless cousins.
My grandparents on this side were very close to my family,
living near them in NYC, and all my early summers were spent
on their summer place in Long Island; this really was pretty wonderful. Isolated
among extensive woodlands were a number of houses, gardens, apple orchards,
chestnut trees and a tennis court. Here all my various Hubert clan relatives
would foregather in the summer season for cocktails on the porch and croquet on
the lawn; in all honesty I was perhaps the golden apple of my grandfather's eye,
first son of his youngest daughter, and I have very fond memories of working in
the gardens with this sweet wise old man.
In these sunlit days I would wander alone in the wild woods or

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explore the rich relics of overflowing attics; I have always been
a solitary person. I began my lifetime love affair with comics
read on rooftops and bicycled to all three of the reachable local libraries; my
father loves sailing, and we would slosh across the Great South Bay to reach the
Atlantic beaches or go on longer family trips to Block Island or Nantucket. Some
of my more vivid early memories are of Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, a restored
18th century whaling town; we would often moor there for several nights and I
would wander the otherworldly nighted streets of another era. Another very vivid
early memory was of a children's production by the local Height's Players which
featured a wizard; this image captured my imagination, and afterwards I had my
mother make labels like Bat's Blood and Lizard Tails, which I taped to my
building blocks, being rather young at the time. I was a wizard for more than one
year of trick-or-treating. Yet another memory which floats to the surface is of
classes in stage magic and sleight-of-hand which I took from a professional who
did groups of neighborhood kids, of visits to Bilbo & Tannen's famous store in
Manhattan, and of years of attending the annual showcase held by the top acts in
the field.
For several summers I also attended a day camp for swimming,
horseback riding and rudimentary sports, which became a bit
of a family tradition for my two sisters Nancy Ingham Carey and Merrill Anne
Carey, who are five and ten years younger than I am respectively. Around this
time I entered my first occult group, the Count Dracula Fan Club. Also, in my
teenage years I took a three week bicycle trip through parts of Canada, which
pumped me up a bit; and my family had a couple of sunny vacations in the Virgin
Islands. I am capable of achieving a remarkably intense level of sun-burn, and
so endeavor to worship Horus and Apollo while remaining in the shade.
Back in Brooklyn Heights, my early socialization began at Grace Church
School; my family had been active there for generations,
and my Sundays included light indoctrination into Episcopalianism,
which is a fairly innocuous form of christianity; some may call it Catholic Light:
half the guilt, less filling. Actually it is mostly in
the Church of England vein; talk about sin was considered bad
taste, and everyone was really quite civilized. Later I spent a
couple of years at Packer Collegiate Institute, where my mother
had once taught; and after second grade and through graduation from high
school I was at St. Ann's Episcopal School, a highly progressive haven for the
endangered liberal/hippie generation. They provided an education decent
enough to get me into Amherst College, of which more anon. I always found
myself something of an outsider or alien in the high school environment, but was
quite active in the technical theatre department, building and painting sets and
doing some sound and lighting, and this had the added advantage of getting me
out of a lot of classes and helping me build some relatively normal friendships. I
did have several very memorable teachers there, and freedom to follow my own
inclinations; in many ways I have always been very lucky in life,
for my parents were wonderful open minded and supportive folks
who gave me their trust, and I have usually found that the gods

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provided well if not luxuriously for me in schools, jobs and other
external events. This has enabled me to carry on the rich inner
life of my Great Work of magickal and alchemical individuation;
for since earliest childhood it is the archetype of the wizard, the
sorcerer, the magus which has defined my True Self.
I did much early reading of mythology (especially Greek, Norse and Egyptian)
and fairy tales, fantasy and mystery and lots of science fiction and horror;
Tolkien and Lord Dunsany were very powerful imprints, as were the entire realm
of H.P. Lovecraft and his circle, the Weird Tales authors such as Clark Ashton
Smith and Robert E. Howard, Ray Bradbury and Robert Bloch. Classic science
fiction writers such as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Andre Norton were a
huge influence as well, and later on folks like Roger Zelazny, Fritz Lieber,
Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. LeGuin and Tanith Lee and countless others.
Before even reaching my rocky adolescence I had already contacted the
alternate realities which ultimately opened my gates: magick and witchcraft, and
shortly thereafter, of course, the proverbial sex, drugs and rock & roll.
However, let us begin with the Craft, that revival of the Old Religion sparked by
Gardner and Valiente in the late fifties, which
was newly established in America by the sixties; largely through the efforts of
Raymond Buckland, whose Museum of Witchcraft
in Bayshore, Long Island, was a site of pilgrimage for me in my
early teens. Ray was always a gentleman with me, and once in answer to my
question he wrote out the entire runic alphabet;
a system which was later to become a major focus of my work.
I bought my first pentagram there; a very fun place.
I began simply: at around 11 or 12 I had a serious bout of the flu and spent the
time writing to all of the cool ads in Fate and Occult magazines, which put me on
all kinds of weird mailing lists (nor can we forget Man, Myth & Magic magazine
among the exotic events of the 70's!).
I corresponded with various other witches and many heathen publications in
the late sixties, notably Joseph Wilson and Leo Martello; and I shopped for books
at Weiser's, one of New York's oldest esoteric sources, beginning a world-class
arcane library; but the first major personal connections I made occurred through
the opening of a wiccan/magickal supply store in my very own neighborhood, the
Warlock Shop, which years later migrated to Manhattan and became the
nationally-known Magickal Childe. There I worked for owner Herman Slater,
pouring out the herbs, dispensing advice, calming down some truly amazing
lunatics, and
meeting virtually all of New York's occult community; from there
I entered several of the Pagan Way Groves in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan
which were at the time the screening and training
programs of the Craft, often in company with the later prominent
Margot Adler. As a result, in the early seventies, I was initiated into Welsh
Traditional Wicca by Ed Buzynski and Lady Kaye, hand-
copying the Book of Shadows in the traditional manner. Finally,
with the younger members of the circle, I formed a coven called

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the Children of Branwen, more-or-less led by myself and Eddie &
Karen Chieco, two of my oldest friends, which ran through quite
a number of members in the next few years. They included Hal, Artie, Gussie,
DJ, Denny, Melody, Denise, Steve, Nadine, Frank & Cheryl, Joe & Jill, and quite
a few others: Howie, Roger & Crystal, David & Rhea, and so on. Doin' magick,
gettin' naked, smokin' de ganja!
It was also at this time that I connected with Denny Sargent, my true friend of
friends, and together we began the magazine Mandragore, whose first volume
was published as part of the much larger publication Earth Religion News, and
which later carved out an illustrious albeit subversive history of its own. Slightly
later our good friends Joseph Engeleit and Jillian Blum joined as well. We in the
coven were also much influenced by the neo-pagan Church of All Worlds and
their journal the Green Egg, the Eleusinian group Feraferia, and the Egyptian
revivalists of
the Church of the Eternal Source.
One of my most powerful magickal memories dates from this time. On an
early visit to Denny's place upstate he and I went out onto the golf-course in the
middle of the night and performed a ritual to awaken the Maid of the Oak, and the
chosen tree came alive for us. On the way back to the house we heard the
notes of a flute drifting through the night, and it is my belief that what we heard
were the thrilling pipes of the great god Pan! At times our world crosses over
with another; sometimes we see it as through a window, and other times spirits
enter into our own realm.
Thus I spent my adolescence out on the subways of night with
my bag containing robe, cord, cup and athame, frolicking with a
range of covens, indulging in various borderline pursuits, often
doing things which, in retrospect, I am somewhat amazed to have
survived and never to have been arrested for. Many strange opportunities
arose from these connections; one Halloween I was even paid big bucks to give
a lecture at the Young Men's & Young Women's Hebrew Association
(YM&YWHA), which was quite well received. Poltergeist phenomena took place
around our circles: flying objects, solid marble slabs of shelf cracking, mysterious
demonic footprints appearing and disappearing on the staircase before several
witnesses. Several times people caught fire in circles - usually Eddie. Various
acts of magick were performed which apparently succeeded, often healing for
extended family members.
Spending time in outer Brooklyn (Eddie's neighborhood) got me out of the
middle-class world and into a grittier part of the city;
Borough Park was a Sicilian and Hasidic ghetto, and lifestyle there tended
toward small-time drug-dealing. Eddie wasn't precisely mobbed-up, but he knew
who to pay respect; his was a life filled with chaotic and suspicious incidents.
Nearer to my home, the original incarnation of the group in Brooklyn Heights
included a largely gay population and an awful lot of party time.

Part 2: The Augoeides & the Ecstasy: Years of Triumph

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 "I'm marching to the Golden Dawn,
immersed in Crowley's uniform of imagery."
Hunky Dory, David Bowie

It was perhaps through the evolution and mutation of our coven that the next
phase of my magickal development emerged. Such covens tended to form by
splitting off members when size or personality conflicts reach a certain point, and
both occurred with ours. Denny (Aion) and I (Hades), along with our long-time
associates Joe (Khreb ent Ptah) & Jill (Noctua), hived off and became the
esoteric cell which was to become the center of one of the most productive
periods of my life. For a time this group included several others, including Steve
and Nadine from the coven, and my first long-term girlfriend Anita; by the mid-
70s various forms of personal chaos had eventually carried them away and
Denny, Joe, Jill and I reformed as the Grove of the Star & the Snake, one of the
most unique secret orders of the late 20th century. Our practice of wicca
became increasingly eclectic, drawing upon a wider range of traditional
paganisms and truly individual creativity in ritual work.
The great metamorphosis took place when we accepted the Law of Thelema,
and the works of Aleister Crowley became our core texts. This is the key to the
transformative tantra of the New Aeon, into which we were then completely
engulfed. We eventually affiliated with author and O.'.H.'.O.'. Kenneth Grant's
London O.'.T.'.O.'. and some of his people who published the magazine Sothis;
and then made contact with the prophet Soror Nema (formerly Andahadna)
through her work published in the Cincinnati Journal of Ceremonial Magick; we
ourselves continued to produce several more esoteric issues of Mandragore as
well. With Soror Nema's connection to the future Aeon of Maat our work was
alchemically catalyzed by the Double Current, 93/696; temporally this
corresponded with our own various invocations for the Knowledge &
Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, and resulted in a vast outpouring of
artistry in diverse forms and ceremonial experimentation. Some of the climactic
points of this process involved our pilgrimages to Ohio to meet Nema and her
Bate Cabal compatriots, and the foundation of the Horus/Maat Lodge for the
promulgation of the Great Work.
Another major influence was the innovative Zos Kia Cultus of the brilliant artist
and sorcerer Austin Osman Spare, whose own system of sigilization is one of the
most direct forms of magick, and who has manifested the primordial Witch-Cult
into a new and potent form. In many ways our group's evolving fusion actually
foreshadowed the slightly later and very similar synthesis of Chaos Magick in
Britain.
For many years the Grove provided the social center of our valiant little band of
alien misfits; nearly every weekend we would gather, usually in Jillian's
apartment, to party hearty and hold marathon ritual sessions; each of us
maintaining vast looseleaf notebooks of weird personal writings and multi
sourced xeroxed materials which we used to construct our workings around a
thelemic format. Art served as both the vehicle and result of these endeavors.

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At other times we met at my home, or made journeys to Denny's place in Rye,
my grandparent's Long Island place, or camping trips into the wilderness.
College scattered us some, but on vacations we picked right up where we had
left off; and in my senior year my good friend Eric Clarke (Nahud) became the
first official new member in many years. We also hosted various guests and
fellow travellers who worked with us over time, including O.'.T.'.O.'. members and
girlfriends of both Denny's and mine (Joe & Jill being a highly volatile yet long-
standing item). Most notable among these were Nema, Bill Siebert and
members of his circle, Sam Adkins, Christine Moore, my main college-era
relationship Younghee Kim, and my later-on one time longtime companion Meryll
Sachs (I guess she wasn't quite the antichrist; I shaved her head one night and it
just said 665).
This combination of esoteric and social life was one hell of a lot of fun; when
not ritualizing or exploring the Tarot and the I Ching, or creating reams of writing
or other forms of art in media such as drawing, music or collage (and in the case
of Denny and later Jillian, painting and pottery) we explored NYC's many weird
possibilities; museums, occult stores, lectures, movies, and a lot of great rock
concerts (with perhaps a slight preponderance of multiple Grateful Dead, Kinks,
Todd Rundgren, and Yes! shows). Whenever it was possible we would get our
activities out into the woods, or at least the larger parks in Queens, which gave at
least one person walking their dog an experience of crimson-robed cultists
lurking in the bushes. Publication of Mandragore put us in contact with a wide
range of correspondents over the years, and our ties to various Craft covens,
magical orders (including at least two OTOs, QBLH, the OAI, IOT, the Cult of Isis
and others) and pagan revivals remained current. In addition to our individual
and sometimes group invocations of our HGAs and personal patron deities, we
had various long term workings focussed upon entities such as the deities of
Liber AL and Aiwass, Metatron, Pan, Lam, and Maat; all of which earthed results
in art, lucid dreams, weird ritual atmospheres, revelations and insights; the
customary funky synchronicities, qabalistic formulas and poltergeist phenomena.
From the late 70s to the early 80s most of us were involved in college
experiences of one kind or another; I was off to Amherst in Massachusetts
(graduated class of 1979); Denny was upstate at SUNY/Oneonta and Jillian was
still in the city. I studied asian and other religions, english, psychology, history,
sociology, cinema, and majored in anthropology; I even had a course in alchemy.
No commercial potential! Amherst was a really nice environment, a small town,
some of my close high-school friends attending with me, and lots of lovely
wooded countryside to disappear in on sunny days and full-moon nights. I
partied an awful lot during this time, but made it through okay in four years
nonetheless.
Once I had the academic routine down I maintained a pretty constant magical
curriculum as well; one major work arranged by the 22 atus was a double current
grimoire called The Book of the Winged Serpent. In my senior year I escaped
one week to Ohio with the grove to see Nema and meet the Cincinnati Journal of
Ceremonial Magick folks; we explored their city, made a trip to the remarkable
ancient holy site called Serpent Mound, and then worked the foundation of the

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Horus/Maat Lodge, initiating both ourselves and the first batch of members. On
a brief stopover in NYC on my way back to school I performed an invocation of
my HGA which culminated a long term working (called Liber Hades, my primary
magical name of the time) and resulted in a seriously altered state of
consciousness, a new understanding of my Self, and the transmission The Book
of the Ongoing Balance, perhaps my most "channelled" work. Another
consequence of this was
a calming of my mind which lasted for some time, ending the constant mindless
mental chatter of normal life. I truly believe that the unique presence and power
of Nema and the energies we invoked did much to catalyze this profound peak
experience.
After graduation I launched into a yearlong devotion to my patron daemon/deity
Abrasax, which resulted in a huge mass of writing reflecting various extreme
states of being. Yet another important development came from a pilgrimage Joe
and Jill made to London, bringing us back initiation into the Western Nath Order,
a long- surviving Adi-Nath sect of Shaivite tantra, through the lineage of the
english adept Shri Guru Dadaji Mahendranath, a one-time friend of Aleister
Crowley. In its final period the Grove was very deeply involved in the traditions of
esoteric/tantrik Hinduism as revealed both through his work and various more
traditional sources.
A large element of my social life in NYC after college involved the New Kalem
Club, a circle of devout Lovecraftians who often met at the apartment of the late
author and editor Lin Carter;
this included Bob Price, editor/publisher of Crypt of Cthulhu magazine; HPL
biographer/scholar S.T. Joshi; Mark and Charlie, who once played zombies in
Dawn of the Dead; punk presence Donna Death, who later married and divorced
Joe Engeleit; some celebrity guests such as Gahan Wilson and Frank Belknap
Long, and various fan-boys. I was quite active in the small press/ fanzine field
during this vastly entertaining period.
I also circled at times with covens led by various old friends including a Welsh
Trad group run by Karen, a more eclectic (if not actually disorganized) group
gathered around Steve, and Meryll's upstate coven of the Windblown tradition.
While my personal path has evolved a bit past wicca, I still enjoy and support it
on principle; America desperately needs a major pagan revival.
During these years I was deeply romancing Younghee, perhaps the great lover
of my life up until the present day; the agonies and ecstasies of having a shakti
certainly affected me on every level, mostly for the good. Our ways parted, to
my sorrow and regret. We had rather wide cultural differences.
For a couple of years after school I worked a night job in nearby Brooklyn
which basically paid me to read for eight hours, and thus furthered my
independent education. No doubt this was the time when I should have found
some more respectable and lucrative career, but my family was somewhat
preoccupied with the prolonged and tragic loss of my mother to cancer. After
her funeral Joe and Jillian had the final battle which led to their ultimate break-up,
and in many ways both the Grove and this whole period of my life came to an
end. Both of them have since subsequently married others and split up after a

10
number of years; Joe is currently involved in changing his gender to female, and
he reportedly plans to become a lesbian. This is a concept involving
considerable processing for all those who knew him.

Part 3: The Road to the Emerald City of OZ

"Therefore is the Eagle made one with the Man, and the
gallows of infamy dance with the fruit of the just."
Liber LXV, c.III, v.59.

These dark times in NYC might reflect my semi-transition into alleged

adulthood, when life gets harder. College certainly had its traumas, especially
the traumatic breakdown of my good friend John in our junior year. Hard
economic times after school, and the deaths of my mother and later on of Lin
Carter and a number of my craft brethren: Herman Slater & Ed Buzynski from
AIDS, Steve Ritholtz to lung cancer, and Eddie Chieco after a long sad slide
through drug addiction, dysfunctional relationships, jail time and disease to a
bizarre and suspicious ending which may even have been murder. The 80s
often really sucked, even though it's not like I personally was doing all that much
cocaine or Wall Street wheeler-dealing.
A relationship which had evolved (out of the rubble of the end of my romance
with Younghee after she went away to Japan) with Meryll Sachs ushered in my
next stage. Meryll was a chiropractor from Rockaway who I met through Steve's
last coven, and our coupling went through many rocky ups and downs over the
next few years. On the one hand, it was great to be with a woman who was
actively involved in witchcraft and magickal practices. We travelled to many
large pagan festivals and renaissance faires, and even took an occult vacation in
New England which included Mystery Hill (America's Stonehenge), the
Lovecraftian sites of Providence, Rhode Island (I have a picture
of myself smoking a joint on his grave) and the witch-hunting museums of Salem,
Massachusetts. She was high priestess of a coven in upstate New York, which I
circled quite happily with for some time while she lived in Woodstock, and I
commuted up there a lot. She even worked with the Grove for awhile. On the
other hand, she could be a totally borderline problem personality, and has
managed to alienate a number of friends over the years. We broke up more
than once. "Love is the extra effort we make in dealing with people we don't
like," as Quentin Crisp once said.
As my life and hers went through changes, New York got kinda old, and we
made a leap to the Left Coast, to the Emerald City of Seattle. My compatriots
Denny and Eric had already moved to Washington, where they worked with the
Voxas Rimotae group which included Jan, Robin & Blue (who were later known
as Mirth & Random); and this move sure seemed like a good idea at the time.
We lived together for several years, during which I worked in the radiology
department of the University Hospital and she went through a number of
positions. We ran a new coven called the Ravens of Ravenna (Robin, Michael,

11
Mark, Yraina, Nancy and Bob were the main members) and were quite active in
local pagan politics, and with the national umbrella organization Covenant of the
Goddess; I served a term as co-first officer of the NW branch.
Eventually our differences brought this to an end and we finally separated once
and for all.
During this period Eric lived mostly upstate in Bellingham, where Denny had
finished his master's degree at WWU. Eric also went through a career or two,
including acupuncture school, a bout of restaurant ownership and zen mastery
of water purification systems. Denny later spent four years in Japan with his
lovely wife Rebecca (who is also the internationally famous author, psychic, and
media personality Sophia); their son Forrest was born there, and they
subsequently returned to Seattle.
An enormously productive element of this time in my life was the exploration of
Norse culture and the magickal cosmos of the Runes, which have become a
major focus of my work. I engulfed myself in their study, and affiliated with
Edred Thorsson's Rune- Gild and the heathen Ring of Troth, making journeys to
the Asatru festival in Arizona and the Rune-Gild get-together in Texas. I have
been writing (for far too long a time) a substantial study called Runespells which I
hope to see published; and I have also done some work with Diana L. Paxson
and her revival of seidhr.
My art in general has continued to evolve: I embody a synthesis of the
taoist/tantric, gnostic/hermetic, shamanic/runic forces in a pan-aeonic fusion of
the double current and chaos magick. This experience I earth in the writing of
prose and poetry, and also in constant creation of visual art by drawing and
collage, xerox and rubber-stamps. Currently I am writing an extensive treatise
on magick entitled Ars Magna; I have also collaborated with Denny on a volume
of ecological and cross-cultural goddess paganism called Earth Spirit Rituals; he
is to be highly congratulated upon actual publication of his own study of the art,
Global Ritualism.
Over the years my articles, poetry, collages and book reviews have seen print in
Mandragore, Aeon, Earth Religion News, Early Warning, Cosmic People, Green
Egg, Voxas Rimotae, Changeling, Crypt of Cthulhu, Rising Aeon Journal, Dark
Matter, and Idunna.
I have even been interviewed on a couple of radio and television shows.
The current phase of my life has also merged inner and outer in a sense; after
Meryll and I utterly split up I shared a house with my friend Jan van Ysslestyne, a
thelemite magician, astrologer and psychic, and student of egyptology and
shamanism. Through her opened up a golden opportunity to purchase the
fabled occult resource center Mandala Books & Gallery, and we have become
partners in running it for some eight years now, sharing a new house with her
longtime companion Debra Kaye (a hypnotherapist and counselor) and our four
lovely yet evil cats Elvira, Abraxas, Khaphre and RNA. We have hosted various
well-known authors for events at the store, and a long-term project has involved
bringing Siberian shamans of the Ulchi and Nanai tribes to America to teach
workshops in traditional practices.

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 My life had thus settled into a somewhat solitary steady routine of reading Tarot
for clients and purveying eastern religions and western magicks to the masses by
day, and the deep study and practice of the esoteric by night, plus several fun
varieties of mindless entertainment. My good friend Scott Serna, a survivor of
several years of living in a Golden Dawn commune, comes by often to discuss
magick, as do Seattleite John Leary and Denny.
Upon occasion I visit Eric upstate, where he is happily married and becoming a
water-systems tycoon. My Dad vacations here, and we've had some good
summer trips through Washington, Oregon and parts of Canada. My sisters are
married and living their lives; Nancy & Obie Johnson have three sons, Forest,
Hunter and Wilder, in rural upstate New York; while Merrill and her husband Jeff
Gallo still live in our family apartment in the city.
As of the beginning of 1998 I have changed into union with the lovely and
charming Lynn Flory; while this relationship has just reached its two-week
anniversary as of this writing, I find myself much more cheerful now. (Six
months later, still happy.)

Part 4: Beelzebub or Bodhisattva? Future History

"O King, you are the essence of all the gods,

and Horus has protected you,
you having become the essence of him."
Utterance 589, Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts

So how many magickal names have I had in my life? I recently turned 40, after
all. Perhaps my first was Maitreya, taken from Zelazny's brilliant Lord of Light;
only later did I discover that this was the name of the Buddha who is yet to come,
and that it had the numeration of 666. My baby-pagan name was Gwion, the
child who became the bard Taliesin, and for a brief time I used Caelus, a form of
Zeus/Jupiter; but my most serious wiccan name, taken at my craft initiation, was
Pendaran, a welsh archdruid from the ancient Mabinogion. In my Grove period I
was Hades 69, a darker form of Zeus/Dionysus, still my primary title; later I
masked it as Shade for public use, and sometimes reflected it with the gnostic
Manda 96. At our initiation of the H.'.M.'.L.'. Nema gave me the name Loki
Fenris 380, and at union with my H.'.G.'.A.'. I took the title Achad Ayin 083 from
The Vision & the Voice. At initiation into the Adi-Nath sect I was given the name
Minanath; for rune-work I took the name Vedhrfjolnir, and at initiation into the
Rune-Gild Thorsson gave me Dagahrabanaz. For use in my graeco/egyptian
magick I have begun to use Aristeas, Apollo's poet who became a raven. In my
earliest childhood, my parent's childhood nickname for me was Spooky; eerily
prophetic, and a good example of how careful one must be with names. I think I
shall publish fiction as Robert Clayton, or perhaps even Roberta? Identity is a
shifting border.
What has been most important to me in life has been the peak experience in
art and magick, or shared with friends and lovers.

13
Rich memories enhance life; daily struggle for material survival is mere routine.
Living in the late 20th century I have had access to countless books, films and
videos; I have thus experienced, however vicariously, countless dramas of every
kind. If I have had sorrows, everyone has; my joys are mine alone. Any regrets
are more for missed opportunities than for mistakes. Any real frustrations are
pretty much purely sexual or merely financial,
or arise from projects not yet completed and sent out into the world. I am now
engaged in creating several works of fiction.
Whither hence? I live, grow, create (Spirit). It is my will to be published (Air),
to evolve magickally (Fire), to become wealthy (Earth), and to explore love in my
life (Water). The world awaits my savage trampelling of "the jewelled thrones of
the earth beneath my sandalled feet". C'est la vie!

“I hate to recommend drugs, violence or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always

worked for me.”   
- Hunter S. Thompson   

"I pick the god damn terror of the gods out of my nose!"
- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs

"I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreedto call magic, in
what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in
the power of creating magical illusions, in the visions of truth in the depths of the
mind when the eyes are closed; and I believe... that the borders of our mind are
ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another, as it were, and
create or reveal a single mind, a single energy... and that our memories are part
of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself."  - from Ideas of Good and
Evil, by W.B. Yeats

"An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself." - All
by English novelist Charles Dickens born on this day in 1812

"Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a

newspaper." - George Orwell

Having your paradigm periodically rupture is, IMHO, an inevitable consequence

of Magick: Change. There is a Zen saying: "Healed head bad, broken head
good." Sometimes what seems to be the dark night of the soul is actually
progress. One aspect of the Great Work is mutation of the personality, or
acquiring a whole tarot deck of identities. Nothing stays the same forever, much
of what we consider ourselves is old imprints, unexamined habits and
internalized opinions of people around us. The Self can be something we create
instead of something that just happens, an alchemy of experience. We all wear

14
different masks, different personas in various situations. K&CotHGA is in some
ways a quest to discover the ultimate core of your being, it is a process and often
it ain't easy... good luck! (Luck is Magick).

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but

by making the darkness conscious." Carl Jung

Hi!
This is a Tree of Life I have been playing with, for evolution read from bottom
up:

0.00.000. Space

1. Universe
2. Stars
3. Planets
? micro-organisms/organic soup/origin of life
4. humans
5. mammals
6. avian (birds)
7. reptilian
8. insectoid
9. aquatic
10. plants

~ Shade

"Magic still trumps science, usually by two falls and a submission."

- Simon R. Green

"Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune." - Walt Whitman

~ Shade
“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch
the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything
there is to be known.”
 Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne

"The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards."
- Alexander Jablokov

“As for the Republicans—how can one regard seriously a frightened, 

greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes 
to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, 
cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and 
condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly 

15
and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and 
principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, 
and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such 
as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of 
unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-
distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American 
heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation 
in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the 
tolerance and respect one gives to the dead. “

– Letter to C.L. Moore, August 1936

in “H.P. Lovecraft, a Life”

by S.T. Joshi, p. 574

"There exists something that cannot be described."

- Maharamayana
93!

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 2:50 AM, D&R Sargent <wisdom2@mindspring.com>

wrote:
> Om
>
> Can we talk about magick please?
>
> Yes yes, all things are magick- but---I'd like to ask those on this list 3 questions
re: the HML
>
> First, have you actually done the initiation ritual or had it done to/with
> you? If not, will you?
>
> http://www.horusmaat.com/initiation.htm
>

  Had it done, did it to many others, participated in creating it.

I think that one of the things we got from Nema's rites was a sense of
keeping things clear, simple and archetypical. Magick should be
direct, and ritual action does have an opening effect that just
reading a text lacks. When you actually work with a current you really
make contact.

  Talking of rites, I try to spread this one around; it's very

adaptable and I hope it will be a contribution to Thelema that
outlives me:

16
http://www.horusmaat.com/silverstar2/SILVERSTAR1-PG30.html

>
> Second, what should be done to make the HML more functional or interactive?
>

  I actually agree that more better magick is what I want to see.

Natural medicine, youtube, music and current events are all fine in
their way, I don't think casual conversation need to disappear and I'm
glad we all seem to get along, but Magick was what I fell in love with
as a kid and is what the list was formed to discuss (and I have a very
wide definition of magick and myth). I'd like to see it more on point,
fewer throwaway lines and more substantial art and science.

  Retro-tech though it may be, I think that the website preserves our
past, the list/archives unites us all in one big unified conversation,
and Silver Star advances our Great Work. Past, present, future, simple
works. Facebook etc. seems like fragmenting into little personal
in-groups. I really like that the HML is genuinely multinational and
individualistic. It gives me hope.

>
> Finally, how would you define the Horus Maat Lodge?

  'A constellation of stars.' Mages are a strange breed, but we've

pushed history along. Sometimes we start revolutions. It is a rare
pleasure to have good friends to discuss weird stuff with. We are
trying something new: a new aeon magical group, without dogma,
degrees, authorities, churches or rules other than common courtesy to
one another. I'll close with a quote I reread today...

 696,
             ~ Shade

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves." -

Henry David Thoreau "If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us
out?" - Will Rogers

"Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ." "Experience is a good
school. But the fees are high." "Great genius takes shape by contact with another
great genius, but, less by assimilation than by fiction." - All by German poet
Heinrich Heine born on this day in 1797

17
“we would like you to come to the /(house with wings)/ , which exists nowhere.
the /(lantern of the kingdom)/ Salomon’s house, where every door opens into a
room in every human /(heart)/ and where you will remember how to /(cut the
master key)/ you can call it the magic mountain, the virtual college, the school of
shadows. or if you prefer, /(the academy)/.” – Grant Morrison, The Invisibles vol.
III

“Love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the
heart. And they both take practice.” - Nora Roberts

"The Book of the Law or Liber Legis, as the communication from Aiwass is
called, is a series of dithyrambic verses with more exclamation marks than any
other work of similar length."
- John Symonds, The Great Beast

"The sole difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad."
- Salvador Dali

“Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.”

- Henrik Tikkanen

“Of all the things I’ve lost, it’s my mind that I miss the most.”
- Ozzy Osbourne

"What then are the essential characteristics of the work of the Odian [magician]?
They can be summed up in four adjectives: bi-polar, egoistic, transformative, and
cooperative."
- The Nine Doors of Midgard, Edred Thorsson

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very
angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
- Douglas Adams 

The Self cannot be pierced by weapons or burned by fire; water cannot wet it,
nor can the wind dry it. The Self cannot be pierced or burned, made wet or dry. It
is everlasting and infinite, standing on the motionless foundations of eternity. The

18
Self is unmanifested, beyond all thought, beyond all change. Knowing this, you
should not grieve.
- Bhagavad Gita 2 23-25

“Objection, evasion, distrust and irony are signs of health. Everything absolute
belongs to pathology.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

“Jesus wept, Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is
derived the grace of human civilization.”
-Victor Hugo

Akron Daraul : Roshinaya Illuminated Ones Central Asia 16th century

Allumbrados in Spain also

Loge zur augehenden Morgernrothe Masonic in Frankfurt, in Frnch branch

Aurore naissante (both “rising Dawn”)
Chabrath Zerek Auor Bokher Society of the Shining Light of Dawn London
founded bt Johannes Falk from Hamburg

“…the phenomena themselves are inherently intangible, but are able in impinge
on our reality in a phenomenological way because they are archetypal.” T. Allen
Greenfield

“Although a jealously guarded secret for many centuries, allegedly because the
powers unleashed are too dangerous to be revealed to all, the technique is
simple enough to be revealed in a single sentence: Orgasm should be avoided
for as long as possible, by always slowing down or altering position when it
seems imminent, and each partner should visualize/idealize the other as some
specially meaningful deity – e.g., in Thelemic magick the male usually identifies
the female with Nuit, the sk goddess, and the female usually identifies the male
with Pan.” - R. A. W

         E    G  RK A O S                <+O( ~   Shade     I  S    A“O King, you are the
essence of all the gods,and Horus has protected you,you having become the
essence of him.”        - Utterance 589, Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts    “I think
that kabbalah is very punk rock.”          - Madonna

                    <+O(   ~ Shade'Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible."   

- Thich Nhat HanhOn some level there would appear to be a sort of "astral
temple of the great mauve lodge", or whatever you want to call it, as well.

19
    "In the Javanese shadow theatre (wayang) this object, called a gunungan
('mountain') or kekayon ('tree') represents the cosmic centre around which the
play of divine and demonic forces develops. The winged doors, a motif found in
Javanese architecture, suggest both a 'passing-through' and a 'magical flight'
from this world to the supernatural world in which the mythical drama takes
place."    (from The Tree of Life: Image for the Cosmos by Roger Cook, great
book from the great Art & Cosmos or Art & Imagination series published for many
years by Thames & Hudson)

I have gone out, a possessed witch,haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitchover the plain houses, light by light:lonely
thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.A woman like that is not a woman, quite.I have
been her kind. -Anne Sexton
“Also I prayed unto the Elephant God, the Lord of Beginnings, who breaketh
down obstruction.” (Liber LXV)
 
The ninth-century Buddhist master Lin Chi said, “If you meet the Buddha on the
road, kill him.”

Other identifications of the Anti-Christ 666 have included RONALD WILSON

REAGAN (6 letters each) and earlier NAPOLE ONBUON APARTE (same). The
Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau took some heat for having 666 as the license
plate on his official limo (too obvious, I guess!). The qabalistic solar spirit Sorath
and the Norse fire giant Surt are both 666 as Samkh, Vau, Resh, Tau.
Perhaps the most perceptive identification, however, is the British House of
Commons: 658 members, 3 clerks, and a deputy, chaplain, sergeant, librarian
and door keeper, totaling 666!

“All men who feel any power of joy in battle know what it is like when the wolf
rises in the heart.” - Theodore Roosevelt

FUTURE MAGICK:
Crowley, Chaos & Beyond

Also Called THE SECRETS OF SORCERY, or ARS MAGNA (The Great Art): A
Curious Treatise upon the Secret History of Scientific Illuminism, the Mysteries of
the Double Current, & the Primal Chaos of True Magick

Scribed for the Ordo Ludus Noctis,

& Ornamented with Quotations
by Shade Oroboros 817

Contents

20
Forward: An Order Out of Chaos, & Back Again
(a brief statement on my inspirations, with many thanks!)

Part I: Coiled in the Serpent’s Egg:

The Origins of the Secret Tradition

93: A Preliminary Evocation (Art)

The Mystery of the Magus & the Fire of the Phoenix

(an introduction to the major themes)
In the Beginning Were the Loaded Questions
(a brief explanation of the history and purposes of Magick)
Lurking in the Shadows of History
(shamanic origins and the birth of “civilization”)
Ancient Light In The East, or the Secret Science of the Sages
(Asian influences on occultism and the West)
Jerking the Golden Chain, or The Usual Suspects
(ancient cultures & the classical world)
Black Magic in the Dark Ages
(gnosticism, medieval & renaissance developments)
The golden dawn, l'aube doree, die goldene dammerung
(Freemasons, Theosophy, and the Golden Dawn)
Hey, Mr. Crowley Man, tally me qabala!
Aeon come and me wan' go home!
(the Importance of Being Crowley)
Of Austin Osman Spare & the End of Sigilization as we know it...
(the Godfather of Chaos Magick)
The Double Current & Other Fascinating Heresies
(20th century trends, magical heresies and new developments)
Conspiracy Theory & Esoteric Espionage
(hidden history & paranoid awareness)
Wicca, Neopaganism & the New Age
(heathenism for the masses)
Vodou: the Mysteries of the Serpent
(serving the Loa with both hands)
Take a Walk on the Dark Side
(popular occulture, the sinister & the satanic)
The Chaos Orders & Post-Modern Sorcery
(evolution of a revolution & related thinkers)
Witchcraft, Magick, Sorcery: Moon, Sun, Stars
(techniques in practice)
The Magisterium Rosarium & The Emerald Tablet of Alchemy
(how Alchemy created civilization)
Interpersonal Dynamics of Diabolic Mind Control
(sage advice on magical groups to seekers after whatever)

21
Part II: Soaring on Wings of the Vulture & the Hawk:
The Methods of Double Current Magick

Stealing the Fire from Heaven

(definitions of magick & magicians)
Central Concepts & Fundamental Forms of the Great Art
(some arcane laws supporting sorcery)
The Method of Science, the Goal of Religion
(aspects of science and quantum theory)
Pyromancy, Aeromancy, Hydromancy, Geomancy
(fire/air/water/earth: elemental correspondences)
Scale Models of the Universe
(the Holy Tree of Life: qabalistic correspondences)
Taming the Tigers of the Mind: Paths to Power
(psychological structures and methods of raising energy)
Gnostic Themes & the Mountain of Initiation
(mutant-pagan theology and the double current)
Crowleyan Cosmology in Theory & Practice
(a personal relationship with the Universe)
Aeonics: Of Time, & the Gods, & the End of the World
(temporal concepts, deities, & the eagerly-awaited apocalypse)
The SiGiL & the LoGoS
(talismans, words of power, and magical alphabets)
Invocation, Evocation, & the Alphabet of Desire
(conjuring with spirits, use of music, and emotional states)
The Rainbow Spectrum of Magick
(a cross-cultural essay on color symbolism)
The Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Spirit
(the essential central Art of self-transformation)
Astral Journeys, Shapeshifting, Invisibility, & Cultivating the Body of Light
(out of body experiences, energy working, chakras)
Materia Magica: the Tools of the Trade
(making things real)
Ritual Structures & Practices
(types and methods)
The Rite of the Verses from the Stele of Revealing
(my quintessential ritual)
The Invocation of the Unborn One
(a newly revised version)
Ars Amatoria or the Mahavajrapadmatantra:
(an essay on post-modern tantra & sexual sorcery)
The Left Hand Path
(history and concepts of the LHP)
B) Sex & Magick: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

22
(some quintessential practices)
C) Secrets of Crowleyan Sexual Occultism
(the New Revised Thelemic version)
D) The Scarlet Woman & the Beast: Conceptions of Babalon
(aspects of Shakti as the sensual Goddess)
E) Far Beyond the Tattered Fringe of the Jagged Edge
(the ever so slightly more unusually extreme side of things)
Pharmacopoeia Maleficorum
(certain traditional biological substances)
I Love Blood: It's a Primary Color!
(human sacrifice and why it’s usually a bad idea)
The Ultimate Secret of Magick
(a final summing up)
Climbing the Tree of Life & Death:
(potential workings)
X. The Body of Earth
IX. The Gate of the Moon
VIII. The Mind of Mercury
VII. The Love of Venus
VI. The Spirit of the Sun
V. The War of Mars
IV. The Mask of Jupiter
!? The Uranian Leap/Crossing Over
III. The Night of Saturn
II. The Word of Neptune
I. The Way of Pluto
The Customary Sinister Warning
(just for dramatic effect & to avoid potential lawsuits)
A Secretive Manifesto, A New Disorder
(my original statement of the founding a new cult)

A Fistful of Bibliomania
A. Suggested Essentials
B. Taoism & Tantra
C. Ancient Middle-Eastern, Egyptian, & Greek Magick & Mythology
D. Runes & Oghams/Norse & Celtic Mythology
E. General History of Magick: Medieval to Early Modern Times
F. Basic Qabala & Gnosticism
G. The Golden Dawn
H. Assorted Useful Contemporary Titles Post-Golden Dawn
I. Aleister “Uncle AL” Crowley
J. The Austin Osman Spare Parts
K. Some Amusing Post-Crowley Heresies, & the Typhonian Tradition
L. Wicca & Neo-Paganism
M. Vodou & Santeria

23
N. UFOlogy & Conspiracy Theory
O. Satanism & Nazi Occultism
P. Chaos Magick Organized
Q. Sexual Magick: History & Practice
R. Angelology
S. Altered States
T. Divination & Tarot
U. A Taste of Alchemy
V. Occult Fiction
W. The Labyrinth

"Philosophy is odious and obscure,

Both law and physic are for petty wits,
Divinity is basest of the three -
Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible and vile;
‘Tis magick, magick! that hath ravish'd me!

These metaphysics of magicians

And necromantic books are heavenly;
Lines, circles, letters, characters –
Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.
O, what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honor, and omnipotence
Is promised to the studious artisan!
All things that move between the quiet poles
Shall be at my command: emperors and kings
Are but obeyed in their several provinces
But his dominion that exceeds in this
Stretches as far as doth the mind of man:
A sound magician is a demi-god!

Here, take this book and peruse it well.

The iterating of these lines brings gold;
The framing of this circle on the ground
Brings thunder, whirlwinds, storm, and lightning…”
- Marlowe's Tragedy of Dr. Faustus

“Professional tomb-robbers seem to have set themselves up against the whole

religious system – they may have had Seth-cults of their own, and saw their
upsetting of Osiris-cult funeral arrangements as a re-enactment of Seth’s efforts
to prevent Isis from reuniting the body of her dead husband. Such underground
cultists formed an alternative society and certainly had no respect for the

24
mummies, even after they had robbed them. The body of the wife of one First
Dynasty pharaoh was so roughly handled that one of her arms was torn off. It
was then hidden in a hole, possibly because the robber was interrupted.”
- Paul Johnson, The Civilization of Ancient Egypt

Forward: An Order Out of Chaos, & Back Again

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law!

I have spent this current lifetime exploring my supernatural nature by the

seven circuits of the Labyrinth and the light of the Secret Star, by the hidden
treasures of darkness and the Invisible Fire of the Phoenix and the twining coils
of the Serpent of Wisdom, by the Prima Materia of Chaos and the alchemical
enigma of the Elixir Vitae and the paradox of the Philosopher’s Stone. I have
sought out the Name of the Angel and the Number of the Beast. For as long as I
can remember, I have been utterly intoxicated by the wisdom, wonder, and
romance of sorcery.

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to

kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.”
- C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

This book is a kaleidoscopic reflection of my somewhat tattered mind: the

world of a modern magician, formed by exposure to a wide variety of sources
and influences, unusual individuals and strange practices. There can be no
single orthodoxy in magick, no dogma, no all-powerful authority. Each mage
must formulate an original system out of an expanding body of traditions and an
assortment of highly unusual and increasingly meaningful experiences.
Sometimes a book is written to pass along these personal understandings, and
so the Art continues to evolve. Most magicians appear to have very strong
opinions, and this strange series of interconnected essays and/or incoherent
rants presents mine. In these intensely technological times a vast amount of
arcane information is now easily available in print and on-line, and so new visions
of reality may be formed by exposure to a whole range of concepts and cultures.
Post-modern magick is increasingly creative and anarchistic, but there are
certain well-established trends, and it is my desire to share with you some of the
most important.

"Enlightenment and illumination have been at a dark standstill for too long.
Mysticism has largely failed (too many are blind), as has science (too many with
wide eyes); and so it is time to forge a new path combining elements of all the old
ways, well trod in secrecy."
- Dr. Fu Manchu

25
 Magick is both the first and original Art and also the Science of the future,
as ancient and as new as humankind. Perhaps it is this primordial power that has
made us unique in our natural world, as a species somehow separated by the
random whimsy of fate from the other inhabitants of Eden's green gardens.
Magick has always been the technology of the sacred: a wildly eclectic collection
of methods for the induction of ecstasy, the transformation of reality, and the
daemonic or divine inspiration of consciousness on all possible levels. Magick is
the instrument of Will, Desire, and Belief. Magick is the evolutionary process and
alchemical creation of the True Self. Magick is a metasystem of direct
communication linking all aspects of the supposedly external universe and the
labyrinthine interior of the human psyche in a ritualized drama of ongoing
revelations. Magick is the Formula of Change and the discovery of all that which
is hidden, a talent for materialized imagination, applied synchronicity and the
working of miracles. Magick is found everywhere: in all our art, philosophy,
poetry, science, mythology, religion, psychology, mathematics, music, sexuality,
history, alchemy, mundane life and metaphysical explorations. Magick is a great
and cunning and perilous dragon, a shape-shifting chimera, a mysterious
chameleon or mythical questing beast; and myths are our eternal stories that are
absolutely true, events that may never have happened at all, yet still are always
happening. Magick as a Way of Life is Really Big Fun! And Magick, whether or
not you believe it at first, actually does work. I will always insist upon the widest
possible definition of this, the Royal Art.

“There is a civic magic which will soon appear undisguised.”

- Antonin Artaud

I have spent a fair portion of my life on exploring and redefining my

magick, with enormous pleasure and the able assistance of that long line of
shamans, sages, witches, avatars, druids, alchemists, heretics, philosophers,
dakinis, priests, wizards, sufis, prophets, troubadours, fakirs, sorceresses,
visionaries, gurus, werewolves, aliens, bokors, oracles, assassins, conjurers,
mediums, mutants, surrealists, frauds, dreamers, gypsies, necromancers, rabbis,
runesingers, renegades, disciples, midwives, libertines, astrologers, tantriks,
translators, healers, poets, monsters, artists, enchantresses, scribes, dancers,
outlaws, nomads, kahunas, poets, seers, gnostics, analysts, poisoners,
changelings, voluptuaries, saints, sinners, courtesans, crones, dandies, bards,
monks, invisibles, lunatics, freemasons, rosicrucians, illuminati, theosophists
(well, maybe just some theosophists), crazed bomb-throwing anarchist
revolutionaries, and all the other varied forms of the unconventional scientists
and gifted amateurs who make up the fabled Aurea Catena or Golden Chain of
all adepts and spirits throughout time and space.
This has all been made possible by powers of the Magickal Word, of the
secret languages, concepts, names, and histories which bestow a form of actual
immortality upon many people who are long dead but not quite forgotten and the
transformative ideas which live on. The fabled Akashic Record of the
Theosophists, Jung’s Collective Unconscious and archetypes, the alchemical

26
World Soul, or the Buddhist Great Ocean of Wisdom all parallel many hidden
libraries in the so-called ‘real world’ that have preserved this Hermetic Tradition.
Expressed in ancient qabalistic terminology: with Knowledge we accumulate
power, for in ancient memory there lies Wisdom, and by full Understanding
comes all change, and thus we attain to the elusive Crown of a fully illuminated
consciousness. In the dark beginning is the Logos, the powerful Word of Creation
that emerged from the Silence. This mystical True Word of prophecy has always
been spoken in secret by the Magician, and given life by the breath of the Holy
Fool. Magick most often works through the power of words and rhymes. A
resonant poem or woven spell to express the Will is not unlike a computer
program, a sequence of codes creating a remarkable effect.

"Beyond a certain point the whole universe becomes a continuous Initiation."

- Aleister Crowley

Throughout our strange and sinister saga sorcery has survived among
hidden cabals and secretive cells, with hand-copied manuscripts and bold but
oddly obscure publishers, underground journals and pamphlets, a forbidden
realm of works largely ignored by academic science and authorized literature,
bravely passed on from hand to hand. Yet now the whole wide world can access
much of this eldritch lore on the cybernetic astral plane of the Internet while their
parents think they are asleep. Times are always changing and evolution really
does happen, and so the Great Art is eternally reformulating itself. This book
reflects my sense of where the cutting edge of the esoteric tradition starts to draw
fresh blood, for now more than ever, behind the scenes, there lives a great
Floating World of occultism. The Illuminati and the Invisibles are mutating for this
new millennium, recreating the ancient mysteries in modern forms and reopening
the hidden gates. There is a true community of magicians, still quite often
concealed and definitely fragmented, frequently contentious and yet generous,
which forms and reforms in unusual groups whose techniques and beliefs extend
beyond the limits of past and future into timelessness and eternity. And as such
magi always have, they champion the spirit of the individual over the collective,
question the merely and morbidly conventional, and create unique new worlds for
immortal and curious spirits to inhabit.

“Whosoever possesses magical power may, at his will, rule and renew the
mineral, plant and animal kingdoms; thus, if a few wizards came to an
agreement, all creation might return to its paradisal state.” -Jane Leade,
On the Will in Nature, VII

In writing at the turn of the 21st century one must confront the great figures of the
20th, and three of the most pioneering and formative exemplars of modern
magick (and some of my personal favorites) are Aleister Crowley, the notorious
Great Beast, solar prophet of the New Aeon of Horus; the shadowy sorcerer
Austin Osman Spare, whose nightside artistry unleashed primal and archaic
atavisms and posthumously spawned the movement called Chaos Magick; and

27
Soror Nema, whose essential reception of the Maatian transmission is now
mutating us towards an unknown future by completing the Double Current.
Crowley's countless works are almost all in print and easy to find, as are Nema’s,
while Spare's few volumes still tend to be found in obscure and limited editions;
light and shadow, perhaps. Most of their texts may be easily found online. I shall
devote time to them both, yet there are countless other innovative adepts in the
current revival, all contributing to this ever-evolving synthesis, including Crowley's
heirs such as Frater Achad, Jack Parsons, Israel Regardie, Kenneth Grant, the
noted Hymenaeii Alpha & Beta, and of course Soror Nema; all the founding lights
of Chaos Magick, including Pete Carroll, Ray Sherwin, Phil Hine, Steve Wilson,
Dave Lee, Nicholas Hall, Francis Breakspear, and many more; the vastly diverse
revivalists of the neo-pagan Wiccan and retro-heathen Runic currents; Dr. Robert
Anton Wilson, Lon Milo Duquette, Christopher Hyatt, Jason Black, and the other
New Falconeers; and many more unusual and harder-to-classify exponents such
as my close friend and colleague W. Denny Sargent, Jan Fries, Steven Mace,
Edred Thorsson, Steven Flowers, Orryelle Defenestrate, Isaac Bonewits, E.E.
Rehmus, Gavin Semple, Andrew Chumbley, Nigel Aldcroft Jackson, Julius Evola,
Franz Bardon, Taylor Ellwood, Bill Whitcomb, Donald Michael Kraig, Michael
Bertiaux, Ramsey Dukes, Neville Drury, Nigel Pennick, Don Webb, Nikolas &
Zeena Schreck, Carlos Castaneda, Hakim Bey, my great guru Sri Dadaji
Mahendranath, and all the other independent and creative thinkers and exotic
practitioners who have so greatly enlivened my own conception of these other
worlds. My apologies to many I have omitted. I might add some slightly more
secular historians as well: Dame Frances Yates, Richard Cavendish, Francis
King, James Webb, Akron Daraul, Gary Lachman, Joscelyn Godwin, R.A.
Gilbert, Dave Evans, and Peter Levenda.

"The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards." -
Alexander Jablokov

Indeed, it is hard to know how far into myth, history, philosophy, or literature this
rather tentative list can be extended (Lao-Tsu & Chuang-Tsu, William
Shakespeare & William Blake, Joseph Campbell & Mircea Eliade, Friedrich
Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Carl Jung, H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien, William S.
Burroughs, Tom Robbins, Phillip K. Dick, Roger Zelazny, Alan Moore, Neil
Gaiman, Grant Morrison?) without starting to sound very like some overlong
acceptance speech at the academy awards ("I'd like to thank my parents, my
friends, my guru, my director, my agent, my Holy Guardian Angel, my feline
familiars, my feng shui consultant, my yoga instructor, my therapist, my florist, all
those sweet little people I brutally stomped on as I clawed my way to the top,
Jesus, and of course the caterers..."). I can only hope that you will search out
their various books and read them, because I am a great lover of books, and
especially of magical ones. Most of the names I will drop in this rambling
discourse are authors, which gives you the option of tracking down their work;
but I must also acknowledge many others in the series of weird cults who have
taught and inspired me, including the various covens and orders of my

28
psychedelic youth and especially those adepts worldwide in the Horus/Maat
Lodge (known largely via the internet). Not to mention some excellent teachers
and professors in the allegedly more respectable realms of academia.

“If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s
research.” - Wilson Mizner

Clearly the Art of Magick has been my great fascination or mantic

obsession in life. Like so many others, I began with an early initiation into Wicca,
the popular 20th century revival of witchcraft as the fabled Craft of the Wise (as a
15-year-old I needed a rather hilarious letter of permission from my bemused
parents to join a coven, sure wish I had a copy of it now!) but have since
progressed through a number of arcane traditions including the northern Runic
Mysteries, the eastern Tantrik Path and the Immortal Way of the Tao. However,
in terms of the more western forms of sorcery that I seek to expound here, the
methods and cosmology most delightful live on in the Double Current of Horus
and Maat, Spare’s Zos Kia Cultus, and the Gnosis of Chaos. The Tarot, the I
Ching, and the lore of the Runes have been my constant tools and advisors.
What the hell am I babbling on about? I shall endeavor to explain, for I believe
that I have something to contribute here as well; this work has emerged from a
deviant impulse to put my thoughts in order that could not be ignored. The
customary procedure in all such cases is to proclaim oneself the supreme and
unquestioned head of a vast yet suspiciously invisible Order and issue a wildly
grandiloquent manifesto, so I am following precedent by doing so in the hope that
my experiences might amuse others. This book might serve as a useful guide
through the mystical maze for beginners, or an invitation to debate for the more
informed. Either way I trust that it will prove moderately entertaining, and place it
under the protection of Thoth the original Magician and Scribe of the Gods and
his consort Seshat the goddess of architects, astronomers, artists, cosmetics and
libraries. May they aid my readers in an easy comprehension of my unusual
vocabulary and frequently convoluted sentence structure.
I have tried to keep the flow of actual information as concentrated as possible
while still maintaining a high level of purple prose. I will begin with a brief essay
upon the historical background and sources, because some level of context in
this strange world is essential, and I will then proceed to outline the core aspects
of psychedelic arcane lore, streamlined qabalistic cosmology and archetypical
shamanic techniques as I have come to understand them. Magick is so vast a
subject that no single volume can even begin to encompass it completely, and it
is very often expressed in a language of obscurely coded correspondences and
esoteric alchemical symbols, but there are certain basic themes and
psychological triggers that constantly reappear in so many cultures over the
millennia that they must be seen as essential to the ways in which our human
minds have always worked. The primordial archetypes of Plato and Jung are
constantly reappearing in new forms and under new names, and the more things
stay the same the more they change. I am attempting to present my own concept
of the major influences that are currently creating post-modern magick, and the

29
ways in which such sorcery has transmuted and evolved into the future, without
ever losing the vital connections to a mysterious past. These secrets have
always survived because they are genuinely effective, and they can and will
change your life in many remarkable and totally unexpected ways. There are
more than enough Wicca 101 books and Golden Dawn rehashes in print, so I
feel that it is time to review the extraordinary diversity of arcane mutations being
created today. Few dogmas can survive intact, but many preserve a few seeds of
truth.
After more decades than I care to think about of jaded spiritual thrill seeking
through various pagan mythologies and other odd arts, I have seen some fairly
weird events take place. These sometimes sinister and allegedly separate
realities are all merely useful yet temporary maps of an invisible and shifting
landscape of deeply personal experiences, in which the strangest journey is still
essentially your own. The most important thing is to reach out and grab your
wand with both hands and actually do something, because any form of theory
without practice is utterly pointless. As Chung Tsu said, “A path is made by
walking it.” Through the opening eyes of cosmic imagination anyone creative can
achieve results that transform their world and truly enlighten them, and that
uniquely personal vision is exactly what this apparently quite transitory life is all
about. Welcome to the Invisible Circus, the Left Hand Path, and the Quest for
the Holy Grail! A secret Enochian decoder ring may be provided shortly.

Love is the law, love under will!

Part I: Coiled in the Serpent’s Egg:

The Origins of the Secret Tradition

“The profession of magician is one of the most perilous and arduous

specializations of the imagination. On the one hand there is the hostility of God
and the police to be guarded against; on the other it is as difficult as music, as
deep as poetry, as ingenious as stage-craft, as nervous as the manufacture of
high explosives, and as delicate as the trade in narcotics.”
-William Bolitho, Twelve Against The Gods

“Magic is protean. It has multiple names, numberless forms. It is

thaumaturgy and goety. It is witchcraft and it is religion. It is superstition and
legend, tested by its potency, its primary effects on the individual, sometimes on
the community, and not rarely on large ethnic groups. It enters into private
domestic life and pervades the tribal community. On occasion, it dominates, in its
malignant impact, an entire nation, upheaving governments, creating devastation
and civic chaos. It pierces the very basic roots of existence, and sometimes
forms itself into a religious cult, capable of overthrowing an established religious
system. Impalpable sometimes, at all times secretive and cryptically esoteric, its

30
powers rest in the grip of small dedicated hieratic groups, or in the control of an
arch adept: or even, as in ancient Italy or Egypt, as in the antique Chinese
dynasties, in the supreme ruler himself, who is both first citizen and thaumaturgic
priest.”
- Harry E. Wedeck, A Treasury of Witchcraft

93: A Preliminary Evocation

The Tree upon the mountain

holds the fountain
in deep roots,
the winged doorway opens
on the heavens
beneath the earth.

Strange voices and visions

pierce mouth and eye,
the gates of alien ecstasy.
When the oracle speaks
through the mask of night
the lust of the goat gives birth.

Inward-turning secret kings

the dragons of Θελημα
coiling serpentine, entwine
the whirling Dancer’s glories:
jewel of fire in the snowflake,
dew upon the ciphered rose.

Rays of golden solar light

flood a silver grail of moon-blood.
The outpoured wine of double nectar
is peacock’s tail and rainbow veil,
a snowstorm of starlight
a garden of bright flowers.

Spiralling inbetween unspoken silences

the weavers of the shadow
master all mystery as dust and ash
blown upon the winds of future aeons.

The Mystery of the Magus & the Fire of the Phoenix

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"Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with the
Will. In other words, it is Science, Pure and Applied."
"How do we achieve this? By exalting the will to the point where it is master of
circumstance. And how do we do this? By so ordering every thought, word and
act, in such a way that the attention is constantly recalled to the chosen object."
- Aleister Crowley

Magick emerges from the mists of pre-history, from the nameless aeons of the
Dreamtime, the primal dawn of mythology and human self-awareness. The
shaman may well be our original specialist, the first person to lift us out of the
mundane concerns of mere daily survival and into the larger otherworld of gods
and monsters, daimons and spirits. From beyond the cycles of hunting and
gathering emerge the first glimmerings of religion, art, and science, and the
shifting revelations of our imagination become the new realm of illumination,
creation, and transformation. As human beings we grow out of our natural animal
existence into a parallel spiritual universe, opening new horizons beyond our
previous limits. It is a typical contemporary error to denigrate this period as
merely ‘primitive’, or consider the so-called ‘supernatural’ as some sort of utterly
alien reality and not a unique insight arising and growing from the organic,
spiritual, cultural and mental world we are all born into. This sacred space is
where we begin to create our souls, and this creation of our own ultimate
meaning is what makes us human. Magick evolves, and we evolve with it.
The archetypes of the wizard as a man of power or the enchantress as a
woman of wisdom flow throughout history creating change. The frenzied dancer
with the bestial mask, lurking in the firelight of ancient caverns; the mythical
heroes, monster-slayers, and founders of city-states and civilizations; the ranting
of biblical prophets and wonderworkers or the texts of martyred Gnostic
heresiarchs; the witches of the dark ages and the alchemists of the Renaissance;
the sorcerers, healers and astrologers, the artists, psychologists and conspirators
of this modern world: all have expressed an alternate consensus of true reality, a
personal vision outside the bounds of dogma and the Black Iron Prison, the
arbitrary tyranny of the normal. Without Merlin and Faust and Prospero, Circe
and Medea and Morgan le Fay, or even Harry Potter, Ged of Earthsea and
Gandalf the Gray, would we not be immeasurably poorer in spirit?
Among today’s best-known images of the Magician is his card in the
Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck: a tall dark figure stands in a garden of roses and
lilies, his right hand upraised to heaven and left reaching downwards toward hell.
On an altar before him lie the four traditional tools of the magus: the wand,
sword, cup and disk. A serpent entwines his waist, and he is crowned with the
double-looped symbol of infinity. The Tarot holds many of the wonders of magick,
as this secretive art is embodied in an alphabet of symbols used to manipulate
time and space, to conceal and reveal truth and to work genuine miracles. If we
examine and analyze this particular figure we may find encoded many of the
basic themes that this work is intended to expound.

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 The gesture of his hands shows the core hermetic aphorism “As above, so
below”. This is the concept of the unity of the Macrocosm (God, the Universe, the
greater or outer world) and the Microcosm (the Soul, Human Being, the smaller
or inner world). We hold what we conceive to be an external cosmos as a
changing image in our mind’s open eye, and everything around us is reflected
within us. By the use of internal symbolic systems we can manipulate outer
events while at the same time constant interaction and communication with wider
realms inevitably affects us as well. This notion also appears fundamental to
astrology, which teaches that the cyclical patterns of the planets and stars are
manifested in turn in our physical bodies and eternal souls, and which late-
classical cultures often believed ensnared us all in a spider’s web of inexorable
destiny. I mention this even though I barely (but occasionally) believe in popular
predictive astrology at all, yet it is still among the oldest known systems of
mapping the human personality, dating back beyond the ancient Chaldeans, and
many do somehow seem to find that it gives useful results; I personally prefer the
newer model of the Enneagram. Like the 78 Atus of the Tarot cards, or the
mathematical Tree of Life in contemporary Qabala, Astrology is one of the
underlying and unifying symbol-systems of both Magick and the nearly forgotten
hermetic science of Alchemy.
The four magical tools or weapons represent the four elements of Fire, Air,
Water and Earth, and are completed by the Quintessence or unifying power of
Spirit. This very ancient Indo-European system of classifying objects, events and
states of being reappears in all of magick and witchcraft, alchemy and astrology,
and in terms of mundane physics would be the four possible states of matter as
energy, gas, liquid and solid. They also represent the four directions of south,
east, west and north, which orient us in space by quartering the mandala or
magical circle where we stand at the crossroads, the indivisible center of things. I
will repeatedly return to explaining aspects of magick in these terms. They are a
key to the Tarot, for the four elemental suits of the 56 minor arcana (wands,
swords, cups and disks) later evolved into our 52 playing cards (clubs, spades,
hearts and diamonds). The fifth suit of the major arcana or trump cards, however,
is a series of 22 complex symbolic figures whose only survivor is the Fool, now
appearing disguised as a mere Joker. These iconic images encode the entire
Hidden Tradition and are the occult version of the Jungian archetypes; they are
secret gateways, mystic talismans, generators of omens, spiritual forces, signs of
power, and lenses to focus those changing aspects of the Self still common to all
humanity. They are also the roots and branches and pathways of the universal
Tree of Life. These are their names (and astrological attributions): The Fool
(Uranus), Magician (Mercury), Priestess (Moon), Empress (Venus), Emperor
(Aries), Hierophant (Taurus), Lovers (Gemini), Chariot (Cancer), Balance or
Justice (Libra), Hermit (Virgo), Wheel (Jupiter), Lust or Strength (Leo), Hanged
Man (Neptune), Death (Scorpio), Art or Alchemy (Sagittarius), Devil (Capricorn),
Tower (Mars), Star (Aquarius), Moon (Pisces), Sun (Sun), Aeon or Judgment
(Pluto), and the Universe or World (Saturn). While these images might seem to
encapsulate an arbitrary and obsolete version of the Renaissance social order, in
practice they reflect much older mythological origins which still resonate on a

33
deeply human level, and the many multicultural versions created by recent artists
attest their flexibility, diversity, and enduring presence in our collective memory.

“It’s said that the shuffling of the cards is the earth, and the pattering of the cards
is the rain, and the beating of the cards is the wind, and the pointing of the cards
is the fire. That’s of the four suits. But the Greater Trumps, it’s said, are the
meaning of all process and the measure of the everlasting dance.”
- Charles Williams, The Greater Trumps

In either the simpler or more complex versions of the qabalistic mind-map known
as the Tree of Life, a balanced network of 10 (or 11) planetary spheres forms a
geometric and numeric model of the creation of the universe as a series of ever-
expanding dimensions, and one traditional method of self-transformation is to
return to the source of that creation by contracting the consciousness back along
the return journey. These spheres are linked by 22 symbolic pathways often
linked to both the Tarot images and the 22 letters of the hebrew alphabet,
forming a traditional vocabulary of signs that reappear in myth and media, in
dreams and meditation, in personal revelations induced by odd experiences or
just randomly appearing in the unexpected oracles and synchronicities of daily
life. Alchemists called this “reading the Book of the World”, the Liber Mundi. This
Qabala is one useful model, but definitely not the only one. All such systems are
ultimately arbitrary, and ‘the map is not the territory’. Never allow yourself to be
completely bound by the definitions of others: a symbol means what it means to
you alone, especially in the dreams that express the unique communications of
your individual Deep Mind. However, this qabalistic tree has become fairly
ubiquitous if not almost inevitable in contemporary magick, and is largely
divorced from its origins in Judaic mysticism by now.

“The science of hieroglyphs was based upon an alphabet in which the gods were
letters, the letters were ideas, the ideas numbers, and the numbers perfect
signs… the famous Book of Thoth.” - P.R.S. Foli

The images of the circular tail-devouring Oroboros serpent (representing the

endless cycles of time) and the crowning cosmic lemniscate (a figure-8 on its
side, an endless loop which is the mathematical sign for infinity) refer to the place
of the Magus at the midpoint of Eternity and Infinity. We stand at the Center,
inbetween all possible pairs of dualities and opposites: darkness and light, time
and space, inner and outer, universal and personal, male and female, chaos and
order, spirit and matter, grotesque and beautiful, sorrow and joy, art and nature,
angelic and demonic, pleasure and pain. The Garden of the World is Eden, the
original state of Nature perfect in and of itself. The pale lilies and crimson roses
portray innocence and experience, purity and passion: the clarity of Will and
energy of Love now known to magicians as the formulas of Thelema and Agape.
They are reflected in the white robe and red cloak of the mercurial and
androgynous Magus who is the mediator of all levels of consciousness, the
subtle shadowy serpentine ever-changing twisting and spiraling principle that

34
eternally lurks inbetween, that connects and communicates and opens, forming
links by language and symbol and affinity. The constant alchemical process of
the dividing Analysis and combining Union of Opposites in countless forms both
sexual and philosophical provides the energy that drives all our insight and power
and enlightenment, and from these ceaseless reunions and revelations arise the
transforming power of the Mage as a creator, an artist, and an eternally
revolutionary spirit. What Austin Spare called ‘the sacred in-betweeness
concepts’ is also a key, for magickal forces lurk in liminal spaces: in shifting
shadows and twilight times, at all crossroads and borders, on shorelines and
mountaintops, in deep caves and marshes, in abandoned temples and
graveyards, through strange doorways and over horizons; between the worlds of
the gods and humans, at the thresholds of night and day, or death and life.
Between waking and sleeping we weave our dreams into manifestation, and
mirrors are also gateways.
In tune with humanity magick evolves through history, rising by layers of
accumulated information and experience. Among our other important theoretical
doctrines is the concept of Aeons, conditionally defined as vast periods of time
each ruled by a series of tutelary deities and expressed by certain magical
formulas. Every great culture has its own mythology, with inspirational tales and
powerful god-forms arising out of the ceaseless interactions of collective
consciousness with the surrounding natural environment. These pantheons
reflect the many faces of the ultimately unknowable divine, which Joseph
Campbell termed the Masks of God, and express the countless diverse roles that
we all may play. Out of our prehistoric eras of early shamanism and totemic
spirits emerge belief systems of ever-increasing sophistication and complexity,
which may be revealed as religion, expressed in art, codified by science, and
practiced as magick. Playing conceptual games and tricks of fate with a flexible
quantum vision of time is yet another of my major themes, and Time itself is
barely a blink in the Eye of Eternity.
Our earliest recorded period is that of pagan polytheism (‘many gods’) as
humans moved from shamanic hunting & gathering cultures to the earliest
agricultural settlements, and the first stories we know come from these times,
which are now often popularly ascribed to the Mother Goddess. More recent
history is dominated by the city-states, conquests and rigidly defined rules and
revelations of the monotheistic (‘single god’) Father figures, whose presence has
been expressed through the Judeo-Christian-Islamic empires. These have been
designated as the Aeons of Isis and Osiris, the Goddess of Many Names and the
One True God, Mother Nature and Father Time, our mythic parents or primordial
forbearers. In reality most pagan cultures did share somehow the concept of a
transcendent High God or other universal deity who was freely expressed
through countless images both male and female (or androgynously), and who
often withdraws to the sky after completing the First Act of creation and leaves
the world in the hands of humans, spirits, and various divine avatars of more
accessible aspect. However, in the interests of social and reproductive control
the very idea of the Goddess soon began to be as severely repressed as so
many women (and indeed the vast majority of all human beings, which

35
incidentally does include men) have almost always been oppressed by their self-
appointed and anointed leaders.
Some may be surprised to find such theological aspects in my definition of
magick as a phenomena largely manifesting in a mythological or spiritual
dimension, or having connections with the very roots of the sacred; but at its core
all magick springs from a divine source, confronting the most essential questions
of human existence, and these ultimate issues raise questions that one seems
obligated to answer for oneself rather than by relying upon any imposed dogma. I
am always deeply saddened by the many recent fundamentalist attempts to
diminish the eternal and infinite presence of whatever that Divine Providence or
Ground of Being or Great Spirit or Unknown God/dess may be into a mere petty
tyrant used to reinforce the fears and hatreds of ignorant and unhappy people,
and I often hope for a more Unitarian sense of the better possibilities of all the
great religious traditions of the world.
"How wonderful! a garden in the fire.My heart transmutes itself to all forms:A
meadow for wild gazelles,a monastery for Christian monks,a temple for Pagan
idols,the Kabba for Muslim pilgrimsTablets for the Jewish Law,and pages for the
Quran.I proclaim the religion of Love,and wherever it carries me,this is my creed
and faith.” - Ibn Arabi, Sufi poet, 1165-1240

Now we stand in the dawning Age of Aquarius, the Atomic Age or Space
Age, known to many mages as the Aeon of Horus. Poised before yet another
revolutionary shift, we are finally entering the time of the Child, androgynous
(dually-sexed) and liberated from rigid roles and doctrines, free to creatively
express the individual Self as opposed to the slavery of social and political and
doctrinal oppression. It is difficult to deny that we have entered a period of radical
change, for with the astounding explosion of our global population the living are
now said to outnumber the dead. Every corner of this world is becoming linked by
trade and travel and the ceaseless barrage of the multi-media spectacle, by
technological and political and educational progress, the nascent cyber-culture of
an omnipresent Internet and the vast migrations of displaced refugees, by
epidemics, wars and catastrophes, by our shared and cherished delusions and
by hope. Out of this age of creative chaos we strive toward the possibility of a
new paradigm manifesting, a longed-for future Utopia to match the long-lost
Golden Age, yet we remain threatened by an ecological extinction resulting
largely from our own actions. Dancing at the end of history we await a future
Aeon of Truth, the even stranger time of the Aeon of Maat, and her cosmic
principle of Balance or harmonious equilibrium is yet another of the most
essential teachings of both Magick and Taoism.
These perhaps arbitrary aeons may not always match strictly historical timelines,
but they do manifest certain levels of cultural development or states of mind, and
the forms and formulas of the consciousness associated with them. As such
they are fully in accord with the criteria of magicians: if it works, if it resonates, if it
stimulates, then use it! Also, the very notion of God as a Child makes a vital and
fundamental shift in focus: Mother and Father are inevitably external figures, our
Parents or Opposites, while the Child is the Self, finding the unique realization of

36
the Spirit internally. And what part of this vast Universe cannot be identical with
the Body of God, especially any part possessed of the living consciousness that
is the Mind of God? In mythic terms, the Egyptian solar child-god Horus is the
Son and their goddess of justice Maat is the Daughter. In magical terms they are
Twins, Brother and Sister, and their double aeons form a synergy, the bright
yang-energies of Horus moving forward in time, the dark yin-energies of Maat
moving backwards, to merge in the present moment (or perhaps Michael Talbot’s
Holographic Universe). On the inner level this means that male and female can
ultimately cease to be a divided duality: the Child is an Androgyne or Gynander,
Both and Neither, the alchemical Rebis or Two-in-One. In another sense all
possible pasts and futures must always meet and unite in the timeless and
eternal instant of the Now, and in yet another these twin deities reflect the
Daytime and Nightside realms of the great Tree of Life & Death.
The lore of ancient civilizations was largely oral, based on myths of the gods and
stories of heroes. With the invention of writing magick became a literary tradition,
and books of sorcery (often called ‘grimoires’) are among the oldest surviving
texts that we have. Many such works were scribed during the formative
philosophical period of Hermeticism and Gnosticism termed Late-Pagan
Syncretism, at a time when much of the then-known world was rather brutally
unified by the Roman Empire. The Dark Ages intervened, but the neo-classical
enthusiasms of the Renaissance were also a major turning point, as ancient lore
was rediscovered and many new developments unfolded into the brilliant
scientific revolution that has created the civilization we inhabit now. The present-
day magical revival tends to draw freely upon all that has gone before: some are
drawn to particular personalities, cultural mythologies or specific teaching orders,
others progress through a whole series of historical researches and eventually
revive or create unique systems all their own. Our cutting edge is often termed
Chaos Magick, a movement sparked during recent decades in Britain which
emphasizes practical technique and creative expedience, total freedom from all
doctrines and limiting belief systems, and freely drawing upon quantum physics,
neuro-psychology and popular culture as often as rote learning from mouldy old
spell-books. As an influential yet subversive movement it seeks a scientific
magick, a magickal science.

“There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that
warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is
independent of the other or more important than the other… The truth of art
keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from
becoming ridiculous.”
- Raymond Chandler

My main thesis is that there has always been this Hidden or Secret Tradition, and
despite the claims of orthodoxy and frequent persecutions by official powers-that-
be, the absolute freedom to dream that we represent has been the vanguard of
all human progress. Without astrology, there would be no astronomy,
mathematics or psychology; without alchemy, no medicine, chemistry or physics;

37
without magick, no creativity, religion or art! The words once spoken or sung
around prehistoric hearth-fires have spawned all the fantastic literature, film or
music we gloriously indulge in today, and the great prophets who founded all our
major religions were originally sparked by visions that can only be called magical.
Without this surprising and individual connection that humans can make with the
universe, without this unique power of imagination and experimentation, we
would still dwell huddled in our dark caves eating raw meat. Magick itself is the
creative spirit and the celestial fire. The Art of Magick, like mythology and music,
inspires the genius within.
Essentially, most people pass through life in a state of habitual trance or deep
sleep, and true magick is ultimately a path that results in Waking Up. In the East,
this is sometimes called Enlightenment. Here in the West we have unfortunately
largely lost the custom of searching for visions or creating such alternative states
of consciousness, so it is left to individuals to find ways and means of
accomplishing this for themselves. The magician and the mystic have much in
common, sharing strange practices that ultimately lead to transformation and
liberation, but perhaps the mage has more fun playing along the Way. One can
never predict when ultimate awakening will occur, only create conditions that
lead to the possibility of a spark which bursts into sudden and mysterious and
beautiful flame.
As I have written this, my friends have upon occasion asked exactly what I
am trying to express with this survey of odd and often archaic psycho-spiritual
techniques, or why exactly I still consider sorcery important. For me magick must
have the widest possible parameters, for while the religious impulse decays into
mere empty dogma and the scientific hypothesis may harden into futile certainty,
magick remains free and spontaneous, alive and fluid and full of change, in touch
with wild forces and primal chaos. Perhaps the magus is more poet than prophet,
more alchemist than academic, but the innate human destiny and drive to
comprehend the constant interaction of the Universe with the Self is the same.
Magick is an Art, Witch-lore a Craft, Alchemy a Medicine, and the joy of any artist
lies in an open and creative process, in a genuine collaboration with both the
natural world and evolving human traditions. All local authorities may seek to
rigidly limit our conceptions of reality into absolutely defined terms, but our
universe is far too weird for that, and the anarchy and daring of the mage allows
a personal adventure that is never fully subjected to the opinions of others.
Magick as mode of being is both a deeply psychological process and a very
personal and radically political decision: to enter the seething, chaotic and
unformed starting point inside ourselves from which all our thoughts grow, and
whose ultimate goal is the quest for the Truth. Magick is both the sword of
judgment and the scales of the balance of Truth. Magick is the childlike sense of
Wonder and the accomplishment of the impossible. Magick, in short, can become
the Zen moment of clarity, the instant of revelation, and the awakening of the
Self; but on the way we have the great pleasure of using our will to accomplish
our desires, and with luck of also helping our communities.
So what exactly do I mean by post-modern or Future Magick?

38
 My personal vision is that what we arbitrarily call magick has always been
the ever-shifting edge or evolution of human thought, the immediate revelation,
the new thing, the advancing wheel of transformation. Because it is often very
private and unique it is also chaotic and unrestrained. Because it draws upon any
source it chooses and mutates whatever it touches, it is deeply creative. Because
it arises directly from our desires, it is very personal, devoted to survival, and so
essentially practical. It is rooted in many cultural traditions but in essence free of
dogma, and to me freedom is one of the highest human ideals. There should be
no intermediaries or self-proclaimed authorities blocking our access to the divine,
however defined. There are, however, many symbols, ideas, trends and
techniques that reappear in remarkably similar ways in various eras and very
different countries worldwide, and this seems to indicate a certain level of
archetypical cohesion in the human condition.
The last few centuries have allegedly been devoted largely to the myth of
Progress, of revolutions technological, psychological, political, scientific, cultural
and so on. We have entered the Space Age while enduring the worst wars in
history, created great wealth for many while leaving billions in appalling poverty,
made vast strides in medicine while still facing plagues both old and new. Mass
production has also enabled mass destruction, the comparative freedom of
worldwide Internet communication has also inspired explosive backlashes from
various fundamentalist religions, and the genuinely urgent ecological crisis of
overpopulation, starvation and extinction is still largely ignored. Clearly so-called
Progress may have some limits, and definitely has unforeseen side effects.
The post-modern view attempts a return to a more humanistic viewpoint,
realizing the importance of the personal and individual as more than cogs in the
crushing wheels of social forces and their idiotic feuds (capitalism versus
communism, christianity versus islamism, fascism versus freedom for humanity).
Our personal myths define us, and so should be chosen very carefully. There
have also been many movements (for peace, artistic freedom, or feminist, racial,
ethnic and sexual equality) truly devoted to Liberation, antidotes to the agendas
of control. Many of these implicitly contain a spiritual dimension.
What does any of this have to do with the so-called supernatural? Magick
has almost always been seen as suspect and subversive, heretical and radical,
and so potentially revolutionary. It creeps people out. The authorities disparage
and ban it. It is out of control, full of wild women and crazy men. It has almost
never been officially authorized. It inevitably spooks the neighbors with strange
glowing lights in the wee small hours. Yet it has an enormously long underground
history, a vast body of methods and traditions, countless transitory codifications
passed from hand to hand. It is an Art as well as a Science, and has been at the
root of most of the experimentation that has, in fact, created human progress. It
remains essentially individual, whether taught by books or teachers, and is
continually modified. For each practitioner it is a chaotic hodge-podge of hidden
history that somehow becomes a world-view that works effectively to explain their
unique experiences. “Rules? In a knife fight? NO RULES!” And yet, I am trying to
explain this vast subject, or at least my somewhat insane version of it… which
often resembles large parts of the current collective consensus.

39
It may even seem that in some ways I am a traditionalist, drawing upon many
concepts from centuries past, or what is sometimes termed the Perennial
Philosophy. If this is so, what distinguishes my vision of Future Magick from the
various historical versions I am about to survey? It is multicultural, drawing freely
upon all world traditions, teachings, paradigms and popular culture (there is a lot
of magick in rock & roll!). It is trans-temporal, merging our ancient and modern
knowledge with many mythological dreamtimes and multiple potential futures, our
shamanic and alchemical visions with the surrealism of contemporary artistic
forms. It is based on the recent advances in quantum physics and chaos theory,
in yoga and psychology and anthropology, informed by the scientific method and
utilizing the tools of technology. It relies not merely upon hypothetical external
deities and spiritual forces or upon official prophets and gurus, but upon the
unique abilities and internal resources of the Self, which is a synthesis of body,
mind and spirit. It questions the destiny of cultural heritage and superficial
genetics, while exalting the complete freedom of the individual to choose
whatever tradition or teacher that appeals to their instinct for truth, and to accept
or reject any such teaching in whole or in part. And ultimately it is completely
personal, calling upon everyone to explore their own psyches, affinities and
talents, to form their own unique system, drawn from the natural and archetypical
influences that resonate for them, the synchronistic events that shape them, and
the visions that come with their own strange transformations and quests for
perfection.

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average
star. But we can understand the universe.”
- Stephen Hawking

To put this strange and almost forgotten world in context, and to open up
new gateways of exploration, I will now proceed to a brief magical mystery tour
through the rich traditions and odd personalities that flow into this remarkable
and multicolored stream of thought. Our most ancient ways worked largely by
personifying and calling upon external gods and spirits, while present-day magi
often display a more psychological tendency to consider these forces as useful
internal archetypes, and to impose their Will upon the world by such simple and
direct methods as highly charged personal sigils, exotic sexual sorcery, tantric
meditation or dream control. Now all these possibilities may be freely
experienced in ‘the best of all possible worlds’. Among many other aspects I will
attempt to confront the vexed issue of that Infamous Evil Awful Person, the
Wickedest Man in the World, the Great Wild Beast Aleister Crowley: who he was,
what he spawned, and why he and his heirs are still so important to
contemporary occultism.
The much larger portion of this volume will outline the rather streamlined and
individualistic postmodern version of the magical cosmos as I enjoy it, attempt to
explain the concepts, tools and arcane practices as I understand them, and then
guide you on to further resources. I will do my best to pass on what I as an
eclectic, electric, open-minded and quite possibly insane researcher have found

40
useful and inspirational in this Otherworld, although perhaps the very concept of
revealing a Mystery will always be a challenge. How does one unscrew the
inscrutable? Most books on this subject tenderly or excessively embrace one
particular cult or system, while I have seen many occultists drinking freely from
very diverse streams. All such sources may be useful, but your insights, omens,
coincidences, brilliant ideas and random experiences create a unique
understanding far more real. Magick may work through an infinite web of
symbolic systems and secret signs, but only you can bring them to life.
Everything you experience in the world is a piece of an infinite puzzle, and you
may have only this fragile lifetime to play the great and golden game as a journey
to the heart of the labyrinth, so you may as well have fun!
Perhaps the most central working of initiation into this High Art is now commonly
known as the Attainment of the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian
Angel, a romantic and archaic terminology veiling what Jung called the Process
of Individuation. Crowley termed it the finding of the True Will, the unique unity of
Identity and Intent, the personal Genius. This is the conscious operation of
discovering or creating the True Self, of birthing the Soul, of deliberately
reformulating both the flesh and the personality as perfected vehicles of Spirit. It
is a matter of freely communicating with whatever you may choose to call the
Great Mystery or Divine Power, both internally through study, dreams and
meditation and externally through creativity, ritual, and constant interaction with
the symbolic synchronicities of our surroundings in what pioneering alchemists
regarded as turning the pages of the Book of Nature, or anthropologists might
term the Participation Mystique. Many mystics have a pronounced tendency to
withdraw from interaction with society, while most magicians still remain deeply
engaged in everyday life. This complete transformation of our modes of being
involves the determined focus of willpower, emotion, insight, understanding,
effort, attention, desire, and considerable compassion, courage and energy. It is
Magick as an Adventure, as a Way of Life. This is our greatest secret and most
forbidden art:

“…to keep the miracle alive, to live always in the miracle, to make the miracle
more and more miraculous, to swear allegiance to nothing, but live only
miraculously, think only miraculously.”
- Henry Miller

At the core of this manuscript lives an evolving system known as the

Double Current, expressed through the ancient Egyptian deities Horus and Maat,
the son and daughter of the High God Amon-Ra. Their totemic forms are the
high-soaring Hawk for Horus and the darker Vulture for Maat, which mirror the
light and dark sides of experience. The primary texts revealing this newborn
tradition are Liber AL vel Legis: The Book of the Law and Liber Pennae
Praenumbra: The Book of the Preshadowing of the Feather, and the related
writings of Frater Perdurabo (Crowley) and Soror Nema. Like the recent
movement of Chaos Magick, my idea of a truly Thelemic methodology draws
freely upon all that has gone before while always emphasizing the primacy of

41
individual creativity. Much of my inner growth has occurred through exploring
these visions, and this book might be considered a user’s manual for those who
can find meaning therein. This New Aeon of Horus is a time of Revolution, and
the interwoven future Aeon of Maat is a dream of Truth. Both revelations are
happening NOW! And while wizardry has so often been focused upon the
legendary adepts of past ages, our eyes are now firmly set upon the incredible
possibilities of each newly opening manifestation. It may seem strange to say this
about a book apparently devoted to making clear what has gone before, but my
true goal will always be creating the Future of Magick. We now have access to
an incredible amount of information, and unlimited potential to explore a new
freestyle form of sorcery. Religion gazes back at a mythic past, Science is
focused on here and now, while our polymorphic and multicultural and
increasingly technological Magick turns toward a future of limitless wonders.
Much of the arcane symbolism I will refer to may seem romantic or
archaic, but there are reasons that these archetypes recur in every human
culture: they are rooted in the nature of the world we exist in. Living trees and
flowers, mountains and caves, rainstorms and rivers, the breath of the wind: no
matter how urbanized and cosmopolitan we may appear to be, these are primal
things that always have meaning for us. Fire, earth, water and air are at once the
essential forms of matter and the fourfold structure of our minds and senses.
Astronomical phenomena like the sun, moon, planets and stars are windows into
the numinous origins of the universe, and when we gaze upon distant spiral
galaxies we are looking back to the dawn of time. Animals, insects, birds and fish
are both our ancestors and oldest companions, and we are all woven from
strands of the same DNA. Letters, numbers, and geometric forms are the
building blocks of all our recorded wisdom and means of communication, and
what make us uniquely human. All these things both known or inconceivable may
be seen as spirits, and all ultimately merge into One Great Spirit. We have
become the nervous system of our living planet, and that the Universe has
evolved life and consciousness is nothing short of astoundingly miraculous… and
essentially magical.

“In me thou mayst see the Phoenix in the burning flame,

For, reviving, I am renewed,
And the virility of the fire I prove –
The bird that’s father and offspring the same.”
- from Paradiso espanol book 4, by Quevedo

The fabled Bennu or Bird of Fire called the Phoenix was an ancient symbol of the
aeonic cycles of time, and she would periodically build a funeral pyre that was
also a nest. Dissolved in flame she would return into her golden egg, and then
emerge reborn, brightly shining and renewed. This immortal Phoenix Fire is also
the Great Magical Power called Change, the Invisible Fire that works in secret.
The two mutations that have most defined humanity are the evolution of
language and the mastery of fire. The constant renewal and rebirth of the
individual and universal Self is the ultimate goal of the alchemical Great Work

42
symbolized by the transmutation of the Philosopher’s Stone, turning lead into
gold, black coal into translucent diamond, mundane oblivion into cosmic
consciousness. The process of becoming a sorcerous entity is usually called
Initiation, and the word ‘initiate’ simply means ‘to begin’. Magick is the Art of
Becoming a Magician. WAKE UP! Transform! Open the Gates!

"What stops a man who can laugh from speaking the truth?"
- Horace

(For those not familiar with Latin the terms Frater and Soror used above mean
Brother and Sister and are commonly employed as titles in esoteric orders, while
Liber simply means Book (but is also the name of a phallic Roman deity related
to goat-horned Pan!). Please also see Bibliography A. The Suggested
Essentials.)

In The Beginning Were The Loaded Questions

“MAGIC is the Highest, most Absolute, and most Divine Knowledge of Natural
Philosophy, advanced in its works and wonderful operations by a right
understanding of the inward and occult virtue of things; so that true Agents being
applied to proper Patients, strange and admirable effects will thereby be
produced. Whence magicians are profound and diligent searchers into Nature;
they, because of their skill, know how to anticipate an effort, the which to the
vulgar shall seem to be a miracle.” - The Goetia

The true origin of humanity, the hypothetical point where the ape became
the human, is also the moment when the world gave birth to a new form of
magick. Through all the ages of slow evolution, the atavistic cellular dance from
protoplasmic chaos to plant life and sea creature, to insect and reptile, bird and
beast, there has always been some new thing. Now, this rather talkative ape
speaks, creates art, sees gods and spirits: "Lo! I alone am the crown of creation!"
he declares. For the moment, perhaps, in this rather small corner of the galaxy,
but what exactly is supposed to come after us? Aliens from inner space? Homo
Veritas? The New World Order? Post-nuclear mutants grooving in the radioactive
rubble of our destroyed civilization? Cybernetic Rosicrucians? Something slimy,
tentacled and hideous out of Lovecraft? Nirvana or Nothingness? A newly
perfected humanity expanding across the universe in gleaming starships?
For now, however, the subject remains magick, a highly loaded term
indeed. Some like to think that it has been superseded by religion and science,
while I choose to believe that these are merely partial disguises. Magick is that
power and wisdom and ecstasy which transforms the individual, the world, and
itself. This is the best game in town; what art should every human being cultivate
if not that of evolution, creativity, change? What else are we here for, merely
endless empty consumption and rabid reproduction? This sacred science of the

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sages is the shadowed history of the march of all our human cultures, a living
body of mystical techniques evolving from the most primal shamanism howling
down the moon on up to quantum theory and neuro-linguistic programming.
Somewhere along the way we strive to become our true selves as best as we
possibly can. Is this humanity’s great destiny or most pathological delusion?
"Follow your bliss," said Joseph Campbell. "Be the pig that you are," said Andrew
Dice Clay. "Nothing is true, all is permitted!" said Hassan I Sabbah. "Grace under
pressure," said Miss Manners. “Avoid error!” said the Buddha.
The question of what magick is may be simple: it is whatever anyone has
willed it to be, throughout all history. The question of how or why magick works
may be complicated, but some recent scientific advances are suggestive.
Parapsychology proposes the existence of certain ubiquitous unusual talents
such as telepathy, psychokinesis and precognition without being entirely clear on
how they function; quantum physics may imply that each observer's constant
interactions with the universe have far more to do with creating it than we realize;
the notion of multiple parallel worlds suggests that we may be able to choose
which time-line we exist in on an ongoing basis; and mere philosophy must often
throw up its hands at the question of the ultimate nature of so-called reality. As
Lao-Tsu said, "The way that can be told is not the constant way, the name that
can be named is not the constant name." As Lily Tomlin said, "Reality is just a
collective hunch."

"In the last analysis magic, religion and science are nothing but theories of
thought; and as science has supplanted its predecessors, so it may hereafter be
itself superseded by some more perfect hypothesis, perhaps by some totally
different way of looking at the phenomena - of registering the shadows on the
screen - of which we in this generation can form no idea." - Sir James Frazer,
The Golden Bough

Frazer's evolutionary progression of magic into religion into science is

widely used by Eurocentric scholars, yet may not really apply to other world
cultures where life is better integrated. It has also been noted that magick is
closer to science than to religion, in that both are attempts to rationally explain
and control the events which popular religions largely accept with blind faith in
confused and archaic doctrines. Another academic distinction suggests that
magick is more often individualistic and private, while religion is collective and
public. Magick at its best tends to be eclectic and creative, while religion is
conservative and bound by tradition. Science, on the other hand, is mistakenly
regarded today as dealing exclusively with cold hard proven facts; while in truth
science is also, or should be, a truly unending, tentative, and open-minded
process of theory and hypothesis, at all times conditional and subject to new
information. Unfortunately, in becoming itself a belief system, scientism has
hardened into doctrine for many, and the resistance of orthodoxy to any new
concepts is hardly uncommon. The early medical profession heatedly denied
Harvey's discovery of the circulation of blood, the mere possibility of rocks falling
from the sky was rejected until such time as meteors became impossible to

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ignore, Einstein was once widely derided as insane (notably by the Nazis, who
despised “Jewish Physics”) and today the military-industrial-academic complex
continues to frantically deny the existence of UFOs in the face of countless
sightings reported and often filmed by apparently rational witnesses. As
Paracelsus remarked, "Magic has power to experience and fathom things which
are inaccessible to human reason. For magic is a great secret wisdom, just as
reason is a great public folly." And as Mark Twain said, “But don’t sacred cows
make the best hamburgers?” So it goes…
Just for the record, the reason that I believe pure magick actually works
(aside from solid results from sigils, occasional astounding revelations,
sensations of weird forces at work, ecstatic personal visions, and far too many
incidents of those endlessly weird and illuminoid peculiar events termed
‘synchronicity’ by Jung) is simply because in my own experience NATURE
IMITATES ART, so perhaps we may also say that METAPHYSICS
INFLUENCES PHYSICS. Matter is nothing but condensed energy, and sorcery is
the art of applied coincidence. Yet another motive for my happy devotion to such
oddities of daily life is purely aesthetic: for me, this Invisible Circus is more sheer
fun than anything else except perhaps sex, drugs, and rock & roll, which are
certainly alternate power-sources and art-forms of the arcane world as well. I
have been driven to write this admittedly bizarre series of essays because my
unusual life experience has made me something of an authority in a subject most
people never even consider, I think that it is nice to share with my potential
playmates and fellow primates, and I have currently seized the urge to get my
thoughts better organized. "Science is magic explained," according to Alan
Grant. The bottom line: Magick is the best game in town! Soror Nema has this to
say of the underlying long-term aims of magick:

"First is the transformation of the Magickian into the realized Self; second is the
transformation of the human race into its next evolutionary stage; third is the
preparation of our species to meet and understand nonhuman intelligence and
events beyond our present accumulated experience." - Nema, Maat
Magick

Perhaps these are fairly worthy goals? At any rate, this is a purely tentative
summary of my personal understanding of the occult or hidden tradition as it now
stands, or as I stand delicately balanced on one foot upon it. Perhaps this
frequently stream-of-consciousness discourse may disillusion anyone who is
naive enough to think of magick as a way to avoid work, and encourage those
who consider it the self-creation of a lifetime. Since each such sadly finite lifetime
is the only reality we can be relatively sure exists, we might as well strive to make
it as deeply amusing and profoundly fulfilling a process as possible. I consider
magick to be much more than a rather arbitrary system of guerrilla
psychotherapy, for the climbing of this strange ethereal qabalistic Ladder of
Lights serves as a series of stepping-stones to the diamond brilliance of ultimate
void, the vast wellspring of the eternal Tao. Waking up is hard to do, but can be
infinitely rewarding.

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 So, is all of the weirdness in history a mere pandemonium of gibberish
and primitive thinking when seen from the superior perspective of modern
rationalism, or is there still some truth herein concealed which mere science has
not yet divined? Must we apologize for daring to even consider magick relevant
today? Is the toll taken by primitive superstition even remotely comparable to the
hideous history of tyranny by religious orthodoxy, and the wide-scale genocide
practiced by the many current governments that have now largely taken the
place of religion? The 21st century of the Christian calendar is off to a very rocky
start, and profit-driven corporate science as it is commonly practiced has upon
occasion shown a distressing tendency to screen out disconcerting data while
pandering to political hacks, or even faking results to suck up for tenure or a
financial grant. Certainly if a vote were to be taken, the majority of humanity
throughout its existence would turn out for a “supernatural” belief in magick or
religion as a vital component of life, but ultimate reality may not be a democracy.
Is not magick a rather romantic yet still convenient term for our unceasing quest
for meaning in life, a search which each unique individual must undertake for
themselves without ever coming to a final conclusion other than by entering the
mystery of death and what may or may not lie beyond? Are there not elements of
our existence that still remain unexplained and even unexplored? And upon rare
occasions does not extremely unusual and otherwise inexplicable stuff actually
happen?
Yes it does! Some but not all crop circles, inexplicable prehistoric
technological artifacts, poltergeist phenomena, odd Fortean rains of frogs and
fish, undeniably accurate prophecies, miraculous healings and effective curses,
spontaneous human combustion, angelic revelations of bold new religions, sigils
that spawn results, and much high weirdness way beyond mere coincidence.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your
psychology, up to and including those damnable UFOs. Hey, I'm not Mr. Science
here; I was an anthropology major with a deep and lively appreciation of various
forms of myth and the anomalies of history, and when it comes to quantum
physics I'm pretty much winging it. However, even our omnipresent television
sets now appear to assure us that:
"THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.
GOVERNMENT DENIES KNOWLEDGE.
TRUST NO ONE."
I will therefore close this derailed train of thought in defense of magick with a
rather cogent remark on the continuing validity of ancient techniques from one
who defines a path I can appreciate:

"...a neo-shamanic way of life based on the beliefs and practices of ancient
shamanism and Goddess worship. All the spiritual practices used meet two
criteria. First, they exist in every shamanic culture worldwide, and second, they
have been used on our planet for 35,000 to 40,000 years. This means they are
so powerful they have transcended nationality and culture and have undergone
thousands of years of trial, error and correction and are therefore more scientific
than any existing science." - Frank Natale, Trance Dance

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 I think this makes a rather important point: humans have been interacting
with their environment for a very long time, and do have some sense of what
works. Trial and error is very old indeed. The tendency we have inherited to look
upon ancient peoples as somehow less cogent than ourselves, to confuse the
primitive with ignorance, is sadly not an uncommon form of chauvinism: consider
the attitude of recent western medicine towards ancient eastern medicine. There
are many similar techniques worldwide that clearly reflect very deep things about
the ways in which the human mind activates its varied talents, and if we make no
use of them we may be limiting our options unnecessarily. Why would we want to
do that?
Furthermore, there have always been an incredible number of accounts of
so-called ‘supernatural’ events from all over the world and throughout all of
history. Logically many may be false, delusory, or have some "rational
explanation”, but it is also very unlikely that all of them are that simple to dismiss;
and viewed statistically or in terms of science, even a mere handful of such
occurrences completely transforms our universe into a whole new ballgame. As
Carl Sagan once said, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

“No President, Academy, Court of Law, Congress, or Senate on this earth has
the knowledge or power to decide what will be the knowledge of tomorrow.”
- Wilhelm Reich, Contact with Space

Lurking in the Shadows of History

"If you want to find something weird, you've got to go downtown."

- from the film Gremlins 2

"Two or three years ago, they were just another serpent cult... now, they're
everywhere!" - from the film Conan the Barbarian

The saga of humanity is written by the victors, and thus tends to leave a
great deal unsaid. Under the surface and between the lines, there is another
world from the one we learn about in school, a less respectable realm where
much of human progress actually takes place. Ancient ideas may tend to be
more fundamental to the way the mind works than more recent fads, and the
primordial esoteric tradition constantly resurfaces and reformulates itself. The
ways in which we interact with the universe are thousands of years old, and a
century or three of industrial revolution, a decade or three of approaching virtual
reality, remain entirely experimental. The average citizen may own a toaster, but
its inner workings might as well be thaumaturgy as far as most are concerned. I
therefore propose to begin with a brief summary of some of the various streams
of thought that run into this complex magickal synthesis.

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 When we first became conscious of ourselves, we began to attempt to
understand the world around us and to establish our place within it, to guarantee
our survival and reproduction, to increase our possibilities for change. Early
humans, as far as we can tell, perceived surroundings where everything was
alive, from plants and animals, birds and fish to stone and flame, wind and sea: a
state of mind called Animism, where all things have their own spirit and all are
thus worthy of respect. The invisible world permeates the realm of appearances,
and if we are alive, why not the universe? If we are indeed conscious, then why
are not other forms of life as well? What truly separates the experiential realms of
waking and dream, or those of life and of death? Is not everything connected?

"In the beginning of all things, wisdom and knowledge were with the animal. For
Tirawa, the One Above, did not speak directly to man. He sent certain animals to
tell mankind that he showed himself through the beast. And that from them, and
from the stars and from the sun and the moon, man should learn."
- quoted in The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell & Bill Moyers

As these forces are personified we begin to have spirits and eventually

gods; mythology then serves to explain the world, and so ritual becomes a
strategy for coping with and influencing it. Our earliest religio-magickal practices
have been generally termed Shamanism, although properly speaking that term
might only apply to certain Siberian tribes and just a few other remaining hunting
& gathering societies. Its practitioners are the chosen intermediaries between the
known and the unknown, the first priests and healers. Their ritual techniques are
still in use because they are still valid to us: mask-dancing around the fire,
chanting personal songs of power, entering the spirit-world in trance and
acquiring allies and secrets there, climbing the world-tree, communing with
animal totems, vision-quests to recover the soul, use of teaching-plants and
power-objects, planting and hunting and healing magick, all to the primordial
rhythmic heart-beat of the sacred drum. As best as we can tell, this is the original
and still-surviving common tradition of the very earliest human societies. It is
believed to have spread across the Old World of the Euro-Asian continent and
then over to the New World of the Americas via the postulated Bering Straights
land bridge. Animism and Shamanism are the deepest roots of all experiences
called magical, and many if not most of later occult teachings throughout time are
merely disguised with whatever is the currently trendy jargon.
Beyond the vivid paintings upon the walls of deep caverns and the fragments of
the archeological record, we may know little about paleolithic religions outside of
parallels in surviving tribal cultures, but we do know that there was magick there.
We know that bears and stags and other animals were powerful totems and
guides; that the dead might be buried curled up as if in the womb, facing the east
as if expecting rebirth, with seeds and food and flowers to accompany them into
an afterlife. We know that quartz crystals, herbs and red ochre were used from
the earliest times, that songs and weapons and vessels held power. We know
that those who were able to survive gained wisdom and passed it along, and
learned to mark the passing of time and season by the movements of the

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celestial bodies, the Moon and Sun and Stars and the cycles of the wandering
Planets. We know that the fertility of plants, animals and people was a constant
concern. We know that this is where music and dance and language and art
were born. Perhaps the oldest known depiction of the Magician is the half-human
half-animal antlered and phallic masked dancer found upon the Trois Freres cave
wall in France. This prehistoric figure may have evolved into such later images as
the horned proto-Shiva of the ancient Dravidian culture in India, the greek goat-
god Pan, the Celtic Cernunnos, the medieval horned god of the witches in
Europe, or even the mysterious Baphomet who casts a twisting shadow
throughout the later secret tradition.
Hunting was always a magical activity, a dangerous quest hedged about
with taboos and rules, subject to luck and the whim or good will of the spirits.
Hunters might fast and avoid sexual activity, carry power objects, perform
preliminary and postprandial rites, and often after the feast would reassemble the
bones and even the skin of the animal so it could be reborn. Shamanic trances
and alchemical tales often feature the dismemberment, transformation and
rebirth of the initiate, reflected in the central myths of Osiris (the grain-god slain
and risen in Egypt, from whom a great deal of Christian symbolism was later
appropriated) and of the Hindu goddess Kali. Psychologically speaking these
events occur as states of crisis and disassociation in the healing process and
similar imagery is often reported in dreams. Much of shamanism involves the
traditional practices of physical and spiritual medicine, the use of herbs and
psychedelics, and the defeat of diseases in the form of demons. An important
element is the concept of the shaman as the wounded healer, that one who has
suffered trials has gained power from them; many shamans began their careers
with a major illness or spiritual crisis, while others were hereditary or embarked
on a vision quest.
It also occurs to me that there is a very long span of human (and other?)
evolution unaccounted for prior to the first well-documented kingdoms of
Mesopotamia and Egypt, and thus plenty of time for many strange things to have
occurred. The great pyramid cultures of the Middle East and South America, with
their remarkably accurate astronomical knowledge, may indeed have shared
some common origins; and both have claimed inspiration from a highly advanced
earlier civilization generally called Atlantis, quite frankly a subject that I have
always regarded with considerable skepticism. Yet historians seem to rely upon
much of the information recorded by Plato, except for his account of Atlantis.
Occult thought constantly returns to this ancient foundation myth of the lost or
flooded kingdom, and also to the notion that gods have sometimes interbred with
humans, as in the biblical tale of the Fallen Angels or Sons of God (also called
the Nephilim) and their unholy marriages with the daughters of men, or to the
very similar lusts of the Olympian gods and satyrs of Greece for dryads of the
trees and river nymphs, fair maidens and beautiful boys. In more recent times it
has become increasingly fashionable to define these intrusive events in terms of
UFO contacts and extraterrestrial breeding experiments, and there are many
similarities between accounts of elves, dwarves and fairies and descriptions of
the denizens of UFOs. There is also no denying the very long record of strange

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lights in the sky and their links to significant events. Perhaps now we merely
perceive the aerial phenomena once understood as spirits in terms of
contemporary science fiction, but the endless odd synchronous connections
between secret societies, strange omens, and pivotal events in history continue
to mystify. Atlantis may never be what we think it was, yet still be important. In
the East there are many similar tales of fabulous Himalayan kingdoms such as
Shambhala or Aghora, and therein dwell the Secret Chiefs or Hidden Masters of
tantric mystery.
Known civilizations then commence their rise and fall, and with each new
layer of culture the systems of belief and practice evolve, our ideas and concepts
spread, and we acquire new ways of understanding. Today we have free access
to a huge body of information, and with the very long overdue collapse of
organized religions which served primarily as tools for social control each
individual has the option of developing their own methods for understanding
reality and interacting with it. Many fine books have been written on these
subjects, and in this blithe journey through recorded time I will continue to
strongly recommend a number of them, because human beings tend to operate
through symbolic systems, and many of those systems overlap one another.
Magick as I currently define it frequently consists of the use of such symbolic
maps and tools to inspire, focus, channel and conditionally define our direct
experiences of life and thus ultimately of death. Magick is an ocean into which
run many rivers, and magicians have always tended to be selective and eclectic
in the extreme. These fragments of the past are thus an extremely condensed
capsule history of what could easily be several lifetimes of study, an option that
the joys of continual reincarnation may well permit.

"Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible."

- Thich Nhat Hanh

Ancient Light In The East, or the Secret Science of the Sages

“Also I prayed unto the Elephant God, the Lord of Beginnings, who breaketh
down obstruction.” - Liber LXV, Aleister Crowley

“Vakratunda Mahakaaya Surya kotee Sama Prabha Nirvighnam Kuru mey Deva
Sarva Kaaryeshu Sarvada!”
(O Lord Ganesha of Large body, curved trunk, with the brilliance of a million
suns, please make all my work free of obstacles, always.}
- A mantra of the elephant-headed god Ganesha

I am assuming that I address a largely western audience who are perhaps

less familiar with the eastern range of doctrines, so it may be best to first discuss
some of the strands that weave through Asia. These spiritual traditions have a
much longer history than those of the west, and often considerably more
sophistication. They have influenced both ancient Greek philosophy and modern

50
seekers alike. The average American, I imagine, may even be unaware that the
Buddha came from India and was originally seeking to transform Hinduism in
much the same way that Jesus sought to reform Judaism, or that Mohammed
was inspired by the archangel Gabriel to become the final Prophet in the chain of
the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. Incidentally, the Virgin Mary is the only
female figure to have her own chapter in the Koran, which also retells many
incidents from the Bible and the life of Jesus. In religion, such rare thinkers and
reformers are about the only way progress occurs.
I might begin with China, perhaps the oldest continuous civilization on earth.
Among the wisest understandings of this world is Taoism, a teaching of natural
philosophy which sees the cosmos as formed by the constant motion and
ceaseless interplay of dual forces of change: yang and yin, light and dark, male
and female, positive and negative, comedy and tragedy, ebbing and flowing and
rising and falling in eternal cycles. When we attune to these tides we are more in
harmony with the universe. The earliest and most essential classical writings of
Taoism are the Tao Te Ching codified by the Chinese sage Lao-Tsu and the
Inner Chapters of his disciple Chuang-Tsu, which still remain among humanity's
most clearly profound works. Taoism also provides the conceptual context for the
often-consulted and multi-dimensional I Ching, a fascinating and effective
divination system of great depth and subtlety that also extends into a sacred
calendar and many other areas of life. Popular Taoism overlaps with folk magick
and various spiritual, alchemical, and yogic systems and underlies much or all of
far eastern culture. Yet in general Chinese society has not always particularly
emphasized religious thought, for while it has a fair share of gods and demons
there is also much practical concern for living in this world, as expressed in the
more mundane traditions of Confucianism.
In India we find the endless complexities of Hinduism, perhaps the world’s
most dazzling array of philosophical teachings, arising from a wide assortment of
both native and invading peoples and a tradition which both reveres the past and
yet still constantly debates and redefines such issues as the nature of God and of
the human soul. In absolute terms the divine presence is frequently termed
Brahman or Atman, a transcendent and impersonal consciousness that both
creates and is synonymous with the universe itself. Since such an infinite
concept is difficult for mere human minds to grasp, it may be visualized or
mediated by the countless exotic deities of Hindu culture. The soul is usually
termed the atman or Self, a spark of consciousness that passes through endless
forms as it evolves towards an eventual reunion with its primordial source: the
word Yoga means ‘union’. The method of this journey is said to be Karma, which
is the total sum of thoughts and actions accumulated through countless
reincarnations. There is much debate about the proper way of life, and every
possible practice from the strictly ascetic to the throbbingly erotic, from emotional
devotion to scientific rationalism, has appeared as a school of thought in India’s
long history of exotic sects, teachers or Gurus, and their students or Chelas.
Perhaps the most important aspect from the magical point of view is that the
human soul or atman is identical with God as the universal Atman, that each
single spark of consciousness contains the entire universe within it, awaiting

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awakening. In western terms this is the realization of the unity of the Microcosm
and the Macrocosm.

“As a wave,Seething and foaming,Is only water.So all creation,Streaming out of

the Self,Is only the Self.Consider a piece of cloth.It is only threads!So all creation,
When you look closely,Is only the Self.”
- Ashtayakra Gita 2:4-5, Thomas Byrom translation

Perhaps the best-known development to emerge from Hinduism is

Buddhism, first taught by the Indian prince Siddhartha, who had a great vision of
the essentially sorrowful nature of this transitory world of inevitable pain, decay
and death. After prolonged study of all the traditional ways of attainment he
achieved enlightenment by what was virtually a complete and radical rejection of
‘normal’ human existence itself, as expressed in the Four Noble Truths:
Existence is Suffering. (Life Sucks! or Entropy Happens?)
The Cause of Suffering is Desire.
The End of Suffering is the End of Desire.
The Way to accomplish this is the Noble Eightfold Path, the proper way of living.
The material world is often considered essentially impermanent and hence
illusory by nature, defined as Samsara or the Wheel of ceaseless Change, while
liberation is Nirvana, which originally meant only ending or cessation. Buddhism
taught Anatman, that the immortal soul does not truly exist, being only an
arbitrary cluster of tendencies held together by the habit of thinking of itself as
real. Pure Buddhism has very little interest in the Hindu speculations about God
or the ultimate nature of reality, it is merely a logical and practical method of
philosophical and psychological analysis for ending the human misery and
despair caused by entrapment in the endless cycles of death and rebirth. Indeed,
it may be better and clearer to replace the word ‘Suffering’ with the word ‘Illusion’.
Life is but a dream…
Originally this was a very simple and straightforward doctrine, practiced mostly
by monks who, while still at times supported by laypeople, largely abandoned
human society to become solitary forest-dwellers or hermits, retreating to
mountains and caves, and eventually forming great monasteries. An important
later development, however, was the concept of the Bodhisattva, a fully
enlightened teacher who took a vow to continually reincarnate until every last
speck of dust in the universe had attained Liberation. Perhaps the best-known
examples of this are Tibetan representatives like the Dalai Lama, who are
ceaselessly reborn in order to accomplish that great goal. This is considered
Mahayana or the Greater Vehicle in Buddhism, while the earlier and simpler
tradition is termed Hinayana or the Lesser Vehicle. An extremely important
aspect of Mahayana is the emphasis upon Compassion for all living beings, and
such teachings prevailed in Tibet and much of Southeast Asia. In India, however,
Buddhism was almost obliterated, in part by the Islamic invasion whose effects
are still being felt in the ongoing conflicts between Muslims and Hindus today. A
similar disaster took place in China, where nearly all of the traditional religious
institutions were brutally suppressed by the Communist (a more recent religion)

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Revolution whose forces continue to commit genocide in Tibet, where Buddhism
had coexisted and even partially merged with a very shamanic survival called
Bon-Po.
As an influence on magick I must also note the later Buddhist form of
meditation called Zen in Japan, Dzogchen in Tibet, and Ch'an in China, which
emphasizes awakening to direct experience of enlightenment in the here and
now. Spontaneous and deeply personal, this is certainly one of the most vital
methods currently practiced. The mythic origin tale of this school recounts what is
historically a rather unlikely meeting between the Buddha and Lao-Tsu, the
founder of Taoism. Japan is also notable for the survival of Shinto, an ancient yet
still evolving animistic pattern of belief that often interacts quite strangely with the
contemporary world.
Also found in Asia are the roots of esoteric Tantra, an enormous body of
teachings and techniques for liberation most often based upon the dualistic love-
play of Shiva and Shakti, who are among the world's oldest deities. They are
living forms of the primordial Lord of Beasts and the Mountain Mother, whose
worship rises out of paleolithic shamanism into the mysteries of many ages and
perhaps resurges in the Greek Mysteries of Dionysos and the medieval and
modern witch-cults of the West as well. Tantric traditions run through both
Hinduism and later many forms of Buddhism, especially that of the Vajrayana or
Diamond Thunderbolt Path in Tibet, which has become more widely known in
recent years. This is largely due to the ongoing diaspora caused by the tyranny
of the Chinese government, which poses an interesting example of the law of
unintended consequences: in attempting to brutally annihilate Tibetan culture,
they have succeeded only in spreading it all around the globe. To be honest, if
people still insist upon having any kind of organized religion, they could probably
do much worse than Buddhism morally and philosophically speaking. Personally,
however… if I am going to form a relationship with the universe based on
arbitrary distinctions, I prefer to regard its foundation as Joy rather than Sorrow,
and to maintain an attitude of participation instead of withdrawal. I will return to
the subject of Tantra later, as there are many deep influences upon and
similarities to current occult traditions. I should also mention that the various
related practices of Yoga, with its breathing techniques and mental disciplines,
complex symbolic systems and physical exercises, which run through the diverse
Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, and Jain traditions. In fact, I would like to quote a very
concise suggested listing of the sources that evolved into Tantra, as they are
strongly suggestive of the parallel development of what is in the west called
Magick:

Table 1: from The Great Book of Tantra by Indra Sinha

“1. Paleolithic worship of fertility deities

2. Bronze age mystery cults
3. The culture of the Indus valley
4. The Vedas, the Soma sacrifice
5. Atharva Veda, Vamadeva, magical traditions

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6. The India of the 'Mahabharata'
7. Mystery cults of the classical period
8. Indigenous tribal cults of India: Kalika, Yellama
9. Sacred prostitution
10. The Upanishads
11. Early Buddhism
12. Tibetan shamanism and Bon beliefs
13. Yoga sutras
14. Mystery cults of the Roman empire
15. The secular tradition of the Kama-shastras
16. Gnosticism in Egypt, Rome and Asia Minor
17. Tibetan and Mahayana Buddhism
18. Kashmir Saivism
19. Tantra texts in Bengal and Orissa”

This brief stolen summary may suggest that covering Tantra in depth here
would require another entire book. The history of Magick is easily as complex,
but I strongly recommend the study of both Taoist wisdom and the Tantric
traditions as being among the most useful and highly developed bodies of
spiritual practice in existence, and a surprising number of occidental if not
accidental mages are drawn into some aspect thereof. As with all magick
worldwide there are many similarities between eastern and western sorcery: the
talismans and magical circles of medieval European goetia, and also the gris-gris
and ve-ves of Haitian Vodou, are not unlike the charms and mandalas of the
east. The conceptions of the elements, the varieties of gods, demons and spirits,
the secretive gatherings in midnight locations, the usage and purposes of spells
or mantras, of sacrifices and herbal substances, the traditions of astrological
observation and alchemical medicine, all show truly remarkable parallels.

    “One who meditates upon and realizes the self discovers that everything in the
cosmos - energy and space, fire and water, name and form, birth and death,
mind and will, word and deed, mantram and meditation – all come from the Self.”
- Chandogya Upanishad, translated by Eknath Easwaran
At the same time I must question how deeply any westerners can immerse
themselves into a truly eastern worldview, for the experience of someone raised
in a Christian country will never be the same as a Hindu's perception of Shiva. All
too often, the Asian mind understands a harmonious polarity and even pure
emptiness filled with transient impressions, while that of the European remains
locked in a violent duality of good versus evil and compulsively insists upon the
presence of something at least vaguely semi-material at all times, usually
envisioned as an angry old guy with a beard, an attitude, and an unfortunate
tendency to fling bolts of lightning about (truly a rare treat for Freudian
interpretation and a window on our political system). Culture may not be destiny,
but you really have to work on overcoming your earliest and most constant
imprints.

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"The thing about the guru in the West is that he represents an alien principle of
the spirit, namely, that you don't follow your own path; you follow a given path.
And that's totally contrary to the Western spirit! Our spirituality is of the individual
quest, individual realization - authenticity in your life out of your own center."
- Joseph Campbell

However, another important aspect is best discussed both early in this

treatise and in an eastern context: magick is all too often regarded as an art of
Maya, of illusion, dreamweaving, trickery and hollow glamours. The word Maya
defines the shifting and phantasmagoric natures of reality itself, as in Sanskrit
magicians are ‘mayins’. From this word are derived the Persian ‘magoi’ or
philosopher-priests (best known as the Three Wise Men or Magi who attended
the Nativity), the Greek ‘magike’, and the Latin ‘magicus’ and ‘magus’. “There
was the assistant wise man, the associate wise man, and the chairman of the
Wisdom Department,” as Garrison Keillor said one Christmas.
The yogic quest to transcend all such phenomena may regard the unusual
abilities of siddhis or miraculous powers as mere side effects on the path to
enlightenment, and when a deeper comprehension of ultimate reality is attained
such things are usually said to be best cast aside. This word ‘siddha’ is cognate
to the later Norse form of shamanic trance-working called ‘seidhr’, showing that
Indo-European is not just a pretty word. It may often be useful to see magick in
some sense as a most deliberate weaving of these transitory veils of Maya, or as
a self-aware swimming with the flow of the tides of the Tao. Any tool may be
effective at some time, or quite unnecessary at another. In many Asian traditions
all forms of manifestation are a mere overlay upon the substratum of the formless
void of emptiness, all reality a playful or tragic dance conditioned by non-
existence; and the western mage may also do well to remember that any and all
mystical systems remain completely arbitrary creations. In the computer
language of binary code, combinations of One and Zero express everything: God
or the Void, Open or Closed, All or Naught, the thelemic Hadit or Nuit. Perhaps
this cosmic distinction also reflects the concept of the mystic who turns inward in
contrast to the magician who turns outwards, each ultimately arriving at a similar
goal. The east often sought the extinction of desire, the west its fulfillment. We
might also recall that infamously popular tantric maxim "One reaches heaven by
the very things which may lead to hell."
This central concept of emptiness (or perhaps ‘transparency’ is a good word) is
one of the fundamental debates of Asian religion as well as Western
existentialism: does anything really exist, is there an immortal soul, or is
everything we seem to experience merely the constant play of illusion, a fleeting
dream in the mind of Brahma? Buddhism largely regards each human psyche as
a collection of complexes and tendencies which will inevitably recur until they are
resolved and extinguished, while Hinduism again regards the eternal soul or self
as the atman, and also declares that each such individual atman is ultimately
identical with the Supreme Atman, which is just another name for GOD. To
awaken to awareness of this Atman by meditation or ecstasy is very similar to the
visionary quest for union with the divine seen in all world religions, as magicians

55
and mystics may travel separate paths to an identical realization. In a sense we
have a close parallel here to the hermetic notion that the microcosm and
macrocosm, the human and divine, the terrestrial and celestial, can be seen as
essentially ONE. Perhaps all such mental distinctions between empty and full,
true and false, real and unreal, may be resolved in the notion that the Deity has a
sense of humor best expressed by paradox, and that humans may benefit by
learning to appreciate that trait. If God is not one funny son-of-a-bitch, then
please explain to me sex, politics, and the duck-billed platypus?

"Phenomena are empty of a certain mode of being called "inherent existence,"

"objective existence," or "natural existence." This "inherent existence" is not a
concept superimposed by philosophical systems but refers to our ordinary sense
of the way that things exist - as if they were concretely existing in and of
themselves, covering their parts. Phenomena are the things which are empty of
inherent existence, and inherent existence is that of which phenomena are
empty. Emptiness or, more properly, an emptiness is a phenomenon's lack of
inherent existence; an emptiness is a negative or utter absence of this concrete
mode of being with which we are so familiar."
"In tantric practice even the visualized gods, goddesses, channels, suns, moons,
and so forth are qualified by emptiness."
- Jeffrey Hopkins, Meditations on Emptiness

For more wisdom of the Mystic Masters see Bibliography B. Taoism & Tantra.

Jerking the Golden Chain, or the Usual Suspects

"The universities do not teach all things, so a doctor must seek out old wives,
gypsies, sorcerers, wandering tribes, old robbers and such outlaws, and take
lessons from them. A doctor must be a traveler. Knowledge is experience.”
- Paracelsus

Moving right along, we find that the roots of western magick (and even of
some parts of eastern tantra) may lie in Egypt, whose glorious civilization was
among the most stable and influential in the ancient world. Among the oldest
known creators of a written language, the Egyptian priesthood integrated
mythology, magick, medicine, art, religion, science, architecture, mathematics,
music and astronomy in ways our own culture has yet to accomplish. The gods of
the two united kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt, who often appear at least
partially in animal shapes, seem like transitional forms between the totemic
figures of tribal animism and a psychologically and spiritually complex cosmology
which still calls to magicians up to the present day. Nor can it be considered
insignificant that Liber AL vel Legis and Liber Pennae Praenumbra, the twin
revelations of the Double Current, were both received in an Egyptian framework.
Practitioners of these mysterious arts could do far worse than to immerse

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themselves in the culture of this era, for their god-forms are still potent and their
symbolic systems still valid. The desert Red Land and fertile Black Land of fabled
Khem existed between the underworld of the dead and the overworld of the
gods, quartered by the east to west journey of the Sun and the south to north
flow of the Nile River that sustained all life.
The complex and interlocking pantheons of the various cults differ in
details but share an essential sense that the Creator God/dess manifests itself
under countless names and forms, as a series of principles or ‘Neters’. Evolving
from the most primitive local spirits into deities with ever-increasing levels of
sophistication, their many aspects offered access to all people according to their
desires and levels of understanding, as if many channels ran to and fro from the
same vast ocean of cosmic energy. A similar principle may appear throughout
Hinduism and also in the now-popular Hebrew qabala, which sees the divine as a
series of emanations appropriate to various levels of the universe and the human
condition, the None becoming the One becoming the Many. We might recall that
the early Hebrew tribes spent some time in Egypt, and that their journey from
paganism to monotheism was a rather rocky road.
Much of Egyptian religion was originally solar, manifesting through the
supreme creator and Sun-god Amon-Ra and his representative form the hawk-
headed deity Horus, whose human avatar was the ruling king or Pharaoh. Darker
principles might include mysterious Set the deity of storms and chaotic powers,
his brother Osiris the god of the underworld and harvest, or jackal-headed Anubis
the guide of dead souls. The Goddess also wore countless related masks, as
Nuit the Night Sky or Isis the Mother of Magick, as Sekhmet the fierce lioness-
headed protector, Hathor the patron of music and lovemaking, or the principle of
harmony and balance Maat. Thoth, the ibis-headed scribe, healer, and creator of
writing, is also the originator of all magick and later became the patron of
alchemy and the Tarot. All of these gods reappear in the modern revelations of
the Double Current.
"Egypt was the mother of magicians”, said Clement of Alexandria, and the
techniques practiced there continue to influence mages up to the present day.
In the Middle East the ancient Mesopotamian, Persian, and Egyptian
cultures established systems of cosmology and pagan belief that influenced the
later forms of the Minoan, Mycenaean, Greek, and Roman civilizations that
eventually entered Europe. The Mediterranean basin really is the cradle of
western civilization, and greek and roman mythology and thought still form much
of our cultural heritage. Most of us still have a fair idea of the personalities of the
greek pantheon, and the gods of Mount Olympus actually form a fairly complete
and balanced model of human types and concerns (as well as providing the
names of the planets and stars, along with much of the psychology expressed in
astrology). The late-classical world view was also surprisingly cosmopolitan and
diverse, and a long line of itinerant philosopher-sages and wandering
astrologers, revolutionary prophets and sinister sorcerers spread the ever-
evolving synthesis of early magical techniques throughout what had become the
vast Roman Empire. Many were also initiates of the dramatic mysteries and
temple-schools born of the elaborate cults of the ancient gods, and the interplay

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between these natural religions and the practitioners of ever more secretive
arcane rites eventually gave birth to the fusion called Pagan Syncretism, which
became the final challenge of these rich and diverse civilizations to the narrow
doctrines of a far more rigid Christianity. Leading up to the later Pythagorean and
Gnostic milieus, this is perhaps the first great formative and eclectic watershed of
the western occult tradition. For the practical aspects, please consult
Bibliography C. The Ancient Middle-Eastern, Egyptian, & Greek Magick &
Mythology.
Much of the later history of magick, not unlike human progress itself, has
been created in major urban centers such as Atlantis, Babylon, Ur, Thebes,
Heliopolis, Memphis, Athens, Alexandria, Rome, Harran, Byzantium, Cordova,
Toledo, Prague, London, Paris or New York. It has been suggested that many
sages survived the fall of the Roman Empire by fleeing to the middle-eastern city
of Harran, therein forming the stargazing Sabean tradition. This culture preserved
much of the classical knowledge and esoteric wisdom that eventually re-entered
Europe through the Islamic world. As the monotheistic family of Judeo-
Christianity and later Islam forcibly took hold of political power the ancient
mystery cults of Eleusis, Dionysos, Orpheus, Isis, Serapis, and Mithras were
suppressed and driven underground, only to resurface in the later gnostic and
heretical movements of medieval times. The eternal tendency of occult
philosophy to synthesize all concepts wove a rich tapestry of thought, which then
periodically resurged in waves of revival and culminated in the Renaissance.

Black Magic in the Dark Ages

- from War In Heaven by Charles Williams

Therefore the resulting Hermetic philosophy included the three pillars of Magick,
Alchemy and Astrology, and was strongly influenced by the Hebrew teachings of
early Merkabah mysticism and the subsequent Qabala, and also by the revival of
the late-classical Neo-Platonist school of thought. The great treasure-house of
images, the Tarot deck, eventually evolved out of this sea of intellectual ferment,
and among the centers of thought which influenced it were the scholars of
Moorish Spain, the heretics of southern France, the neo-classicists of
Renaissance Italy and the Rosicrucians and Freemasons of the British isles.
While this underground stream was constantly troubled by a long series of laws,
crusades, pogroms, inquisitions, witch-hunts, and the Church's brutal betrayal of
the Knights Templar, it still appears that tyranny ultimately fails, repression
creates resistance, and officially unauthorized truth inevitably will out. Ideas
always have a certain life of their own and recognize no geographical or cultural
boundaries, and cross-pollination inevitably happens. This intellectual traffic was
never limited to scholars and churchmen, for wandering gypsies, tinkers and
gamblers, herbalists and cunning-men, midwives and hedge-witches often had
rich stores of orally transmitted lore that somehow survived without the need of

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written records. Such people served important social functions and were often
the only available healers.
In fact, the series of Crusades ultimately had many unforeseen effects, as
European contact with the far more sophisticated Muslim world led to the
rediscovery of many lost classical writings as well as to the growth of new
concepts and many advances in sciences including astronomy, architecture,
mathematics and alchemy. The Islamic mystical practices of Sufism have been
enormously influential from medieval times on up to the present day, flowing into
the recent transformational teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. The related
and notorious hashish cult of the Assassins formed a model for several later
secret societies in terms of both structure and practice, and may even have
influenced the homicidal cult of Thuggee in India and the fabled conspiracy of the
Bavarian Illuminati. These Assassins were in a sense the opposite numbers to
the Christian military order of the Knights Templar, who were later destroyed by a
vicious political conspiracy hatched by King Philip the Fair of France and his
lackey Pope Clement, in order to seize the vast wealth the Templars had
accumulated (in part by establishing Europe’s first real banking and postal
systems). Among the many charges against them were heresy, homosexuality,
and the worship of a strange idol with three faces called Baphomet. It is thought
by many that this was simply a corruption of the name of the Prophet Mohammad
as Mahomet, implying that these hybrid monk/knights had been subverted to
Islam. While in France many were imprisoned or burned, most in other parts of
Europe escaped, and their traditions allegedly reappear later in some forms of
esoteric Freemasonry. Along with assorted other early gnostic heresies their
stories are found in recent Papally-condemned bestsellers like Holy Blood, Holy
Grail (holy cow!) and The Da Vinci Code.
Also rising out of this turbulent era of the Crusades were the mythic development
of the quest for the Holy Grail, the tales of King Arthur and the Round Table at
Camelot, the romantic ethos of the knightly troubadours, and massive
revolutionary and heretical movements such as the Cathars and Bogomils, the
Albigensians and Waldensians. There were also many lesser-known groups like
the Brethren of the Free Spirit and the mysterious Sect of the Phoenix, who
preserved radical antinomian traditions and were said to practice the orgiastic
rites so often ascribed to sorcerers. In much more recent times the infamous Mad
Monk Rasputin emerged from the bizarre sect called the Khlisty in Russia,
becoming advisor to the family of the last Czar. He taught that in order to be
forgiven by God one must first have sins worth forgiving, and threw some
sensational parties.
Eventually Europe was also wracked by centuries of religious warfare
sparked by the schism of the Protestant Reformation. In addition, one must never
underestimate the vastly destabilizing psychological impact a few waves of the
Black Plague can have on the equilibrium of a continent. Europe alone may have
lost something between a third to a half of its population, and what then passed
for civilization broke down almost completely in many areas. Apocalyptic pseudo-
messiahs and fanatic movements arose, as a crisis of belief in the rather dubious
mercies of the Church led to an unparalleled level of mass panic, constant

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warfare, peasant rebellions, witch-hunts and the fear of devils and heretics, and a
frenzied expectation of the end of the world. These last dying gasps of the highly
structured and stratified late-medieval culture would lead toward the eventual
development of a freer and somewhat more rational and modern world-view with
the coming of the Renaissance, but at the same time that period also saw a great
deal of political turmoil and religious violence, and the creation of one of the
greatest archetypes of western culture: the myth of Faust, the sorcerer who
would sell his very soul to the Devil Mephistopheles in order to gain the secrets
of unholy and forbidden knowledge.
Further to the north the Celtic and Germanic tribes contributed their gods
and spells, their secretive Ogam and Runic scripts; and while we now have little
documentation on Eastern Europe and Russia, there can be no doubt that many
ideas filtered back and forth along the trade routes and continued to develop.
Magick has always lurked in the underground, and while major religions generally
tend toward the conservative, sorcery leans more toward innovation. Many odd
ingredients may be added to the strange brew seething in the witch’s cauldron.
See Bibliography D. Runes & Ogams/Norse & Celtic Mythology.
Some have made a rather technical or simply class-based distinction
between the few surviving European pagan folk traditions as Low Magick and the
monotheistic, monastic and scholastically influenced medieval grimoires as
Ceremonial or High Magick, although in practice they frequently overlapped. In
part this is reflected in a similar division between daemonic magic which
operated by the ritual conjuration of spirits, and the slightly less theologically
suspect forms of natural magic which utilized the strange powers of herbs, gems
and crystals (and also sundry bits and pieces of various local animals, which is a
practice fallen quite out of style in most modern movements).
We may note in passing the gender conflicts in the later evolution of
medicine, which led to the unfortunate suppression of midwives and a huge
corresponding rise in the rate of infant and maternal mortality. We must also
mention the various Rosicrucian and Masonic movements whose secret lodges
and philosophy greatly influenced alchemy and astrology, literature and
architecture, politics and music. This hidden tradition has always tended toward
the outcast and subversive in its ceaseless questioning of the accepted
consensus reality and deconstructive influence on the sad strictures of society
and culture. Consider again those sinister revolutionaries the Bavarian Illuminati,
still the subject of much fundamentalist paranoia today, and the many other
veiled conspiracies said to be the hidden rulers of the world or perhaps merely
the would-be conquerors thereof. At the same time, such disowned bastard
children of human thought are largely responsible for all of our vaunted progress:
as I have mentioned before, alchemy evolves into chemistry and medicine,
astrology into astronomy and physics, and occult hermetics into philosophy and
psychology. All too often the more conventional elements of our religious,
educational, and political orthodoxies have contributed only rigidity, repression,
distorted versions of truth, and occasional bouts of genocide to our epic saga. I
am thus often inclined to think that the only good civilization is a dead civilization.

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 Even in the most repressive times both books and practitioners survived to
carry on these traditions, not infrequently through members of a strange clerical
underground sprung from the schools of the Church itself, which for centuries
monopolized literacy and scholarship of all kinds. It is from these renegade clergy
that the concept of the Black Mass arose, evolving from such superstitious
practices as the saying of a funeral mass for one still among the living into the
blasphemous parody later falsely associated with the Witches Sabbat. The great
courts of the nobility often protected their chosen associates from the edicts of
the Popes and the iron fist of the medieval state, both of whose power would
eventually be weakened by growing religious dissent. The great split caused by
Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation, quickly followed by the bloody wars of
the Counter-Reformation, the age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution,
and the period of colonial empires, has ultimately led to the rise of a more
egalitarian society. In America, France and Russia there were great popular
rebellions, largely inspired by those early secular humanists the Freemasons,
which vastly increased individual liberty and ended some of the most archaic
laws as the concept of democracy flowered. Somehow in this modern era, which
is so often regarded as being dominated only by rationality and the scientific
method, we have now experienced a major magickal and neo-pagan revival. As
the Old World culture of the Mediterranean and European worlds expanded into
North and South America, as Asia, Africa and eventually even Australia were
forcibly colonized by imperialist powers, our self-proclaimed ‘developed’
countries slowly began to discover that the other nations so casually and all too
often genocidally dismissed as mere ‘primitives’ were in fact still possessed of a
wealth of history and traditional wisdom. As our entire spinning globe became
closely linked in a web of trade and treaty, travel and education, the possibilities
opened up by the rapid spread of modern technical information vastly increased
magickal and mythic possibilities as well as more mundane opportunities. Even
the ivory towers of academia have made some considerable contributions, and it
may seem that multi-cultural relativism now rules for a time. We begin to flatter
ourselves that we are ‘post-modern’, and so devastatingly hip that the common
constraints of our history and beliefs (not to mention simple human decency)
somehow no longer apply to us.
There has been a long-term tendency to divide the many Eastern
traditions of Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Bon-Po, Shinto and
Confucianism from the more Western Hermetic mysteries, which are a bizarre
hodge-podge of European and Classical sources mingled with the middle-
eastern Judeo-Christian-Islamic stream. In recent times some have suggested a
Northern branch consisting of the Celtic, Pictish, Germanic and perhaps also
Lapp or Finnish or Siberian influences. This is paralleled by the Southern
mysteries consisting of both the traditional African magico-religious systems and
such varied Afro-Caribbean practices as Vodou, Santeria, Lucumi, Obeah,
Macumba, Candomble, Palo Mayombe, and the Hoodoo and Root Magick of the
southern United States, all of which evolved out of the tribal cultures of Africa as
the abomination of the slave trade scattered people across the globe. This still
remains a typically Eurocentric form of classification, largely neglecting the native

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beliefs of both Americas and remote Australia and the other island nations,
whose surviving indigenous inhabitants have probably been sufficiently abused
and exploited to be perfectly happy to be left out of any more Grand Schemes;
yet it does begin to show some of the wide range of themes which are connected
by the open-ended concept of magick. One should avoid limiting such a brief
analysis of influences to purely national or racial terms, as many modern adepts
find that they have deep spiritual affinities (the remnants of past lives?) to
traditions that are widely removed from their superficial genetic patterns. Ideas
always spread rapidly, and both genes and memes reproduce everywhere they
can without restraint.
Of course, we have imported virtually everything here in these rather
Altered States of the New World, in the throes of our various enthusiasms.
Georges Clemenceau once remarked that "America is the only nation in history
which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the
usual interval of civilization." Winston Churchill calmly observed: "You can always
depend on the American people to do the right thing, once they've explored all
the other possibilities." Bill Murray added that we are the proud descendants of
people who were "thrown out of every decent country on earth". Of course we all
have our personal computers now, and unless our civilization crashes into rubble
(a distinct possibility!) jet-belts, flying cars and robot slaves will surely follow
soon. Sadly, the more leisured lifestyle predicted by so many futurists seems to
be running a bit late; but the Stars & Stripes of our proud flag can only symbolize
the New Aeon of starry Nuit & the crimson rays of solar Hadit, the neo-egyptian
god-forms of Crowley’s Thelemic cosmology. Our now-endangered national bird
the American Eagle was originally intended to be the Phoenix by our Masonic
founding fathers, although Benjamin Franklin had more wisely suggested the wild
turkey. If you want to know more about the true rather than official history of
colonial America, research Thomas Morton and the nearly forgotten free thinkers
of the early and brutally suppressed Merrymount colony, who were arrested,
jailed, robbed, and brutalized by Puritans and deported for consorting with Native
Americans and dancing around the Maypole. Many rugged individualists
immigrated to the colonies, and happily enough we have never all been typical of
the type of pseudo-religious bigots who currently seem to be running the Land of
the Free and the Home of the Brave into the ground.
It might thus appear from this brief survey that the magicians of the world
are extremely open to innovation, evolution, and eclecticism, or even to the
extremes of purest lunacy. For practical purposes we may speak of many
Magickal Currents, rising out of cultural traditions or sparked by various prophets,
which interweave to inspire the individual practitioner. Personal identification of
the Self with such currents gives access to the powers and inner contacts that
inspired them, and in turn creates new developments and explorations of the
secret tradition. In each generation a few teachers arise to purify and revitalize
the stream of initiatory thought. This is what the so-called Illuminati or Great
White Brotherhood or Crowley’s Astrum Argenteum were all about: the
preservation and transmission of the True Mysteries or Perennial Philosophy in
new forms. Admittedly you don’t really hear much about that whole Great White

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Brotherhood thing anymore; I heard a vague rumor that they merged with the
Great Black Sisterhood.
I made a brief reference above to the Freemasons, a wide assortment of
both public and secret orders which grew out of a merging of the medieval
stonemason's guilds (operative masonry, which built the great castles and
cathedrals) with the humanistic and metaphysical theories of the educated
classes (known as speculative masonry, and allegedly responsible in its time for
a great deal of creatively subversive political maneuvering). As one fine example,
Count Cagliostro’s Egyptian Freemasonry provided the inspiration for both
Mozart’s famous opera The Magic Flute and the insane ramblings of the syphilitic
father of author of weird tales H.P. Lovecraft, and later became one of the roots
of the O.T.O. No treatise on mysterious conspiracies can possibly resist quoting
this truly delicious definition thereof, which leads rather neatly into our next
section:

"Freemasons, n. An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic

costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of
London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken
retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side
of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational
inhabitants of Chaos and the Formless Void. The order was founded at different
times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucius,
Thothmes and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found in the
Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese
Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian
Pyramids - always by a Freemason."

In all fairness we should perhaps recall this charming entry as well:

"Magic, n. An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving
the same high purpose, but the discrete lexicographer does not name them."
- both from The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce

My hypothetical readers may well question why such ancient history is still
important to a post-modern sorcery that is increasingly eclectic and based largely
upon contemporary sources. In all honesty, much of western magick might
appear to be so fragmented by centuries of repression that we find ourselves in
the unfortunate position of searching through the ashes of burnt books and
heretics for a few scattered glowing embers, yet this seriously underestimates
the extent to which the hermetic tradition has always influenced our cultures. In
medieval and renaissance times magick was not considered as some bizarre
sub-stratum lurking beneath real science, but accepted as the actual and only
available real knowledge of the times by the still tiny educated elite.
Indeed, it is sad to say that our Churches have continually resisted every single
step of scientific progress as rigidly as they ever did magical concepts, and
without the revolutionary influences of some alternative stream of thought most of

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us would still be slaving away under a divinely ordained serfdom (as distinct from
that now imposed in turn by crony capitalism). Even today rabid fundamentalists
continue to degrade our school system, banning perceptive books and
desperately needed sex education, denying concepts as essential as Evolution
itself, and interfering with vital medical research and human rights alike. America
sometimes seems as deeply in danger of becoming a religious dictatorship as
any Islamic nation. We may now usually think of Rosicrucians as some sort of
cheesy mail-order con game and Freemasonry as merely a dying oddball social
organization, but the truth is that they have often preserved elements of wisdom
free from the dictates of dogma, and without them our world would be very
different today. We are the heirs to a history which has inspired many of our most
vital philosophers, artists, composers, and political thinkers, our influence
continues to spread widely through popular culture today, and we can and should
be pretty damn proud of that. While secular humanism has contributed greatly to
our current level of freedom, it could never have done so without the previous
contributions of a world-view that has spawned or paralleled all the developments
of western progress. Far too frequently organized religions have been the tool of
oppression, and chaotic magick and individual mysticism the way of liberty. Our
Founding Fathers were mostly Freemasons, and bless their black hearts, they
gave us the American Revolution in 1776, the French Revolution shortly
thereafter, and perhaps even the Russian version awhile after that. The ‘time for
a change’ is always upon us. In the spirit of Horus the Avenger, I generally tend
to support most revolutions purely on principle (although they often have
problems in practice). As the Deist Thomas Jefferson so proudly proclaimed, “I
have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny
over the mind of Man.” He also once remarked that “Christianity is the most
perverted system that ever shone on man.” Yet we still elected him president…
See Bibliographies E. General History of Magick: Medieval to Early Modern
Times and F. Basic Qabala & Gnosticism.

The golden dawn, l'aube doree, die goldene dammerung

"It was an experience altogether strange and sudden and it took place as most
such ceremonies will in an obscure street, where faded respectability struggles
unsuccessfully enough with bad drains and a thriving trade in harlotry."
- 1903 diary of A.E. Waite, from Gilbert's Golden Dawn Scrapbook

The history of the occult is full of many fascinating personalities: King

Solomon, Medea, Circe, Aristotle, Plato, Pythagoras, Socrates, Simon Magus,
Apollonius of Tyana, Merlin, Queen Morgan le Fay, Albertus Magnus, Cornelius
Agrippa, Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (Paracelsus), Dr. Johann
Faustus, Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino, Tommaso Campanella, Pico della
Mirandola, Dr. John Dee and his companion Edward Kelly, Sir Isaac Newton,
Count Cagliostro, Francis Barrett, Eliphas Levi, countless witches, and even
several of the shadier Popes: all have preserved and regenerated the secret

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tradition. For the limited purposes of this treatise I will cut to the chase and refer
you to my bibliography and the Internet, as we finally focus upon our more recent
influences.
Now we truly enter the realm of modern magick and its adepts, and the
Orient begins again to recombine with the Occident, the East with the West. One
of the most widespread manifestations of this was the creation of the
Theosophical Society by Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, which was one of
the first forums to widely disseminate information on ancient Asian spiritual
teachings in European and American venues; although it was soon to be
superseded by more academic studies, its original influence was tremendous.
The society was founded in 1875 (the very same year in which such arcane
luminaries as Pascal Beverly Randolph and Eliphas Levi died, and Aleister
Crowley, Carl Jung, and Theodore Reuss were born) and in many ways the
entire New Age movement of recent decades is the direct descendent. Other
organizations include Rudolph Steiner's Anthroposophy and the little-known
African-American occultist P.B. Randolph's Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. There
was again a great vogue for secret societies along the old Rosicrucian and
Masonic lines, and various lodges of continental adepts active in France and
Germany, including the nascent O.T.O. As the educational system became
increasingly secularized some parts of the steadily growing middle class began
to outgrow their reliance on received religious training, and to take an interest in
progressive politics and responsibility for a more personal spiritual quest.
There was also the explosive phenomenon or craze of Spiritualism
sparked by the famous Fox sisters in America, with its séances, mediums, Indian
guides, spirit trumpets, ghostly messages from beyond and glowing
materializations of ectoplasm. Few people now seem to recall how widespread a
challenge to the established churches this became during its heyday as an
extraordinarily popular mass movement, or how much of the jargon of the more
recent New Age movement is still drawn from it. Apparently the countless dead of
the War Between the States (Civil War) and the Great War (W.W. I) and the War
to End All Wars (W.W. II) and now the War Against Terror (W.W. III?) found
themselves quite eager to communicate with loved ones posthumously, or vice
versa (coming to your town soon: W.W. IV: the War for Peace). From the
subsequent founding of the Society for Psychical Research arose actual scientific
investigation of unexplained phenomena, which began to lay the first shaky
foundations of academic parapsychology; and the eccentric researcher Charles
Fort attempted to force so-called scientists to confront, and perhaps even
account for, countless unexplained phenomena.
Personally I tend to regard most organized religions merely as dead forms
of magick, now rigid and rapidly decaying; once the dogma becomes official all
direct experience is lost. His most fond disciples quickly twist every Master’s
teachings as soon as he is safely dead. This world was not created in seven
days; it is being created anew by each of us in every moment. However, one
must never underestimate the vastly destabilizing psychological influence that a
couple of world wars and many smaller wars can have on the rather fragile
equilibrium of a planet, and even the most morbid monotheisms may have

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certain mystical doctrines of great value hidden within them. These include the
Qabala in Judaism, the Gnosis in Christianity, Sufism in Islam and Satanism in
Mormonism, not to mention Zen in Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta in Hinduism, and
Taoism in general.

"A magician needs an order like a politician needs a party."

- John Symonds

In the late nineteenth century all of these esoteric streams came together
in that great turning point of modern magick, the Hermetic Order of the Golden
Dawn. A trio of physicians who were all high-ranking freemasons and members
of a Rosicrucian society were the founders of the group: Wynn Westcott (a
London coroner and recent though rather unlikely Jack-the-Ripper suspect) and
two others named Woodford and Woodman. They were soon joined by the
eccentric mystical scholar MacGregor Mathers, who along with his talented and
artistic wife Moina Bergson-Mathers was largely responsible for the new forms of
its teachings and practices. The G.D. then modernized, reorganized and
streamlined the elder qabalistic and hermetic traditions into a carefully structured
initiatory order. In general it drew its new members from the most obvious
sources: Theosophy and Freemasonry. Unlike the masons, however, the
magicians accepted women on an equal basis, and the very concept of an
arcane order freely teaching occultism and performing pseudo-Egyptian-styled
rituals is rather remarkable for its time even in a London full of strange clubs and
secretive social and political organizations. This was a discrete yet still somewhat
public organization in a society not all that far removed in time from burning
heretics alive, and a group of remarkably bright people actively researching and
experimenting with and completely reinventing the entire concept of magick.
They also rediscovered and integrated the remarkable system of Enochian
magick created by Dr. John Dee and his scryer Edward Kelly.
Among its many other notable alumni were the famous poet W.B. Yeats,
such well-known authors as Charles Williams, Algernon Blackwood, Edith Nesbit,
Evelyn Underhill, Sax Rohmer and Arthur Machen, the actress Florence Farr,
magical writers such as Dion Fortune and the rather pedantic A.E. Waite, many
more freemasons such as J.W. Brodie-Innes and E.W. Berridge, several
clergyman and alchemists, prominent artist Sir Gerald F. Kelly, Irish revolutionary
Maud Gonne, chemical engineer Allan Bennett, and ultimately that infamous bad
boy of magick, Edward Alexander "Aleister" Crowley. If he had not existed it
would have been necessary to invent him, and in many ways he created himself
as the very model of a modern major magician. His various emulators have been
copying his methods, and upon far too many occasions his personal crises, ever
since.
Before moving on to the Great Wild Beast himself, however, we should
note that the elaborate and complex system of the Golden Dawn still survives as
a living force. This is largely due to the efforts of Francis Israel Regardie, a
former associate of Crowley's, who published a great deal of material which
might otherwise have been lost to history. Dr. Regardie was also a therapist

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much influenced by Reich and Jung, and his most personal wish for the future of
the Order was that all applicants first go through at least a year or two of some
(preferably Reichian, but essentially any) form of psychotherapy before
proceeding. When I consider some of the magicians and magical casualties I
have met over the years that does not necessarily sound like a dreadful idea. At
any rate, in the grand heritage of esoteric and other movements the Golden
Dawn has had the usual several splinter groups filing lawsuits and flaming each
other on the Internet. It would perhaps behoove such excitable boys to consider
that the amoeba-like process of reproduction by fission has worked out quite well
for the modern Wiccan revival: when a coven is outgrown by its personality
conflicts it merely splits, and now there are lots of covens out there innovating
and spreading the good word.
There are also many other heirs to this influential mainstream of British-
based qabalistic/ceremonial magick, including folks like the above-mentioned
Dion Fortune, Gareth Knight, William Gray, William Butler, Alan Richardson, and
Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki. Many later G.D. inspired authors include continue to
mine this rich lode. Indeed, there always seems to be a continuing major
influence upon American occultism, from Mathers, Crowley and Spare to the
Craft of Wicca to the currents of Chaos Magick, which flows from across the
Atlantic and those green and pleasant lands. Yet in the early twenty-first century
it may also appear that the American people have taken supernaturalism to its
widest extent as a series of mass movements, and by adopting and adapting
these currents we have made them considerably more prominent in both the
media and popular consciousness. Other well known groups in this G.D. line of
descent might include Fortune’s Society of the Inner Light, the Aurum Solis, the
Builders of the Adytum, and the Order of the Cubic Stone. It would seem that this
open establishment of teaching orders may well have led to the later spread of
contemporary covens sparked by the Wiccan revival around the 1960s, and in
turn Wicca has created a remarkably wide level of public awareness and private
practice of traditional arcane thought.
My personal critique of the Golden Dawn is that in typical Victorian fashion
it became extremely verbose, over-complicated and overly-structured, and by
very rigidly defining the qabalistic, astral, mythological and even color
correspondences in its tables of symbolism it seems to have drastically limited
the more direct, intuitive and personal interpretations of its member’s visions, as
they were trained in an imposed system that often discarded any results that did
not match up to their official canon. It was quite authoritarian, which created the
typical schisms and squabbles, and despite drawing upon Egyptian and many
other influences it remained essentially Judeo-Christian. Few members seem to
have progressed past the lowest of its ten degrees of initiation, but it was and
remains very influential (largely through the works of Crowley, which probably
would have horrified them!).
Please consult Bibliographies G. The Golden Dawn, and H. Assorted Useful
Contemporary Titles Post-Golden Dawn.

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Hey, Mr. Crowley Man, tally me qabala!
Aeon come and me wan' go home!

"We place no reliance

on Virgin or Pigeon;
Our Method is Science,
our Goal is Religion." - Aleister Crowley

"Let he that hath wisdom count the number of the Beast, for it is the number of a
man; and that number is six hundred and sixty and six." - Revelations 13:18

To explore the dimensions of post-modern magick is to come face to face

with its quintessential and most notorious proponent. Born in 1875 and raised by
a deeply repressive and fanatically fundamentalist family, Aleister Crowley utterly
rebelled, identified himself with the Great Beast of the biblical book of
Revelations, and went on to explore and possibly squander his vast potential
through mountain-climbing and big-game hunting, world travel and poetry, sex
and drugs, religion and philosophy, yoga and magick, espionage and painting
and chess. His rather libertine, untidy, and decadently Bohemian lifestyle has
caused many to see him as a prototype of the later beat generation and hippie
movements, yet his vast energy, intermittent discipline, sharp wit, and residual
social and class issues tend to place him in a somewhat different category of
genial eccentricity (when he was not being an unrepentant prick).
After Cambridge he discovered the Golden Dawn and progressed very
rapidly through the first grades of initiation they offered, assuming the magical
name of Frater Perdurabo (and years later, of Baphomet). While some
sensationalist reporting casts him as the player most responsible for the
organization’s eventual break-up, he was actually in this period a relatively minor
catalyst, and he based much of his own order (the Astrum Argenteum or A.A.)
upon their teachings in his later years. For quite some time he was a loyalist to
the group's de facto leader MacGregor Mathers, who was well known as a rather
difficult personality in his own right, and turned out to be more than capable of
igniting the collapse of the Golden Dawn all by himself. Yet in many ways
Crowley was also the most remarkable success story to publicly emerge from the
complex training program and hierarchical system of the G.D. Out of all their
many adepts, it seems to have been Crowley who took his magick the most
seriously and the most personally, and who climbed their initiatory ladder to its
ultimate extreme. In his memoirs he recalls in later life meeting a former high-
ranking member in Hong Kong, and discovering that she was using her ritual
robes as a fancy-dress costume for a masquerade ball! Yet another of his major
G.D. influences was his longtime friend Allen Bennett, who eventually became an
influential Buddhist monk and finally a genuine mad scientist. Through both
Bennett and his own years of travel in the Far East Crowley was exposed to a
much wider range of cross-cultural concepts than the average British enthusiast
of the esoteric at that time.

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In 1904 Crowley received the transmission commonly known as Liber AL vel
Legis: The Book of the Law, which became the basis of his life’s work. It revealed
a neo-pagan and quantum cosmology centered within the Self, wherein each
individual soul (the point-of-view, Hadit) was uniquely present as a Star in the
living body of time-space (the universal Goddess, Nuit); their interplay gave birth
to the child-god Horus (or Ra-Hoor-Khuit), exemplar and ruling archetype of the
New Aeon of human history. From this vision he developed an elaborate and
extensive system of Magick drawn from a fusion of the western qabalistic
tradition as carried on by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn which had
trained him, later combined with explorations of eastern mysteries such as
Taoism, Tantrism, and Sufism. This body of work is known variously as Thelema
(Greek for Will) or the 93 Current, and is perhaps best expressed in such maxims
as “The Method of Science, The Goal of Religion” and by his familiar key-words
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”, "Every man and every woman is
a star", and "Love is the law, love under will". His openly avowed purpose was
the liberation of all humanity by the revelation of each person’s own unique
spiritual path, expressed as their True Will or the Word of their Holy Guardian
Angel. Since his passing in 1947 many groups such as the various O.T.O.s have
sought to carry on his work, some of them more orthodox (assuming we can
actually speak of any possibility of a Thelemic orthodoxy) than others. In many
ways Thelema has become the dominant paradigm of modern ceremonial
magick, as the earlier Golden Dawn structure was considerably more long-
winded and cumbersome, and while there were many overtly pagan influences
they also remained deeply mired in a rather medieval worldview. Part of the
appeal of Crowley's revelation lies in the fact that it is indeed a living Neo-Pagan
mythos, and like the Heathen and Wiccan revivals of the last few decades it has
shown remarkable vitality.
When he wished to use it he had a highly disciplined mind, and while his
constant tongue-in-cheek assertions of his own genius may become a bit
monotonous this Edwardian man of letters was indeed quite brilliant in his own
peculiar and egocentric way. While writing magical and purely instructional
material his prose is clear, generous, practical, and precise, so he may perhaps
be forgiven for his large body of often rather dreadful although occasionally quite
lovely poetry (above all read his throbbing and erotic Hymn to Pan) and happily
remembered for his more inspired works. As for his hysterically funny, vindictive,
rambling and rambunctious memoirs, the so-called Confessions of Aleister
Crowley or Autohagiography, more than one biographer has suggested that they
really might have improved his sordid reputation if they had been properly
published in his lifetime. In 2002 a BBC survey of the 100 most popular Britons
ranked him at 73, and I know of at least two-dozen biographies devoted to his
life, making him a remarkably recognizable man.
He also took many masonic degrees, which led to eventual leadership of
the other esoteric order later associated with him, the German Ordo Templi
Orientis or O.T.O. Among the major events of his life were the transformative
reception of his primary personal revelation The Book of the Law, which declared
the birth of a fiery new aeon of liberation, revolution, and ecstasy in 1904; a

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series of thirty invocations based upon the important Enochian system of Angelic
Magick received by the Elizabethan magicians Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelly
and recorded in The Vision & The Voice; the publication of his encyclopedic
journal The Equinox and of his magnum opus Magick In Theory & Practice; the
founding in Sicily of a radical magickal community called (after Rabelais) the
Abbey of Thelema; and the writing and design (with the aid and artistry of his
friend Lady Frieda Harris) of The Book of Thoth with its brilliant accompanying
Thoth Tarot deck. Late in life he wrote Magick Without Tears, which remains one
of the more easily readable and user-friendly explanations of his system.
Throughout his life of international wanderings and exiles, his various and sundry
marriages, his many obscure and bisexual liaisons, and a secretive career in
international espionage, he steadily produced a wide-ranging, enormously
influential, and all-too-seldom credited body of writings. He could undeniably be a
somewhat difficult and even rather questionable character to deal with, he was
arrogant and self-centered for most of his life and he often treated people quite
badly, perhaps not entirely untypical of someone raised in the highly privileged
world of the upper-class British gentleman of that era. Like everyone else, he
was a product of his times. One might remember that like many if not most
people in this primitive era of medical science he was forced to struggle with a
number of painful and debilitating health problems (including asthma, which
seems to afflict a surprising number of mages) and the deaths of some of his
children. However, he also had many loyal friends and possessed great charm,
wit, and erudition. Virtually all of history's great mages have had some element of
the trickster in their personalities, and ultimately his sincere belief in his mission
always shines through. Like him or not, he forms the veritable template of all
modern magick, and with his vivid and prophetic declaration of a New Aeon of
freedom, force and fire he has completely realigned the formulae and practices
thereof. Much of this present work grew out of my personal confrontation with
what has grown from his philosophy.
The potency of this Luciferian or Promethean current is often oddly
testified to by the determination of more conservative modern writers on the
arcane to gratuitously denigrate or studiously ignore his works. It might be said
that for some the fear of Crowley is the end of wisdom, but for those of us bold
enough to actually practice magick he will always remain an inspiration. In the
course of this book you may often be subjected to a stream of "Crowley said this"
or "Crowley said that"; well, the man really did have an awful lot to say. Perhaps
the most central and essential aspect of his system involves the quest for
Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, the process of forging a
uniquely personal and individual link with the universe as a means of discovering
the True Will and the True Self. It is far too easy for humans to accept the outside
authority of the revelations of others, and to assume ultimate responsibility for
one’s own spiritual development is a doctrine of total freedom and total clarity
that few have ever dared to expound. Indeed, teaching such radical concepts
later resulted in Krishnamurti’s expulsion from the Theosophical Society.
His emphasis on the careful application of the experimental method to
magickal operations (i.e., "Scientific Illuminism” or “Skeptical Theurgy") and the

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very effective merging of eastern techniques with western symbolism has greatly
raised the level and standards of occultism, and helped to redefine the ultimate
goal as the perfection of the human individual rather than merely such charming
and undeniably useful side-effects as the rapid fulfillment of desires. His constant
effort to evolve and transform himself through a long succession of identities, his
synthesis of the magical traditions of many realms and ages, his dream of a more
fully liberated humanity, and even his often overlooked personal courage (which
sometimes may have bordered closely on lunacy) make him seem uniquely
human. And when all is said and done, and despite his many foibles and unusual
personality, Crowley’s rather ripe and perverse sense of humor makes his truly
monumental ego both endurable and frequently extremely entertaining. Crowley
thus serves as a fascinating dual model for the modern magician: at his best, he
can reveal the infinite potential of this path and has documented it beautifully; at
his worst, he is a shining example of what not to do: heroin and cocaine
addiction, sexism and arrogance, and completely blowing two inherited fortunes
on high living, mountain-climbing and self-publishing. It is terribly unfortunate that
so many of his modern disciples fail to distinguish the twin aspects of this flawed
yet brilliant gem, let alone learn the important lessons thereof. I should also note
that he lived for the most part in a time when heroin and cocaine use were still
perfectly legal and not uncommon and their dangers mostly unknown, and add
that some of his usage was medically prescribed and that he later struggled
mightily with these addictions; the diaries recording this are harrowing reading.
He was in fact an important pioneer in the study of psychotropic substances, long
before the work of Timothy Leary, who openly modeled his community at
Millbrook on Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema.
For those who insist upon making shallow judgments of the artists of
bygone centuries by the quirky and inane standards of our own, the Church of
the Sub-Genius has a concept which may be useful in this context: that of the
‘short-term personal savior’, who can be anyone or anything, and used or abused
in any way you choose. Mr. Crowley may not have been politically correct by
today's fanatical standards, but frankly that whole PC trend long ago become the
simple-minded deification of anal retention and mind control and is currently
being slowly co-opted from the feminists and leftists by Orwellian right-wingers
and Bushist dead-enders. So in conclusion, I will present a few of the more lively
opinions of others; the late Jim Keith remarked:

"Was Crowley a black magician? Did he engage in human sacrifice? I frankly

don't know for certain, but with his synthesis of Eastern and Western magical and
religious thinking, you can see that Crowley knew that these systems are
basically symbolic interpretations overlaid on and hopefully accessing something
more amorphous, and that this, not the symbolism itself, is where the power
derives from.
I'll put it another way: I get the impression that Crowley knew that all of this stuff
comes from unmanifest, non-symbolized awareness, and that there is a stepping
down that takes place from pure awareness by which symbols and realities are
created."

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- Saucers of the Illuminati

H.P. Lovecraft, on the other hand, had his own opinions:

"In the 1890's the fashionable Decadents liked to pretend that they belonged to
all sorts of diabolic black mass cults & possessed all sorts of frightful occult
information. The only specimen of this group still active is the rather over-
advertised Aleister Crowley…." - Selected Letters vol. V

Academic historian Jeffrey Burton Russell may seem a tad jaded:

"By the early part of the twentieth century, occultism enjoyed a certain popularity,
especially among dandies and bohemians, and magicians such as Aleister
Crowley, who styled himself "the Great Beast," attracted a following. Their
doctrines were a mixture of high magic, low sorcery, affected Satanism,
hedonism, dubious historical and philosophical arguments, and mere irony."
- Hidden Truths: Magic, Alchemy and the Occult

And also rather cynically expressed is:

“His reputation had been that of a man who worshipped Satan, but it was more
accurately said that he worshipped no one except himself.”
- Martin Gardner, On the Wild Side

However, Zen authority Alan Watts had this to say about Crowley:

"For myself, I make no judgment. It is possible that a man can be such a fraud as
to be an incomparable and magical fraud. It is also possible that a man of high
compassion and wisdom can play at being a fraud so as not to become an idol or
the founder of a formal religion. Great and powerful men, in the religious
dimension, are invariably regarded gods by some and as devils by others."
- The San Francisco Examiner, on 2/28/1970

Politics and personalities aside, in the last analysis any acceptance of Crowley's
vision hinges upon coming to terms with Liber Al vel Legis: The Book of the Law
and with the concept of Thelema as both a philosophical vision and a truly
modern form of transformative tantra. The cosmology presented by this present
book will make considerably more sense if you take the time to seriously study it.
For me, it is largely a matter of deep affinity and spiritual aesthetics: after years
of exploration the book still works as an engine for change, still producing
insights. Think what you will about Crowley, a remarkably beautiful and savage
cosmology emerged through him, and hopefully bypassed most of the filters of
his personality. As a mythopoetic work of Art, or a visionary experience, I feel a
deep connection to Liber AL.
Sacred texts do come through human minds, yet The Book of the Law, like the
Bhagavad-Gita or Koran, is claimed as a transmission from beyond. When I

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compare this work to the mass of comparatively mediocre poetry and ritual
Crowley was producing at the same early time in his career I can honestly feel
that something extraordinary occurred, whether it was a triggering of the potential
of his deep mind or an actual angelic visitation, always assuming there is any
difference. And Liber AL at least has the virtue of being brief and to the point, not
necessarily qualities usually attributed to Mr. Crowley. Even Thomas Jefferson
remarked that the Bible badly needed an editor (and so he produced his own
edition). Such texts may well take on the flavor of their scribe's personality, and
there is certainly some Aleister in there, as the Koran perhaps has a bit of the
Prophet and the Bible clearly reflects the wide range of poetic talents emitted
from an assortment of primitive stylists. All such books have a certain jewels-to-
dung ratio, some perhaps being clearly better than others. Many Asian (and
especially Taoist) writings strike me as fairly pristine, perhaps reflecting fewer
ego issues and a greater respect for the uncorrupted preservation of original
texts. However, tantric texts or medieval alchemy may also use what is called
'Twilight Language', gnostic or hermetic codes, whose subtleties must be
explored more deeply, often through the use of secret numerical keys or with the
guidance of a teacher. Certainly we may hope that the more gore-splattered
passages of Liber AL are allegory, rather than an explicit survival guide to some
post-civilization Apocalypse. The book itself clearly states that there are secrets
encoded therein.
Somehow Liber AL has indeed continued to inspire people for decades. There is
some very pure poetry there, and I resonate strongly to the concept of uniting the
divine seed of Self (Hadit) with both the Void and manifest aspects of the
universe (expressed as Nuit or Isis). Their interaction as the incarnate Child is
something I see as totally individual, however; perhaps the quest for the
Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel implies that we all really
do need to receive our own personal visions or holy books. Any explicit
prophecies of the future always seem to be highly conditional upon very
unpredictable events, and there are of course 'Absolutely No Absolutes'. Crowley
certainly did point out the paradox that the word of the Magus (or of any such
prophet) is ultimately proven limited, hence false: Truth is always necessarily a
Lie, because mere words cannot encompass the ultimate nature of reality, but
only serve as signposts to indicate its nature. Liber AL does this somewhat better
than many other sacred texts.
One aspect of this Aeon of the Crowned and Conquering Child is clearly a
revolutionary destruction of the past and the triumph of freedom over tyranny.
The child revolts against the parent, Horus the Son supplants Osiris the Father,
individual conscience and consciousness must now overcome external authority
whether religious or political. The old notions of reality are rapidly collapsing and
the new world order appears fatally flawed, while the orthodox teachings of the
Black Dharmas are in what we desperately hope are their death throes. Perhaps
a necessary stage of interacting with Liber AL may even be in eventually
rejecting it, yet the alchemical process of creating the Philosopher's Stone is
always cyclical: destruction and putrefaction, purification and refinement,
transformation and illumination, in a constant and unending evolution toward an

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elusive perfection. Magick is the formula of Change. The fact that Liber AL
serves so well as a vehicle for stimulating inspirations or making personal
connections seems like real Magick in Action to me. "Success is your proof!"
There is something here undeniably worth exploring and understanding. Where
this takes us as individuals is perhaps the ultimate test of whether it is really
valid. I personally try never to accept anything unconditionally, but unlike many
so-called revelations this one actually works for me, and we are clearly now living
in a brave new world of vastly accelerated change.
In the Arthurian tradition there are said to be Three Tables of the Holy
Grail. The first was at the original communion of Christ's Last Supper, and the
Cup was later used to catch his blood at the Crucifixion, whence it was taken to
Glastonbury in Britain by Saint Joseph of Arimethea. The second was the fabled
Round Table of the questing knights of King Arthur's court, and a third is yet to
come. I believe that we Thelemites are enthroned at that third table, and that this
hallowed Sangraal, which began in lost Celtic prehistory as the miraculous ever-
giving Cauldron of the primordial Goddess, has become the Cup of Babalon as
prophesied in the biblical book of Revelations. It might be noted that at times this
Grail is described as a stone rather than a cup: in one version it is the emerald
which fell from the brow of Lucifer the Light-bringer, bright Star of the Morning,
when he was cast down from the celestial city with those fallen angels who are
said to account for one-third of the company of heaven.
Perhaps the real question is "did he fall or was he pushed?" At any rate, there
are also plenty of New Age Christian types who believe that the Grail was taken
to Sedona in Arizona by Saint Joseph of Aromatherapy, and filled with little
orange-flavored aspirins for children. But when we hear that word ‘stone’, we
must always recall the alchemical philosophers, and their miraculous Stone
which expressed the ultimate perfection of the original primal material of the
natural universe and of human evolution as well. For that matter, our old friend
Lucifer bears a remarkable resemblance to the titan Prometheus, who stole the
secret of Fire from Heaven to liberate suffering mankind…
See Bibliography I. Aleister “Uncle AL” Crowley.

Of Austin Osman Spare & the End of Sigilization as we know it...

"It was the straying that found the Path direct." - A.O. Spare

A sometime friend and associate of Crowley was the remarkable artist and
sorcerer Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956), who formulated a highly individual
system of magick known as the Zos Kia Cultus. Spare's influences included the
traditional Witch Cult into which he was apparently initiated by the mysterious
crone Mrs. Yelda Paterson, intimate encounters with spiritualism and ancient
Egypt, service as a war artist in the medical corps during W.W. I, Crowley's own
system, Taoism and Advaita Vedanta, a wide range of reading which obviously
must have included Blake and Nietzsche, and an extremely vivid inner life which

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gave birth to a striking and extraordinary body of creative work and visionary
writing. His use of language is unusual and oblique yet still highly suggestive of
powerful concepts and connections. I find that every reading yields new insights
as I evolve a growing understanding of his potent and erotic system.

"I am all that I conceive. Not for all time but at some time.
'I multiply I' is creation; The sexual infinity. There is no end to the details of my
extreme likeness. The more chaotic - the more complete am I.
The soul is the ancestral animals.
The body is their knowledge.
This omnivorous soul, how lusty; it would seem to be everlasting...."
"Man should most desire a simultaneous consciousness of his separate
entities.... the pleasure ground of self is contact with the living.” - A.O. Spare,
The Focus of Life

Spare himself has described magick as a unity of will, imagination or belief, and
desire:

"23. Belief is a sustenance, desire acquisitive, and 'will' energizes and

maintains; their close unison gives ability and the full measure of our sincerity...
creative when spontaneous. First the suppressions to create the tension - then
the dramatic release." - A.O. Spare, Axiomata

He also emphasized transformation by the interplay of twin vital principles

symbolized by the Eye and the Hand, or the Yoni and the Lingam. The first is
KIA, “the Atmospheric ‘I’”, the original unity, first and ultimate source of all the
forms of existence and of consciousness, corresponding roughly to the gnostic
Pleroma, thelemic Nuit, qabalistic Ain/Ain Soph/Ain Soph Aur, possibly to “God”
or to the entire collective earthly biosphere and psychospiritual noosphere in
which we exist. This cosmic power acts through ZOS, the "body considered as a
whole" (and containing the DNA templates of all earthly life) or the individual and
universal Self, which may correspond to the gnostic Creatura, thelemic Hadit,
and the qabalistic Tree of Life.
Rather contemptuously dismissing any necessity of needlessly elaborate
ceremonial paraphernalia, Spare relied upon the concept of the sigil, a hieroglyph
or cryptogram of organic desire whose meaning was encoded and concealed
from the rational mind and projected by willful and deliberate forgetting into the
depths of the unconscious, where it would create a stress that would only be
relieved by manifesting the physical result. This was done by the use of various
trance techniques such as the Death Posture, a mental state also used in the
later Gnosis of Chaos Magick; thereby these highly charged sentient symbols
would serve to activate the great primordial powers of our past lives and long
heritage of genetic forms in what Spare termed an atavistic resurgence. His
artistry reflected nostalgia for these totemic or animalistic powers in metamorphic
imagery strikingly similar to that of the medieval Witches Sabbat as it was
portrayed by in goetic and metamorphic imagery by Albrecht Durer, Hieronymus

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Bosch, Francisco Goya, Felicien Ropps and others; we may note that the late
lamented Rosaleen Norton reified many similar forms in her own visionary art in
1950s Australia, a time and a place which were by no means prepared for such a
pioneering revivalist of witchcraft and shady lady of the avant-garde.
In many ways Spare pre-shadowed the Surrealist movement and its own
exploration of the deep mind, while in other ways he hearkens back to the
prototypical forms of aboriginal shamanism. He was also empowered by an
extremely active and unusual sexual career, with peculiar tastes leaning towards
those recurring archetypes of the witch-figure, old crones and cruel young
women. Not quite as extreme as our favorite bisexual lunatic Crowley, who
actually advertised for hunchbacks, hermaphrodites, circus freaks and such-like.
"Bei nacht sind alle katzen grau.”
Speaking of which, Spare also lived with dozens of cats, which clearly
shows his pure divinity. "He was mad on cats. They crawled all over his place",
observed Steffi Grant, and many photographs show them crawling all over him
as well; he was a lifelong supporter of the early R.S.P.C.A. and what is now
termed animal rights, and also a talented amateur musician. Despite early critical
and professional success, Spare lived out much of his later life in poverty and
obscurity, in part because of the destruction of his home and studio and the
injuries he received during the bombing of London during the Blitz (he was
trapped in the rubble for hours and for a time had to learn to draw with his other
hand). He left behind a highly charged body of graphic work and writing, and no
one who intensely regards his fabulously evocative paintings and vivid drawings
can fail to appreciate his connection with truly powerful forces from the very
depths of the archaic psyche. Indeed, as with many geniuses throughout history,
the mystical quest that he earthed in his artworks and the internal processes that
sparked them were far more real and vital to him than the passing vicissitudes of
public opinion. He is generally hailed as the inspirational avatar of the more
recent movement known as Chaos Magick, where creative art and spontaneous
innovation in sorcery can (hopefully!) become a way of life, and many of Spare’s
core concepts such as sigils and the Alphabet of Desire have been further
developed therein.
See Bibliography J. The Austin Osman Spare Parts.

"Let this be my one excuse, I pleasured myself." A.O. Spare

It is these two striking personalities, Crowley and Spare, who have

arguably been the most formative influences upon early modern sorcery. They
also find an extremely important synthesis in the many works of Mr. Kenneth
Grant, Outer Head of the London O.T.O. or Typhonian Order and student and
friend of both men, whose profound and complex yet very weird analysis also
includes many tantric and Lovecraftian influences. He has issued a triple trilogy
of nine strange and influential books growing in part out of his foundation of the
arcane Nu-Isis Lodge (1955-1962), and a number of other works including the
two best volumes on Spare. The vast extent of his influence on the growth of
Thelema and magick in general should never be underestimated. While I have

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sometimes touched upon him here, I strongly recommend that you study the
remarkable tapestry of his writings for yourself, as they are carefully woven in a
manner demanding direct experience. He is yet another of my personal major
inspirations.

The Double Current & Other Fascinating Heresies

"I'm closer to the Golden Dawn,

immersed in Crowley's uniform of imagery..." - David Bowie

Crowley also spawned a remarkable crew of disciples, and it is perhaps

necessary to note that some of the most important have been drawn to the more
female side of the divine, perhaps as a balancing of the infamous ‘solar-phallic’
obsessions of the Beast himself. The return of the Goddess may still turn out to
be the most earthshaking spiritual development of the end of the 20th century
and the dawn of the 21st.
One of America's most active early O.T.O. lodges was run by the brilliant
and innovative scientist John Whiteside Parsons (1914-1952), who was also co-
founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. During WWII he invented the solid-fuel
rockets that later led to the American space program. Parsons was strongly
drawn toward the flaming archetype of Babalon, the Scarlet Woman or Great
Harlot of Revelations; Crowleanity has inherited a tendency toward apocalyptic
aeonics similar to that of the U.F.O. cults. Parson’s life was a truly remarkable
and ultimately rather tragic magical melodrama which intersected unfortunately
with that of sci-fi hack-writer L. Ron Hubbard, later the founder and guru of
Scientology and Dianetics, a man who is all too seldom recognized as both an
early follower and watered-down imitator of Crowley and a casual acquaintance
of H.P. Lovecraft. Jack Parsons later perished in a laboratory explosion, leaving
a small but very striking body of work behind. A grateful NASA has appropriately
named a large crater on the dark side of the moon after him. As a lifelong
rebellious spirit he is essentially the occult James Dean, and his demise was
quite unfortunate. Intelligent, charismatic and deeply devoted to Thelema, he
might have provided much stronger continuity to a movement that had a
considerable hiatus (if not a near-death experience) after Crowley’s passing.
Canadian Charles Stansfeld Jones (1886-1950), also known as Frater
Achad, discovered major qabalistic keys to the interpretation of the Book of the
Law and later had visions of the total reversal of the Hebrew alphabet (which
realigned the corresponding paths of the tree of life, making him history’s most
remarkable example of esoteric dyslexia) and of the goddess Maat, who rules the
future aeon-to-come. At first seen as the heir apparent to Crowley, he seems
sadly to have fallen prey to two of the classic pitfalls of magicians: mistaking a
personal insight or revelation for a universal formula, and the messianic inflation
of the ego (which led to a possibly apocryphal tale of a nude ritual perambulation
of the Vancouver city center and an amusing initiatory session in the local jail).
Despite these moments of excess, many of the most useful strands of Achad's

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thought have been continued by others including both Kenneth Grant and the
important contemporary order Q.B.L.H., which has also done a great deal of work
in exploring the possibilities of an English-language based qabala.
His formula of Reversal, however, is still a major key: the tantric ‘turning-back’,
the yogic looking inward, the process of reversion to an aboriginal source or
state. Austin Spare’s concept of “God” as the Primordial KIA was in one sense
essentially a reaching back to the moment of cosmic creation, a regression to the
moment of universal origination, the Primal Unity, the Big Bang theorized by
Vedic Hinduism and modern physics. Speaking of time-travel:

"It's the Dawn of the Twinned Aeon of Horus/Ma'at!  Somebody must have
something to say!" - Grant Morrison, The Invisibles

Achad's vision of Maat has been confirmed by the vital workings of Soror
Nema, whose system began with her 1974 visionary reception of Liber Pennae
Praenumbra and first flowered through her works published in various small-
press journals including the Bate Cabal's Cincinnati Journal of Ceremonial
Magick, the Grove of the Star & the Snake's Mandragore and Aeon, the
Typhonian OTO’s Sothis and Starfire, and many others. I highly recommend both
the essential Maat Magick and her more recent The Way of Mystery, which are
core volumes of this present curriculum. In a truly lucid and cogent explanation of
the magical path, she covers the ascent of the tree of life in both theory and
practice and provides some of the most potent rituals I have seen. Their use
seems to act as a catalyst triggering the accelerated development and mutation
of all aspects of initiation. The Double Current of Horus & Maat (as the twinned
Son & Daughter) to which I repeatedly refer forms an energy of great vitality,
which may relate in some senses to both the light and dark sides of the Tree of
Life. It is also reminiscent of the dual waves of the symbol of Aquarius, which is
the astrological ruler of this age, or of the serpents intertwined upon the hermetic
caduceus that reflects the double helix structure of our DNA. In one sense, the
energy of Horus is advancing the past toward the future while the energy of Maat
is being projected backwards from the future to the past, meeting in the Eternal
Now. Maat may be largely Yin, Horus is very Yang, but everything contains its
own opposite. Beyond the limits of male and female are the androgyne and
gynander, the hermaphrodite, the two-in-one: Baphomet yet again. When
Crowley’s 93 Current (whose magical word is ABRAHADABRA and whose solar
war-god is the falcon-headed Horus) combines with the 696 Current of the fair
goddess of Truth and cosmic balance Maat (whose mantra is IPSOS, meaning
"by that same mouth") magical development and ongoing synchronicity appear to
go into hyperdrive. The concept of Maat as the daughter of the supreme sun-god
Ra was central to the religion of ancient Egypt, and her balance of truth is a
lesson which we would all do well to learn today; it relates strongly to the
concerns of the ecological or Green movement. At the end of Egyptian temple
rituals the priest would elevate in offering a small statue of Maat, requesting that
justice and order be established in the four quarters of the world.

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“All revolved round maat. The word has its linguistic origin in the concept of
‘straightness’ and the earliest hieroglyph for it probably derives from the plinth of
the pharaoh’s throne. But this throne itself was in origin merely a stylized version
of the primeval mound, which emerged as the principle of order out of the waters
of chaos.”
- Paul Johnson, The Civilization of Ancient Egypt

Much of my own Great Work (a traditional alchemical term) has grown out
of a connection with Nema, who in person combines Madame Blavatsky and
Janis Joplin. The small circle of which I was a member in the 1970s and 1980s,
the Grove of the Star & the Snake, joined with her to found the Horus/Maat
Lodge, a freewheeling and anarchistic constellation of magi dedicated to the
worldwide activation of this Double Current. After an initial burst of creativity we
went into hibernation for a number of years, and then explosively re-emerged to
become perhaps the first of the truly cybernetic orders, existing largely as an
international e-list with periodic synchronized rituals. In some ways it seems that
the Internet was needed to become the vehicle or nervous system of an entity
central to Nema's vision: N'Aton, the potential or eventual gestalt or world-mind
of our collective and awakened humanity. As a framework for the future aeon, the
power of free transmission both backwards and forwards through time is another
strand of this powerful system; and all of my writings here may be considered in
some sense to be simply an analysis of this Double Current. We may be
contacted at www.horusmaat.com. We also have an ongoing free online journal,
Silver Star.
I believe in the power of magick to plant seeds that manifest in the world: from
vision to art to movement to paradigm to the mutation of human nature. I believe
in alchemy, the turning of inchoate rage into compassion, inertia into change, war
into peace, famine into feast, death into birth. And I believe that out of this
awakening from global nightmare, the golden child of a future transformation will
soon be reborn from humanity’s continuous evolution.
"If the symbol method works well for you, I guess the most precise one for N'Aton
is the Maat wand he/she carries. It has a lotus-bud cupping the bottom of the
shaft, the shaft is elbow-to-fingertip long, and at the top is a heart girt with a
serpent (3 1/2 turns, a cobra with a spread hood), topped by the Feather.
Visually, he/she's golden all over, skin, hair, eyes - wears a pleated linen cloak
with vulture shoulder-piece, and always appears half-in-light, half-in-shadow.
Sometimes the shadow-side is invisible, with the stars and galaxies shining
through. About in the region of the genitals is a downward-facing Bee.”
- Letter from Nema, late 1970s

Members of the Lodge have debated the nature of N’Aton as an

evolutionary leap, a Next Step for humanity. Esoteric tradition has long
maintained the totemic belief that there is a guardian spirit for every natural
species, and foreshadowings of N’Aton as a collective avatar of humankind seem
to appear throughout our history; perhaps in the revolutionary worship of Aten as
the sun-disk by the famous heretic monotheist pharaoh Akhenaten, or in the

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prophecies of the future Buddha called Maitreya, or the final avatar of the Hindu
preserver-god Vishnu called Kalki. In a solar sense s/he may even resemble the
gnostic concept of the archetypical Cosmic Christ as distinct from the earthly
vehicle called Jesus, and many of us see hir as a possible outcome of the so-
called Holy Guardian Angel process. In a very similar way, Crowley identified
Aiwass (the spirit who transmitted or dictated the Book of the Law) with his own
HGA. Both Aiwass and N’Aton appear to be aspects of the ever-evolving
Zeitgeist (‘time-ghost’) or presiding spirit of a certain period or Aeon. This notion
of the eventual perfection of humanity is one of the core concepts of the Great
Work, and this androgynous, multi-racial, ageless N’Aton may appear as a
unified gestalt or whole, a collective consciousness or entity linking us all, the
living, dead and yet to be born, in a future Golden Age. Only Time will tell…
Please see Bibliography K. Some Amusing Post-Crowley Heresies & the
Typhonian Tradition.

I return now to the rather vexed subject of the O.T.O. (Ordo Templi
Orientis, the Order of Oriental Templars), which had a considerable history
before it became the first of the Masonic lodges to transform by acceptance of
the Law of Thelema or 'Do what thou wilt'. German industrialist Karl Kellner and
Theodore Reuss, a rather shady figure around the fringes of Freemasonry
(journalist, opera singer, socialist, police spy), founded the group in the late
1880s and it later became the Thelemic version well after the turn of the century.
At a conference held in Bavaria in 1924 and attended by Aleister Crowley, the
question was raised of accepting both Crowley's leadership and the ever-
controversial Book of the Law; its supporters included Reuss, Eugen Grosche
(later known as Frater Gregorius of the German Fraternitas Saturni or
Brotherhood of Saturn), Martha Kuntzel, and Karl Germer (who preserved the
line of descent which eventually became the primary North American incarnation
of the O.T.O.). Germer later survived brutal imprisonment under Hitler's regime
during the widespread Nazi persecution of occultists. There have been various
other branches of this organization, whose other well-known early members or
associates are often rumored to include the founder of Anthroposophy, Rudolph
Steiner, and the early Tarot theorist Gerard ‘Papus’ Encasse, and Dr. Franz
Hartmann. This may in fact simply reflect the tendency of Reuss to mail out free
memberships to prominent individuals, and there is no denying the active
tradition of creative mythologizing still common to all occult organizations.
Crowley, however, took over an eclectic and exotic masonic order and
completely transformed it in his own image.
Subsequent to Crowley's death in 1947 new varieties of schismatic O.T.O.
sprang up. The late Major Grady McMurtry (1918-1985) revived the order as the
Californian or Caliphate O.T.O. which now seems to have become the
established legal heir in this country, having triumphed in court over the
minuscule Brazilian O.T.O. of Marcelo Ramos Motta (1931-1987), and it has
apparently come to some form of truce with Kenneth Grant's London or
Typhonian Order mentioned above. Of these three branches, it is undoubtedly
Grant's version that has produced the most wildly and widely innovative and

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original thought subsequent to Crowley's own work. However, it is also the
American O.T.O. that has secured the copyrights and trademarked the seal, and
is thriving as a popular mass movement and busily spreading the officially
authorized and canonical Word of the Master Therion worldwide with a number of
publishing projects, an extensive Internet presence, and a vast franchise of
active groups. Unlike more orthodox churches, it has even achieved the
remarkable feat of persuading young people to attend Mass on Sundays. This is
Crowley’s Gnostic Mass, of course; you need a naked woman to do it properly.
The even more exotic quantum/thelemic/voudon master Michael
Bertiaux's own Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua sprang from a pre-Crowleyan
dispensation, although he is perhaps better known for his teachings released
through the Chicago-based Monastery of the Seven Rays. He is the creator of a
truly strange and complex system that I have made absolutely no attempt to
cover here, since briefly explaining Austin Spare is more than sufficiently
challenging. Explore his epic volume The Voudon Gnostic Workbook if you dare.
There was for many years also a Swiss O.T.O. led by Hermann Metzger
that reportedly experienced a local resurgence. While the Order originated in
Germany, occultism there was considerably ravaged by the hideous insanity of
the Third Reich, which despite its own esoteric roots still indulged an unfortunate
tendency to throw astrologers, freemasons and members of other secret
societies into the concentration camps along with the political dissidents, gypsies,
Jews, Slavs, trade unionists, communists, Catholics, homosexuals and other
groups. Perhaps the most influential post-war Crowleyan-influenced German
order was the notorious Fraternitas Saturni, whose work is described in Stephen
Flower's Fire & Ice; it has, however, taken the German people more than a
couple of generations to get over the grim association of volkisch occultism and
anti-Semitic Nazism.
There have been a number of other cut-off branches of the O.T.O. as well,
including the Great Brotherhood of God or G.B.G. founded by Crowley disciple
Louis T. Culling, the Lovecraftian-influenced order now called the
Chthonic/Ouranian Templars of Thelema, the Open Source O.T.O., the Albion
O.T.O., the O.T.O. Foundation, and even Jean Brayton's notorious 1970s Solar
Lodge in California, which allegedly may have crossed paths with the Manson
Family. Frequent schisms and vicious disputes are a common feature of all such
underground movements, whether magical or political or artistic or whatever, and
it seems rather dubious that any single individual has a completely clear claim to
being the One True Ultimate Official Outer Head of Order (O.H.O.) of the O.T.O.
derived directly from the Great Beast himself. My own feeling is that Crowley in
despair would probably have appointed half of the people he met for a drink to
the role of O.H.O. in the hopes that at least one would carry on his work, and it is
therefore appropriate to judge them solely by the value of their results. As far as
these various branches of his organization are concerned, one must balance a
desire to connect with the magical currents that they represent against a sober
personal judgment of the character of the individuals involved, which is always a
very wise policy in dealing with human groups of any kind. Remember these

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immortal words of wisdom from Monty Python: "We don't morally censure, we
just want the money!"
One of the more unusual accomplishments of recent occult research is the
monumental O.T.O. History website established by Peter-R.Koenig, which
despite a rather jaded (or even actively hostile) attitude still gathers an
extraordinary amount of documentation on the Crowley phenomenon in all its
forms; I will recommend it to the more discerning student. Of course, virtually
every esoteric order or cult mentioned herein now maintains some form of
Internet presence as well, and an enormous number of resources and texts and
journals are available.
Crowley's influence has never been limited to structured orders of
magicians, however: his ongoing impact upon musicians, writers, film-makers
(such as underground director Kenneth Anger), artists, harlots, criminals,
psychologists, drug fiends, scientists, scientologists, poseurs, physicists,
revolutionaries, and many other unique individuals runs rampant through the
twentieth century like some rabid mutational virus in heat. Small groups formed in
secret by people you’ve never even heard of may have attained many of the
most remarkable results, and the high level of discourse in cyberspace reveals
the widespread power of esoteric thought in our times.

Conspiracy Theory & Esoteric Espionage

“At midnight, all the agents and the superhuman crew,

go out and round up everyone who knows more than they do.”
- Bob Dylan

There are also a very strange series of connections between magick and
espionage extending at least as far back as Dr. John Dee's spying for Queen
Elizabeth, on to the rather curious activities of a number of our O.T.O. cast
(including Mr. Crowley himself) during the two most recent world-wars, to the
linkage of UFO phenomena with certain covert agencies and their mind-control
experiments, to L. Ron Hubbard's alleged investigation of the O.T.O. for Naval
Intelligence and the recently-published rumors that Jack Parsons actually faked
his own death and went underground to become the secret head of the CIA. No,
really… that is what some say. Over time Parsons has been adopted as a key
element of several UFOlogical theories including the Montauk Project, which
connect his pivotal Babalon Working of 1945/46 with the sudden huge outbreak
of the modern flying saucer phenomena in 1947, when seven crescents or discs
were seen skipping blithely over Washington State's Cascade mountain range
near the sacred site of Mount Rainier.
This link opens up our subject to a wider and more contemporary view of
the age-old Fiendish Conspiracy. In the past we saw occultists and freemasons,
templars and assassins, illuminati and rosicrucians lurking behind world events;
all these strands directly connect to the current sinister octopus of our shadowy
secret government, which so callously afflicts all aspects of the post-cold-war

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political landscape. As mentioned above, Dr. John Dee was not merely an
Elizabethan court astrologer and royal advisor; he was one of the founding
fathers of what became British Intelligence and his code-name was (believe it or
not) 007! Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, based his villainous Le Chiffre
(‘the cipher’) upon Crowley, who he knew during W.W.II. Dee is also a definite
candidate for an early founder of the Rosicrucian movement, and there have
even been transmissions to UFO contactees in what appears to be the Angelic or
Enochian language that he and his scryer Edward Kelly channeled. To this day
we are told that the British government, police, and intelligence services are
riddled with if not actually dominated by Freemasonry. Mason Cecil Rhodes
founded the Round Table group, which is a direct predecessor to the
Trilateralists, the Bilderburgers, and the Council on Foreign Relations. After W.W.
II the CIA amorally absorbed huge elements of the Nazi espionage network and
propaganda structure, as well as smuggling their V-2 rocket scientists out of the
Reich and into the American space program. The countless connections between
Masonry, the Knights of Malta, international banking, Italy’s scandalous P-2
clique, organized crime, terrorist and racist groups, the Vatican, and right-wing
powers-that-be in general can be rather shocking when examined more closely.
Occult movements can span the political spectrum, from the left-wing Illuminati
desire to smash the church & state to the right-wing royalist or even racist
Illuminati.
"Paranoia is a state of heightened awareness", said Claude Steiner.
“Paranoia is Love!” said Charlie Manson. “Even paranoids have enemies”, said
Henry Kissinger. The rather bizarre assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X
and John Lennon, like the attempts upon Ronald Reagan and George Wallace,
were allegedly and oh so very conveniently carried out by classic ‘lone nuts’, all
of whom shared many subversive connections and symptoms of drug-induced or
hypnotic mind control. These hearken back to the covert LSD-25, MK/ULTRA,
and Jonestown experiments carried out by the CIA; even the cult film The
Manchurian Candidate may actually have been a form of nonfiction. It is very odd
indeed that in other countries a quite clearly political assassination is usually
recognized as such, while here in America we are invariably informed that the
perpetrator is a lunatic working all by himself. My, what a remarkable
coincidence! Like many people I still suspect that at least one of the various Lee
Harvey Oswald clones was an innocent dupe of some kind, and I am fascinated
by Rosicrucian student Sirhan Sirhan's ability to shoot Bobby Kennedy in the
back while firing from the front, and to get 12 shots out of an 8-shot clip. What
ever happened to the ‘girl in the polka-dot dress’, and why were the local Texas
police so quick to deliberately obliterate all the available evidence? The deaths of
the Kennedy brothers and of Martin Luther King were an utterly vile turning point
in American history, and with the fall of Camelot and the subsequent grotesquely
transparent cover-up millions of people have lost all faith in our government,
which was once supposed to stand for truth, justice, and the American way of
freedom. Now it stands for uncontrolled greed for oil, the corporate rape of the
planet, fake drug wars, and the military support of fascist dictatorships. Many
people are so utterly disgusted and disillusioned that they don't even bother to

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vote, which sad fact largely accounts for the presence of utterly sleazy, venal,
duplicitous, senile and corrupt representatives in our seats of authority. The fact
that we permit ourselves to be constantly lied to by both the institutions of
political power and their lap-dogs among the infotainment media is a disaster
with no need to wait: it is already happening. The report of the Warren
Commission set a standard for corruption unsurpassed until that of the recent
9/11 Commission. Had any good wars lately?

"There has never been a more subversive, conspiratorial, unpatriotic, or

endangering course for the United States and the world than the attempt by the
United States to hide the truth behind the murder of its recent president." -
Bertrand Russell

It may appear that the fabled Rosicrucian Mount Abniegus, an allegorical

symbol of alchemical initiation, is in some ways cognate with or shadowed by the
actual el Alamut, the medieval stronghold of the Assassins who were led against
the Crusaders by the Old Man of the Mountain, Hassan I Sabbah himself. This
fortress contained a secret Garden of Paradise with fountains of wine and pools
of honey, and many beautiful maidens masquerading as houris from the Islamic
afterlife. Here the hashish-intoxicated acolytes were secretly transported for
reprogramming and then sent forth as the original ‘sleeper agents’, living
unobtrusively for years until ordered to kill, not unlike Oswald, Sirhan, Chapman,
Hinkley et al. This is no more unbelievable than the notion that the CIA has cut a
deal with little gray aliens to exchange abducted human DNA for advanced
technology, is it? Or are we simply being deluged with disinformation? The entire
UFO phenomenon may simply be a fantasy deliberately induced to distract us
from the horrible reality of the semi-human governments that control our lives
and exploit the resources of this planet. Occam's Razor will never go out of
fashion: "Entitia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem” (Entities are not to
be multiplied beyond necessity). The simplest explanation that accounts for all of
the known facts is the most likely; and conspiracy theory can be a quicksand that
drags one straight into raving psychosis. On the other hand, the lights in the sky
and the elaborate crop circle formations might also be the global equivalent of
loud sirens and flashing red ecological warning lights from Mother Gaia.
However, behind the political Power Elite or the Military-Industrial-
Academic Complex we often find only extreme greed and long-term stupidity at
work, and perhaps that is the ultimate flaw in conspiracy theory: in terms of
competence, let alone of omnipotence, humans usually just aren't that well
organized. All that can really be concluded is that a large number of ongoing
events seem to be steadily shattering the general public's faith in the veracity of
the powers-that-be. Even everyone's favorite non-fiction documentary series of
yesteryear, The X-Files, served to steadily erode the general public's rapidly
dwindling faith in our residual democracy.
And what is the great sin of the Illuminati, why was Lucifer cast from heaven?
The Illuminators are liberators, and the Luciferians are light-bringers. “They hate
us for our freedom.” Do people resist waking up themselves, or does someone

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profit from their sleep? Charles Fort said: “The earth is a farm. We are someone
else’s property.” And as Jim Keith once remarked: "The Left Hand Path doesn't
know what the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is doing." In any case, every occult
book I have ever read seems to have at least one obligatory moment where I
suspect that the author is completely nuts, so if I didn’t get to you with the stuff
about Atlantis or UFOs this must have been mine. However, in general, people
do not believe what they see, they merely see what they believe. The word
‘occult’, by the way, means ‘hidden’; and the word ‘conspire’ means ‘to breathe
together’.
See Bibliography N. UFOs & Conspiracy Theory.

Wicca, Neopaganism & the New Age

“Naked as on the day she was born, save for a double-looped string of
amber beads and a pair of harlequin-framed spectacles, Mrs. Flora Pentatuke, of
33 Partney Avenue, Flaxborough, leaped nimbly over the embers of the fire.”
- Colin Watson, Kissing Covens

In the early 1970s, I Was A Teenage Witch… and there were no websites,
chat rooms or support groups. One recalls Mr. Spock “attempting to create a
mnemonic circuit with stone knives and bearskins.” *******
Wicca is probably the first introduction to magic most people find in these
decadent times. Probably the most influential and popular element of the 20th
century occultism is modern Wicca. The return to a female vision of religion has
found a massive resonance in this revival of witchcraft as the Craft of the Wise, in
which Crowley himself had something of a formative hand through his friendship
with its major founder Gerald Gardner. In many ways Wicca has become the
most prominent and public form of recent Neopaganism, a truly massive initiatory
movement infiltrating every American community and expanding awareness of
alternatives to obsolete monotheistic religions. On a wider scale both feminism
and recent archeology have given rise to the Goddess movement, which has
also spread through society via such diverse mediums as the New Age
phenomenon, radical nuns, and the good offices of the Unitarians. The very
notion that the Divine can be female apparently comes as an earth-shaking
shock to much of western culture; just recall presidential candidate Pat
Robertson’s charming yet perhaps slightly medieval speech at the 1992 GOP
convention: “Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their
children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.” Influential
pagan voices such as the writer Starhawk have expanded the perspective of
Wicca to include social, ecological and political issues, and an astounding variety
of innovative Craft traditions have arisen worldwide. The accessibility of
witchcraft as a public phenomenon has contributed enormously to the magical
revival, as it is perhaps the first form that anyone is likely to encounter. Countless
books and magazines are available, and many cities and towns support occult
bookstores; newspapers and television interview Wiccan personalities, national

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umbrella organizations such as the Covenant of the Goddess have been formed
to lobby for Wiccan causes, large pagan festivals and conventions take place.
“We’re here, we’re weird, get used to it!” Television has chimed in with
Bewitched, Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Various other revivals of historical paganism arose in the 1970s, including
the Egyptian-based Church of the Eternal Source, the Cretan or Eleusinian
recreation of Greek mystery cults in Feraferia, and the neo-pagan Church of All
Worlds (based in part on Robert Heinlein's cult novel Stranger In A Strange
Land) which developed a wide influence through its well-known journal the Green
Egg. There are many more new groups today.
Wicca has very rapidly created and evolved a wide range of diverse traditions.
Isaac Bonewitz, in his innovative Real Magic, has proposed a useful set of
categories in witchcraft: "Classic, Shamanic, Gothic, Familial or "Fam-Trad,"
Immigrant or "Imm-Trad," Neopagan, Feminist, Neoclassic, Neogothic,
Neoshamanic, Ethnic, and Anthropologic Witches." Apparently he missed the
most prevalent modern variety, the “Pop Witch”; but Neopagan might cover most
of the countless groups active today, including the well-known Gardnerians and
Alexandrians, Victor Anderson’s Feri tradition, the Reclaiming Collective, and
many more. These titles may also hint at the wide variety of practices throughout
the history of a world where there are always witches behind the scenes, and
Neopagan Wicca is not a monopoly; it is, however, the variety best known to the
public today.
However, the survival of genuine although generally fragmentary elements of a
Traditional craft among certain old family trees is not as unlikely as some would
like to think, nor is it likely to resemble the Wiccan party line that began the
1950s when that odd duck Gerald Gardner sparked the renewal of paganism as
Wicca the Craft of the Wise. This was in fact a new version of the Old Religion,
where relatively public covens were formed and naked witches danced in circles
to raise the cone of power, celebrating the sabbats of the Wheel of the Year and
the mysteries of the Great Goddess and Her consort the Horned God. This
revival struck a deep chord with many who sought a more primal and personal
faith than any allowed by the established religions. Spreading rapidly from Britain
to America long before the New Age fad began, Wicca has brought magick and
the worship of the Goddess into the awareness of the general public, and largely
altered the attitudes people held towards such phenomena. As the counter-
culture begun in the 1960s loosened society up, as the closely related feminist
movement and green ecological concerns spread, as the news media slowly
began to disseminate this unofficial version of history, Wicca has become an
unusual but undeniable part of the alternative fringe of western culture, and I for
one will thank the Goddess for it. See Bibliography L. Wicca & Neo-Paganism.
This neo-pagan revival has often tended to strongly de-emphasize the
more sinister side of our history in the interests of portraying the violent
inquisitorial persecution of the heathens as a feminist holocaust. While there are
undeniable elements of truth in this view, there is also some exaggeration and
outdated information. Recent historical studies have found that the Burning
Times were perhaps not quite as dramatic as previously believed, and indeed

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some details of famous trials have turned out to be a 19th-century fiction created
by a hack writer and accepted by several generations of later scholars. The
executions which Gerald Gardner once miscalculated at nine million now appear
to have been ‘merely’ several hundred thousand at most, and the outbreaks of
mass hysteria that caused the trials lasted mainly from about 1550 to 1650. Yet
there is also some over-selective definition here: while most witches killed in
Europe were women, many men were also burned, more usually as werewolves
or heretics, and there were ongoing attacks upon Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals,
and other suspect groups which considerably raise the actual death-toll. Saddest
of all, the terrible Spanish Inquisition turns out to have been a relatively rational
and moderating force at the time, while more superstitious local secular courts
accounted for most of the bloodshed. None of these facts excuse a single
murder, let alone many thousands, and typically enough the Church has yet to
decently apologize. And the Holy Inquisition, of course, did succeed in the
persecution and massacre not only of countless Jews, but also the genocide of a
huge percentage of the native population of South America. Amazingly, when the
Spanish invaders moved in, the Aztecs and Mayans turned out not to be good
orthodox Catholics. The largely Protestant systematic slaughter of the original
inhabitants of North America accounts for many more murders, and both
colonization drives were deeply dependent on the trade in African slaves, so
western civilization has plenty of atrocities to answer for; and it is very hard to
believe that any witches could be as evil as the men who burned them, nor to
suspect that many fundamentalists would cheerfully do exactly the same thing
again if given half a chance.

"Hide, witch, hide! The good folk come to burn thee!

Their keen enjoyment hid behind a gothic mask of duty!”
- Jefferson Starship

Wicca sometimes seem to have fallen into that strange glorification of

victim-hood and martyrdom so popular on TV talk shows, and perhaps also into a
desire for some form of 20th century social respectability which I do not share.
Organized Christians have never bothered to atone for their periods of genocide,
so I feel no need to defend my own beliefs, which include a healthy regard for the
darker side of the Goddess rather than a schizophrenic tendency to split off the
threatening aspects of the universe into a Devil-figure, in some separate-but-
equal hell opposing heaven. I say, let's have some surrealist affirmative action to
bring our culture's Jungian shadow back into the mystic mainstream! Behind the
fluffy day-glow unicorns, elves and strawberries of the modern Craft movement
there lie very deep and primal mysteries; the midnight sabbat of the witches
grows out of the wild parade of atavistic beings who follow in the train of Shiva or
Dionysos, of Diana's fairy crew, of Herne or Wodan's Wild Hunt. Beneath the
obsessive control of civilized life lurk the primordial energies of the dreamtime,
which give vitality and meaning beyond the conventional limits of stifling morality
and jaded intellect.

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 While I was most enjoyably initiated into Wicca in my teenage years and
have long circled with various covens, I now seek to explore the deeper aspects
of the true tradition previous to the modern resurgence sparked by Margaret
Murray, C.G. Leland, Gerald Gardner, Doreen Valiente, and Paul Huson. There
is an older and darker survival sought by academics like Carlo Ginzburg, Ronald
Hutton, Michael Harrison, and Hans Peter Duerr, and Traditional writers like
Andrew Chumbley, Robert Cochrane, Nigel Aldcroft-Jackson, and Evan Jones;
the surviving elder witchlore of Old George Pickingill and the cunning-men, and
of the fabled crone Yelda Paterson who taught strange secrets to her protégé
Austin Osman Spare.

“We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom.”

- Francis Bacon

Most of the existing Wiccan groups are loosely based on Celtic mythology
and medieval grimoires, although there is some compelling evidence of early
middle-eastern influences in the more traditional Craft as well, and Gardner
himself drew much from a life spent largely in the Far East. There has also been
an ever-growing Norse revival, and although the British Odinic Rite appears to
have contained some regrettably right-wing elements, there are now also several
important American organizations like the Asatru Free Assembly and the Ring of
Troth who carry on the work in a non-racist manner. The many important writings
of Edred Thorsson and his magically oriented Rune-Gild, and a number of other
fine authors in the runic revival in general (including such luminaries as Diana L.
Paxson, Kveldulf Gundarsson, Freya Aswynn, Jan Fries and Nigel Pennick) have
created a remarkable rejuvenation of this powerful and organic heathen system.
Rune-magick is one of the most potent and direct methods I practice, and in
general there has been a higher level of scholarship in the Norse revival than in
most of the neopagan movements. It is also refreshing to note that Norse
heathenism survived much later in history than most European forms, and that
much of the pagan mythology and sacred poetry was collected and preserved
from destruction in the form of the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda. See
Bibliography D. Runes & Ogams/Norse & Celtic Mythology.
It is impossible here to do more than begin to survey the vast realm of the current
neopagan revival; Margot Adler's Drawing Down The Moon remains the best
study. The fact that I have not explored Wicca and Neopaganism more
thoroughly here, like my light pass over the importance of Tantra, is due largely
to unfortunate constraints of time and space. I was a teenage witch decades
before we had popular TV shows and spell-kits available at the local mall, and
have greatly enjoyed watching its rapid evolution. Also, Wicca is primarily still a
religious or devotional movement, deeply involved with the cycles of the Moon
and the seasons and the worship of the Gods, although in many ways it remains
inseparable from its original magical elements. Perhaps a lunar Wicca is the
inevitable natural balance to a more solar Thelema. See also Bibliography L.
Wicca & Neo-Paganism.

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 Let's also briefly face a rather appalling truth: the New Age Movement is
still one of the most widespread manifestations of alternative metaphysics in the
American mainstream. While there is a vast spectrum of quality filed under this
banner, which has often earned it justifiable ridicule for its frequent excesses and
commercialism, there has also been some remarkable work in human evolution
emerging from communities involved in various aspects of the expansion of
consciousness. As for the more preposterous elements, well... my own version of
Buddhist compassion pretty much involves not having terribly high expectations
for some people, and thus it is an even more pleasant surprise when something
real happens. Mark Twain once made a comment to the effect that if you meet a
talking dog, it is remarkable enough that you should not be critical if he doesn’t
do it very well. Perhaps it does not matter how ideas are spread, as long as they
are. EST, TM and Scientology, crystals, channeling and crop circles, Rolfing,
Reiki and Ramtha, pseudo-shamanism and bowdlerized tantrism, Ascension and
the Flower of Life, all the latest fads must have their place in the vast scheme of
things. There is a rather old joke, however: "What's the difference between
paganism and the new age? Two more decimal places on the price tag!" One
may also hear cruel comments like “there’s a seeker born every minute” or snide
terms like “bliss ninnies”. Perhaps the greatest danger of the New Age, aside
from typical cult behavior, is the compulsive ‘White Light’ denial of those negative
aspects of personality that serve to make people genuinely human. Contrary to
popular belief, repression does not actually make emotions go away; they simply
fester and re-emerge deformed. If you have issues… you really need to work on
them.

Vodou: the Mysteries of the Serpent

“Attibon Legba ouvri bayé pou’moin ago!

Ou wé Attibon Legba ouvri bayé
pou’moin ouvri bayé!
M’apé rentré quand ma tourné
Ma salute loa yo!”
Translation:
“Attibon Legba, open the gate for me, ago!
You see, Attibon Legba, open the gate for me,
open the gate!
I will enter when I return,
I salute the loa!”
- Haitian Vodou chant for Legba, transcribed by Harold Courlander

Most books on arcane American forms focus on either Wicca or Magick,

and completely ignore the widespread phenomena of Voodoo. But in terms of
survival rather than revival, the Afro-Caribbean traditions such as Santeria and
Vodou spread widely in both Americas, and are now becoming increasingly
accessible. Macumba and Candomble have always been powerful in South

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America, as are Cuban Lucumi and Jamaican Obeah; most areas which received
a diaspora of West African slaves developed some such form of religious fusion:
part tribal, part Christian, and even in part indigenous Native American
influences.
The best known is the Voudon or Vodou of Haiti, which created the only fully
successful slave revolution in the colonial empires established by the Old World
in the New World. It is a tribute to the strength and resilience of these people that
they preserved their religious heritage in the face of slavery and the most savage
forms of torture, execution and repression. The Haitian people are often
described as “90% catholic and 100% voodoo”; sadly, the much-feared Tonton
Macute or secret police of the Duvalier dynasty of dictators made use of the
darker forms of the tradition to spread fear. It is a unique aspect of such a living
cult that it continues to expand its rich pantheon; the countless Loa or spirits are
always acquiring new aspects, and often powerful humans are included after
their deaths in a form of apotheosis. There are even many contemporary
sightings of the Men In Black-like Zobops, who travel through the jungle by night
in big black cars with headlights like eyes, and kidnap the unwary traveler.

“Adhering to the principles of contagious and imitative magic, charm ingredients

were chosen because their physical appearance, their names, or their everyday
functions symbolized the desired attribute or action. Among the natural
ingredients used in charm formulation were plants, minerals, and animal parts
and products. Possession of the bodily products or unwashed clothing of the
target was a means of control, as was the writing of his or her name on a slip of
paper. The spiritual potency of the dead was solicited through the incorporation
of graveyard dirt into charms and by “planting” charms in the cemetery. Man-
made objects and substances were also used in charms. Iron horseshoes, nails,
and files represented strength. Thread and string “tied up” wrongdoers or
secured a lover. Sharp pins, needles, and tacks were used to “pin down” the
target. Perfume, honey, sugar, essences, and flavorings attracted lovers, friends
and customers. Hot elements, such as red or black pepper, dry mustard,
gunpowder, and matches, “heated up” a situation for quick results. Strong-
smelling substances like sulfur, ammonia or asafetida were protective charms.
Sour or bitter ingredients, such as lemon, beef gall, strong coffee, and vinegar,
were employed for “bad work”. Many magical ingredients were common
preservatives, cleansers, and other household products. Salt was the most often-
cited ingredient in protective charms…
Charm preparation involved ritual actions imitative of the desired result – bathing
upward or downward, sweeping into or out of the house, folding toward or away
of the user, turning upside-down or inside-out, crossing, tying, knotting, pinning,
nailing, shaking, bottling up, treading underfoot, casting away, burying, or
burning. The maker or user of the charm was sometimes required to perform the
ritual at the “four moments of the sun” – sunrise, noon, sunset, or midnight. The
number three (for the Father, Son and Holy Ghost) had magical significance, and
nine (three times three) was even more important. Rituals often called for the

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repetition of an action nine times or on nine successive days, or required the use
of nine items.”
- from Spiritual Merchants: religion, magic and commerce by Carolyn Morrow
Long

In recent years all these movements have become better known and more
public, as a current of primal magick which has prevailed over oppression and
which continues to the present day. Indeed, as with Tantra, there are a large
number of modern magicians being drawn into Voudon and Santeria as well. The
urge to connect with an extremely active spiritual pantheon, and to experience
firsthand a living magical tradition rather than one that is being revived from
fragmentary history is not uncommon. I also suspect that both Tantra and
Voudon have greater affinities to the Thelemic current and ethos than many other
streams of occult theology.
See Bibliography M. Santeria & Voudon.

Take a Walk on the Dark Side

"I smell blood, and an era of prominent madmen." - W.H. Auden

“Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.” - R.W. Emerson

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is
that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
- Oscar Wilde

There are many other currents that flow into the modern view of magick,
and prominent among them are quantum physics, political and personal
liberation movements, the birth of psychology and such artistic movements as
Dada and Surrealism. First Darwin shredded any notions of the unique origin of
humanity, and then Marx critiqued the abusive inequities of an exploitive social
order. Freud opened the door to the exploration of dreams and the power of
sexuality in our inner life. Jung studied parapsychology, alchemy and Gnosticism,
and provided the vital concepts of the collective unconscious or objective psyche,
of the process of individuation, and of the archetypes that hearken back to
Plato’s ideal forms, and his influence on magickal thought is undoubtedly much
greater. I highly recommend his inspired transmission The Seven Sermons to the
Dead, which is included as an appendix to his wonderful autobiography
Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and also reproduced with extensive commentary
in Stephen Hoeller's The Gnostic Jung. Jung’s form of psychology is the
definitive occult version to date, having especially influenced many authors on
astrology and the Tarot, and we should recall that early psychology emerged
from philosophy and ‘psychical research’ as much as from medicine and
anatomy: these were scientists who were searching for the human soul.

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 Around the same period the nihilism and disillusionment subsequent to
W.W. I led into the political and artistic revolution of Dada, whose deeply
anarchistic sense of cosmic absurdism later evolved into the more symbolic
explorations of Surrealism personified by the Salvador Dali Lama and others.
Many earlier movements such as the Romantics, Symbolists and Decadents
were also quite firmly grounded in occultism. Literature and music constantly take
new forms, and with jazz and the Beat generation, rock & roll, ever more modern,
abstract, psychedelic and visionary art, and the rapidly evolving and quickly
devolving over-the-counter-cultures of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, the various
breakdowns, terrorisms, and weird mutations of our modern society, there has
been a widespread and inevitable sensation of ever-accelerating change. We
cannot even begin to understand magick if we separate it from psychology, art,
the various mass movements toward liberation (whether political or nationalistic,
feminist or religious, sexual or racial) and the phenomena of popular culture.
Many of the most striking elements are found in the continual resurgence of dark
and horrifying imagery in books, music, and other artistic mediums.
In recent decades the film and television industries have produced new
cinematic interpretations of the dark literary tradition which runs through Poe and
Machen, Lovecraft and Smith, King and Rice, Barker and the so-called
splatterpunks, which clearly show that some large segments of the public have
developed a taste for very strong drink indeed. No month passes without new
vampire novels, and now even the once-fictional Cthulhu Mythos has become the
stuff of role-playing games; indeed, there are magicians making a full and active
use of Lovecraft's tales as a viable magickal system sometimes described as the
23 Current. Kenneth Grant has gone so far as to assert that Lovecraft's dream-
based cycle of stories are in fact valid visions of a grim cosmic reality. As we flow
through the recent technological era our television has spawned The Twilight
Zone and Dark Shadows, progressed to Twin Peaks and The X-Files, then
devolved into Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed. Herr Doktor Jung might
interpret all this activity as a confronting of the cultural shadow, while others
sense a horrifying flood of bloody and chaotic forces that may imply some major
transformations of our civilization. Both foreign and homegrown cults proliferate
and occasionally explode, and the New World Order appears immanent. Ever
since Einstein took up the sword of quantum theory and slew Newtonian physics
as an adequate answer to the nature of reality, we have all lived in a much more
uncertain universe, one constantly overshadowed by all the usual clichés of an
impending thermo-nuclear holocaust or unstoppable ecological apocalypse, and
the attendant paranoia of the worldwide UFO sightings. More recently the new
physics of chaos science has suggested the possibility of a higher level of
apparent order behind many superficially random processes. Soror Nema's
conception of the primordial atavistic forces of the Forgotten Ones resurgent
should also be remembered in this nocturnal context. Let’s all get together and
‘Immanentize the Eschaton’, shall we?
Perhaps the greatest manifestation of the night-side of humanity can be
found in the phenomenon of genocidal government-sponsored mass murder.
Nazi Germany (which was rooted in part in esoteric thought), Soviet Russia and

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Red China have slaughtered so many millions that even such utter horrors as
Cambodia, Bosnia, East Timor, Rwanda, the Middle East, and now the Congo
and Sudan seem rather trite. How many times can we say “Never Again!” without
ever actually meaning it? Are these really human sacrifices used to open the
outer gateways to the return of the Great Old Ones? Grant has suggested that
the detonation of nuclear weapons may also have served this secret purpose,
and that the massive release of radiation has radically altered both the biosphere
and psychocosm of our planet. Also, the rise of the serial killer as the dark
stranger of American society, the modern vampire sex-cult, and the otherwise
quite inexplicable popularity of many celebrities may bespeak some sinister pact
with the devil as well.
Consider the resurgence of popularized and sanitized diabolism sparked
by Anton Szandor LaVey and his founding of the Church of Satan in 1966; his
books have been continually in print for decades and have undoubtedly impacted
a few teenage thrill-killers as well as many others. An unusual personality he may
have been, but he figured out a smart enough racket so that he could afford to
quit his day job, yet another fine example of magicians who completely reinvent
themselves and declare a new era of history. His Satanic Bible is still in such
demand that even the superficially respectable chain stores in the malls carry it,
and is always one of the favorite things for the police to find back at the evil-
doer’s secret lair.
Rising from this is the later establishment of an even more sophisticated system
of magical philosophy in the Temple of Set, which was founded in 1975 by
LaVey's erstwhile ex-disciple Michael Aquino (a former Air Force colonel who
worked in intelligence) and has been carried on by his successor Don Webb,
Stephen E. Flowers, Nikolas & Zeena Schreck, and many others. This group
appears to have raised the diabolic current to a much more highly developed
intellectual level and has privately produced several works of high quality. They
have largely discarded the post-Christian obsession with Satan in favor of a
focus upon the more primordial pagan deities of darkness, chaos and opposition.
Set himself, of course, has often been identified with the core Thelemic god-form
Hadit.
The Temple of Set, in fact, seems to have accomplished a number of goals that
have proven quite difficult for other occult groups. They have apparently had a
(relatively) orderly and amicable succession in leadership instead of collapsing
with the retirement of their founder, and they have emphasized intelligence and
accomplishment, individuality and creativity instead of dogma and masses of
empty-headed followers. They have researched and created a variety of
specialized sub-sects within their organization, apparently avoiding many
(although probably not all) of the internecine battles and schisms so common in
occultism. I find some of their writing very useful.
On a merely pop-culture level, the satanic energy has been carried further
if less accurately onwards by a series of whacked-out teenagers, heavy-metal
bands and the occasional depraved psycho killer. However, the actual existence
of any wide-spread evil cult of baby-sacrificing devil-worshippers seems to be
merely the hysterical and ratings-driven creation of noisy tabloid journalists (such

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as Geraldo Rivera), rabidly Fundamentalist Christian talk-show hosts, and the
excesses of the repressed-memory school of hypno-therapists. Some years ago
an extensive and very expensive probe by the F.B.I. proved embarrassingly
unable to turn up any hard evidence thereof. Furthermore, the repressed-
memory school of thought has turned out to be more than slightly unreliable and
is now fairly thoroughly discredited; hypnotic suggestion is a useful tool, but must
be used with enormous care. And as Arthur Miller once remarked, "A witch-hunt
isn't any fun unless everyone joins in". As Bart Simpson said, “All the best bands
are associated with Satan.”
Ah, well… perhaps the worst thing you can say about Satanism is that if
you screw up, you go to heaven. It may be all too easy to dismiss the late Black
Pope LaVey as a mere showman; in point of fact this was a man who thought
quite deeply about history and morality, music and magick, and had some very
cogent insights to impart about both the tangled psychology and the pure
hypocrisy of human nature and modern culture. As George Bernard Shaw
remarked, "A nation's morals are like its teeth; the more decayed they are, the
more it hurts to touch them." And I suppose that Satanists, in many ways, are
simply the most seriously damaged Christians. In actuality, if you want to find a
cult which habitually molests children, the Catholic Church has turned out to have
had far too many peculiar incidents with its nuns and choirboys, and it has
become increasingly difficult to find a Protestant televangelist who hasn't turned
up with his own church organ caught in his metaphorical zipper. Apparently
sexual repression, when it has been officially institutionalized, has a pronounced
tendency to become sexual perversion. Perhaps if our dear Christian brethren
lived up to their protestations of virtue Satan might seem less attractive. "Prisons
are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion,” said William Blake.
I should also mention the very odd Process Church of the Final Judgment
begun by Robert and Mary Anne de Grimston, which somehow managed to
merge ordinary Jesus freaks with Satanic fundamentalists in the 1970s; an
important influence upon the later group ToPY, and yet another of the oddly
disconcerting Manson Family connections, by the way. "The truth is ugly, so we
put our prophets in prison," to quote Charlie himself.
In the last analysis this underground satanic current is now such a fringe element
that the vast majorities of mainstream occultists or witches seldom even consider
it as anything but a lingering media embarrassment, and indeed may actually be
surprised to see it mentioned in a more serious (?) context such as this. As a
matter of courtesy I should perhaps emphasize that as far as the pre-Christian,
Neo-Pagan, and Wiccan revivals to which most living magicians adhere are
concerned, the Christian Devil as a useful concept barely even exists within their
categories of belief. For that matter, the common notion of Crowley as a Satanist
simply reveals people who have never read enough of the man's work to realize
that whatever the hell he was is considerably more complicated. "There ain't no
devil, there's just god when he's drunk," according to Tom Waits.
However, we cannot deny the appeal of sinister godforms to many modern
magicians, nor ignore the power they contain. In all truly pagan religions there
are gods of light and fire, and gods of air and darkness no less holy. There are

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gods who, like humans, contain both, instead of trying to artificially separate the
two. Many deities of Asia have two aspects, the wrathful and the compassionate.
Jungian psychology suggests that a personal shadow left unfaced is also left
unmastered, and that the ‘never have a negative thought’ delusions of the New
Age movement result only in the demented acting-out of unresolved issues. The
true magician must reconcile both faces of the divine and of the self as well. Are
not God and the Devil simply two sides of the same coin? For further
background, see Bibliography O. Satanic and Nazi Occultism.

We must also note a surprising rebirth of neo-shamanism sparked in part

by a burst of interest in Native American traditions and in part by the remarkable
work of Carlos Castaneda and his circle, which includes such authors as Florinda
Donner Grau and Taisha Abelar, later contributors Ken Eagle Feather, Carlos
Santos and Victor Sanchez, and academic critics like David Silverman, Daniel
Noel, and Richard de Mille. They appear to be evolving a modern system out of
ancient Toltec traditions, and due to Castaneda's popularity as a best-selling
writer this has had a considerable impact on the general public. Like many if not
most magicians, Castaneda himself seems to have been something of a trickster,
and we must hope that he did not just make the whole thing up, but this hardly
invalidates the profound insights and many useful techniques his teachings and
world-view provide.
These sorcerers in turn provided some metaphysical context for the rise of
the psychedelic culture stimulated by such researchers as Timothy Leary, Ralph
Metzner, Richard Albert, Stanislav Grof, John Lilly, Terence McKenna and many
others, and manifested by the various alternative cultures ranging from the beat
generation and the early flower power movement to the punks, goths, ravers,
ferals, urban primitives and other performance artists of the new millennium. Are
rock stars truly the future avatars of Orpheus and Dionysos? Musical groups
have virtually defined many of the largest popular movements of our era. At any
rate, the widespread availability of new and improved mind-expanding
substances has had an enormous impact upon American society, and rock & roll
is still the Devil's music, which certainly puts eMpTV in a very interesting moral
position. See Bibliography S. Altered States.
The works of Michael Harner and Sandra Ingerman and the training
system of their Foundation for Shamanic Studies, while at times derided as
‘McShamanism’ by some, have been highly influential in spreading ancient
teachings and techniques to new generations worldwide. They have also actively
worked to revive shamanic practices in surviving traditional cultures before they
are lost completely, a very worthy cause.
However, the rather shallow and disconcerting phenomenon of New Age
Shamanism, like their earlier wholesale (and retail!) pillage of the Native
American traditions, frequently appears to be dangerously close to a self-
indulgent aberration; shamanism in its pure form cannot easily be divorced from
its tribal and cultural roots, its transforming power, or its true context as a healing
tradition within a cohesive community. I suppose that there is always hope that
such vital practices can be a starting place which leads people on to finding their

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own way of being in the universe, and that the manifestation of what we might
call neo-shamanism affirms that "the goddess is alive and magick is afoot!" in the
world of today.

The Chaos Orders & Post-Modern Sorcery

"One must have chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star." -
Friedrich Nietzsche

In 1978 in Britain the New Equinox magazine presented one of the earliest
announcements of a new order and a new current: "The I.O.T. represents a
fusion of Thelemic Magick, Tantra, The Sorceries of Zos, and Tao. The non-
mysteries of symbolic systems have been discarded in favor of mastery of
technique...." It is from this beginning and in this broad context that the radical
synthesis of Chaos Magick arose in the workings of a few small groups of
anarchist mages, a more streamlined methodology that drew upon both the past
and the future in sometimes arbitrary ways, and emphasized practical techniques
and observation of the nature of reality rather than the theoretical models and
complex theology of the Qabala. Despite the seeming contradictions inherent in
the founding of a Chaos Order, this postmodern or freestyle approach to sorcery
evolved into the Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros or I.O.T. (Thanatos and
Eros are the fabled Freudian forces of death and sexuality) as well as a handful
of other loose and individualistic cabals. Utilizing the symbol of the Chaosphere
or eight-rayed star, they have now become the established revolutionaries of the
magical community. Techno-shamans and chaos-engineers in erotically charged
virtual mandalas, cyber-ejaculating their fractal sigils into the astral-qabalistic
Internet of the psycho-spiritual quantum field!
Their writings are also core volumes of the curriculum I herein suggest. The best-
known of the seminal works, Pete Carroll's Liber Null & Psychonaut, are both
sharp and concise surveys of the techniques of the Art as essential to the
understanding of modern magickal thought as the writings of Crowley, Spare,
Nema, and Grant; and his later Liber Kaos and others present both his own view
of new-wave physics and further outlines the structure and practices of the I.O.T.
The more recent and very thoughtful volumes contributed by Phil Hine,
Condensed Chaos and Prime Chaos, also contain many insights into the
conceptual background and personal practice. Related fine writers include Ray
Sherwin, Dave Lee, Steve Wilson, Steven Mace, Francis Breakspear, and even
Frater U.D. and Ramsey Dukes; sad to say, chaos most often extends to their
limited distribution in America. As with most magical movements their influence
extends far beyond those formally affiliated with any groups, as such currents
become active within all individuals who contact them through the various media
they employ. I would also like to mention the Order ov Chaos, a very creative
cabal of magical performance artists located in Australia. See also Bibliography
P. Chaos Magick Organized.

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When reading early issues of the journal Chaos International one frequently finds
humorous reminders of a genial rivalry between O.T.O. members and Chaosians
on the British occult scene, which seemingly show underlying differences
between the two major movements in terms of teachings and approach. My own
feeling is that this actually does something of an injustice to the true spirit of
liberty in Thelema and even to Crowley himself. While he certainly devoted vast
effort to creating a defining system of his own, clearly spelling out elaborate
structures and practices, Crowley at his best recognized that all systems were in
some sense arbitrary projections of the human mind which had created them,
and were ultimately tools to be used and transcended. Crowley's career may
have begun a century earlier, but in many ways demonstrates very similar
concerns.
The key symbol of the Chaosphere, formed of eight arrows radiating from a
central black sphere, is drawn from the fantasy fiction of Michael Moorcock. In
many of his tales this pantacle of the Chaosphere is paralleled by a
corresponding single Arrow of Law, and both are reconciled in turn by the
Maatian scales of a Cosmic Balance. It is amusing to note the recurring symbol
of the Arrow appearing in Crowley's Enochian visions, as well as repeated
references to Chaos, and to wonder at how easily the Chaos Current might
harmonize with the vision of Thelema. My own impression is that many recent
magi find themselves perfectly comfortable with drawing upon both traditions,
and that in practice there is considerable crossover. As Chaos Magick makes
free use of various paradigms, Crowley's cosmos would seem to be at least as
useful as any other modern system; and a major strand of Chaos suggests that
each of us is a constellation of identities, rather than the monolithic unity favored
by western culture in general. In fact, it seems almost impossible to impose any
rigid categories upon modern magicians; eclecticism is the name of the game
and half the fun. Most of us have a whole range of odd experiences in our
backgrounds. Perhaps we could envision a gleaming magical wand, topped with
a Chaosphere of black radiance and entwined caduceus-like with the twin
serpents of the Double Current of Horus and Maat, golden and silver.
I consider the freedom of Chaos Magick to be a highly encouraging trend
in its straightforward determination for occultism to continue to evolve and create
new forms and techniques, as I believe all such works of art to be among the
major ways of earthing magick in results. I admire the purely experimental
approach and openness to the implications of scientific thought, and in terms of
influences and techniques their rather elegant synthesis does look an awful lot
like my own synthesis in most ways.
This current may reflect in magickal terms such multimedia trends as collage in
art, montage in film, sampling in music, subliminal advertising, and also quantum
physics and chaos theory on the cutting edge of science; perhaps even
extending to deconstruction in criticism and magical realism in literature. Indeed,
their major influences include certain strange literary works that are themselves
also engines for the personal transformation of reality, such as the wonderful
Illuminatus! series by Wilson & Shea, Philip K. Dick’s bizarre trilogy of Valis
novels, Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s

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Pendulum, the many works of Roger Zelazny, or graphic novels including Grant
Morrison’s brilliant holographic enchantment The Invisibles, Neil Gaiman’s
Sandman and Alan Moore’s fabulous Promethea. See Bibliography V. Occult
Fiction.
What makes Chaos Magick more or less post-modern is this emphasis upon a
multitude of models rather than a dependence upon what Blake called "single
vision and Newton’s law". The neo-shamanism of the urban primitives can be
combined with the ancient wisdom of the sages and the speculations of future
science, with the pandemonium of personalities and possibilities bent to the will
of the individual sorcerer.
In a sense, it is by consideration of and in response to this relatively recent
curriculum of Chaos that I have been moved towards formulating my own present
feelings on magick. Galileo*Newton is said to have said: “If I have seen further
than other men, it is because I have stood upon the shoulders of giants.” While I
believe that every sorcerer should ultimately create a truly unique synthesis of
their Art, it is also my opinion that when standing on the shoulders of others it is
rude to ignore where one's feet are planted. I do have some reservations about
the early chaotic trend toward the substantial elimination of the spiritual
dimension and the semi-structured unfolding of a balanced system of
development (i.e., the Tree of Life model) from the magickal experience; one
might seem to be at risk of missing the point at best, or even of some deep
personal dementia at the worst. Feedback from others in your working group can
serve as the antidote to this possibility, and perhaps my sense of the romance of
sorcery simply makes me long for a bit more poetry. Also, Chaoism began with a
valiant attempt to discard or at least remodel symbolic and mythological systems,
and I happen to quite enjoy such things and think that they inevitably have a lot
to do with the way the human mind interacts with its surroundings. Chaos may be
the gateway to the primal forces underlying all manifestation, but forming a
conditional reality, however arbitrary and short-term, implies some sort of
balanced organization as well. The Freemasons have a useful motto: ORDO AB
CHAO, or "Order out of Chaos". There is a creative tension between the two
states, and from the ever-changing whirlwind of the world's esoteric traditions, we
create our own visions.
Like Crowley and Spare, these ‘Anarchs of the New Paradigm’ (Hakim
Bey's term) have greatly emphasized both constant paradigm-shifting and an
impromptu deconditioning like unto the systematic derangement of the senses
hailed by such poets as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Artaud. This exalts the
deliberate breakdown of the merely surface or conventional personality in the
quest of some wider and wilder consciousness beyond. Such extreme and tantric
techniques have inevitably included certain perils as well as great rewards. In
general the strange glamours of the magickal arte have often attracted some
rather fringe personalities, and thus there is quite logically a high rate of burnout
cases, so anyone who actually survives a few years on this winding and
labyrinthine path gets real points in my view. Those who crash in flames should
perhaps serve as a warning to others. At the same time, you have no business
messing about with magick if you are not prepared to live dangerously, and are

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not willing to face radical change. Chaos like Thelema offers a freedom more
demanding than any limiting Law.

As a postscript, several other influences might also be mentioned in this

context: for example, the absurdist Church of the Sub-Genius and their fictional
yet brilliant messiah ‘Bob’ Dobbs has had a surprising success for a bad joke
founded by a bunch of Texas white boys, and contains far more Divine Truth and
esoteric insight than one might expect.
Also from Britain is Thee Temple ov Psychik Youth founded by the author
and musician Genesis P-Orridge, which extensively popularized Spare’s concept
of sigil magick, and which might have been taken more seriously if they had ever
stopped piercing their genitalia long enough to learn how to spell. Their early
works are littered with what I regard merely as deliberate and annoying
ToPYgraphical errors, which often distract from the message. The practice is
partly inspired by the fictional works of William S. Burroughs and Brian Gysin,
and upon rare occasions does in fact make one pause to reconsider the use and
meaning of words. Mr. P-Orridge is well known for his work with various bands
including Psychic-TV and the industrial music movement, and for the harassment
inflicted upon him by hysterical elements of the British media establishment.
Last but by no means least, three other influential prophets must be
mentioned: one is the ontological terrorist Hakim Bey, co-founder of the Moorish
Orthodox Church, whose concepts as explained in the Temporary Autonomous
Zone (aka T.A.Z.) and other works (some published under his original name of
Peter Lamborn Wilson) are an inspiration to us all.
The next is Dr. Robert Anton Wilson, who explains many kinds of very
wonderful and important things, and whose facts and fictions should be read by
every adult who is trying to digest their inner child. His early association with the
Erisian Movement, as revealed in the sacred Principia Discordia, is yet another
strand in the ever evolving weave of Chaos. So are his revival of the Illuminati
mythos and his explorations of the thoughts of Timothy Leary, Buckminster
Fuller, James Joyce, Aleister Crowley (him again!) and various other geniuses.
Sadly, he has recently passed on, but I was lucky enough to hang out with him a
few times, and he remains one of my personal heroes. May all the gods bless his
name! Go forth immediately, and read his essential works Cosmic Trigger I and
Prometheus Rising to begin; all of his writings are luminous and inspirational, and
they never fail to cheer me up and increase the rate of synchronicities I
experience in daily life. Again, he is a vital part of my own synthesis.
Finally, a neo-tantric influence has flowed into the west through the
mediation of Sri Guru Dadaji Mahendranath, an Englishman who was advised
early in life by Aleister Crowley to journey to India, where he remained for many
years. He garnered initiations into various traditions, and especially preserved
the Nath tradition of Saivism; his disciples have been known variously as the
Western or International Nath Order, or as A.M.O.O.K.O.S. This movement has
spread widely through both the European and American magical revivals by
virtue of his profound and charming writings and the efforts of an ever-expanding
body of initiates.

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Aum. Ha!

Witchcraft, Magick, Sorcery: Moon, Sun, Stars

"Magick is not created by man; it is a part of man, having its basis in the structure
of his brain, his body and his nervous system in their relations to his conceptual
universe, the matrix of thought, and of speech, the mother of thought."
- Jack Parsons

"All the world is but the smoke of our intellects. What we want, we may make
about us; and what we don't want, we may sweep away.”
- H.P. Lovecraft

If there is to be a hierarchy or ascending spiral of the mystic arts, an

evolutionary structure of lower and higher forms, it may be constructive to define
it in terms of practice rather than rank or theological superiority. Everyone has
the potential to function on any level, and I choose here to chart the main forms
on the central pillar of the tree of life.
From the physical plane of earth we first enter the gateway of the lunar
realm traditional to witchcraft, that primal mystery cultus known and often feared
in almost every human culture, the most direct development of paleoshamanism
into recorded history. The witch is the classical example of the Other, the strange
and disquieting presence of the enchantress, the cunning-man or wise-woman;
sometimes a healer, advisor or midwife, sometimes a dark and threatening figure
who sits upon the fence which marks the boundary between the human world
and the chaos of wilderness beyond. The powers of healing and harming are as
closely linked as love and hate, as life and death. Witches brew herbs and
potions, love-philters and deadly poisons; they employ strange jewels and
crystals to form amulets and talismans, they consort with animal powers and fly
overhead by night. In ancient times, we find such classic examples as Medea
and Circe in Greece, the hedge-riding hags of northern Europe, and the feared
secret societies of Africa or Asia. Most often witches were seen as women,
perhaps because of simpleminded misogyny, or perhaps because they are so
closely linked to the cycles and crisis-points of life: as midwives at birth, healers
in time of sickness, and lastly as the layers-out of the dead. Not until Christian
times were these elder figures tainted with the imposed concepts of Satanism
and heresy, thus forming the persecuted archetype of the malefic 'black witch';
still, witches have always been considered rather dangerous to be around,
although very good people to have on your side. The average person is still
carefully programmed with an ambivalent attitude toward the weird and wild.
In this lunar realm lie the casting of spells and the power of the
overlooking gaze, the working of natural magick in tune with the primal gods of
nature, the animistic and etheric interweaving of deep desires expressed in the
figurative nuts & bolts of primal shamanic or simple operative folk magick or
hoodoo. In classical times this lunar realm was conceived as the effective sphere

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of all sorcerous endeavor, and the Yesodic or astral planes are still thought to
consist of such malleable stuff that weavings of imposed meaning there are
inevitably manifested on the physical level in time. The midnight Sabbat of the
witch-cult is always accessible, especially when the tides of the cycles of moon
and year reach their peaks.
While Crowley is not often thought of in terms of the craft, he did have this
to say of the material elements of their practices in his thoughts on the forging of
magical links:

"The same may be said of witches, who appear to have been wiser than the
thaumaturgists who despised them. They at least made waxen images -
identified by baptism - of the people they wished to control. They at least used
appropriate bases for magical manifestations, such as blood and other vehicles
of animal force, with those of vegetable virtue such as herbs. They were also
careful to put their bewitched products into actual contact - material or astral -
with their victims. The classical exorcists, on the contrary, for all their learning,
were careless about this essential condition. They acted as stupidly as people
who should write business letters and omit to post them." - Crowley's Magick,
chapter XIV

* * * * *

At the solar level we find greater elaborations of hermetic symbolism: less

of instinctive ecstasy and more of intellectual or ordered ritual and doctrine, more
written records of a personal visionary gnosis and less immersion in collective
unconsciousness. Traditionally such work draws quite heavily upon the mediation
of external powers in the complex ceremonial invocation and evocation of spirits,
elementals, angels, demons and other entities; a system conceptually dependent
upon the literary and hierarchical model of the qabalistic cosmos. For me this
mode of operation is now best expressed more simply through the Knowledge &
Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, as expedited by the Law of Thelema
and the Double Current. Such New Magick was most thoroughly recodified in this
century by (deja vu!) Aleister Crowley, who thought deeply and wrote profoundly
of it for his entire life, in every viewpoint ranging from the mystical to the rational.
He attempted to apply scientific principles to the work, and insisted upon the
keeping of accurate records of technique and results. This turns out to be very
useful, and like works of art in any form serves to earth the current in
manifestation. Seeking to unify eastern techniques of training the mind with more
western esoteric symbolism, he summarized thus:

Table 2: from The Equinox

YOGA AND MAGIC

I. Yoga is the art of uniting the mind to a single idea. It has four methods:
Gnana-Yoga Union by Knowledge
Raja-Yoga Union by Will

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 Bhakta-Yoga Union by Love
Hatha-Yoga Union by Courage
add Mantra-Yoga Union through Speech
Karma-Yoga Union through Work
These are united by the supreme method of Silence.

II. Ceremonial Magic is the art of uniting the mind to a single idea. It has four
methods:
The Holy Qabala Union by Knowledge
The Sacred Magic Union by Will
The Acts of Worship Union by Love
The Ordeals Union by Courage
add The Invocations Union through Speech
The Acts of Service Union through Work
These are united by the supreme method of Silence.

This chart is a good example of why I feel that eastern and western
magick overlap: because mantras are spells and words of power, yantras are
talismans and icons, and mandala is Sanskrit for 'magick circle'. In both magick
and tantra very similar rites may be performed in the graveyard by night, and
these simply reflect the ways in which the human mind operates and the
shocking stimuli to which it responds.
Crowley's Magick was initially largely based on the training he received in
his early years with the Golden Dawn. From them he took the concept of an
initiatory ascent rising through the qabalistic spheres, and the invocations of the
powers of those spheres as planetary forces; a practice arising from the theurgy
of the Neoplatonists, and the daemonic invocation of elementals and spirits
typical of the more medieval and renaissance ceremonial magicks mentioned
above. In the aftermath of his reception of Liber AL, he made contact with a
series of entities or guides such as Aiwass, Lam, Abuldiz and Amalantrah. In his
later years he was greatly influenced by the sexual occultism taught by the
German O.T.O., and thus many of his seers were Scarlet Women entranced in
part through the use of sensuality, drugs and alcohol. His evolution from the
complexity of the qabala to these simpler and more direct methods of Thelemic
magick, while never a complete break, is illustrative of his unique position as a
pivot between the old aeon of the slave-gods and the New Aeon of Horus. As I
have remarked elsewhere, many of the extreme and undeniable peculiarities of
his personality seem to arise from this function as an alchemical crucible
designed by destiny to revise and purify the magical current into a new form.
Study of his essential works remains highly educational.

* * * * *

Ultimately a magician must be a creative artist as well as a receiver of

tradition. If Magick is truly an art, Wicca a craft, then these terms imply the

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expansion of personal skills and an ongoing contribution to the body of lore. In
the last analysis, one must create one’s own system or be bound by another’s.
As the poet Milton's Devil remarked, it is “better to reign in Hell than serve in
Heaven."
I will call this Sorcery, ascribe it to the star-level of the Crown, and use
Austin Osman Spare as the last century's prime example. On the one hand, he
maintained that he was carrying on the secrets of the most ancient sabbatic
mysteries; on the other, his work is among the most strikingly original and
individualistic systems of artistic sorcery in history. His concept is of the ancestral
and primordial Kia, as the all-encompassing consciousness of being which
evolves throughout the many forms of life into the human vehicle called Zos,
containing the whole of history and the genetic universe of animal spirits and
their abilities; these can be resurrected by means of an atavistic resurgence to
serve as the familiars of the sorcerer. Spare's notion of the Alphabet of Desire,
whose living letters form a personal vocabulary of emotional states and cosmic
powers, was no doubt influenced by the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic script in
which very naturalistic representations of birds and beasts frequently appear, and
the most dangerous of these were often depicted in mutilated or partial forms.
The zoomorphic gods of this culture are also suggestive of intermediate or
composite forms between animal, human and god, while many similar
multifarious mutations and transformations appear in Spare's remarkable art. For
him the “holy in-betweeness concepts” or the “neither-neither state” were vital;
and liminal states, doorways and gates, beaches and bridges, windows and
thresholds, wells and towers, boundaries and crossroads, caverns and wetlands,
are always sacred to the gods of magick. Again, we find the figure of the magus
as one who masters the ancient mysteries and once again makes them new.

"The fractional second is the path I would open.... Magic is but one's natural
ability to attract without asking."
"The magical act is a fulguration of one's whole affectiveness by wish-education."
- A.O. Spare

If I were to arbitrarily summarize these levels of practice as if they did not

in fact overlap, I might suggest that witchcraft involves the directly focused use of
the most fundamental elemental and physical spell-weaving and folklore, while
magick often operates more by such mediated practices as invocation and
evocation of many varied types of entity, whether seen as external powers or
projections of the psyche. Sorcery (while others, including anthropologists, may
use the term differently) combines both of these with the pure power of the Will
and advances the integration of personal reality and creative artistry to the next
step. I would suggest a merging of all the traditional tools and techniques of
classical magick and witchlore and the cosmology or theology of Crowley with
the methods and creativity of Spare, and this is similar in essence to the
approach of Chaos Magick, assuming that we omit any formal theological
definitions. Other possible names that have been suggested for this are the so-
called Pragmatic Magick, Results Magic, or W.D. Sargent's Eclectic Ritualism,

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which draws upon all world cultures. I might call it Freestyle Sorcery, or Future
Magick!
This schema also seems to reflect the chronological evolution of magick
itself: from the direct spells of the ancient world, as acts of binding chosen effects
into manifestation; to the elaborate conjurations of spirits in medieval ceremonial
magick and recent lodge-work; to the use of sexuality, sigils and dream control in
post-modern practice. Whatever floats your boat is now possible. At the same
time, it also reflects the ancient Greek hierarchies of the witch-like Goetia, the
more skilled and scholarly level of hermetic Magia, and the crowning form called
Theurgia, which invoked the higher divine powers for the communion and
transformation of the soul itself.
The Next Steps in human evolution are often said to be the union with the
Holy Guardian Spirit, followed by the great leap of crossing the Abyss: the
perfection of the Self or Selves, followed by a sacrificial dissolution. On the
qabalistic tree these advances are guarded by the Veil of Paroketh that precedes
the solar sphere of Tiphareth, and the Veil of the Abyss before the supernal triad,
which match up to the divisions suggested above. Each step or sphere in magick
becomes a platform for the launching of the subsequent apotheosis, and each
mage recodifies ancient tradition as modern technique and thus provides the
basis for subsequent successors.
The ancient moralistic division between black and white magick may be
rather arbitrary, as good and evil often seem less like ultimate principles than
situational and political divisions established by humans: we are good, they are
bad. There is a lot of rather obvious racism involved in labeling Voudoun or
Santeria as black magick, a lot of arrogant self-righteousness among some
‘white’ magicians, and a lot of unconscious and unexamined behavior among
some self-proclaimed ‘black’ magicians. Perhaps any such view should depend
solely upon your own unique ethical decision as to whether certain methods,
means, or goals are acceptable to your sense of justice and the sanctity of all (or
at least most) life. "I have a little list, they never will be missed!” to quote Gilbert &
Sullivan. Personally, I like my magick in wide-screen Technicolor, and one of the
mysteries concealed by magick is this: in the end, the White Lodge and the Black
Lodge may well turn out to be the same damn thing. See Alejandro Jodorowski’s
great film The Holy Mountain.

"White magic is poetry; black magic is anything that actually works.”

- Victor Anderson

The Magisterium Rosarium of the Alchemists

And now I will take a few moments to go back to the beginning of recorded
history and the roots of human evolution, and discuss how the nearly forgotten
practice of alchemy created modern civilization by laying the foundations of
modern science, and how the theories and goals of these hermetic philosophers
define the ultimate purpose of high magick.

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 The ancient Egyptians are generally recognized as the founders of
alchemy, as masters of gold-working and metallurgy, distillers of plant oils and
perfumes, brewers of beer and other alcoholic beverages, makers of dyes and
medicines, able to tint gem-stones and create fine jewelry.

and the ancient codex known as the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus
encodes many formulas of such operations. This mysterious text appears to
come from a 12th century Latin rendition of a 10th century Arabic translation of a
4th century Greek text probably based on an even earlier Egyptian original. I
include it in full here, as a summary of the transformations engaged in the Great
Work:

"True, without falsehood, certain and most true, that which is above is as that
which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, for the
accomplishment of the miracles of the One Thing.
Just as all things proceed from One alone by the mediation of One alone, so also
they have their birth derived from this One thing by adaptation.
The Sun is its father, the Moon is its mother, The Wind has carried it in its womb,
and the Earth is its nurse.
This is the Child of all perfection, or consummation of the whole world.
Its power is perfect and integrating, if it be converted into earth.
Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, softly, and
with great ingenuity and prudence.
It rises from earth to heaven, and descends again from heaven to earth, and
receives the power of the superiors above and the inferiors below.
So thou hast the glory of the whole world, and all darkness and obscurity flee
before you.
This is the strong force of all forces, overcoming every subtle and penetrating
every solid thing.
So this world is created according to the prototype of the great world.
From this and in this way, marvelous applications and adaptations are made, of
which this is the manner.
For this reason am I called Hermes Trismegistus, for I possess the wisdom of the
three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.
Perfect is what I have said concerning the Operation of the Sun."
- Tabula Smaragdina (author’s rendition)

This text speaks of the union of the microcosm (the human being) and the
macrocosm (the universe), the mutations of the elements, and the great magical
power of the invisible fire in the furnace or Alkahest which heats the vessel or
Egg or Athanor containing the chaotic Primal Matter of the Great Work, which is
in turn identical with the unperfected state of the alchemist. This Secret Fire is
the Life Force itself, and in a sense also the light of the Holy Guardian Spirit.
Traditionally these progressive levels of the alchemical process are revealed by a
changing sequence of colors, beginning with blackening of decay and dissolution
called the Nigredo (death's black raven, the Body). The occult substance is

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purified and refined to the silvery universal medicine of Albedo (the white swan,
the Soul) and then kindled to the fiery gold of the Rubedo (the red eagle, phoenix
or Spirit) that is the Philosopher's infamous Stone. These three states are also
known as the salt/mercury/sulfur of alchemical art, or the tamas/sattvas/rajas of
the tantrik gunas. They reflect the major developmental stages in the endless
transformations of individual consciousness: the darkness of inward-turning
depression and despair, the brightening process of awakening to full awareness,
and the glorious red-gold of fully illuminated Being. They are also seen as the
changing colors of the holy Nile River as various shades of soil wash through it in
the yearly cycle of the flooding or inundation that once brought fertility to Egypt.
There are many other colors recorded in this mysterious work, notably the
transitional stage of iridescence termed the Peacock’s Tail. Alchemy like Magick
or Astrology speaks in a complex and evocative code of symbols whose meaning
unfolds through study and practice, paralleled in the east by what the tantriks call
Twilight Language, which both conceals and reveals the process of initiation. I
have only touched lightly upon alchemical symbolism in this book, as it is often
obscure to the point of surrealism; yet it remains one of the true foundations of
the western mystery tradition.

Liber Pennae Praenumbra

Bibliography U. A Taste of Alchemy.

Interpersonal Dynamics of Diabolic Mind Control

"Doubt everything. Find your own light.”

- final recorded words of Buddha

"Magic is but one's natural ability to attract without asking."

- A.O. Spare

"That few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time."
- John Stuart Mill

So, what are magicians actually up to? We have a very long and some
pretty odd history. Realistically, it may perhaps seem difficult to find a true
magician who is not an amoral alien whacko at heart, however superficially
respectable we may appear; and a low profile is often a useful survival trait. We
are the proverbial ‘Kings in Disguise’, who have chosen to create our own
universes rather than to accept any version forced upon us. Admittedly the occult
worldview may seem at first to be very different from what is regarded as normal
belief, but at the same time it is important to define one’s reality on an ongoing
basis, rather than allowing blind habit to determine perception. The truly
determined practice of magick opens the infinite doors of the senses to many
stimulating hours of creative playtime and personal fulfillment.

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 It is almost impossible to generalize about magicians; some may turn to
the left and some to the right politically, although I suspect that terms like
anarchist or libertarian could easily apply to many of us (and quite frankly I am
heartily sick of both the left and the right, as each seem to hold the extremes of
their belief systems in higher regard than the quality and sanctity of human life,
and there always seems to be an excuse for callous behavior towards those who
do not submit to their worldview). Words like cantankerous and individualistic and
eccentric come pretty close to a lot of us, and there is probably a definite trend
towards the well-read and the sub-culturally literate, but that does not necessarily
imply slavish devotion to any particular belief system or educational orthodoxy.
Sociologically speaking, I suspect that the full spectrum of humanity is pretty well
represented. Gender-wise, likewise; and I doubt that 'alternative lifestyle' even
begins to scratch the surface.
It might seem that I have touched upon many of the darker strands of this
mystic web, and thus raised obscure historical connections which many current
practitioners may be very uncomfortable facing. There is an element of challenge
here, for if the magus is to shine as a beacon of light, she may also cast many
grim shadows. In the world of magick there are both angels and demons; there
may indeed be war in heaven, or perhaps such conflicts truly take place in every
human heart. If the post-modern magician is in fact a microcosm, a complete
multiverse, then we must by definition contain everything within us, from dire
horrors to the heights of spiritual ecstasy. Nietzsche may have taken us beyond
good and evil, but it would be very naive indeed to pretend that some choices are
not better than others. I believe that every soul is ultimately fully responsible for
its own actions, and that blaming others (Satan, the U.S. government, society,
awful parents, significant others, or whoever) is a feeble excuse unsuitable to
one who seeks to master both the World and the Self. Since much magical
decision-making is of necessity formed completely outside of conventional
structures we may in fact have a higher than average sense of what we feel is
either positive or detrimental to our honor as human beings. When you stand
before the gaze of the cosmos, you alone are the judge of the only truth you can
know: your own unique and individual viewpoint. As death-camp survivor Victor
Frankl said, "There are only two races of humans: the decent and the indecent."
Many magicians tend to be solitary souls, and the history of the subject is
full of tales of exile and long wandering journeys. While it is often very refreshing
to be responsible to and for no one but your self, it is not nearly as entertaining
as work with a group. Feedback is also useful for sanity maintenance. Learning
from good or bad examples saves a great deal of time, and in the depths of a
profound psychological transformation it is often a very good thing to have close
friends around to say: "You are out of your tiny mind! Chill out!" Even conjurers
need colleagues. Also, there truly is power in numbers: collective magick does
build up a greater charge of energy, and synchronicities multiply where
magicians gather together.
One ideal is the magical couple; sorcerers often have their Shakti (and
vice versa), from Simon Magus and Helen, or Doctor Faustus and Marguerite, or
Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, or Jim Baker and Tammy Faye, or Robert

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and Mary Ann de Grimston, on up through Aleister Crowley or Jack Parsons and
their lifelong quests for the ultimate Scarlet Woman Babalon, the proverbial
whore to end all whores (such a dreadfully outdated terminology!). Some
practical aspects of such dyads are discussed under the topic of sexual magick
below.
Group dynamics can get almost as exciting, and we monkeys sure do love
our primate politics. Considering the turbulent history of large orders (or of
nation-states, or political parties, or organized religions) I tend to consider smaller
groups more stable and less likely to fall victim to ego battles over leadership or
agendas, or to the often inevitable personality conflicts. Larger assemblages tend
to form nasty little cliques and over-indulge in bellicose gamesmanship, or fall
prey to sexual triangles and manipulative games. If any question of large
amounts of money is involved the situation can become even more complicated
rather quickly.
The best experiences I have had in person with magical groups were in
small covens or circles of close friends, more-or-less on the same level of
practice and with some similar affinities; we all partied and feasted and talked
together, and then did wild creative rituals till dawn and created art from the
results. My experiences with the Horus Maat Lodge in recent years have also
been very rewarding, but while certain ritual activities are coordinated worldwide
the major link is an Internet e-list, providing wide-ranging discussion and rapid
feedback, yet without much personal contact; an interesting mutation. In all these
situations equality has been emphasized, which leads to the vexed if not hexed
question of teachers and gurus and the merging of Eastern and Western
influences over the last couple of centuries.
Here in the west we have been exposed to many of the great teachers of
the east, where centuries of tradition can inspire people to surrender their lives
completely in devotion to a guru. This can be a very powerful experience, and a
teacher who truly lives their path can guide others with wisdom, compassion and
honesty, can transform their lives and lead them to enlightenment. The great
traditions and schools of Asia have learned to create such individuals, but they
do not exist in a vacuum. They express a culture and a system fine-tuned by
many generations of feedback, and for a westerner to enter such a Guru-based
system without being a part of their culture is not an easy thing, for we lack the
language and the nuances shared by those born into such a community. Our
perceptions and understanding are not the same, and without empathy and
patience we cannot fully enter that experience. I sometimes have doubts about
how well such practices translate, for there honestly are some differences
between east and west, in the ways that we interact and the willingness we may
have to fully participate unconditionally in traditional modes of transformation.
There are different senses of the balance between the individual and the
collective, and occasional elements of hysteria in, for example, the Sun Myung
Moonie's random mass weddings that point to a lack of personal responsibility
and a neurotic need for parenting being acted out instead of a spiritual
adventure. We should also recall that both east and west share long histories of
frauds, fakers and tricksters, and the fact that we have access to the crème de la

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crème of foreign teachers doesn't change the possibility that we may also, upon
occasion, have been well and truly had by plausible opportunists.
No matter what part of the world they come from, a true teacher is a rare
and wonderful phenomenon, and they may well deserve respect for their
willingness to share their hard-earned knowledge and experience. However, a
corrupt and manipulative con artist filling this role is a great danger to everyone
around them, and fringe religions, new-age communes and occult groups have a
long history of such tawdry villains. Be very careful before you offer up your
devotion to someone who may just be after your bank account or your significant
other. Being surrounded by a circle of true believers can crank up the level of
apparent charisma in these individuals, and studies have shown that if you are
creating such a racket it is best to make your belief system as ludicrous as
possible, for if your teachings are just slightly outside the mainstream people are
able to argue about them rationally, but if you convince them that the space
brothers are coming from Sirius they may invest a great deal of themselves into
defending your particular form of lunacy to the death. It is amazing what can
seem to make sense if it is presented convincingly and backed up by a smiling
crowd of fervent true believers.
So-called ‘cults’ (usually nascent religions without credentials, and now
frequently of the fundamentalist persuasion) tend to employ classic brainwashing
techniques on their adherent zombies: total separation from friends and family,
sleep and food deprivation, continual sermons, really bad folk music, 'love-
bombing', a sense of being a chosen elite unjustly persecuted by outsiders,
constant reinforcement and feedback from more senior members of the
completely programmed, and ultimately total control of every aspect of life,
especially the sexual. All too frequently the lower levels experience total chastity
for the men, while their all-powerful prophets sleep with the woman down to the
age of twelve or so. These are all warning signs, flashing red lights and
screaming sirens. If you find yourself spreading Sarin on the subways while the
winner of the David Koresh look-alike contest boffs your wife and nubile
daughters, you have probably lost your way on the strange and twisting path to
liberation. Try to avoid invitations to massive Jonestown-style group suicides or
Heaven's Gate seminars, free Scientology personality tests or Promise Keeper
rallies. Phil Hine contributes the cogent observation that one should be very
careful before opening "your mind, your wallet or your legs" to just anyone.
Just for the record, though, let us recall: Jonestown, Waco, the Solar
Temple, most recent cults of all sorts: these were all good old-fashioned
fundamentalist Christians high on the Bible, not occultists of any kind. Frankly,
after Manson and Koresh I sometimes think that people should be required to get
a note from their doctor before being allowed to study biblical apocrypha like that
pesky book of Revelations.
Why am I telling you this? Hey, you never know - until it's too late. People
may not associate the words ‘common sense’ with occultism very often, but like
Malkuth it is the first step. If magicians can't make their own decisions, they aren't
magicians; but if they don't explore and take risks, they aren't magicians either.
Open eyes and balance in all things - it couldn't hurt. What it comes down to for

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me is that in the New Aeon there seems to be very little need for any leaders and
followers, but a circle of equals is a wonderful thing, and if anyone in it deserves
an extra dose of respect it is those who do the most work. In my experience that
is usually the chosen few indeed. Magickal Art, like small-press publishing, often
turns out to be rather strenuous and doesn’t make a hell of a lot of money. I
might have digressed a bit here, but this is the kind of advice I don't often recall
seeing in books of this kind.
The complications of interactions within or between groups, while usually
fairly hysterical and mundane, can also lead into open conflict and thus ultimately
to the whole other question of the battle between the sinister Black Lodge
(THEM, usually) and the more benevolent Great White Brotherhood (US,
naturally). Behind the scenes in modern terms we might have the evil-gray-aliens
and nazi-influenced cadre of the CIA Aquarius Group in mortal combat with the
"almost mystical good-guys" of COM-12 Naval Intelligence. It has occasionally
been suggested that all these apparently clashing cliques of the Illuminati are
actually working together behind the scenes for some covert and subversive
purpose like, maybe, enlightening all humanity? There is always the tension
between the forces of repression and evolution, and the resulting question of the
somewhat revolutionary or oppositional stance taken of simple necessity by
many adepts. Perhaps this white/black or evil/good or even order/chaos
controversy is merely a device to inspire examination of personal moral issues,
or to keep the wee neophytes up on their toes. Many orders appear to view bouts
of magical warfare as simply a useful form of training, or perhaps as a Darwinian
weeding-out of the unfit, and using your students as cannon fodder might also
provide an extra layer of insulation for you personally to enjoy.
Never hesitate to question, never let anyone make your decisions for you, never
abandon your center. In the light of true will the simple concept of personal honor
becomes essential, as the word of the magus should always be valid; and if we
are to influence the destiny of the world for the better some form of action is a
logical first step. Personally, I support as much freedom as possible for everyone,
and hope that they can take it from there. Magick is hopefully intended as more
than a random system of homemade psychotherapy, and may also include some
personal or political agenda and even potential contributions to the future destiny
of humanity. Crowley summarized this in his monosyllabic libertarian social
manifesto:

Liber OZ s.f. LXXVII

"the law of the strong, this is our law and the joy of the world." - AL II, 21
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." - AL I, 40
"thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other
shall say nay." - AL I, 42-3
"Every man and every woman is a star." - AL I, 3
There is no god but man.
1. Man has the right to live by his own law:
to live in the way that he wills to do:
to work as he will:

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 to play as he will:
to rest as he will:
to die when and how he will.
2. Man has the right to eat what he will:
to drink what he will:
to dwell where he will:
to move as he will on the face of the earth.
3. Man has the right to think what he will:
to speak what he will:
to write what he will:
to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will:
to dress as he will.
4. Man has the right to love as he will:
"take your fill and will of love as ye will,
when, where and with whom ye will." - AL I, 51
5. Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.
"the slaves shall serve." - AL II, 58
"Love is the law. love under will." - AL I, 57
- Aleister Crowley

Or to put it in another way apparently quite incomprehensible to the

current batch of so-called compassionate yet neoconservative Republican
Guards, "Free people have a right to do as they damn well please.” That was
Barry Goldwater talking… how very strange.
For a final note on the immense diversity of modern magical currents,
multiculturalism still has its arcane side as well. Aside from Wicca and Thelema
and Chaos and the Norse runic revival, there are many other older traditions that
have also recently achieved a wider influence. As I have earlier remarked,
among the most notable are the Buddhist and Hindu schools of Tantra, and the
Afro-Caribbean sects of Voudon and Santeria, both of which have attracted many
devotees from the western practitioners of the occult. My impression is that there
are a number of reasons for this: the similar patterns at the core of all true
mysteries, the deep compatibilities between the pantheons of organic
mythologies, and the new and refreshing freedom that humans have to follow
their spiritual affinities without being burnt at the stake. As Joseph Campbell said:
“Follow your bliss!”

“.... nothing more can be attempted than to establish the beginning and the
direction of an infinitely long road. The pretension of any systematic and
definitive completeness would be, at least, a self-illusion. Perfection can here be
attained by the individual student only in the subjective sense that he
communicates everything he has been able to see." - Georg Simmel

Part II: Soaring on Wings of the Vulture & the Hawk:

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The Methods of Double Current Magick

This is the Universal Ritual:

Gather four elements into balance,

the invisible fifth arises.

Spinning the wheel of space and time

all things are drawn to the single center,
nothingness revealed in naked splendor
at the circumference.

By shadowed spaces inbetween

in holy rapture dance the primal rite,
unite the soul with secret Self,
life with death in one flesh.

When the eyes of sun and moon are closed

the diamond eye of the star is opened.

In this silence may the single Word be spoken.

This is the Universal Ritual:

Invoke Often.

Stealing the Fire From Heaven

"Our Path: The eclectic path between ecstasies, the precarious funambulatory
way." - Austin Osman Spare

"We go where reason will not take us.  Will you come, or will you not?"
- Ursula K. LeGuin

How do we walk upon this Path of the Magus, and why does is it still seem
so important?
The Faustian archetype of the seeker of forbidden knowledge is among the
oldest imprints on western culture. Rather than accepting fate we may strive to
become the masters of our universes and the creators of our own worlds. Rather
that accepting any particular dogmas we may freely explore all the mysteries of
this globe, in the belief that all societies and mythologies have their own visions
of truth and their own pieces of a vast puzzle. Wisdom and power, direct
knowledge of truth and of spiritual experience, and the fulfillment of our deepest
and most organic desires are all strong motivations. We exalt each individual

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True Will over the blind habits of the localized collective. The original tools of the
mage are the five ancient elemental principles of fire, water, earth, air that merge
in spirit, and the realms we explore extend to the outermost spheres of human
consciousness, which can be symbolized by the gateways of the planets, the
Aeons, or the qabalistic Tree of Life and Death. We inhabit a forest of symbols, a
surreal and ever-shifting landscape of undiscovered meaning filled with omens,
synchronicities, mysteries, and reflections. Our alchemical Great Work is thus the
perfection of the Self, the transformation of being in the rebirth of phoenix fires,
the organic metamorphosis that gives birth to the immortal soul. Rejecting the
normal, we are seen as alien, as walkers upon the Left Hand Path. Reversing
any accepted consensus, we are sometimes considered dangerous and
subversive. “Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own
hearts,” as Albert Einstein said.
In the course of this work, I have often made references to the Double
Current of Horus and Maat. Crowley’s revelation proposes a view of the cosmos
focused entirely upon the Self, acknowledging that our only certainty lies in direct
experience. The new model of consciousness proposed in The Book of the Law
may be summarized in the astrological sign of the Sun, a point at the center of a
circle, the observer and the orbiting cosmos. This magical circle represents the
universe around us as the Great Goddess in Her dual nature of All (Hathor or
Isis) and Naught (as Nuit or Nephthys). In Her we may find manifested
Everything and Nothing, Being and Void, Day and Night. The central point may
be called Hadit or Set or Abraxas or Pan, the divine spark of primordial Chaos at
our core, the Hidden God in whom the individual soul and the cosmic Self or
Atman are united and seen as identical. This symbol as a whole signifies the
hawk-headed god-form of Ra or Horus, who is both the Supreme Deity and the
Solar Child of Egyptian myth. This bold transition from perceiving God as either a
distant yet deified Father or Mother to truly accepting ourselves (and every other
living spark of unique consciousness) as the Holy Child incarnate makes a leap
beyond previous notions of divinity as something remote and external to an
understanding of all existence as the passionate play of spirit and matter for the
sheer delight of being. It rejects the usual monotheist delusion of the universe as
given over entirely to struggle and sorrow, seeing these as mere side effects of
physicality. It exalts Joy as the essential principle of existence, creative chaos
and revolution as keys to human evolution, life and death as two sides of the
same coin. The greek philosopher Heracleitus, around 500 BCE, remarked that
“The Aeon is a Child at Play.”
Central to both the Magical Revival and the theology of Wicca and
Neopaganism was the rediscovery of the Goddess and the shocking notion that
the divine is female as well as male. This runs counter to the established
teachings of almost all of the major revealed religions in the West, whose
purposes so often run more towards social control than to the direct and ecstatic
experience of any ultimate reality. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic hierarchy, made
up entirely of men, often seems quite obsessed with the control of women: their
lives and thoughts and actions, and their all-important reproductive capacities. It
would be naïve to think that Buddhist or Hindu structures have been entirely

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different, and thus half of the human race now finds restrictions and roles forced
upon them in the holy name of God. Feminism has held out a hope of change,
and indeed our own society has transformed far more than many people in
America today may realize, but most of this planet has a very long way to go. At
the same time we must also be aware that in harsh truth most men are equally
imprisoned in economic systems whose structure exalts mere obedience and
consumerism above all else. With wealth, privilege and political power controlled
entirely by a ludicrously incompetent few at the top, we must beware of any
expectation that outside forces will ever provide liberation, and therefore rely
upon ourselves alone for a metamorphosis based upon a truly unique way of
being and becoming. One aspect of this may be found in the Tantric or Thelemic
incorporation of sexuality into magico-religious practice, and the chaotic habit of
breaking all habits and violating all taboos.
The 93 Current of Horus has now been harmonized with the 696 Current
of Maat, the essential Shakti or feminine principle of Truth and Balance. In Egypt
Maat was the daughter of the Sun God Ra, and the power that both emanated
from and sustained all creation: the vitality of nature, the holistic integrity of the
cosmos and of human society. Her lessons are essential to the magician, for as
we project our visions into reality we may very well fall into traps of illusion or
delusion. A rigorous honesty and constant self-analysis, a careful balance of all
the aspects of our lives, are essential to any relative sanity. Ultimately the
greatest practice of the mage may well be the Laughter of Pan, an appreciation
of the Cosmic Joke: how very unfortunate and depressing it can be, to take
merely actual events even remotely seriously! The human mind needs to stretch
considerably to grasp Ultimate Reality, always assuming that there is such a
thing; and I have noticed that those persons generally recognized as enlightened
(masters of Zen or Sufism or such) are often notable for their senses of humor.
You may therefore note my own terrible jokes emerging at the most inappropriate
times in this discourse without making any assumptions about my innate
Buddhahood. As G.K. Chesterton said, “Angels can fly because they take
themselves lightly.”
What concepts hold our magick together? It begins with a sense of all
experience as a living organic system, a unity of many parts: the Anima Mundi, or
Soul of the World. This vast cosmos is the Macrocosm and the human being is
the Microcosm, which contains, reflects, and creates the larger whole; ever
conscious of the mystery it reveals through the symbolism, signs and qabalistic
correspondences meaningful to the interpreting mind. In this interplay of levels
and forces the sorcerer weaves a web of conscious belief, true will, and fulfilled
desire, becoming more alive with each experience, memory and insight,
participating in newborn miracles as the spiral dance of being unfolds. This
apparent world is an alchemical theater of transformation, a funhouse hall of
mirrors, a vast labyrinthine maze wherein we may find ourselves evolving and
expanding to the infinities beyond, contracting to a primal source within. What is
vital and unique is the ebb and flow of this experience, for whatever strange
goals you may choose of bliss or of horror, until such time as the current vehicle

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of your being dissolves into non-existence you choose your own path and
perform your own individual creation.

"Don't you feel in your heart that these contradictions do not really contradict: that
there is a cosmos that contains them all? The soul goes round upon a wheel of
stars and all things return.... Good and evil go round in a wheel that is one thing
and not many. Do you not realize in your heart, do you not believe behind all your
beliefs, that there is but one reality and we are its shadows; and that all things
are but aspects of one thing: a centre where men melt into Man and Man into
God?"
- The Dagger With Wings, G.K. Chesterton

The rules of the Church or the State, the genetic destiny of nationality or
family, the expectations of society and its denizens; all pale to an insipid
insignificance before the light of your True Will, your original cause. The true
magician may swim with the world's tides or against them as expedience
suggests, but always in quest of the Holy Grail, of Gnosis, of liberation. The
hero's journey, the mystic's passion play, the Great Work of self-perfection via
alchemy, or a living cosmos making love with itself: all are just ways of
expressing the ongoing union of the individual with the universal: of Hadit and
Nuit, Zos and Kia, Shiva and Shakti, Self and Other, Odin and Freya, Purusha &
Prakriti. In making the conscious, deliberate and life-affirming choice of a process
of constant awakening you leave the safe conformity of the common herd behind
in the dust, participating in a reality defined on your own terms and created for
your own purposes, in a Faustian challenge to all that is for the sake of all that
might be. Halfway between God and Beast, subtly weaving the substance of
shadows inbetween bright and dark, intermediate in scale between the sun and
the atom: each magician has the potential to be both and neither, to initiate an
open-ended voyage which knows no ultimate limitation until death intervenes,
and perhaps not even then if we accept the cheerful yet still quite hypothetical
notion of any kind of afterlife. Said Nietzsche, "Whoever wishes to be creative,
must first destroy and smash accepted values."
To be a magician is to become a revolutionary, ever turning a rebours
(against the flow) of the conventional and expected, against what Spare termed
"the inferno of the normal” and Philip K. Dick called the "Black Iron Prison". This
oppositional stance is often perceived as virtually satanic, for the Devil is seen as
the original source of rebellion, the eternal spirit of chaos and opposition to order
whether natural or imposed; and who may dare to resist the way things are
supposed to be, to oppose ‘good old-fashioned family values’ with rampant
individuality? Yet all true progress seems to be made by rebels and impertinent
askers of very inconvenient questions, not ‘true believers’ or ‘good company
men’. In this sense the mage is seen as aligned with nature's higher forces and
the conscious impetus toward truly radical and evolutionary change. It all
depends upon how wide you allow your definitions and experiences to be: of the
outer and inner worlds, the objective and subjective, of the material and the
divine, and of your Self. The union of opposites releases energy for change and

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all of these apparent dualities are ultimately resolved into singular unities of
paradox. Magick as a process can achieve the human becoming the
superhuman, or perhaps even the natural world’s illumination as the alleged
supernatural. Our adepts may consciously identify themselves with every aspect
of creation in turn, thus growing with each transformational experience toward
new dimensions of wisdom and understanding, power and harmony. By the ritual
and meditative process of freely identifying oneself with the aspects of the
cosmos one's mind can expand to contain all within it. As an ancient druid is
rumored to have said:

"I am a wind of the sea.

I am a wave of the sea
I am the sound of the sea
I am a stag of seven tines
I am a hawk above the cliff
I am a teardrop in the sun
I am the fairest of fair flowers
I am a raging boar
I am a salmon in a pool
I am a lake upon a fair plain
I am a spear that roars for blood
I am the god of inspiring fire." - Celtic Song of Amergin

The concept of a sentient universe with which we can interact and

communicate via symbolic systems opens up reality to magical manipulation and
divinatory practices. In some paradigms of quantum physics the observer creates
the universe by the very act of conceiving it, and for most Asian cultures
consensus reality is seen as a delusory creation of the mind. The common
concept of various theosophical planes of being or formative levels of astral
density relates to the qabalistic tree of life or the gnostic chain of aeons, and is a
useful yet arbitrary way of conditionally defining our world to serve the willed
mutations of the magus. We explore our newborn vision of reality in unique ways,
as pioneers of the body and the spirit made whole: a quest without an ultimate
arbiter other than our own souls and whatever our opposite and complementary
polarity God might turn out to be.
Magickal and divinatory systems such as the western Qabala or Tarot, the
northern Runes, southern Ifa, or eastern I Ching are useful temporary maps of
the cosmos which we can make our own, each developed from the minds and
cultures of generations of humanity and then continually reinterpreted in the light
of our own unique perceptions; they are systems of mutual communication
between the various levels of being and becoming. Such traditions should be
servants; the magus must be the ultimate defining principle of all tools and
methods, of their tumultuous entourage of familiar spirits, and in the final analysis
of herself or himself as well. In essence, the magus deliberately creates and
inhabits a personal universe and becomes its living and incarnate deity.

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 What does this spiral path of initiation lead to? Wider understanding and
wisdom can also be sought through meditation and philosophy, but true magick
is a way of action and direct experience, not a passive contemplation. The
shamanic quest for power, the Crowleyan invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel,
Castaneda's mysterious nagual and tonal, the workings of Gnosis or Tantra, all
imply entrance into expanded worlds and new dimensions; a free exploration of
the implications of the Self and of an eventual union with Otherness whether
daemonic or divine. In a sense we discover what lies beyond by a process of
becoming truly alien to the normal; beyond the manifest and the unmanifest we
create individual new worlds of our own by evolution, illumination, liberation,
mutation, and ecstasy. Again, the word Initiate means To Begin; as expressed
by Angus McKie, “...in preparation for the day when their son comes of age... on
that day the son finally realizes that he is and always will be, ultimately and
irredeemably alone... and becomes... an alien.”
Sad to say, it is all too often an inevitable side effect of initiation that each
shining peak experience is paralleled by corresponding tests and ordeals, for life
lived as an eternal adventure tends to make us earn our victories by bloody
struggle. Initiation and Ordeal go hand in hand, two sides of the same spinning
coin. The human condition… no one has ever had a perfect life, we all must face
crises and traumas, we all carry our own forms of pain, and everything that has
ever lived has died. Just how well we cope with adversity and finish in style says
a lot about us, and if you are not dealing adequately with the outside social world
you are quite likely to find many corresponding difficulties in the inner psychic
world, and vice versa. So it goes.
At the end of this heroic and heretic quest we may discover only mystery
and paradox, silence and emptiness, or ultimate light. However things may turn
out, I am quite cheerfully prepared to fully appreciate mystery and paradox,
silence and emptiness, or ultimate light as the case may be. According to John
Lennon, “Nothing ever just happens.”

Central Concepts & Fundamental Laws of the Great Art

"Laws are like cobwebs, for if any trifling or powerless thing falls into them, they
hold it fast, but if a thing of any size falls into them it breaks the mesh and
escapes."
- Anacharsis, circa 600 BCE

"Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearance of magic."

- Arthur C. Clarke

The world-view of magick is in many ways as internally consistent as that

of science and has evolved out of the same mechanisms of the human mind.
Philosophically all we can say is that we perceive that we have a consciousness
of a Self, which continually interacts with what appears to be a physical universe.
The causes and effects of our actions appear to us to be real, yet our perceptions

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are colored by experiences and expectations, by cultural programming and
heedless habit. By the changing of the mind and its preconceptions we alter the
internal model of the external world that we all carry with us, and by conscious
reprogramming of our definitions and increased clarity in our own thoughts we
may shift reality itself. We can often accomplish this by the use of magical words
and of powerful symbols. We all choose what we believe, and magick happens.
Spare believed that loss of faith in a complex of ideas (such as the veracity of the
Church or the virtue of the State) created a burst of 'free belief' or energy that
could be applied to restructuring of reality and the accomplishment of magical
effects. Carlos Castaneda practiced a complete elimination of his own personal
history for similar purposes. The notion that belief creates reality lies at the root
of all magick.
Another core principle of occultism is the concept of an aethyr or medium
that connects the mind and the world. It may be seen as a cosmic memory or
akashic archive that contains the image of all things, similar to Jung's collective
unconscious and its complement of inherent archetypes; or as a chain of
unfolding levels of manifestation in a series of qabalistic realms. It may be a
model of energy formed into material patterns or perhaps a quantum universe of
pure information. The vital key to its use is that the focused attention or essential
power of the human Will is a vector of force by which desired changes may be
manipulated, a connecting link between the creative chaos of the Kia and the
manifested form of the Zos. This concept of the energized True Will is the core
principle of Thelema and the essence of magick as the Art of making things
happen.
In his model of this mechanism Crowley utilized the formula 0 = 2: the void
divides or cleaves into a dualistic world, and the reunion of these opposites
releases their energy to be recombined in new forms. The zero is the Tao and
the two are yin and yang, entropy and energy, or 0 = (-1) (+1). We may work by
the old alchemical formula of 'solve et coagula', analysis and synthesis: any
concept may be divided into two opposing poles which still contain and define
each other; they are then reunited in a synthesis, a whole greater than the parts.
The word Yoga means Union, and the realization of a Samadhi is a resolution of
the distinction between subject and object; every idea implies its opposite, and
they cancel each other out, leading to the state of tantric emptiness. This is
Spare's 'neither-neither concept', the 'non-attachment, non-disinterest' of chaos
magick, or the 'not this, not that' of Buddhist meditation. Pure magick is energy
for change released by the experience of this paradox of the union of opposites
in whatever manner, sexual or otherwise. 0 = 2. The ultimate purpose of all
magical ritual is thus the same as that of mysticism: the union of the microcosm
and the macrocosm, or in other terms of the self with the other, the spirit with
matter, the soul with god.

"The Neither-Neither principle is based on the assumption that to assert any

position makes that position's opposite equally necessary, and this opposite may
be used to free the power locked up in the original. How much power their

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juxtaposition will release depends both upon the strength of the passion and how
open-minded one is." - Stephen Mace

To me, that means that a union of opposites - any opposites, light & dark, male &
female, subject & object, innocence & experience, idealism & cynicism, faith &
doubt, wrong & right, whatever.... when you combine, resolve, understand it,
releases both a burst of magical energy and takes awareness up to the next
level. Dualities are how our minds work, how we create the universe; but taking
that step beyond them, to where they complement and complete rather than
conflict with each other, is a wider view. One way to see it is the 93 formula
where AL (God or All) is also LA (Not or Naught), similar to the Buddhist concept
that manifestation is essentially emptiness or transparency, or the qabalistic
notion that above the Abyss things exist only as their own opposites, meaning
that all Unity is essentially a Paradox, and that all things both Are and Are Not.   
The gnostics largely saw the cosmos as a prison created by pairs of opposites.
Again, Spare believed that a loss of faith in something (religious dogma or
romantic love or mindless patriotism, for example) released a burst of Free Belief
usable to sustain a new creation, hence he focused upon sigilized desires at
times of despair or loss or crisis. Out of a void moment, new creations spawn and
cycles renewed can begin again. Or see it as the cosmic lemniscate: twisted in a
figure-8, Duality! Unwound as circular Zero, the Void!  Thelema just makes this a
more interactive and personal process. Physicist Niels Bohr has said that "The
opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a
profound truth may be another profound truth."
Turning to the underlying laws of magick, this interplay of a human
microcosm (the magus, empowered by an active will) with an outer macrocosm
(the universe, created by a receptive love) roots us in the core notion that
corresponding concepts, symbols, or functions have a mutual influence. On the
most primitive level things that clearly resemble one another (like a voodoo doll
and its victim) are connected (sharp pins cause shooting pains). Frazer defined
this as the ‘Law of Similarity, which reflects the way the human mind works by
simple chains of association. The related medieval Doctrine of Signatures
proclaims that all things resembling one another are also thus linked (as a bright
round yellow radiating sunflower qabalistically corresponds to the Sun) and that
their physical form expresses their nature. The mind appears to enjoy making
such connections.
The related Law of Contagion states that things that were once in contact
always remain in contact (the doll is more powerful if made with the victim's
clothes, hair and nail-clippings). This is termed the Magical Link, and quantum
physics does now postulate some kind of sub-atomic and non-causal resonance
binding the continuum. Bell's Theorem appears to suggest that particles that
were once in mutual contact continue to influence one another instantaneously,
regardless of the vast distances involved. This clearly approaches the practice
which generations of scholars have termed sympathetic magic. Everything is
connected, in the microcosmic mind and the macrocosmic universe alike. Re-
enact your desire by the actions of a spell or ritual drama and the effect is

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achieved by a resonance with reality. In ancient times one might even send a
curse by pounding nails into an enemy’s footprints.

"Magical actions, how does one explain them? Certainly by sympathy, because
there exists both harmony between similar things and repulsion between
dissimilar ones, and because there exist numerous forces which are focused
unto one living being. Many things are being attracted and enchanted, although
no one sets them in motion: true magic, thus, is the love there is in the cosmos
and its opposite, the hate." - Enneads of Plotinus

Another key to this process is the animistic device of personifying natural

phenomena or internal psychic functions as entities or spirits, which enables the
mind to perceive them as living beings susceptible to control. This leads us into
the practices of invocation and evocation as methods for manipulating our inner
world, and to the power of words and the law of naming: to know a true name or
sentient symbol is to understand and command the forces it represents. In
arcane terms the name is the thing itself, the expression of its inner nature, the
qabalistic formula of its being. In many cosmologies the world is created by the
power of the Word or Logos, and in early Hebrew myth it was Adam's task to
name everything that God created. The magical use of language, the vital force
of the spoken word echoing outwards into the universe, has always been a key to
sorcery: spells, chants, charms, mantras, are the very stock-in-trade of
enchantment. Words are the medium by which the conscious mind functions and
defines or redefines reality, and rhetoric is the method by which all leaders have
inspired their peoples throughout history. All the recent positive affirmations,
neuro-linguistic programming and self-hypnosis are merely new names for very
old processes. Learning a separate magical language like Sanskrit, Hebrew,
Greek, Enochian or Old Norse may be a quite effective exercise as well.

"Runes and charms are very practical formulae designed to produce definite
results, such as getting a cow out of a bog."
- The Music of Poetry by T.S. Eliot

Symbols, on the other hand, are the keys to the doorway of the deep
mind, the infamous sub-, un-, or pre-consciousness; they function on a level
more profound than the verbal. Natural phenomena are our most primordial
symbols: the sun, moon and stars; the thunder, lightning and rain of the storm;
the flowing waters, the mountains and the holy trees; the many-formed company
of animal powers; the breath of the wind and the sacred fire. Humans appear to
have developed a taste for art and other glyphs quite early in our evolution and
the primal paintings upon the walls of caves can still move us today. Magick and
mythology, alchemy and astrology, have a huge vocabulary of sigils and signs
which one can choose to make one's own; the use of these prototypes of science
unseals archetypal levels of the psyche. Carefully studying a good-quality
symbolic dictionary is highly recommended as an antidote to the dreadful state of
secular education; I might suggest the recent Continuum Encyclopedia of

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Symbols by Becker or the Dictionary of Symbolism by Biedermann. I also
strongly recommend that you go to your local video store or public library and
take out The Power of Myth series of interviews between Joseph Campbell and
Bill Moyers, a truly remarkable accomplishment and a wonderful way to widen
your perspective. I have presented more than a few public classes, and
whenever I asked who had seen The Power of Myth all hands went up and
suddenly everyone had a collective context. However, the eternal archetypes
constantly remanifest themselves and the contemporary images that are
ceaselessly poured into our fertile brains by movies, television and other media
are potentially just as active and powerful as those that have survived for
countless millennia. Cartoon characters and corporate logos are what people
recognize now, and some practice what Taylor Ellwood has defined as Pop
Culture magic. Superheroes are the mythology of our children, comix our
papyrus scrolls.

“For thousands of years art and magic were indistinguishable from one another.
Any image or representation carried great occult significance – to make a mark
was to cast a spell.” - Dylan Horrocks

People have always loved making up laws and rules, which tend to
multiply over time. The magical attitude is one of purest pragmatism: what works
is kept, what does not is discarded. Whatever model of the cosmos serves to
activate your latent talents is useful, regardless of whether or not it can fully or
accurately define the universe as an ultimate answer.
On another level, I often think that a major law of magick is (or should be)
"Be careful what you ask for, you may get it". History is full of people who
expected results and received consequences; it is good to phrase intentions and
formulate desires very carefully and precisely. An oft-quoted example is conjuring
for wealth and winding up with an inheritance from the death of a much-loved
relative. With spells or sigils it may be better to attract a generally favorable result
than to indulge in fantasizing complex particular details. Obsessive love spells
directed at a particular person, for example, raise issues of ethics: are they
already committed to another relationship, do they have reasons for distrusting
you, are you trifling with the True Will of another? Better to examine your motives
and the situation carefully, and consider working towards attracting the person
who is right for you. “A man marries a woman thinking she will never change, but
she does. A woman marries a man thinking he will change, but he doesn’t.” We
may also recall Lovecraft's immortal phrase "Don't call up what you can't put
down", or Clint Eastwood's "A man should know his limitations". Call this the law
of unintended consequences; it can often be seen in action even amid the
occasional altruistic actions of governments. A closely related law is that of the
strange contrariness of inanimate objects, which gives rise to such eternal
questions as "What the hell is my computer doing now?", "Where are the car
keys?", and "Who took the good scissors?".
Two longer, more detailed, and very thought-provoking outlines of the
Laws of Magick appear near the beginnings of Bonewitz's Real Magic and

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Whitcomb's Magician's Companion respectively. Magick is applied synchronicity,
and ultimately is perfectly practical: what works is true, what doesn't is false.

"The universe does not have laws.

It has habits.
And habits can be broken."- Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins

"Magic: n. (1) technique used to liquefy reality;

(2) something that is always afoot." - Coco Pekelis

The Method of Science, the Goal of Religion

Magic is "...self-delusory fixation at the oral-anal stage of phases of adaptation,

with purely fantasized operation of the omnipotent will." - Weston La Barre

"Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there

it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.”
- H.L. Mencken

"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make
sense." - Mark Twain

Magicians have always striven to refine and improve their arts, and the
popular understanding of what underlies sorcery has changed as our cultural
views have evolved. The ancient animistic view regarded all magick largely as
the work of spirits, and most religious structures still more-or-less cling to this in
some form; it may still be one of the most useful approaches to take. Later
thought relied upon a model of vital energy driven by the human will, perhaps in
part supernatural or spiritual, in part physical or mental. This essential energy
has many names: kundalini, mana, chi, vril, heka, baraka, ashé, mojo, dynamis,
wakan, orgone, libido, or magis, for example. Much of the current discussion has
turned to a purely psychological point of view, and regards all these psychic
processes as an internal manipulation of Jungian archetypes and arbitrary
thought-forms; yet this does not account for any possible physical results of
occult operations, and now quantum physics seems to be raising the ante as it
implies that the mind of the observer has much to do with creating the observed.
Chaos magick now suggests a meta-system drawing freely upon any of these
multiple models (spirit, energy, psychological, or quantum) as convenience may
dictate.
If magick as a body of knowledge is in the process of evolving into the
science of the future, then the study of parapsychology may be a useful place to
start. Isaac Bonewits' seminal work Real Magic was among the first truly modern
attempts at synthesizing the conclusions of the academic world with the ancient
and forbidden lore of the arcane. He points out that actual experimentation from
J.B. Rhine onwards has pretty much been forced to conclude that yes, telepathy

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and perhaps precognition and even psychokinesis do appear to be proven facts,
especially among some talented individuals but to some extent in all of us. This
seems to imply a ‘rational explanation’ for many effects claimed by wizardry over
the centuries, and takes us out of the realm of hearsay. Much of divination
regarding those close to us, or magical influence upon them, can thus be
attributed to a subconscious interplay between our minds via simple telepathy
(how does a mother instantly sense that her child is in trouble?) and may also
have a genetic component (as studies of the connections between twins
suggest). Bonewits has suggested the concept of the Switchboard, a somewhat
more dynamic version of Jung's Collective Unconscious, which implies that
everyone is constantly transmitting their own thoughts and simultaneously
receiving those of the people surrounding them. It appears that to some extent
humanity exists as part of a psychic network, and I don't mean the one on TV.
Families, villages, cities, nations, all form an interlinked telepathic community
that, if it ever awakens, will become the global human consciousness or World
Mind called N'Aton by Soror Nema. The appearances of ghosts may simply be
the residual psychic imprint of other personalities on our minds.
Other useful works interpreting fairly recent science for the layman include
The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and the somewhat more readable The
Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukov. The current vision of modern physics in
some ways also seems to resemble the ancient esoteric view of this world as
being largely created and interpreted by the mind. The experimenter may affect
the experiment. Michael Talbot's writings on the holographic universe, for
example, indicate that both consciousness and creation seem to store memory
and information holographically (each part containing the whole) and to have an
ongoing interaction. This is reminiscent of the tantric concept of Indra's Net as
the complex weave of the universe itself, and at each intersection of this net is a
brilliant jewel that reflects within itself the entire cosmos. Fred Alan Wolf's books
on shamanic physics also have useful insights, as does Rupert Sheldrake and
his hypothesis of a morphogenic field. I also enjoy the writings of the more sober
UFO and conspiracy oriented authors such as Jim Keith, John Keel, Jim Marrs
and others, including the fascinating The Dark Gods by Anthony Roberts and
Geoff Gilbertson, which provides a unique vision of these issues. Nor can we
forget the pioneering work of Charles Fort. And I always get a lot of information
out of futurist Robert Anton Wilson's works; his most excellent Prometheus
Rising and Quantum Psychology cover among many other things Leary's
important 8-circuit model of the stages of human consciousness. The New
Inquisition is a discussion of the psychological implications of quantum physics,
and another work has a fascinating entry on issues raised by a very interesting
book called Space-Time Transients and Unusual Events (Persinger and
Lafreniere, Nelson-Hall, 1977) whose conclusions Dr. Wilson summarizes as
follows:

"Persinger and Lafreniere, behavioral scientists, did a computer analysis of 1,242

UFO cases and 4,818 other "fringe science" reports (Poltergeists, anomalies,
Fortean data, etc.) - 6,060 instances of things that scientific orthodoxy says could

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not have happened. The computers, scanning for patterns, found a few: Such
reports tend to cluster around earthquake fault lines; there is some peaking
before earthquakes; and a certain topology appears in the wider and better
documented cases. For instance, those at a distance report only strange lights,
or light moving strangely; those closer in report poltergeist effects (as in Steven
Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind): electrical and electronic
malfunctions, machinery turning itself on and off, jumping furniture, etc.; those
who blunder into the center of the phenomenon come back with strange yarns
full of Freudian and/or Jungian dream symbolism (sexual assaults, abductions,
encounters with Jesus or "beings of light", rebirth experiences, etc.).
Persinger and Lafreniere suggest that the strange lights and poltergeist effects
represent real energy anomalies triggered by Earth's occasional magnetic and
gravitational fluctuations, and that the mythic elements - Persephone abducted
by Hades, rebirth, resurrection, etc. - come from the back brain when these
abnormal energies alter the brain's normal wave patterns.
This theory has a certain appeal to some occultists, who have a long tradition
about psychic "windows" - times and places when the "other world" impinges on
this one."
- Everything Is Under Control, Robert Anton Wilson

This potentially ties a lot together, and the Chaos magi have also devoted
some serious thought to these issues; see especially Pete Carroll's Liber Kaos
and Apopheion, and Dave Lee's Chaotopia. On the question of a quantum
cosmos, we may quote Carroll:

"It has been said that if you are not shocked by the implications of quantum
physics then you have not understood it. This may be perfectly true for the
scientist but for the magician, quantum physics provides elegant confirmation for
many of his theories. Briefly in qualitative terms, we now have hard experimental
evidence that strongly implies that physical processes are, at root, acausal; they
just happen out of themselves; and that consciousness, or at least the decisions
of the observer, can modify or control what happens. Secondly it would seem
that pure information can travel anywhere instantaneously and perhaps persist
indefinitely, providing there is some sort of affinity, or magical link as we would
call it, between that which emits and that which receives. Very few liberties need
to be taken with quantum physics to fit in virtually the whole of parapsychology. It
remains to be seen if quantum physics can be presented in sufficiently
accessible form to provoke another occult revival." - Chaos International #1

Other sources of speculation might include the works on ley lines and
geomancy such as Paul Deveraux's earth lights hypothesis, and the vast bodies
of work on human psychology, psychedelics, entheogens, and states of
consciousness expansion. If I look for clear-cut examples of purely physical
manifestations of the inexplicable two phenomena immediately occur to me:
poltergeists and spontaneous human combustion (kundalini gone amok?). These
things do seem to happen, and they are pretty darned spooky, aren't they?

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 Clearly, I have skipped rather lightly over these burning questions of how
science and magick interact, as I am perhaps rather less informed on physics
than I am on metaphysics (sorry, my major in college was Anthropology). In
general I have chosen here to discuss the arts of arcane enchantment on their
own age-old terms, and these arts have survived those ages because of internal
consistency and (surprisingly frequently) actual results.
My own sense of things is simply that in some mysterious way or other the
human mind (or should we say brain?) does interact with the apparent universe
surrounding it. The work of the mage is to deliberately create a personal sphere
of power or influence wherein insights, synchronicities, and constant fulfillment of
will and desire continually manifest. Whatever model of the cosmos and its
processes is most effective for activating our hidden talents may be utilized or
discarded as results dictate. One must simply accustom the psyche to infinite
possibilities and remarkable coincidences begin to accumulate, until our
childhood programming breaks down and we admit to ourselves that the world is
indeed much stranger than we are taught.
The Taoist sage Chuang-Tzu had a parable: sleeping, he dreamt that he
was a butterfly, and on awakening he wondered: was he truly a philosopher who
dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of being a philosopher? The
new mathematics of chaos science has a parable: the fluttering breeze of a
butterfly's wings over South American rain-forest cascades outwards to become
a huge storm over New York City. In itself, this is really not a bad metaphor for
the ways in which the seed-sigil of magical desire can grow into actual effects. To
me, the question is: what if they are the same damn butterfly? In ancient myth
the butterfly is often a metaphor for the soul, a wormlike thing that spins a cocoon
and emerges metamorphosed into a creature of beauty.
Quantum theory has been described as “the dreams that stuff is made of”.
One amusing aspect of modern particle physics is that whenever a researcher
predicts another new subatomic particle and goes looking for it, they tend to find
it. Is it even remotely possible that they are creating it instead? Of course, one of
the fundamental questions of recent science is "That's fine in practice, but how
does it work in theory?" Frankly it is still practice that concerns me more; while
scientists may not believe in magick, I would consider it rude not to believe in
science, which has done so much to improve our attempts at civilization. Often I
have met those who think that things were better in the good old days, or that
science alone is solely responsible for degrading and polluting our planet or that
herbs are superior to modern medicine. In general I look at them and think to
myself: "If you had lived a hundred years ago you'd have been pretty damn lucky
to survive past infancy". The human quest for knowledge has tripled life
expectancy and made everyday life a thousand times easier. Indoor plumbing
and technology, transportation and communication, transplant surgery and
antibiotics? Brilliant stuff. Any of the horrendous side effects are largely
attributable to human idiocy, corporate greed, and corrupt governments; and
there is a saying among physicians that no side effects means no effects. Many
of the best spiritual visions we have had in the last few years have appeared in
science fiction, and history shows that science fiction frequently comes true.

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Frankly, we have so monumentally screwed up our lovely planet that our only
hope now is rapid technological progress, especially in finding new sources of
food, water and energy. I really am rooting for maximum progress; if I have to
choose a future, I’d much prefer Star Trek over Road Warrior.

Pyromancy, Aeromancy, Hydromancy, Geomancy

“… the seed should be taken as representing Spirit… the stem as Fire, the
blossom as Water, the leaf as Air, and the fruit as Earth. Note that the fruit
usually contains the seed of the next generation…”
- Aleister Crowley, from 777

From these various theories of how the psycho-spiritual realm functions

and ultimately interacts with material reality we may advance to the classic
cartographic models of how it is structured. First, the five elements that are the
tools of the magus, used to manipulate this world we know; second, the forces of
the planetary spheres, the ladder of lights by which we ascend to the otherworld.
In Taoist terms these are earth and heaven, twin dragons perpetually intertwined.
While the rather elaborate Holy Tree of Life connects the vertical axis of
the otherworlds above and below to the center where we stand, our first view of
the world is primarily horizontal: what is before or behind us, to our left or right.
Many traditions orient themselves ritually by these four quarters or corners or
watchtowers of the world, and with this pattern we now turn to the most ancient
Indo-European system of classification: that of the alchemical elements or
principles of Fire, Air, Water, Earth, completed and unified by Spirit (sometimes
called the Quintessence). These also pertain to the Hindu tattvas or the five suits
of the essential Tarot, and they are the keys to all magick.
Fire creates light and destroys with heat and is always seen as sacred
(except in those strange religions that believe in Hell) and may be associated
with the Soul. Often considered an illuminating, purifying and renewing force
linked with lightning, the Sun, love or lust, the heart and blood, and the color red.
In many mythologies mankind steals fire from heaven, a primal yet creative
crime. Making fire through friction (with a bow and fire-drill) often symbolizes the
sexual act. Fire rules Aries, Leo and Sagittarius.
Air is wind and cloud and storms, gods and spirits and stars in the sky and
the breath of life itself, and like intangible spirit mediates between upper and
lower realms and is associated with thought and the Mind, and the color yellow or
blue. Air rules Gemini, Libra and Aquarius.
Water ****????
The totality of all these elements is the Quintessence or Spirit or the
Philosopher’s Stone, and sometimes symbolized by the Egg or Rainbow.
With the first light of dawn comes a rush of wind, Air the breath of life. At
the peak of noon the brilliant solar light of Fire illuminates all. In the shadows of

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dusk the fertilizing Waters descend, and at midnight the Earth in darkness
merges us with the otherworld in an eternal cyclical dreaming Dance.
An ancient alchemical outline of their circular flow and qualities is as follows:

FIRE

Hot Dry

AIR SPIRIT EARTH

Wet Cold

WATER

Thus Fire is hot & dry, while Earth is dry & cold, Water is cold & wet, and
Air wet & hot. Fire and Air arise and expand, Water and Earth descend and
contract. Meditation on the ways in which the interplay of these forces form the
world by their permutations and transformations can include any aspect of
existence.
Whenever I travel by air, I enjoy the macrocosmic sense of viewing the world
from above: the globe itself like the uterine alchemical egg of the Great Work of
evolution, the solid fields of earth floating in vast oceans, the living rivers and
streams forming the circulatory system, the envelope of atmosphere like the mind
with clouds of memory and winds of thought, shining solar rays of electric sunfire
or magnetic moonglow slanting down from dark space to spark all life. The
flowing organic forms of the natural landscape are overlaid by the manmade grid
of roads, fields and cities, in a creative imposition of order upon chaos. On the
microcosmic level a walk through the woods enters a realm where stone and soil,
cascading liquid rivulets, golden light and misty breath whirl in a slow stately
dance of fresh green growth arising out of constant fungal decay, life born out of
death and the season's sacred wheel of change. Here every tree and plant is an
actual form of the archetypal Tree and every bird, beast, fish or insect is a true
representation of the greater spirit that ensouls their species. For me one of the
key places where magick and religion come together is in the numinous sense
that the entire universe is a beautiful and awesome miracle, unfolding in a
mysterious balance toward an unknown goal, and that the richness of all life itself
contains at every point a purpose rooted in individual being. As the poet William
Blake once said, "For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life." To
participate in the world is to experience this flow of change, the constant mingling
and separation ('solve et coagula' or dissolution and synthesis) of these elements
at play, and to find their transformations mirrored in one single Self. To feel the
Earth, taste the Water, hear the Wind and see the Fire is to exalt the Spirit.
While walking on a mountain trail after a New Year I had this thought on how we
evolved: with Earth we have the solidification of this terrestrial sphere as order
out of chaos, or solid matter cooling from the original star-substance. In Water
there are the first stirrings of micro-organisms and oceanic life, and the process

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of reproduction begins. As Air, plants create oxygen with photosynthesis, and so
we have surface life and the breath that goes with it. By Fire evolves the power of
mobility in all varied forms of animal life, the burning hunger of hunter and prey.
Spirit itself is consciousness or Self-awareness, the divine spark reflecting back
upon itself, and is not limited to humans.

A spiritual conjuration, etheric projection, or visualized sensory immersion in such

purely elemental streams can be quite useful in magical practice. These are the
most ancient powers of the magus, and never cease to resonate. They are
represented in ritual by the classical tools of the Magician as seen in the first
trump of the Tarot: the Wand, Cup, Blade, Disk or Pantacle, and perhaps the
Lamp for Spirit. My personal version of some of the correspondences presently
looks like this:

Earth Water Air Fire Spirit

solid liquid gas energy aethyr
matter time space energy mind
physical emotional mental spiritual
total
touch taste hearing sight smell
north west east south center
disk cup blade wand trumps,
lamp
diamonds hearts spades clubs joker
fruit flower leaf stem seed
beasts fish birds serpents humans
field/forest waters mountains deserts space
gnomes undines sylphs salamanders
gods/neters
merchants priests warriors farmers royalty
midnight sunset dawn noon now
winter autumn spring summer eternity
green blue yellow red black/white
melancholic sanguine phlegmatic choleric (the humours)
sensation intuition thinking feeling (Jungian)
cold/dry cold/wet hot/wet hot/dry (alchemy)
infant adolescent elder adult afterlife
to keep silent to dare to know to will to go
Law Love Life Light
Liberty/Laughter
Stone Seed Soul Star Self
Boreas Zephyrus Eurus Notus (four winds)
Uriel Gabriel Raphael Michael IHVH?
Ringo Paul George John The
Beatles
Gummo Harpo Chico Groucho Zeppo

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banana strawberry vanilla chocolate ice cream cone
Army Navy Air Force Marines Intelligence
Shub- Cthulhu Hastur Azathoth Yog-Sothoth,
Niggurath, Black Goat of the Woods or Nyarlathotep

They also correspond to the forms of the classical Platonic solids: earth is
the hexahedron (aka the cube); water is the icosahedron; air the octahedron; fire
the tetrahedron; and spirit the dodecahedron. Useful information? Perhaps
instead we should examine the court cards of the Tarot, the King, Queen, Prince
and Princess, who correspond to Father, Mother, Son, and Daughter in the
qabalistic formula IHVH. Like the four suits, they also each represent Fire, Water,
Air and Earth, so we may chart their permutations of human typography thus:

King Queen Prince Princess

Wands fire of fire water of fire air of fire earth of fire
Swords fire of air water of air air of air earth of air
Cups fire of water water of water air of water earth of water
Disks fire of earth water of earth air of earth earth of earth

There are many ways of absorbing these elemental forces to fully

empower your being. For example, you can employ yogic breathing (pranayama)
to charge yourself with the power of winds and aires, or any other realm in which
you immerse yourself: water ranging from ocean surf to hot-tub, fire from candle
flame to bonfire to volcano to the Sun, earth by giving way to gravity and feeling
yourself drawn to the peak of a mountain or the core of the planet.
The Hindu tattvas mentioned above are a yellow square for earth (Prithivi), a
silver crescent for water (Apas), a blue circle for air (Vayu), a red triangle for fire
(Tejas), and a black egg for spirit (Akasha). They can be combined to represent
conjunctions of the forces they represent, used as gateways in scrying or astral
projection, or visualized when projecting waves of etheric force from your hands
in operations such as the charging of tools or talismans. The palm of the hand is
a chakra or center most useful for the concentration of power; it is attributed to
the Hebrew letter Kaph which is in turn ascribed to the Tarot trump the Wheel of
Fortune, and the practice of palmistry has always taught that the individual
destiny is imprinted in the lines and shape of the hand. In ritual terms these
elemental categories may by applied in countless ways:
Earth: in addition to the disk or Pantacle, earth is represented with sacred stones
(especially those with natural holes, called holystones), ash, gems, crystals, salt,
colored chalk, etc. All forms of solidity and support, such as the altar or a globe of
the world; food offerings such as bread or fruit; and sand paintings like those
made by the Tibetans, Navaho or Hopi. I also think that one of the great
mutations of the suit
of pentacles in this aeon is that Disks are now computer disks, containing
condensed information, text, music, images...
Water: containers like the chalice, cup, grail, drinking horn, offering or
scrying bowls, cauldrons; the holy-water sprinkler or aspergillum; wells or

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fountains, all bodies of water; liquid sacraments like wine, mead or ale; bodily
secretions such as saliva, blood, tears, or sexual fluids; scented oils, inks and
paints; ritual bathing, baptism, purification, and swimming.
Air: incense, flowers or smudge sticks; smoking implements such as the
sacred pipes of the Plains Indian tribes (or the hookah, bong or water-pipe that
alchemically combines all the elements); fans and prayer flags; bull-roarers,
bells, whistles, pan-pipes and flutes; feathers and branches of trees; yogic
breathing, and the wind itself; the blade, sword, dagger or arrow.
Fire: sources of illumination such as candles, lamps, torches, bonfires,
fire-drills or flints; the pyre wherein sigils or prayer-offerings are burned (a classic
method of transmitting something to the otherworld); all brilliant natural
phenomena such as volcanoes, lightning or comets; the practices of fire-walking
or gazing into flame, and the Chinese use of explosive fireworks to drive away
evil; the Sun, Moon, and Stars and comets; and of course the magician's wand or
staff.
Spirit: images of the gods, the Shiva-Lingam or Stele of Revealing; also
the Void as Nuit. The symbolism of the major instruments will be discussed in
more depth later.

"Aiwaz! Confirm my troth with Thee! my will inspire

With secret sperm of subtle, free, creating Fire!
Mould thou my very flesh as Thine, renew my birth
In childhood merry as divine, enchanted Earth!
Dissolve my rapture in Thine own, a sacred slaughter
Whereby to capture and atone the Soul of Water!
Fill thou my mind with gleaming Thought intense and rare
To One refined, outflung to Naught, the Word of Air!
Most, bridal bound, my quintessential Form thus freeing
From self, be found one Selfhood blent in Spirit-Being."
- 'Invocation', from Crowley's Book of Thoth

We may also discuss in some detail the four classic powers of the magus:
to Know, to Dare, to Will, and to Keep Silent:

“To attain the sanctum regnum, in other words, the knowledge and the power of
the magi, there are four indispensable conditions - an intelligence illuminated by
study, an intrepidity which nothing can check, a will nothing can break, and a
discretion which nothing can corrupt and nothing intoxicate. To know, to dare, to
will, to keep silence - such are the four words of the magus.”
- Dogma & Ritual of High Magic, Eliphas Levi

To Know: may be interpreted both in the conventional sense of the

accumulation of wisdom and skills, and in esoteric terms as Gnosis, that deeper
knowledge or organic understanding which is so transformative as to be virtually
identical with the ecstatic state of magical or yogic trance. Books and teachers
are a necessary strand of the weavings of mystery, but so is direct experience. In

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either sense, learning is an essential: magick can be as perilous to the careless
amateur as any other laboratory explosion, and a little knowledge is indeed quite
often a dangerous thing. Folklore ancient and modern abounds with tales of
those who did something stupid just to see what would happen, and the
cemeteries and madhouses overflow. To know someone in the biblical sense, of
course, is another story completely.
To Dare: emphasizes sorcery as a path of action rather than passivity.
The history of our Art, like today's academic community and far too much of the
Internet, is full of armchair magi who freely criticize others without any real
comprehension, attainment, or personal accomplishment. Courage is now often
fashionably seen as a rather evil-male-dominator-culture attribute by our coddled
and comfortable society; on the other hand, it evolved to insure survival in a
considerably less artificial environment. To dare is a leap, perhaps not of faith,
but of resolve.
To Will: is the key to success; without focus, drive, and sheer bloody-
minded determination nothing is ever likely to actually happen. The Word of the
Law is Thelema: Will! Desire alone is not enough. According to Robert Anton
Wilson, Thelema also has linguistic roots meaning 'spells or sorcery'. The
concept of the True Will, the raison de’tre, the core purpose in life of each
individual, is at the very center of Crowley's system. Virtually every true magical
action in its essence is simply the expression of a deliberate act of Will, and
every system is driven toward change by conscious intent.
To Keep Silent: serves several functions. Secrecy is traditional for a
variety of reasons: the instinctual notion that power shared is power lost, and that
the true name of a thing gives you power over it; the desire of the practitioner to
avoid long drawn-out painful discussions with the Unholy Inquisition or the local
Baptists; and the very definition of magick as a secret art whose effects are
worked in a deliberately concealed and unconventional manner, unknown to
those it seeks to influence, by means and methods effective in part by being
hidden from the profane. There is also implied the yogic practice of stilling the
mind, suppressing the random monkey-chatter of mundane consciousness. On
the level of practice every word spoken in ritual is meaningful and extraneous
nonsense should in general be avoided, although this may not apply to laughter!
Silence is very often to be found in the instructions of occult texts: the practitioner
should journey to and from the place of power without speech, to maintain full
concentration upon the vital actions; in a world set apart from the normal the
enchanted circle of magick becomes a lens to focus more sharply the intensity of
being. To cultivate silence by stilling of the mind leads to experience of the
emptiness that permeates all things, for there is no light without darkness. The
territory of magick overlaps with that of religion, and thus trespasses upon the
realm of the sacred, since many of the arcane arts were birthed in the temples of
the ancient mystery cults. Hoor-par-kraat, the lotus-born child-form of Horus in
Liber AL, is the god of silence; his typical gesture of the finger to the lips is a rite
of powerful banishing by simple inner stillness, and can be accompanied by
visualization of oneself encompassed in a protective mirror-egg of blue light. This
practice can ultimately lead to the power of invisibility. The symbol of silence was

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a black rose, and when conspiracies met they would hang a rose above them as
a reminder of secrecy; hence our phrase sub rosa.
In the next aeon we might require a fifth power and some have noticed
that a pyramid, while it comes into focus upon a single point, also has in fact five
sides when counting the hidden base. This last has been nominated as:
To Go: the power or activity of motion sometimes expressed in the
Egyptian symbol of life called the Ankh, traditionally said to represent a sandal-
strap (or a magical knot, or a mirror, or a bouquet of flowers, or sexual congress),
but also resembling the union of sexual organs, the Lingam with the Yoni. Life,
motion, action, and vitality: the gifts of the gods, the Way of the Tao. Momentum
has a life of its own, and much of magick involves setting the wheels in motion
and guiding them on their way. The notion of Karma, for instance, I see largely as
a simple matter of results logically arising from thoughts and actions rather than
the imaginary ledger of some moral bank account. Consider also the Tarot trump
of the Chariot, which is strongly linked to the Aeon of Horus and clearly evolved
from the late-classical image of Helios-Apollo as the charioteer of the Sun. That
which Goes is the Way of the Tao.

Odd as it may seem to some, playing the great game of magick may often
involve some light-hearted juggling with symbols. Once I was watching a
documentary on the legendary demise of Russia's infamous mad monk Rasputin.
It is said that his aristocratic assassins first massively poisoned him to no effect.
Then they panicked and repeatedly shot him, but he still did not die; then they
stabbed and bludgeoned him for awhile, and after a long and strenuous evening
finally threw him (still alive!) into an icy river were at last he drowned. Great story,
and it occurs to me that it works as an elemental magical initiation: Poison: is of
the Spirit; Shot: with Firearms; Stabbed: swords are Air in the Tarot; then
Bludgeoned: would be physical Earth; and Drowned: in Water.
Finally, I have a theory relating these elemental forces to modern physics:
Fire as electro-magnetism, Water as the strong nuclear force, Air as the weak
nuclear force, Earth as gravity, and Spirit as string theory. String theory itself fits
well with so many metaphors of magick, the weaving of the Fates and binding of
spirits, the age-old use of knots and cords, the webs and nets in which power is
snared.

"Enough for now. In urbanized, technologized society - that institutional home for
the orphans of Pan - there may be few who can even relate anymore to the Four
Elements. At least not in any primal sense. V'lu Jackson, for example, once
inquired of Madame Devalier if the Four Elements weren't some Motown jive
group, while Ricki the bartender has defined the Four Elements as cocaine,
champagne, pussy, and chocolate." - Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins

Scale Models of the Universe

“I think that qabala is very punk rock.” - Madonna

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"Oh noble man, fear nothing, for both the threatening gods and the peaceable
gods are no more than the creations of your own mind."
- Tibetan Book of the Dead

"Forget the Buddha! Sit under the Bodhi tree any time you like."
- Toby Dalton

“It’s only a model.” - Monty Python

A Tree with roots in the sky grows out of the center of the world. In terms
of modern magick this has become a qabalistic diagram called the Tree of Life,
which serves as a map of both the internal and external universe. In its
contemporary form in has evolved out of the Christian Cabalism of the
Renaissance and been codified by the Golden Dawn.
Monotheism sees the universe as the One, the Universe, a cosmos
sustained by an incomprehensible balance. On the other hand, the viewing of
everything that is may be rather difficult for human minds to comprehend
simultaneously. Like the Taoists and the gnostics, we may then tend to perceive
all events as created by the interplay of duality: male and female, light and
darkness, heaven and earth, yang and yin, chocolate and vanilla, good and evil,
right brain and left brain. As our cultural mythologies later evolve into complexity,
we begin to envision vast cosmic hierarchies of celestial and infernal realms
inhabited by multitudes of beings, and thus continually complicate things.
Perhaps Asian religions especially might seem notable for taking a fairly simple
and fundamental concept and elaborating it to extremes: from a relatively
straightforward teaching may result many thousands of pages of commentaries,
and from a single deity arise countless aspects. Categories are conveniences,
but it helps to keep our systems of belief simple and manageable, and to bear in
mind that ultimately they are intended to be completely utilitarian. Cosmologies
gone berserk simply confuse the issue of what underlying reality is or might be.
The originally Hebrew qabala, for example, which models the Tree of Life as a
system of ten spheres (and a non-sphere) in three columns on seven planes
divided by triple veils yet connected by twenty-two paths and manifesting in four
worlds, can progress to become a form of total magickal obsession for many. In
fact, the qabala essentially is a form of deliberate magickal obsession, a 10-Step
Recovery Program. However, we are our own Higher Power in this very different
version of the A.A.
One of the first things we naturally do is map out our territory. In archaic
terms, we generally find a three-fold division of the universe: the human world
around us, filled with plant and animal life; the sky-realm of heaven above,
containing sun, moon, stars and storms, thus gods and beings of light; and the
underworld of dark caverns and deep oceans, where ancestral and animal spirits
of the dead and the more sinister hell-beings dwell. These triple worlds are often
linked by the connecting symbol of the cosmic tree, with roots deep below,
branches ever reaching upward, whose trunk forms the rainbow bridge for the

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shaman's journey. From the Old Norse world-ash Yggdrasill, to the biblical
Eden's ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ drawn from ancient near-eastern
sources, to the sacred Bodhi-tree where the Buddha found enlightenment, this
primordial tree is seen as the center of the universe. The roots draw liquid life
and mineral elements upwards and the branches capture fiery light and the
breath of the wind reaching downwards, in an endless play of transmutation.
Linking the terrestrial and the celestial, the trunk of the tree is the sky-supporting
column of the center and the body of the mage. The divine overworld and the
infernal underworld, as realms of astrological force and alchemical form, meet in
the magick of the human realm.
This duality may also be useful in examining the parallels of the sephiroth and
the qlipoth. The traditional Tree of Life with its paths & spheres is balanced by a
Tree of Death formed of tunnels & caverns; these bright and dark aspects have
been explored by Kenneth Grant and others. In this version or vision of the
qabalistic system, the eleventh non-sphere of Daath or Knowledge (located in the
Abyss) serves as a unique gateway to the other side or negative zone of the tree,
to a reversed or reflected Universe B filled with the strange Lovecraftian or alien
influences that naturally manifest there. Our world may thus be seen from either
side of the coin, as both daydream or nightmare, heaven or hell: something like
the matter and anti-matter universes in the old Star Trek episode, or the orbital
journey of the Egyptian sun-god Ra over our sky of the Living during the Day,
and through the land of the Dead by Night. Daath is a strange phenomenon, a
point of cosmic discontinuity between the Real and the Unmanifest; in some
traditions it is the original location of our home sphere, the sephira Malkuth, as
the Kingdom before the Fall of humankind and the alleged expulsion from the
Garden of Eden. Daath is also the sphere of Knowledge: when we ‘Cross the
Abyss’ we pass beyond the realm of the merely personal or the limits of rational
thought.
We should also recall that near the sacred tree there is often a holy pool
or well with healing and prophetic properties, sometimes found in a cave; all
clearly feminine or Goddess symbols.
In western magick this qabalistic tree of life is the key or symbolic
centerpiece that is simultaneously the macrocosm or solar system and the
microcosm or human individual. These are then considered to be in some ways
identical, or at least capable of mutually influencing one another. It has come to
serve as a sort of conceptual file cabinet linking all things into a rich system of
correspondences. These spheres (called in Hebrew sephiroth or ‘lights’)
represent the numbers from 1 to 10 (or 11) as the planets, the gods and their
many aspects, levels of density, states of consciousness, the colors of the
spectrum, the atus of the tarot from Ace to Ten, and so forth; they are formed by
the lightning-flash of creation, the original gnostic fall of the spirit into
manifestation as matter. Each sphere in turn reflects the overflowing energy of
that which precedes it. The 22 connecting paths are linked to the 22 letters of the
Hebrew alphabet, the 22 trumps of the Tarot, and to countless other symbols;
they form the winding serpentine path of return to whatever our primal or final
state may turn out to be. All of this is again in one sense completely arbitrary,

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and on another resonates deeply with the Jungian archetypes or Platonic ideal
forms which run amok through the human psyche. Like most of magick, which
has evolved over centuries through the work of countless thinkers, it is retained
as a model for the practical reason that it remains useful. Internal consistency
might be good for something, and a tentative map of the process enables us to
manipulate our universe and our selves. The middle pillar of the tree is in some
ways symmetrical with the human spinal column and its chakras; the two side
pillars are ascribed to the qualities of mercy or expansion and severity or
contraction, and reconciled by justice or balance in the center. I originally had no
intention of writing a full treatise on the subject at this time, but since I have
followed esoteric tradition in roughly structuring my present work around the
qabalistic schematic I seem to have wound up doing so anyway. I suppose it has
become the traditional way of having the otherworld world of magick make some
vague sort of sense.
The structure of the Tree of Life represents the numbers from One to Ten,
and Ten as 1 + 0 = 1, the Many ever returning to the One and None again:
Nirvana is Samsara, Heaven is Earth, God is the World, and the Human Body is
the Cosmos. If we accept the thelemic model of the Tree as including the semi-
sphere of Daath we arrive at eleven, which Crowley claimed as the number of
magick, the ‘one beyond ten’. Taking 11 as 1 + 1 = 2 we move to the defining
new aeon formula of the universe as 0 = 2, the Tao in manifestation as the
interplay of yin and yang. Let us examine this model more closely.
Beyond everything lies nothing: the dark triple veil of the unmanifest,
called Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur (Nothingness, Without Limit, and
Limitless Light). These coalesce at the apex of the supernal triangle of the
spheres upon the tree in Kether the Crown, which is utterly GOD beyond our
conceptions, KIA or the TAO, seen as pure white radiance at the point of all
manifestation. This creates darkness and light, dividing into Chokmah and Binah,
the primal yang and yin, the word and the silence, the stars amid space. Binah
(Mother of Understanding) is seen as black and Chokmah (Father of Wisdom)
as the many shades of gray vibrating between light and dark. The Veil of the
Abyss, whose crossing is considered one of the ultimate leaps of cosmic
consciousness and is also seen by some as the gateway to certain negative
realms, divides them from the mundane reality we perceive. Binah is linked to
Saturn, long the outermost known planet, while the Abyss or Daath is now seen
as Uranus, Chokmah as Neptune, and Kether as Pluto. It is quite interesting to
note that while all the other planetary rotations are more-or-less in line, abysmal
Uranus alone spins on its axis at a sideways angle. Crowley suggests that the
asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter also corresponds to Daath; others believe
this zone to be an unformed or shattered lost planet (called Lucifer by some and
in my own opinion the actual site of Atlantis and the original source of all
genetically-seeded terrestrial life). Prior to the comparatively recent discovery of
these outer planets Chokmah was seen as the sphere of the zodiacal belt, and
Kether as that of the fixed stars or Primum Mobile. Anything that we say about
these supernal spheres might remain largely in the realm of speculation.

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 The next triad corresponds to the three primary colors: Chesed is blue and
Jupiter, Geburah is red and Mars, completing the outermost planets. In the
center of the pattern is Tiphareth, yellow or gold as the Sun, which is also the
center of the solar system. The third triad of inner planets forms the secondary
colors: Netzach is green and Venus, Hod is orange and Mercury, Yesod is purple
or silver and the Moon. Pendant to all these spheres is Malkuth at the base of the
tree, representing Earth and the physical world in the organic brown that unites
all colors. There are other versions, of course; the G.D. used four separate
schemes of color, and this is essentially their Queen Scale. We may also
mention that the inner planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are quite solid
little rocks, while Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are immense gas giants.
The status of chill and distant Pluto as a planet is still a matter of some debate;
some would now classify it as an asteroid.
The central pillar of balance thus traditionally consists of the Kingdom of
Earth (Malkuth) rising to Moon (Yesod), Sun (Tiphareth), and the Crown of Stars
(Kether). On the left, the dark rational pillar of judgment is Mercury (Hod), Mars
(Geburah) and Saturn (Binah). On the right the bright intuitive pillar of mercy is
Venus (Netzach), Jupiter (Chesed), and Neptune or the turning Wheel of the
Zodiac (Chokmah).
In the transformational processes of alchemical science the Sun and
Moon are doubled with gold and silver (gold being a bright and unchanging
metal, and silver represented by the moon in part because it tarnishes, as the
waning moon darkens); also Saturn is lead, Jupiter tin, Mars iron, Venus copper,
and Mercury is logically enough mercury or quicksilver, while Earth might be any
stone or crystal. Of the newly discovered planets Uranus and Pluto correspond to
the uranium and plutonium suggestive of the New Aeon as an atomic age, while
Neptune has been variously linked to neptunium, lithium, and aluminum.
Uranium, neptunium, and plutonium have atomic numbers of 92, 93, and
94 respectively; these radioactive elements are reminiscent of nuclear weapons
(rather than computers or UFOs or genitalia) as the ‘war-engine’ prophesied in
Liber AL. If my information is correct, number 93 was the first man-made
element. Clearly the most ancient astrological theories of the star-sown sky, and
also the seething alchemical mutations of the underworld, still retain their
influence in this heaven and earth of our magickal world-view’s ever-expanding
system of planetary classifications. As Comrade Lenin once so truly said,
"Everything is connected to everything else."
Crowley's G.D.-derived 777 & Other Qabalistic Writings is the standard
dictionary, and to discover the appropriate geometric figures, colors, gods,
perfumes, animals, drugs, tools, etc. for any operation one must simply read
through the various tables for the sphere or path involved. (Bill Whitcomb's The
Magician's Companion is also a very useful contemporary contribution, as is
Steven Skinner’s recent

.) Thus, for example, if one was devising a ritual of Mars (as the fifth sphere,
Geburah), one might employ weapons of steel, call on war-gods, wear red robes
and armor, play heavy metal music, burn five red candles and a martial incense,

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offer blood and tobacco, and do a cocaine-induced war-dance within a pentagon
of iron chain while wearing a flaming pentagram and firing five rounds from a
pistol at a pre-sigilized target (gunpowder also being a martial substance).
Funny, isn't it, that our military forces also inhabit a Pentagon? Rumors abound
of the malignant demons penned within!
In terms of the return journey we might also consider the Earth as physical
birth; the Moon as infancy; Mercury as the age of rationality and language; Venus
as sexual puberty; the Sun as the individuality of adulthood; Mars as parenthood;
Jupiter as seniority; Saturn as the realm of death; and the outer planets as the
after-death or bardo states. Or alternatively: Earth: strengthen the body; Moon:
dedicate the soul; Mercury: train the mind; Venus: rouse those unruly passions;
Sun: achieve the one-pointedness of spirit; Mars: do thy will; Jupiter: speak thy
word; Uranus: cross the abyss of death; Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto: union with
Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit.
Another model of the process is less linear, and the spheres are seen as
levels of density or vibration occupying the same space. Reality is formed by the
Void swirling into focus as the primal point of Kether the Crown, and then
progressing to solidity by a concentration inward or expanding outward to form
the jewel of Malkuth the Kingdom. These spheres are thus like the layers of an
onion, and the way of return is accomplished by the projection or reabsorbing of
consciousness back to reunite with its source. This source corresponds to
Spare’s concept of KIA as the Original or Primordial Unity.

I will close with my own charts of correspondences. These are the generally
accepted spheres of the tree: their Hebrew and English names, planets, colors of
the spectrum, and the mystical metals of alchemy:
1. Kether Crown Pluto White Plutonium
2. Chokmah Wisdom Neptune Gray
Neptunium
3. Binah Understanding Saturn Black Lead
0. Daath Knowledge Uranus Clear Uranium
4. Chesed Mercy Jupiter Blue Tin
5. Geburah Strength Mars Red Iron
6. Tiphareth Beauty Sun Yellow Gold
7. Netzach Victory Venus Green Copper
8. Hod Splendor Mercury Orange
Quicksilver
9. Yesod Foundation Moon Purple Silver
10. Malkuth Kingdom Earth Brown Crystal

These are the magical offices or levels of initiation according to the A.A. (based
on Adam Weishaupt’s original structure of the Bavarian Illuminati as later
modified by the G.D.); also my own version of the instruments of the Magus and
the god-forms of the Dual Current. The triad of spheres 4, 5, and 6 (Jupiter, Mars
and the Sun) form the downward-pointing red triangle that is a symbol of Horus,

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and the three names given here are all different aspects of him as the Child, the
Warrior, and the balanced Priest-King.
1. Ipsissimus 10=1 Stele, Crown Hrumachis/Abraxas
2. Magus 9=2 Phallus/Lingam Hadit
3. Magister Templi 8=3 Kteis/Yoni Nuit
0. Babe of the Abyss Black Mirror, Crystal Tahuti (Thoth)
4. Exempt Adept 7=4 Book of Art, Robe Hoor-par-kraat
5. Adeptus Major 6=5 Bell, Spear, Sword Ra-hoor-khuit
6. Adeptus Minor 5=6 Lamp, Altar, Cord Heru-Ra-Ha
7. Philosophus 4=7 Wand Babalon
8. Practicus 3=8 Blade, Censer Therion
9. Zelator 2=9 Cup Maat
10. Neophyte 1=10 Pantacle, Circle, Tarot Baphomet/Aiwass

These are the parts of Adam Kadmon, primordial man whose body is the Tree
itself; some aspects of the human condition; and one of various versions of the
holy angels and angelic orders of the sephiroth:
1. Head Truth Metatron, Shekinah Aeons
2. Eyes Will Raziel
Seraphim
3. Ears Love Tzaphqiel
Cherubim
0. Mouth Questioning The Holy Spirit Hosts
4. left arm Concept Tzadkiel
Thrones
5. right arm Action Samael Dominions
6. Heart Creation Michael
Virtues
7. left leg Feeling Hanael
Powers
8. right leg Thinking Raphael
Principalities
9. Genitalia Changing Gabriel
Archangels
10. Body, feet Growing Sandalphon, Uriel
Angels

These are some aspects of Egyptian neters and Greek deities:

1. Amon, Atum-Ra, Nut, Heka Zeus, Themis, Pan
2. Thoth, Shu, Ptah, Hu Athena, Cronos
3. Mut, Tefnut, Neith, Isis, Nephthys, Nut, Sia Hera, Rhea
0. Maat, Kheph-Ra, Harpocrates, Ihy, Set, Nun Hades, Eris
4. Kneph, Khnum, Min Poseidon,
Hephaistos
5. Horus, Set-Typhon, Montu, Min, Reshep Ares, Heracles
6. Ra-Horakte, Asar, Sekhmet, Aton Apollo, Helios, Dionysos

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7. Hathor, Qatesh, Bast Aphrodite,
Euphoria. 8. Anubis, Thoth, Imhotep Hermes,
Aesklepios 9. Khonsu, Sokar, Shu Artemis,
Hekate, Selene
10. Geb, Isis, Maat, Bes, Taurt Demeter, Hestia

These are Norse gods, the totemic or alchemical bird-forms from the
Maatian system, and Soror Nema’s titles or aspects of Maat:
1. Odin, Tiwaz Swan She Who Moves
2. Bragi, Forseti Heron On-Going Balance
3. Frigga, Wyrd Owl Mother of the Sun
0. Hodr, Hel Ibis TAO (or Hoor-par-Kraat)
4. Njord, Vidar Raven Mask Dancer
5. Tyr, Thor, Vali Cockerel Air Unconfined
6. Baldur, Frey, Sunna Hawk Black Flame
7. Freya, Gerd Peacock Bee Gynander
8. Loki, Hermod Hummingbird Quill-Plume
9. Heimdall, Mani Loon Maut the Vulture
10. Jord, Sif, Gefn Eagle/Lion Black Pearl Within The
Crystal Lotus

As a Norse addendum, this is my brutal reconciliation of the Nine Realms of the

fabled World-Tree called Yggdrasil with the Hebrew qabala, which serves to
show the overall flexibility of both systems:
1. Kether is Asgardh, Kingdom of the Aesir or Sky Gods
2. Chokmah is Muspelheim, the realm of Light, Fire and Energy
3. Binah is Niflheim, the realm of Darkness, Ice and Matter
0. Daath is Ginnungagap, 'the yawning void' full of magical energy
4. Chesed is Vanaheim, land of the Vanir, Earth Gods or fertility deities
5. Geburah is Jotunheim, land of Giants similar to the early Greek Titans
6. Tiphareth is Bifrost, radiant Rainbow Bridge linking human and divine worlds
7. Netzach is Alfheim, home of the aerial bright elves (angels?)
8. Hod is Svartalfheim, dwelling of subterranean dwarves & kobolds (demons?)
9. Yesod is Hel, misty realm of the Dead
10. Malkuth is Midgardh, the 'middle garden' or human world, which is better
known to us all as Professor Tolkien's famous Middle Earth.

            If we play with the concept of the Tree of Life, if thissymbolism serves as
a template for the analysis of just about absolutelyeverything, then anything is
fair game. One might experiment with qabalistic analysis of the ideal home itself,
or of amusement parks: Kether garden                          planetarium
Chokmmah attic                              roller coasterBinah               
basement                     spook houseDaath                moving                         
entrance/exitChesed             dining room                 parachute drop
Geburah            playroom                     bumper carsTiphareth            living
room                 Ferris wheel, merry-go-

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roundNetzach            bedroom                     tunnel of loveHod                 
study                            fortunetellerYesod               bathroom                     house
of mirrorsMalkuth             kitchen                          freak show             I have
placed the kitchen in Malkuth, as the hearth is the traditional center of the home.
We can further divide the four elements as the stove for fire, the sink for water,
the refrigerator for air, and the cupboard for earth, with the process of cooking as
spirit. Also, the halls and stairways would represent the paths.
I also think I may also have discovered the Tree of Punctuation. Now I can retire.
            Kether *Binah ?                   
Chokmah !            Daath ;Geburah -               
Chesed ( )            Tiphareth &Hod "                      
Netzach /            Yesod ,
Malkuth .

Taming the Tigers of the Mind: the Paths to Power

"Two are the methods of becoming God: the Upright and the Averse. Let the
Mind become as a flame, or as a well of still water."
- Liber HHH s.f. CCCXLI

"(Night and day.) One dream interprets another." - A.O.Spare

The mind is our experiential reality, our only real existence: through the
(hopefully reliable) gates of the senses we perceive the external world, and
turning inward we explore our interior cosmos. We might assume that the
physical world is more real than the vagaries and varieties of inner life; that
popular, accepted, or consensus reality is fact, and the visions of artists, mystics
or psychotics are fantasy; or vice versa. As Lily Tomlin once remarked, "Why is it
that when we talk to God it’s prayer, but when God talks to us it is
schizophrenia?" Once again, magick enters into the gray areas and Big
Questions: what is the nature of the ultimate reality? My attitude is that everyone
needs to work that one out for themselves, and that all of the undeniably bizarre
concepts of magick, religion or science may provide clues and stepping-stones
along the way to amplify forms of direct experience; the gnostic knowledge
opposed to faith. We all inhabit a variety of trance states, from intense
concentration over a project to the internal autopilot that enables us to walk home
safely without noticing any details along the way. In short, we all range through
states from deep sleep to dazzling flashes of inspiration, blind habit to cosmic or
sexual ecstasy; so the ‘under will’ part of magick implies making strategic use of
any and all of them. Magick involves the deliberate and systematic creation of a
state of mind which then becomes a state of being. Altered states are the
gateways to magickal success. The metaphors of liberation or clarity or
awakening or ‘transcendence’ (of what, pray tell?) indicate some of the potential
goals of consciousness; meditation or yogic techniques have been around for
millennia, and quantum physics perhaps complicates or simplifies everything

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depending on your attitude and understanding. Magick, on the other hand,
intensifies everything.
The various levels of yogic attainment, or the visionary states of the spheres of
the Tree of Life, or the freely utilized passions of Spare's Alphabet of Desire, are
all merely attempts at codifying the infinite potentials of the human mind. Without
a deep and honest appraisal of the self and a full exploration of the talents of
one's own psyche, the magician may indulge only in the notorious trap of self-
deception, which is a contradiction in terms of the quest for wisdom and power.
This is but one of the many good reasons for keeping a journal or Magical
Record. A technical distinction is sometimes made between the more active and
passive modes or techniques in practical work, and Pete Carroll provides this
vital chart:

Table 3: from Liber Null

The Physiological Gnosis

Inhibitory Mode Excitatory Mode

Death Posture Sexual excitation

Magical trance Emotional arousal

Concentration e.g., fear, anger,
and horror

Sleeplessness Pain, torture

Fasting Flagellation
Exhaustion Dancing, drumming
Chanting

Gazing Right way of walking

Hypnotic or Excitatory or
Trance inducing drugs disinhibitory drugs,
Mild hallucinogens,
Forced over-breathing

Sensory deprivation Sensory overload

As we can see, this diagram shows a balance between passive & active or
negative & positive modes of being. Death (Thanatos) reflects Sex (Eros); the
inward-turning inhibitory extremes are matched with arousal and the outward
extremes of emotional excess (emotions can include either positive joy and
ecstasy or negative rage and combativeness). Sensory deprivation matches
sensory overload and breath control or forced over breathing is an easily attained

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rush of hyper-ventilation that harkens back to the yogic practices of pranayama;
Buddhist walking meditation may be similar to Carlos Castaneda's gait of power.
Eastern chanting of calming mantras is matched with western raving goetic
invocation. Hypnotic gazing is a part of the mirror-working in Spare's Death
Posture and other forms of trance; prolonged regarding of one's reflected face in
a mirror (or a black mirror) eventually produces a profoundly altered state which
may be employed in the evocation of spirit entities. All of these practices,
including dancing or drumming, torture or combat, weird sexual practices, use of
hallucinogens and excitatory drugs, are all are just tricks to trigger what the noted
psychologist Abraham Maslow termed a peak experience.
Kenneth Grant's work is sometimes rather complex, but he provides a
listing of the methods of achieving magical power based upon the structure of the
Tree of Life that is a model of clarity; I include it under my account of the
individual sephiroth below.

Magick like psychology has made much use of the concept of the deep
mind, the so-called subconscious or unconscious; that vasty deep whence spirits,
archetypes, autonomous complexes or intrusive familiars arise via the
mechanisms of depth analysis, atavistic resurgence or goetic invocation. For
whatever reason (the preservation of relative sanity?) we cannot currently be
aware of every memory, experience, perception, or scrap of knowledge
simultaneously. We skate upon the surface of our psyches, while below us the
fallen idols of our past incarnations lie embedded in the past; a concept not
unlike that of the Norse Well of Wyrd, which holds all layers of history as we
experience the sharp edge of the present, ever creating the weave of the future.
Valid or not in terms of Freudian repression or of the Jungian collective
unconscious, our minds do seem to function in this way, and in becoming more
complete we may endeavor to bring light to this darkness and to steal away its
hidden treasures. Spare's concept of the sigil is greatly dependent upon the
notion of a deliberate forgetting, of side-stepping normal consciousness and
projecting our desires beyond all of the conflicts, doubts and hesitations of the
psychic censor, super-ego, or guardian of the threshold; as they gestate in this
hidden otherworld an autonomous astral stress is created which leads to their
manifestation in the sunlit realms. Bill Whitcomb suggests the following outline of
the mind:

Table 4: from The Magician's Companion

LEVEL FUNCTION RELATED

ELEMENT

Higher Self Spiritual evolution, Fire

"Connectedness"

Talking Self Talking, Memory, Logic Air

(Older Self) Thinking about the past and future

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Younger Self Feeling, Emotion, Desire Earth
Survival instinct
Momentary, here and now consciousness

Deep Self Subconscious, Dreams Water

Suppressed memory

This schema is similar in many ways to the multiple soul functions of some
pagan cultures such as the Egyptian or Norse. Both the tantriks and Kenneth
Grant also place great importance on the triple states of sleeping, waking and
dream, and the lucid control of the dreaming state is another of the great
gateways of magick, most useful in astral exploration, emotive sigilization, and
interior divination (not to mention allusive alliteration). The structure of the human
brain has evolved by an ongoing series of new developments: our waking ape
brain is wrapped around a dreaming wolf brain which is wrapped around a
sleeping reptile brain, and perhaps it is there that the primordial serpent of
kundalini dwells, and through these cellular levels that the hidden dragons of
Spare's atavistic automata arise.
There are various levels of magical trance utilized by oracles or mediums.
The Golden Dawn taught the ritual assumption of god forms, where one would
visualize oneself in the aspect and with the attributes of a personal deity, and be
overshadowed by their presence. Sexual excitation rapidly leads to a pronounced
focus of concentration, as does yogic training with its categories of mental states
leading from simple one-pointedness, on to various unions, then on up to the full-
blown ego-destroying Samadhi. While inspired to art we may feel the presence of
divine forces, and in the rites of Voudon we may see full possession in action: the
spirits of the Loa completely take over their devotees and make use their bodies,
as a rider mounts a horse. Inspiration***
The deliberate training and exploration of the mind is an integral part of
this great art. Turning back to the east, Yoga is perhaps the oldest and best
known such system, and many authorities are easily available, ultimately derived
from the sage Patanjali and his Yoga Sutras; Crowley explains most of what you
really need to know in both his Magick: Book 4 (part I) and Eight Lectures on
Yoga. This can be easily summarized as sit still, breathe deeply and shut up, but
actual practice quickly turns out to be a very different level of challenge.
The first step is to find a comfortable seated position with the spine
straight, so that your body ceases to be an issue; but without falling asleep,
which is a strong recommendation against prone postures. This practice is called
asana in yoga and motionlessness in chaos magick, and to fully maintain such a
posture for more than a few minutes at a time without slouching, itching or
twitching is much harder than it sounds. The next step is to breathe very deeply
and regularly, which most of us do not; this is called pranayama, and various
rhythms and usages of the mouth and of both or alternate nostrils may be
employed as your practice progresses. Essentially, however, it begins with just

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"inhale, hold; exhale, hold!” The new-age technique known as rebirthing employs
deep breathing to re-enact the experience of being born, to recover the body's
lost memories from traumatic repression. The next phase is quite simply, after
passing through various stages, to learn to stop thinking in the normal way; the
constant choronzonic babble of the monkey-mind is a remarkable distraction to
concentration and tends to maintain day-to-day reality and neurosis. When you
actually try to sit silently the most amazing memories and bizarre distractions
float to the surface and must be faced, resolved, and dismissed.
Sometimes an external object is used as a focus: a yantra or mandala, the
geometric Hindu tattvas, a candle flame or blank white wall, clouds or stars or a
flowing stream, can become the central point of the gaze. Eventually the image is
internalized into a training of the essential faculty of creative visualization. It is
perhaps best to begin with an arbitrary, meaningless or natural subject. This
practice can enhance the fabled hypnotic power of charismatic fascination, the
magical gaze or 'Evil Eye' possessed by many old witches and most black cats.
The practice of chanting a hypnotic mantra to focus the mind is common
as well and can become virtually automatic. There are many such phrases
common in Asian traditions up to and including commercial Transcendental
Meditation, and a western adept may fruitfully employ qabalistic, thelemic or
random vibrations instead. Engulfing oneself in music as a non-verbal exercise in
ecstasy is another option with the ultimate goal of remaining silent.
To explore the contents of the mind without being overwhelmed by them,
to attain altered states at will rather than by accident, can require many years of
practice. Better start now! Schedule a regular time period for daily routine, and
record all results. Understand that sheer bloody concentration and raw
determination is the foundation of everything; much of magick boils down to the
simple key elements of focused Will-power, aroused desire or overflowing libido,
vivid imagination, practiced memory, and skilled visualization. Whether you call it
a form of Yoga or simply mental calisthenics, training the mind has a profound
cumulative effect, and Robert Anton Wilson's 23rd Law is "DO IT EVERY DAY!"
It is bad enough that television has so utterly trashed many people's span of
attention. Ask any high-school teacher. Ask me why it took so damn long to finish
writing this book. Daily life provides constant distraction, and time flies…
Aside from the many traditional systems of Yoga, in the current
information explosion, there are countless systems of consciousness expansion,
organic and chemical stimulants, and high-tech brain machines now available for
the enlightened consumer. Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove's PSI*Development Systems is
one useful guidebook of the many possibilities in recent training systems,
covering everything from Silva Mind Control (highly recommended by many) to
cults like EST or Scientology. Other magickal training systems might include
Bardon's Initiation Into Hermetics, Thorsson's Nine Doors of Midgard, Don
Webb’s Uncle Setnakt’s Essential Guide to the Left Hand Path, the Wallace's
Psychic Healing Book, and the various works of Frater Perdurabo and Soror
Nema and Chaos magick and perhaps NLP.

"To reach up to the ceiling of Heaven - look within."

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- A.O. Spare

In the last analysis any ascent of the so-called ‘higher planes’ must begin
with a firm foothold in the alleged ‘real world’, and any work of the Will should
apply the simplest and most straightforward methods. The Great Work must
begin with a ruthless evaluation of every aspect of the Self: physical health,
emotional balance, and mental skills must be attained before one is assured of
spiritual adventures. It is more efficient to find a new career by searching the
want ads, sending out resumes and applications, and going to interviews than by
casting spells and then watching soap operas. Magick has many fields of
effectiveness, but like everything else it is also somewhat limited by those nasty
inconvenient laws of physics; it can shift the odds in your favor and aid your
confidence and endeavors, it can provide insights and revelations and quite often
expedite some truly remarkable coincidences, but it is a form of work, not a
substitute for work.

"Aleister Crowley used to say that the correct magical operation for leaving a
room is turning the doorknob and pushing the door."
- Allen H. Greenfield

Gnostic Themes & the Mountain of Initiation

"There are those who say that life is an illusion, and that reality is simply a
figment of the imagination." - Rocky Horror Picture Show

"This is your great moment of reality - the living flesh.... these self-frightened
saints who bleat - "All is Illusion" -; they offer fewer alternatives to reality than half
a wet dream." - A.O. Spare

I have referred above to the Gnosis, a general term for a wide variety of
magico-religious systems both Pagan and Judeo-Christian, which were formed
out of the ferment of the collapsing classical world and the rapidly emerging
barbarian empires. In many ways they form the western parallel to the eastern
tantriks, also made up of innumerable sects with secret teachings and arcane
practices, and both sharing a drive towards direct experience of the divine and a
view of the universe as created by linked pairs of opposites. Both offered a range
of attitudes varying from the strictly ascetic to the ecstatically erotic, while many
shared a sense of the soul's entrapment in the hostile or illusory material world.
The Orphic saying was "soma, sema": "the body is a tomb". They compared the
soul's imprisonment in doomed physical bodies with the exotic torture used by
the Silesian pirates, who would tie their victims face-to-face with a rotting corpse
until they starved to death. Some Hebrew or Rastafarian sects compare this
captivity of the pure spirit made into a carnal being to the exile and bondage in
Egypt.

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 By secret names or mantras and occult exercises these chains of the spirit
could be loosed, and release to the true reality attained. For the tantriks this
meant transcendence of the illusions of Samsara for the liberation of Nirvana,
and for the gnostics awareness of and communion with the True God. Many of
these gnostics saw the natural world as the imperfect creation of an evil or limited
Demiurge, while the true Supreme Being was wholly separate from any merely
manifest or material reality. This hostile Demiurge was often associated with the
biblical tyrant Jehovah, while the Serpent in the Garden of Eden was seen as a
liberator, since in Hebrew qabala ‘serpent’ and ‘messiah’ are numerologically
identical. The radical sects of the Ophites were often derided as mere serpent-
worshippers, when in fact they regarded Christ as the reincarnation of this Edenic
serpent, and considered both to be friends of mankind. This novel view of the
serpent power leads directly into the appeal the Devil has held for many later
heretics as the true savior of mankind, while the officially sanctioned God was
seen as the brutal accomplice of the Church, the State, and the tyrannical ruling
classes. The fallen angel Lucifer the Light-bringer was seen as a messenger
from beyond, a true teacher of the salvational knowledge of good and evil
symbolized by the fruit of the tree of life. In this sense the mechanism or guide of
true revelation (and moral ambivalence) bears some strong similarities to the
Crowleyan Holy Guardian Angel or Aiwass concept. Just in passing, we might
also mention the radical tradition that Cain was not truly the son of Adam, but of
Eve and the aforementioned Serpent; and there is a belief that many of us are
descended from the witch-blood of Cain.
Both gnostics and tantriks created elaborate and hierarchical systems of
cosmology, and the qabalistic tree is simply the best-known surviving example in
the west. All served as Ladders of Lights: if this present universe is seen as
created by a primordial fall from the perfect state of unity or divinity, or of
voidness or non-existence, then the exiled soul-spark of each individual must in
turn claw its way back out of some hideous clutching morass of mundane
manifestation, escaping from eternal bondage upon the wheel of recurring
rebirth. Ideally the ultimate goal is illumination, or more simply put, waking up.
The all-too-frequent and extremely unfortunate notion is that the spirit is good
and the body is evil. Gosh…. What was our Creator thinking of?
However, this fundamentally dualistic worldview (sparked in part by the
Zoroastrianism of ancient Persia and the later Manicheism) all too often becomes
a form of cultural schizophrenia that has always been one of the most sadly
recurring and central problems of the human condition. A profound hatred of life
has thus led to both personal and doctrinal states of psychosis throughout the
western world's history. Fundamentalist monotheism itself begins to look not
unlike a mental illness, which is often accompanied by a very deeply-rooted fear
and hatred of all forms of sexuality and of women and the female side of the
divine principle, simply because these are symbols of life and thus threaten their
perverse obsession with death. Christianity degraded all mortal existence to exalt
a hypothetical afterlife, and worshiped its single sacrificed god as a trinity of
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: what exactly is wrong with this picture? Where is…
Mother?

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 In more pagan or hermetic terms both life and death can be seen as a
great and unique opportunity for adventure and experience, and the affirmation of
life, flesh and nature rather than this desperate denial of the existence that we
have freely chosen may actually be healthy. If this planet is an organism, then we
are an integral part of it. Incredible arrogance aside, the very notion that human
beings are somehow separate from or totally superior to Nature is pretty darn
funny if you stop to consider it. Nature is much bigger than we are, and after
2,000 twisted years the revival of the concept of the Goddess and of Lovelock's
recent Gaia hypothesis (that the complex global play of interlocking ecosystems
forms a single great living being) may be leading us gently toward a much more
realistic and even pleasurable viewpoint. If anything matters when we look at
these monolithic monotheisms it is the oft-ignored notion that all life is sacred,
and that to repeat once more the vital words of the prophet William Blake,
"Everything that lives is holy, life delights in life". The hermetic tradition sees
duality as a function of an essentially unified, organic, and holistic living cosmos,
all of whose elements serve a purpose. It is impossible for me to look upon the
intricate beauty of this universe and the world we inhabit without an absolutely
awed appreciation of the miraculous nature of Nature. Buddhism declares that All
is Sorrow; Liber AL states “Existence is pure joy…”
It may currently seem very fashionable to view the aboriginal or nature
religions as being terribly primitive when compared to the more ‘evolved,
sophisticated, civilized’ monotheism, but a bit of actual study of Judeo-Christian-
Islamic practices will reveal a truly bizarre mélange of obsolete medieval
superstition, sloppy thinking, twisted emotion and bad theology. Fundamentalists
might be less likely to declare their unthinking belief in an utterly inerrant Bible if
they ever bothered to read all of the fine print or truly contemplated the various
contradictions therein. Am I the only one who has noticed that the Old and New
Testaments are completely irreconcilable, and that the god of wrath and his
loving son are clearly very different personality types: sadist and masochist,
perhaps? And that is after centuries of ruthless editing, not to mention the
suppression of countless conflicting gospels and other contemporary texts. The
fanatical Paul, who never even met Jesus, hijacked the early Christian movement
from its Jewish roots and declared a mission to the Gentiles. He seized control of
the early church from the hands of James the brother of Jesus, and the long
process of rewriting history began. The New Testament found itself quite
ruthlessly disemboweled by the Council of Nicea after 300 CE, and all the really
good Gospels were removed once everyone who had actually known Jesus was
safely deceased. This meant that they could begin the process of converting him
from a revolutionary figure to a primary support of the status quo, enlisting
converts from the top of society rather than from the bottom. The later ‘divine
right of kings’ meant that virtually any acts of resistance or revolution against the
temporal rulers also became an unforgivable offense against Great God Almighty
Himself, how very convenient.
At any rate, being born-again does not mean you get twice as many civil
rights as anyone else, or even a second navel. I do not wish to turn this
discussion into an anti-christian rant; hey, let’s all try being female under Islam,

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wherein some countries choose to execute rape victims instead of rapists. Yet a
full awareness of their bloody and tyrannical history of genocide, their oppression
of women and support of slavery, their deliberate guilt-ridden twisting of all
normal human instincts for sensuality and the inevitable accompanying bizarre
psychological and criminal consequences, and especially their still current and
apparently unquestionable influence over all western societies makes some form
of challenge necessary. If I am writing this book for a western audience, then
perhaps I must also confront western culture. It hardly seems polite to blame
Christ himself, regardless of the evils of history. While I may be less than
impressed with organized religions in practice, I believe that a sense of the
marvelous is essential to being fully human, and that complete religious freedom
is obviously among the most essential of all human rights. Nor do I hold the
countless perfectly decent people throughout history fully responsible for the
excesses of the unfortunate doctrines that shaped their lives. Speaking of our pal
Jesus, the wicked Beast Crowley once observed: "Personally, I hold the poor
man completely blameless for the religion foisted upon him posthumously." Still,
we might well question the ultimate intentions of an all-male unaccountable
hierarchy that defines its adherents only as children or sheep.
In general, whenever I look at either large governments or organized
religions (and Communism has largely qualified as the latter) I find myself
extremely reluctant to trust those who divide humanity rather than unify it.
Whenever people are limited to friends or enemies, patriots or terrorists, the
saved or the damned, I scent an ugly smoke upon the winds. It arises from the
fire where human beings defined as incorrect and books labeled as subversive
burn together, on the raging pyres of the Holy Inquisition or in the ovens of the
Thousand Year Reich. I hear the delirious roar of the crowd as they applaud the
witch-hunter and the holy defender of orthodoxy against heresy, the virtuous
McCarthyite and his identical opposite number, the Stalinist. Never trust anyone
who tells you that we are threatened by our foes, that we are the chosen people
or the master race, that the subhuman must be destroyed so that we can live in
peace, or that we alone are the One True Faith or the World’s Only Superpower.
When you hear someone sitting in judgment over the morals of others, look very
closely to theirs, and remember that we so easily become what we hate the
most. Despite all our pious posturing about the wonders of civilized human
progress we have just seen the bloodiest century in history, with a death toll
directly due to warfare well over 160 million people and countless millions more
carried off by famine and disease. Many more are barely surviving, or more often
dying, under conditions of constant hunger and appalling poverty that those of us
in developed countries cannot even conceive. At the turn of the last century 90%
of battle-deaths were military personnel, and at the turn of this century 70% to
85% are civilians. Much of that is directly due to unquestioned beliefs that make
our cherished causes or economic interests more important than the lives of our
neighbors. How many conquests have been portrayed as ‘holy wars’ or ‘manifest
destiny’?
Incidentally, it seems that at least one-third of the words of Jesus as
recorded in the New Testament can be boiled down to "help the poor", yet most

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of our politicians prefer to declare America a Christian country while demonizing
the poor and homeless as welfare frauds and evil menaces to society. Even after
the fall of the Soviet Union, it seems that we still require an enemy to make our
people feel threatened, however pathetically contrived.

"There is no religion higher than truth." - Madame Blavatsky

The soul's personal journey to reunion with God by rejection of the world is
commonly seen in tranquil, mystical, escapist or passive terms within the
paradigm of our major world religions. On the active magickal path there is more
of looking outwards and less of turning inwards, and an embrace of life rather
than a rejection. Union with the divine may also be interpreted as integration of
the personality. Returning to the qabalistic tree, the G.D. and A.A. taught a
balanced ascent of the spheres, each having its own meditations, practices and
tasks. Ideally this was a system with feedback from teachers who have gone
before, although at various times there were gaps in the initiatory chain in both
organizations. This process of initiation was intended to expand the horizons of
the individual, and to deliberately create insight and understanding. Almost all
cultures have some formal rites of passage through the stages of life: birth,
growth, adolescence, marriage, childbearing, aging, death, even membership in
secret societies or even professional guilds; all were hedged about by traditional
teachings handed down from a mythic past, often maintaining the societal norms.
Our loss of these traits to the happy delusion of progress has led only to
alienation and anomie; now our troubled youth form gangs in a half-understood
return to tribalism and fight turf wars on a slightly smaller scale than the nation-
states. While the major religions once served this integrative function, they have
lost much of their credibility in recent years.
One of the great strengths of the modern Wiccan or Craft revival is a firm
basis on an initiatory and training system designed for the constant expansion
and reproduction of small independent covens or in-groups, and this balance of
belonging to a past tradition which freely and simultaneously encourages
innovation has proven wildly successful. The system uses three degrees of
novice/initiate/priesthood that are very similar to the common classical and
medieval apprentice/journeyman/master model. This is clearly a simpler process
than the ten levels of the G.D. or A.A. or O.T.O., which in turn are less complex
than the various degrees of Freemasonry, countless as the sands upon the
beach or the stars of the heavens, and apparently nearly as expensive.
In general the classic pattern of initiatory rites involves a journey outward,
a separation of the individual from the normal or accepted social world; a period
or dramatic act of complete transformation; and a return to consensus ‘reality’
with a new status and a new understanding of things. This is paralleled by some
seasonal rites wherein the social order is dissolved or reversed in a ritual return
to primal chaos, and then re-established by the re-enactment of the cultural
creation myth, thus rejuvenating the world and its people. This rebalancing of
inner and outer, a reconciliation of the primordial and archetypal dreamtime with
the waking world, is often seen as a battle by a tribal-hero or culture-deity to slay

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a personification of Chaos such as the Norse giant Ymir or the Babylonian
goddess Tiamat or the Greek serpent Typhon, often using their severed parts to
form and establish the world. The Egyptian Osiris, Hindu Kali, and Greek
Dionysos all share myths of separation and rejoining, and the dreams and visions
of shamans and alchemists often include inner experiences of dismemberment
and rebirth. Their bones may be reforged as gold, or their hearts replaced by
quartz crystal. By a deeply felt or emotionally engaged participation with such
mythological processes individuals can also begin to totally reformulate
themselves, and in post-modern times we can be very creative with regards to
our many sources for such experiences. Perhaps it is time to turn from the past
to the future, and to the revolutionary vision of a quantum cosmos.

Crowleyan Cosmology in Theory & Practice

“Above, the gemmed azure is

The naked splendour of Nuit;
She bends in ecstasy to kiss
The secret ardours of Hadit.
The winged globe, the starry blue
Are mine, O Ankh-af-na-Khonsu!” - Liber AL, I, 14

Stepping beyond these various traditional magico-mythological models of

cosmology to that of the New Aeon, we find in Thelema a space-age pantheon
based upon the interaction of the individual observer with the play of the cosmos.
These gods are also depicted upon the ancient Egyptian artifact now known as
the Stele of Revealing, a relic kept in the Cairo Museum, which triggered
Crowley’s reception of Liber AL. The first chapter of this Book contains the words
of the Star Goddess Nuit, whose double aspect (Infinite Space, Infinite Stars:
thus ISIS, the Great Mother of ancient Egypt) simultaneously contains both all
the changing manifestations of matter and also the diamond emptiness of the
void. She is the universe or the multiverse, and upon the Stele she appears as a
beautiful naked woman arched like the sky above all. The second chapter is the
cosmic revelation of Hadit, the divine stellar seed of consciousness and motion at
the central core of every being, which is each individual yet omnipresent point-of-
view. He is depicted on the Stele as a winged solar disk with serpents, and is
often seen as secretly identical with the chaotic Egyptian storm-god Set. This
motif of a winged disk representing the Sun appears in many civilizations
throughout the ancient Middle East.

“A Circle whose Center is Everywhere, and that has Nowhere a Circumference.”

- Hermetic aphorism from The Book of the 24 Philosophers

In the third and final chapter arrives the message of the Child, Horus ever reborn,
a force to end all restriction, the primal vibration of ecstasy reverberating in-
between these twin extremes of the infinity within and that without; it declares a

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new age of freedom, force and fire. Horus is shown as a hawk-headed god
seated upon a throne, worshipped by the priest Ankh-af-na-Khonsu for whom the
Stele was made. It is this third chapter that probably gives people the most
trouble, as the rhetoric is quite nietzschian and iconoclastic, not to mention gory
and apocalyptic. I suppose that in part this might reflect Crowley's early traumas
with a rabidly fundamentalist upbringing, but in a wider sense the birth of any
new aeon always implies the destruction of a decaying and corrupted old aeon.
In the reading of visionary texts it is always wise to recall that subtle and elusive
distinction between consensus reality and symbolic metaphor.
Horus is in part an avenging and martial force, but at the same time is a
symbol of royal justice and the healing or integration of the soul; he is strongly
linked to the Sun God Ra, equated by the Greeks to Apollo in the late composite
form of Horapollo. In Egyptian thought each ruling pharaoh was the living
incarnation of Horus, while all the earlier deceased pharaohs became one with
his father Osiris, the ancestral deity of life beyond death. His many aspects in
ancient times are reflected in twin forms in Liber AL as both the silent child called
Hoor-par-kraat or Heru-par-kraath (Horus the Younger, child of Isis, in Greek
called Harpocrates) and as the active or elder aspect of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, the
warrior-god Horus. They are combined in the balanced solar manifestation of
Heru-Ra-Ha or Hrumachis, the Lord of the Two Horizons. These twins represent
the paths or processes of turning inwards by mysticism and outward by magick.
In a similar sense the dual goals of becoming Hadit and Nuit united are of the
central Eye of God that opens to perceive All Otherness as the boundless cosmic
Void filled with the continuous love-play of existence. Their essential identity is
expressed in the key or formula discovered by Frater Achad: the double word AL
(‘God’ or ‘All’, better known as the Hebrew divine name EL) is reversed as LA
(‘Not’, ‘Night’, or ‘Naught’). Everything that is, is not; and everything that is not, is.
Apparently an appreciation of paradox is necessary to life itself.

"Love and hate are horns on the same goat!"

- Runecaster's comment to Tony Curtis, in the film The Vikings

This Book of the Law is a tantric transmission or love-poem between

twinned polarities defined as Hadit (Shiva, Zos or Fu-Hsi) and Nuit (Shakti, Kia or
Nu-Kua) and containing the magickal keys of the future. The incarnate officers of
these tantrik rites take on the forms of Το Μεγα Θηεριον (To Mega Therion, The
Great Beast or Priest of the Princes) and his consort Βαβαλον ηε Μεγελε
(Babalon he Megele, Babalon the Great, the Scarlet Woman) as incarnate
avatars of the god and goddess. Salvation by the blood sacrifice of the Lamb (or
the earlier Mithraic Bull) is declared to be as obsolete as the doctrine of vicarious
atonement, for the astral menstruum of the coming time is formed by the mingled
and highly charged sexual fluids of truly self-realized individuals, those who have
discovered their own true wills and actively worked to accomplish them rather
than submitting to the conventional yet depraved doctrines of the more
authoritarian and inhumane theologies (sometimes referred to as the Black
Dharmas). True Will does not necessarily imply any merely wanton and random

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self-indulgence, but rather the exploration and discovery of one's inner nature
and essential purpose in life, and the carrying-out of this personal mission with a
whole heart. It is identical with your enlightened Buddha-Nature. To discover your
primal obsession, to reify the inherent dream, is the key to realizing the True Self.
The Magnum Opus or Great Work of Alchemy reflects Jung's process of
individuation, of becoming fully and uniquely human.
The doctrine of aeons sees the last 2,000 years as the age of God-the-
Father, spiritual, monotheistic and authoritarian; and the previous 2,000 years as
the time of Goddess-the-Mother, physical, pantheistic and shamanic. The new
aeon of the Child now unifies and transcends both of these, going beyond
archaic formulations and rigidly defined socio-sexual roles to a period of infinite
possibilities for true liberation and self-transformation. This joyous magical Child
dances in-between all forms of polarity, a shifting shadow beyond mere light or
darkness, a primal androgyne containing all potential forms. The present aeon
will be balanced and followed by that of the daughter Maat, on whom see further
below. In some senses, they can be simultaneous, as yet another form of the
magickal concept of the Twins; the Androgyne balanced with the Gynander, the
Lord of the Wand of Double Power and the Lady of Two Cups, both of whom are
depicted in various aspects in the atus of the Tarot.
The credo of Liber AL is: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
Love is the law, love under will." Θελημα (Thelema or Will) and Αγαπε (Agape or
Love) both have the qabalistic numeration of 93, and are thus considered
equivalent or identical in many senses; that is the reason this revelation is termed
the 93 Current. Crowley may have received this transmission, but he also always
asserted that he did not fully understand it, for there are layers of complexity
coded within Liber AL that still await decipherment. That Crowley interpreted
these largely in terms of the Golden Dawn paradigm reflects the ongoing
profound influence of that order's world-view upon him, and also his quite
uniquely pivotal position as the gateway between old and new aeons. I see
Crowley as an alchemical vessel or alembic wherein the essences of all the
earlier mystical traditions were distilled, purified and renewed for a fresh start.
The experiences recorded in his The Vision & The Voice form a remarkable
depiction of this process in action, yet are only the beginning of an ongoing
transubstantiation. Because he was the product of a particular time and place, he
was somewhat limited in how far he could advance beyond his own cultural
imprints, although it is to his credit that he never ceased to mutate and evolve as
best he could. Perhaps the simplest way to sum this up is to say that for many of
us there is still something in the spirit of Crowley that remains far more important
than all of his words, and that those countless words form a vast superstructure
to support a handful of simple but very important ideas.
This is in notable contrast to some of his contemporary followers, who still
slavishly adhere to his now partially outdated body of work. I tend to make a clear
distinction between true Thelemites and mere Crowleyites: the former seek out
their own destiny, while the latter just desperately repeat every error the Master
ever made in the futile hope of getting laid. One is often reminded of the actor
Peter Cook's great line: "Yes! I have learned from my mistakes! I am sure that I

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could repeat them exactly!" Another example of this trend is the contra-christian
stance, which I freely admit to somewhat sharing, due largely to the amount of
damage both to society and to people's minds and souls that I have seen done.
This may seem to be a rather extreme statement, but we are talking about the
colonization of Europe, North and South America, Asia, Australia and Africa, and
acts of outright genocide committed against their native peoples. While Crowley's
continual rebellion against an extremely rigid fundamentalist upbringing may
reflect a need to dismantle the obsolete and make way for the new current, to be
trapped in a state of revulsion against something only serves to allow it to define
you, rather than finding your own way. The average teenage satanist is an
excellent example of someone caught in this vicious cycle and its sadly self-
imposed limitations. If a theology is well and truly exhausted unto death, then it is
time to move on without regrets or leftover moralities and compulsions. Get a life,
move out of your parent's church basement!
I once heard someone make a wonderfully snide comment that he really
appreciated Crowley himself, but was always a little bit put off by the way his
work seemed to attract "that pudgy Goth crowd". Many booksellers are forced to
keep the Crowley books behind the counter to deter the more slimy types of
shoplifter, a pretty sad symptom of the level of some people. There is more to life
than wearing black clothing and a dysfunctional attitude, and more to magick
than being a fashion casualty. I find it very sad that so many musical and social
movements have wound up being branded and packaged as lifestyle choices by
corporate America. Compulsive conformity to yet another harmlessly fragmented
little in-group is hardly revolutionary, is it? There may have been some fuzzy
thinking in the 1960s and 1970s, but at least then we had some genuinely world-
shaking movements with worthwhile and definite goals, and they did loosen up a
rigid society - if only for a while, since we seem to have slid right back under the
spiked iron boot of fundamentalist mores. More recent trends can be largely
divided into mindless greed and sloppy nihilism, neither of which forms much of a
useful threat to the ruling class. They come together in that compulsive ad-driven
consumerism which so completely dominates American culture and makes us a
drain upon the life of the entire planet. Our five percent of the world's population
is currently slurping down some twenty-four percent of the resources, and it
seems unlikely that this can continue forever.
The Book of the Law is also quite clearly a violently radical political
statement, and whatever Mr. Crowley's personality quirks may have been
whoever spoke through him was absolutely committed to the liberation of
humanity. The twentieth century may have come a long way towards the
exaltation of the individual over the herd, but mere hedonism is not enough to
cause meaningful change.

"The deviants, who are so frequently the inventive and creative spirits, shall no
longer be sacrificed; it shall not be considered infamous to deviate from
conventional morality; numerous experiments in life and society shall be made; a
tremendous amount of bad conscience shall be lifted from the world." -
Nietzsche, The Dawn

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 In discussions with my friends over the course of writing this treatise,
several have expressed the feeling that Crowley is no longer essential or even
necessary for an understanding of the future; that his various late-victorian
obsessions are far less important than the scientific or socio-psychological
discoveries and political progress of the late 20th century, and even that much of
his magick is too wrapped up in the Judeo-Christian sub-structure of the Golden
Dawn. To some extent I agree; I prefer his shorter, simpler, and more focused
ritual forms in the same way I like Woody Allen's "earlier, funnier movies better". I
also feel that it is quite possible for an artist or other individual to be Thelemic
without ever having heard of Crowley or his message, and that to do one's True
Will is an instinctive stage in the birth of consciousness. Gurdjieff taught that the
creation of the soul was a process rather than an automatic birthright, and Monty
Python pointed out that the problem is that we become distracted. On the other
hand, I also feel that Crowley captured something very important, that the current
sweeping through magick at this time is in many ways sparked by his receptivity
to a vision of transformation which has great power, and that the alignment of the
individual to this new cosmological world-view triggers radical change by a
deliberate act of revolution against the old and toxic, and for freedom and
creativity. There is an effect that results only from a truly personal understanding
of Liber AL: either you get the cosmic joke on some level, or you don't. This is a
book that carries a powerful magical charge, and those who attempt to portray it
as fascist are perhaps missing one of history's most Unitarian statements: "All
words are sacred and all prophets true...." (AL, I, 56)
In terms of examining the work as what Crowley always insisted it was, a
highly coded and inspired transmission from beyond, I continue to find new
insights and profound inspiration here myself. Many other students have found
unique formulas and qabalistic riddles to be solved. Also, after spending over 30
years going through the man's voluminous works, I will say this as well: while
much of his writing still seems to be quite readable in a surprisingly contemporary
way, he never managed to produce anything else quite on the level of The Book
of the Law. In its pure precision, clarity, and power it still stands alone, far beyond
the usual effusions of his poetic style, and to me this may well indicate something
genuinely exceptional. As a vision of the magical cosmos of the new aeon, as a
summary of arcane philosophy, as a key to open strange doors, as a program for
deliberately willed changes in consciousness, as an enchiridion of sexual
formulae, as an exotically gorgeous prose poem, as Tantra, as Gnosis, as
Magickal Art, Liber AL speaks for itself to anyone willing to hear. "Yet to all it shall
seem beautiful. Its enemies who say not so, are mere liars." (AL, III, 68).

Aeonics: Of Time, & the Gods, & the End of the World

"Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me
along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire
that consumes me, but I am the fire."

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- Jorge Luis Borges

"It's the millennium. Motive is incidental." - Wes Craven's Scream

The magickal worldview tends to take a somewhat mythic view of history,

dividing it into vast aeons of time. Many ancient chronologies are arranged into
the Golden Age of the Gods, the Silver Age of Heroes, and the Iron Age of Men;
thus in Hindu terms we are now in the Kali-Yuga or Iron Age. The Mayans and
Aztecs have other formulas, as do the Jewish and Christian biblically based
calendars, or those of Asia. Many of these are simply convenient attempts to
systematize a view of evolutionary history as a linear scheme of time running
from creation to destruction, and which may then proceed again to further cycles
in turn. Historical accuracy aside, these are useful paradigms expressing magical
formulas and mythological world-views.
In prehistoric times we find the Nameless Aeon before recorded culture,
as the human evolved from the beast into a world of small tribes and paleolithic
proto-shamanism, through the birth pangs of language and magick and art; this is
usually ascribed to the strange Egyptian dwarf-god Besz, a protector who was
very active in the popular magick of the common people. The Crowleyan-based
schema mentioned above concerns itself primarily with three approximately two-
thousand-year aeons, and his various heirs have worked out the next one in
advance:
The Aeon of Isis the Mother: polytheistic, matriarchal, agricultural,
physical, shamanic. An era of tribalism and migration, hunting and herding, ruled
by Aries. The woman was the image of the life-force, and her vital ability to give
birth was an enormous mystery before the genetic contribution of the male was
understood; like the Mother Earth, Grandmother Ocean and Great-Grandmother
Space, she gave life to all in a peaceful time of paganism (according to some).
The Aeon of Osiris the Father: monotheistic, patriarchal, urban, spiritual,
hierarchical. This was an era of city-states and invasions, writing and technology,
ruled by Pisces. The role of the father came to dominate, linked to the sacrificial
cultus of the dying and reborn god, the eternally rising and falling sun and its
representative image the phallus. The era of endless warfare sparked by bronze-
age invaders and later Judeo-Christian-Islamic obsessions.
The Aeon of Horus the Son: pantheistic, androgynous, and multi-cultural.
Now beginning an era of chaos and freedom, science and sexuality, ruled by
Aquarius. Notions of death and rebirth are replaced by the reincarnational
knowledge of the eternal and ecstatic continuity of consciousness. This is closely
linked to or twinned with:
The Aeon of Maat the Daughter: humanistic, gynanderous, the world-
mind. To be an era of holistics and transformation, of unity and mutation, ruled by
Capricorn (the Goat, Pan?). Her formulae are as yet only partially revealed, and
lead eventually to the returning silence of the unknown Wordless Aeon. All of
these spans of time are words declared by the ibis-headed god Thoth, yet
ultimately are wrapped and raptured about by Eternity.

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 Examined in terms of the elemental qabalistic formula of IHVH, Osiris or
Hadit would be I/Yod the Father, the formative seed of fire; Isis or Nuit is H/He
the Mother, as water; V/Vau is air, Horus the Son; and H/He final is Maat, the
Daughter, manifesting Earth and completing the circle. They are the King and
Queen, Prince and Princess of the Tarot. These are the letters of the rather
infamous Tetragrammaton, the Square Name of God or unpronounceable four-
letter-word of the sacred qabala. Rearranging it in the chronological order of the
Aeons results in the spelling of HIVE, reflecting the Maatian icon of the bee (the
Hebrew letter 'He' can be transliterated as either H or E, here beginning and
ending the sequence).
Prior to this were shamanic eras of gods in animal form, ruled by Taurus
as reflected in sacred horned bull-gods; before that the Gemini age might well
have included twin gods, but who knows? In a future age of Sagittarius, star flight
and alien contact? Who knows? These most basic aeonic classifications are
essentially symbolic gateways, and we have access to the forces and formulae of
any of them at will. Rather than being limited to actual periods of time, they are
levels of myth and magick, states of consciousness and initiation, and modes of
ritual working.
Pete Carroll in his Liber Null proposes a similar but somewhat different
outline of the evolutionary procession of aeons: Shamanic, Pagan, Monotheist,
and Atheist, bringing us now to the technological edge of a fifth aeon which is still
chaotic and undefined. Medieval Christianity, on the other hand, saw a sequence
of the three Ages of the Father (grounded in authority and the Old Testament),
the Son (of love and the New Testament), and in the immanent post-apocalyptic
future that of the Holy Ghost or Paraclete (based on freedom). These represent
the revelations of Moses, Jesus, and the mystic Joachim of Floris, whose visions
inspired much of the later End Times Christianity. Hegelian-Marxist historical
theory would see the process as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
For further on the question of aeonics see many of the works of Crowley
(including the short story 'Across the Gulf'), Grant, Achad, Nema, Carroll, Lee,
and Angels, Demons & Gods of the New Millennium by Lon Milo DuQuette. As
another vision of the New Aeon, I will now take the enormous liberty of quoting in
full a classic poem by yet another Golden Dawn adept:

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

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Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? - W.B. Yeats

As for more immediate questions of time, the phases of the moon are
often thought to affect magicks of increase or decrease as they wax and wane
from void to peak and back again, and the full moon is the period of maximum
psychic activity. The lunar tides are of course strongly linked to the human
menstrual cycle. The in-between or twilight times of dawn and dusk, the poles of
noon and midnight, are also considered to be symbolically potent, and are
reflected in the solstices and equinoxes of the solar year. With the four cross-
quarter days of the earlier agricultural cycle we have the eight-fold wheel of the
year, observed as the traditional sabbats of Wicca. Many systems also have a
sacred calendar, which commemorates certain dates and lists lucky and
unfavorable days. The special Thelemic holidays are listed in AL, II, 34 to 44, and
the main ones are:

The Equinox of the Gods (March 20th)

Anniversary of the beginning of the Aeon of Horus declared in 1904, and
the date used to formally mark the lurid thelemic New Year celebrations, usually
with the Supreme Ritual.

The Three Days of the Writing of the Book of the Law (April 8th, 9th, & 10th)
At noon upon these days in 1904, Crowley received the three chapters of
Liber AL vel Legis. These holy days are thus usually celebrated with ritual
readings of each respective chapter on its day.

The First Night of the Prophet and his Bride (August 12th)
On this day in 1903, Crowley married his first wife, Rose Edith Kelly, who
was to spark the reception of The Book of the Law and thus the inauguration of
the New Aeon.

A Feast for Life... (October 12th)

Crowleymas is celebrated as the anniversary of Aleister Crowley's
birthday in 1875. My friends and I once celebrated it with costumes expressing

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Crowley’s various incarnations and roles, and a devil’s-food cake iced with the
Mark of the Beast. Similar feasts may be celebrated for the nativity of any of your
own personal saints or heroes.

... and a Greater Feast for Death (December 1st)

Commemorates the death of Aleister Crowley on this day in 1947. The
passing of your own ancestors or role models also serves as a good excuse for a
memorial party.

A Feast for Fire and a Feast for Water

The year's balanced equinoxes and turning-point solstices (annually in
March, June, September, and December) mark the seasonal wheel of the year,
traditionally observed by many cultures worldwide, and are also celebrated by
Thelemites and other practitioners of magick and Wicca. As I mentioned above,
the eight major sabbats in witchcraft also include the four cross-quarter days.

New Year’s Day (1/1/06)

Robert Anton Wilson born (January 18, 1932)

Rasputin born (January 22, 1871)

Imbolc/Candlemas Sabbat (February 1 & 2)

John Balance of COIL & Psychic TV born (February 16, 1962)

Founding of the British Society for Psychical Research (February 20, 1882)

Sybil Leek born (February 22, 1917)

March 1: Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn founded (1888),

Covenant of the Goddess founded (1795)

March 11: Feast of the Martyrdom of St. Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the
Order of the Knights Templar (1314)

March 12: Feast of the Martyrdom of the gnostic/pagan St. Hypatia

Edgar Cayce born (March 18, 1877)

Vernal Equinox/Ostara Sabbat (March 20, 2006)

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The Equinox of the Gods (March 20th) Anniversary of the beginning of the Aeon
of Horus declared in 1904, and the date used to formally mark the Thelemic New
Year. Also the official Rosicrucian New Year and International Astrology Day.

Joseph Campbell born (March 26, 1904)

April 1: Feast of All Fools & Annual Crowley Veracity Debate

Aeon of Maat declared by Frater Achad (April 2, 1948)

Founding of the Church of All Worlds (April 7, 1962; later chartered by the IRS on
6/18/70)

The Three Days of the Writing of the Book of the Law (April 8th, 9th, & 10th) At
noon upon these legendary days in 1904, Crowley received the three chapters of
Liber AL vel Legis. This may be celebrated with ritual readings of each chapter
on its day.

Ithell Colquhoun aka Soror Splendidor Vitro died (April 11, 1988)

Foundation of the Horus/Maat Lodge (April 26th, 1979)

& the HML Website (1994)

Sri Dadaji Mahendranath born (April 29, 1911)

May Eve/Walpurgisnacht (April 30)

Beltane Sabbat/May Day (5/1/06)

Foundation of the Order of Illuminati (May 1, 1776)

Kenneth Grant born (May 23, 1924)

May 30: Feast of the Martyrdom of St Joan of Arc, burnt at the stake (1431)

June 13: W.B. Yeats born (1865), Gerald Gardner born (1884)

Summer Solstice/Midsummer Sabbat (June 21, 2006)

Anti-Witchcraft laws repealed in England (June 22, 1951)

Dog Days of Summer: the star Sirius/Sothis is exalted (July 3 to August 12)

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H.H. Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, born (July 6, 1935)

Dr. John Dee born (July 13, 1527)

7/14/06 Bastille Day

July 22: Feast of St Mary Magdalene

Robert Graves born (July 24, 1895)

Carl Gustav Jung born (July 26, 1875)

Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky born (July 31, 1831)

Lughnassadh/Lammas Sabbat (August 1)

August 11: Feast of St Claire of Assisi, clairvoyant, patron of television

The First Night of the Prophet and his Bride (August 12th) On this day in 1903,
Crowley married his first wife, Rose Edith Kelly, the Scarlet Woman who was to
spark the reception of The Book of the Law and thus the inauguration of the New
Aeon.

Charles Godfrey Leland born (August 15, 1824)

H.P. Lovecraft born (August 20, 1890)

Foundation of the Order of the Rosy Cross, in Paris (August 22, 1623)

Foundation of the Theosophical Society (September 8, 1875)

Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim born (September 14, 1486)

Andrew Chumbley was born and died (September 15)

Nema’s Birthday (September 16)

Autumnal Equinox/Mabon Sabbat (September 23, 2006)

Jack Parsons born (October 2, 1914) also Mahatma Gandhi’s Birthday

Ithell Colquhoun aka Soror Splendidor Vitro born (October 9, 1906)

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A Feast for Life (October 12th) Anniversary of the Prophet Aleister (aka the
Master Therion aka Frater Perdurabo etc.) Crowley's birthday in 1875

All Hallow’s Eve/Samhain Sabbat (October 31)

November 2: All Soul’s Day, Day of the Dead

Bram Stoker born (November 8, 1847)

Paracelsus born (November 10, 1493)

John Balance of COIL & Psychic TV died (November 13, 2004)

Israel Regardie born (November 17, 1907)

William Blake born (November 28, 1757)

Greater Feast for Death (December 1st) Death of Aleister Crowley in 1947
& World AIDS Day

Dion Fortune born (December 6, 1890)

Nostradamus born (December 14,1503)

Winter Solstice/Yule/Midwinter Sabbat (December 21, 2006)

Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, ‘Birth of the Invincible Sun’: Mithras & Horus
(December 25) Rod Serling born (December 24, 1924)

12/31/06 Nu Year’s Eve!

Austin Osman Spare born (inbetween Dec. 31 & Jan. 1, 1886)

The seven days of the week have an ancient correspondence to the

planets: the rhythm runs through Sun-day, Moon-day, Tuesday (Mars, the Norse
war god Tyr or Tiw), Wednesday (Mercury, Wodan or Odin), Thursday (Jupiter as
Thor), Friday (Venus is Freya, goddess of love), and Saturn's day. As we can
see, our names are largely based on the Norse or Germanic pantheon, although
the seven planetary wanderers have always captured the imagination. However,
the medieval attempt to link the planets to a cycle of hours has always seemed to
me completely arbitrary. All supernatural (what a very strange word that is!) or
paranormal manifestations happen when they happen; the numinous occurrence
is usually spontaneous, and the proper time to work magick may be when you

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are ready to. Discover meaning in the apparent chaos of the random, make your
life open to useful coincidence, and if you sense a tide by all means sail with it
and see where it may take you.
A later footnote to this: apparently the system of planetary hours began in ancient
Greece and was preserved by Arabic scholars, whence it passed back to
European adepts. I stand corrected yet still unimpressed. However, the discipline
involved in following such an arbitrary schema may still be useful in and of itself
in terms of commitment to an operation. Note that these planetary hours must be
specially calculated by dividing the periods of daylight or darkness into twelve
equal periods each and then attributing the planets to them in the repeating
sequence of the Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars; by beginning
with the first hour after midnight on Sunday, you will find that the first hour of
every day is always its planetary ruler.
Lastly, the dark arts have ever been most customarily practiced in the
dead of night, when the clamorous psychic static of waking minds is stilled and
sleepers are vulnerable in dream to influences from outside. Tantric rites also
occur at midnight, when the power of Shakti is at her peak.

"Dead time lasts for one hour - from half an hour before midnight to half an hour
after midnight. The half hour before midnight is for doin' good. The half hour after
midnight is for doin' evil."
- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt

Before moving on to the Gods Themselves, I would like to share two key words
of power from the revelation of Maat, words to command the powers of Matter
and of Time/Space; for part of the mystery of Maat is that it is a current flowing
backwards from the future, a reversal of the established order and a seed
planted in the past to grow in the present. Far back in time we find twin lions
guarding temples, and even today they appear flanking the doorways of our great
public edifices. In Egypt these sphinxes represent the Two Horizons of Yesterday
and Tomorrow, and to this day magick remains somewhat unstuck from the
matrix of the present. It creates a subtle perichoresis or mingling where the
ghosts of the past and the prophecies of the future can exist in the eternal
moment of consciousness that we perceive as the Now, and where the power of
Change is unbound.

“The Hidden One of the Abyss now gives the two wherein is wrought the higher
Alchemy: supporting Earth is Chthonos - learn it well, and all bonds shall be
loosed for the Will's Working. Surmounting Spirit, there is Ychronos, whose
nature is duration and the passing away thereof.
The two are one, and form the Kingdom's essence. Who masters them is Master
of the World. They are the utter keys of Transmutation, and keys of the power of
the other Elements.” - Liber Pennae Praenumbra

* * * * *

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"God is that, having the head of a hawk and a spiral force."
- Oracles of Zoroaster

The whole question of the Gods Themselves is a complex issue: did they
create us, or do we create them? Do their basic patterns exist in our DNA as the
Jungian archetypes, waiting to be fleshed out by our various cultural mythologies,
or do they have an independent existence on some conceptual planes high
above our own? Does it even matter? Spare regarded the gods as useful places
to store psychic energy not otherwise in use. Humans tend to project their
concerns outwards and then form them into symbols, to thus personify the forces
of nature into conscious beings; if you explore and manipulate mythological
symbolic systems, then transformation and mutation and liberation may result.
The gods may simply be the holy names by which we channel and call upon the
underlying processes and forms of the cosmos.
Experience, however, may discover them to be very real indeed.
R.A. Wilson says "Different semantic funnels for different reality tunnels".
Chaos magick makes much of paradigm shifting and direct experience, while
Pop Wicca has often developed an unfortunate tendency to reduce any group of
somewhat similar deities into generic hodgepodge. In my own opinion any
mythology of depth and richness will come alive if you infuse it with sufficient
study, devotion and belief; part of the trick is to stick with it until you achieve
results, rather than indulging in the spiritual equivalent of channel-surfing. As our
dear Mr. Crowley says repeatedly, "Invoke often! Inflame thyself with prayer!"
Switching reality-tunnels is a perfectly legitimate practice, as long as we are
completely absorbed into that realm while we inhabit it. The richness of magickal
systems often grows out of cultural history. In the runelore of the Norse skalds or
lost wisdom of the Celtic druids, rites of ancient Egypt or Greece, the tantras of
Asia or the new magicks of the Double Current, we may find dramatic power,
aesthetic form, proven technique, deep emotional engagement and pure atavistic
resonance. Total immersion in new belief systems breaks down old conceptions
and tangles of psychic energy, and empowers and activates sorcery on multiple
levels. The various pantheons of the ancient and modern gods evolved over time
as perfect reflections of particular cultures, but also as profoundly functional
models of human psychology. Utilize them accordingly. Frater U.D. says, "Magic
is applied mythology".
The gods are great; I love the gods. Many of the patron deities of the mystic arts
are very complex personalities, perhaps fusions of many earlier forms, absorbing
their aspects and attributes. Among them is Odin the High One, trickster, lord of
kingship and warfare and wisdom, poetry and ecstasy and the enchantments of
the Runes, a god whose self-sacrifice upon the Tree of Worlds hearkens back to
a primordial shamanism. Odin has hundreds of names, and countless tribal gods
were drawn into orbit around his central archetype. The study of such names
provides deep insight into the nature of a deity, and links that open within the
Self; let us gaze upon the example of another avatar.

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 The Greek Dionysos emerges from the wilderness of Phrygia or Thrace,
the eternally young god of upsurging ecstasy and untamed spirit, of music and
dance, revelry and masquerade, prophecy and drama, joy and frenzy, and the
liquid tides and forces of fertility that grow and flow through all of nature: blood
and semen, the sap in trees and the wine of festival. A wanderer and founder of
great cities, first teacher of the art of making wine, he was represented with a
mask hung upon a tree or stone pillar; his cult symbol is the Thrysus, a phallic
stave of fennel tipped with a pinecone and entwined with ivy, and he and his
devotees wear the Nebris or fawn-skin. He is the mystical stranger god who
comes smiling from beyond, bringer of madness and delight, a Holy Child, lover
and healer yet at times a savage destroyer who rends and devours raw flesh; the
nocturnal one hidden by night, the liberator and breaker of chains. Crowned with
serpents and the vines of the grape, his other totems include the dolphin, fawn,
and fox, the horned bull, goat and stag, and all great cats such as the tiger,
leopard and panther (Pantherios, the ‘Beast of Pan’). He is followed by a wild
chorus of satyrs and centaurs, and the Maenads who were rapturous women
given over to feasting and intoxication, sacred orgies of wild song and dancing; in
Rome he is the phallic god Liber (‘who makes free’) and reeling drunken Bacchus
accompanied by Bacchantes, akin to the Hindu deity Krishna with his Gopis.
Among his many names are Dionysos (‘god of the mountain’), Lusios
(‘liberator’), Zagreus (‘great hunter’), Bromius (‘the roarer’), Sabazius (‘savior’),
Omestes (‘eater of raw flesh’), Deucalion (‘new-wine sailor’), Dendrites (‘young
man hung upon the tree’), Dithyrambos (‘he of the double door’), Kouros (‘young
man’), Eriboas (‘howler’), Plutodotes (‘wealth-giver’), Melanaigis (‘Dionysos of the
black goat-skin’) and Liknites (‘child cradled in a winnowing-basket’, a symbol of
many grain-gods, seen again with Jesus in the manger). He is Adonis, Lenaios,
Anthios, Iacchus, Zalmoxis, Karpios, Cissos, Bassareus, Eleutherios, Nyktelios,
and countless more.
Often companioned by the laughing Pan, he is slain and reborn many
times over, given several mothers and many lovers, a paradoxical form of the
free and untamable spirit of chaotic life that overcomes all attempts at repression.
His father is most often said to be Zeus, and his son is the poet-musician and
culture-hero Orpheus; in Egypt he was identified with the ever-dying and
resurrected Osiris, and I believe that one of the deepest secrets of the Mysteries
was that the dark god Hades and Dionysos are one, a unity of Life emerging from
Death: the oldest Olympian becoming the youngest. He lurks at the core of the
Orphic Mysteries, part mortal, part Titan, and part divine. As a savior born of a
virgin he is a prototype of Christ, and from all this we may begin to glimpse the
richness and complexity of Pagan religions, and to see how much of their
symbolism was absorbed into the later representations of Jesus, not least with
the broken bread and blood-red wine of sacrifice and redemption that were
sacraments in the Mysteries of Eleusis. Christ also incorporates much of the
Persian and Roman god Mithras, another savior-child also born at the winter
solstice among shepherds. Lastly, Dionysos may well have shared common
origins, retinues of celebrants, and an androgynous nature with the Hindu god
Shiva; and Alain Danielou’s God of Ecstasy is a truly wonderful book exploring

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the remarkable parallels of their mythologies that I highly recommend to anyone
seeking the core of belief common to both eastern and western Indo-Europeans.

Academia makes a distinction between revealed religions (as peoples of

the book, the Torah, Gospels, or Koran), which are inspired by the rigid legalistic
codifications of often peculiar prophets; and the manifested religions, which are
the pagan cults organically grown out of the interaction of human and natural
phenomena. It is easy to see which variety is more flexible in terms of individual
evolution, and which always feels a need to impose its doctrines by brute force.
Polytheism provides far more exemplars for the range of human experience than
Monotheism, even while ultimately unifying its multiplicity in the conception of the
all-embracing High God. I tend to think that Monotheism is considerably more
prone to the creation of mental illnesses and to such perverse obsessions as
fanaticism, since all of humanity must be forced (purely for their own good!) to
submit to the One True Way. Christianity is a rather unique example: having
blamed all evil on the very first woman, Eve, it has proceeded to allow for only
one good woman in all of later history, Mary. Coincidentally she and she alone
can be simultaneously a virgin and a mother; try living up to that schizoid role
model! Personally I go with Pantheism: everything is sacred. “Energy is Eternal
Delight”, said Blake, and Shakti is ever the Great Enchantress.
Many schools of magick employ special names, masks, and costumes to
create an altered ego or separate sense of identity, and to empower the sorcerer
at the moment outside of normal time when the magickal word is spoken and the
transformative act takes place. Emotion is sparked by drama, and in identifying
ourselves with some romantic past incarnation or by union with some god-form,
we step outside our normal state to a larger realm wherein our potency is vastly
increased. Crowley constantly recreated himself in this way, and I feel that this
should be understood as a deliberate act of self-transformation, rather than a
symptom of psychosis.

"Identity should be our obsession; the Soul's great gift. We are a composite of
personalities, an afaveolated ego, a resurging catacomb where the phantoms of
past loves seek their reality in us." - A.O. Spare

For magick there is the related question of the reality of spirits: are they
independent entities, or autonomous complexes within our own deep minds? Is
there a clear difference between macrocosm and microcosm, and could this
difference make any difference in actual practice? Should we perhaps
understand the question in different ways at different times? Maybe this is why
Liber AL I, 22 states "Let there be no difference made among you between any
one thing & any other thing; for thereby cometh hurt." By acting ‘as if’ certain
things are true, certain results are attained; truth on one level can still be
falsehood on another. Everything above the abyss contains and implies its own
opposites. Hassan I Sabbah taught his disciples by an endless series of
unfolding contradictions, each reality being transformed as they ascended the

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levels of initiation. Perhaps one must simply choose one's wildest wonders
wisely.

"We are either alone in the universe or we are not. Both ideas are
overwhelming." - Arthur C. Clarke

As a brief recapitulation of my own personal favorite belief systems, as if

they have not become fully apparent by now, I my Self willfully accept the Law of
Thelema and the Balance of Maat as expressed in the Double Current, and the
Zos-Kia Cultus now expressing the Primal Witch-Cult, as aesthetically pleasing,
full of wisdom, power and ecstasy, and proven to produce results. I consider
them the direct modern outgrowth of the most primal Typhonian tradition, and
further arrange my cosmology thus: shamanic/vodou in the South, taoist/tantric in
the East, runic/wiccan in the North, and gnostic/hermetic in the West. These
various currents express the four quarters of my inner life, with Chaos and True
Will united at the center. I have a deeply felt affinity for the Northern European
Runic cosmos, which incorporates the gods of some of my genetic heritage; for
the ancient tantric worship of Shiva and Shakti; and for the Greco-Egyptian
magico-religious and Dionysian/Orphic mystery streams. A cosmos for every
mood, as it were. Ever and again, Taoism underlies everything. You can't really
argue successfully with the Tao. How did I enter these various modes? By
completely immersing myself in their study for long periods of time (some in a
college setting, I took a few semesters of Asian religions), practicing their
magicks, and creating my own art.
For the purposes of my Order's work I might define the nexus-points of
interest as those crises of transformation which take place at the sacred in-
betweeness times of inter-aeonic change: the period of pagan syncretism which
gave birth to hermetics and gnosticism as the age of the Mother became that of
the Father; the current revolution of Thelema, Chaos, and Neo-Pagan archaic
revival as the Father gives way to the Son; and the future mysterious mutational
magicks of Maat foreshadowed by the end of the Nu Aeon and its transition to
that of the Daughter. Past, Present, Future, or the Two Horizons of Yesterday
and Tomorrow: equally illusory, equally real. Naught is concealed, all is revealed.
In traditional societies many people were devoted to a personal deity
whose aspects expressed their own individual concerns. Even the most
vociferously monotheistic religions such as Christianity and Buddhism appear
unable to survive without hordes of angels and saints, dakinis and bodhisattvas,
and those inevitable bastard demons. Finding the divine patrons who express
most fully your own nature and exploring their aspects in yourself gives rise to
memorable art. Magick has an ongoing tendency towards eclecticism, and I
consider this to be perfectly valid if it is done with full awareness and some
residual tattered semblance of the discipline of scholarship. If I seem to be an
extreme case of dueling paradigms, perhaps it is because I have been playing
this game of wizardry for rather a long time, and so I have been engulfed in a
whole series of highly energized enthusiasms.

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 "I contradict myself?
Very well, then: I contradict myself.
I am large: I contain multitudes." - Walt Whitman

As we reached the end of the twentieth century of the western calendar

there was much hysteria about the Last Judgment, the End Times, the Second
Coming of Elvis, the Millennium, Armageddon, the New Age, the Kali-Yuga, St.
John's Apocalypse of Revelations, Thermo-Nuclear Holocaust, Immanentizing
the Eschaton, the End of History, the Twilight of the Gods, the New World Order,
the Aztec Fifth Sun, Gotterdammerung, Helter Skelter, Omega Point, the Great
Day of Reckoning, Cthulhu rising from sunken R'yleh, and similar convulsions.
The ancient prophecies of the Mayan calendar, the Great Pyramid, the Bible and
Nostradamus are all said to be coming to an end. The late prophet Terence
McKenna's hypothetical time-line has set the date for the end of history (Dec.
22nd, 2012), which would appear to pose an even larger calendarical challenge
than the Y2K crisis of re-setting all the world's computers for the year 2000. Do
we face Cataclysm or Rapture, Anti-Christ or Christ? It would be very convenient
not to have to pay off all those credit cards, wouldn't it? So it goes, with them
post-modern fin-de-siecle zeitgeist blues. Perhaps we all feel a bit apocalyptic as
the End of the World eternally approaches, and the world seems to seethe and
bubble with tides of change and chaos.

"Some say the world will end in Fire,

Some say in Ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor Fire." - Robert Frost

"It isn’t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice - there are two other
possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
- Frank Zappa 

Perhaps the last big old question here is that of life after death: do we
continue? Reports on this vary. Reincarnation seems such a logical and tidy
answer, since recycling is very ecological. The ancient Celts were reputedly so
utterly convinced of the validity of transmigration that they were willing to accept
IOUs payable in the next life. The Buddhist desire to escape this wheel of rebirth
may arise from the high rate of starvation-induced misery and suffering in the
history of some Asian countries; as Woody Allen, when informed that
reincarnation happens, so cogently observed: "Oh, great! Now I'll have to sit
through the Icecapades again!" The deep trauma of birth is thought to affect our
retention of the memories of past lifetimes, as some gnostic sects liken the fatal
fall into mere manifestation to forgetfulness and slumber. Crowley wrote in his
heliocentric theory of reincarnation that Earth is the last planet where we have
bodies made of matter, while on Venus they are liquid, on Mercury aerial, and in
the Sun we become beings of purest fire.

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 ‘Normal’ folks, of course, may achieve an ancient form of immortality
through their children; authors and artists may live forever through their work.
The power of fame, of having one's name remembered, is thought by some to
contribute to immortality: the pharaohs who built the pyramids, the Viking
warriors who thought their reputations would last forever, all shared the notion
that they would survive as long as their names were still spoken. Shakespeare
lives on in millions of minds, while many of the people we pass on the street
seem like hungry ghosts walking. In the end we all must share a certain
inevitable and genetic fear of extinction.
On the other hand, when we look at the simple heaven-or-hell track
offered by the Judeo-Christian-Islamic establishment we must deal with the ever-
amusing notion of eternal damnation, which so warms the kindly hearts of our
good neighbors, but would also appear to reduce their personal yet infinite god of
love to the status of a mere psychopathic torturer. It all seems rather arbitrary, to
make a short span on earth the final exam for an eternity which is rumored to be
a very long time indeed. When you think about it, biological time pales before
geological time, and musing on astronomical time is enough to give you an ice-
cream headache. Perhaps all of this Ragnarok & Roll reeks more than slightly of
the pious self-righteousness of the saved, whose pleasure in heaven was once
said to be in gazing down at the torments of the damned in hell. I may have some
doubts about the perfectibility of humanity, but I do strive to believe that we can
at least improve.

i suppose the human race

is doing the best it can
but hells bells thats
only an explanation
its not an excuse - Don Marquis

My inclination to find reincarnation a charming theory may arise from a

sense that many of the people I meet (or see on TV!) are just not going to get the
joke on this particular spin of the big merry-go-round. The belief that our souls
might transmigrate through all possible forms of life, our spirits advancing in tune
with evolution toward an eventual reunion of all separate sparks of
consciousness with a universal spirit, has a certain logic and undeniable charm. I
also suspect that the millions of buffalo souls who no longer have any buffalo
bodies available to inhabit have now become some of the countless rather slow
individuals all around us. That guy who can't quite figure out the register at the 7-
11? He should be grazing on the plains somewhere, but sadly, the herds are
gone. Clearly cat must be a vacation incarnation, perhaps a life of 18 hours of
sleep a day is some sort of reward, the spiritual equivalent of frequent-flyer miles.
Being a dolphin is clearly a promotion from mere human. Whales might be
Bodhisattvas, their sonorous songs an oceanic mantra. In the New York occult
scene of the 1970s, "You killed me in a past life!" was a not uncommon pick-up
line and a very effective method of weighing in the emotional baggage before the
relationship even began.

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 Many pagan cultures maintain the existence of multiple souls with several
ultimate destinations, notably the Egyptians and Norse. It is often thought that the
soul-spark or immortal life-force of an individual rejoins the divine and/or
reincarnates, while the partial elements of the former personality linger for a time
as a ghost or shell before finally dissipating into decay; these remnants or
revenants may account for hauntings and the strange phenomena of the séance
chamber.
While I am willing to believe that our energy survives and transforms, we
essentially have no idea of the physics of the soul or of any possible after-death
state. We may in fact progress beyond biologically based life forms, and merge
with the earth's radiation field; we may dissipate and our various bodies be
absorbed by other living entities; we may merely be fodder for demon-gods from
another dimension; we may become one with the universe, or possibly seven
with several universes. Our journey may continue through new layers of reality
we cannot at this time conceive or imagine, or we may just cease to be. Perhaps
all that can be said on this matter is that most of us are really in no big hurry for
the ultimate answer. If the worse comes to the worst, I would imagine that a state
of pure non-existence is actually rather peaceful. The original meaning of Nirvana
is 'cessation'. Where does the light go, when it goes out? We will never know the
answer to the big question until the final exam takes place. No cheating!

"They will come back, come back again,

As long as the red earth rolls.
He never wasted a tree or a leaf,
Why should he squander souls?" - Rudyard Kipling

On the practical level, Carroll's Liber Null suggests three operative options
for eluding the final encounter with the Reaper. In the Red Rite, the aging
sorcerer sires a child and then commits suicide, projecting his soul into the
developing fetus for rebirth. In the Black Rite, a forcible entry is made into the
body of an adult being, perhaps the child or devotee of the magician, often with
the aid of drugs, and eventually taken over completely in an invasion or walk-in
similar to that recounted in H.P. Lovecraft's The Lurker on the Threshold; such an
immoral demonic possession carries a great risk of madness in a body that is
containing two separate entities. In the White Rite, a sigil is formed to act as an
aetheric marker designed to carry the adept's consciousness through rebirth to
the next randomly selected reincarnation, in a manner similar to the serial
lifetimes of some Tibetan lamas. In any event, it may seem that only a true
master may be capable of carrying memory and personality from body to body.
Dubious as such forms of survival may seem, there have been some remarkably
inexplicable case histories, often although not exclusively occurring with children
in Asian countries who are completely familiar with details of the life of someone
recently deceased. The case of Bridey Murphy several decades back in Ireland
was also quite well known.
I have often thought that magickal effects may be easier to fully
accomplish in cultures with surviving occult traditions and in communities with a

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wider acceptance of such phenomena, where the seminal power of an
unquestioning belief seems bound to result in an increasing percentage of
successful results. Observation of areas where trance and possession are
common suggests that they are in part learned experiences, easier when
expected. The very assumption of survival may thus expedite the coherence of
astral vehicles, and the potency of faith has long been known to lead to many
miracles, including well-documented spontaneous healings. “I am a child of earth
and starry heaven, but my birth is from heaven alone” was the secret password
of some ancient Greek mystery cults.
On yet another hand, Robert Anton Wilson predicts an immortality pill to
result from life-extension research shortly, so perhaps the very question of an
expiration-date may prove moot. Unfortunately a large number of his futurist
prophecies are running a bit late and he himself has passed on; and we were
also supposed to have orbital space cities and total control of our brain
chemistries by now. While the sciences of medicine, genetics and biology have
made amazing advances the human brain and the very nature of the soul or of
consciousness are still mysterious.

"Why weep for a soul that is ready to join the spirits of the stars?"
- Last words of the pagan Roman emperor Julian the Apostate

The SiGiL & the LoGoS

"There is a Grimoire of symbology, of vague phonic nuances that conjoins all

thoughts and is the cryptic language of the subconscious world."
"What sounds the depths and conjoins Will and Belief? Some inarticulate
hieroglyph or sigil wrought from nascent desire and rhythmed by unbounding
Ego.”
- A.O. Spare

"A man is insane who writes a secret in any way other than one which will
conceal it from the vulgar."
- Roger Bacon

How do we form the nucleus of magical operations, the knot woven out of
energy, the earthing of a particularized force? Concepts can be grounded in
arcane artifacts of various kinds, which serve as containers of psychic energy
and subliminal reminders of the focus of the sorcerer's will and desires. In the
ancient world divine powers were personified in brightly painted images of the
gods, which were served as though they were human; fed and clothed with fresh
offerings daily, entertained by dancers and musicians. Ancient Egyptians used
the ritual of the Opening of the Mouth, which activated the senses of statues or
brought mummies back to life. Among the Romans the emperor was often
accompanied by a statue of the goddess Fortuna, attended by a slave whose
duty it was to ensure that her gaze ever faced him, thus watching over the leader

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and ensuring his luck and therefore the luck of the nation; sacred kingship has
always been encircled by rites and taboos of various kinds. When besieging a
city the Roman legions would also employ spies to discover the secret names of
that people's gods; they would then have their Roman priests invoke and invite
those gods to abandon their city to its fall and join the imperial pantheon.
The images and tales of the primordial Olympian gods of Greece long
remained a living influence upon the more educated classes and courts of
Europe. Even during the Renaissance there were hermetic magicians and artists
in sculpture and painting who would create complex images or eidolons that
personified protective or other forces, vivifying them by the system of astrological
correspondences. These practices were derived from the late-classical
theurgists, who would place the appropriate plants, metals, perfumes and written
invocations within statues in an attempt to activate daemonic presences and
bring them to life, as active channels of divine communication. Roger Bacon was
said to have a head cast of bronze that would speak and utter oracles, and such
prophetic skulls extend far back in time, to the Norse Mimir and the Celtic Bran,
and the prehistoric headhunters beyond.
Amulets, good luck charms, and talismans of all kinds continue the
identical principle, made or infused with appropriate planetary metals or other
substances and charged by invocation at the correct astrological times; the art of
their making has fallen into undeserved neglect in recent times. Rings, bracelets
or pendants can easily be worn publicly, and they accumulate stores of your
personal power over time. Paper, wood, metal or parchment talismans are easy
to conceal. Such things are among the oldest and most common human artifacts
found worldwide; they help to strengthen the ego and define the sense of self, to
establish connection with sources of wisdom, healing, attraction, and protection.
Technically, amulets provide protection while talismans invoke or attract
particular powers.
To earth the ethereal energies in a work of art, whether carving or
painting, in jewelry, poetry, collage, recorded music, architecture, or whatever, is
to provide a vehicle or container for the will to manifest through a constantly
growing yet subliminal reminder to the dormant powers of the deep mind. In what
is perhaps its most streamlined form, we arrive at Austin Spare's vital design of
the sentient sigil, which encodes the desire and conceals it from the censorship,
conflict and doubts of the conscious mind.

"Real magic is just the introduction of an idea, so that it eventually becomes a

reality."
- Paul Jenkins

This seminal concept of sigils has become central to groups like the IOT
and ToPY; they are devised by clearly expressing a desire in a sentence,
eliminating all duplicated letters, and combining the resulting sequence into a
monogram or geometric form which suggests no immediate associations to the
mind, whose alleged rationality and second-guessing must be eluded. This now-
encoded cryptogram or hieroglyph is then charged in various ways (including

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magical rituals, sexuality, violence, hyperventilation, nitrous oxide, the rush of
sky-diving, bungee-jumping or roller-coaster rides, concentration at moments of
shock or stress) and projected into the deep mind to germinate. Forgotten by the
surface mind and sidestepping the censor of the super-ego, it creates an astral
stress that is reified in results. These obscure icons of desire may be integrated
into artworks in various ways and left scattered about the house to influence the
mind, and Spare's drawings abound with them. The I.O.T. also suggests making
the scrambled letters of this sentence into a pronounceable ‘subliminal mantra’
which may be chanted in the customary manner; or alternatively the use of
simply drawn pictorial symbols of the goal rather than letter-forms, which may
also be woven into aesthetic graphic designs.
My own contribution is the notion that these word-formulas may be linked
to such planetary forces as are appropriate by diagramming them upon the
mathematical kameas or planetary squares used by the Golden Dawn and
everyone else subsequent to Cornelius Agrippa: the letters are turned into
numbers by qabalistic gematria and then drawn as a line on the squares, in the
same way as the names of spirits were used to form their seals. Yet another
method of linking the planetary forces to the purpose of the sigil is the simpler
expedient of drawing the figure in the appropriate color of ink. I may note that
while Spare employed the English alphabet for his sigils, I have found that the
Norse runes combine very easily and aesthetically, and add a rather significant
additional dimension of magick to the process; called bind-runes, such archaic
monograms are completely traditional, surviving for many centuries as merchants
and masons marks. Frater U.D. suggests the use of simple geometric figures as
borders to focus sigils, and they can be used as design elements to link a desired
series of runestaves, or as additional reminders of the qabalistic sphere being
worked. I note a suggestion by Benjamin Walker that all the vowels also be
eliminated from the sigilized sentence, which would simplify the verbal formula
even further; while this might be congruent to some non-english linguistic forms,
I'm not sure that I agree. Jason Cooper suggests condensing the longer phrases
to be sigilized by completely removing all the repeated letters and using only
those that appear just once.
An experiment in collective working would be for every member to
formulate a sigil of desire and place it in a vessel, then draw one at random and
charge it in their own manner; or to consecrate each individual’s sigil as a group.
Results could be monitored to gauge success.
The process of sending the sigils may also be linked to the four elements.
After burning we may sacramentally drink the ashes, or the sigil may be drawn
upon a piece of rolling paper and ceremonially shared and smoked, or marked
upon fireworks and exploded. Offerings in wishing wells or deep marshes extend
into prehistory, perhaps combined with a small symbolic sacrifice of food, coins,
or brightly colored ribbon; or they may be floated away as messages in bottles or
on small model boats. For air, the sign may be placed high in a tree, or drawn
upon a paper airplane or balloon, or even reduced to confetti and released into
the atmosphere. Earth holds many possibilities: charms were often buried at
crossroads, under the very doorsteps of those they were meant to affect, or

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planted in their footprints. Their frequent burial in graveyards also implies a
contact with the underworld and the potent spirits of the ancestral dead, and such
curses and love spells were often carved on small tablets of lead, many of which
have survived. Sigils may be planted with actual seeds, and the magician tends
the plant as it grows; in Egypt a frame in the shape of Osiris was used to grow a
small field as the body of the grain-god, and in India the same method was used
with an image of the Goddess. They may be drawn upon boards and then ritually
smashed with the focused chi of the martial artist, or concealed in articles of
apparel or talismanic jewelry; woven into cloth with needlework embroidery or
chanted in subliminal tapes. A sign may be drawn in chalk upon a stone Pantacle
and washed into the cup with the sacramental wine; the absorption of some
specific power by the eating or drinking of its symbol incorporates concept into
organism. In ancient Egypt statues of healing deities were carved with spells, and
liquid medicines were charged by being poured over them and then given to the
patient.
Often the sigil is repeatedly charged with blood or sexual fluids. Spare
speaks of the use of a vessel with dimensions slightly larger than the member of
the magus, with the sigil at the bottom; this is charged by autocopulation, buried
for a lunar cycle, and subsequently disinterred and recharged and then
reinterred. This device he termed an 'earthenware virgin’, and stated that such
urns were the origin of the tale of King Solomon's spirits or djinn kept in brazen
vessels. Some modern magicians have similarly impregnated pyramidal
Enochian tablets. The core concept of the magickal will may clearly imply the
focus of levels of attention by unique methods.
This returns us to the question of willed forgetting as a means to bypass
both doubt and the ‘lust of result’; Pete Carroll suggests various ‘sleights of mind’
for this, mostly variations on running such veiled symbols past the conscious
censor and tricks of belief which become reality ("fake it till you make it!"). Spare
also spoke of making sacrifices of desire to fuel a sigil, such as giving up
smoking until the will was accomplished (a “very great sacrifice” for him!). Paul
Huson refers to a similar cursing technique called the Black Fast, wherein the
sorcerer stops eating and sleeping and projects obsessive hatred until his target
is extinguished. Desire when balked of its normal outlets finds new channels to
run through, which may account for the appeal of fetishistic sexual ‘perversions’
to some, and of constant novelty to others.
Energy may be projected into sigils by any of the methods given in this
book, and deeply emotional energy is the most potent: Spare suggested focusing
upon sigilized forms at peak emotional moments such as rage or fear or ecstasy,
joy or frustration or enthusiasm; and also when some great personal betrayal,
disillusionment, despair or disappointment served to empty the belief that one's
core concepts contained into the void of Kia.
The seed-concept or bud-will of the sigil is encoded or formulated in Earth,
deliberately veiled or concealed with Water, charged with the energy of Fire,
forgotten by Air, and reified or accomplished as Spirit.

"I say to you: Make perfect your will.

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I say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing." - T.S. Elliot

Words of power and mantras are essentially verbal sigils as codifications

of magickal formulae, expressions of various currents of power and deep
meaning. Qabalistic methods of numerological analysis and gematria form the
matrix from which such jewels are mined and polished, and magickal alphabets
of whatever cultural tradition are the conceptual building blocks. The sounds of
goetic evocation, whether pure glossolalia or meaningful phonetically, have a
deep effect on the organism. The Greeks and Egyptians vibrated sacred vowel
sounds, and so have many tantriks, gnostics, magicians, rune-workers, chaoists
and surrealists all throughout history. Spend some time in solitude expressing
your self through imaginary languages and build up a vocabulary of sounds.
Whistles or whispers for air, erotic moans or humming for water, roars or
screams for fire, deep vibrating tones or grunts for earth? Classical accounts of
witchery describe a grotesque chorus of animal or bird-sounds, and Typhonian
texts abound with long strings of obscure letter-formulas to be vibrated by the
adept. These are the well-known onomata barbarika, foreign or barbarous names
of power that have a stimulating or hypnotic effect. The voces magicae, or
magical words, are spoken in a voice of command, a voice informed with the
power of truth and the assumed authority of the divine: "The great god, he who
lives, who commands you, who exists from eternity to eternity", as an ancient text
puts it. Perhaps the most common descriptions of spell casting worldwide specify
whispering, and charms must often be repeated 3 or 7 or 3x3 times.
Part of the work of a magus is the discovery or formulation of a Word or
Name that expresses the Law of their being. Crowley devotes considerable
analysis to the Words of various prophets, such as ALLAH for Mohammed,
ANATTA for the Buddha, or his own formulas such as ABRAHADABRA,
THELEMA, AGAPE, LAShTAL, fIAOf, AUMGN, NIHIL, et AL. Edred Thorsson's
work flowered when he heard the word RUNA. I explore the word SELF; for a
good friend, it is ART. Perhaps for Isadora Duncan it was DANCE; for someone
else it might be SEX or WINE or QUANTUM or CHOCOLATE or MIND or even
CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANCY. Among the most potent are the names of
pagan gods, which often express the formula of their invocation, as well as the
keys of sound-vibration that manifest them. The letters of a name may be
transcribed into their corresponding Tarot images to create a meaningful pattern.
Another aspect of the magickal art is expressed in the work of the Scribe
as manifested by the Egyptian god of wisdom, the ibis-headed Tahuti or Thoth.
The very process of writing renders a verbal spell or formula permanent, for the
Word becomes eternal. Development of literacy is a key moment in all arcane
traditions, and the culture-heroes or gods who create alphabets (Thoth, Hermes,
the Norse Odin or Celtic Ogma, for example) are always very potent in magick.
Most early letter-forms have numerological and symbolic correspondences:
Hebrew, Greek or Coptic qabalas, Runes or Ogams, Egyptian hieroglyphic or
demotic scripts, all have a sense of the individual glyphs as living cosmic forces.

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I have mentioned before the links between the Hebrew alphabet, the Tarot
trumps, and the paths of the tree of life. If words or names create the cosmos,
then letters are the roots of creation. The word 'Grimoire', a book of spells, is a
corruption of 'grammar'; and grammarye is an old word for magick. We may also
note that the alphabet itself is a potent charm, as it by definition contains all
possible words including the Holy Unspeakable Name of God. Some of our
knowledge of the Norse runes comes from early inscriptions consisting of the
alphabet or Futhark written out in order, and part of the consecration rite in early
Christian churches included the inscription of the complete sequence from Alpha
to Omega.

The various techniques employed by traditional qabalists for manipulating

such formulas include:
Gematria: in many early alphabets, most notably Greek and Hebrew, the
letters also serve as numbers: A=1, B=2, and so forth. Every word can thus be
expressed as a mathematical total as well, and all words with the same number
are considered linked. There is an enormous body of such analysis devoted to
the Bible, and a great deal of work has been done in exploring English-language
qabalas as applied to the Book of the Law. Many magicians find themselves
haunted by particular numbers related to personal formulas like magical names,
as Crowley was by 31, 93, 156, 418 and 666, or as I am by 101, 365, 380 and
69/96. Robert Anton Wilson obsessed over 23, and as the famous mathematician
and code-breaker John Nash once remarked, “23 is my favorite prime number.”
They constantly pop up as omens in the external world in all kinds of places, or
are found by random word analysis or in qabalistic dictionaries. Synchronicity is
the telltale thumbprint of the Creator. We might also recall Douglas Adams’
ingenious solution to the ultimate question of “life, the universe & everything” as
42. The essential reference books are Crowley’s 777 & Other Qabalistic Writings
and Godwin’s Cabalistic Encyclopedia.
Notariqon: expands each letter of a word to begin the initial letters of a
sentence, as with the alchemical formula of VITRIOL: Visita Interiora Terrae,
Recificando Invenies Occultem Lapidem ("Visit the interior parts of the earth; by
rectification thou shalt find the hidden stone.") or Captain Marvel’s super-
empowering SHAZAM! formula (the wisdom of Solomon, strength of Hercules,
stamina of Atlas, power of Zeus, courage of Achilles, speed of Mercury).
Alternatively, a sentence can be reduced to a single word of power, using the
process in reverse; as with the qabalistic ARARITA, drawn from the Hebrew
phrase for "One is His beginning: One is His individuality: His permutation is
One."
Temura: uses linguistic or mathematical methods of substituting various
letters to create codes, as with the 'Qabala of the Nine Chambers' method. This
is a nine-squared grid, each of which contains the linked number/letter
sequences for 1, 10, 100 or 2, 20, 200 and so forth. It is used to condense and
encode word-formulas in various ways, including the kameas or mathematical
magick squares mentioned above.

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Another common qabalistic cipher is called AthBsh, which works by writing the
first half of the Hebrew alphabet in one direction and the second half beneath it in
reverse. One then transposes the pairs of letters: Aleph & Tau, first & last; Beth &
Shin, second & next to last; then Gimel & Resh, and so on.  As an interesting
example we may uncover a mystery of Baphomet, the mysterious 'idol' of the
Knights Templar. In Hebrew we may take BaPhOMeT as Beth Pe Vau Mem Tau,
which then becomes Shin Vau Pe Yod Aleph, or the famous female emanation
Sophia. Sophia, of course, is the Greek for Wisdom, and she is more-or-less the
Shakti of Gnosticism and its countless cults. The best-known image of Baphomet
is Eliphas Levi's famous version: half angel, half devil; half man, half woman; half
deity, half beast. How many ever thought of this as a Goddess? Yet one of the
earliest interpretations of the name Baphomet was as a corruption of the Greek
for “Baptism of Wisdom", or Metis. Metis was yet another Greek Goddess of
Wisdom, first wife of Zeus and mother of Athena. Apparently the Templars may
have been preserving some sort of heretical gnostic secret. Other early writers
saw in Baphomet a mere corruption of Mahomet or Mohammed, fearing that
Islam was infiltrating European knights at the time of the Crusades. A more
recent author, recalling the descriptions of this idol as having the form of a Head,
suggested that the Templars actually had the Shroud of Turin, folded to show the
face.

A sheet of paper may symbolize the field of the universe, or body of Nuit;
the moving point of the pen manifests Hadit; the lines of script are the words
spoken by Ra-Hoor-Khuit and the overall balance of the composition reflects
Maat. Alternatively, we may see the brush, pen or quill-plume as the Wand, the
inkpot as the Cup, the papyrus as the Disk, and the Blade used to cut the paper
and sharpen the pen.
Another aspect of such written magical forms is the use of magical
squares that take the form of a palindrome, reading the same vertically or
horizontally. Many of these are provided by Abra-Melim the Mage; the most
famous example is the so-called Sator Square, which for centuries has served as
a powerful protective formula in a number of western cultures:

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

Often such word-formulas are written so as to increase or diminish, a

technique which goes back to ancient Babylon:

ABRAHADABRA
BRAHADABR
RAHADAB

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 AHADA
HAD
A
HAD
AHADA
RAHADAB
BRAHADABR
ABRAHADABRA

There is also the custom of writing which takes pictorial forms, called
technopaignion; see Tibetan Tantric Charms & Amulets by Douglas or the Greco-
Egyptian magical papyri for some examples. I also highly recommend Lazlo
Legeza's Tao Magic for amazing cult forms of esoteric Asian spirit-writing; and
since representational art is usually forbidden by Islam, the Arab world has also
developed elaborately beautiful calligraphy, often of verses from the Koran or
names of God. Another technique called boustrophedon ('as the ox plows')
involves writing alternate lines from left-to-right and right-to-left. Nor can we
forget the practice of automatic writing, utilized by spirit mediums, early
surrealists, and trance channelers to receive transmissions from the vasty deep
beyond.

“Language is a virus from outer space.”

- William S. Burroughs

"My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed."
- Christopher Morley

Lastly, words are the language of the conscious mind, and symbols are
that of the deep mind. Please reread that last sentence a time or two: words are
the language of the conscious mind, and symbols of the deep mind. In the weave
of tantra, we find the unity of the mantra as the verbal, and the yantra as the
pictorial: twin living forms of the ritual representation of an invoked energy or
god-form. Hermes rules magick because his power is that of communication,
between every level and plane of being, the interior or external, real or ideal. To
mediate between entities or aspects of the self, a common vocabulary is
required. I will thus conclude this section with a note on the formula of its title: the
SiGiL reverses the LoGoS, the sign or image and the word, the yantra and the
mantra; and their component letters Samekh, Gimel and Lamed once again total
the mystic 93:

S
i
LoGoS
i
L

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"The work of the Artist is his awareness that anything has its beauty and
significance, giving 'visual' reality to his conceptions, however fantastic;
transforming all falsehood into truth."
- A.O. Spare

Invocation, Evocation, & the Alphabet of Desire

Glendower: "I can call spirits from the vasty deep."

Hotspur: "Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?"
Henry IV, part 2, William Shakespeare

“Invoke often! Inflame thyself with prayer!” - Aleister Crowley

Magick may or may not assume the existence of actual entities external to
the psyche of the practitioner: gods, angels, demons, spirits of every kind
populate the cosmic landscape. Whether they possess an objective reality is a
question more loaded than the average cheap illegal handgun, touching upon the
fundamental questions of the nature of reality and its interface with the individual
mentality. How many pinheads can dance on an angel? If we see our various
familiars as autonomous complexes constructed by our own desires, are they
easier to control than more hypothetical elementals from beyond the fields we
know? Or is one of the most essential components of this mysterious art the very
possibility of contact with something beyond our limited experience? Adepts
throughout history have sought communion with something higher or lower than
themselves, demonic or divine as the case may be. Oracles have spoken for the
gods, mediums for the dead, and channelers for the crystal-humping UFO
dolphins from Atlantis. Shamans have no doubt that strange spirits lurk in the
forest, while psychologists try to look wise while talking about the mechanism of
projection. Crowley centered much of his life's quest upon the search for
authentic inner plane contacts, and Mathers and Blavatsky largely based their
authority upon the so-called Secret Chiefs or Ascended Masters. Clearly,
something is up. The tendency to psychologize magick, to reduce all experience
into a purely internal process, is a comparatively recent and often rather silly
innovation.
Invocation is said to involve summoning something from above or outside
oneself, and evocation calls up powers from below or within; practically speaking
the distinction may often be arbitrary other than in terms of dramatic effect.
Medieval ceremonial magick tends toward an elaborate hierarchy: call
upon God to tell an archangel to instruct an angel to dispatch a spirit to request
the Devil to command his infernal court to send a demon to do your will. Occam's
Razor again intervenes: "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily". The
simplest solution that covers all known facts is best. Systems which function
upon the purely expressed will of the sorcerer might still employ familiar spirits
without going through this qabalistic equivalent of the choose-your-function-and-

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press-seven answering-machine maze. The powers of the four elements are the
usual attendants of the magus, and a corresponding entourage of about four is
probably about the maximum useful number anyway. The contemporary magi of
Chaos magick have devoted some thought to the creation of servitors on the
computer-program format, wherein they can incorporate whatever qualities they
wish, although a careful formulation of the roles and proper functions of such a
manufactured egregore or homunculus is advisable. They are designed by
means of appropriate qabalistic or symbolic correspondences for a very specific
purpose, such as healing or the protection of a home. The power of names as
formulas is essential here; for example, a true name which expresses a being’s
nature can be formed by selecting letters via the Qabala or Tarot, using such
imagery as may be appropriate to formulate an astral mechanism with a limited
yet focused consciousness split off from your own. One of the advantages of
empowering an individual entity is that they can carry out an independent mission
with initiative and unflagging concentration. There are many demonic familiars to
be drawn from the endless lists given in the goetic grimoires of medieval times,
and such traditional sources may prove useful if you should see a name that
resonates for you. From Spare's point of view such things are often atavisms of
animal or other prehuman levels of evolution and from these totems and spirit
helpers of shamanism emerge the bizarre mutant life forms of contemporary
media. The denizens of the otherworld may be discovered in cultural sources
from the antique world, or contacted at random by attraction of the spirits of a
particular landscape: the Genius Loci or spirit of a place, called Kami in
Japanese, or Landsvettir (land-spirits) in Norse.
Magical groups and orders can cultivate a shared totem or patron as a
source of energy and method of communication and shared symbolism. The
Fraternitas Saturni utilized such an egregore or deliberately created spirit guide
called GOTOS, and many Asian schools are founded by gurus whose images
are preserved and influences felt long after their apparent deaths. One of the
advantages of group working lies in the shared focus of multiple wills, a process
that requires a clearly defined target of intention.
Whole classes of beings present unique possibilities: angels and demons,
the group-souls of minerals or power-plants or animal species, the natural spirits
of particular places, the collective consciousness of national entities (Uncle Sam?
the goddess Britannia?) or traditional folk sprites, brownies, elves or faeries,
djinn, kami, stellar or planetary forces, the personifications of governments or
corporate entities, the mascots of sports teams, cartoon characters out of the
Disney empire or role-playing games or comix; all kinds of thingies are active in
the modern collective unconscious. Some folks have even activated plastic
action figures as guardians or servitors. That must be true; I read it on the
Internet.
The distinction between angels and demons is rather moralistic, but such
a rigid division between good and evil may reflect the fact that spirits are usually
not considered as complete a universe or entity as we superhuman beings are.
Many are in fact considered somewhat troublesome: astral larvae, confused
remnants of the recently departed, poltergeists or noisy ghosts, unconscious

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complexes within the psyche acting out their old traumas. This is a good motive
for preliminary banishings, clearings or centering in ceremonial work. In more
psychological terms we might think of angels as the higher functions of the mind,
and demons as the lower; a rather gravity-bound and hierarchical way of viewing
things. However, by naming and focusing such internal energies, we may attain
control over them, activating contact with planetary forces or our own holy
guardian spirits, for example.
Demons, on the other hand, can also be personifications of unconscious
crises, of sickness or disease, addictions or compulsions, or any dysfunctional
habits and patterns; brought to light and resolved, they can then perhaps be
exorcised. If in the exploration of the self one runs into extremely nasty
unresolved issues, psychotherapy really can provide help for some. One of the
greatest dangers in magick is that of obsession, and it hardly matters whether it
is an internal process or an external entity. It would, however, be unwise to
completely discount the existence of wicked astral predators or psychic attacks.
There are perhaps real issues behind the millennia-old practices of making the
circle of protection into a fortified citadel rather than merely a lens of focus. Even
if we learn nothing else from Star Trek we should remember the utility of keeping
the shields up when appropriate, and even the modernized Church of Rome
does still authorize the occasional authentic exorcism. If demons are as real as
any other concept, prepare to deal with them from a position of strength. One
may note that they sometimes seem to emerge from the insect level of evolution,
and that their distinctive sounds seem to include the buzzing and drones of
nocturnal insects. Some folks dive into the Lovecraftian Cthulhu Mythos, which I
personally am quite happy to enjoy as fiction. Angel, demon, or atavism, dark,
bright, or in-between: such entities can make possible the activation and use of
exceptional powers of any type required to work the will of the magus.
Lastly is the question of necromancy or spiritualism, the conjuration of the
dead, which might in a very technical sense be called black magick. I have some
reservations about this; what you get may be merely a traumatized remnant of
someone who knows no more than they did in life, and is no more honest. It is
always important to let the dead depart, lest we find ourselves locked into the
past. However, sincere work with the dead raises all kinds of romantic and goetic
possibilities, if one desires to go completely gothic and spend some time in the
graveyard which is the usual haunt of sorcerers; and in a sense one should also
respect one’s ancestors, who in societies less rootless than our own watch over
family members and aid them. We will leave aside such excesses as the raising
of actual zombies, as the common or garden variety of revenant can be
sufficiently disconcerting. Meditation on the condition of death also has a
powerful effect on the mind, breaking down the preconceptions and structures of
mundane identity, as in Tibetan tantrik Chod rituals.

How does one conjure such entities? Talismans, statues, sigils or

paintings of the spirit can provide a focus. Traditionally the magus stands within a
magical circle and imprisons the entity within a triangle of manifestation drawn
outside it; this may or more usually may not appear as a 3-D hologram like it

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does in the movies. Incense smoke often provides the vehicle for such forms,
and burning the herb called Dittany of Crete is regarded as a powerful agent of
materialization. In general, incenses seen as invoking are frankincense and other
sweet scents, often combined with assorted herbs and resins ascribed to the
various planets or spheres. Those that banish include harsh-smelling, acrid or
fetid substances such as asafetida or brimstone; and the sage used for smudging
by many Native American tribes is always very effective for the cleansing and
purifying of a space. Alternatively there may be a sense of a presence or a
tingling sensation, or even mild poltergeist phenomena. Always bear in mind that
you as the Magus are absolutely in command of all such spirits.
Perhaps the single most effective method of contact involves the practice
of crystal gazing within the circle or scrying in a magical mirror placed in the
triangle. The use of a bowl of pure water with oil or ink or a bit of blood added is
an ancient method, as is using a deeply entranced seer or medium to describe
the events to the invoking magus; young children or virgin maidens were often
employed for this purpose in the classical period. Carroll 'Poke' Runyon of the
Ordo Templi Astartes has done much to rediscover these Solomonic techniques;
after noticing that recent works on magick recommended only the often inefficient
use of incense smoke for attempts to visibly materialize entities, he argued that
genuine sorcerers had utilized this technique of scrying, and that the secret
became confused and lost over time. Specifically he recommends the use of the
black mirror (familiar to readers of Franz Bardon) flanked by candles and
reflecting the face of the medium as most effective when set in the Triangle for all
demonic evocations; this is paralleled by the use of the crystal within the circle for
angelic invocations. Donald Tyson's Scrying for Beginners also covers the long
history of this practice.
The opening Statement of Intent is a most excellent prelude to any
operative working, serving to clearly focus the will; and the classic License to
Depart before banishing is a courteous yet wise move as well. It certainly can't
hurt to have a clear and coherent framework for ritual practices, or to eliminate
any unnecessary or contradictory elements. Clarity is good and confusion is bad:
fuzzy thinking, fuzzy results. Every now and then I have met some amateur who
did an invocation, séance or bloodletting "just to see if anything would happen";
and frequently something rather unpleasant did. Quite frankly, I often shudder at
this particular approach; but I suppose that Mother Nature must thin the herd
somehow, and human stupidity seems as useful a weeding-out process as any. It
certainly seems to work in many other arenas besides magick. Many tombstones
would be more honest if their inscriptions simply read "It seemed like a good idea
at the time."
There are other methods for the care and feeding of spirits that are also
traditional; often a carved image such as a fetish, idol, or head serves as a home
or physical basis for an entity. Vessels such as bowls or jars, eggs or bottles,
even amulets or jewelry are useful; often a doll form similar to human shape is
made, as in the northern custom of carving a mandrake root into the form of a
manikin or alraun as a household servitor or guardian. Lastly there are spirit traps
such as mazes and labyrinths, or net-like devices like Native American dream-

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catchers that ensnare and entangle them; and ultimately the quartz crystal, long
used by shamans to ensnare demons of illness or madness or menace.
The practical outlines of ritual are covered below; suffice it to say that one
gathers the instruments of the Art, and then prepares the sacred space by
designing an environment symbolically appropriate to the spirit by using the
correspondences in 777. One then invokes with all the emotion and poetry one
can summon up, stimulating all the senses and utilizing the methods of magical
empowerment to create a sphere where no result but success is possible.

Pantheons of gods are especially rich sources for devotional and artistic
as well as more directed operative activities. On many high and holy mountains
the companies of the gods still dwell: on the Greek Olympus and the Norse
Asgardh, the Hindu Mount Meru and the Shinto Mount Fuji, the glass castles of
the ancient Celts and the primal mound which rose from the dark oceans of night
when the Neters of ancient Egypt formed creation, on every continent of the
world the deities of the people still await their calling. Such pantheons often
reflect the gestalts of ancient planetary or qabalistic spheres, the dance of the
archetypes; these divine complexes of ideas such as love or war, wisdom or
mercy, the moon or the sun, resonate deeply in the human mind. Study of the
many names and aspects possessed by some of the more complex gods open
gateways to union. Personally, I have never much trifled with the more involved
types of goetic conjuration of personified spirits. I tend to rely upon the more
undifferentiated legions of natural elementals from the realms of fire, water,
earth, and air; upon the link with my holy guardian spirit; upon the patron entities
such as Aiwaz or n’Aton that inspire and empower wider magical currents; and
ultimately upon the gods themselves, who embody the full spectrum of forces in
the universe.
For workings of results-oriented magick I tend toward emotions channeled
through sigils, or upon simple old-fashioned methods such as the charging and
burning of colored candles over a period of nights, carved with runes and signs
and anointed with appropriate oils; or the binding of chants into the knots of
colored cords. I like the making of talismans charged with planetary forces, to
serve such purposes as healing or protection, increase in wisdom or the finding
of unusual books; often I find that magick works better by creating a general
atmosphere of attraction for a certain goal, rather than by too-complex specifics
that bog down in details. If one desires a lover, for example, one should not limit
expectations. Visualization can be very useful, however: create an empty space
and fill it with the image of fulfillment. Aids to this are the age-old tricks of the
trade, like image magick: a voodoo doll stuck with pins is a great focus for
malice; similar images might be filled with herbs for healing; and a picture
lavished with sweet herbs and perfumed oils and inscriptions of caring can open
a channel for better purposes. Desires should be deep and organic, and not
mediated by excessive brooding or overblown intellectualizations.

"Emotion is the quickest, most immediate form of power there is. Be it love,
anger, fear, whatever, it produces instant power, instant capability. Knowledge

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also produces such power, but learning is a much more tedious process, and, if
the time can be afforded, it is the preferred source. Power that stems from
knowledge is much more controlled and directed." - Mage, by Matt
Wagner

Spare made the Alphabet of Desire one of the keys to his sorcery, and
Carroll devised a whole vocabulary of emotional states in his Liber Null. Briefly,
he defines emotions as pairs of opposites: love/hate, joy/sorrow,
anger/forgiveness, fear/desire, lust/disgust, and so on; sex and death are the
most primal duality, the instincts of life and its opposite pole. He recommends
laughter for effective banishing. Carroll also suggests a purely biological pairing
of pain & pleasure with fire & water, and elation & depression with air & earth.
Whichever mood serves to empower your art or suit your purpose can be chosen
and activated by the vivid associations of memory and color, a correctly devised
environment, and a personal vocabulary of symbols and actions.
As for pouring raw energy into an encoded sigil, does it matter which
emotions you employ as long as they are intense as possible? In terms of using
free belief to get results, lust, anger and fear may be the simplest to create at
short notice: we can all get horny with just a little fantasy and self-stimulation; we
can all get very seriously pissed off (see red) at something in life, and it can be
quite easy to work oneself up into a seething rage; and a good reason for doing
sorcery at midnight in a cemetery is that fear paralyzes many of the rational
functions of the mind. As Mark Twain once said, "The knowledge that one is to
be shot at dawn concentrates the mind wonderfully"; the instinctive fear of
darkness and death really gets the juices jangling. Looking at the ludicrous
success of the Blair Witch Project, it would appear that we have become so
urban and civilized that even the mere illusion of being lost in the woods at night
terrifies the crap out of many of us. The new-age white-light brigade might insist
that these are the kinds of 'negative emotions' that people should never be
allowed to feel, which says a great deal about the dangerously artificial and
controlling nature of the new age movement. Jung, however, speaks of
embracing the shadow, which is the portion of the psyche where such emotions
and memories are stored; and an enormous amount of power is locked up in that
darkness, waiting to be used. Communion with one’s own physical shadow and
using it to cast waves of power may have fascinating results.
I tend to emphasize emotional charges and associative resonance over
the more intellectually contrived complexities of the G.D. tradition; the more you
inflate your consciousness by inflaming your passions, the more primal libido or
instinctive forces you engage. Two of the most powerful channels for such
simulations of stimulation are also among the most physical: sight and sound.
They may also be the most ancient, for the associations of color are perhaps
even pre-verbal, and the power of music and subtle effects of rhythm serve to
create an environment that carries us far beyond our normal states.
In the triggering of magical energies within the temple we have certain
modern advantages in the creation of an atmosphere. Ideally, music may be
performed live in rituals to great effect; consider the thundering power of the

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drums in many tribal rites. Recorded music can be selected to provide an overall
esoteric ambiance, and can also be used to time a specific series of emotional
cues to accompany various stages of the process and the aspects of your
activities; sound technology enables total control over the energy and emotive
levels of the auditory environment. A working group can use certain pieces to
build up associations for regular practices, triggers for altered states of being. In
Wicca a piece of music that slowly builds up to an explosive climax may be used
in circle-dances to raise and release the 'cone of power'. We used to use Carl
Orff’s Carmena Burana at one point in my coven career, and it still pumps up my
adrenaline level. Gustav Holst’s The Planets is useful in astrological rites. Much
of techno/rave seems designed for trance. While one perhaps shudders to
recommend New Age music, some of it is quite atmospheric and effective,
especially since it has begun to incorporate the World Beat influence.
Quite some time ago it occurred to me that musical instruments might
easily be classified according to the five elements. According to the Encyclopedia
Britannica, there are four main categories: “…percussion instruments are divided
into (I) idiophones, in which sound is produced from hard substances not
previously stretched in any way (bells, cymbals, xylophones, etc.); and (II)
membranophones, producing sound from a stretched skin (drums). Stringed
instruments are termed (III) chordophones. Wind instruments come under (IV)
aerophones….” Let us see where this takes us.
Air: obviously this would be aerophones, Pan’s reed pipes or Krishna’s
flute.
Water: here I place membranophones, for a few reasons including the
fluid flexibility of their surfaces, the essential rhythm suggestive of the beating
heart that circulates our liquid blood, and the ceaseless waves and tides of the
ocean. There are also the associations with tribal and shamanic cultures. Voudon
is inseparable from the powerful voice of the drums.
Fire: chordophones with their scales from high to low remind me of the
spectrum of color and the solar Apollo’s lyre. We might also consider the electric
guitar as the defining sound of the fiery Age of Horus, whose theme music to
date would have to be rock & roll.
Earth: idiophones qualify by their fundamental hardness, and the frequent
association of bells with Maat as the very essence of Matter.
Spirit: the Encyclopedia Britannica also suggests a new category: “(V)
electrophones… include instruments in which sound is produced electronically.”
The development of such devices has completely transformed modern music. In
a concluding observation it is remarked that “many primitive instruments show
magical connotations, by which the sounds produced from natural substances by
the hand or breath of man are used for communication with the spirit world in
rites of every kind.” Ritual, of course, is very much like a dance.
Music has been the subject of esoteric discourse from the Hindu Vedas to
the Greek philosophers to the renaissance hermeticists to the new agers, and a
piece of music is an emotive code similar to an enchantment. Rhythm, mood,
and tone can work upon our feelings in very subtle or remarkably extreme ways.
In thelemic terms a living musical performance may be experienced as an aethyr

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for the mage to explore. The melodic interplay of subject (Hadit, the listener) with
object (Nuit, the music) produces a magical child (Horus, the experience) in time
(Maat). The universe itself is merely energy at various levels of vibration, the
music of the spheres. In another sense, Nuit is the surrounding silence, and each
individual note is a point of Hadit, linked in a constellation of stars. The higher
and lower vibrations emitted are the twins Horus and Harpocrates, and the
overall order of harmony is Maat.

“All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.”

- Walter Pater

The Rainbow Spectrum of Magick

“What is this prism

arcing the sky
when rain and sun have dueled?
The aura of Zeus?
A silk to bridle Juno’s wayward curls?
A kiss of peace between the Elements?” - Rosemary Gilbert

Another major key to magick is found in the subliminal use of the

influences of color, the shining lights of the shimmering rainbow. From the
various Tree of Life color scales employed by the Golden Dawn and the
classifications of forms in Chaos Magick on back to the dawn of recorded time,
color remains among the oldest and quite possibly preverbal forms of human
symbolism. While candles of various hues are traditional, an oil lamp may also
shine behind tinted gels or lenses to create a realm of light appropriate to the
sphere of magical activity, or full-scale stage lighting may be employed in
dramatic rites. Some groups have experimented with other electrical devices and
effects, and a strobe light can be shockingly effective in wild and frenzied magical
dances. Black lights and fluorescent paints may be employed in qlipothic rituals
to create a more disquieting or otherworldly atmosphere. From paleoshamanism
onwards fire and light and music and dance have always had a central place in
religio-magical activity. Digital manipulation now enables filmmakers to freely
control every aspect of color to encode certain moods or differentiate time and
location. We turn now to Bifrost, the rainbow bridge that links the terrestrial and
celestial realms.
The seven-fold spectrum of visible light is seen as a metaphor for the
whole range of human experience, rising out of the heated infrared that is the
ground of physical life, and progressing to the cooling ultraviolet of spiritual
ecstasy. Color epitomizes emotional states. Of the triple primary colors it might
be said:

Red Yellow Blue

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Body Mind Spirit
Dawn Noon Dusk
Growth Fullness Passing
Past Present Future
Hadit Hrumachis Nuit
Zos Abraxas Kia
Hell World Heaven
Sensuality Intellect Spirituality

In terms of the seven planetary wanderers, the visible sequence of red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet may correspond to the seven reeds in the
fabled reed Pipes of horned and goat-hooved and dancing Pan and to Mars,
Mercury, Sol, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Luna in turn. There is also a
correspondence implied with the notes of the musical scale. Colors that reflect
light (red, orange, yellow) are active and warming; those that absorb it (blue,
indigo, violet) are passive and cooling; green balances and reconciles. We may
embrace many traditional aspects such as these:

RED: is perhaps the oldest of distinguished colors, and the one most often
associated with the power of magick. Red has an immediate association with
blood, the liquid of life, linked to both hunting and warfare and to sexuality and
childbirth: life and death forming a circle. The Vikings wrote their runes in blood,
and one of their words for magickal empowerment means ‘to redden’ (the
Germanic Zauber or ‘magic’, and Old Norse Taufr meaning ‘talisman, magic’).
The Egyptians linked red to the god Set (lord of the red desert sands as opposed
to the black land fertilized by the Nile), the personification of the mystic powers of
Chaos, of strangers and forces from beyond the boundaries, who in thelemic
terms is also seen as Hadit; and scribes used red ink to write dangerous or
magically powerful words. In medieval times judges, executioners and cardinals
wore red robes.
Red also invokes the whole universe of Fire and energy, courage and vigor, heat
and eroticism, and is ascribed to Mars and the sphere of Geburah. Crimson is
the color of activity, immortality, passion, power, and sacrifice. The infrared is the
low end of the spectrum whence the rainbow arises, making red the most basic
or root color; the same holds true in prehistoric painting, where the mineral basis
of reds provides many of the earliest and most common hues. In the first known
prehistoric graves flowers and red ochre cover bodies in fetal positions, perhaps
awaiting rebirth from the body of mother earth. In classical antiquity objects, trees
and even animals were painted red as a form of protection, and many people in
the Middle East still decorate their bodies with protective marks of red henna. In
China red is associated with rites of marriage; and in ancient Rome only
victorious generals, emperors, and sacrificial priests could wear red garments.
Red implies all beginnings as sunrise and renewal, the daily flight of the Horus-
Hawk or Phoenix, yet also appears as dying sunset. It is the ultimate culmination
of the Great Work of the philosophers in European, Islamic and Chinese
alchemy, and an antique alchemical text states: “The deep redness of the Sun

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perfecteth the work of Sulphur, which is called the Sperm of the male, the fire of
the Stone, the King’s crown, the Son of Sol.” In the east the substance called
Cinnabar (the Sulphur of Mercury) is both a symbol of this Perfect Stone of
alchemy and a frequently used red pigment; the name means ‘dragon’s blood’.
Thus in one sense red is the original primal matter, and in another it represents
the final stage of the alchemical process. It is the color of the soul, the libido, and
the heart, the birth-blood of the womb and the fiery lava at the molten core of the
earth. In ancient Egypt red lamps were used in rites of Typhonian magick, and
throughout the modern world they mark the doorways of brothels in red-light
districts. It is the primary hue of tantric practice.
The nature of red may be studied by gazing at the sun (with the eyes closed!), to
see the union of the blood of the flesh with the solar fire through the eyelids. The
Book of the Law states that in “the Scarlet Woman is all power given”, indicating
the primacy of Shakti as the primordial energy. The name of Adam, the first
human, means ‘red clay’; the Hindu creator Brahma is often portrayed as red-
gold and his four arms embrace the four corners of the earth. In color healing it is
used to warm and accelerate bodily functions. The Rainbow Book, my source for
much of this lore (along with a large stack of symbol dictionaries!) states that:
“Red-orange is dense, filled with inner warmth. It represents revitalized earth,
and it promotes growth and organic function. Bright red represents Mars and a
burning world of war, demons, revolutions, and passionate physical love. Pure
red also means absolute motion, the motion of life and the zenith of man’s bodily
prime.”

ORANGE: is an energy intermediate between red and yellow, usually

ascribed to Mercury and Hod, and thus to the powers of communication,
commerce, technology, and the mind. If red is physical passion and yellow is
spiritual grace, then orange is the power of radiant thought and intellect which
mediates between the two, again appropriate to Hermes as an expediter and the
uniter of opposites. Joining together sexuality and spirituality, it is the active
principle of divine wisdom, the energized kiss of life. Saffron robes have been
worn by Buddhist and Hindu monks, American Hari Krishnas, and in Greece by
the company of the Muses. In Rome the flammeum or marriage veil was orange,
as were the garments of the god Bacchus and the Egyptian Thoth. It is perhaps
the most highly energized color, used in healing to revitalize and invigorate.

YELLOW: a brilliant and energetic color, linked to solar vitality and aerial
wisdom, to life, success, wealth, clarity, enlightenment, youth, imagination,
eternity and celestial daylight. It doubles with gold and is ascribed to Tiphareth
the sphere of Beauty, and most often to Air. Yellow’s indo-european root-word
ghel means ‘to gleam’, and it is the brightest of colors, associated with the
garments of the Hindu god Vishnu and his earthly avatar the Buddha, as well as
the golden-robed wisdom-goddess Athena who expresses the Mind of Zeus.
Saints are often depicted with a yellow-gold halo or nimbus. In color healing it is
used to cleanse and stimulate the nervous system.

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 GREEN: the color of verdant Earth in springtime, of growing plant life and
abundance, and of that folding green stuff, money. The word derives from the
Anglo-Saxon grene, meaning ‘to grow’, and is associated with youth and health.
Even today it is the most often-used color of medical associations and healing in
general. As the sign of Nature it represents hope, fruitfulness, new life or rebirth.
It is also linked to the emerald sphere of Netzach, thus to love, romance, and
fertility. The Greek Aphrodite and Roman Venus, goddesses of love and beauty,
are robed in green. At the center point of the spectrum the balance of green
reconciles and harmonizes the warmer colors of red/orange/yellow with the
cooler blue/indigo/violet (sometimes seen as the realms of hell and heaven). In
the religious realm of Islam it is said to be the color of the World Mother, and
descendants of the Prophet and those who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca
may wear green turbans; it is also prominent in the gardens of Paradise. In
Christianity the walls of the New Jerusalem are made of jasper, and many saints
are clad in green as the sign of eternal life. It is often the color associated with
Earth, or occasionally also to Water. The alchemists saw the Green Fire as the
living spirit or vitality and essence of plant life and associated the color with
solvents; and the rarely observed Green Ray is sometimes seen at sunrise or
sunset. Thoreau's quote is "Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible
green." It is sometimes seen as poisonous…

BLUE/AZURE/INDIGO: the deepest color of the sky and the sea, the
realms upon which float this island earth, the flowing elements of wind and wave
in changing patterns. Blue is at once spiritual and strangely insubstantial, the
calming color of wisdom, coolness, peace, distance, purity, contemplation, truth,
mercy and compassion, usually linked to Heaven, Jupiter and Chesed and most
often to the element of Water. It is the sign of celestial origins and immortality of
the soul. In Egyptian temples the ceiling was often painted a deep azure and
decorated with golden constellations to depict the arching body of the sky-
goddess Nut or Nu, and was also ascribed to creator-gods like Amoun and Ptah.
The Hindu Shiva and Krishna (an avatar of Vishnu) are blue-skinned, as are
many Egyptian gods, and even the Old Testament Lord himself in the Vision of
Ezekiel. The tablets of the Ten Commandments were graven on sapphire, and in
color healing it is used for cooling of fevers, and to induce sleep and relaxation.
Reaching the darker realms of indigo we enter the mysteries of spiritual
philosophy, of light emerging from night, of life returning again to death. As the
dreaming shades of blue darken they shift us to the zones of unconsciousness
and deep sleep. Yet in this realm we still find clarity, insights and intuition,
crossing the threshold of the beyond. It is the deeper shade of our lady of
sorrows, of sadness and ‘the blues’. The robes of the Virgin Mary are blue, and
the color protects from the evil eye. Indigo or dark blue may merge into the
blackness of Saturn, long seen as the pylon at the edge of our solar system
(before the discovery of the mysterious outermost planets) and the unmanifest
body of Space Herself.

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 PURPLE/VIOLET: the final hue of the spectrum, sliding into the darkness
of Void. Long regarded as the color of royalty, from ancient times when the
expensive dye called Tyrian Purple was reserved to emperors and kings, it thus
has some links to Chesed, luxury and prosperity; also, however, it is traditional to
Yesod (also seen as silver), the misty lunar sphere of glamours, mystery, and
sexual enchantment. It is the subtlest and least mundane of colors, misty and
mysterious. In Christian symbolism it refers to dignity and splendor, and in China
it was the official color of well-educated intellectuals. Purple fades into the upper
end of the spectrum, the ultraviolet of Spirit or Akasha, crossing the threshold. It
represents clarity, subtlety, and secrecy. It combines red and blue.

OCTARINE: in the chaos tradition this arcane vibration is considered your

own personal vision of the color of pure magical energy. I lean toward a glowing
purple myself in many ways, as it unites and balances the two extremes of the
spectrum (infrared and ultraviolet, Horus and Maat) in a completed circle; not
unlike the ancient hermetic symbol of the serpent Oroboros that devours its own
tail, merging beginnings and endings, ciphering the Zero point. There is some
question as to whether ancient peoples actually perceived color in the same way
that we do, as clearly genuine references to purple are notably absent in the
oldest literature. It may be that our vision has evolved, and that glimpses of auras
imply that we are beginning to see even higher wavelengths of the spectrum.

BLACK: is Yin, the sable shade of the treasures of primordial darkness,

death, the underworld, infinite space, chaos undifferentiated and abysmal; of
mystery, the realm of the unknown, the female body of Nuit or Night. Linked to
Time, Saturn and Binah. An all-purpose color or absence thereof, black absorbs
all colors equally and thus symbolizes understanding. A black rose is the symbol
of silence, and the fertile dark soil on the banks of the Nile contrasted with the
red of the barren desert and gave Egypt its name of Khem, the Black Land. Black
and White can both express the Absolute, as both emptiness and abundance. In
Christian symbolism it may imply both evil or dignity.

WHITE: is Yang, and unifies all colors as the radiance of a purity or

wholeness of consciousness and spirit; the sign of radiance, life, perfection,
snow, sanctity, holiness, wisdom and clarity, ascribed to Kether. In some senses
also the hue of the Moon, thus doubled with the silver also ascribed to Yesod. An
all-purpose color or absence thereof, white reflects all colors equally. Blending all
the colors of the spectrum creates white light. However, in many Asian and
African and Slavic traditions it is also the color of death, associated with ghosts
and specters, and so like black can express mourning. White is often the
preferred color of angels, brides and sacrificial animals. In alchemy white is often
associated with females and red with males.

GRAY: the shade of meditation, ashes and mist, vibrating between black
and white, mediating between light and darkness, and ascribed to Chokmah. The
intermediate realm of ghosts, shades and spirits that walk abroad. In Christian

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symbolism it implies the Resurrection or re-erection. In painting, a hue is made
by mixing a pure color with white to make it brighter, a shade by adding black to
darken it.

BROWN: is often mysteriously absent from treatises upon color, perhaps

considered merely a debased form of red. I tend to see it as a merging of all
colors, and thus appropriate to the world of Malkuth as the culmination of the
qabalistic creative process. The G.D. marked this realm of Earth as a fourfold
wheel of citrine, russet, olive and black, which strikes me as overcomplicated;
while brown is the color of fresh-plowed soil, yet also of the russet leaves of
autumn and melancholy.

A few words about black, white and red: this color scheme appears in our
most prehistoric art. Where rune-stones with remnants of original tinting have
been found in Scandinavia, soot, chalk, and red ochre appear. Black, white, and
red are the Celtic fairy colors and also feature constantly in Tantric art. They
represent the three main stages of alchemical process, called Nigredo, Albedo,
and Rubedo. The triple goddess oft is seen as the Wheel of White Maiden, Red
Mother, and Black Crone: the sower of seeds, ripener of crops, and reaper of
harvest. This is all worth exploring; and the traditional nine-foot cord I employ
(symbolic of nine months in the womb and used to measure the nine-foot circle
employed in Wicca) is also woven of three strands of black, white and red: “Nuit!
Hadit! Ra-Hoor-Khuit! The Sun, Strength & Sight, Light; these are for the
servants of the Star & the Snake!” (AL, II, 21)
The talismanic arts have traditionally made great use of gems, crystals
and semi-precious stones largely based upon their colors, and even today
jewelers preserve the lore of monthly birthstones. Crystals, especially those of
clear quartz, are among the oldest and most commonly found tools of shamans
and sorcerers worldwide and are essential components of much modern
technology as well. The alchemical metals, notably the lunar silver and solar
gold, continue their lurid fascinations to this day.
As mentioned above, colored lighting deeply affects ritual moods, as do
robes and altar-cloths and candles. Lastly, in the practice known as pathworking
(which by imaginative visualization explores the tree of life) the tarot trump of the
specific path involved may be placed upon the altar between twin candles the
colors of the two spheres which it links: the Magus between white and black, or
Art between gold and silver, for example. Again, speaking of inbetweeness, the
rainbow spectrum of visible light spans a space between the heat of infrared and
the chill of ultraviolet, and I ascribe these to Horus and Maat respectively.

The Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Spirit,

& the Emerald Tablet of Alchemy

"There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the
uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual

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is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of
Mysticism, Union with God.” - Magick in Theory & Practice, Aleister
Crowley

"What dignifies the yogic practices is that the belief system itself is not truly
religious. There is no Buddhist God per se; it is the Self, the individual mind that
contains immortality and ultimate truth. I think that that true Self, that original Self,
that first Self, is a real mensurate thing, tangible and incarnate; and I'm going to
find the fucker.” - from the film Altered States
The secret name of your Angel is the Word that expresses the nature of
your being, and the Holy Guardian Angel is the symbol and focus of a process of
Self-becoming. As an essential magickal act you begin a Vision Quest to unite
with an entity outside of yourself, and with the process of that quest you
completely change the way you experience the world around you. Each event
becomes charged with deeper meaning, as the universe becomes an oracular,
intelligent, communicating awareness. Mysticism of whatever religion is
ultimately about the Union with God by whatever Name; where does an
intermediary such as an Angel factor in to this equation or occasion? The word
‘Angel’ means ‘Messenger’: this being is a ray of light passing between the
individual and the cosmos, a guiding truth upon the way, a link. We can question
whether the experience is inner or external, until we realize there is no real
difference. Looking at the world’s major religions, so many have had visions of
angels hovering around their beginnings; and angels bring revelations. The angel
Gabriel announced the birth of Christ to Mary and dictated the Koran to
Mohammed, and the angel Moroni allegedly gave the Book of Mormon to Joseph
Smith.
This ritual process of the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian
Angel is the very centerpiece of Crowleyan magical initiation: the discovery of the
True Will, the holy and immortal core of being. It is largely based upon the
ceremonies of the Book of the Sacred Magick of Abra-Melim the Mage, perhaps
the most elegant and coherent of the surviving medieval grimoires, which called
for the magus to spend six months in seclusion and ever-increasing invocation
resulting in contact with the entity destined as their eternal companion and guide.
Only after the bond of this union was sealed by the discovery of the true name of
this spirit could the magician proceed to the conjuration of the demonic forces
that would accomplish his desires. For his own purposes Crowley employed an
ancient Greco-Egyptian text subsequently modified by the Golden Dawn and
revised by the Beast himself as Liber Samekh: Theurgia Goetia Summa
Congressus cum Daemone sub figura DCCC; it is truly a powerful invocation,
and over a period of time builds up a highly charged momentum of
consciousness. In addition to commentaries upon this, his other writings contain
constant references to the process, notably this important revision of the Abra-
Melim procedure:

“And thus shall he do who will attain unto the mystery of the knowledge and
conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel:

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First, let him prepare a chamber, of which the walls and the roof shall be white,
and the floor shall be covered with a carpet of black squares and white, and the
border thereof shall be blue and gold.
And if it be in a town, the room shall have no window, and if it be in the country,
then it is better if the window be in the roof. Or, if it be possible, let this invocation
be performed in a temple prepared for the ritual of passing through the Tuat.
From the roof he shall hang a lamp, wherein is a red glass, to burn olive oil. And
this lamp shall he cleanse and make ready after the prayer of sunset, and
beneath the lamp shall be an altar, foursquare, & the height shall be thrice half of
the breadth or double the breadth.
And upon the altar shall be a censor, hemispherical, supported upon three legs,
of silver, and within it an hemisphere of copper, and upon the top a grating of
gilded silver, and thereupon shall he burn incense made of four parts of olibanum
and two parts of stacte, and one part of lignum aloes, or of cedar, or of sandal.
And this is enough.
And he shall also keep ready in a flask of crystal within the altar, holy anointing
oil made of myrrh and cinnamon and galangal.
And even if he be of higher rank than a Probationer, he shall yet wear the robe of
the Probationer, for the star of flame showeth forth Ra Hoor Khuit openly upon
the breast, and secretly the blue triangle that descendeth is Nuit, and the red
triangle that ascendeth is Hadit. And I am the golden Tau in the midst of their
marriage. Also, if he choose, he may instead wear a close-fitting robe of shot silk,
purple and green, and upon it a cloak without sleeves, of bright blue, covered
with golden sequins, and scarlet within.
And he shall make himself a wand of almond wood or of hazel cut by his own
hands at dawn at the Equinox, or at the Solstice, or on the day of Corpus Christi,
or on one of the feast-days that are appointed in The Book of the Law.
And he shall engrave with his own hand upon the plate of gold the Holy
Sevenfold Table, or the Holy Twelvefold Table, or some particular device.
And it shall be foursquare within a circle, and the circle shall be winged, and he
shall attach it about his forehead by a ribbon of blue silk. Moreover, he shall wear
a fillet of laurel or rose or ivy or rue, and every day, after the prayer of sunrise, he
shall burn it in the fire of the censor.
Now he shall pray thrice daily, about sunset, and at midnight, and at sunrise. And
if he be able, he shall pray also four times between sunrise and sunset.
The prayer shall last for the space of an hour, at the least, and he shall seek ever
to extend it, and to inflame himself in praying. Thus shall he invoke his Holy
Guardian Angel for eleven weeks, and in any case he shall pray seven times
daily during the last week of the eleven weeks.
And during all this time he shall have composed an invocation suitable, with such
wisdom and understanding as may be given him from the Crown, and this shall
he write in letters of gold upon the top of the altar.
For the top of the altar shall be of white wood, well polished, and in the centre
thereof he shall have placed a triangle of oak-wood, painted with scarlet, and
upon this triangle the three legs of the censor shall stand.

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Moreover, he shall copy his invocation upon a sheet of pure white vellum, with
Indian ink, and he shall illuminate it according to his fancy and imagination, that
shall be informed by beauty.
And on the first day of the twelfth week he shall enter the chamber at sunrise,
and he shall make his prayer, having first burnt the conjuration that he had made
upon the vellum in the fire of the lamp.
Then, at his prayer, shall the chamber be filled with light insufferable for
splendour, and a perfume intolerable for sweetness. And his Holy Guardian
Angel shall appear unto him, yea, his Holy Guardian Angel shall appear unto
him, so that he shall be wrapt away into the Mystery of Holiness.
All that day shall he remain in the enjoyment of the knowledge and conversation
of the Holy Guardian Angel.
And for three days after he shall remain from sunrise unto sunset in the temple,
and he shall obey the counsel that his Angel shall have given unto him, and he
shall suffer those things that are appointed.
And for ten days thereafter shall he withdraw himself as shall have been taught
unto him from the fullness of that communion, for he must harmonize the world
that is within with the world that is without.
And at the end of the ninety-one days he shall return into the world, and there
shall he perform that work to which the Angel shall have appointed him.
And more than this it is not necessary to say, for his Angel shall have entreated
him kindly, and showed him in what manner he may be most perfectly involved.
And unto him that hath this Master there is nothing else that he needeth, so long
as he continue in the knowledge and conversation of the Angel, so that he shall
come at last into the City of the Pyramids.
Lo! two and twenty are the paths of the Tree, but one is the Serpent of Wisdom;
ten are the ineffable emanations, but one is the Flaming Sword.”
- from the 8th Aethyr of The Vision & The Voice

Since few of us in these decadent times possess the resources for such an
elaborate operation, it is important to form a personal method of carrying out the
true spirit of this process. Create an alter or shrine in a fine and private place,
adorn it with the symbols that have deep meaning for you, and write and evolve
your own invocations, combined with traditional or newly devised practices.
Crowley himself performed much of his own Abra-Melim working internally, while
riding across China on horseback (after spending a small fortune on actually
buying and equipping a house called Boleskeine, in Scotland near Loch Ness).
Looking over ancient records of angelic material I am struck by how general or
universal it often seems, and I think that one of the most striking elements of
Crowley’s thought is the way that he transformed this concept toward an
individual, personal, unique angel, instead of the relatively undifferentiated
angels of a more collective age. Indeed, by medieval times Christianity had
become quite suspicious of angels, although the earliest gnostic sects were often
quite enthused by them and the ancient Coptic Church in Egypt preserved an
enormous amount of angelic magick.

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 To embark upon this process is perhaps the quintessential initiation of
western magick. It hearkens back through time to the shamanic Vision Quest,
where the seeker goes alone into the wilderness, fasting and sleepless, and
chants until their personal ally or guide appears to them in animal form or
otherwise and reveals the pattern and secrets of their life to come. In the later
rites of the classical era the arcane initiate would perform a conjuration to invoke
a paredros, a semi-divine companion or helper, similar to the daimon or higher
genius of Socrates and some other philosopher-sages. Such guides were potent
in magick and divination, and in Christian times merged with the concepts of
guardian angels or patron saints. A remarkable recent case is that of Carl Jung,
whose guide Philemon led him into the gnostic and alchemical reality that formed
the basis for all of his work. Some modern christian fundamentalists have
charged that this was in fact an evil devil deluding him; then again, the same
source believed that the Dalai Lama, Native Americans, Hollywood’s film
industry, the media, and the ecological and women's movements are all parts of
a vast satanic communist conspiracy.
This operation is a core element of modern ceremonial magical practice: the
training and skills of the sorcerer are entirely focused upon this essential act of
union with the guiding force or entity that fully epitomizes their nature and their
personal mission. It is the deliberate manifestation of the True Self, combined in
a very dramatic and transforming union with its complementary opposite as the
Other, and opening the psyche to a more complete understanding of the
universe. Through this process every aspect of being is united in the alchemical
Great Work of personal exploration, analysis, and discovery. Crowley
somewhere states that he retained the disconcertingly archaic terminology of the
Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel because of its apparent
absurdity. At the same time it is also a rather sublime conception, demanding
from the cosmos a clear declaration that there is more to our existence than
mere consumerism and reproduction. With this alien contact, the sorcerer steps
fully into the separate reality; as I said before, the very word 'Angel' means
'Messenger'. Crowley also considered the existence of a pair of such entities for
each individual: the agathodaemon or good spirit, and the kakodaemon or evil
one. His notion was that one should first invoke for whichever side of the
personality most needed strengthening.

"...each human being 'possesses' - or, to be more precise, 'is composed of' - two
Angels. On his right stands the Angel spirit; guardian, guide and companion. On
the left is the guided spirit, the receptive soul. Thus the total self is composed of
a reunion of a celestial Angel with a 'fallen' Angel; they are the two wings of the
soul."
- Angels, Peter Lamborn Wilson

For me this helps reconcile the internal and external elements of the HGA, as I
tend to view the Universe as subsumed in the Self. In terms of Liber AL this
informing angel might be seen as Ra-Hoor-Khuit and the receptive soul as Hoor-
par-kraat, reconciled in the human form of the prophet Ankh-f-n-Khonsu depicted

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on the Stele of Revealing. A brief side-thought on the notion of Thelema as it
relates to Tantra: if we see Shiva as Hadit and Kali/Shakti as Nuit/Babalon, then
their sons would be the lotus-throned and elephant-headed deity Ganesh as
Hoor-par-kraat, and the warrior child-god Skanda who rides upon a peacock
bearing a spear as Ra-hoor-khuit. In Hindu tantras, the Atman (or Self) is
identical with the Brahman (or God). The question of whether a true self really
exists is a subject of much debate in Asian traditions. Hinduism does accept the
soul-spark of the Atman as a seed passing through many cycles of existence,
while Buddhism ultimately sees this as a false sense of self, a limited ego which
eventually must dissolve along with the rest of the illusory universe. The magical
view may reconcile the two, utilizing the Self or even multiple selves as vehicles
for as long as it is useful and artistically fulfilling, and then finally surrendering all
beliefs with the crossing of the Abyss. If in the paradigm of Chaos we are again
merely a brief constellation of identities without an ultimate center (a notion I still
have some reservations about) then the operation of invoking the Holy Guardian
Spirit may still serve to coalesce the various levels of the mind around a central
core or axis of being, which is a pretty useful concept for a magician. Gurdjieff
believed that the creation of the soul was a conscious and deliberate process
that few humans have attempted, let alone accomplished. As an unfolding series
of insights this illumination involves stripping away the veils of rigid belief that
conceal the nature of the Original Self or True Will. A central concept of Maatian
magick is N’Aton, the collective and universal consciousness of future humanity,
which we are eventually to awaken; and for me this is one more way of
understanding the unity of the personal or individual self and the complete and
universal Self. The Atman and the Brahman are one, the Self is the seed or
spark of God.
One central key to this process may be the ritual of the Eucharist: the
invocation of a spiritual force into a cup of consecrated wine or water and its
consumption. To call an outside power and then absorb it into one’s Self is
among the most instinctively powerful actions devised by humans, and its
applications are infinitely flexible. Shamans often regard eating or drinking as a
way of absorbing a force, and Egyptian sorcerers carried magick in their bellies.
Other rites and techniques that I have used include almost every aspect of ritual
practice. I open all ceremonies by invoking the Guardian Spirit, and employ
candle-flames as a centering point for invocation, because a dancing fire is to me
the living presence of the Light. We may note in passing that the candle unites all
four elements, as a solid magical wand that liquefies and becomes a gas to feed
the flame. Genuine beeswax is recommended. At all meals I bless my food, and
charge all drinks as a sacrament. Mirrors and reflections are also gateways,
because the experience of seeing myself as another breaks down any limited
conceptions of what I am. One of the earliest ways I envisioned this Angel was
as my own DNA in female rather than male form, a perfect opposite or twin with
which to unite, to celebrate the sacred marriage. Any sexual act can be an
invocation of the Angel, as Jung’s concept of the Anima or Animus who appears
in myth or dream seems often to be a veiling of the personal angel. Yogic
breathing meditation calms the mind and makes the process accelerate. In

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addition to fire and reflections, other symbols of the HGA are the Sun as the
center of radiance in our solar system, and the Heart as the center of life in a
human: the blood as light and heartbeat as the drum-rhythm of creation. Opening
to Love is an element of this practice, and for years I have tried my best to
practice a Sufi heart meditation: “Turning one heart to all faces, seeing one face
in all hearts.” Castaneda located the ‘assemblage point’ between the shoulder
blades, obviously related to the heart chakra as well. Above all, as Crowley says,
“Invoke Often”, changing the song as your understanding evolves.
The context of this process is also important. There are still circles of magicians
in this world, and in our most active period my friends and I existed in a whirlwind
of wide ranging study of a number of esoteric traditions, and regularly met for
frequent rituals as well as doing solitary work in our own ways. Working in groups
increases magical power and accelerates synchronicity. All of us were actively
invoking our angels, most often with the ancient practice known as the Ritual of
the Bornless One, which Crowley rewrote as the above-mentioned Liber
Samekh. Eventually I reached a point where I was singing the strange names it
contains like mantras in daily life. As a renewal at various points I did take
magickal oaths to achieve this union, and such formal vows are very useful tools
to open a momentum leading to success. I eventually did a very intense period of
sixty formal workings of this rite with an ever-increasing intensity and frequency,
attempting to earth each in Art. Sixty is the number of Samekh, ascribed to the
angelic Art card of the Tarot and the vertical path linking Moon & Sun on the
central pillar of the tree of life, and suggesting their marriage in the symbol of an
eclipse. At the same time some very extreme events were taking place amid the
circle of my friends as well (among them the founding of the Horus/Maat Lodge),
and I think that the energy which group ritual incites, combined with my own will,
led finally to an climactic all-night session where the whole of my experiences
were synthesized into a new understanding of angelic contact. I recorded this as
my own holy book, which is a text I still grapple with. A further result of this event
was a fairly long aftermath of inner silence; the constant babble of inner dialog
actually stopped, and I lived in this world in a very different way for a period of
some weeks, and can upon occasion return to this state at will.
I believe one of the secrets of this process is that uniting with the Angel in a
sense implies becoming that Angel, participating in an awakening, a genuine
transformation or enlightenment. Union with the HGA is a working to perfect the
Self, and the world would perhaps be a better place if we were all our own angels
rather than our devils. While living in this state everything becomes sacred,
music a communion and color a sacrament. What I have always sought in my life
and in my magick is this peak experience, the moment of vivid intensity that lifts
everyday experience out of its limits and charges the instant with genuine
meaning. We all go through our routines in daily life, and much of what we do is
so automatic and unaware that we are virtually asleep. The angel of revelation
blows the trumpet that awakens, which resurrects us from death into joy, from
nightmare into dream. I suppose what I am trying to say here is that I like to think
that I have become a better person because I have devoted time to fully
exploring myself, to shining some light into my darkness. I certainly will not claim

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to be perfect, but I have a pretty good sense of what my strengths and
weaknesses are. I know myself better, try my best to do the right thing, maintain
compassion for all without losing my rage against injustice. I am more complete
and more creative. This is again what Jung termed individuation, and it is a
ceaselessly unfolding process.
How does this cosmic spirit maintain communication? With synchronicities,
coincidences, flashes of insight; the book or tool or quotation that appears
unexpectedly at the perfect time, the word from a friend or teacher that makes all
seem clear. Connections made in unexpected ways, that let one grasp for a
moment the cosmic joke. And of course there are my ‘transmitted manuscripts’;
how do I address that here? I’ve always thought of myself as a writer, deeply
appreciating words and books; my talents did not seem to lie in music or other
arts beyond the occasional burst of drawing, or some play with photography and
collages. In the course of these operations of using the Ritual of the Bornless
One to achieve union I would have frequent flashes of symbolism, mythic
imagery, or even sensations of elemental presences glimpsed in the corner of
the eye. Not necessarily vast fiery visions or spirit voices in general, just a sort of
unfolding understanding that I tried to earth in writing after each rite, which in the
best events would flow freely and spontaneously through me; often these pieces
do actively bring the same state of consciousness back. There were a few
remarkable exceptions to my ‘no voices’ comment: once while I was dreaming a
very loud voice did indeed intone the name on an Angel so loudly that it woke me
from sleep with the vivid conviction that this was The Name. I felt that this was a
major result, and always try to remember and analyze my dreams as best I can,
considering them as messages.
So how else can your HGA communicate? Via a constant flow of new
insights. On a good day, I create a work of art. When I return to it later, I find new
meanings in it, and realize that my younger self reflects my older self, that time
exists only to convey meaning, experience only to confer joy. The same holds
true for decoding the artworks of others; art is the immortality of the undying
Spirit that passes through the changing world of the human body. Mythology,
books, painting, music, fashion, cooking, technology, children, all the ways we
imprint ourselves into history form the tapestry woven by a unity split into
multiplicity for the purpose of play. Imaginative use of cultural codes like the
Tarot, Runes, or the I Ching help convince one that the reflecting mirror of reality,
what the alchemists called reading the Book of the World, will never cease to
amaze. And on a more immediate level every living being you meet can speak
with that same voice, if you listen very carefully. Truth can come from the most
unlikely sources, sometimes.

"According to a very interesting legend, the thrones left vacant by the fallen
Angels are reserved for the elect among men; St. Francis of Assisi is supposed
to have been awarded the throne of Lucifer himself."
Angels, by Peter Lamborn Wilson

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 Magick in its higher modes ultimately aims towards this integration and
transformation of the Self, the full exploration and utilization of the potentials of
one's own being. Whether or not we see this process as a purely internal series
of projections within the overactive imagination, it still serves as a vehicle for the
achievement of higher states of consciousness or esoteric trances. In alchemical
thought the process of transforming base matter into gold was always paralleled
by the corresponding purification and rebirth of the alchemists themselves, a
metaphor for the evolution of the soul or the immortal body of light. In these
permutations of the psyche we touch upon the central concepts of alchemy…
See Bibliography R. Angelology.

Astral Journeys, Shapeshifting, Invisibility, & Cultivating the Body of Light

"Odin could shift his appearance. When he did so his body would lie there as if
he were asleep or dead; but he himself, in an instant, in the shape of a bird or
animal, a fish or a serpent, went to distant countries on his or other men's
errands. He was also able with mere words to extinguish fires, to calm the sea,
and to turn the wind any way he pleased."
- Ynglinga-Saga, translated by Hollander

The human organism is often thought to consist of a variety of levels

beyond the physical; most importantly, of an energy body which may form the
matrix upon which bone and flesh are formed, a pulsating presence which
extends beyond our basic outline in the aura discerned by psychics and captured
by Kirlian photography. This energy field fuels the forces employed in spiritual
healings, concentrates the prana absorbed by yogic breathing exercises, and can
be projected outwards in the form of magical thunderbolts, or as the chi or ki of
highly trained martial artists. The energy body is in some ways seen as pre-
existing the physical, and perhaps even surviving it: the phantom sensations or
ghost pains experienced by amputees have often been confirmed by Kirlian
photos showing the limb still present, harkening back to the notion that existence
is somehow formulated as an ideal or archetype on other planes prior to the
material.
Eastern thought has created many systems of concentrating inner forces.
In Hindu tantra the fire serpent of Kundalini rises through the chakras ("wheels")
of the spinal column after years of training and special breathing exercises
designed to prepare various subtle channels. Taoist teaching includes systems of
circulating sexual or spiritual energies internally, by the power of breath and the
visualization of various vessels and furnaces, again with the goal of the
alchemical transformation of the body and the pursuit of immortality. Physical
exercises such as Tai Chi use similar forces for health and vitality. This
strengthening of the body of light seems a key to life after death in many
traditions, including perhaps the ancient Egyptians with their funerary
obsessions.
There are many varying versions of the chakras in the human body,
although western magicians in general appear to be quite comfortable with the

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Hindu tantric model. Uniquely western correspondences to these centers might
connect the spectrum of color, or alternatively even the planetary metals linked to
the alchemical process:

Crown Ultra-violet Gold/Sun Space

3rd Eye Purple Silver/Moon Star
Throat Blue Quicksilver/Mercury Spirit
Heart Green Copper/Venus Air
Navel YellowIron/Mars Fire
Genital Orange Tin/Jupiter Water
Root Red Lead/Saturn Earth

Returning for a moment to the notion of macrocosm and microcosm we

may note that most arcane cosmological maps also include correspondences to
the human form. The trigrams of the I Ching and the signs of the zodiac have
well-established rulership over parts of the body, and the qabalistic Tree is also
the image of a divine human: on the Middle Pillar Kether is head, Daath is throat,
Tiphareth heart, Yesod genitals, and Malkuth the feet, for example.
Another core practice of the mystic arts is the practice of astral projection,
the ability of the spirit or psyche to leave the corporeal form and explore both the
material worlds we know and the higher conceptual planes of being. If the soul is
immortal, it must by definition have the ability to survive when separated from the
physical body. Throughout our history there have been many reports of ghosts,
doppelgangers, night-flights of witches and visionary journeys of shamans and
prophets. Even science has recently and reluctantly begun to explore the out-of-
body experience (aka OoBE), although often dismissing them as being "merely"
ESP exercises in remote viewing for the CIA.
The Golden Dawn presented the practice of Rising on the Planes: after
entering the altered state and exiting the body, the adepts would ascend as far
as possible and then explore the landscape they discovered around them. This
qabalistic topography of the astral realms appears to merge with the collective
unconscious in some way, displaying various characteristics of the world's
mythologies; we must naturally also consider the strong possibility that these are
purely internal voyages, akin to the Jungian active imagination, without denying
their potential validity to the individual.
The exploration of the world around you by OoBEs, if successful enough
to bring back verifiable results, is by itself sufficient to shake the accepted notions
of our local consensus reality. If we can exit our physical frames and explore the
outermost limits of space or even travel through time, if we can make our
presence known to distant observers or return with hidden knowledge, then we
have come a long way towards proving the independent existence of the spiritual
component of our beings and possibly the immortality of souls.
The great gateways to these realms are made of horn and ivory and work
through dream, that path between waking consciousness and deep sleep. The
practice of lucid dreaming involves awakening within the dream-state and taking
control of it; Castaneda recommends training yourself to remember to look for

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your hands, thus centering into the astral body. One may then journey at will.
Concentration as one quietly drifts into slumber, perhaps augmented by
autoerotic activity that does not reach an orgasmic peak, may activate sigils;
spirits might be contacted by the focus upon their symbols in this way. This is
related to the ancient custom of incubation or seeking an oracular vision: the
querent would journey to a temple, frequently of some healing god (such as
Apollo, his son the healer Aesklepios, or his Egyptian counterpart Imhotep) and
make an offering, perhaps drinking some exotic and hypnotic potion. Sleeping
within the sacred precinct, they then received a significant dream that the
priesthood would help them to interpret. The mind is always working on its
issues, even in slumber, and science records many incidents of awakening with
answers. The discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, for example, came
in a dream of intertwined spiral staircases.
The practice of astral projection seems to have a variety of possible
techniques, almost all beginning with systematic relaxation of the body. Some
people appear to rise from their bodies and drift away while others report a
sudden exit through the gateway of the third eye located near the pineal gland.
Others visualize external doubles of their selves (like the Egyptian Ka) and
transfer their consciousness into them; a full-length mirror can be used to create
the sense of dislocation and the fully realized eidolon or image into which the
sense of self is passed. There are also accounts of more abrupt exits caused by
events such as being hit by a truck, or hovering over your body during surgery.
Consider also the custom of shapeshifting: witches from the dawn of time
have created bird shapes in which to travel, and Castaneda describes in detail
his transformation into a raven by his teacher Don Juan. Crowley is said to have
explored astral realms by transferring his essence into the form of a golden
falcon, and the Egyptian Book of the Dead (more properly called the Book of the
Coming Forth by Day) contains a whole series of spells for such metamorphoses
in the afterlife, which may also have been used by living sorcerers. Kenneth
Grant describes a technique employing Crowley's drawing of the entity Lam:
projecting inward through his eyes, one may travel the otherworld in his head as
if it were an egg or space-capsule, effectively taking on his form (which is
remarkably similar to the large-headed aliens in UFO sightings) and authority.
Shapechanging in general might seem to employ alterations of the aura;
operations of invisibility, of disguise, of casting sexual glamours or increasing
political charisma, may function through this body of light. By the influence of the
full moon, or of Yesod as the astral gateway, combined with Spare's atavistic
resurgence, even lycanthropy (becoming a werewolf
or loup-garou) may become possible. Like invisibility this is a very useful talent,
but both do take practice.
Invisibility is a very old goal of mages, found in the folktales of many
cultures. Crowley reports practicing in a mirror to the point of flickering and
achieving full success under duress while escaping from a homicidal street gang.
On a less spectacular level ‘not being seen’ can function in simpler ways:
dressing inconspicuously is one, or programming your aura to deflect the gaze of
others or make you unnoticeable or unrecognizable. If you see someone you do

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not want to meet on the street, just do not make eye contact and quickly turn a
corner or enter a store. That may seem pretty simple, but the Tao of magick
should be simple. To pass unknown may merely be a convenience now, but
there have been times when it was a matter of survival for many.

Materia Magica: the Tools of the Trade

"Sorcery: the systematic cultivation of enhanced consciousness or non-ordinary

awareness & its deployment in the world of deeds & objects to bring about
desired results.
The incremental openings of perception gradually banish the false selves, our
cacophonous ghosts - the "black magic" of envy & vendetta backfires because
Desire cannot be forced. Where our knowledge of beauty harmonizes with the
ludus naturae, sorcery begins." - T.A.Z. by Hakim Bey

Much of the gothic romance which can emotionally empower sorcery lies
in the exotic paraphernalia: mundane objects raised to the status of cosmic
forces, items found in religious ritual and daily life transformed into the symbols
which underlie both. Tribal shamanism is naturally evocative and dramatic, and
many of the primal roots of Greek ritual lie in the theater of Dionysos; medieval
ceremonies involved the evocation of demons in graveyards by night or Black
Masses in desecrated churches, using terror to break the bonds of normalcy and
raise the practitioner to a state of frenzy. Tantriks performed similar rites and
meditations in the burning-ground of cremation, surrounded by corpses; such
breaking of taboos, like the violations of perverse sexuality, unleash deep
currents and forces. States of shock or panic open windows of vulnerability to
new imprints, and are thus employed in many primitive and some contemporary
initiation rites (such as basic training in the Marine Corps). Our imagination and
emotional states drive magickal desires through the medium of the trained will.
Symbols mediate between the various realms of the psyche and the cosmos,
creating tensions that relieve themselves in effects.
Magical tools were once made by hand from virgin materials by each
practitioner, which is a pleasant ideal, yet few of us now have the skills to forge
our own blades. Pottery, however, is one of the oldest forms of true alchemy, and
can employ the traditional four elements in the making of Cup or Disk. I think that
at the very least everyone should carve their own wand, and the electric wood-
burning pens available in hobby-stores do an elegant job of marking them. The
Finding of appropriate instruments in the world around you is a form of proof of
success in the quest for power. Whether from an art gallery or antique shop,
blacksmith or cutlery, garage sale discovery or Renaissance Faire or online
shopping or some ancient family heirloom, if it speaks to you it is ripe for use.
Magical tools bear some resemblances to African fetishes, or to the concept of
the surrealist object. Take delight in your artifacts, fondle them to infuse them
with your vibrations, make them an expression of your own aesthetic. Fill them

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with mana and belief. Drink from them and cut with them, be sustained and
illuminated by them.
Ancient representations of Shiva Ardhanarisvara depict a double-sexed
divinity holding a scepter, sword, skull-cup, and lotus. The Magus of the Tarot
juggles these instruments of the elements; conjure the spirits representative of
these forces, then visualize them charging your instruments and presenting them
to you as gifts. The four major traditional weapons of the magician are the
symbols of the elemental arcana of the Tarot: the wand, blade, cup and disk:

The Disk, pantacle or coin rules Earth and serves as the symbol of both
the Self and the physical universe; the magus must devise a diagram expressing
this. In some traditions one side depicts the human being and the other the
cosmos (microcosm/macrocosm), and perhaps one's horoscope could be
inscribed around the rim. It is most usually round and made of metal, wood,
stone or earthenware. There are similarities to the Native American medicine
shield, or to the heraldic tradition of the coat-of-arms in chivalry. In another
sense, the disk serves as a storage battery for psychic energy and a symbol of
this whirling globe or material world as the terrestrial culmination of all the
celestial spheres. As a Coin the pantacle is a useful focus for wealth magick. The
lamen is a smaller version worn as a badge, and may be the seal of an order or
the totemic focus of a group or a coven symbol. I have found that an actual
Globe of our Earth makes a very powerful symbol as well.

“Mandala. n. circular, round; A disk (especially of the sun or moon); anything

round; a circle; the charmed circle of a conjuror; globe, orb, ring, circumference,
ball, wheel; the path or orbit of a heavenly body; a halo round the sun or moon; a
circular array of troops; a territory, province, country, district; a surrounding
district or neighboring state, the circle of a King's near and distant neighbors; a
multitude; group, band, collection, whole body, society, company; an oblation or
sacrifice, sexual dalliance.”
- Williams-Moinier, Sanskrit-English Dictionary

In the spirit of “Love is the Law, Love under Will!” my own concept of a
Pantacle looks like this:

ENTER

On one side is the five-pointed star, pentagram or pentalpha (sometimes called

Solomon’s Shield), symbolizing both mastery of the five elements and the
microcosm of the human body (head, hands, feet); the Greek word AGAPE or
LOVE is inscribed between the points.

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 IMAGE

On the other is the unicursal hexagram, a six-pointed star drawn with one
continuous line, signifying the macrocosm and the solar awakening of the Holy
Guardian Spirit. This is a variant upon the traditional tantric symbol or Solomon’s
Seal made up of two interlaced triangles, ascending and descending. The word
THELEMA is WILL.

Together the 11 points of the stars and the 11 letters equal 22, the number
of trumps in the Major Arcana of the Tarot. 11 is the number of Magick, of the
sephiroth on the Tree of Life, and the 11-fold Word of the New Aeon
ABRAHADABRA, supreme formula of cosmic consciousness with a numeration
of 418, which contains five A’s and six other letters. Knowledge & Conversation
of the Holy Guardian Angel is achieved by adepts in the 5 = 6 degree of the G.D.
and the A.A., and both THELEMA and AGAPE total 93.
In a secret manner these words are aligned at the top to link with the
Maatian current: in AGAPE appears the Hebrew letter -PE meaning ‘mouth’ and
suggesting the mantra IPSOS, “by that same mouth”, and in THELEMA the
closely related name -MA is the natural vocal root of the word for ‘Mother’ in
almost all human languages.
In certain rites one may add a scarlet circle to create the symbol of the
star-goddess Nuit: “The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, & the circle
is Red.” (AL, I, 60) The total number of elements would then become 23, sacred
to the chaotic cult of Eris and explained in the works of Robert Anton Wilson.

The loving Cup or chalice is the symbol of Water or Wine and of the Yoni,
of the flow of the Tao, the Holy Grail of offering and ecstasy, inspiration and
rebirth, passion and communion, devotion and grace. It also incorporates many
elements of the womb-cave-cauldron complex and the thelemic imagery of the
vessel of Our Lady Babalon. Custom suggests silver, crystal, clay or a human
skull-cup, and some traditions emphasize that it should be a gift from a loved
one. Offering or divination bowls, cauldrons and all containers share in this liquid
realm. The Lotus or padma of Asian tradition also appears in Egyptian myth, a
symbol of unfolding manifestation usually seen as the Rose in the west. Norse
traditions employ the drinking-horn that outpours the sacred honey-mead of
mystical and poetic inspiration called Odhroerir. The Cup is the sign of Love as
the Wand is of Will, and sharing of water-brotherhood or communality in
drunkenness is a bond as lasting as blood: Life itself, born from the oceans.

The Blade, whether sword, dagger, knife, kris, purbha, saex or athame, is
the tool of Air and the mind, the powers of intellect, reason and analysis, of
battle, protection and command. Its double edge dices duality. It is rooted in the

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weaponry of attack and of defense, as well as the technology of blood sacrifice.
In form it may reflect the user's cultural cosmology, and is the major instrument
employed in banishing. The Censer or incense burner is a secondary tool of air.
Note that a sage smudge-stick provides excellent cleansing of all kinds of
atmospheres.
In the Viking world fine swords were given names and passed down
through family lines, and there was a custom of meditation by focusing the vision
upon the sharp edge. Once while engaged in this practice, it occurred to me why
the blade still retains the aura of potency in banishing rites even today, when we
seldom use such tools: weapons are ultimately designed to kill, and to hold one
is to have the power of death in one’s hands, the ultimate authority. They are
certainly among humanity’s oldest personal possessions, and their use in hunting
or combat suggests an intimate connection with magick, fate, and luck. Recall
also the Arthurian tales of Excalibur as the symbol of royalty, drawn from an anvil
on a stone. Here may be as good a place as any to say that blacksmiths as
workers of fire have ancient magical origins that blend with many traditions of
shamanism, and evolve into both the science of alchemy and the secret rites of
the miners who delved into the spirit-ridden dangers of the earth. Smith-gods
such as the Greek Hephaistos or the Norse Volund were often lame, the
common shamanic motif of the wounded healer. The earliest iron artifacts were
made from sky-born meteoric deposits.
I would add that many of the medieval Solomonic grimoires distinguish
between the dagger and the sword, a telling point of the social status of such
practitioners: only nobility would be likely to have a sword. In many Wiccan
traditions everyone may have an athame, but the coven sword is held by the
High Priestess or Priest, who are symbolic royalty.

In Buddhism, the double-edged sword

The Wand, baculum, rod or staff is the quintessential tool of the magus and that
oldest of human devices, the branch or club which evolves into the first weapon,
the pointed stick or spear; the flaming torch of Fire, the crook of the shepherd,
the scepter of the king, the wizard's staff, the hunter’s or farmer’s tools, or the
baton of an inviolate herald which was also the caduceus sacred to Hermes. It is
also the serpent-entwined and winged caduceus that has become the sign of
healing gods like Asclepios and their medical arts, and a symbol that has been
found carved on stones from at least 5,000 years ago. It is the sign of the ever-
growing power and wisdom of the soul, the Dionysian thrysus that was tipped
with a pine-cone and decorated with ribbons, as an eternally green-leaved and
flowering rod. It is the vector of the True Will of the psyche, the clearly phallic
symbol. One of the very earliest forms of wand may have been the drum-stick or
beater in shamanic cultures; and in Vodou the rather similar sign of the clergy is
the ason, a sacred gourd rattle, often incorporating crystals, seeds or snake
vertebrae, painted or with a net of beadwork, sometimes including a small bell.
Among the earliest surviving human artifacts are so-called 'batons of authority'
carved with human and animal figures, made from bone or ivory, emblems of

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proto-shamanism; there are also some examples of paleolithic dildos. There
were also curved atropaic (protective) wands engraved with various spirit forms,
designed for protection and healing; some show wear-patterns that suggest they
may have been used to draw magick circles in the ground, and there are
references in ancient Egypt to their being laid upon the stomachs of women in
childbirth, or used to protect infants. Also in Egypt the staff was the regal symbol
of office, ultimately derived from the solar god-descended power of the Pharaoh;
varied forms of wands were employed in both the major temple cults and in
private magickal practice as well. There were many different forms of wand
portrayed in both Egyptian and Babylonian art, and some may have evolved from
the primitive and easily-carried symbolic fetishes that represented prehistoric
tribal god-forms. One of the most common is the ‘uas-scepter’ held by many
deities and kings which has the stylized head of the Typhonian Set-Beast while
the opposite end is forked like his tail; it symbolizes power and dominion (and
similar forked sticks are still used to catch snakes today, possibly its original
purpose). Another was shaped like a lotus. Some goddess cults used a metal
rattle called a sistrum. In Crete the labrys or double-bladed ax was a major
symbol.
The wand also shares in the core symbolism of the central pole or tree of the
world-axis, and the measuring-rod of the sacred science of geomancy that is
used to establish the boundaries of the sacred precinct or the territory of the
kingdom as a whole. Early runic calendars were also often carved upon staves, a
binding of time, and their gandr or wand is also the symbol of the Vitki or wise
one in Scandinavian sorcery. There are also forked dowsing or divining wands
used to find water, mineral deposits and buried treasure by the science of
rhabdomancy. In Asian tantra we find the dorje or vajra, the thunderbolt or
diamond scepter which at the other end of the Indo-European world appears in
an almost identical form as the rod of lightning held by Zeus, the king of the
greek gods. The Golden Dawn employed a wide range of brightly painted wands
with very complex symbolisms and variously shaped heads. One version was
painted with a rainbow of the planetary colors, and one would hold it by
whichever band represented the force one was invoking. A friend of mine,
viewing a selection of G.D. regalia in the famous Museum of Witchcraft in
Bocastle, was irresistibly reminded of a rack of croquet mallets. Ultimately, the
wand becomes the quill-plume of the scribe, expressing the magick of the Word;
we have often found that the power of the pen can change the shape of the
world.
There is a considerable amount of arcane lore regarding the Arrow in different
cultures, with a number of deities who mastered the bow including Artemis and
Apollo who are the moon and sun. The arrow symbol (an archetype in Crowley’s
Enochian visionary experiences) has really connected for me in recent years, as
the Law of Thelema balanced with Chaosphere imagery. The arrow is feathered
and tipped with a steel barb, incorporating the plume or quill of Maat with sword
of truth symbolism, an interesting composite magical weapon. In terms of the
Double-Wanded One, crossed arrows are the symbol of the egyptian creatrix
Neith, a very ancient and complex neter who is also a dual-sexed gynander and

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who I consider cognate with Nuit (along with Nu or Nut the night-sky goddess,
Isis the mother of magick, Nephthys her darker sister, and the primordial waters
of the void called Nun). Kama, the Hindu god of love, carried a bow strung with
bees and five flowers for arrows and is related to the orphic god Eros who is later
the roman Cupid.
Oak or ash wands are traditional for Thor or Odin respectively; willow or
birch often more goddess-related, as for Freya. Some sources suggest a fruit-
bearing tree for fertility associations, or blackthorn for a blasting rod, while Abra-
Melim the Mage recommends almond or hazel. I tend to go for the one that
presents itself as feeling right; my primary wand was made from anonymous
driftwood. The customary length of old is one cubit, which is the distance
between your elbow and the tip of your longest finger. A magical staff is
traditionally the exact height of its bearer. If you are cutting a branch from a living
tree you should do so ritually and respectfully and leave an offering or libation
behind. Medieval grimoires often specified that it should be severed with a single
blow. Often words of power are painted, carved or burned upon the wand, or the
alphabet (whether Runic, Greek, Enochian, Hebrew, Ogham) from beginning to
end is spiraled about it, containing all possible words and names of the gods. “In
the labyrinth of the alphabet the truth is hidden. It is one thing repeated many
times…” according to A.O. Spare
The Wand is the major symbol of a mage’s creativity, and the form thereof should
reflect every aspect of the initiate’s personal methodology. To this day the wand
is still the symbol of stage magicians and the baton that conducts orchestras.

The Lamp, whether candle or oil lamp, is generally recognized as the

instrument of Spirit. A central point of light radiating into the darkness casts the
original magick circle in a manner similar to the creation of the world as “Let there
be light!” or FIAT LUX. For many thousands of years humans have sat around
this sacred fire together. In religious traditions worldwide candles are both
offerings to and signs of the presence of God. An eye of light in the night:
perhaps yet another way to understand Hadit in a cosmic sense is as the Big
Bang, the primordial explosion of energy that began our universe, and Nuit as the
maximum expansion to the total entropy at the end of time, heat death in the
infinite void.
In vodou traditions candles or lamps are used for ‘doing work’, and in
bowls, gourds or shells herbs and other magical ingredients may be mixed with
oil, and the wick may be supported by crossed bones or thrust through an
appropriate playing card.
"Unless the eye catch fire, the god will not be seen.Unless the tongue catch fire,
the Gods will not be named.Unless the heart catch fire, the Gods will not be
loved.Unless the mind catch fire, the Gods will not be known."
- William Blake

The sacred Cord about the waist, symbolizing both a token of initiation as
the serpentine umbilical cord of recurring rebirth and the magical power of
binding by knots, also shares in Spirit; as do the Holy Oil and the permeating

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sound of the Bell (whose bowl & handle represent the Yoni & Lingam). The Stele
of Revealing and the sacred Shiva-lingam are great representations to have on
the altar as the Omphallos or central point, and the images of your chosen God
or Goddess are powerful totems also.

The Black Book, Grimoire, Book of Shadows or magickal record contains

the words of power, names of spirits, gathered rituals and experiences of the
adept; and thus our insights accumulate to be passed onwards to succeeding
generations. The Orphic sects believed that much power could be gained from
the reading of the original sacred texts, and since power rises from wisdom I do
too. In the Chinese Hell the souls who were damned for disrespecting the
teachings of the Dharma are repeatedly crushed between the pages of a gigantic
book for all eternity. Thoth is the scribe of the gods and originator of magick and
the Tarot is also a book of leaves from the Tree of Life. In biblical tradition Raziel
the archangel of Chokmah (sphere of the Word, as Binah is of the Silence) wrote
the Book of Enoch, yet another archetypical Grimoire. Note that the magical
record is an essential form of earthing experience, and that the random cuts to a
page of bibliomancy can be a powerful oracle. See also Liber AL et al., y’all.

The Magick Mirror or speculum is a gateway to potent insights, and many

of the evocational operations of ancient and medieval magick may have involved
spirits visualized in the mirror or crystal ball, in bowls of water with oil or ink or
blood added, as well as in clouds of incense. Consider again the complex
Enochian scrying of Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelly. Mirrors also used in one of
Spare's three modes of achieving the Death Posture, and often in Nema's
Maatian workings. By gazing at one’s own face an altered state where identity
shifts can be attained and the reflection may become an opening to your Holy
Guardian Spirit. The Mirror is itself may be empty, yet like the Tao reflects all
things; with a candle-flame reflected a looking glass can become a window
between Universes A and B. An instrument special to magick is the Black Mirror,
which can be made by acquiring a large round clock-crystal or other
appropriately shaped piece of glass and carefully spray-painting its freshly
cleaned obverse a glossy black. Often it is also painted with an alchemically
prepared herbal elixir termed a fluid condenser. Note that reflected images are
always reversed… "The mirror is the most immediate symbol of spiritual
contemplation, and indeed of knowledge (gnosis) in general, for it portrays the
union of subject and object," according to Titus Burckhardt. "The soul
contemplates itself in the mirror of Divinity. God Himself is the mirror,” adds
Meister Eckhart.

The simplest ritual garb is nudity, which allows for full freedom of
movement, elimination of social roles and distinctions, connection to the earliest
and least civilized mode of human existence, and the raising of energy by erotic
tension and wild dancing. Robes of various colors, preferably with deep hoods
creating anonymity, have a long history and many uses and create unity in the
group. The robe both represents and reinforces the personal aura, and in a

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sense it recapitulates the Circle itself. The deliberate process of ritually bathing
and robing before a ceremony is highly conducive to either the solemnity and
discipline or eventual mayhem of the occasion. Other events may require colorful
creativity and exotic costumes. There is a great dramatic difference between this
sort of ritual and simply working in street clothes, and a level of focus, mood and
commitment. Ritual is theater.
The Crown is the royal symbol of Kether and of spiritual attainment;
garlands of flowers are similar, and hearken back to their presence upon victims
of the rites of both sacrifice and marriage, two quite surprisingly similar modes of
sanctification. Liber AL recommends the wearing of a ‘rich headdress’ or nemyss
(as seen in Egyptian art, which also includes a large number of other symbolic
crowns) to be worn in the rites of Nuit. Notable is the Uraeus-Crown, which
features a rampant cobra-goddess who is the power of the Eye of Ra. In Wicca
the high priestess may wear a crown with a crescent moon, the priest perhaps a
sun-symbol or antlers.
Masks are often inhabited by spirits, who may carry us into the realms of
trance and possession; for the mask destroys one identity while creating another,
and creation and destruction in a single act is the power of the divine itself.
Masks may ensoul or open channels to obsessing life forms or psychic entities,
or they can be an idealized expression of the sorcerer's individuality assumed as
an act of power or used to create anonymity. They may incarnate ancestral
spirits and carry initiation into hereditary or tribal rites. In ancient Rome the family
death-masks would be kept in the shrine of the home, and worn in funeral
processions by the living descendant who most resembled them. The Dances of
the Masks must be studied in detail in Nema’s Maat Magick. Hermetic magi
sometimes employ blindfolds and earplugs for sensory isolation, and this is
paralleled by early suspensions in the hammock or sling of the Witch's Cradle
and the contemporary isolation or float tanks, which are a very cool tool.

The Magick Circle, or more properly the Sphere, serves as a primal

symbol of centered but infinite dimension, as temple-sanctuary and place of
power, lens of focus and temporary autonomous zone. It is interesting to note
that western magi tend to stand within the protective citadel of their fortified
circles, while the tantriks stand outside and project their visualizations by calling
divine energies into their exteriorized mandalas. Having neither beginning nor
ending, the simplest and most perfect of the geometric forms in nature,
reminiscent of the planets and their orbits, the trunk of the world-tree, and the
pupil of the all-seeing eye: the circle is a symbol of both infinity and eternity. In
form it suggests all the cycles of Time. It may be permanently painted upon the
floor or a portable carpet, marked with cords, drawn temporarily in chalk, flour or
salt, and inscribed with names of power meaningful to the adept. Other geometric
forms are often used for specialized purposes such as the invocation of specific
planetary forces, and Old Norse sorcerers may have employed a nine-square
grid-pattern in a similar manner. Western ceremonial magick also often evokes
spirits by placing their sigils in an external Triangle of Manifestation at the
appropriate elemental quarter. Many circles of sacred stones survive in various

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parts of the globe, often in the form of astronomical calendars, and some may
once have been ways of making mysterious crop circles (faery rings) into
permanent places of power. In ancient India a circle of stones was placed around
the bed of childbirth for protection. In actual practice in cramped modern
apartments the circle is most often inscribed with visualization of rays of blue
flame emitted by the wand rather than marked physically, or perhaps cords,
stones, chalk or masking tape may be employed. Rings of burning candles at the
four quarters, or eight at the spacemarks, create a very dramatic effect. The
original sphere of protection is the light cast by the campfire in prehistoric times,
and dancing around this ageless fire still touches primal levels of memory. The
open starlit sky, the whispering woods, or the ocean shore are well worth the
extra effort.

“As for the places of Magical Circles, they are to be chosen melancholy, doleful,
dark and lonely; either in Woods or Deserts, or in a place where three ways
meet, or amongst ruins of Castles, Abbeys, Monasteries… or upon the Seashore
when the Moon shines clear, or else in some large Parlor hung with black… with
doors and windows closely shut, and waxen candles lighted.”
- Reginald Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft

A Circle I have designed for myself is marked with the 12 zodiac signs and
10 planetary signs ascribed to the 22 Major Arcana of the Tarot, in a secret order
based on the ‘double loop in the zodiac’ discussed by Crowley. These are drawn
between double lines and would run as follows: Uranus, Mercury, Luna, Venus,
Aquarius, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Libra, Virgo, Jupiter, Leo, Neptune, Scorpio,
Sagittarius, Capricorn, Mars, Aries, Pisces, Sol, Pluto, and Saturn. My Triangle of
Art is drawn as two double lines around the words ‘manifestation, hiding, reward’,
for reasons apparent to students of Liber AL, in the archaic Theban Script
hallowed by esoteric custom. A circle may also be formed from the 56 cards of
the minor arcana of the Tarot, with the elemental suits aligned to the appropriate
directions; and a triangle with the major arcana by placing 3 lines of 7, with the 0
card of the Fool in the center or on the altar.

The earliest Altars probably consisted of simple stone slabs or tree-

stumps, while later temples continually elaborated upon them. Ancient examples
often had horns on the corners or otherwise displayed, perhaps a memory of
using the skull of the prey or totem for shamanic purposes. Modern-day
ceremonialists may favor a double cube, one black, one white, although a
circular table also works well. It is useful for the altar to double as a cupboard for
the storage of arcane artifacts or holy relics. The altar symbolizes the world and
like all of these devices should be aesthetically pleasing. It is appropriate to place
all the ritual elements of the temple (heaven) or on the surface of the altar (earth)
in a symmetrical balance. It is also the Primeval Mound or First Hill, which arose
from the dark waters of space at the very dawn of time in the Egyptian
cosmology; and in Taoism the many meanings of Yin and Yang evolved from
references to the dark and bright sides of a mountain. The altar holds the central

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fire that evolved into the cave, temple or household hearth. Sacred fire from a
central source was often used to relight all of a community’s cooking fires at the
New Year, and was carried forth to transmit power to the foundational
ceremonies of Greek colonies. We see a similar practice carried on today in the
journey of the Olympic torch.
Additional elements upon the altar might include representations of nature
in the form of living flowers, feathers, seashells, stones and crystals, seedpods
and pinecones, leaves and greenery appropriate to seasonal celebration. Food
offerings such as fruit, nuts, bread, or even candy can be kept on the altar for
later consumption, as can the sacramental wine and personal talismans. Many of
the procedures given in the graeco-egyptian magical texts specifically require an
altar made of mud-bricks; not an uncommon item in those times, but an
instruction with a deeper meaning behind it:

"Two bricks were often used as footrests for women when squatting to give birth.
These so-called birth bricks were believed to determine one's destiny. According
to the Rhind Papyrus, Thoth carved the time of one's death into them. The
birthstone was personified by the goddess Meshkhent, and whilst the child was
yet in the womb she fashioned its ka and announced its destiny at birth. In the
circle of Abydine gods, four Meshkhents appear as servants of Isis. Besides
anthropomorphic depictions the goddess was also shown in the form of a birth
brick with a woman's head attached.”
- Gods and Symbols of Ancient Egypt, Manfred Lurker

The post-G.D. tradition often makes use of a matched pair of columns or

pillars, one black, one white, as in some atus of the Tarot; these are reminiscent
of the Masonic symbolism of King Solomon’s Temple. Candles or torches
representing the four watchtowers may be placed at the four quarters, or
elemental Banners designed as impressive yet easily portable symbols of the
Work as a whole.

The Temple is whatever sacred space you can arrange in these decadent
modern times, whether a temporary set-up in your bedroom, a separate chamber
dedicated within your home, or a full-scale structure. Yurts are nice and circular.
The G.D. and O.T.O. often rented space in Masonic halls. The most important
requirements are safety, privacy and security, adequate space for your
operations, and aesthetics as suitable as possible. The usual precautions against
interruption, exposure, and fire hazards are always advisable, as is a very
thorough preliminary cleaning, purification and dedication. Once fully established
the creation of an atmosphere of power is maintained by the use of color and
lighting, scents and tastes, music and chanting. The overall arrangement of
furnishing and equipment should be balanced in composition, oriented to the four
quarters or the eight fold divisions of the maatian spacemarks or Norse aetts,
and as free as possible of extraneous distractions or opposing influences.
Balance or equilibrium, as a manifestation of Maat, is among the most essential

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lessons of magick, as is the energy released by the contemplation and union of
opposites.

All of these tools are stimuli for the gates of the senses, for the creation of
a charged sphere wherein strange things may happen. Symmetrical elements
upon the altar focus the attention on a symbolic center for the universe, an
Omphallos, the stone at the Oracle of Delphi that represented the navel of the
world. The forces symbolized on the outer are activated on the inner. Darkness
surrounds light, and by the shadows in-between we interweave will, desire and
belief. The senses are gateways:
Vision embraces the sacred images, the magical instruments, the colors
and the lights in the darkness, and your companions.
Voice fills the silence, whisper to mantric vibration to song to scream.
Musical instruments and recorded sources can enhance and engage the
emotions.
Taste absorbs the sacraments and secretions.
Touch guides the body in the dance of action and sensation, gesture and
sensuality.
Scented associations are a direct link to the secret cells of the brain, via
oils and incenses, herbs and hormones. Perfumed oils are much used in tantra,
and in ancient Egypt the invisible presence of a scent was considered the
manifestation of a deity.
All can merge in mystic synaesthesia, entheogen-enhanced or otherwise.
A mere six senses hardly seem adequate for our purposes at this time. The
laughter of Pan is the light of the stars.

`"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it
is, infinite." - William Blake.

Ritual Structures & Practices

"All that we are is the result of all that we have thought. It is founded on thought.
It is created by thought."
- The Dhammapada

Ritual activity takes many forms: personal practices of meditation and

centering, invocation or evocation of entities, seasonal celebration of sacred
holidays, rites of passage through the stages of life, initiation into some group
structure, worship of the gods, wild tantric orgies, or just straightforward
operations of results magick. Some of the main styles would be:

Mystical or Devotional: as in bhakti-yoga, dedicated to worship,

contemplation, and communion with the gods (before a personal shrine filled with
images of an ancient goddess, a devotee scribes poetry, sings songs, makes

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offerings, meditates, communes, and from the tales of the deity reshapes the
manner of their own life).

Hermetic or Theurgic: solemn magical ritual in the intellectual, qabalistic,

or complex ceremonial mode, as with the Golden Dawn (in a temple carefully
arranged according to geometric and geomantic principles of number, a cadre of
adepts weave color, scent, song, and symbol in the solemn invocation of a
planetary angel into a scrying mirror; the visions of the seer are transcribed and
analyzed to test if the prophecies come to pass and the wisdom offered is
consistent and effective).

Goetic: black masses and magical extravaganzas of terror in graveyards

by night, the frenzied conjurations of demons, Tibetan Chod meditations and left-
hand tantra in the cremation ground (a solitary sorcerer illicitly enters a cemetery
and lights a single black candle by the tomb of a murderer, casting a circle
widdershins; binding and piercing the image of a hated enemy he invokes
demons of hell to torment them, rousing his spirit to a frenzy of anger and hatred
and then burying the image deeply by the crossing of three pathways, or perhaps
beneath the doorway of his enemy’s home or in a spot where he must pass).

Orphic: Dionysian or bacchic celebrations of drink and emotion, dance and

music, chanting and song, voudou drumming and witches sabbats, leading to
exultation and ecstasy (at a meeting in a forest clearing on the midsummer’s eve
a coven of green-robed witches dance and drink the night away, whirling with the
gods to wild music until they greet the dawn).

Typhonian or Ophidian: thelemic sex magick and tantric orgia, orgasmic

use of the serpent power and the raising of kundalini, oracular utterances and
trance states (a couple enter a hidden temple lit with golden candles and
furnished with cushions of scarlet, each with the image of a secret sigil upon a
headband; they invoke Nuit and Hadit into each other and inflame themselves
with ritual and secret sacraments, than make passionate love gazing at the sigils
upon their opposite’s third eyes until orgasm sweeps them away and they
become inspired with visionary images).

Initiatory: almost all structured groups have formal rites and reenactments
to introduce new members into the shared mysteries, secret passwords, and
masonic handshakes involved in passing through the grades of a hierarchal
degree system (such as the three degrees of contemporary Wicca). Power grows
as it is passed through generations.

Ritual provides rhythm and structure to the practice of magick, imposing a

sense of order upon the unformed chaos of action and experience. Almost all
human cultures share similar structures for the establishment of sacred areas,
orientation in space, purification of tools and offerings, the invocation of spirits
and deities, and so forth. A most inspirational survey of practices worldwide is

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Global Ritualism by Denny Sargent. Traditional religious vocabulary alone is
vast, and the more idiosyncratic operations of magicians are even more varied.
What I am attempting to do here is to loosely outline the types of activity a
creative sorcerer might employ in the accomplishment of the will. For the most
part, you can set your own order. While one should not be bound by rigid routine,
a standard or customary framing structure builds the habit of shifting to an altered
state, and helps develop solidarity and an ongoing current for groups.
In the last analysis a ritual event is not unlike a psychedelic experience or
a journey to the otherworld: one departs the mundane and enters a realm of
deeper meaning and greater power, where magical words and actions resonate
outwards, then afterward return to semi-normalcy.

Omens: In ancient Rome official augers performed divinations of various

kinds, dividing the directions of the sky for the purpose of reading the patterns of
weather, the flight of birds, and the places where lightning struck, or interpreting
dreams and prophecies, and taking note of portents and prodigies like the birth of
two-headed cows and hermaphrodites. Sadly, divination by the entrails of
sacrificial victims seems to have gone out of style… but astrology is still often
used to choose appropriate and auspicious times.

Preparation: the physical details and requirements should be carefully

arranged beforehand so that all proceeds smoothly. The purpose should be
clearly understood from the outset, especially by groups, where discussion and
agreement should be completed before and not during the course of the rite. A
magical working is in a sense a drama, and if a bit of rehearsal is necessary, so
be it. Many if not most magi tend to perform divination on major operations and
their potential results (with Tarot, runes, I Ching, bibliomancy, etc.) before fully
committing to a course of action. As carpenters say, “Measure three times and
cut once.” Be very clear about your intentions, especially when others are
involved. All of this, of course, applies to preparation; many rituals are designed
to climax in a full-blown bacchanalian blowout, and to make full use of the forces
of chaos and improvisation. Spontaneity and creativity should never be
completely repressed, but a simple framework makes events flow smoothly.
Some groups emphasize circle etiquette: no unnecessary chit-chat,
always moving gracefully and in a clockwise manner, touching tools and altar
with only the right hand, addressing others solely by magical names, or as Lady
or Lord, Soror or Frater. Others snort lines of coke off the Pantacle. No, wait a
minute... that was the same group.

Purification and Consecration: often there is a period of abstinence,

fasting, or sleeplessness in preparation for a major working; at the very least
there may be a ritual bath or washing of the hands, an anointing with oil or
smudging with sage. The sauna or sweat lodge makes for an amazingly deep
cleansing.
Magical tools and materials for spells are usually purified by asperging
with water and censing with incense, and then fully charged for their intended

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purpose. Crowley in Magick suggests these phrases for purification: “Asperges
me, Therion, hyssopo, et mundabor; lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.” This
is “Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, o Therion, and I shall be clean; thou shalt
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” For consecration: Accendat in nobis
Therion ignem sui amoris et flammam aeternae caritatis.” This is “Inflame in us,
Therion, the fire of your love, and the flame of eternal devotion.” These formulas
are drawn from the Solomonic grimoires, and it is perhaps typical of Crowley’s
ego that he has removed the name Adonai (‘Lord’) and replaced it with his own
title. I use the holy name ABRAXAS myself. For the washing a bit of salt (rock
crystal or sea salt, not iodized table salt) may be added to incorporate water and
earth, and in charging fire and air are combined in incense; your own words
provide the holy spirit.

Wayfaring: assuming that one is leaving the confines of home or temple,

the journey to the chosen site becomes an adventure. Traditional sources
suggest that the process be undertaken in solitude, secrecy and silence; this
becomes less likely in urban environments or the camaraderie of group workings,
which tend toward good cheer. In either case one’s eye should be open to the
random yet meaningful appearance of omens: the flight of birds and patterns of
weather, the shadows or branches of trees forming runes, the finding of strange
and unusual objects whether natural or manmade, snatches of overheard
conversation, psychic impressions, whatever. This is in a sense a pilgrimage, or
an initiation; if going into the wilderness, it is a passage outside the boundaries of
the civilized order and into the primordial chaos of the dreamtime. A suitably
dramatic site adds immeasurably to the impact of the rite: seashore, garden,
mountaintop, stone circle, desert, cavern, crypt or hallowed grove, are often so
alien to the average urban dweller that they disrupt the usual bad habits of
thought and belief. The customary precautions for avoiding intruders, and fire
safety, still apply. I gather that Thoreau felt really bad about that huge forest fire
he started at Walden Pond.

Centering: achieving a place of clarity, harmony, and calm is always a

good way to start. Take a few moments, relax and breathe deeply, do your TM
mantra, let the mundane cares of daily life fade away. If in a group working, join
hands in a circle and OM together for a while. Raise energies through the
chakras or Middle Pillar exercise. Magicians are unusual individuals, magical
orders are extremely volatile, and magical realms are uncommon worlds; try to
have any personality conflicts or organizational disputes happily under control
before launching the mission into inner space, and be prepared to enjoy your
self.

Banishing: one of the more important traditional directives in occultism is

to banish the area thoroughly before and after every rite. Never mind whether
you think you really believe in spirits, demons, auras or vibes: think of this as
observing proper sterile conditions in a laboratory procedure. Clear your mind
and working space of detritus and focus on doing your will.

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 The Golden Dawn/Crowleyan traditions usually employ some version of
the Greater or Lesser Banishing Rituals of the Pentagram before opening with
the Invoking Rituals of the Hexagram (for Crowley, see also the Star Ruby, Star
Sapphire, Mark of the Beast, etc.) Soror Nema also gives the newer eightfold
Spacemarks banishing and several others. All share the purpose of clearing the
atmosphere of unwanted influences and fortifying it against contrary outside
forces, while simultaneously centering and aligning the mind with the purpose of
the Self. Omit these steps and it is said that you may run the risk of being
devoured by unspeakable evil thingies, okay?
At the same time, we must avoid mere paranoia or useless superstition. Mages
are always the rulers of their worlds and masters of their domains, and there are
those who prefer to allow power to gather in a well-established ritual space, or
permit familiar spirits to ward them at all times. Thelemic magick, like many other
traditions, is not always limited to a physical circle, but may freely interact with
the world.

Orientation: it is customary in wiccan and magical procedure to establish

the stations of the four quarters or open the watchtowers by invoking the spirits of
the elemental Air, Fire, Water, and Earth in the East, South, West, and North
(cultural and denominational variations may apply) and bringing their influences
together at the center, which is frequently where the altar is placed and certainly
where the magus stands. Often one then proceeds to activate the central column
of the Cosmic Axis within oneself, unifying the stars above and the world
beneath, by such means as the G.D. Middle Pillar ritual or the tantrik activation of
the chakras, thus awakening the Second Attention of the Higher Self. One steps
aside from the mundane personality and affirms the esoteric or divine selfhood,
perhaps by affirming the new identity given by one’s magical name.

Opening the Circle: as described above, the circle is the sacred space that
serves as the temple. It may be cut into the ground, permanently painted upon
the floor, a round rug, or marked temporarily with chalk or tape; it is then formally
charged with the wand or sword tracing the boundaries once or thrice while some
suitably impressive formulae are intoned. It represents the totality of the
Universe. Often the opening is clockwise (deosil) and the closing is counter-
clockwise (widdershins). Again, a circle made of Tarot cards with the elemental
suits aligned to the quarters can be quite effective.

“Ban! Ban! Barrier that none may pass,

Barrier of the Gods, that none may break,
Barrier of heaven and earth that none can change,
Which no god may annul, nor god nor man may loose…”
- From the Ancient Akkadian Surpu Tablets

Statement of Intent: Thelemic rites usually open by proclaiming: “Do what

thou wilt shall be the whole of the law!” One may then begin the proceedings with
a clear and simple declaration along the lines of: “By my Name of Power (…) this

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is my True Will: to achieve the full Knowledge and Conversation of my Holy
Guardian Spirit!” or “to meet and merge with my destined soul mate!“ or “to work
healing for my parent’s health!“ or “to prevent this clueless idiot from being
elected president!” or whatever. It is meant to inform the familiar spirits who
attend you, to use the power of the spoken word to arouse the talents of the deep
mind, and to avoid confusion.

Raising Power: I have covered various methods elsewhere in this book,

but in active ritual some are especially useful and among the foremost is dance.
In casting the circle, repeated circumambulations stir up the energy and wake up
the body; in wicca the whirling circle-dance raises the Cone of Power, which is
released at the climax when all fall to the ground and the officiating priestess
directs the coven’s will outwards to its goal. Dervish-style spinning upon one‘s
own axis causes the kundalini to stir and rise, infusing the circle with an ambient
glow. Full-scale use of other magical methods might be reserved for the peak of
the rite, but it is good to physically charge up your space at the outset. Ritual in
general should resemble the dance.

Invocation: the purpose of many rituals is to call up mighty forces to

achieve one’s goals; gods or goddesses, elementals, daemons, angels,
atavisms, animal powers, ghosts, or whatever image calls to you as a
transforming energy. Drama and deep feeling are important; poetic forms add
resonance to the soul. Speak up! Don’t mumble! Assert your authority! Poetry is
always good and there are very old reasons for rhyme…

The Eucharist: the consecration and consumption of food or drink is

among the oldest rites, and a means of externalizing and then absorbing the
divine energies, becoming one with the body of the God/dess and quite literally
transformed thereby. Liquids are believed to absorb vibrations, including those of
mantras or spoken words of power. Passed about the circle hand-to-hand, the
sharing of the drink bonds the participants human or otherwise. Any charged
sacrament must be fully consumed or returned to nature in a respectful manner.
Other offerings may be raised up to the Gods and then shared in thanksgiving.

The Working: the operative magick or tantric orgia, if the rite is not purely
an initiatory rite of passage or a celebratory seasonal drama of some kind.

Oracles: various forms of scrying or divination (‘finding things out’) are

best practiced in the circle. Many of the deepest insights I have ever had were
triggered by some random clue of symbolism in the temple space during ritual, or
arose from meditation therein.

Relaxation: in the circles I grew up in, after the main event, we would
simply hang out with the gods, socialize and enjoy the atmosphere. We would
have esoteric conversations and show & tell sessions, read the Tarot or runes for

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one another, polish off the cakes and wine, have a smoke, share new thoughts,
and bond more closely. Sexual orgies were surprisingly rare, sad to say.

Closing: is a reversal of opening, a withdrawal of the circle, a thanks and

dismissal of the watchtowers. Some give the formal license to depart:

“And now I say unto thee, depart in peace unto thy habitations and abodes, and
may the blessings of the Name of the Highest be upon thee, and let there be
peace between me and thee, and be thou ever ready to come, whenever thou art
invoked and called, either by word or a will, or by this mighty conjuration of
magical art!”

Medieval texts ramble on through countless pages of such overwrought

rhetoric, leading me to prefer speaking simply and from the heart. Some touch
the hands to the ground with the words “Heal the Earth! Rebirth!” to settle
remaining energy. In ancient Egypt the last act was often to elevate a statue of
Maat to reaffirm the balance of cosmic order. My own closing for this goes:

IPSOS!
Breath of the Universe, Soul of the World!East:  MAAT, speak the Word of Truth!
South:   MAAT, share the Light of Justice!West:   MAAT, be the Way of Balance!
North:   MAAT, heal the Order of the World!Center:   MAAT above, MAAT below,
MAAT embracing All,
Come dwell in my Heart,
Give Birth to the Future,
Give Life to the Child!
ABRAHADABRA!
Finally, one finishes with the phrase “Love is the law, love under will!” and
repeats the preliminary banishing. Another very powerful, indeed nigh invincible,
form of banishing is laughter, which overcomes all evil. One should perhaps have
a very good or very bad joke prepared to clear the air if necessary.
Afterwards, one notes down the rite and any results in the magical record,
winds down, and either discusses or completely forgets the process. Food and
ultimately sleep are good ways of earthing oneself as well.

Some thoughts on my own habits for solitary Thelemic ritual: I generally

banish first with either Crowley’s Star Ruby or Nema’s Spacemarks, then deeply
breathe the mantra IPSOS in darkness for a time. I light the candles saying:
“Burn upon their brows, o splendrous serpent!” and the incense saying “O azure-
lidded woman, bend upon them!” (AL, I, 18-19) and make the Thelemic Cross
given below. With the gestures of the Golden Dawn’s Sign of the Enterer into the
Opening of the Veil, I proclaim “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law!”
and then dervish-spin on my axis a bit to loosen the power, chanting HEKA!
MAGEIA! GALDRA! (which mean MAGICK in Egyptian, Greek, and Norse). My
most frequent framing sequence is the Rite of the Verses below. I state my intent
or Will, then invoke my Guardian Spirit in various personal ways and proceed

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through my rite, which is usually a combination of various texts (my own and
others) with much creative verbal improvisation some of which later resurfaces
as poetry; climaxing with sacraments of some kind and frequently the first
charging or final burning of sigils. Often I cast the Tarot, Runes or I Ching.
Ending, I salute the appropriate station of the Sun with Crowley’s Liber Resh vel
Helios, repeat the Thelemic Cross, then Close the Veil saying “Love is the law,
love under will!” Retreating with the Sign of Silence, I finally repeat the banishing.
The various stages are marked with the ringing of bells, which traditionally still,
charge and purify the atmosphere. I often play recorded music, ascend or
descend my chakras, perform variations on Liber Samekh; and I do have
separate patterns for tantrik or runic rituals. At other times I strive to be
completely spontaneous, for the best words must be spoken by the Heart &
Tongue of the True Self.
For a pattern of personal daily practice I appreciate the outline given by
Crowley as ‘De Cultu (On Thelemic Cult)’ in Liber Aleph: The Book of Wisdom or
Folly, and I include it here in full:

"Now, o my Son, that thou mayst be well guarded against thy ghostly enemies,
do thou work constantly by the Means prescribed in our Holy Books.
Neglect never the fourfold Adorations of the Sun in his four Stations, for thereby
thou dost affirm thy place in Nature and her Harmonies.
Neglect not the Performance of the Ritual of the Pentagram, and of the
Assumption of the Form of Hoor-par-kraat.
Neglect not the daily Miracle of the Mass, either by the rite of the Gnostic
Catholic Church, or that of the Phoenix.
Neglect not the performance of the Mass of the Holy Ghost, as Nature Herself
prompteth thee.
Travel much also in the Empyrean in thy Body of Light, seeking ever Abodes
more fiery and lucid.
Finally, exercise constantly the Eight Limbs of Yoga.
And so shalt thou come to the End."

Translated from the Crowleyan, this would be the practice of Liber Resh
vel Helios, which consists of four short salutations of the Sun at dawn, noon,
dusk, and midnight; daily banishing and centering; the performance of a ritual of
eucharist; sex magick; astral projection; and yoga. If you can do all or most of
these things every day, you will undoubtedly experience change.

The Rite of the Verses from the Stele of Revealing

This is a daily eucharistic ritual of invocation based upon the Master Therion’s
original 1904 verse translation of the hieroglyphics upon the talismanic Stele of
Revealing, which was also subsequently included in the text of Liber AL vel
Legis: The Book of the Law. The meanings of the symbolism employed should
be studied in his various commentaries and accounts thereof.

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It has been devised to charge the Self with the evolutionary energies of the 93
Current, and to contact whatever power may be the focus of one's personal
Great Work. The charging and absorption of the liquid sacrament is a perfect
model of the tail-devouring Oroboros Serpent of eternity, the holy union of
microcosm and macrocosm, a hieros gamos for the purpose of metamorphosis. I
believe that this simple ritual is one of my greatest contributions to the practice of
Thelema, but like all Magick, it only works if you actually do it!
The central altar should be equipped with the blade, cup, wand, disk, bell,
lamp or candles, incense, Liber AL & the image of the Stele of Revealing. The
mage will first banish with the blade, perhaps with the Star Ruby or the
Spacemarks ritual devised by Nema.
Deeply breathe the mantra IPSOS in darkness for a time, then light the
candles saying: “Burn upon their brows, o splendrous serpent!” and the incense
saying “O azure-lidded woman, bend upon them!” (AL, I, 18-19)
Ring the bell 11 times in the pattern of 3-5-3, and then perform the
Thelemic Cross: touch your third eye and say ABRAHADABRA! Then the
genitalia and say IPSOS! The right shoulder and say THELEMA! The left
shoulder and say AGAPE! Then cross the arms over the chest and say
LASHTAL! Project energy toward the altar with the Sign of the Enterer (lunging
forward with both arms and one leg extended), flowing with a step forward into
the Sign of the Parting of the Veil (mimed by spreading the hands dramatically
apart), and proclaiming:

DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW!

Take up the wand and cast a triple circle deosil, chanting:

ABOVE, THE GEMMED AZURE IS

THE NAKED SPLENDOUR OF NUIT;
SHE BENDS IN ECSTASY TO KISS
THE SECRET ARDOURS OF HADIT.
THE WINGED GLOBE, THE STARRY BLUE
ARE MINE, O ANKH-AF-NA-KHONSU.

As you finish both verse and circle, bring the wand down to touch the disk.
Then, project energy into the filled cup with the wand, consecrating the wine or
elixir:

I AM THE LORD OF THEBES, AND I

THE INSPIRED FORTH-SPEAKER OF MENTU!
FOR ME UNVEILS THE VEILED SKY,
THE SELF-SLAIN ANKH-AF-NA-KHONSU
WHOSE WORDS ARE TRUTH. I INVOKE, I GREET
THY PRESENCE, O RA-HOOR-KHUIT!

Hold the wand with both hands horizontally before you, invoking:

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 UNITY UTTERMOST SHOWED!
I ADORE THE MIGHT OF THY BREATH,
SUPREME AND TERRIBLE GOD,
WHO MAKEST THE GODS AND DEATH
TO TREMBLE BEFORE THEE:
I, I ADORE THEE!

Ring the bell 11 times in the pattern of 3-5-3.

Here may be performed a formal invocation or calling of whatsoever entity

the mage seeks to link with, whether the Holy Guardian Spirit or the inspiration of
a chosen patron Deity. The Invocation of the Bornless One may be best, or
Crowley's 'Aiwass' chant from the Book of Thoth, or perhaps his verse translation
of the reverse of the Stele may also be used. Then place the wand upon the
altar, and raise the chalice high over head with both hands chanting:

APPEAR ON THE THRONE OF RA!

OPEN THE WAYS OF THE KHU!
LIGHTEN THE WAYS OF THE KA!
THE WAYS OF THE KHABS RUN THROUGH
TO STIR ME OR STILL ME!
AUM! LET IT FILL ME!

Drink the sacrament, offering the last drops to the Earth and Sky, the All
and Naught. Wand in right hand, cup in left, arms crossed; absorb the force,
saying:

THE LIGHT IS MINE; ITS RAYS CONSUME

ME: I HAVE MADE A SECRET DOOR
INTO THE HOUSE OF RA AND TUM,
OF KHEPHRA AND OF AHATHOOR.
I AM THY THEBAN, O MENTU,
THE PROPHET ANKH-AF-NA-KHONSU!

Salute the sun at all four quarters with the adorations given in Liber Resh
vel Helios, or simply recite the verse appropriate to the current time. Withdraw
the circle with the wand going widdershins, intoning:

BY BES-NA-MAUT MY BREAST I BEAT;

BY WISE TA-NECH I WEAVE MY SPELL.
SHOW THY STAR-SPLENDOUR, O NUIT!
BID ME WITHIN THINE HOUSE TO DWELL,
O WINGED SNAKE OF LIGHT, HADIT!
ABIDE WITH ME, RA-HOOR-KHUIT!

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 Finish by again bringing the wand to earth upon the pantacle.

Ring the bell 11 times in the pattern of 3-5-3, then repeat the Thelemic
Cross; and make the Sign of Closing the Veil (bringing your widespread hands
together before you and taking a step back) then close by proclaiming:

LOVE IS THE LAW, LOVE UNDER WILL!

Once more banish with the blade, again using the Spacemarks or some
ritual devised by your own genius. Put out the candle. Make the Sign of Silence
in darkness (finger to lips, absorbing all energy). Go forth upon the earth and
take your pleasure among the living.

It is also possible to perform this rite internally and even silently in the
chakras, drawing the energy inwards. I often do this while falling asleep. Whisper
the first verse focusing above the crown of your head, drawing the stellar
energies down through the Sahasrara or Thousand Petalled Lotus. Focus the
second verse in your Ajna or Third Eye, and the third in the Vishuddhi or Throat.
In the Anahata or Heart, invoke your Holy Guardian Spirit in your own way, then
continue the final verses in the Manipura or solar plexus, the Svadhishthana or
sexual center, and finish by earthing the energy in the Muladhara or root chakra
at the base of the spine. Breathe deeply into meditation or sleep, and take note
of your inspirations or dreams…

The Invocation of the Unborn One

This is the current incarnation of my ongoing attempt to make the vital Ritual of
the Bornless One a deeper experience by examining and to some extent
rewriting the text based upon several translations. It was originally an ancient
Greco-Egyptian-Gnostic ritual exorcism, which generations of magicians
subsequent to the Golden Dawn have adopted as the prime Invocation of their
Holy Guardian Angels; perhaps its best-known incarnation is that formulated by
Aleister Crowley as ‘Liber Samekh Theurgia Goetia Summa (Congressus cum
Daemone) sub figura DCCC’. I have performed it many hundreds of times in my
life, and believe that it has a powerful and cumulative effect in the unfolding of
the True Will.
However, I still remain a bit confused by Mr. Crowley’s instruction to visualize a
‘Solar-Phallic Hippopotamus’. In general, when his notes call for visualizing a
particular animal I would suggest shapeshifting to it, in the manner of the
assumption of god-forms; and I have found that a Baphometic Bull may work
better as earth than the more Taurt-like Hippopotamus. His remaining elemental
forms are the Lion for fire, Dragon-serpent for water, and Bird (Hawk?) for air; the
elemental links to the various sections do not exist in the original text and are
most likely a Golden Dawn or Crowleyan innovation.

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I would like to make it quite clear that I am by no means discarding Crowley’s
essential version, which (with its extensive appended notes) should by studied in
Magick In Theory & Practice. As noted above, further instructions for the
Attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel
appear throughout his works, notably in the Eighth Aethyr of The Vision & The
Voice. The concept was first presented in the late-medieval Book of the Sacred
Magic of Abra-Melim the Mage, although again in an overly elaborate form. An
earlier version of my revision also appears in the excellent Your Guardian Angel
& You by Denny Sargent.
What I have done here, first of all, is to essentially restore the ‘barbarous names
of invocation’ to the most accurate and scholarly transliteration available: that of
The Greek Magical Papyri In Translation, edited by Hans Dieter Betz, the
definitive collection of the body of early spells from which this text is drawn.
These all-too-often obscure words of power combine various god-names,
magical and numerical formulas, and vowel-vibrations whose origins are now lost
in time. Crowley revised and analyzed them in terms of his own Thelemic Cultus;
without losing sight of his work I have reverted to the earliest text in hopes of
finding new insights. Many very similar rites may also be found in Ancient
Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power edited by Marvin Meyer & Richard
Smith, for the early fathers of the Coptic Church and many of the Gnostic sects
were much involved with angelic invocations, and similar contacts with the
Daimon or Genius appear in pagan traditions.
Other sources consulted include Ceremonial Magic by Israel Regardie, which is
virtually a user’s manual for this process; it collects all the various earlier versions
up through the Golden Dawn and Crowley, including the original Greek text. Next
was the very useful Hermetic Magic by Stephen Edred Flowers, who remarks:
“Note that the body of the working is a summoning – but in the course of the
summoning the magician is transformed from a summoner to the entity being
summoned – and ultimately to the god himself.” Lastly I employed Seven Faces
Of Darkness: Practical Typhonian Magic, by Don Webb, who in turn has
remarked that “The ‘Holy Headless One’ is identified in other texts as being
behind the constellation Draco. He is Set in the form of the Bata serpent.”
Crowley, and especially Kenneth Grant of course, identify Set with Hadit.
Based on all of these versions and my own personal practice I have also revised
the English elements to a somewhat less florid and Victorian form, although I
have been unable to completely avoid the dramatic use of some Thee’s and
Thou’s. Some few divine names combine Crowley’s forms with my own preferred
versions. I have taken several creative liberties with these sections, which is
rather the point of this exercise.
Throughout the whole of Liber Samekh there runs a sonorous refrain:

“Hear me, and make all spirits subject unto me, so that every spirit of the
firmament and of the aethyr, upon the earth and under the earth, on dry land and
in the water, of whirling air and of rushing fire, and every spell and scourge of
God may be obedient unto me!”

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While not repeated in the original version, it adds considerably to the dramatic
impact. Since this work has been a genuine attempt to renew my use of this rite
in a form less rote, here are two alternate versions:

“Subject to me all daimons so that every daimon, whether heavenly or aerial, or

earthly or subterranean, or terrestrial or aquatic, might be obedient unto me and
every enchantment and scourge which is from God.” (Betz and Flowers)

“Subject to me all daimons, so that they obey me whether they are of the Mind,
or the Fates of heaven, or the air, or the earth, or beneath the earth. I am seeing
the Absolute and henceforth every spell and scourge will work my will.”
(Webb)

The following names of God, which have been restored to their original place at
the opening and closing of the text, should be written on a strip of papyrus or
cloth which is to be worn as a headband: AOTH ABRAOTH BASYM ISAK
SABAOTH IAO! In the Greek original this sequence consists of 24 letters (the
total number of their alphabet) beginning with Alpha and ending with Omega, the
First and the Last. All such names are best vibrated or howled, rather than
merely chanted or intoned. Invoke Often!

The Ritual of the Unborn One

AOTH ABRAOTH BASYM ISAK SABAOTH IAO!

Thee I summon and invoke,

Thee, the Unborn One!
Thee who created earth and heaven,
Thee who created night and day,
Thee who created darkness and light!
Thou art Asar-un-nefer, Thou art Ra-Hoor-Khuit,
whom none hath ever seen!
Thou art Ia-Bez, thou art Ia-Apophis!
Thou hast divided the just and unjust,
Thou hast created female and male,
Thou hast formed seeds and fruit,
Thou hast made men & women to love one another,
and to hate one another.

I am n’Aton Thy prophet,

Unto whom Thou hast revealed Thy mysteries,
the ceremonies of Khem.
Thou hast produced the moist and dry, and all manner of life.
Hear me! I am the messenger of Ptah-Amoun-Ra:
I will speak Thy true name, handed down to the prophets of AL.

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Hear me, Spirits of Air!

ARBATHIAO REIBET ATHELEBERSETH ARA BLATHA ALBEU

EBENPHICHI CHITASGOE IBAOTH IAO!

Hear me and make all spirits subject unto me, so that every spirit of heaven &
hell, of earth and water, air and fire, may work my will!

Hear me, Spirits of Fire!

I call upon Thee, the terrible and invisible god,

dweller in the empty wind, the void place of the spirit!

AROGOGOROBRAO SOCHOU MODORIO PHALARCHA OOO AEPE!

Holy and unborn one!

Hear me and make all spirits subject unto me, so that every spirit of heaven &
hell, of earth and water, air and fire, may work my will!

Hear me, Spirits of Water!

ROUBRIAO MARI ODAM BAABNABAOTH ASSS ADONAI APHNIAO

ITHOLETH ABRASAX AEOOI ISCHURE!

Mighty and unborn one!

Hear me and make all spirits subject unto me, so that every spirit of heaven &
hell, of earth and water, air and fire, may work my will!

Hear me, Spirits of Earth!

I invoke Thee!

MABARRAIO IOEL KOTHA ATHOREBALO ABRAOTH!

Hear me and make all spirits subject unto me, so that every spirit of heaven &
hell, of earth and water, air and fire, may work my will!

Hear me, Spirit of All, Self-created!

AOTH ABRAOTH BASYM ISAK SABAOTH IAO!

This is the origin of the gods,

This is the center of the universe,

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This is the One whom the winds fear,
This is the One who made all things by command of true voice,
Lord of all things, king, ruler, and healer!

Hear me and make all spirits subject unto me, so that every spirit of heaven &
hell, of earth and water, air and fire, may work my will!

Hear me, Spirit of God!

IEOU PYR IOU PYR IAOT IAEO IOOU ABRASAX SABRIAM OO

YY EY OO YY ADONAIE EDE EDU ANGELOS TON THEON,
ANLALA LAI GAIA APA DIACHANNA CHORYN!

I am Thee, the unborn spirit, having sight in the Eye;

Almighty One who speaks the Word of immortal fire!
I am Thee, the act of revealing truth!
I am Thee, who hates that ill-deeds should be done in the world!
I am Thee, whose name makes the lightning flash and thunder roll!
I am Thee, whose seed is the shower that falls upon the earth that it may teem!
I am Thee, whose mouth is utterly aflame!
I am Thee, the begetter and the destroyer and the bringer-forth!
I am Thee, the Grace of the Aeon!
The heart of the world encircled with a serpent is my name!

Come thou forth and follow me, and make all spirits subject unto me, so that
every spirit of heaven & hell, of earth and water, air and fire, may work my will!

Great is my might, greater still my might through Thee!

IAO! SABAOTH! Such are the words!

AOTH ABRAOTH BASYM ISAK SABAOTH IAO!

Ars Amatoria, or the Mahavajrapadmatantra

A) Back To The Left Hand Path
B) Sex & Magick: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together
C) Secrets of Crowleyan Sexual Occultism
D) The Scarlet Woman & the Beast: Conceptions of Babalon
F) Beyond the Tattered Fringe

Since the magical formula of the New Aeon is widely regarded as purely
sexual, as is the shallow yet popular conception of Tantra, I have taken it upon
myself to place one of my more blatantly explicit instructional texts upon the
record. I trust that all will be equally offended as I attempt to explain the great
and terrible secrets of the erotic occult arts, and I will say this right up front: as I

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am a man writing this, it is perhaps inevitable that a woman may have some very
different points of view.

A) Back To The Left Hand Path

"One reaches Heaven by the very practices which may lead to Hell."
- Tantric maxim

The use of the term Left Hand Path is largely drawn from the circles of eastern
Tantra: when worshippers gathered for a rite of worship or Puja a clothed woman
or Shakti would sit on the right side of her partner in purely symbolic or Right
Hand ceremonies, and a naked woman on the Left in those much more
uncommon celebrations where actual physical congress took place. Such an
exalted woman is regarded as a Guru, and as the very incarnation of the
Goddess Herself. Modern westerners tend to have a wildly distorted view of
Hindu tantra as an endless sexual orgy, which hardly does justice to the ritual
and philosophical complexity of more genuine practices. Traditional Indian
society was rigidly stratified and structured, and a devotee might spend many
years of study and preparation under a teacher before the climactic moment of
such a radical and ego-shattering act as intercourse outside the bounds of
marriage and the rules of the caste system. This was performed as a sacred
initiation, given by a wisdom-bearing Dakini or Suvasini. Often such rites took
place at midnight amid the burning corpses of the cremation ground, poised
between terror and delight. Left Hand practices have always tended toward
extremes, and although sometimes outwardly quite respectable their devotees
more often include holy men or sorcerers, outcasts or outlaws. The Vama Marga
or Left Path is also the Daksini Marga, the Way of Women (the Yin-Tao in
China), revering the Goddess or Shakti who is the primordial energy. She is often
seen as Maya, the Great Enchantress who weaves the illusions of reality as Lila
or play, and as the Fire Snake or Kundalini Serpent who lurks coiled at the base
of the spine. This magical power can be awakened to rise through the energy
centers of the body that are called chakras, activating the Third Eye and finally
blossoming as the Thousand Petalled Lotus or crown chakra. She appears again
as the Uraeus snake upon the crowns of Egyptian royalty, a fiery avatar of the
Eye of Ra, and in the serpentine forms of primal gods such as Heka, who
personifies magick itself. In later times we find sacred serpents in the rites of
Voudon, and we must not forget that Egypt once included parts of Africa. Tantra
has become a huge influence on western magick, but both the outward and
inward forms of these practices must mutate to be valid in a very different culture.
In thelemic terms we find the tantric Svecchachara, or ‘path of one's own will’.
This is said to be similar to ‘riding the tiger’ or ‘walking on the edge of a sword’.
The earliest european explorers, gazing upon the elaborately writhing sculptures
that decorated many of the great Hindu temples, projected many of their own
repressed urges and instincts upon the colonized peoples of Asia. The rather
twisted morality of the Victorian era was easily adopted by upper class Hindus as

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well, since it fit in with their own prejudices of purity and control. Tantra had its
origins in the ancient Dravidian culture of the Indus Valley region, long before the
later Vedic tradition of the Aryan invaders. The phrase Left Hand Path was also
employed as a pejorative term for black magick by Madame Blavatsky and her
cohorts, and the Theosophical Society served to a large extent as the first major
infusion of eastern philosophy into western popular culture.
The West, however, has ancient left hand practices of its own: from the sacred
prostitutes or Qadeshtu of the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean world, to the
rumored orgies of underground gnostic sects later suppressed as heretics, to the
dark sabbats of the witches. These covens seem to originally have been led by a
Lady of the Fair Folk: not the shallow gossamer-winged fairies of fantasy, but the
primordial powers of the earth, the forest, and the sacred stone circles, the spirits
of air and darkness. Her consort was the Lord of the Wild Hunt, the shadowy
Horned One who was once Shiva and Dionysos, Cernunnos and Wodan and
goat-footed Pan. We all know who he became, however: Old Nick, the Dark One,
the Distinguished Gentleman, and the Archfiend Himself. But before he was
Satan in Hell, he was Lucifer the Lightbringer in Heaven, God's first and favorite
angel. Even the medieval mind often questioned this turn of events: was there
some secret plan involved? Who was really on the side of humankind, the clever
devil or the tyrant god?

“The devil is an angel too.” - Miguel de Unamundo

In esoteric qabala this 'serpent' of Eden has the same numeration as the
'messiah', and in some heretical sects they were viewed as identical, the Devil in
the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil, the Savior upon the Cross or Tree of
Life & Death, both working out the plan of humanity's salvation in the face of the
blind forces of unjust destiny. Among the hidden occult traditions that lurked in
the background of the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, and the Illuminati as well
as the Witch-Cult, there was often a trend toward identifying with the sinister
opposition rather than the status quo; and daring to question authority was to
immediately place oneself in the Satanic party. Since people in these medieval
and renaissance periods had no surviving pagan context to define themselves
with, the Black Mass was the only available theological alternative, and there has
always been a deeply concealed underground of such renegade priests lurking
about, drawn straight from the ranks of the christian clergy.
In recent years this trend toward diabolism has resurfaced in such public groups
as Anton LaVey's Church of Satan and Michael Aquino's Temple of Set, and
perhaps most occultists would think of them as the current standard bearers of
the sinister. However, Aleister Crowley's 93 Current might also be considered
rather dark by many modern white-light new-agers and pagans, and the
Typhonian O.T.O. established by his disciple Kenneth Grant has also devoted
much thought to workings upon the nightside of existence. While some might
recoil from such thoughts, there are two important points I would like to make:
like it or not, Crowley's movement is in fact a genuinely pagan revival of the gods
of Egypt, not some watered-down form of pseudo-respectable Satanism. And like

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it or not, no matter how many recent Interfaith Conferences allow a heathen
representative to sit in the back with the Buddhists, the harsh reality is that I do
not believe mainstream christianity will ever truly accept Wicca as a legitimate
religious tradition, for one very simple reason: Wicca is devoted to an even more
threatening figure than their Devil: the Goddess Herself. And the notion of the
divine as female, and perhaps even feminist, is a terrifying threat to all their sad
delusions of social control.
As we have seen, exaltation of the Goddess is at the very origin of the Left Hand
Path. Ever since Lilith the first wife of Adam demanded to be on top during sex
and was replaced by the somewhat more compliant Eve, the Goddess has been
written out of the history books. Her renewal in recent years has been a rather
terrible shock, which continues to ripple through contemporary society. After all,
even Satan could be considered a sort of loyal opposition, and his worshippers
still had to define themselves within the essentially Christian framework limited to
a duality of God and the Devil. A genuine pagan revival completely sidesteps this
entire extremely lucrative judeo-christian-islamic worldview and allows individuals
to redefine themselves on their own terms. It also reveals far too much about the
sordid schizophrenia of western civilization, ever splitting God into two opposing
halves, for in other cultures the deity retains unity and even the Wrathful and the
Compassionate Buddha are one and the same. Without acknowledging both our
darkness and our light, how can we ever become truly whole? With the resolution
of duality, or Carl Jung's embrace of the shadow, we take the wisdom and power
of the darkness into ourselves; and from there we can move on to the more
important mission: changing the world, so that illumination and liberation can be
achieved as the birthright of all beings.
In the good old days, in some parts of Europe, left-handed people and those with
red hair were burned at the stake. As far back as ancient Rome, legitimate
descent ran through the dexter or right hand line. In
medieval heraldry, the leftward bend sinister on a shield denoted bastardy. The
left side is that of the female, the evil and unholy. The dark Yin seeks to
overcome the bright Yang. These are very old prejudices, but perhaps it is time
we left them behind. Many people are uncomfortable with negative forces,
midnight places, or uncontrollable and primal chaos. They may delude
themselves that denial makes such things go away, but they can only be
suppressed for a time, and what is denied grows stronger and eventually bursts
forth. Perhaps that is why our civilizations, which so emphasize order and light,
are continually beset by the uprisings and revolts of chaos and a perceived
darkness.

“Maybe this planet is another planet’s Hell.” - Aldous Huxley

The left-hand path, by the magical formula of opposition or reversal, the tantric
Viparit Karani or ‘backward doing’, sees things in very a different way. Order is
tyranny, rigidity, and oppression. Chaos is anarchy, renewal, and liberation. In
truth the creative tension between the two is what makes progress possible; and
since the Church & State serve order, it is left to outlawed and outcast traditions

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such as magick and witchcraft to champion all revolutionary and individualistic
causes, to question the norm and subvert the orthodox. Those spiritual traditions
that carry the cause of liberty forward are often persecuted as heresies, yet they
are often older and truer than the later structures that seek to supplant them. The
nightmare of the tyrant is the freedom of the people; and we are entering an era
of freedom. The Left Hand Path is the way of knowledge, while the Right Hand
Path rules by faith alone.
The Sufis sometimes expressed the power of the Negative Way or Via Sinistra
with the symbol of Black Light, and contemporary Luciferians exalt the Black
Sun. Yet another of the secret mantras of Maat is LUTIS NITRA or Black Flame,
the nightside of Tiphareth, the power of Set as the inverse reflection of Horus, the
darkness that illuminates.

B) Sex & Magick: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

"All things fornicate all the time." - A.O. Spare

"The Grace of God is the Lust of the Goat." - William Blake

The forces of sensuality have been seen as mysterious and enchanting

throughout history, and much of sorcery has always been devoted to the rapid
attainment of lovers. Historian Francis King has suggested that tantric concepts
of the ancient east were first carried to the modern west by travelers such as the
Victorian pornographer Edward Sellon, and they have since become central to
the new-aeon practices of orders such as the O.T.O., whose central secret is in
fact rumored to be a sexual one. Early co-founder Karl Kellner was said to have
had three masters, two Hindu and one Arab, who trained him in the esoteric and
erotic practices of yoga. Aleister Crowley himself over the course of his odd
career discarded most of the ceremonial practices of the Golden Dawn in favor of
rampant experimentation with sex-magick. Austin Spare, with his more primal
and instinctive approach to sorcery, relied heavily upon such will-directed
manipulation of the sensual life force, the same energy that was termed Vril by
Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Orgone in the studies of the martyred Wilhelm
Reich.
Sexuality is indivisible from the human experience, and is quite often
perceived as virtually identical to the fundamental energies of the universe itself,
for all creation is a sexual act. In the raising of power all underlying concepts of
prana, chi, mana, vril, heka, mojo or libido are interchangeable in some senses,
as a physiological gnosis or vivid sensation of rapture that is constantly
accessible. Even mere ‘normal’ sensuality provides a warm glow of inner energy,
and acts involving the perceived violation of personal or cultural taboos can go
far beyond societal limits in the quest for spiritual ecstasy. It is this phenomenon
which has led to the extremes of left-hand tantra in the east, and also perhaps to
various fetishisms and other compulsive behaviors in the west. Spare noted that

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"the familiar is always sterile” and the corresponding reflex is that the forbidden is
always attractive.
Sexual arousal is among the simplest ways to raise magical energy, and
the longer this is maintained, the more power is raised; in other words, more is
better. Such prolonged intercourse is frequently called ‘karezza’, a term coined
by Thomas Lake Harris, an American prophet who apparently influenced several
members of the otherwise rather straight-laced Golden Dawn. It is a subject of
debate in some circles as to whether an actual male orgasm is a good thing; I
personally vote yes, although many tantric or yogic practices of the east are
utterly opposed to any loss by emission of semen. Others see ejaculation as a
form of offering or sacrifice. The excitatory process can end in two ways: a
gradual sublimation (which can flow into trance states, lucid dreaming and astral
encounters) or the full-blown orgasmic climax (which can flow all over the purple
satin sheets, but is much more useful for the empowerment of sigils, amulets, or
other magical tools).
These holy sexual secretions are genetic embodiments of the whole
individual, for such biochemically complex oozing fluids contain the double spiral
helix of the DNA code that is the Pantacle of the True Self and the ultimate
source of all life. Recall the Zen koans: "What did your face look like before your
parents were born?" and “Who is the Master that makes the grass green?” In the
last age, blood was more often employed, while the formula of modern times
centers on orgasm as the sacrificial rite.
Kenneth Grant has devoted much discussion to the rediscovery of the
ancient tantric science of the kalas or secretions of the female, while Crowley
himself regarded them as the magical menstruum of the New Aeon and also
exhibited a certain rather scatological regard for his own sacred effluvia; it is
instructive to read Liber AL with an awareness of these senses of the word
‘secret’. In fact, Grant has nominated SECRETION ('secret ion, or eon') as the
Word of the New Aeon, with a numeration of 365. Like the blood that flowed in
the Old Aeon these are living substances, and generally referred to as the Elixir
in sexual alchemy and Amrita or nectar in tantra. It was said that devotees of
some of the ancient gnostic sects, after their unholy orgies, would raise up in
offering their mingled essences in the consecrated cup of the communion.
Crowley and Spare made much use of these methods in the charging of
talismans, some of which, perhaps rather grossly, are said to survive. Crowley
also observed that the posture known as soixante-neuf is the image of the
interlaced triangles of the holy hexagram; we might say the same of the Tibetan
Yab-Yum position.
At any rate, we are all essentially transitory vehicles for the mercurial
caduceus of our ever-evolving DNA. In alchemical terminology the sperm and the
menstrual blood are the White and Red elixirs, or the Eagle and the Lion, whose
mingling creates the philosopher's stone and the miraculous medicine of eternal
life; and the earthing of magical operations by sacramental consumption is
believed to grant magickal power and to rejuvenate the body.
Ancient philters or love-spells often relied upon the surreptitious slipping of
semen or vaginal fluids into someone's food or drink, perhaps in combination with

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certain venereal herbs; and a little menstrual blood is still quite often used for the
same purpose in the villages of Italy. Pheromones are important to both the
animal and human kingdoms, and the mysteries of scent have always been
integral pathways to fusion. Virtually the entire perfume industry has evolved out
of religious and medicinal uses and is now largely devoted to the enticement of
one's opposite number, or to employ yet more occult jargon, the Carnal
Knowledge & Conversation of the Wholly Significant Other.
There are countless sex-manuals in the traditions of Hindu, Taoist, and
Buddhist tantra, the most famous being the Kama-Sutra (with its hundreds of
positions suitable for triple-jointed acrobats) and the Chinese Pillow-Books; Islam
has the Persian Perfumed Garden and others as well. Modern literature both
mundane and arcane abounds with sexual teachings, and again the new-agers
have some silliness to answer for. Yet in the west we are constantly bombarded
with thinly veiled sexual messages designed mostly to merchandise cars, fashion
accessories, and other inconsequential products. Despite this public display most
sexual activity is still puritanically frowned upon, and unfortunately the social
morality that was superficially loosened in the 60s and 70s seems to have been
widely re-established by the more recent waves of fascist fundamentalism in the
80s and 90s. People may be better educated, looser, and somewhat more
tolerant, but AIDS and other STDs have served to create a climate of fear for
many, and the backlash against the women's rights and reproductive freedom
movements has been extreme. There have been more than a few murderous
assaults and terrorist bombings of clinics in America, which our authorities tend
to sweep under the rug as quietly as possibly, in their barely concealed desire to
keep women, gays, and people of color under control. But I digress... and
pontificate.
It is customary to define the King as the active/male/yang/solar force and
the Queen as the passive/female/yin/lunar form; but this may not always be true.
A number of ancient cosmologies see the sun as female and the moon as male,
as seen in the Norse, Japanese, and in some senses the Egyptian view as well.
In thelemic and maatian terms we have the priest-king Ankh-af-na-Khonsu ('Life-
of-the-Moon') and ibis-headed Thoth as a moon-god, and the Scarlet Woman
Babalon as the "Woman Clothed with the Sun"; in tantra Shiva has the crescent
moon upon his brow and Shakti is the supreme source of energy and power.
Moonlight is in fact reflected sunlight, and a key formula of magick is that of
reversal, of turning the world upside-down. It is useful in practice to experiment
with both polarities, and to be aware of the fact that all humans are complete
universes, each containing both sexes within themselves. Twin-gendered deities
such as Baphomet, Ptah-Amoun, Neith, Shiva Ardhanarisvara, and Bacchus
Diphues reflect the double-current ideal of the androgyne or gynander, currently
mutating into the recent concept of the third sex as applied to intermediate or
transgender individuals. The Holy Child (Horus/Maat, son/daughter, as the union
of mother Isis and father Osiris completing the qabalistic formula of IHVH)
contains both genders within, and the magician must do the same. Our culture
tends toward extreme rigidity is such roles; there was a time not long ago when
even cross-dressing was strictly illegal, and in the state where I live a woman

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could be jailed if she was not wearing at least three articles of female apparel
(did socks count?). In the last analysis, there are still absolutely no absolutes.
Despite Crowley’s carefully cultivated reputation as a satyr and the author
W. Somerset Maugham's opposite yet candid description of him as "an
entertaining and most erudite queen" (as footnoted in G. Messadie's recent
History of the Devil) we may note that the Beast was an extremely active
bisexual, to say the least. In fact, the invocation that unsealed the final Enochian
aethyrs in the series of visions described by Crowley was an act of homosexual
magick between him and his disciple Victor Neuburg. The apocryphal tale of an
incident of bestial intercourse at his Abbey of Thelema appears to be rather
dubious, however; apparently the Scarlet Woman was willing, but the goat was
not particularly interested. We might also mention the unusual relations between
Horus and Set in Egyptian myth, and the rather varied loves of the gods of
Olympus; after all, they were Greek.
However, the very question of rampant homosexuality has seldom been
openly dealt with by any means other than heavy-handed moralizing in either
occult or tantric circles, despite the clear orientations of many practitioners. While
the basic activities may be similar to heterosexual practices (our human anatomy
provides only a few ‘tab A/slot B’ combinations) we may assume some variations
in the energies aroused. I am sometimes puzzled by the thought that an easy
and open bisexuality might be considered the progressive ideal for all humans,
as it was at times in the ancient world or in some few non-european cultures
today; yet if any issue seems to unite the heterosexual and homosexual
communities, it seems to be a panicked fear of and aversion toward bisexuals
(especially of the male ones, since girls are always kind of hot no matter what
they do). Apparently whatever role one has locked oneself into must be
emotionally defended at any cost, and any in-betweeness sparks stark terror of
ambiguity. Sexual orientation is a very early imprint, and a core component of the
sense of identity: question it and you shake up the whole personality. There is
also a very long history of cross-dressing in various tribal shamanisms, many of
whose practitioners quite openly lived as members of the opposite sex, and
some find it quite effective in ritual as well. Then again, some like to confront the
twin forces of Eros and Thanatos with the aid of strippers who start out dressed
as nuns; which brings back to the big two, sex & death. Orgasm is sometimes
termed la petit mort, ‘the little death’: a spasm of release wherein boundaries
merge and individuality drowns in a sea of bliss, in yet another phase of death
implying rebirth. It is also a burst of pure biological and psychic energy, a
manifestation of the serpentine Great Magical Power, one of the moments in life
where we are most completely focused; a true peak experience of Pan-Dionysian
ecstasy.

"Scorpio is the sign of Sex and Death; it rules the sex organs - the Good Gash
and the Stiff Cock - as well as machines, motorcycles and electric guitars." -
Kenneth Anger

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C) Secrets of Crowleyan Sexual Occultism

"Of all possible sexual perversions, religion is the only one to have ever been
scientifically systematized." - Louis Aragon

As usual, Crowley has attempted to develop a framework for utilizing the

libido in a thelemic ritual manner. While his conservative times made him rather
cautious about expressing these practices in unguarded terms (the martyrdom of
Oscar Wilde being ever fresh in his mind), in general the O.T.O. model of sexual
magick has operated on four main levels:

The 7th degree: involves a period of magical chastity, a time-period of

latency or discipline during which surging libido is stored up for a later and
greater spending. Spare often worked in this way and magical operations such
as that of Abra-Melim emphasized restraint quite strongly. This was termed
Alphaism by Crowley's disciple Louis T. Culling in the teachings of his own order,
the Great Brotherhood of God or G.B.G. Magical partners building up energy for
a working often may separate for a time of preparation.
In most ancient custom and medieval ceremonial magick all the usual
instruments and materials employed were unused, pure and unsullied, the sword
forged from virgin ore, the talismans drawn on virgin parchment. Even sacrificial
animals, or the young child sometimes used as a seer in scrying, or the naked
woman upon the altar in the black mass, were all virgins; their potential never
dissipated and completely dedicated to a single purpose. The new aeon version
may have a somewhat different and indeed completely opposite definition of
magickal chastity: any and all sexual activity is utterly devoted to the goal of the
Great Work.
Chastity is still a common obsession in organized religions, and the wild
and vivid hallucinations of horrific demons and wanton women experienced by
the early Christian hermits are clearly a direct result. There is an occult tradition
that their centuries of rejected libido form a vast pool of energy on the astral
plane that can be accessed by bold sorcerers. Clearly such willful restraint is one
way of maintaining control and focus, and of aspiring to eventual union with a
deity or holy guardian spirit.
Unfortunately it is also related to the not uncommon male obsession with
virginity, and in social and historical terms this has created only two possible
categories of women: nuns and sluts, the infamous ‘Virgin or Whore’ complex, a
rather over-simplistic world view which we may finally be outgrowing in some few
parts of the world. This extreme double standard is very seldom applied to the
men in most countries, who are notorious for navigating in any direction indicated
by the turning of their own ‘southern compasses’. And honesty compels us to
admit that despite the so-called sexual revolution, American culture is still hugely
conflicted about sexuality; ask any high-school girl who gets labeled as a slut,
and simultaneously courted and denigrated; or any boy who gets tagged as gay.

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 The 8th degree: refers to the autosexual or onanistic or masturbatory
operations, which clearly are the simplest to perform and control, and therefore
the most straightforward formula for the solitary magus; they were referred to
elsewhere in relation to Spare's key formula of the Earthenware Virgin, a clay
container designed to receive the phallus for the purpose of charging sigils
concealed within. Self-pleasuring has a long mythic history as well: Hermes is
said to have taught masturbation to Pan, and the most primordial High God of
ancient Egypt created the world itself with a primal act of self-love. The consort
and high priestess of this god was later personified as the Hand of Amoun.

"I copulated with my fist, my heart came to me into my hand, the semen fell into
my mouth. I sent forth issue as Shu, I poured my self out as Tefnut; from one
God I was three Gods..." - Papyrus of Nes-Min

"Yes I it was me
grabbed my cock drained seedwater
through my fist back into me I wrapped myself around cock
joined in fucking my shadow fanning me under his cloud
I rained seedwater spewing it like barley from the earth
into my mouth my own.
I sprouted windman Shu, I dropped raingirl Tefnut."
- The Pyramid Texts

"Self-love never dies", said Voltaire; and surrealist artist Salvador Daly
gloried in his title of ‘The Great Masturbator’. This may be the cardinal method of
creating, training and refining the sensual reflexes inherent in one's own personal
metabolism. The act of ritually oiling up a colored candle to charge it for a
magical working is remarkably similar, guys. One aspect which cannot be
emphasized enough is the freedom of imagination which such solo workings
permit; one may visualize any image found exciting, from personal phantasy to
total immersion in the wild astral orgies of the witch’s sabbat. Solitary self-
pleasuring in absolute darkness can be an exercise in discovering your true core
motifs of arousal in the absence of any external stimuli. Many sources also
suggest physical exercises for tensing and relaxing the sexual organs, which
lead to both greater control and more intense orgasms.
While any spirit may be involved in such operations, it is wise to be
selective; gods are one level of being or concept and tend to draw one toward
goals of enlightenment and cohesiveness, while incubi and succubae, ghosts of
the dead and primitive elementals apparently can tend toward the opposite
results. Deities should always be respected, while lesser spirits should be linked
to with much greater care. The HGA is a rather special case.
In any event, such solitary operations are traditionally applied mainly to
the consecration of talismans, sigils, and magical tools and weapons, or to be
consumed as a Eucharist.

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 The 9th degree: refers to allegedly ‘normal’ heterosexual congress; the
cosmic ideal of the union of masculine and feminine as the restoration of a
primordial hermaphroditic unity from before the division or fall into duality. The
archetypal Sacred Marriage or Hieros Gamos creates the universe or Magickal
Childe. Passion is the Original Act of Union with All Otherness, paramount
among our most innate biological and spiritual urges; and sensuality is perhaps
the most primal obsession once the fundamental details of simple survival are
taken care of. In and out, yin and yang, rising and falling, form the rhythm of
intercourse, and rhythm, in this sense, is also the root of both ritual and music.
The union of opposites results in their explosive annihilation and the birth of new
beings, resolved by the thelemic formula of 0=2 in transformative tantric ecstasy.

"The Sun is the Wine and the Moon is the Cup. Pour the Sun into the Moon."
- Hafiz

One of the most vital secrets of sexual magick involves the visualization of
one's partner (imaginary, spiritual, or actual) as a deity or other entity; one may
have astral congress with the Holy Guardian Spirit, or with the god or goddess to
whom you are devoted, thus creating a powerful etheric link. In Wicca the
goddess and god may be invoked into the priestess and priest in the ritual of
Drawing Down the Moon (derived from ancient Greek magick, where the
reflection of the Moon was caught by the wine within the chalice) and of the Sun.
This is followed by the Great Rite of sacred intercourse between the two, who
represent and enflesh the gods in celebration. Any pair of deities may be so
invoked: Nuit & Hadit, Odin & Freya, Shiva & Shakti, Baal & Astarte, Samael &
Lilith, Horus & Hathor, or even Christ & Mary Magdalene or Charis (a gnostic
female form of Christ).
Traditional doctrine insists that every sexual act creates results of some
type on the astral planes, or spawns a magickal child in some form whether
physical or aetheric; a good reason to always keep a sigil or deity in mind. There
are also said to be subtle dangers of obsession, especially by predatory spirits
who feed upon the vital juices of the living to sustain themselves, yet another
good reason to always banish. This may seem paranoid, but there are in fact as
many cases of assaults by an incubus or succubus as there are documented
examples of poltergeist phenomena, and perhaps they should not lightly be
dismissed as non-existent.

"Exuberance is beauty." - William Blake

"All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable."

- Malleus Malificarum

It is obvious that sex-magick is more fun with a partner, although this

might raise some questions of the relative levels of psychic development and of
compatible world-views, and the moral question of whether your lover should be
made aware that they are participating in a ritual operation (many of Crowley's

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were not). Most books on this subject are obsessed with heterosexual polarity,
yet actual practice tends to explore a wider range of polysexual options. It seems
that some people believe that sex is only valid or appropriate when performed
with an odd number of participants, such as 1, 3, or 23. Phil Hine contributes the
exceedingly cogent observation that one should "Never do sexual magick with
anyone crazier than yourself". Of course, this may considerably narrow the field.
In the confusing realm of modern relationships and in terms of maatian magicks I
tend to come down in favor of honesty, openness, fairness and equality, but then
I'm pretty weird. However, it can be said that bad stuff between couples tends to
infiltrate other aspects of one's life both quickly and not infrequently disastrously,
and that magick has a very strong tendency to intensify all things. As far as good
stuff goes, true romance is a wonderful thing, and so people really should do
their best to treat each other right. Wouldn't that be nice? Can't we all just get
along?
One practice common to east and west is extended intercourse without
orgasm or emission, which is seen as building power without release. As to its
origins in the east, polygamy and harems were once not uncommon and a man
rich enough to afford several wives had a moral duty to satisfy all of them. This
may have contributed to such exercises, but there is still a frequent belief that
equates loss of semen with loss of life force or essential vitality. Conversely, in
some Taoist yoga the male absorbs the yin-energies from the female without
ever surrendering his own yang-forces; this was believed to increase his own
personal power and lead to the extension of life, but now perhaps smacks of
vampirism. Various breathing techniques can also be applied to such orgia, both
for drawing upon or mutually sharing and increasing a partner's prana.
The synchronization of breath, combined with deep eye contact and the linkage
of certain chakras by etheric lines of force, is a classic method of seduction. We
should also note yet another tantric inversion of the ‘normal’ order: the female is
often the active partner, riding on top of the male, arched above as Nuit, or
twined about him like a vine, in full control. This can be seen in images of Kali
mounted upon the prone Shiva, or as Isis magically conceiving Horus by coitus
with the slain corpse of Osiris.
For a magical couple ritual sensuality in practice can unleash enormous
energies. In sacred circles nakedness may signify an openness or vulnerability, a
freedom found in the loss of social identity. In the modern witch-cult nudity or
going skyclad is often customary in the raising of power by frenzied dancing. In
Liber AL the goddess Nuit commands us to “wear rich jewels”, potent talismans
around the world, often useful for displaying a sigil at the throat chakra or third
eye, or elsewhere. Yet one should beware of defining every sexual encounter as
an operative magical act, for this may place a distance between partners in the
act of love, and at many times shared ecstasy and mutual affection are far more
important than spells or sigils or mumbled mantras can ever be.

The 10th degree: as Kether, the sphere of the O.H.O. or Outer Head of
the Order, this is said to be "purely administrative", which must surely conceal

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some utterly unspeakable and unimaginable and unpronounceable Lovecraftian
perversion! Please join me in a prolonged shudder.

The 11th degree: involves anal sex in either straight or gay acts, or
perhaps intercourse during menstruation, depending upon your chosen authority.
Crowley generally referred to anal intercourse as p.v.n. (per vas nefandum, or 'by
the unmentionable vessel'); but one had to be very careful in the days of sodomy
laws, so he encoded his diaries and left only a few explicitly sexual technical
instructions. The public martyrdom of Oscar Wilde was a very strong warning
about the love that dare not speak its name. It would appear that he might have
regarded this as a method conducive to the earthing of results in the material
world. As I mentioned earlier, it was such an act of sheerly blasphemous
buggery, performed upon him by Victor Neuberg, which served to spark the
climactic aethyrs of the Enochian workings described in The Vision & the Voice.
It is possible that such stimulation of the Muladhara or root chakra may be
conducive to the awakening of the fire-snake or Kundalini. Sodomy is described
as a sinister and perverse act of depraved black magick in Theosophical
sources, in part I suspect because it allows a man to play the part of a woman,
and gender bending seems to incite panic. However, fashions often change and
people wouldn't do it if it didn't feel good, and so this is still considered a path to
power by some and an abomination by others.
Grant, on the other hand, insists upon a more tantric interpretation of the
11th degree as the period when the Scarlet Woman or Suvasini overflows with
the highly-potent blood of life, and almost all cultures regard this as a time when
women are variously taboo, magically potent, and dangerous. He devotes much
thought to the complex cycles of the kalas or secretions, which the Shakti emits
through the changes of the lunar cycle. Several works on the subject of
menstrual magick have appeared in the literature of the feminist/goddess
movement: women's mysteries, indeed.

The organs of generation themselves have long been venerated around

the world, as in the tantric worship of the Yoni of Shakti and the Shiva-Lingam, or
the wide distribution of phallic symbols (‘anything longer than it is wide’) used as
protective amulets. In sexual alchemy the kteis may be termed the athanor, lotus,
padma, or Holy Grail, while the phallus is the cucurbit, diamond scepter, vajra, or
Spear of Destiny. There are many other such symbols used in both magick and
alchemy: the Wand and the Cup, the Lance and the Grail, the Sun and the Moon,
the Man and the Woman, Shiva and Shakti, Hadit and Nuit, Cross and Rose,
Adam and Eve; all are means to union with otherness, to the conjunction of
opposites, the explosive energy released by the transcendence of duality.
For Spare the Hand and the Eye are also symbols of the male and female
attributes. They are Zos, "the body considered as a whole"; and Kia, which is
quite simply defined in his Book of Pleasure (Self-Love) as "the absolute freedom
which being free is mighty enough to be "reality" and free at any time: therefore is
not potential or manifest (except as its instant possibility) by ideas of freedom or
"means," but by the Ego being free to receive it, by being free of ideas about it

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and by not believing." Got all that clear? The Hand would be phallic, while the
oval Eye is a yonic symbol.
Obviously all of these levels of practice can involve oral, genital, anal,
digital, mental, verbal or cybernetic engagements in variations and combinations.
Oral sex can be seen as an act of worship performed upon the sacred yoni or
lingam that symbolizes the individual divinity of one's lover, as well as being
highly conducive to training and controlling the learned or conditioned reflex of
orgasm itself. As an expediter of successful and ecstatic intercourse, it provides
three of the essential requirements: lubrication, lubrication, lubrication! Crowley,
in his charming late-Victorian way, termed fellatio and cunnilingus ‘vampirism’,
and saw them in terms of drawing or exchanging energy from a partner; similar
beliefs occur in Taoist alchemy. In maatian magick, the formula of IPSOS ("by
that same mouth") may clearly connect with oral sex, and in all workings the elixir
should be shared and sacramentally consumed. In rites where one partner is
acting as the seer, scryer, or entranced focus of some kind this is perhaps the
most easily performed method of stimulation, and by repeated climaxes one can
create a trance state which Crowley termed "eroto-comatose lucidity" and held in
high regard. It involved repeating sexual acts to the point of exhaustion or death,
resulting in a profoundly altered state. What a hopeless romantic! The Japanese
call it gokuraku-ojo, ‘sweet death’.

D) The Scarlet Woman & the Beast: Conceptions of Babalon

"And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked
with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will show unto thee the judgment of the
great whore that sitteth upon many waters;
With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants
of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.
So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit
upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads
and ten horns.
And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold
and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of
abominations and filthiness of her fornication:
And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE
GREAT: THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of
the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her I wondered with great admiration."
- Revelations, 17, 1-6

The Book of the Law proclaims that the rites of magick are to be carried
out by human avatars of Nuit and Hadit, and that they bear the titles of the
Scarlet Woman Babalon (so spelled for qabalistic reasons) and of the Beast.
Clearly much of this symbolism is drawn from the biblical book of Revelations,
and it has always been my feeling that this particular vision was received by a

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prophet who perceived the fiery New Aeon but found it so alien to his belief
system that his only response could be one of terror. Early Christianity was
obsessed with an exclusively male image of the deity, while the Aeon of Horus is
rediscovering the more primal concept of the Goddess. In looking upon this
notion of Babalon we find her image suppressed and distorted but still surviving,
and we may examine the roots of her worship and consider her power today.
The Greek name Babylon is derived from the Semitic Bab-El (or AL)
meaning "Gate of God", specifically that of On, which was a city of the Sun God.
It appears in the Bible as the Tower of Babel, and opens up a whole complex of
symbols: of the holy city at the center of the world, or in The Vision & The Voice
as the city of the pyramids which links Babalon to the sphere of Binah the Great
Mother; of the gate as a metaphor for the yoni, and the chalice, cauldron, grail or
womb which contains the solar force of the sacred child; and of the wild Goddess
who rides upon the Beast, an archetypical form found in countless mythologies.
In the Middle East we have various deities of passion, magick and war often
linked to lions, such as Astarte, Qatesh, Anath, Lilith, Inanna and Ishtar; and the
whole interlocked complex of Egyptian goddesses whose aspects ceaselessly
flow into one another: Sekhmet and Isis and Maat, Hathor and Tefnut and Bast,
all may share a leonine form. Other goddesses of unfettered sensual power
might include the Chinese Hsi Wang Mu, South American Tlazolteotl, Greek
Aphrodite Pornea, and Afro-Caribbean Erzulie, Oshun and Pomba Gira. In India
great Kali's mount is the tiger, and in northern climes the vehicle of Freya the
lady of romance is again the cat. These are all primal deities of love, life, fertility,
intoxication, magick, music, dance, and the raging solar fire. All represent Shakti,
the fundamental energy of the universe itself, also seen in serpent form as the
Hindu Kundalini or the Egyptian Uraeus symbolizing royalty. The Tarot trump of
Strength or Lust, that represents her as a woman riding upon a lion, is connected
to the Hebrew letter Teth which means 'serpent'.
This goddess is often seen as the giver of sovereignty to the king, the
physical manifestation of the realm or city he rules. In early times it was the rite of
sacred marriage repeated at yearly intervals in the holy temple that empowered
or legitimated all rulership. Later the rites of so-called sacred prostitution (which
can never be understood in the shallow and twisted terms of our contemporary
morality) gave every man the chance of communion with the goddess through
the hierodules or priestesses who represented her. On a very deep level many
once realized that it was the female force, whether seen as woman or deity, who
gave life and dealt death to all. She was fate, power, wisdom, beauty, and
magick, and to link with her was to know the divine.
Unfortunately compulsory monotheism came along and screwed us all up,
destroying what had worked for centuries and filling the world with gray sorrow.
Wilhelm Reich was not the only person to notice that sexual repression leads to
warfare, but of course he had Nazi Germany for a case study. Nasty old men
vowed to celibacy have long attempted to pervert and control society, and to do
this it was necessary to dominate the libido of men and utterly terminate the
occasionally more rational influence of women. Temples and libraries were
burned, whole cultures were destroyed, and we were left with the foul polluted

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mess we have today, as exemplified by the recent massive pedophilia scandals
in the Catholic Church. However, it has proven impossible to utterly remove the
influence of the Lady. Even in orthodox Christianity the cult of the Virgin Mary
constantly resurfaced, and in the heretic sects of the gnostics we find her even
more clearly. There Sophia, or Wisdom, is the female face of God, exiled and
defiled, fallen from grace, but ultimately inseparable from the primordial glory.
Another of her divine names is Barbelo, clearly cognate to Babalon; and the
Hebrew concept of the Shekinah is another strand of the weave.

In Elizabethan times the magicians John Dee and Edward Kelly performed
a series of workings designed to communicate with the angels who transmitted
the Enochian language, employing a special altar of cedar wood to hold the
crystal or shew-stone in which they scryed. About its border were these words:
"This is the place of the outpouring of forgotten treasure in the form of ecstasy.
Only fire is substantial here. This is the way of Babalon and of the Beast who is
the first form. The eyes only need rest upon the name of any guardian and its
representative will speedily be encountered". In Enochian the word Babalon
means 'harlot’ and this section of Dee's record gives some sense of her ways:

"I am the daughter of Fortitude and ravished every hour from my youth. For
behold, I am Understanding, and science dwelleth in me; and the heavens
oppress me. They cover and desire me with infinite appetite; for none that are
earthly have embraced me, for I am shadowed with the Circle of the Stars, and
covered with the morning clouds. My feet are swifter than the winds, and my
hands are sweeter than the morning dew. My garments are from the beginning,
and my dwelling place is in myself. The Lion knoweth not where I walk, neither
do the beasts of the field understand me. I am deflowered, yet a virgin; I sanctify
and am not sanctified. Happy is he that embraceth me: for in the night season I
am sweet, and in the day full of pleasure. My company is a harmony of many
symbols, and my lips sweeter than health itself. I am a harlot for such as ravish
me, and a virgin with such as know me not. Purge your streets, O ye sons of
men, and wash your houses clean; make yourselves holy, and put on
righteousness. Cast out your old strumpets, and burn their clothes and then I will
bring forth children unto you and they shall be the Sons of Comfort in the Age
that is to come."

In the esoteric gnostic text from the Nag Hammadi Library called Thunder,
Perfect Mind, George W. MacRae translation, we find a similar vision of the
female form of the divine:

“For I am the first and the last.

I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.

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I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one and many are her sons.
I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband.
I am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom,
and it is my husband who begot me.
I am the mother of my father and the sister of my husband,
and he is my offspring.

I am the silence that is incomprehensible

and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name.

For I am knowledge and ignorance.

I am shame and boldness.
I am shameless; I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and peace.
Give heed to me.
I am the one who is disgraced and the great one.

I am the one who is hated everywhere

and who has been loved everywhere.
I am the one whom they call Life, and you have called Death.
I am the one whom they call Law,
and you have called Lawlessness.
I am the one whom you have pursued,
and I am the one whom you have seized.
I am the one you have scattered,
and you have gathered me together.
I am the one before whom you have been ashamed,
and you have been shameless to me.
I am she who does not keep festival,
and I am she whose festivals are many.
I, I am godless, and I am one whose God is great.”

From yet another context we draw this version:

"Axis, earthmen, is not one idea, or even one place... it is a thousand million
ideas and places... it is an apocalyptic magnet... a dazzling jewel that none can
possess... a brilliant candle consuming wandering butterflies... a fantastic spider's
web strewn with the remains of a billion dreams...

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... but perhaps most of all, Axis is the eternal erotic chimera, an extraordinary
creature possessed of an unnatural, terrifying beauty, which is more than the eye
of man can withstand, a terrifying beauty which violently destroys all that
surrounds it while concealing deep within… a heart of... fathomless... mysterious
silence...
... the erotic chimera, she who is a living embodiment of the sublime paradox,
which is a complete mystery not only to the world... but to itself, also... "
- So Beautiful And So Dangerous, Angus McKie

Other visions appear in Crowley's The Vision & the Voice, and in those
ancient words of Isis: "I am all that was, is, and ever shall be; no man hath lifted
my veil."
Perhaps it is not surprising that Crowley and Parsons would be drawn to
such powerful imagery, and to feel themselves somehow incomplete without
union with such a bride. Jack Parsons was notorious for his Babalon Working,
performed with L. Ron Hubbard and designed to manifest the goddess in a
physical incarnation. In tantra it is often proclaimed that: "Shiva without Shakti is
a corpse". The classical magician Simon Magus apparently believed that his
consort Helen was in fact Sophia, the gnostic personification of the female side of
God, separated by the act of the original creation of the world, cast down through
the spheres of the tree of life represented by the archons, lost to forgetfulness,
incarnate through myriad forms, until the final time of reuniting. Many mages
throughout history have sought partnership with women of power who could
initiate them into the mysteries; in Tibetan Buddhism the Dakinis or 'wisdom-
holders' have the power to transfigure the devotee, and in Hindu tantra the
Suvasini or 'sweet-smelling woman' bestows union with the Goddess herself.
This powerful female role of the enchantress or seductress is an ancient
archetype, descended from primordial wise women and shamans; consider
Medea, Circe or Calypso in Homer's Odyssey.
The forced role of slave or abused victim has sadly become far more
prevalent in so-called Christian times, when the bizarre ‘sin complex’ has twisted
so many psyches into truly warped forms; and the current involuntary reflex is
that of the dominatrix or virago. The very concept of the Scarlet Woman Babalon
as an officer or priestess of the new aeon has mutated through Revelations and
the Book of the Law, and must now be taken beyond the cultural limitations of
Crowley's conceptions to a new vision of the neo-tantric suvasini or dakini. Who,
after all, is a mere 19th century man to say how the sexuality of Hell's Belles shall
manifest now that centuries of oppression and repression are slowly drawing to a
well-deserved demise? On some level we must accept the notion that every
human is in essence both a physical and a divine incarnate presence.

“O night of stars that coruscate

Like semen spated in the womb of Night!
O serpent woman, smiling sinister!
O lovely dancer at the feast to be!” - Jack Parsons

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 Turning now from the goddess to the animal, from Beauty to the Beast,
Crowley often defined his male form of magickal sexuality in terms of the Great
Wild Beast called Therion, not unlike the satyr-god Pan (whose horns and
hooves were appropriated by the Devil) or the primordial form of Shiva as Rudra
the Howler, or the tantrik Mahakala, Lord of Time. The joining of women with
gods in animal form extends far back in myth, and may even raise the issue of
shapeshifting or lycanthropy. ‘Making the beast with two backs’ is quite an old
metaphor for intercourse, and bestial or atavistic imagery prevails at the dark
sabbat of the witches, where they would ‘Dance in circles, back to back!’ And
who is this fabled Beast? He is the first god, the horned god, the son and lover,
lord of the hunt; the Celtic Cernunnos and the Lord of Beasts from the ancient
Mohenjo-Daro civilization, the shamanic master of all animals, serpent-crowned
Dionysos, antlered Freyr, and the Goat-God, great Pan whose very name means
'All'.

“O goat-hoofed One, O horned One, O pillar of lightning…”

- Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli I, 23

Animal and atavistic imagery abounds in sexual magick. For example,

those beasties sacred to the lunar Hekate might include the phallic Snake
(whose tongue is a symbol of oral sexuality); the Dog or Wolf (doing' it doggy
style?); the Ape (monkeys are associated with masturbation); the Owl (sacred to
Lilith) and the Frog (a potent image of the Leaper between worlds, as amphibians
exist between realms; their splayed legs may resemble those of a human jerking
rhythmically during intercourse and they appear as spirits at the very earliest
period of Egyptian mythology). These are all numbered among the familiars of
witches, and Crowley gave many of his Scarlet Women animal titles including
most of those here. I must confess that it took me many years of sleepless nights
to have any concept of how on earth the formula of the Frog could be seen in
sexual terms. They are hardly as sensual as the Cat, who among the ancient
Egyptian goddesses of pleasure, power, joy, destruction, and frenzied sexual
heat such as Bast and Sekhmet was held in the highest regard.
How did Crowley develop so strangely? Well, let's face facts: he was a
wealthy upper-class Englishman at the turn of the last century, at a time when
the sun had not yet set upon the British Empire, and so he was in a position of
male privilege which we can barely imagine today. The notion of women was
rapidly changing as well, as the romantic notions of the Decadents and the Art
Nouveau movement nearly deified the erotic dancers of the idealized harems or
eastern seraglios, inspired by Wilde's Salome or Flaubert's Salambo. Mata Hari,
Isadora Duncan, and countless stars of the silver screen forever changed the
image of the female. Women began to be seen as both powerful and dangerous:
the femme fatale, destroyer and lover. The age-old striptease or dance of seven
veils, mythologized in the Babylonian tale of Ishtar's descent to the underworld,
now resurfaces as the dance of the path of Teth in Maatian magicks. The
Woman as All Otherness is ever the focus of fascination and idol of perversity,
possessed of the seductive power to cloud men’s minds.

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 Vague rumor has it that men are kind of weird, and in point of fact they do
have a higher statistical rate of bizarre and indeed criminal behavior than women.
There is no denying that Crowley was a very odd bird indeed, and his challenges
with women are legendary; we can say that he was an unusual product of his
time, and that he evolved as best he could, and that none of us was actually
there at the time. In any event, a pivotal element of his erotic magick remains the
concept of the Scarlet Woman called Babalon, the avatar of the Goddess in
human form. In Her honor we may perhaps attempt to reclaim the names of
Whore or Harlot as terms of honor, power, and absolute freedom; or we may
need to create a better terminology, and ‘sex industry workers’ sounds far too
Marxist for comfort. Perhaps we may consider courtesan, maenad, hierodule, or
simply the Beloved? In any case, we must discard the still all too frequent
chauvinist notion that she is simply the receptive vessel of male power, and
recognize her total independence of all preconceptions. Shakti is the force that
manifests all things, and not every goddess is the Mother Goddess.

“15. Now ye shall know that the chosen priest & apostle of infinite space is the
prince priest the Beast; and in his woman called the Scarlet Woman is all power
given. They shall gather my children into their fold: they shall bring the glory of
the stars into the hearts of men.
16. For he is ever a sun, and she a moon. But to him is the winged secret flame,
and to her the stooping starlight.
17. But ye are not so chosen.
18. Burn upon their brows, o splendrous serpent!
19. O azure-lidded woman, bend upon them!
20. The key of the rituals is in the secret word which I have given unto him.”
- from Chapter I of The Book of the Law

E) Beyond the Tattered Fringe, Outside the Jagged Edge

"Bid Thy maidens who follow Thee bestrew us a bed of flowers immortal, that we
may take our pleasure thereupon. Bid Thy satyrs heap thorns among the flowers,
that we may take our pain thereupon. Let the pleasure and pain be mingled in
one supreme offering unto the Lord Adonai!" - Liber LXV, c. IV, v. 47

As I open this section I experience the chilling and horrible thought that it
might wind up coming off as a safe-sex message. For the record, I completely
support absolute freedom and polymorphous perversity in all its forms, enjoy a
lifestyle of willful hedonism whenever possible, and have been around the merry-
go-round a few times myself. However, here I will touch upon some of the most
volatile and extreme forms of sensuality known to humanity, and I freely admit
that my own preference leans more toward pleasure than pain. Algolagnia is
simply not my cup of tea, so I cannot claim to have field-tested absolutely all of
this stuff. On the other hand I have absorbed some very strange literature and

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met some very unusual people, and where experience may sometimes fall short,
imagination knows no limits.
Organizations such as COYOTE (Cast Off Your Old Tired Ethics) have pointed to
the long herstory of sacred sexuality, and the tail end of the 20th century has
produced a wide range of liberation movements (notably for our civilization's
classic ‘others’, woman and gays) and special interest groups for every possible
fetishism under the moon and sun (the word fetish is derived from the
Portuguese feitico, ‘charm, sorcery’). Sadomasochism, cophrophilia, extreme
body types anywhere from midgets to obesity to amputees, bodily modifications
such as piercing, tattoos, scarification, branding, and even transgender surgery
all have their very own life-style magazines and obligatory web-sites; role-
reversal, cross-dressing, bisexual experiments in androgyny and gender-bending
are not totally uncommon among the erotic avant-garde. However, much of the
wife-swapping and anonymous bath house sex (common even in Crowley's time)
seem to have become at least a partial casualty of the epidemics of AIDS and
other STDs. Careful now, kiddies! Latex condoms can be your friends, so
develop abiding appreciation for the love glove. Hypocritical of me to say so, no
doubt, since I hate the damn things, and so does every other man on earth.
I shudder to think about what disembodied phone-sex and the ‘one hand
on your keyboard, one hand on your gland’ Internet may imply for the future, but
apparently pornography is about the only thing in cyberspace that actually turns a
profit. It is perhaps a pity that the world contains so much tasteless pornography
and so little erotica that is not pretentious and boring. Oh, well, I can't say I've
actually been searching that hard. Perhaps there is Middle Way. Erotica in one
form or another extends into prehistory; one theory regarding the ancient stone
images of buxom Venus figurines, usually described as fertility goddesses, is that
they were paleolithic pornography.
Technically the term ‘neuter-booter’ refers to screwing around with aliens
or inanimate objects. Dildos (a predecessor of the wand), vibrators and other
equipment may be properly consecrated as ritual tools and ornamented
accordingly. Oils and lubricants may include scents appropriate to the qabalistic
sphere of operation chosen; colored sheets, candles and lighting, music and
incense, all contribute to the creation of an appropriate ritual atmosphere.
While we may question whether anything at all is still strictly verboten, the
main possibilities which occur to me include pederasty, bestiality or zoophilia,
and necrophilia (which Arthur Miller so charmingly termed "Egyptian love"), all of
which would seem to involve an element of violation in the absence of informed
consent which I find rather unsavory and unthelemic. Maybe they do count as
black magic, if anything does. There is clearly more to Mr. Spare's concept of the
New Sexuality than scented body lotions, ‘leather or rubber tonight, dear?’,
vibrating plastic sex toys, coffee-table tantra books, and the Victoria's Secret
catalog. For some this extends to various forms of full-fledged psychodrama.
The subculture of sadomasochism or bondage & discipline is consumed
with dramas of dominance and submission, surrender and violation, and perhaps
an obsessive play-acting of old imprints which at best may actually allow people
to process the wounds of their childhoods, releasing muscular armoring and

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blocked emotional energy. Complexes locked around sexuality are hardly
uncommon and deconditioning and reprogramming may be quite necessary. Yet
one should always recall that subtle difference between indulgence and
compulsion, and be aware that amateur efforts can lead to serious physical
consequences; tie someone's wrists the wrong way and cut-off circulation can
lead to permanent nerve damage. Get a bit medieval on someone's luscious
derriere and you'd better be careful of the spine. Have signals arranged and go
light on the alcohol. Remember what the Bible says: "Why did Jesus die on the
cross? He forgot his safe-word!" There is a fine line between pain, and pleasure,
and lots more pain.
However, there is a long tradition of darkly dramatic ritual in these black
arts, similar to the twisted theatricality of Artaud and Genet; LaVey's Church of
Satan, for example, has kept alive the tradition of the Black Mass and various
other scenarios, and Flowers has implied the existence of an order similar to that
in the classic Story of O. Crowley had extreme components in his personality as
well, and it is remarkable how many things he tried out in his life. There is a
charming little anecdote in his Confessions where he speaks of how, as a young
man, he was convinced that he had done it all; but then he met a Mexican
prostitute who asked him if he had ever been "pricked with needles in the dark",
and he was "overcome with shame" to admit that he had not! S&M scenes
actually do have a strong resemblance to magical ceremonies; the almost
religious intensity, the specialized costumes and equipment, the dungeon as
temple, the hierarchy of a secret priesthood, the ritualized responses, and the
breaking of taboos such as sex with strangers or acts perceived as forbidden
inevitably release considerable power for transformation. Practitioners aware of
magical techniques may well make use of trance states induced by bondage or
flagellation, unique methods of charging sigils, and the marking of the human
body as a virtual pantacle. Obviously, many find this stuff pretty darned exciting,
and the bottom line is that altered states are paths to awakening power. Beyond
any limits, even cophrophilia and necrophilia have been practiced by radical
tantric sects such as the Aghoris.
While the modern Craft may not speak too loudly of such practices, we
should recall that Gerald Gardner's version of the revival, which was the basis for
most others, clearly did include blindfolds, bondage and light flagellation; not for
nothing was birching known as the English Vice, and many accounts claim that
the subtle stimulation resulting can carry the subject into an altered state without
always reaching the level of either agony or ecstasy. Flagellation was quite
common in rites of celebration and initiation in many ancient cultures, and clearly
many find intimate bondage or a good spanking quite stimulating; it can in fact
release energies of great intensity. The ancient graeco-egyptian magi also
employed blindfolds, and medieval witches induced trance by being hooded and
bound in a sort of hammock called the Witches' Cradle; the modern innovation of
the sensory-deprivation float-tank also points toward the cutting off of the senses
as a fast track to turning inwards. The suspension of the Sioux warriors in the
Sun Dance has become a model for some of our modern primitives as well.

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 As a footnote, I might add that the recent vogue for practicing auto-erotic
asphyxiation (self-strangulation to the point of orgasm), while an undeniably
interesting manifestation of the Tarot formula of the Hanged Man, may have
unintended consequences such as those which cost us the talents of the
wonderful underground cartoonist Vaughn Bode and of Michael Hutchence, the
lead singer of INXS, and now David Carridine. It may also be an embarrassing
way for your corpse to be found. It is a well-known physiological phenomenon
that men ejaculate while being hanged, and the mystic mandrake root treasured
by sorcerers, whose form is often nearly human, was said to grow at the foot of
the gallows after being spawned by the final spurting of the executed.
It is a common cliché that devil-worshippers indulge in orgies, and they
exist as a thriving mundane sub-culture as well. The use of masks to create
anonymity can create a highly charged atmosphere. At least one recent writer
has proposed a magical circle formed by the writhing bodies of alternating males
and females locked together in an endless chain of oral-genital contacts, no
doubt very dramatic if the choreography can be arranged. Sex with strangers in
unaccustomed locales, without the normal boundaries or relationship issues, can
trigger frenzied responses. However, one should be aware that large groups
engaged in extreme behavior may also release large amounts of energy, and not
all will necessarily flow along the designated lines of magical intention. Those
who cajole their partners into such volatile activities may not always find their
reactions to their liking. Even established circles of friends or trained and
determined magi may discover that once the bonds of couples are loosened
there is no way to predict where their emotions may carry people. This is not
intended as a moral judgment, but simply a fact of life. It is never easy to get the
Genie back in the bottle.
Before engaging in S&M it is advisable to have some real training in the
techniques from those experienced if not actually professional; a trip to the local
emergency room can really wreck the mood, and so can misplacing the keys to
the handcuffs. Activities such as piercing should never be indulged in by
amateurs, and it is a sad truth indeed that bodily fluids in our era may indeed be
venom as well as nectar. Depressingly enough, I am indeed forced to suggest
the practice of Safe Sex, a contradiction in terms if ever there was one.
Chaos magick, following Freud, has emphasized the union of the twin
forces of Eros and Thanatos: as Woody Allen observed, "Sex and death: two
things that come once in a lifetime, except after death you're not nauseous." At
the same time, we may recall Winston Churchill's ever-profound summing-up:
"The pleasure is momentary, the position is ridiculous, and the expense is
monstrous." Celtic wisdom is so often expressed in triads. My readers may well
question how much of this stuff I have actually tried myself, and I will leave you
wondering about my answer: some of it. For the real freaks see my Q. Sex
Magick: History & Practice bibliography entry; I was pretty thorough on that one.

Perhaps the Ultimate Final Secret of sex-magick is the happy cliché, the
ultimate truth, and the simple complexity that the nature of the universe really is

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Love, sweet Love; and that is what makes the wheels turn round. If you find it,
treat it right.

“If I had my way we’d sleep every night all wrapped around each other like
rattlesnakes.” - William S. Burroughs

The Pharmacopoeia Maleficorum

“I hate to recommend drugs, violence or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always

worked for me.” - Hunter S. Thompson

Okay, kids… a few moments of straight talk about entheogens! Speaking

entirely hypothetically but perhaps quite realistically now... we can’t deny that the
modern occult revival arrived gland-in-hand with the psychedelic revolution,
which made the musical and political and psychological culture of the late 20th
century into whatever the hell it was. As Owsley Stanley once said, "Chemistry is
applied theology.” A popular 1960s slogan was "Reality is just a crutch for people
who can't handle drugs."
The powers-that-be have always declared most mind-altering substances
illegal, and since our governments constantly lie to us, this clearly must mean
that they are probably very good things indeed. Their influence on all of human
history is undeniable, and the range of available possibilities remarkable.
Intoxication is a frequent metaphor for ecstasy in many spiritual traditions.
Consider Sufi or Skaldic poetry, recall the brews, potions and flying ointments
that led to the frenzies of the Witches’ Sabbat, and the newly-made vintage of the
wine in the Dionysian Bacchanal; the peyote of the Native American vision quest
and the amanita mushrooms of the Siberian shaman; the lost sacred substances
of initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries and the fabled Indic soma. I have no
idea where toad-licking fits in. Chaos magick rather coyly refers to all of this fun
as "chemognosis". Modern science is producing new brain drugs every day, and
we might consider that many traditional substances were pretty toxic and often
had gawd-awful side effects, from stuff like datura or jimson weed (the Manson
Family was into this!), and in parts of Africa the use of ‘ordeal poisons’. My, don't
those sound appetizing!
In magical terms I may seek to classify the possibilities by the traditional
four elements. On first view we might loosely classify alcohol and all other liquids
under the sphere of Water; smokables such as marijuana, hashish and opium
under Air; depressants would be Earth and stimulants Fire; and the psychedelics
are clearly Spirit. A little bit can go a long way, and the importance of
concentration and control in many rituals could imply that it might be a bad idea
to attempt some of the more complicated practices while totally blitzed.
Alternatively, long centuries of tantrik tradition suggest that many rites are best
performed while happily whacked out of your skull. The decision must then be
based on exigent circumstances and the current beliefs of all the individuals
involved, and on the wisdom of Timothy Leary, who always emphasized two vital

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aspects for any such experiment: set and setting. Be in the right state and in the
right time and place. The mind-set previously programmed by the participants
affects every aspect of subsequent experience, and the setting or location and
conditions under which it takes place are vital to an effective and meaningful
outcome. It may also be prudent to have at least one sober person to guard the
circle and deal with any emergencies.
I find that modern science conveniently accepts a fourfold division as well,
and the common classifications of intoxicants are inebriants, hallucinogens,
hypnotics, and stimulants. So:

Inebriants: this covers many unpleasant chemicals such as chloroform,

benzene, ether and other inadvisable solvents; but the best known and most
widely distributed is alcohol in all its countless varieties, and the act of drinking
must clearly relate to Water. The process of making various forms of alcohol or
'spirits' is among the oldest types of alchemy, and ale, mead, wine, and the
harder stuff have been used in a wide range of religio-magical contexts
worldwide, while the brewing of beer may well predate the baking of bread. Many
ancient peoples also mingled a wide variety of other unusual substances in their
drinks of choice; in Greece the fabled psychedelics of the Eleusinian Mysteries
were mixed in the wine, and the Vikings spiced up their ales with all kinds of wild
things (henbane and hemlock and hemp, mandrake and mushrooms, belladonna
and opium poppies). In Old Norse myth the richly fermented honey-mead is the
sacred drink of Odin, the very wellspring of poetic inspiration and source of all
sorcerous effectiveness; a frequently used rune-magical word is ALU, meaning
both ‘Ale’ and ‘magical power’. Even the simple act of Sharing Water (or
whatever) is a primal affirmation of the friendship, blood brotherhood, and vital
hospitality that is a key to the social matrix of most human cultures worldwide.
According to the Roman historian Tacitus the Germanic tribes would debate all of
their most important decisions twice: once roaring drunk, then again cold sober
and hung over the following morning. This clearly proves that so-called
barbarians are not necessarily stupid. Wine has a most ancient history as the
sacramental liquid, and the rites of the Greek Dionysos and Roman Bacchus
long predate any Christian usage as the holy Eucharist in the rites of communion.
One of the odder magico-theological debates I have had over the years
was whether or not mixed drinks were okay as a sacrament: martinis on the altar,
their ice cubes gently clinking? Perhaps just for diabolical or qlipothic rituals? For
a while we tried to figure out which species of booze could be attributed to the
various Tunnels of Set… alcohol has a well-known tendency to clear away
inhibitions; moderate intake can stimulate pleasure, excess can easily become
toxic. Designate a charioteer before the orgies begin. To quote Dean Martin, “If
you can lie on the floor without holding on, you're not drunk.”

Hallucinogens: includes all the varieties of hemp or cannabis, and also

such well-known mushrooms as the amanita muscaria or fly agaric beloved of
shamans and the wondrous psilocybe; also peyote, mescaline, harmaline, LSD
and other synthetics, toxic belladonna and henbane, and certain exotic South

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American vines. Because their effect is largely in the mental sphere I will attribute
the smokable cannabis derivatives such as hashish and marijuana mostly to Air
and the others to Spirit.
From hemp we receive the bhang beloved of tantrik sadhus or the reefer
of the beatniks, the hashish of the Assassins or the ganja of the Rastafarians.
This is among the most ancient and harmless of human intoxicants, and may be
the most useful and manageable adjunct to arcane practices. Long long ago in a
galaxy far far away I participated in the founding of a new cult of the green
goddess Euphoria, leafy lady of the high, twin sister of Eris. Her worship gives
blessings good for ten thousand lifetimes, minimum. There is also a Taoist
cannabis goddess named Ma Ku, ‘Lady Hemp’. We might note that magicians
Pascal Beverly Randolph and Aleister Crowley were both very enthusiastic
devotees of the "Grass of the Arabs" as well. Cannabis can indeed give wings to
the imagination, as long as one can maintain enough focus to be useful; it is
probably the least toxic and most salutary of any of any these varied possibilities,
and perfectly suited to represent Air as the breath of life. Lord Shiva is also
noteworthy as its patron, and Hindu saddhus or holy men float on a cloud of
heavenly hemp. Crowley in 777 remarks that cannabis will "produce in one mood
voluptuous visions which pertain to Venus, and in another confer the power of
self-analysis, which is Mercurial." Remember clapping your hands to the
childhood rhyme “Patty-cake, Patty-cake, Baker’s Man”?

"Cakes of light, cakes of light, IO PAN!

Make me a Beast as Great as you can!
Roll it,
and smoke it,
and mark it V.V.V.V.V.
then Cross the Abyss, solar-phallically!"

I also note that nitrous oxide, a.k.a. laughing gas, is a remarkable tool for
tracing thoughts to their source, and a real blast for charging sigils. William
James, the noted author of the classic The Varieties of Religious Experience,
was said to have used this in his investigation of his own mind.
In the next step up we must reserve a special place in our black hearts for
the psychedelics, from magic mushrooms to the latest synthetics, in the opening
of the doors of perception. Entheogens can indeed be doorways to divinity, true
forms of Transcendental Medication. Castaneda's early work with peyote and
mescaline, Leary's popular experiments with LSD and McKenna's with other
possibilities, have produced unique and unexpected happenings, and the ripples
of culture shock continue to spread outwards. Those freely-growing and very
pretty little psilocybin mushrooms became the vehicle of the 80s and 90s, a
healthy organic vegetarian alternative in an era when it seems that corporate
culture has largely co-opted the impetus of the psychedelic revolution into yet
another form of life-style product. As one sad example of this, the merely
recreational use of Ecstasy in the rave subculture often seems designed to
reduce a remarkable substance with genuine therapeutic potential into just

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another distraction to keep the empty-headed masses occupied. In early LSD
experiments (before it was banned), good results were obtained in the treatment
of alcoholism and also reduced recidivism in prison trials. In a free democracy, of
course, everyone is entitled to my opinion: I do not believe that science should be
held hostage to politics. However (and this is important) is very wise to recall that
the quality and purity of most street drugs is extremely unreliable and potentially
toxic.
The fifth element of Spirit is also what you yourself bring to the experience of
these entheogenic equations. As Robert Hunter said, "Once in a while you get
shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right."

Hypnotics cause states of calm, stupor or slumber; examples are kava,

mandrake, opium and its bastard child heroin, and all such narcotics and
tranquilizers. I ascribe them to Earth, and while they clearly may have some
benefits in healing I remain rather dubious about their magical uses, although I
am sure that we have all heard romantic tales of the daemon sultan opium...

Stimulants include cocaine and amphetamines; qat, pituri, and betel; and
such socially acceptable toxic substances as tobacco, coffee, tea, cocoa, coca,
and cola. As sources of energy I connect them to Fire, and some may have their
moments, yet they do have a rather checkered history. Cocaine is not called the
'devil's dandruff' without reason, and to have known junkies is all too seldom to
respect them. Crowley was one of the earliest researchers to scientifically
document the effects of many of these substances, and one often wonders
where his career might have led him without perpetual alternation of cocaine and
heroin whenever he felt that one or the other was becoming an addiction. It
should be noted that for much of his life they were still legal, and his use was
originally medically prescribed for asthma and other conditions. At the time this
was more or less socially acceptable and quite widespread, and much less was
known about their perils; in fact, they were all perfectly legal when he started,
and Freud himself was also a major cokehead. Now it has become much more
apparent that for every odd literary icon like the Great Beast or William S.
Burroughs, there are far too many sordid overdoses in lavatories. Where are
Elvis and Lenny Bruce when we really need them? Oh well, if you don't have a
good vice it's hard to get a grip on your self.
Some personality types appear far more subject than others to such loss
of control. Metabolism and genetics are very different for every individual, and
quite frankly I have come to suspect that the more synthetic such a chemical
substance is, the further it overflows into the realm of the qlipoth.
Methamphetamines are a good example: from their birth in the laboratories of
Nazi scientists striving to keep the Luftwaffe flying to their current distribution by
violent motorcycle gangs, they remain rather unsavory. The same can be said for
most of the legal pharmaceutical pill-heads, and prescription-drug abuse is a
huge phenomenon in America (with some of its highest rates in Mormon Utah,
strangely enough!) and around the world. To quote The Who: "Uppers and
Downers - either way blood flows!" To quote Frank Zappa: “Speed will turn you

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into your parents.” Reading over this, I do seem to note some occasional and
quite unfortunate incidents of my ill-informed opinions appearing to become mere
heavy-handed moralism. Frankly, I still can't tell whether my alleged literary style
in this work is absolutely seamless or wildly uneven; but whenever I look at the
huge overuse of Ritalin in American schools I know perfectly well that Johnny is
not hyperactive, just bored, and he gets more than enough chemicals in his
system from a diet of junk food. Since the advent of Viagra, there has been a
virtual epidemic of STDs in old-age retirement homes. We expect results and we
get consequences. Addiction is not True Will, but not all use is abuse…
Once again, Crowley was a pioneer in both experimenting with and
documenting of the drug experience, writing a number of articles in the Equinox
and the novel Diary of a Drug Fiend. Published extracts of his magical diaries
clearly show his struggles with his habits (see The Fountain of Hyacinth),
although it really must be remembered that in his era these substances were
freely available in pharmacies, and that half the population of America was
hooked on patent medicines made up largely of alcohol and laudanum. It has
also recently been suggested that some of his work in espionage during the
World Wars (for both British and American intelligence services) may have
involved his expertise in unusual drugs, as a forerunner of the CIA’s LSD and
MK-ULTRA experiments. Many of his devotees see Crowley as an excuse for
overindulgence, but one should really never use anyone else's excuse for such
things, or forget that a great deal of his usage grew out of chronic and painful
health conditions. Perhaps this is the reason Crowley has such a scowl on his
face as he gazes out from the back row of the cover picture on the Beatles’ Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album (between a sadhu and Mae West). At
any rate, freedom of personal choice is the only possible Thelemic attitude here,
and the Book of the Law has some fairly suggestive lines on the subject:

“I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the
hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs
whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all.”
(AL, II, 22)

In his Djeridensis Comment he has this to say: “Aiwass now flings his third great
challenge at the world. He denies flatly the truth of all the teachings of the past.
He tells us that to worship Hadit, that is, to cause him to stir, we should make
ourselves drunk by the use of wine and certain strange drugs. So much is
common knowledge. But he adds the startling statement: “They shall not harm ye
at all.” One can but gasp; to argue in support of his statement would be beyond
the power of any man. The proof must be with time. Lest there be folly, let me
say that this passage does not license reckless debauch. The use of drink and
drugs is to be strictly an act of Magick.”
Both western and eastern forms of alchemy were as much concerned with
the spiritual and intellectual transformation of the alchemist as with any merely
external chemical or metallurgical processes. Obligatory notes of relative caution,
however, are usually customary. According to Doonesbury "There is no room in

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the drug culture for amateurs”, and Pete Caroll says "Never put anything in your
mouth that you can't spell." Then again, many folks in both the British and
American mainstreams of occultism still seem very nervous about the question of
drugs; some valid legal concerns or a lingering respectability, perhaps. Too many
very bad experiences with people who can’t handle them, more likely. However,
if the essence of magick lies in deliberately willed changes of consciousness, it
seems folly to ignore tools kindly designed by Mother Nature for precisely that
purpose. It has often been suggested that shamans on shrooms are the origin of
magick, religion, science and all of human culture.
Our many control-obsessed politicians have seized upon their utterly indefensible
and notoriously unsuccessful "war on some drugs" as a convenient excuse to gut
the Constitution, and succeeded only in massively enriching organized crime,
corrupting law enforcement, imprisoning large and quite harmless segments of
the population, and utterly betraying the public's trust. We won’t even mention the
wildly racist aspects of their very selective enforcement. "In order to preserve
liberty it became necessary to destroy it." Apparently Prohibition worked so well
in the 1930s that it seemed like a good idea to try it again, but somehow back
then we had enough brains left to actually repeal Prohibition. Strangely enough,
the most truly lethal drugs are those that are still legal: alcohol and tobacco kill off
significantly large chunks of the population every year with impunity while
marijuana harms no one. This is precisely the kind of casual hypocrisy that gives
people enormous contempt for their “representatives”. A recent study of the
much-touted D.A.R.E. program of anti-drug education in the schools has
discovered that it actually makes children more likely to experiment with drugs,
not less. Children usually know when they are being lied to. In the same way,
abstinence-only sex education has not only been proven to result in a higher rate
of teen pregnancy and STDs than a more rational variety, but also to be less
effective than no classes at all: it is literally worse than nothing! Apparently you
may lose the people’s trust and respect when you constantly deceive them.
Sooner or later we will have to face the simple fact that the War on Drugs has
been a monumental failure, wasting billions of dollars only to destroy people’s
lives (does that sound like any other current wars?). Other countries have
already arrived at the simple and blindingly obvious conclusion that substance
abuse responds to treatment and not punishment. As William S. Burroughs said,
“Drug control is a thin pretext, and getting thinner, to increase police powers and
to brand dissent as criminal.”
The establishment anti-drug message so dutifully echoed by many craft
covens and magickal orders seems mainly to imply a desire for simple anonymity
and immunity from the attentions of local authorities and torch-bearing mobs of
villagers, and a fear of radical extremes that ill-serves the cosmic quest for the
Holy Grail. Face facts: most teenagers in the last few decades have at least
occasionally "inhaled", and a lot of occultists started out as goddam hippies. Let
he who has never been stoned cast the first sin. Like fire, such intoxicants may
be good servants and very bad masters. It was Benjamin Franklin who said that
"The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever

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receive either." He is also reputed to have said, “Beer is proof that God loves us
and wants us to be happy.” The man partied with the Hellfire Club…
Some moralizing Theosophists like to insist that drug-induced states are
not ‘legitimate’ mystical experiences, but scientific studies have shown that they
often appear to be identical, and once you have been to a place once it is much
easier to find your way back. These varied substances are powerful triggers, and
reprogramming the brain for ecstasy or enlightenment certainly seems to serve a
higher purpose. Yogis of many schools have employed such methods without
any hesitation. In the long run, it hardly seems to matter if the doors to
enlightenment are opened by mushrooms or by hyperventilation. To quote
Dupont: “Better living through chemistry!” Remember, without chemicals, nothing
would exist! And as the prophet William Blake said, "The road of excess leads to
the palace of wisdom."

A Bibliography on Altered States

Allegro, John M. Lost Gods
The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross
Andrews, George Drugs & Magic
Bennett, C. & Osburn, L. & Osburn, J. Green Gold the Tree of Life
DeKorne, James Psychedelic Shamanism
Devereux, Paul The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia
Harner, Michael Hallucinogens & Shamanism
Heinrich, Clark Strange Fruit: Alchemy & Religion: the Hidden Truth
Leary, Timothy complete works
Lilly, John C. Programming & Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer
Center of the Cyclone
The Dyadic Cyclone
The Deep Self
Simulations of God
McKenna, Terrence The Archaic Revival
Food of the Gods
True Hallucinations
Invisible Landscape
Pendell, Dale Pharmako/poeia
Pharmako/gnosis
Pharmako/dynamis
Rudgley, Richard Essential Substances
Schultes, R.E. & Hofmann, A. Plants of the Gods
Stafford, Peter Psychedelics Encyclopedia
Weil, G./Metzner, R./Leary, T. The Psychedelic Reader
Wilson, Peter Lamborn Ploughing the Clouds
Zaehner, R.C. Zen, Drugs & Mysticism

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I Love Blood: it's a Primary Color!

"Blood is the great materializing agent, both for spirits that would incarnate in this
world (or on this plane) and for spirits which, remaining in another world, wish to
assume a shape in order to impress their presence upon human beings."
- The Magical Revival, Kenneth Grant

Blood runs red in our veins, a liquid fire, the stuff of life itself and thus of
true magick. Perhaps the earliest initiation passes through the womb-blood of
childbirth; perhaps the earliest conscious ritual centers on hunting, the animal or
god that becomes the totem or ancestor of the tribe. In the hunt we find life and
death, struggle and survival; the mysterious powers of hunger and of weapons,
and the strange forces of luck. This flows into the concepts of sacrifice (‘to make
sacred’) and of communion, to become one with the body of god by eating of the
flesh and drinking of the blood. Most importantly, blood and flame as forms of
living energy are closely related symbols.
Sacrificial ritual runs through much of the world's ancient and modern
religion; into such diverse magicks as medieval demonolatry and le Masse Noir,
or more contemporary Santeria or Voudon or Hinduism or Animism or Islam; into
the semi-sublimated Christian crucifixion and communion which grew out of the
earliest Hebrew slaughter of animals. Even Crowley did experiment on occasion
with blood sacrifice (a toad, a few pigeons, a goat once; and apparently a cat, for
which his nether regions will doubtless burn forever in the nether regions!) as
have several other varieties of post-modern magus. The controlled release of
blood from more-or-less willing participants in the piercings and cuttings,
tattooing and scarifications of the urban primitive has become as much a life-
style choice as that of the various vampire cultists now active. "The blood is the
life, Mr. Renfield." Nor was Mr. Crowley the first to see in vampirism a vivid oral
sexual dimension; Dracula and Lestat are extremely active archetypes for an
America that can easily purchase fur-covered handcuffs at the local mall.
The third chapter of the Book of the Law has much to say about the
subject, including this: "The best blood is of the moon, monthly: then the fresh
blood of a child, or dropping from the host of heaven: then of enemies; then of
the priest or of the worshippers: last of some beast, no matter what." (AL, III, 24).
In a personal insight, I ascribe this seldom-used formula to the planetary spheres
as follows: the clearly menstrual blood of the moon to Yesod; of a child (oneself;
or perhaps the uterine fluids and afterbirth?) to Tiphareth; of the host of heaven
(from bleeding statues of the Virgin or of Elvis, and the stigmata of living saints?)
to Chesed; of enemies to Geburah; of the priest to Hod and of the worshippers to
Netzach; of some beast to Malkuth. As for Binah, Nuit in AL, I, 59 states “My
incense is of resinous woods & gums; and there is no blood therein; because of
my hair the trees of Eternity". In other words, beyond the abyss all the blood of
the adept has been poured out into the Cup of Babalon, and the illusory and
limited nature of the individual ego is no more than ash and dust on the wind.
Sacrificial ritual has evolved in each aeon of human history: from the
slaying of the sacred king to fertilize the fields, to the substitution of another

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victim chosen by lot (often a royal child, slave, prisoner of war or criminal); then
to the replacement of human with animal, and ultimately to the use of bread and
wine as flesh and blood. Indiscriminate use of bloodshed today may attract the
unwelcome attention of the aforementioned local authorities and unruly mobs of
villagers with torches. I tend to believe that in the new aeon sexual fluids are far
more appropriate, and in practice the Scarlet Woman’s moon-blood flows more
freely than ever; Kenneth Grant has much to answer for. Blood also can link you
to your magical tools and charge your sigils, and at the very least you might mix
a bit of your blood with oil and rub it into your wand, or add a bit to any workings
in clay.
Recent Supreme Court decisions have defended the freedom-of-religion rights of
the Santeria priesthood regarding animal sacrifice, but one must still consider
local laws, and of course there is also a decision to be made on the basis of
one's own personal sense of morality; many of us are even pacifists, vegetarians
and animal-rights activists. All such persons should of course be killed and
devoured. If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
One must wonder about the mysterious UFO-linked cattle mutilations, and
about the random motivations of some serial killers; Jeffrey Dahmer's unusual
excursions into cannibalism, while fundamentally quite uncharming, do possess a
certain warped yet primal resonance. Like the vampire, he was absorbing his
victim's essence; just a lonely misunderstood sort of guy who happened to be
completely out of his mind.
Siriusly, though, I think the only even remotely moral possibilities are
willing volunteers for a human sacrifice (pretty darn unlikely! and definite legal
consequences), or animals who are slated for your feast; and either way I am
dubious about any amateur use of such practices and the extreme energies and
consequences they tend to release. My vote is No. Accounts of the now-fallen
ancient empires of the Romans and Aztecs seem to show that massive sacrificial
rites did little to prevent their collapse.
However, as a purely technical note, many sacrificial cults also utilize burnt
offerings, and there is an international tradition that the energies of blood are
released by the medium of flame. As AL, III, 11 states, "Worship me with fire and
blood!" Boiling in a cauldron appears to be the slow-release method. There is
also mentioned a formula involving insects, "creeping things sacred unto me...
these slay, naming your enemies, and they shall fall before you..." I suppose we
can all handle bug sacrifice, and we must admit that bloodshed and other acts of
violence can in fact release an enormous amount of energy, which is why such
sacrifice has so often been practiced throughout history and into the present day.
Traditionally the Pact with the Devil is still signed in blood.
      What personifies the Dark Side of the Force in American popular culture?
What is the Jungian Shadow of mass consciousness? I nominate that ever-
popular daemonic force, the Vampire.   Since the publication of Bram Stoker's
Dracula in 1897 the general public has had an ardent love affair with the dark
and mysterious stranger. Stoker's work was actually a brilliant piece of writing
which originated a number of novel literary devices such as extracts from letters,
diaries and wax cylinder recordings as the means of narration, and the use of an

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actual historical personage as the basis of one of the first true antiheroes. The
setting of the story in Transylvania, and later London, brought a mythic and
supernatural past into a recognizable and rational present, an eruption of chaotic
forces into a scientific world; and the Victorians, like ourselves, were not immune
to the Romantic appeal of a challenge to a mechanistic universe.   Since that
time there has flowed an endless stream of books, art, magazines, films, comix,
television, video games, and erotic fantasies centered around the vampire. Some
of us remember Dark Shadows, others Anne Rice; there has never in the last
century been a time when new material was not appearing. Now, as with so
many other recent phenomena, fiction (?) is becoming lifestyle: the Goth fashion
statement has birthed nightclubs and cafes; fan clubs become cults, teenagers
run amok and drink the blood of their parents, swingers share fluids in new and
unusual ways. There are dentists who will permanently implant custom-made
fangs and opticians who sell red contact lenses. Basic black never really goes
out of style. Nosferatu does Oprah.   How might we interpret this?
Psychologically, the archetype of the Shadow in jungian analysis is suggestive:
all those aspects of the Self which are feared and repressed are projected into a
rejected segment of the psyche; which must ultimately be reintegrated into the
larger whole, lest the eruptions of the unconscious become uncontrollable. The
embracing of this shadow is also a source of great power, and some magicians
have been known to externalize this darkness as a deliberate glamour, an illusion
of identity which serves as a vehicle for shaking loose the emotional energies
and stratified beliefs of those around them. Many magi seek their Holy Guardian
Angel without considering the equal importance of comprehending their personal
demons as well; the traditional Abra-melin system of magick requires one to
master both sides of the Self, to achieve the sacred marriage of heaven and hell.
Crowley, on the other hand, employed vampirism as a metaphor for oral sex;
how typical of the man.   Politically, the capitalist system often appears vampiric:
the endless corporate greed which feeds off our consumer culture, the bloated
bureaucracy which sucks tax dollars from every transaction, the twisted
republican administrations whose transparent mission is to transfer the wealth of
the many into the hands of the few, the credit card industry which lures the
population into debt while conveniently ignoring the biblical prohibition against
usury; good christians all. The vast unholy military-industrial-academic complex
happily colludes in the wars and covert machinations which constitute the
continuation of colonization by other means, and America, with four percent of
the world's population,consumes more than a quarter of the resources. How
embarrassing.    We should not forget that other striking representative of our
collective psyche: that marvelous modern invention, the serial killer. By night they
stalk their victims, most of whom are never found; how many people disappear in
our country every year? The FBI estimates that there may be at least one
hundred serial killers working today, still unidentified, hungry for blood..... a bit
too real, perhaps? Maybe we prefer the fictional vampire to the appalling truth
of a genuine threat.   For there is no denying that the vampire has a charming
side, that the erotic thrills of danger and sexuality lie very close together for some
of us. As the old rules of society break down, as many people seize the freedom

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to explore new possibilities, anything goes. On the other hand, as the pressures
of survival take new forms and current structures and expectations become
harder to escape, others may seek extremes as a way of breaking loose from
limitations, as a way to feel more alive. When S&M becomes merely another
lifestyle, and 'til death do us part' becomes considerably more of a challenge in
the light of vastly increased life spans; when multiple partners become as
available as transgender surgery, can practicing vampires be so far behind? For
blood is the stuff of life itself, of birth and death and sacrifice; and to share red
blood is to share power, identity, risk, to face the reality of organic being and all
that it implies. Part of the attraction is leaving safety behind, another part is
exploration of what may be the ultimate intimacy. Perhaps the tragic spread of
AIDS is merely a wake-up call regarding the toxic effects which humanity is
having upon the survival of the Earth and the countless other entities upon Her;
is not our recent Resident-Select's mindless drive to suck all the oil from the
globe rather vampiric, a need to sink the fangs of the oil rig into the most remote
and pristine remnants of the planet?   In Magick the paths to power are where
you find them, and in the New Aeon freedom and revolution go hand in hand,
while Dayside and Nightside mingle; initiations and ordeals take place all around
us. Eros and Thanatos, Sex and Death, are the Yin and Yang of things; for "the
Blood is the Life, Mr. Renfield".

The Ultimate Secret of Magick

“Purge thyself of belief: live like a tree walking!”

- Austin Osman Spare

So how do I tie this rambling discourse of secret history and bizarre

technique together? What is the infamous Ultimate Secret of Magick taught only
by mysterious Rosicrucians in Black who appear, reveal, and vanish; or by
expensive mail-order courses that don’t spill the beans until the final installment,
well after your check has cleared?
Bloody hell, there are an infinite number of secrets, which is sort of the
point of a real book on magick. This has just been my personal collection of what
works for me. Magick is a feast unknown, which initiates each individual in
entirely unique and personal ways. We each have our own links and affinities,
ordeals and revelations, and strange paths to wander. Magick is largely achieved
by a completely open attitude toward that proverbial Meaning of Life, the
Universe, and Everything. You begin the process and become a process, of the
mind and body and spirit as an alchemical laboratory caught up in the waves of
change. Set a goal, select a technique, and see what results.
There are many tools in this adventure: links to divinity and alien entity,
exotic symbol systems, intellect and emotion joined in physical theatre, sexual
ecstasy becoming spiritual rapture, the individual breath sharing the universal

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prana. There is a reason that so many grimoires read like cookbooks: both teach
art as well as science, and art is unique. Into this cauldron of the witches we stir
all the ingredients of our brew: the exotic imagery, the physiological gnosis, the
charged intensity of the peak experience, the numinous sense of wonder and
possibility, the forces of will, desire and belief. We focus upon our goal or grail of
the moment and discover truth in every event that the play of creation spawns.
We create an environment where Something Will Happen. Crowley refers to
Energized Enthusiasm.
My answer to the Big Question is this: the Ultimate Secret of Magick is the
Self, the True Self, individual and universal, beyond the play of death and birth
yet endlessly amused if often sorrowed by it all. Poised between the mythic past
and the unknown future there is the eternal moment of the Now, wherein we are
all that golden child, the original Buddha-nature, the Bornless One, N’Aton rising
on phoenix wings. Here is the play of being and becoming, of meaning and of
emptiness, of awakening. The Great Work of magick is the passionate play of
transformation, and in the hidden vessel of the alchemical egg the soul itself is
transformed by an invisible fire. Magick may toy with countless paths to power or
systems of belief, but at its core is experience unmediated by any judgment or
authority but your own. Go wherever you will, there is always the Self which No
One knows.
These, however, are a few of the other secrets. The Masonic Master Word you
are not allowed to know is JABULON?????????? The inner mystery of Thelemic
sexual sorcery is as Crowley said: “When one has realized that God is just
another name for the sexual instinct…. , which should not be confused with
feminist Mary Daly’s statement that “If God is male, then the male must be God.”
Working through the repressed memories of my teenage years, the secret of
Wiccan magick in the covens of NYC in the 1970s was probably marijuana, just
like everyone else’s secret back then. “Never eat at a place called Mom’s, never
play cards with a man called Doc, and never sleep with anyone whose problems
are worse than yours…

So, what is it we actually do with all this magickal stuff? How do we

navigate the coded map to the hidden treasure?
The traditional planetary schema of the qabalistic tree of life, which also
corresponds roughly to the colors-of-magick outline of chaos magick and to some
extent the eight-circuit model of Dr. Timothy Leary, can be used to formulate a
system of techniques and operations for the practitioner. Like any other such
system, it is in one sense completely arbitrary and in another perfectly useful on
its own terms. While I have never become an authority on astrology as it is
popularly practiced, the symbolic connection between the planets and the
pantheons of the gods can be traced back to the earliest civilizations of
Mesopotamia and Egypt, to Greece and Rome, on through medieval and
renaissance Europe and up to the present day. While this ancient tradition was
reformulated and elaborated by the Golden Dawn and later post-Crowleyan
contemporary orders, it remains quite flexible and capable of expansion, like silly

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putty. And like silly putty, and also like the theosophical astral light, it retains the
imprint of images as well.
Tribal peoples tend toward rites involving simple survival: for fertility and
healing, for war and hunting magick, and often protection from evil spirits and/or
evil witchcraft. When we look at ancient or medieval traditions we also notice a
rather limited number of immediate concerns: curses and love spells, weather
and wealth magicks (frequently in the form of finding buried treasure or
discovering thieves) and divinations; at times the casting of glamours such as
invisibility or illusions, or works relating to warfare and gaining favor with the
powerful. Self-actualizing perfection of being seems to be a much more modern
conceit, and most people of almost every era appear quite obsessed with the
classic triad of "getting rich, getting laid, getting even," or money, sex and
revenge. In contemporary popular magick, which is sometimes reflected in the
appalling cultural mirror we know and worship as "television," this has hardly
changed. It's like deja vu all over again. Yet perhaps these personal dramas are
in fact all necessary lessons in life, and mundane existence just a testing ground:
not for some future life, but for this one. Reality is what you make of it, after all.
When seen in terms of the macrocosm and the microcosm, the tree of life
is seen as identical with the human body, and the inner alchemy of physical
transmutation recapitulates the evolutionary process. It has been said that:
“Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny”. The symbol-driven adventure of exploring
the tree as a series of astral or planetary planes on the outer is paralleled by the
internal activation of the sephirothic spheres as the chakras of the physical form.
Thus, part of this process involves a psycho-spiritual enlightenment while another
part is the transformation of the various energy-sheathes of the aura down to the
cellular level of mutation for physiological immortality. Becoming a true magician
implies the awakening and functioning of the Self on each of these levels in turn.

“If a man’s mind is merged in the Self, then he is completely released, just as
water is not distinguishable in Water, or fire in Fire or air in Air.” - from the
Vedas

This is a skeletal outline of some of the possibilities of climbing the ladder

of lights. Other great parallel examples are Frater Perdurabo's more detailed A.A.
curriculum in Magick and Soror Nema's vital system in Maat Magick, and
between these two you have the essence of the Double Current as primarily
expressed in Liber AL vel Legis and Liber Pennae Praenumbra. In a sense I am
here recapitulating the entire structure of this book and of my understanding of
the process of magick. While Kenneth Grant's work is sometimes rather
recondite and complex, his personal listing of the methods for achieving magical
power based upon the structure of the Tree of Life is also a model of clarity; I
employ it as a key at the ending of each section.
It should always be remembered that the map is not the territory, nor the
menu the meal. These hypothetical spheres, like the aeons, are not just times or
places or magickal formulae or states of consciousness or planes of density or
levels of initiation, but all of the above and more. The qabala is only a tool for

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providing meaningful context to direct experience. All of this wildly archaic,
exotic, arcane, goetic, mystic, theurgic, oneiric, and gothic romance can prove
useful and suggestive: the prophets of the past inspire the visions of the future,
and the paths charted by earlier explorers may guide without restricting our own
unique experiences. Shamanism is direct experience, and if our Magick is truly
an Art, or Wicca a Craft, then this implies both the mastery of past traditions and
the artistic talent to create new ones. Here is one adept’s ritual-based example of
a journey from One to Ten, from Malkuth the Kingdom to Kether the Crown:

ARCANUM DCCXXXV (The Ritual of the Shrine)

1 The Adept, removing his sandals, shall approach the Shrine in a mood of
reverence.
2 He shall kneel and invoke the lunar Gods (and enter the door of the lunar
temple).
3 He shall invoke the Gods of Wisdom.
4 He shall become inflamed with adoration.
5 He shall evoke the star of Light.
6 He shall receive the power of heaven.
7 He shall worship the shrine and star.
8 He shall see the face of God.
9 He shall rule over the animals and the elements.
10 He shall receive the blessings of Light.
- Jack Parsons

Climbing the Tree of Life & Death

X. The Body of Earth

"Magic is the Science of Living Artistically." - Michael Skrtic

We begin with the sphere of Malkuth, the planet Earth as the center of our
perceived universe, which encompasses the influences of the entire tree and
reifies them in the flesh. A central component of this is the physical body, mind,
and soul complex of the sorceress herself, the microcosm or internal universe
that contains/reflects the macrocosm of the greater universe. One of the key
tenets of the magickal worldview emphasizes the essential identity of the two and
their mutual influence upon reality, however defined. This level might be thought
to correspond to the Octarine or Pure Magick of the Chaos orders, the A.A. office
of Neophyte, and the G.D.1=10 degree. In psychological terms this is the seat or
throne of the conscious ego performing the great work of perfection, and the
vehicle of the outer persona whose various masks we project into our personal
interactions. Magickal operations could include bodywork for health, strength,
fertility, and immortality; rites for the ecological preservation of the world; and of
course the actual manifestation of all desires. Deities might include Isis, Gaia,

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Nerthus, and Pan. This level of vibration also contains all the physical elements
of temple and tools and actions, basic framing practices of banishing and
centering, the seed-sigil or talismanic pentacle that forms the core symbol of
desire, and all forms of art which earth and commemorate magickal workings.
The body is the vehicle of consciousness and identity, and alterations to the body
affect the sense of self. Make-up and body-paint, nudity, varieties of costume and
identical uniforms, the anonymity of hooded robes, jewelry of a talismanic nature,
masks, crowns, tattoos and piercings, hair-styles and other fashion statements
can all have deep influences on the psyche, and we can safely assume that sex-
change operations and plastic surgery do as well. Disguise, cross-dressing and
transvestite activities have a long history in shamanism, and androgyny is an
example of the sacred in-betweeness state. Whenever you see a stranger in the
mirror it has an effect. Posture and gait, yoga and dance, breathing and chanting,
exercise and gesture; sensory deprivation or over-stimulation, isolation tanks or
bondage and suspension (known in times past as the Witches’ Cradle), brain-
machines and bio-feedback, all forms of sexuality are potent in the body. Exotic
substances, if ingested, can also affect the somatic psyche.
Obviously physical, mental and spiritual health is more desirable than any
alternatives, although sickness can be considered an altered state and some
viruses may even have a mutational dimension. In many cultures a crisis of
health, seizures, or even time in a coma may lead to a shamanic initiation.
Acceptance and tracking (via the keeping of a magical record) of our own
personal cycles of elation and depression, order and chaos, activity and inertia,
enables us to take advantage of the inner tides and rhythms.
In Leary's terms we find here the rather essential First or Oral Biosurvival
Circuit, which deals with the infant’s needs for physical essentials of comfort and
security, food and warmth. According to Kenneth Grant one magical power of
Malkuth is: "(10) Violence carried to the pitch of frenzy, either masochistic or the
reverse. This unseals primal atavisms, the resurgence of which leads directly to
the most ancient (i.e. the original) state of consciousness which, being pure, is
cosmic, unlimited."

IX. The Gate of the Moon

"Resolute imagination is the beginning of all magical operations.” - Paracelsus

“The man who has no imagination has no wings.” - Muhammad Ali

The sphere of Yesod is the level of the so-called astral plane and the
fluidic formative realm where much of the activity of sorcery actually takes place.
It corresponds roughly to the Purple or Silver Sex Magick of Chaos, the A.A.
office of Zelator, and the G.D. 2=9 degree. It is the natural space of all psychic
faculties and subtle, etheric or astral bodies, of dream-work, active imagination
and guided meditation. It is the sacred aboriginal Dreamtime and the lurid
hallucinogenic frenzy of the Witch's Sabbat, ruled by three-faced Hekate and all

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lunar goddesses such as Diana, Selene, or Artemis; often in triple aspect as the
Maiden, Mother, Crone, or Sower, Ripener, Reaper. There are also Moon-gods
including Khonsu, Sin, and in some forms Thoth.
In a psychological sense for the male this is the first contact with the anima, the
contrasexual internal image of the female so often seen as the symbol of ‘All
Otherness’; for women the corresponding figure is the male animus, as Yesod is
also the semi-hypothetical collective unconscious or realm of the Jungian
archetypes. This anima or animus is also a form of the Holy Guardian Spirit; and
the mystical grail or magickal mirror of the Moon, filled with a whirlwind of
images, is in a sense the seat of the soul.
Practices include astral projection, lucid dreaming, 'rising on the planes,'
and all such internal or external journeys of the psyche; here is the gateway to
the otherworld or faeryland of Celtic myth, the nine worlds of old Norse runic
cosmology, the trance journey of the Siberian shaman, the Prophet's night
journey, the scrying of the qabalistic spheres. We may also include more oracular
trances, such as those of the Pythoness of Delphi, the Oracle of Cumae, or the
ancient Norse seidhkonas. Here we find such gut-level enchantments as the
casting of glamours, illusions, and sexual magnetism or charisma; the deep
organic forces of libido employed in all forms of sexual magick; overlooking (the
use of the traditional "evil eye") and other negative occult practices such as
vampirism, whose practitioners drain the physical and sexual vitality of others;
and the shape-shifting lycanthropy of skin-walkers and werewolves, fox-maidens
and seal-women, jaguar shamans and leopard-men, of the witches becoming
cats and any number of cultures where shamans fly as ravens. Illusion is a tool
here. All such gleefully lurid theriomorphic transformation harkens back to primal
tribal totem animals, to the beast-headed gods of ancient Egypt, and to the
resurgent atavisms of Spare. Grant somewhere suggests that all the ages of
repressed sexual desires of Christian and other ascetic sects accumulate on the
astral plane and form a vast pool of energy now accessible to sorcerers.
A not uncommon practice is the foundation of an astral temple as a
personal center of power established on this plane for meditation, exploration,
and ritual workings. Every detail of landscape and structure is formulated under
will and built up by repeated visualization until it achieves some type of reality all
its own: Greek temple on a mountain, oracular cavern full of echoing spirits,
crystalline force-bubble in outer space, pyramid in the desert or stone circle in a
forest. The habit of repeated transfer of consciousness to this imaginal landscape
is useful in lucid dream work as a form of chosen and deliberate activity without
awakening. One of Carlos Castaneda's more useful techniques for this is
remembering to look for one's hands in dreams, thus taking control of the
experience. Some magickal orders and Wiccan covens form such common areas
for the sharing of energy, symbolism, and experiments in communication; a
similar technique is the formation of an egregore or synthetic entity that can be
servant or guide to a group.
The Moon is the astral mirror, the primal open gateway to the states of
consciousness symbolized by the outer planets, and the realm of tidal flux where

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material events can be shaped. It also appears to be the chaotic psychic space
inhabited by lunatics, fanatics, ghosts and televised evangelists.
Leary’s Second or Anal Emotional-Territorial Circuit deals with physical
activity and ego-boundaries in the developing toddler. According to Kenneth
Grant a magical power of Yesod is: "(9) Religious enthusiasms induced by total
devotion to the Absolute conceived under the form of a personal deity. The
resulting obsession leads to a transcendence of the individuality and taps cosmic
energy. The devotee is caught up into the "heaven" of his "god"."

VIII. The Mind of Mercury

"The future informs the present just as much as the past does.” - Eddie
Campbell

Mercury corresponds to the qabalistic sphere of Hod and the Orange

Magick/Thinking Magick of Chaos, to the A.A. office of Practicus, and the G.D.
3=8 degree. The notoriously shifty messenger and trickster Hermes is the god of
language, communication, travel, divination, luck, gambling, commerce,
eloquence, art, science, marvels, deceit, and theft; he is linked to the Egyptian
Tahuti or Thoth, inventor of writing and magick. Their composite form is Thoth
Hermes Trismegistus (‘thrice-the-greatest’), the legendary Mercurius, the semi-
mythical founder of all hermetic sciences of magick, astrology and alchemy. This
is the true realm of the mind, of all insight or deep study leading to intellectual
understanding, of magickal alphabets and languages, secret codes and ciphers,
metaphysics and philosophy. Here we find all cryptograms and hieroglyphs, the
sacred alphabet of desire and sentient symbols postulated by Spare. In almost
every culture it appears that the god who originated writing also governs magick,
and Odin and Ogma are very mercurial.
Operations of divination or finding things out function on this plane, and countless
methods of sortilege have been devised worldwide throughout history. In the
East the major system is the famous I Ching with its 64 hexagrams charting the
permutations of the Tao. In the South there are many systems out of Africa, of
which the best known may be the Ifa or seashell method of casting in Santeria. In
the North we find the Runes, ancient alphabets of powerful symbols useful in
both divination and magick and reflecting the Viking world-view. See my own
forthcoming book Runespells and my bibliography. There are also a few brave
people engaged in the rediscovery of the old celtic Ogam or tree-alphabet which
has some similarity to the runes in its use of tree-forms and system of numerical
coding and symbolic correspondences.
In our West the Tarot still serves as the main symbolic file-cabinet of the
archetypes of Jung's collective unconscious, and visually ties together countless
elements and influences of the hermetic tradition. There are many good decks,
and most people begin by learning on some version of the highly influential
Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot. The ultimate new-aeon deck is of course the brilliant
Thoth Tarot, which was painted by Lady Frieda Harris according to the designs

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Aleister Crowley described in his Book Of Thoth. Others among my own favorite
versions include the as yet unpublished N'Aton trumps by Nema, Orryelle’s rare
Book of Chaos deck, and the (Greek) Mythic, Norse, Alchemical, Haindl, Vertigo,
Aquarian, Elemental, Walker, Voyager, Hermetic, Ansata, Greenwood, Native
American, Ancient Egyptian, New Orleans Voodoo, Pythagorean, Cosmic Tribe,
Salvador Dali, Casanova, Enchanted, and Jungian Tarot decks; some are more
powerful art than others, but all have some excellent thought behind them, and
frequently good associated books. One of the great strengths of the Tarot is the
basic five-suit and 78-card structure that can be reinterpreted constantly by new
artists. In addition, the linkage of the twenty-two major arcana to the letters of the
hebrew alphabet and the paths of the tree of life, and of the four minor suits to
the realms of the elements and the four worlds of the qabala, have become
generally accepted key elements of the post-Golden Dawn magickal universe.
Since most Tarots maintain the same fundamental structure, you are free to
choose the deck that appeal aesthetically to you. One way in which the Tarot has
taken new forms is revealed in Soror Nema's potent system of mask-dances
keyed to the paths and trumps (see Maat Magick) and her formulation of a Tarot
of the Qlipoth, and experimentation therewith in both ritual and meditation will
provide remarkable results. See also Bibliography D. Runes & Oghams and T.
Divination & Tarot.
In general divination systems are symbolic maps of the cultural universe,
and those methods which employ an element of randomness in their casting may
be preferred to more static systems such as astrology, since synchronicity or
meaningful coincidence is a key element. One of Peter Carroll's better mottos is
"enchant long, divine short": allow your magickal operations time to build
momentum while focusing divination on short-term choices, thus taking the
changeable and plastic nature of reality into account. Another practice is
‘retroactive enchantment’, the alteration of past events in order to create an
alternative future, related to Castaneda’s erasing of personal history. Whether or
not this violates the laws of physics anymore than magick in general does, it may
still be a useful psychological reality construct. Yet another system appropriate to
this sphere is bibliomancy, the random opening of a book and pointing to a
passage as an oracle. The Bible has long been used for this, and the Holy Books
of Thelema or the works of James Joyce or Charles Fort are good modern
alternatives. We do not at this time recommend the Magic Eightball, as its
selections are somewhat limited; nor the Ouija Board, which may simply reflect
personal issues or attract the lower class of spirits, and perhaps the very
confused ghosts of the recently deceased. In disciplined hands, however, the
board can be very effective.
Two very simple yet surprisingly useful methods deserve mention. One is
the Pendulum, which with practice can be quite accurate in the short term. The
other is Yes/No Stones: find three small similar stones, one white for Yes, one
black for No, and one colored as indicator. Cast them on a question and see
which choice the indicator falls closest to. Relying upon the apparently random
can be an interesting practice.

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On another level than divination, this remains the sphere of all mental self-
exploration, philosophical speculation, academic learning, and deep meditation,
of every activity of the brain, rational or otherwise. Here is Leary’s Third or Time-
Binding Semantic Circuit, which governs symbolic intelligence, language and
communication, logic and ideas, and the concept of time. According to Kenneth
Grant the magical power of Hod is: "(8) Aesthetic ecstasy or impersonal rapture
induced by the contemplation of supreme artistry."

VII. The Love of Venus

"Know that when you learn to lose yourself, you will reach the Beloved. There is
no other secret to be learnt, and more than this is not known to me.”
- Ansari of Herat

The qabalistic sphere of Netzach corresponds to the Green or Love

Magick of Chaos, the A.A. office of Philosophus, and the G.D. 4=7 degree. This
is the realm of relationship and emotional power, of all romantic passion and
religious devotion, of bhakti-yoga or worship of a personal deity, of the hieros
gamos or sacred marriage and the higher forms of sexual sorcery. The Green
Ray also speaks of herbal and nature magick and the realm of organic life: of
medicine and ecological healing and the Gaian world-mind of planetary
consciousness. Goddess-forms would include Aphrodite and Venus, Hathor and
Bast, Erzulie or Freya.
The root of the word Tantra implies weaving: of Yoga, or union. On the
interhuman level this may include all forms of sensuality as discussed above, and
beyond lustful passion the deeper bonds of romantic love. On the transhuman
level devotion to a specific deity whose particular aspects and attributes parallel
one's own evolution can activate unusual experiences and serve as a template
for spiritual development (see Crowley's excellent Liber Astarte for instructions).
Mythology always exists because it speaks to multiple levels of consciousness
simultaneously, serving as a vehicle to explore and explain experience. The
quest for meaning is the quest for the grail. What this level does is engage the
emotions, as the previous level does with the intellect; and feelings, whether of
longing or desire or lust or wrath or joy or Buddhist compassion or atavistic
nostalgia, always act to empower the magickal will. Knowledge is power, but
emotional engagement also creates connections, and the magickal link is often
said to be vital in the activation of magickal changes. One aspect of magick
involves the willed suspension of disbelief, the overcoming of the rationalistic
programming our culture provides. Acting AS IF magick is real leads to real
magick. For one of R.A. Wilson's reality-tunnels to be functional we need to be
completely engaged in the experience as it unfolds for us. This is also a sphere
for artistic creativity of every kind, which includes the remaking of the Self and
profound alterations of personal identity.

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"I believe in the power of belief, and that sincerity integrates sufficient will for our
purposes. I accept the 'as if' to evoke from my unknown self a means of
transcendentalism and the magic of dynamic change."- A.O. Spare

Leary’s Fourth Moralistic-Social-Sexual Circuit relates to adolescence,

rules and laws, social structures and ethics, sexual and moral codes and
relationships. According to Kenneth Grant the magical power of Netzach is: "(7)
Absolute Compassion for all created things. This is the Buddhist formula par
excellence; it leads to the highest trances and to that Sahaja Samadhi, or state of
natural and permanent self-realization, achieved by Advaitins."

(Between the lower four spheres and attainment of the Knowledge &
Conversation of the Holy Guardian Spirit in Tiphareth hangs the Veil of Paroketh,
which is crossed by the A.A. grade of the Dominus Liminus. The lower four
spheres are considered the workings of the First Order or Golden Dawn, and the
next three those of the Second Order or Rosy Cross.)

VI. The Spirit of the Sun

"For I am I: ergo, the truth of myself: my own sphinx, conflict, chaos, vortex:
asymmetric to all rhythms: oblique to all paths. I am the prism between black and
white: mine own unison in duality."
- A.O. Spare

"Then beauty is just the beginning of a terror that we are still able to bear.  And
the reason we love it so is that it blithely disdains to destroy us." -Rainer
Maria Rilke

The solar sphere of Tiphareth corresponds to the Yellow/Gold or Ego

Magick of Chaos, the A.A. office of Adeptus Minor, the G.D. 5=6 degree, and
experience of the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. It is
the Jungian individuation process, the total integration of or union with the Self,
the attainment of cosmic consciousness; the realm of solar or savior gods such
as Horus, Abraxas, Apollo, Mithras, IAO, Christ or Dionysos. It is the state of
ecstasy, the peak experience, and gnosis. It is Awakening and Opening.

“A similar Fire flashingly extending through the rushing of Air, or a Fire formless
whence cometh the Image of a Voice, or even a flashing Light abounding,
revolving, whirling forth, crying aloud. Also there is the vision of the fire-flashing
Courser of Light, or also a Child, borne aloft on the shoulders of the Celestial
Steed, fiery, or clothed in gold, or naked, or shooting with the bow shafts of light,
and standing on the shoulders of the horse; then if thy meditation prolongeth
itself, thou shalt surely unite all these symbols into the form of a Lion.” -
Oracles of Zoroaster

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In Crowleyan magick the discovery of the True Will, the K&C of the HGA, is
perhaps the key component, central message or theme and identical with the
Daimon or Genius of the Greek philosophers. In one sense all such activity takes
place within the internal theater of the Self and its multiple levels of being and
believing, yet in another the issue of the external reality of the HGA, spirit guide,
follower, watcher or fylgja again raises that whole vexed question of the objective
existence of gods, demons and spirits in general. If, however, the fundamental
notions of any expanded or contracted or altered or higher or deeper or more
profoundly sideways levels of pure or spiritual consciousness have any validity,
then the vivid solar trance of Tiphareth is among the major points of personal
transformation. Ars Regia, the Royal Art of alchemy, symbolizes this process as
the distillation of lead (mundane consciousness) into gold (cosmic
consciousness) as a form of the Gurdjieffian process of creating the Soul. It is
also very closely paralleled by the initiatory Vision Quest of some tribal cultures
and the wandering in the desert of many prophets. The Great Work, in short, is
dependent upon the harmonious integration of the Awakening Self.
Crowley's main ritual used for this purpose was Liber Samekh, an
evolution of an ancient graeco-egyptian magickal text also used by the Golden
Dawn. By use of sonorous invocation and barbarous words of power this rite
serves to create both an altered state and an opportunity for the cosmic forces to
manifest, and I will testify to its effectiveness. Another very useful solar practice
is given in his Liber Resh vel Helios, which provides salutations to the sun at
dawn, noon, sunset and midnight, thus constantly recalling the mind to the Great
Work. A short Greek invocation I have devised for myself runs as follows:

HAGIOS ATHANATOS Holy undying one 

APEIRON ANGELOS boundless angel 
AIONOS KYRIOS lord of the Aeons 
ASTER AITHERIOS star of the heavens 
ALETHES LOGOS true word 
AKEPHOLOS bornless one 
AUGOEIDES shining one 
AGATHODAIMON great good spirit 
ABRASAX! Abrasax! 

Leary’s Fifth Circuit imprints Holistic Neurosomatic Bliss: bodily alchemy

and ecstasy, breathing technologies such as rebirthing or vivation, tantric
lovemaking and healing trance; pleasure which takes one outside of oneself.
Eternal hedonism. According to Kenneth Grant the magical power of Tiphareth is:
"(6) Magically controlled sexual activity of which the Kundalini is the immediate
object. This is a dangerous method and demands a high grade of initiation in the
practitioner. As the Kularnava Tantra declares, "One reaches Heaven by the very
things which may lead to Hell.""

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V. The War of Mars

"Revenge is a dish that is best served cold." - Traditional sentiment

The qabalistic realm of Geburah or Action corresponds to the Red/War

Magick of Chaos and to the A.A. office of Adeptus Major or the G.D. 6=5 degree.
This active sphere is typical of the double nature of the warrior, of the hero and
his opponent, of both defense and attack, of courage and all military matters, of
energy, principle and honor. War-gods include Horus, Mars, Ares, Ogun or Tyr.
Practices include curses and banishing, vengeance and protection;
techniques include the disciplined study of martial arts and active forms of dance,
the use of blood and sacrificial energies, tobacco, cocaine and alcohol as
sacraments. The expression of Thelema can become a form of Jihad or holy war
for the liberation of humankind or a radical political agenda such as ecoterrorism.
War magick is common in almost all human cultures, as the desires for luck,
victory, and survival come into play. Weapons were among the earliest personal
possessions, and the tendency to name or personify them is also very old; the
best swords had names of their own, and the charging of magickal weapons
pertains here as well. The forces of this level energize all banishing rituals.
Magical warfare is perhaps the test of this level, and combat between
individuals or covens or orders involving the slinging of curses, accusations,
opprobrium and invective is an all too common occurrence on the magical or
internet scenes - far more frequent than necessary. Without judging any of the
potential issues or the level of childishness such behavior may reveal, I can only
guess that somehow the universe does provide tests of character and survival
skills. Initiations as the openings of ever-wider vistas are often paired with
ordeals in one's life, with family struggles or personal traumas or plain old
accidents and stresses and difficulties. Apparently progress meets resistance at
times, and it is the energy of Geburah that overcomes opposition and inertia.
Sometimes destruction is a creative act, sometimes struggle is necessary.
Ultimately this becomes the active level of your own great work, your very
personal mission in life, to the accomplishment of which every spark of energy is
relentlessly turned and focused. After finding your true will, the next challenge
lies in accomplishing it by moving on to practical matters. The way of action is in
many ways as legitimate as any other yoga, and that great document the
Bhagavad-Gita is in a sense a reply to the question of war. The events it
describes are sparked by a great battle, and on the dawn of conflict the warrior
Arjuna gazes out on the opposing forces and realizes that he is about to
slaughter his own cousins. In his despair he questions the ‘meaning of life’, and
at this point his charioteer reveals himself as the god Krishna and takes a time-
out to explain virtually everything. One vital element is that roles in life must often
be carried out as a matter of karma, for in battle a warrior must fight and not
question.
In the final analysis the true warrior must serve justice, and the battle first won
within the Self must turn outwards to the creation of a more perfect world for all.
In Liber AL there is a verse that simply states: “From gold forge steel”. In

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alchemical terms this gold is solar consciousness, the union with the Holy
Guardian Angel in Tiphareth; steel is the higher form of iron sacred to Mars or
Geburah, refined by the secret fire to become the sword of Thelema. The path
which links those two spheres of Horus is that of Libra or Balance, the eighth
trump called Justice, the equilibrating and evolutionary work of Maat. Inspiration
is empty without Action.
In Leary’s system the Sixth Circuit corresponding to this sphere is the
Metaprogrammer of self-hypnotic trance, NLP, reprogramming of mental
processes, adaptations of consciousness. According to Kenneth Grant, among
the magical powers of Geburah is: "(5) Speed, which has a tendency to loosen
the astral body and thus make possible a willed influx of cosmic energy. The
whirling dance of the Dervishes and the frenzied gyrations of the Voodoo
practitioners induce a similar condition of receptivity to cosmic influences; this
acts directly upon the Fire Snake."

IV. The Mask of Jupiter

“When you wish upon a star your dreams come true!” - Walt Disney

"Say the magic word and the duck will come down and give you $100!"
- Groucho Marx

The level of Chesed corresponds to the Blue or Wealth Magick of Chaos,

the A.A. office of Exempt Adept, and the G.D. 7=4 degree. Jupiterian forces
generally operate in areas of art, expansion, transformation, abundance, honors,
wealth, influence, politics, power, compassion, friendship, luck, health and
healing. The traditional art of becoming invisible (which in part involves simple
camouflage or distraction, as well as unobtrusiveness or disguise) might manifest
through this sphere. Gods would include Zeus, Jupiter, Odin, Amon-Ra, and all
such cosmic kings or emperors who are powers of organization and structure.
Weather-working is also an attribute of Zeus and all thunder gods like Thor or
Adad, and while Chesed is a sphere of water it also connects to heaven and the
celestial spheres. As the realm of Mercy it links to the Buddha as personification
of compassion. As the moment of creation it governs creativity; as the celestial
architect it manifests the four-fold manifestation of the elements.
While the inner planets are solid rocks like our earth, the outer planets
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are enormous gas giants that come very
near to being solar systems themselves, with multiple moons and rings around
them. Jupiter or Jove, the king of the gods, is thus seen as the formative or
organizing principle that establishes a material universe conceived by the
supernals. In a sense this demiurgic power can be seen as the Mask of God, the
openly revealed face of something indescribable beyond. In the individual such
personas develop in response to the various social roles we play in our complex
day-to-day lives, as seen in the Maatian system of maskology. Zeus in his

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amours took many forms, including that of an androgyne, and so transformation
or shapeshifting is also an aspect of this sphere.
If Geburah is seen as the active force of an individual warrior as Ra-hoor-
khuit, Chesed may be the form of Hoor-par-kraat emerging into birth, or of its
corresponding withdrawal of the spirit into the void. They are balanced in the dual
form of Heru-Ra-Ha in Tiphareth, and this forms the ‘descending triangle of red’
that is a key symbol of Horus. Combined with a hieroglyphic feather of black
flame it becomes the double current symbol of the Horus/Maat Lodge.
As an organizing principle this sphere establishes all physical, mental,
religious and political structures (such as magical orders) and is the seed of
architecture and cosmic planning. If on the other hand you have an interest in
wealth magick, Crowley suggests that you use coins rather than paper money in
your spells; for the gnomes who guard riches best understand metals like silver
and gold.
Leary’s Seventh Circuit is the level of Collective Neurogenetic Trance reached by
extreme psychedelic experiences or religious revelations, by transpersonal
processes, genetic memory and atavistic resurgence. According to Kenneth
Grant the magical power of Chesed is: "(4) Ecstasy induced by music: jazz,
kirtana, rhythmic drumming, mantra."

(Between the lower seven spheres and the three supernals lies the non-
sphere of Daath, the gateway of forbidden Knowledge and the Veil of the Abyss;
this is crossed by the A.A. grade of the Babe of the Abyss. The final or primal
three spheres are considered to be the realm of the Third Order or Silver Star.
Above this paradoxical Abyss all things exist only as identical with their own
opposites: in Binah, Sorrow is Joy; in Chokmah, Truth is Falsehood; in Kether,
Self is Not-Self.)

?! The Uranian Leap/Crossing Over

"Wild cats will meet hyenas there, the satyrs will call to each other; there Lilith
shall repose and find her a place of rest." - Isaiah 34:14

"There are things that are known, and things that are unknown; in between are
the doors." - William Blake, inspiring Aldous Huxley and Jim Morrison

"GONE TO CROATAN.’
(mysterious final message of the lost colony of Roanoke in Virginia)

“It is by going down into the abyss that you recover the treasures of life. Where
you stumble, there lies your treasure.” - Joseph Campbell

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the
abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Friedrich Nietzsche

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 The Abyss is thought to lie between the lower spheres of the tree and the
supernal triad; its crossing is the great leap from the conventional to the trans-
human levels of being, to a more intimate acquaintance with the divine. It can be
seen as being very much like Death, as the magician surrenders the vehicle or
self-image s/he has labored so long to perfect. This may be accomplished by
taking the Oath of the Abyss, which is to regard every action and event as a
direct communication between God and one's Self; Crowley's account of this
experience may be found in The Vision & The Voice. Essentially, the personality
is reduced to ash. Examples of premature leaps as spiritual crisis might be found
in the careers of Achad and Parsons; an inflated ego is no substitute for an
abandoned ego. Many more religious types such as Charles Manson and Jim
Jones, Marvin Applewhite and David Koresh, have decided to publicly proclaim
themselves Messiahs (‘liberators’) while in the grip of mere pathological
delusions. It is much easier to proclaim oneself the living Christ and Satan in one
single body than to actually integrate such extreme opposites, and clearly nasty
consequences have been known to result. We may always recall Nietzsche's
"Let a man not look too deeply into the Abyss, for when he does so the Abyss
also looks deeply into him". There is a pivotal moment in the Don Juan books
when Carlos Castaneda leaps off a cliff and into the separate reality, and this
relates to the similar question of the voltigeurs or leapers in Bertiaux's nightside
workings. There is also a very close correspondence between the Abyss and
Robert Anton Wilson's concept of the Chapel Perilous, a title borrowed from the
Holy Grail mythos, which appears to imply that state of being where the mind is
open to, if not overwhelmingly and utterly immersed in, a stormy period of
synchronicity, spiritual crisis, coincidence, the Dark Night of the Soul, and deeply
transformative changes.

"I take my last bow with pride, as proudly as

befits a conjure man
going down in flames,
up as smoke.

I wrote my name on the wall of the

invisible labyrinth.
I was so diligent in my studies;
I gave my whole time and heart to the
pursuit.

I wrote my name, but I can find it

no longer;
my ashes blow like dust around the
invisible labyrinth.” - Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman

Grant also suggests that this sphere of Daath serves as a gateway to the
nightside of the cosmos: instead of a bright tree of life formed of spheres and

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paths, on the shadowed tree of death there is a realm of caverns and tunnels
riddled with Lovecraftian entities. His most recent books, not unlike the semi-
mythic Necronomicon, chart such contacts extensively. These realms are
perhaps generally considered somewhat hazardous for amateurs. One way of
viewing this is through the 23rd Path as described by Nema, a connection or
gateway through the sphere of Yesod on the dayside of the Tree that opens on
the nightside through Daath and gives access to the Qlipoth. This is one of the
myriad uses of Maat’s core mantra IPSOS, which means “By that same mouth”:

“What is this Word, O Lady - how may it be used?''

In silent wisdom, King and Warrior-Priest. Let the deed shine forth and let the
word be hidden; the deed is lamp enough to veil the face.  
It is the word of the twenty-third path, whose number is fifty and six. It is the
unspoken Abode, wherein the Dance of the Mask is taught by Me. Tahuti
watches without the Ape; I am the Vulture also.
It is the Chalice of Air and Wand of Water, the Sword of Earth and Pantacle of
Fire. It is the hourglass and tail-biting serpent. It is the Ganges becoming Ocean,
the Way of the Eternal Child.
It names the Source of Mine Own Being - and yours. It is the origin of this
sending, that channels through Andromeda and Set. What race of gods do speak
to Man, O Willed Ones? The word of them is both the Name and the Fact.
It is for thee mantram and incantation. To speak it is to bring about certain
change. Be circumspect in its usage - for if its truth be known abroad, it would
perchance drive the slaves to madness and despair.  
Only a true Priest-King may know it fully, and stay in balance through his GOing
flight. This is all I speak for now. The Book of the Preshadowing of the Feather is
complete.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will.''
- Liber Pennae Praenumbra

III. The Night of Saturn

"…excuse me while I kiss the sky!" - Jimi Hendrix

"Everything merges with the night..." - Brian Eno

“…black is the color and none is the number…” - Bob Dylan

Binah corresponds to the Black or Death Magick of Chaos, the A.A. office
of Magister Templi, and the G.D. 8=3 degree. Saturn was of old seen as the
outermost pylon of the solar system, before the still recent discovery of the outer
planets: the slowest moving of the wanderers and the symbol of time itself.
Deities would include Kronos, Kali, Hera, and Nuit. Works involving death and
darkness, necromancy and communication with the dead, spiritualist séances
(which are well-done only with very rare mediums), the discovery and laying to

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rest of hauntings, and malign sendings of spectral vengeance all center here. An
antique practice involves the retention of a spirit in a vessel, egg or jar; or by its
connection with its skull, sometimes including the crossed-bones that make the
symbol of Osiris, slain and reborn. The ancient Celts were never history's only
headhunters, and the Egyptian cult of Osirian resurrection finds later forms in the
fabled zombies or zuvembies of Haitian Vodou, a far more complex process than
it seems in bad movies.
Among the darker of black magicks is the partial reanimation of a (relatively
fresh) corpse by virtue of an act of necrophiliac intercourse with the sorcerer. The
cemetery, graveyard, or bone-orchard where life and death meet has always
been a customary place of power, the site of medieval western conjurations or of
the tumultuous aforementioned vodou rituals, often the meeting place of the
witches' Sabbat. The crossroads where suicides are buried and the gallows once
stood serves a similar function, and the mystical mandrake root grows from the
semen ejaculated by hanged men; this was a liminal place of mystery worldwide,
of strange meetings and in-betweeness. In the east tantriks would meditate in the
cremation-grounds, face-to-face with their own death, visualizing the decay of
their bodies and devouring by demons in the Tibetan Chod rites descended from
many similar dreams or myths of shamanic dismemberment. Peter Carroll in
Liber Null suggests three options for dying magicians, the Red, White, and Black
Rites, which I have discussed above.
Death is also seen as the ultimate passage through the bardo states to the
clear light of the diamond void and final liberation from the wheel of rebirth and
this brings us to the other side of Saturn as the infinite body of Nuit, of night
eternal jeweled with stars. The central paradox of Binah is the resolution of life
and death, of being and non-existence, of joy and sorrow; of the Great Mother
who gives birth only to devour us with time and eternity, in the turning of the
wheel and the love play of creation. Everything we know exists in the empty void
of nothingness.
In the words of the ancient Tara-mantra:

"GATE, GATE, PARAGATE, PARASAMGATE, BODHI, SVAHA!

(O Bodhi, gone, gone, gone to the other shore, landed at
the other shore, svaha!)
GATE, GATE, PARAGATE, PARASAMGATE, BODHI, SVAHA!
(Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what
an awakening, All Hail!)
GATE, GATE, PARAGATE, PARASAMGATE, BODHI, SVAHA!
(Pure presence is transcending, ever transcending, transcending
transcendence, transcending even the transcendence of
transcendence. It is total awareness. It is suchness.)"

Leary’s Eighth Circuit is that of Non-Local Quantum Consciousness: bilocation

and deja vu, lucid dreaming and out-of-body experiences, alien contacts and
cyber-space, and ultimately Taoist emptiness or the Omega Point. According to
Kenneth Grant one magical power of Binah is: "(3) Shock (in the form of intense

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surprise, grief, ecstasy, etc.); any sudden release of subconscious energy affects
the Kundalini."

II. The Word of Neptune

"Life as an art and art as a game - an action for its own sake, without thought for
gain or loss, praise or blame - is the key, then, to the turning of living itself into a
yoga, and art into the means to such a life.” - Joseph Campbell

In Chokmah one takes the A.A. office of Magus, and the G.D. 9=2 degree.
Like Malkuth it may include the Octarine or Pure Magick of Chaos. God forms
could include Hadit, Pan, and the three Olympian brothers Zeus, Poseidon and
Hades. It is a sphere of Life to balance that of Death, a Word to challenge the
Silence. The foundation of all true magical orders is established at this level, and
it is here that the Word of the Magus is spoken.
One element we may discuss is the formula of reversal or inversion,
whereby all the normally ordered patterns of things and flows of energy are
turned backwards to their sources, to the aboriginal Chaos. Examples abound of
the festivals of misrule in many cultures, such as the Roman Saturnalia where
the social order is turned upside down and the masters serve their slaves, or the
medieval French carnival that featured Quasimodo the hunchback becoming the
Pope of Fools (the very word 'Carnival' means 'to leave the flesh behind'). In the
Celtic or Gypsy otherworlds all actions may be backwards or upside-down; at the
legendary black sabbat medieval witches danced back-to-back and might parody
by inversion the Christian mass. In yogic meditation we follow our thoughts back
to their roots; in tantra those things that entrap the spirit also lead to liberation.
Frater Achad had shocking visions of the reversals of the Hebrew and English
alphabets and the total inversion of the paths of the tree of life, and later made
much use of this formula. Austin Spare utilized imaginative nostalgia and
atavistic resurgence to revert into the most primordial Kia, the transcendent
source of all manifestation. Each sphere of the tree of life may be considered as
the reflection or reversal of the one above it in the process of creation.
When visiting Soror Nema some years ago I noticed that she would
always turn a piece of art upside-down while inspecting it; this led me to review
her own paintings in much the same manner, and to reconsider the reversal of
tarot trumps. Chokmah is the first reflection of Kether, and all mirrors reverse
images. When the revolutionary art of printing first entered Europe it was quite
widely considered satanic because the type was set backwards, as well as
threatening the church's total control of information. There was also William
Blake's secret method of 'infernal printing'. All of this harkens back to the
deconstruction of the mundane shell of constricting personality, to the vitalized
energies of free belief released by excess and extremes, blasphemy and
perversion, antinomianism and iconoclasm, and to the soul's final liberation from
that thrice-damned wheel of recurring karma and ceaseless rebirth.

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 Chokmah is also the sphere of the Logos or Word that recreates the
universe. In Crowley's magick each Age or Aeon has a Magus who declares the
Word or formula that epitomizes it, and other prophets whose words express
their works arise throughout history to purify and revitalize these magickal
currents. "In the Beginning was the Word," says Genesis. This Word speaks both
truth and falsehood, because speech by its nature is limited and incomplete.
Robert Anton Wilson has often said "Every statement is true in some sense, false
in some sense, both true and false in some sense, and neither true nor false in
some sense." However, speech like magick is the way in which we deal with the
world until such time as we pass beyond the need for either; and until that comes
to pass, words have enormous power; in politics and advertising, in therapy and
magick, and in the hearts and minds of humanity.
According to Kenneth Grant the magical power of Chokmah is: "(2) Drugs
and alcohol: "To worship me take wine and strange drugs, whereof I will tell my
prophet, & be drunk thereof. They shall not harm ye at all."
"The familiar is always sterile." - A.O. Spare

I. The Way of Pluto

"One moment of realization is worth ten thousand prayers." - Traditional Sufi

saying

"For men to have a glimpse of lasting happiness he has first to realize that God,
being all, knows all; that God alone acts and reacts through all; that God, in the
guise of countless animate and inanimate entities, experiences the innumerably
varied phenomena of suffering and happiness, and that God Himself undergoes
all these illusory happenings." - Meher Baba

At Kether the Crown we find the A.A. office of Ipsissimus, the G.D. 10=1
degree, and clarity beyond darkness, light, or the spectrum of colors. This is the
root of the TAO, of the KIA, of all things and all concepts manifested or
unmanifest; of GOD in great big capital letters and the goat-horned PAN crowned
in mystery. Much of what can be said about this sphere is a purely philosophical
speculation, and Crowley simply states: "Unity is Paradox". This is the still
smooth point where the nameless becomes the named and the central focus of
the moment of creation where all words melt into silence. It is the instant outside
of time, in-between the Big Bang and the Big Crunch. Beyond this swirling point
of beginning and ending lie the triple veils of the void, the formless form of the
infinite and ultimate body of Nuit; this diamond light of emptiness and eternity
permeates all apparent things, and we must each continually rediscover it for
ourselves in the awakening awareness of a Nothingness that is somehow also
Everything.

"Only in silence the word;

only in darkness, light;

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only in dying, life.
Bright the hawk's flight
on the empty sky." - The Creation of Ea, Ursula K. LeGuin

Nevertheless, the whole thrust of human religion is largely an attempt to

find a Name that God will answer to when called. In the west we have obsessed
about Jehovah (a mere corruption of IHVH) and Jesus Christ, in the Middle East
Allah (the One God with 99 Names) reigns supreme; in the Far East and the rest
of the world we find the 108 Names of Shiva and the Million Names of God, and
every single one of them is true.
There are also many more secret names special to magick, and I have touched
upon many of them here. Triple Hekate is still the Queen of the Witch-Cult, and
Thoth the Speaker of Words and Lord of the Tarot; the ancient Egyptian god
Heka is Magick personified, and the stranger Dionysos crowned with grapevines
brings ecstasy dancing. Odin rules the Runes. The mysterious Baphomet once
said to be worshipped by the medieval Knights Templar has been adopted by
many Thelemites, Witches, Chaosians, and Satanists: represented as a bird-
winged figure with the horned head and hooves of a goat, the breasts of a
woman and the phallus of a man, this icon represents all forms of organic life; a
being both Male & Female, Angel & Devil, God & Beast. The word Baphomet is
also qabalistically cognate to Great Pan, whose name means ‘All’. The Truth of
Maat manifests the Gods of the New Aeon, as it is written: “Nuit! Hadit! Ra-Hoor-
Khuit! The Sun, Strength & Sight, Light; these are for the servants of the Star &
the Snake.” (AL, I, 21)

“The bird is struggling out of the egg,

The egg is the world,
Whoever wants to be born must first destroy a world.
The bird is flying to God.
The name of the God is called Abraxas.” - Hermann Hesse

My own ultimate name is the God ABRAXAS, who is found in the writings
of the Alexandrian gnostic and magical sects. He is depicted upon countless
talismanic gemstones as a man with the head of a cockerel or hawk and snakes
for legs, often bearing a shield graven with the divine name IAO and identified
with the gnostic deity Aion, and said to be foremost among the Aeons of
Creation. Sometimes depicted as a charioteer, he ruled the First Heaven and the
seven planetary spheres. In both Greek and Hebrew qabala his name totals 365:
the number of days in the year, and thus of the Sun and the Cycles of Time. It is
also a number of the Vedic, Persian and Roman god Mithras. The hawk’s head
represents Horus and the order of celestial realms, and the serpentine legs are
Set as the dragon of the chaotic netherworlds; the human body is the Self always
centered in our reality. His name is the root of the Word of the Aeon: “The ending
of the words is the Word Abrahadabra.” (AL, III, 67)

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“Hard to know is the deity of Abraxas. Its power is the greatest, because man
perceiveth it not. From the Sun he draweth the ‘summum bonum’; from the devil
the ‘infinum malum’; but from Abraxas LIFE, altogether indefinite, the mother of
good and evil.”
“Each star is a god, and each space that a star filleth is a devil. But the empty-
fullness of the whole is the Pleroma. The operation of the whole is Abraxas, to
whom only the ineffective standeth opposed.” - Carl Jung, Septem Sermones
ad Mortuos

According to Kenneth Grant the magical power of Kether is: "(1) Total
concentration and absorption of the mind in its source, brought on by intense
study or research, or by absolute introversion; or by some state of mental
quiescence, or one-pointed concentration of mental energy on a magical symbol
or sigil."

“One mounteth unto the Crown by the moon and by the Sun, and by the arrow,
and by the Foundation, and by the dark home of the stars from the black earth.”
- Liber LXV, I, 9

To finally retrace the Middle Pillar as the mode of ascent: we begin in Malkuth,
the black Earth herself, the material world of time and event, the Buddhist
Samsara. Here we set our feet and establish the forms of our foundation in the
quartered elements and the Human Body.
Opening we rise to the white/silver sphere of the Moon, the gateway, the
mirror, the dreaming pool of the astral light. Our individual Self opens to the
collective unconscious, the realm of the soul and of primal shamanic witchcraft.
Hod then engages our intellect and Netzach our emotions.
Centering our focus we become one with the True Self in the red/gold
realm of the Sun; in a higher consciousness, in personal revelations of magick, in
the balanced link formed by and with the Holy Guardian Spirit. This level is
structured by Chesed and expressed in action by Geburah.
Making a leap past knowledge we cross the desert of the Abyss.
Beyond all we find the kingdom’s crown, union with the indescribable
origin expressed through the triple supernals, the Buddhist Nirvana, the Triangle
centered on the Eye of God.
What I perceive as my Self is a universe spiraling in the dark womb of
space, a single light that sparks billions of dancing reflections. Crowley once
described the vision he attained in his highest yogic trance: “Nothingness with
twinkles… but what twinkles!”

(The mysterious origin of the entire Tree of Life & Death, the secret of creation
itself, emerges out of the Triple Veil of the Beyond, called by qabalists Ain, Ain
Soph, Ain Soph Aur (‘The Void, Without Limit, the Limitless Light’); nothingness
knowing itself. The Dancer whirls in Her endless veils…)

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“A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall
be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-
folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one. “ - Four
Quartets, T. S. Eliot.

The Customary Sinister Warning Delivered Just For Dramatic Effect

"In this book it is spoken of the sephiroth & the paths, of spirits & conjurations, of
gods, spheres, planes & many other things which may or may not exist. It is
immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things certain results
follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or
philosophical validity to any of them."
- Aleister Crowley

Occult exercises can, do, and should lead to extremes. Therefore I must
presuppose that this present author and his hypothetical future publisher take
absolutely no personal responsibility for any possible consequences (or total lack
thereof) as a result of the many odd practices discussed in this book or any of the
suggested supplements to it, and I will also recommend against their
indiscriminate use by all individuals with any serious or chronic physical
conditions or mental disorders, such as heart disease or epilepsy or dementia;
except when under the constant care of a very wise physician or the extremely
rare qualified guru. In the great and ancient historical tradition of all mystic arts
the wide world over: “Caveat Emptor ('let the buyer beware'). All Items Are Sold
As Curios Only”. And of course I would never advise you to do anything
dangerous, silly, immoral or illegal unless it was your True Will, in which case I
might also quite strongly suggest not getting caught. To quote the lurid warning
of the late Golden Dawn adept Reverend William Alexander Ayton: "This
development of Man's Higher Powers is not without great dangers. It cuts both
ways. A man by its means may become either a God or an Incarnation of Evil."
To quote Cervantes, “Those who play with cats must expect to be scratched.”
Try not to hurt yourself by doing something dumb.
We've all seen bad horror movies, right? DON’T GO INTO THE
BASEMENT ALONE!!! This being said (amid thunder in the distance, mist on the
moors, strange lights in the woods, scratching noises from the vault, ghostly
apparitions on the stairs, rising organ music) DO WHAT THOU WILT! And good
luck to you all.

"Whoever carries this book with him, is safe from all his enemies, visible or
invisible; and whoever has this book with him cannot die without the holy corpse
of Jesus Christ, nor drowned in any water, nor burn up in any fire, nor can any
unjust sentence be passed upon him. So help me.” - from John George

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Hohman's 1820 work Pow-wows, or Long Lost Friend, a collection of mysterious
and invaluable arts and remedies for man as well as animals, with many proofs.

* * * * *

The preceding volume of essays was designed as an introduction to the

background of my very own Secret Society, the luminous yet informal Ordo
Ludus Noctis, which operates neither by mail-order correspondence courses nor
formal initiation rituals, but by the random induction of strange synchronicities
that may enable you to discover your own fascinations and ultimately your own
True Will. Take a qabalistic number and stop waiting, Ascended Masters may be
with you shortly. As a semi-historical document I append below my original
manifesto, written several years back, as the seed from which this entire twisted
effort has sprung. Please always remember that there are absolutely no
absolutes, and that in those immortal words of Saint Hassan i Sabbah:
"Nothing is true, and all is permitted."

A Secretive Manifesto, A New Disorder

"A magician needs an order like a politician needs a party." - John Symonds

“Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.” - Wolfgang von Goethe

The Ludus Noctis or School of Night was the rumored name of an

Elizabethan secret society that may or may not have actually existed. As a
branch of the Invisible College of the Rosicrucians, rumored to be somewhat
Saturnian in nature, it might have included as members the explorer Sir Walter
Raleigh, the poet George Chapman, the mathematician Walter Warner, the
astronomer Tomas Harriot, playwright Christopher Marlowe, and Henry Percy the
Wizard Earl of Northumberland. Many of these gentlemen may have been
students of that notorious secret agent and multi-talented magus of Enochian
fame, Dr. John Dee, who arranged their contact with the brilliant heretic Giordano
Bruno. It has been suggested that this esoteric cabal has further expressed their
revolutionary vision through patronage of the later magical plays allegedly written
by William Shakespeare. In a sense we carry on the traditions of the Academy
first formed by the ancient Greek philosophers, and revitalized by the revival of
hermetics during the Renaissance.
Another strand of thought might recall the northern tradition of the Black
School, where twelve students would learn magick from the Archfiend in person.
After a term of years they would graduate, but the Devil would seize the soul of
the last one out. In popular fable Satan was usually tricked at the last moment.

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Yet another font of inspiration is the Abbey of Thelema proposed by Rabelais
and created in Sicily by Aleister Crowley in the early 1920s.
Such a shadowy and problematical history may well prove a rather apt
metaphor for the polymorphous perversity of Magick itself, yet such a truly great
bit of dramatic nomenclature should not go to waste, regardless of any previous
incarnations. Therefore, inspired by the Double Current of Horus and Maat, the
artistic ecstasies of the Zos Kia Cultus, and the New Pandemonaeon of Chaos,
and in the diverse spirits of the Astrum Argenteum, the Horus/Maat Lodge, the
Order of the Templars of the Orient, the Bavarian Illuminati, the Secret Chiefs,
the Great White Brotherhood, the Black Lodge, the Hellfire Club, the Hidden
Chapel of the Holy Grail, the Dark Sabbath of the Witches, the Council of Twelve,
the Priory of Sion, the Nine Unknown Men, Assassins, Invisibles, Rosicrucians,
Freemasons, Watchers, the Theosophical Society, the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn, the Cult of the All-Seeing Eye, the Eight Taoist Immortals, the
International Nath Order, the most archaic Typhonian Tradition, Center of
Pestilence Local #418, and the law firm of Erebus & Old Night; also, with an
extra-special tip of the star-covered pointy hat to the Grove of the Star & the
Snake, Q.B.L.H., the Bate Cabal, the Order ov Chaos, and the I.O.T.; I do hereby
declare this to be a Dis-Order re-formed, open to all humanity, not (alas!) via
massive initiation fees, but by simply and suddenly finding yourself a member by
virtue of awakening to your True Self.

"To this secret order every wise and spiritually enlightened person belongs by
right of his or her nature. Into this sacred society no one can be admitted by
another, unless he has the power to enter by virtue of his own interior
illumination."
- Aleister Crowley

The stone which the builders rejected becomes the foundation of the
King's palace and the keystone of the Royal Arch. Came not Jesus to comfort the
afflicted and Crowley to afflict the comfortable? Be ye then the horny goats of
Pan, for the little lambs of Christ get fleeced. We can become Gods or lamb
chops. If you've ever belonged to anything of an esoteric and initiatory bent you
may already be in. If you've ever found yourself brutally cast out of something
more conventional as a Gawd-damn'd heretic you may be in. If you have some
random momentary whim that you wind up regretting later you may be in. If you
bought this book, you really are in. Congratulations. "What man is at ease in his
inn? Get out!" says Aleister Crowley. "The world is a burning house - get out!"
taught the Buddha. "You've got to get in to get out," sings Peter Gabriel.
Who gets to issue the credentials? I do. This was my brilliant idea. What
are the basic requirements? The sharing of Magical Art. That means your brilliant
ideas. What are some of the more openly avowed purposes? Metamorphosis,
human evolution, intelligent conversation, primordial wisdom, eventual world
domination, and cheap sordid thrills. Mutation, liberation, surrealism, and flaming
scarlet ecstasy. Health, wealth, happiness and liberation for all beings. And all, of
course, by both the finding and the doing of our own True Wills.

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 This preceding treatise has been an official Ordo Ludus Noctis preliminary
publication in Class A/B, Top Secret, Third Eyes Only; which is to say that it is a
rather rambling tirade on what I might think this week, sometimes humorous and
not infrequently pompous, and always remains subject to change without notice. I
have recently been moved to write down my thoughts on what is most useful in
the post-modern magickal tradition for limited circulation among my closest
friends, the Secret Chiefs of Staff of the Gray Lodge, in hopes of receiving their
challenges and comment; someday this rather skeletal guide may evolve into a
real live published book, perhaps with a catchy commercial new-age title like The
Tao of Thelema, Kaos for Kids, Better Living Through Magick, Trafficking With
The Devil, Fiendish Fun With Uncle AL, Mo’ Better Magick, or The Joy of
Sorcery. I can only hope that it will be found to be brilliant, charming, erudite and
concise, yet still somehow shocking, macabre, twisted and offensive. I may have
touched upon subjects that many might perceive as being utterly perverse,
revolting, heretical, or otherwise politically incorrect, but I can only remark that it
is a damn poor joke that doesn't successfully offend somebody. As a personal
tribute to the heritage of this great art, I have freely ornamented my text with a
garden of quotable aphorisms useful and educational to the young, gleaned from
both alleged authorities and innocent bystanders.

I have dedicated this work to Frater Perdurabo, Soror Nema, and Zos vel
Thanatos; to my friends, foes, lovers, teachers, earlier and other covens,
collegiums and orders, and fellow practitioners of the Law of Thelema; and also
unto All and Naught and that which is beyond.
Again I emphasize the magickal link with the New Aeon and the 93
Current as revealed in Liber Al vel Legis: The Book of the Law, which is the great
Grimoire of this era; combined with the Next Step of the 696 Current as later
expressed in Liber Pennae Praenumbra: the Book of the Foreshadowing of the
Feather, which opens the outer gateways beyond the circles of time. I also
greatly appreciate the post-modern non-system known as Chaos Magick, heir to
the Zos Kia Cultus of A.O. Spare. These are the triple strands that I weave.

"The Love of Liber Legis is always bold, virile, even orgiastic. There is delicacy,
but it is the delicacy of strength. Mighty and terrible and glorious as it is, however,
it is but the pennon upon the sacred lance of Will, the damascened inscription
upon the swords of the Knight-monks of Thelema." - Aleister Crowley

The Seal of this Order forms around the classic eye-in-the-triangle design,
much beloved of both professional occultists and conspiracy paranoids; the Eye
is that of Ra or Horus, the hawk-headed Sun God of ancient Egypt whose spirit
embodies this present Aeon of time. The point of the pupil at its very center
serves to represent the stellar god Hadit/Set, and is crowned by the feather
symbolic of the unfolding future balance of Maat. It is surrounded by the three
numbers corresponding to Crowley's major qabalistic numerations of the name
Aiwass, informing spirit of the Age of Horus, transmitter of The Book of the Law:

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 78 is the sum of the numbers from 1 to 12, the total number of trumps in
the Tarot deck, of MeZLA the influence from Kether, and of AIWAS.
93 is the core number of the current, corresponding to THELEMA (will)
and AGAPE (love) by the Greek qabala, to LAShTAL (by one of Mr. Crowley's
most convoluted formulations), and the spelling OIVZ.
418 is the number of RA HOOR, of HeRU-RA-HA, of MAKAShANaH, and
of ABRAHADABRA (the formula of cosmic consciousness); by the Greek qabala,
of PALLAS ATHENE and of AIWASS.

The alchemical symbol of the Oroboros or tail-devouring serpent, symbol

of eternity and the infinite circle of the goddess Nuit/Isis, encompass all. This is
depicted as the venomous horned viper of the Egyptian desert, an ancient image
of Chaos. There are also three words of power: ‘heka’ in Egyptian hieroglyphs,
‘mageia’ in the Greek script, and ‘galdra’ in the Norse runes, all of which mean
‘magick’. These reflect the most primal root traditions of the ancient Middle
Eastern, classical Mediterranean, and Old European worlds whose cultures gave
birth to the unique forms of our contemporary western mystery tradition.
Our most magical patrons are the lunar creatrix Hekate, the solar deity
Abraxas, and the stellar alchemist Thoth Hermes Trismegistus from the past, and
all the gods, spirits, daimons, kami, neters, or loa of the New Aeon in the future.

“Servius, one of Virgil’s commentators, wrote that just as Hecate is Proserpine in

Hades, Diana upon the earth, and Luna in Heaven, for which reason she is called
the “triple goddess”, so the Harpies are the Furies of the underworld, the Harpies
of the earth, and the Dirae, or demons, of the sky. They are sometimes confused
with the Fates.”
- from The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges

The Eight-Rayed Star of the Order is Sothis; the Stone is quartz crystal;
the colors are red, black and white; the sacred animals are all chimerical and
hybrid forms such as the dragon, the basilisk, and the sphinx; birds include the
phoenix, hawk & vulture; the insects are the scarab-beetle, the honey-bee, and
the star-spider. Our herbs are marijuana and moly, and the favorite mushroom is
psilocybin. Our motto is ERITIS SICUT DEI, the promise of the Serpent in Eden:
“You shall be as gods!” A top-secret masonic handshake will be arranged shortly.

“Guard the mysteries! Reveal them constantly!”

“Every man and every woman is a star!”

This Secret Society was reformed just for the sheer hell of it, in the 93rd
year of the Aeon of Horus and 200th year of the American Republic, near the
Northern Gate of the Emerald City, on the Third Stone from the Sun. I bid you
welcome to the Third Table of the Holy Grail: enter freely and of your own True
Will. Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged! Fay ce que vouldras!

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- Shade Oroboros DCLXVI, OHO, Ordo Ludus Noctis
Grand Magister & Heresiarch of the Gray Lodge
Seattle, anno 93

Sources for information on the Ludus Noctis or School of Night include The
Magic of Obelisks by Peter Tompkins, The Occult Philosophy by F. A. Yates, and
the novel The Armor of Light by M. Scott & L.A. Barnett.

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