Much is made of semantics when it comes to animal magic. You have totems, and animal guides, and power animals, and animal spirits, and animal familiars, and tonal and nagual animals, and so on so forth. Everyone’s opinion varies as to what each of those words means, and I don’t think there’s really any right or wrong to that, just so long as everyone has an idea of what everyone else is talking about. You can have one person talking about their animal totem, another of a power animal, and a third about an animal spirit guide. After a few minutes, they may very well find they’re all referring to the same basic concept. Some people are very strict about their terminology, while others use whatever word works best for their needs. (I’ve found that the animals themselves believe we all think too much, but that’s another observation entirely.)

For my own part, I am quite fond of the term “totem.” I have collected three different ideas of what a totem actually is (as opposed to what it does). The first is that a totem is an archetypal being, akin to the Animal Master of Joseph Campbell, which embodies all the characteristics of a species.¹ There’s also the idea that a totem is an individual animal spirit which may or may not have been in a physical body at some point. And from a psychological viewpoint, a totem animal represents one aspect of the human psyche, the whole of which may be mapped out in any pantheon or other grouping of entities, totems included.

I find it advantageous to work with all three of these theories simultaneously. After all, reality is not a simple thing. It is vast, and highly dependent on observation and belief for its forms. “Right” and “wrong” ways of belief are highly subjective, and I don’t think the archetypal theory is any more or less correct than the other two. On the contrary, I find that all three work harmoniously.

Let me give you an example. Earlier today, I wanted to work some magic to bolster my job hunting efforts. I’d been feeling rather discouraged, and even a bit self-sabotaging, and wanted to reverse that trend. You can apply for all the jobs in the world, and get as many interviews as you can, but if you go in with a negative attitude you may as well have stayed home. So it was time to counteract the self-sabotage I’d indulged in.

I’ve been working more with my animal skins; two wolves, a fox, a badger, a deer, and a few others. When an animal dies, it leaves behind a spirit of sorts — not the soul itself, but definitely something that has a personality and remembers what it was to be that animal. I went to them and I asked, “Who can help me with this?” The badger spoke up: “I can teach you how to make your efforts more efficient, and find a means of living that you’ll gain a lot from.” He showed me an image of a hole in the ground with a never ending supply of grubs, mice and other things that badgers find delicious, the closest he had to show as a parallel between what I wanted and what a badger thinks of as a good supply of resources. Not that I expect to end up with a hole full of grubs, of course.

That’s where Badger the archetype came in. Once I opened the ritual and evoked all my friends, family and guardians, I called on Badger and told him of my need. He understood perfectly. The thing about the Animal Masters, the archetypes, is that they serve as intermediaries between animals and humanity. They help us to understand what it is to be animal, and they help animals understand what it is to be human. Therefore Badger was able to communicate further to my badger skin spirit what exactly the objective was.

As I was performing the ritual, I also called upon that within me which is badger in nature. Pretty much every time invoke an animal energy I astrally shift to that animal for as long as the invocation lasts. As I went through the various processes of my magic, I could feel (non-physically) the silver and black fur over my skin, the way that a badger’s limbs are shorter, and the muscle more compact, with a sharp-toothed muzzle. However, the more abstract connections also came to the fore; I felt more grounded and strong, less afraid of the task at hand.

This wasn’t the first time I’d used the tri-layered approach; for years I’ve done totem dancing with a wolf skin, calling on the archetypal Wolf, the spirit of the skin, and my own lupine nature as I danced. It was the first time I’d ever worked with Badger, though. In the past, when working with a new totem, I just called on the archetype; for example, in previous job hunting rituals I had called upon Otter and Beaver, but only through evoking the archetypal totems. The connection to Badger in this ritual was a lot stronger, though time will tell what the full results of the ritual are.

It would be easy for me to simply say that these were separate beings, that the Badger archetype was entirely independent of the badger skin spirit, both of which were unconnected to the internal badger aspect. And some would argue that one was a totem, another a spirit guide, and the third just a figment of my imagination. However, I see them as all connected, as I see all of reality connected. That which we label as Badger manifests in numerous ways, on one level Badger is the archetype; on another, Badger is every physical specimen of several species of mustelids; and on a third, Badger is that within me (and possibly other people) that not only relates to the furry animal that can dig a burrow quicker than a person can shovel, but also the ideas of tenacity and resourcefulness. This increases the power of the totem and also allows a more personal connection because of the physical contact with the skin, and the invocation of the badger-self.

I am definitely going to continue with experimenting with this tri-layered approach to totemism. It brings together a number of magical practices and combines them to make a more powerful combined evocation/invocation, as well as offering me a deeper connection to the totems I work with. In the end, it really doesn’t matter what the semantics are — what I felt today in that ritual, dancing in a slow circle with Badger, as Badger, was beyond the words themselves… magic!

Footnotes

1. Campbell, 1984, p. 292

©2006 Lupa
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Lupa is the author of Fang and Fur, Blood and Bone: A Primal Guide to Animal Magic, A Field Guide to Otherkin, and co-author of Kink Magic, among other works. You can read her blog at http://therioshamanism.com and see her website at http://www.thegreenwolf.com.

The Pagan and Occult Author Resource Page

SEATTLE, WA — November 25, 2006

After several months of updates and design changes, authors Taylor Ellwood and Lupa would like to announce the rebirth of the Pagan and Occult Author Resource Page. Located at http://www.thegreenwolf.com/poarp.html, this is an extensive collection of resources specifically aimed towards writers in the pagan and occult nonfiction genres.

In 2004, Taylor published his first solo book, Pop Culture Magick. In the process, he realized that there was no central resource available to new occult authors navigating the ins and outs of writing, editing, publishing, and promoting nonfiction texts. He collected the resources he had gathered in his own research, arranged them online, and the Occult Author Resource Page was born.

Fast forward to 2006. Taylor and his new wife, friend and fellow author Lupa, decided to revamp the OARP. They moved everything over to their joint site, weeded out the dead links, and spent weeks adding even more essays, tips and links of interest to authors. Because the information was relevant to pagan as well as occult authors, the name was changed, and the OARP became the POARP.

Since then, Taylor and Lupa have been adding to the POARP on a consistent basis. The basics of the OARP have been retained: magazines and other publications for authors to submit their articles and review copies of books to, radio shows and podcasts aimed at pagan and occult listeners, and an ever-growing list of festivals and other events. New features include essays and tips on everything from editing to promotion and publicity, calls for writers, and a variety of links to valuable online communities and other resources.

The look and location may have changed, but the focus is the same: to offer both new and experienced authors in the pagan and occult non-fiction genres the information they need to write, publish and market that book they’ve been working on. New resources and essays are accepted and appreciated. And, as always, the POARP is entirely free of charge.

To find out more about the POARP, visit http://www.thegreenwolf.com/poarp.html.

Nicholas Graham Releases First Book

Megalithica Books
Immanion Press Publicity Editor

Nicholas Graham is proud to announce the upcoming release of his debut book, entitled The Four Powers (Megalithica Books catalog #MB0104 ISBN #1-905713-04-5). The Four Powers is the book that Nicholas Graham wishes he’d had when he was just discovering magic as a teenager. It’s a unique introduction to magic; rather than relying on the same rehashed Wicca 101, Graham goes into a variety of topics — the different areas of magic (Neopaganism, Ceremonial magic, Chaos magic, etc.), the various models of magic (spiritual, energetic, psychological, cybernetic), and applications of magic (evocation, invocation, divination), among many other areas of interest.

He also includes exceptionally useful exercises to help the reader apply what s/he has read and further determine where to put hir focus of study. The recommended reading is varied, and lacks the fluff that can mislead seekers for years.

Graham goes into realistic looks at real-world situations, too, such as coming out of the broom closet, deciding whether magic really is dangerous or not, and deciding what your personal morals will be. What is presented here is a no fluff, common sense look at being new to magic that shows the many avenues available while giving practical advice for figuring out where to start one’s own journey. This is an excellent book to give to someone just getting started on their magical journey, but it’s also ideal for someone who’s been studying and practicing one paradigm for a while and is feeling stuck in a rut.

For the time being, you can order The Four Powers here.

News in Magick appears as often as we receive press releases. If you’d like to send us a press release of potential interest to RTV readers, please email your materials to admin@rendingtheveil.com and be aware of our issue publication dates.

Meditation in Theory

Meditation is the foundation of all magical and mystical systems of all cultures. It may seem a bit beginnerish to spend an entire article on the subject, but I believe this topic to be important enough to cover over and over again. I don’t think that I’ll have to do that here, but I at least want to get out my views on the topic for the general reader.

To give an idea of what meditation is at its core, allow me the presumption of a crude allegory. Consider an unpolished block of marble. This is your mind, complete with rough edges, nooks, points, spines, and crannies of all varieties on every side. Thoughts (my ideas of which will be explained further in a moment) are as snowballs being slung at the marble block. With all of the rough spots, there is ample friction for the snow to stick, and more than enough nooks in which the snow can be caught. Meditation is a process by which we buff, chisel, and polish the marble until it is smooth. At this point, the mud can only stick for but a few moments, after which it simply slides off the nearly frictionless surface. Such are the thoughts that are thrown at a meditative mind.

As stated, this is merely an allegory. No thoughts of my own could possibly tell the whole story, but it gives you a good idea. This allegory, in my opinion, also answers a question that troubles many would-be magicians and mystics. Most of us are taught at the beginning that if we do not achieve complete mental vacuity, we have failed in our meditative efforts. While mental vacuity must be our goal, meditation almost always falls short of this ideal. We are not failures for this. A Zen practitioner friend of mine once told me in response to a question on this that no matter how many years you’ve been at it, there will always be a bit of mental chatter. The goal is to attain a state in which thoughts melt away as quickly as they appear.

Why, some readers may ask, would we want to achieve such a state at all? Isn’t thinking good? Of course thinking is good. Any extremist which tries to tell you that thinking is bad has entirely missed the point. Meditation is useful in numerous ways. The most practical use for most people is that meditation calms the mind such that thinking throughout the rest of one’s day is smoother and much easier to direct and focus.

Additionally, meditation puts one in touch in a very direct and open way with what we may term Divinity or The Source by way of the essential “emptiness” of all things. Meditation does not empty us, but instead aids us in realizing our own preexisting emptiness, or what William G. Gray calls “Nil.” Think of Nil as our essential Self, but likewise Nil is the essence of everything and everyone else, so it is our one true and complete means of unity with all other aspects of existence and even non-existence. For more culturally specific modes of expressing this idea, think the Kabbalistic Yechidah, or the Taoist statement that it is only by a thing’s emptiness that it is made useful.¹ A wheel is only usable if it has a central hole for the axle, and a vase is only a vase if it is hollow.

For many magicians, the primary role of meditation in their practice is as a convenient and portable means of casting “spells” or “sigils.” After all, while sitting in your company’s lunch room it’s much easier to achieve a meditative state of mind than it is to jump up and do an ecstatic dance or perform a complete ceremonial invocation! Meditation is indeed quite useful for this purpose, based on my experience, but please do not make the common mistake of believing that this is the only ‘true’ goal of meditation.

Now for the question of the nature of consciousness. Without using any one system’s concept of the structure of a human’s subtle bodies and aspects of Self, I will provide my own theory based on my own experience from 5 years of serious meditation. I hope that it will give somebody a bit of insight into what meditation actually accomplishes and how it does so.

I recommend that everybody try the Neophyte meditation of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.² Spend several minutes performing rhythmic breathing in your preferred fashion. The Golden Dawn themselves suggested the Fourfold Breath (count of 4 in, count of 4 hold, count of 4 out, count of 4 hold, etc.) but this is not necessary as long as you are breathing in a rhythmic, relaxed, and thoroughly oxygenating manner. Now, consider a zero-dimensional point. Focus all of your attention on that concept the best you can. Consider the concept directly (no tangential thoughts, please!) for five to ten minutes, then note down your experiences and insights.

The demonstration this simple exercise makes is that consciousness is very much like that point. That point, in Kabbalistic terminology, is like your personal Kether. Kether is much like the Eye in the Pyramid: the Observer. Aha, now you know what the title of this article means! The Observer is my name for the essential consciousness of each person. The implications of this idea are simply astounding, and make more sense the more one meditates.

We do not create ideas, at least not most of them. We observe them as they float by us on the Mental Plane. Let that sink in for a moment. Read it again. We observe thoughts as they float by us on the Mental Plane. The Mental Plane is not limited by time and space, so when I say, “as they float by us,” I mean that only as a simplification. A proper clarification may be that we observe those thoughts that best catch our attention, this being dependent upon our personality and individual circumstances on the Astral and Physical levels. The untrained Observer is naturally drawn to any shiny and fun thoughts that happen to enter its field of awareness. Meditation is the best method by far for training the Observer; in other words, of gaining and mastering the ability to focus the Observer’s attention on any given idea in particular.

Curiously, I have observed that we can generate certain thoughts. In particular, we generate our self-reflections. These are developed mostly in our Mental Matrices rather than in our Minds proper. A person’s Mental Matrix is the energetic interface developed between the Spirit/Mind and the Soul/Astral Body. These thoughts are generated in the individual’s Mental Matrix, then projected “outward” (or “inward,” depending on perspective) to the Mental Plane at which point they become observable to the Mind-Observer proper. This allows us a more direct mode of self-reflection as opposed to waiting for ideas about ourselves to generate spontaneously in the Mental Plane.

If this seems like a lot of unnecessary theory, you may safely disregard it in your own meditative pursuits. I, however, have found these ideas to be exceedingly useful in my own efforts as well as the efforts of some others with whom I have shared these ideas privately.

Meditation in Practice

There are two major Orders of Operation for meditation, and which one you use is dependent upon your purpose for meditation at that time. For your initial efforts, until you have mastered the techniques involved, I recommend that you stick entirely with the first or ‘mystical’ method. After that, experiment with the ‘magical’ method and get to know the differences for yourself. The practical differences are slight, but the effectual differences cannot be overstated.

The Mystical Method should be the starting place of all Initiates and Initiates-to-be. It can be found in many systems of training worldwide, from Yoga and Tantra to Franz Bardon’s Hermetics. Here, I’ll be using Franz Bardon’s descriptive titles for the steps in the method, and explaining them in my own words.³

1. Thought Control is not the literal control of your thoughts. That comes later. It’s more the control of your conscious focus and awareness. Do not attempt to grab one thought and hold to it entirely. That also comes later. Your goal here should be learning how to let go. Simply observe your thoughts as they flow by. Do your best to keep track of them, but don’t fall into the trap of focusing on any of them alone or in groups. Merely let them flow and ‘watch’ them as if on a movie screen. Continue with this step alone until you are able to maintain this state of mind for five minutes consistently. Twice daily, once in the morning and once in the evening, is best. Then add the next step to your routine. Do not replace one with the other, as they are both still important.
2. Thought Discipline is the next step, and is what most people generally associate with the term “meditation.” In this step, you must determine yourself to focus on one and only one thought, be it of any type of sense-input soever. Each person will find thoughts associated with certain senses to be easier or harder for them personally. For me, thoughts in the form of internal sound (internal dialog, a song stuck in your head, etc.) are much easier to hold than visual thoughts or olfactory thoughts, for example. For you, it could be very different. In this exercise, training our other internal senses is not the goal, however, so feel free to stick with your strongest in order to accomplish your present purpose. If you choose the sentence, “God is in us all,” repeat the sentence mentally for as long as you can without allowing your mind to wander even to tangentially relevant thoughts. Similarly for if you wish to focus on an image (a cross, a circle, or any other simple image is best) or anything else. Work on this exercise immediately after the first one. Do not move on to the third exercise until you are able to maintain this state of mental focus for at least five minutes.
3. Mastery of Thought is the third and final exercise in mastering the mystical method of meditation. Immediately following Thought Discipline, relinquish the thought you had been focusing on and allow your mind to remain clear. As I said before, there will always be some level of mental chatter. Simply allow this chatter to dissipate. Do not force it out, because that force will merely create further distractions. You will know well when you have succeeded in this exercise, as it is quite unlike any other mental state that you have experienced. Work on this exercise until you are able to maintain this vacuous state of mind for five minutes consistently.

I must emphasize that when I say to work up to five minutes with each of these exercises, I do not mean to limit yourself to that duration by any means. In fact, Bardon suggests ten minutes as a bare minimum before you can consider the techniques to be mastered, and even then do not neglect them, but continue to increase your ability with them by deepening your state of consciousness and advancing your durations. Before moving on to any more advanced techniques of magic or mysticism, a bare minimum of ten minutes each (30 minutes total) should be a consistent standard. We will always have our highs and lows, so do not be disappointed if you usually are capable of the full 10 minutes with an exercise but have a few days during which you cannot go more than two minutes without losing focus. These things happen; simply carry on with your daily work and you will soon find yourself better for it.

The Mystical Method of meditation as described above is mystical insofar as it is a self-sexual process of conception and birth of our own goals for ourselves on the Inner Planes. The thought control exercise can be considered a sort of generation of our Mental Seed. Thought discipline is the conscious choice of one among the many Seeds we have at our disposal and the implantation of it within our Inner Womb (Deep Mind, unconscious, etc.). Thus, the Seed or thought chosen for this second exercise does not have to be of a profound or spiritually abstract nature, but it should be a thought or symbol with which we would wish to inseminate the egg of our own Future Selves. Thus, statements of our ideals, important ideas from our chosen magical⁄mystical system, statements of personal goals (as long as they are compatible with our spiritual growth and do not run contrary to it) are all suitable. We are not truly enchanting for these things, but simply planting the seed for them. Future magical work involving these goals is liable to come to fruition much more easily as a consequence. Finally, the mastery of thought exercise is much like the gestation of the fertilized egg within our own psyches. We are allowing ourselves to become for a few moments (with the goal of eventually becoming on a more permanent basis) our true Inner Selves and to simply ‘be and become’ within the emptiness of our Inner Womb. The Observer may observe purely and without bias toward any one thought or idea.

The Magical Method is very similar, but not identical. It involves a different Order of Operations, but using the identical exercises described above. It is important that the practitioner master the exercises in the Mystical Method before moving on to the Magical Method. We require a handle on our Inner lives before we can hope to strongly influence the Outer with any safety and effectiveness. Power over yourself is more challenging and more rewarding than power over the outside world, and is ultimately the foundation of any healthy outer lifestyle.

The Order of Operations which follows is that used by Peter J. Carroll in his Liber Null & Psychonaut: An Introduction to Chaos Magic.⁴

1. Thought Control is described in Carroll’s book as the physical act of motionlessness, which is accurate insofar as it resembles zazen, or “sitting meditation,” the goal of which is a gradual stilling of the mind by relaxing our eyes and minds on a plain, solid background. This state requires at the very least the ability to stay mostly still and relaxed rather than tensely forcing ourselves to focus.
2. Mastery of Thought is switched here. We begin from a state of mental vacuity that we may act first as the womb into which we will implant our desire.
3. Thought Discipline is the final step. In the Magical Method, it acts as the impregnation of our previously empty Inner Womb with our desire.

The basic difference is obvious insofar as two steps are switched, but the functional difference is more subtle. In the Mystical Method, we work toward our essential silence, while in the Magical Method, we invoke our silence in order to more strongly make Inner contact and impregnate our desire into the Inner Planes. This is the secret to all magic, and goes beyond a mere altered state of consciousness if properly understood. An altered state of consciousness can only be an aid to this state. Once meditation proper has been mastered, such methods become redundant (though sometimes still fun).

The simplest magical usage of a meditative state is to spend the third step focusing on an appropriate sigil or mantra.⁵ This method is generally slow, as your desire must be ‘brought to term’ and born like any other offspring (outspring?). A way of speeding up the process, or at least adding power to it, is to utilize the process of Step 3 to first invoke the aid of an appropriate and friendly god or spirit, drawing the entity into your own emptiness as a means of close communication. Once this entity is fully invoked, or invoked to the depth of your present ability, you may request of it your desire. Do not try to force a god or spirit to do as you say. Ask it if it believes that your desire is wise and, assuming that it is, ask it to bring the desire about for you by adding its own power to yours. If the entity believes your desire to be unwise, ask its aid in reformulating your desire in such a way as to be of actual benefit. This, of course, is only the simplest of magical methods, but one that can become central to your overall practice. It can form the nucleus of larger ceremonies, or stand on its own for more basic wants and needs. It is especially well suited to acts of illumination and behavioral modification, but its power is definitely effective for Outer ends.⁶

No matter how advanced you get in magic and mysticism, basic meditation as described in this article must not be neglected. It is more difficult for some than for others, but is a worthy use of time and effort for everybody. I have on occasion had people ask me what single practice is most important for a person with limited free time. My answer is always daily meditation. Once daily is good, twice daily is better. Most people can find 60 minutes out of every day to devote to this practice, and those rare few who cannot find such time may surely find 15 or 30! Unfortunately, we are not God with the power to create time when needed, but we do have the power to clear some time from our schedules in order to improve ourselves and open up Inner and Outer opportunities for ourselves and, by sympathy, all of humanity and perhaps all of the Cosmos.

Footnotes

1. For more on Kabbalah, please see Israel Regardie’s A Garden of Pomegranates, available from several publishers. For more on this Taoist idea, read Tao Te Ching (Skylight Illuminations) by Lao Tzu (Lao-tzu, Lao Tze, etc.) and available in numerous translations and editions.
2. Available in the First Knowledge Lecture in Israel Regardie’s The Golden Dawn, Llewellyn Publications.
3. Franz Bardon’s book Initiation into Hermetics is, in my opinion, the single finest training manual in practical and mystical Hermetics. It is available in a new translation from Murker Publication Company (2001).
4. Weiser Books. This book is definitely a must-read for anybody who has not already encountered it. No matter what system or tradition you belong to, you will find something useful.
5. See Liber Null & Psychonaut again for practical information on sigils.
6. For more on basic magical and mystical practice, please see my own book, The Four Powers: Magical Practice for Beginners of All Ages from Megalithica Books, an imprint of Immanion Press.

©2006 Nicholas Graham
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Nicholas Graham is the author of The Four Powers. You can read his blog here.

One issue that occurs with both Western and Eastern sex magic is the polarization of the sexes. This kind of thinking about the sexes can be found in nineteenth century occultism (and even further back). “One calls the forces positive and negative, and one rediscovers them in good and bad, emission and reception, life and death, idea and action, man and woman (positive and negative magnetic poles) in the material plane and, conversely the woman (active pole) and man (negative pole) in the mental plane.¹” The division into polarity is often used as a way of explaining the unity found in sex magic. In other words, it is the union of opposites. Intriguingly, “enough love” is often cited as a necessary ingredient of sex magic, in order to make it particularly effective. We are inclined to agree that love, in sex magic, can be very important as an energizer. Whether the polarity is necessary is another case, as the union of opposites is by it’s nature a negation of polarity and the need for it. We feel polarity is an unnecessary approach to sex in general, that has caused far more harm and misunderstanding precisely because it is cultural, as opposed to biological.

And yet incorporation of polarity occurs all too often even in modern texts. In Shaping Formless Fire: Distilling the Quintessence of Magick, Stephen Mace states that “The difference between men and women — in both anatomy and quality of energy — is conspicuous. Men eject the quickening jolt, the surge of power, that animates the enterprise. Women provide the form that can thus be stirred to life.²” Unfortunately for Mace, this statement reveals his ignorance of female anatomy. The majority of men are ignorant of the fact that women can actually ejaculate fluid as well, and as such, by his criteria, are capable of that same quickening jolt.

Beyond that, it’s not unknown for a woman to be the active magical worker. A female magician may also use her vagina to draw in a male magician’s energy and work the necessary magic with it, rather than simply being a vessel for the magic he works. In this way, the man could simply be a generator of energy, while the woman is the one who shapes it and creates the magic. In one case, a woman has actively vamped sexual energy from men, without them knowing it, and then directed that energy toward her own purposes.³ While we don’t condone her ethical values (as we think using a person’s energy without hir permission is harmful to the person) it does illustrate that a woman can be the active principle.

Polarity automatically buys into an attitude common in both Western and Eastern sex magic texts: the idea that having a vagina makes a person automatically passive/receptive, whereas the penis endows one with active/projective energy. The stereotypical polarity not only thrusts people into limiting roles, but it also oftentimes relegates the biological woman to being a convenience rather than a participant in magic, a mere cauldron in which the male magician stirs the elixir of life. But in sex magic, polarity is not a biological fact. “Our physical gender does not determine the type or amount of energy we have access to, and does not determine the roles we must play in sex magic workings.⁴” It’s important to remember that we are not defined by our sex when it comes to magic. Instead, if sex is something which must be defined, let it be defined in a way that is helpful, as opposed to harmful.

Western sex magic generally involves heterosexual intercourse, with the focus being primarily on coitus. It is assumed that the climax of the magic will occur when the man ejaculates, regardless of whether the woman has an orgasm or not. (And we don’t care how good your magic is — there’s no way to guarantee simultaneous orgasm!) The magic is not considered complete until there’s sperm floating around in the mix. In addition, on an energetic level, the focus is on the energy raised when the man orgasms, while the woman is the container for this energy. In short, the woman serves no purpose that could not also be filled by another man, a blowup doll, or the male magician’s own hand.

Part of the problem is misunderstanding or downplay of the female orgasm. In Lupa’s experience, at least, a clitoral orgasm is much stronger than a vaginal orgasm. This is a common trait among biological females, though not universal. The difficulty for many women to have a clitoral orgasm during coitus can be seen as a distraction not worth bothering with until the real ritual is over — if even then. We wonder how many women have never had a chance to discover the clitoral orgasm exists simply because they end up with partners who can’t give decent face or hand (or who are too focused on their own pleasure to try).

The vaginal/uterine emphasis bolsters an unhealthy attitude — the idea that the highest function of a woman is to give birth, whether figuratively or literally. This strengthens the idea that effective sex magic can only come about through coitus, and that anything else is less effective because only coitus involves reproduction. While symbolic reproduction can be useful in creating effective magic, it is not the be-all and end-all of sex magic. Otherwise why would so many magicians of all sexes use masturbation to cast sigils? Yet from Cerridwen’s Cauldron to the Holy Grail to the ceremonial Cup, women are limited in symbolism only to their uteri. The clitoris is left out in the cold.

This emphasis also puts lots of pressure on men. The need to perform, to be hard in an instant, and ready to have sex (whether you want to or not) is something that men experience, but which is also frequently unnoted, because of the supposed male privilege. And yet even as not all men are ripped and buff (an image which is portrayed as the ideal man), nor do all men have a high sex drive, or for that matter an overwhelming need to have sex all the time. Nor is sex the only thing that is on a man’s mind. And yet inevitably men will be accused of “thinking with their dicks,” or be portrayed as sex crazy idiots. This stereotype is very harmful to men, putting pressure on them to conform to these images and yet also shaming them for having a perfectly natural desire for sex.

The secret to breaking this dichotomy starts at the very source of our genitalia. Every human fetus starts out as female. It is only after three months that some fetuses change over to being male. This means that everyone’s genitals start out from the same basic little buds of developing flesh. The penis and the clitoris are analogous to each other anatomically speaking, as are the testes and ovaries.⁵

There is no biological truth to polarity, because polarity is a cultural concept, with meanings associated with it that are used to define it. It’s true that the bio-males and bio-females have different physiological functions. The man can produce sperm and the woman can produce an ovum, but these functions still are focused on the same end goal and are rather similar in terms of what occurs, i.e. the sperm is produced by the man’s body as part of the procreation function, just as the ovum is produced by the woman’s body for procreation. The difference is that a woman can actually carry a baby to term in her body, and a man cannot…but the woman still needs a man in order to produce the baby. Even with that difference noted there is no definitive polarity about it. The reason is because that difference is related to a biological function as opposed to something more meaningful.

Also if we associate polarity with biology we leave out (in just the human race) the intersex people, the androgynous, the gay and lesbian community, the transgendered community, and the people who don’t have the full biological capacity to produce sperm or ovum — needless to say polarity becomes a confining system that tries to ignore the inconvenient truth that biology is capable of more diversity than just the dualistic male and female ends of the spectrum. Other species can also be pointed to as an example of the fact that polarity is not a biological constant. That people associate it with biology is a result of cultural beliefs about biology. It’s also a rather limited human-centric perspective on biology, one which tends to focus only on the human experience as opposed to trying to understand the variety of biological diversity that exists.

Polarity is a cultural concept precisely because it is an attempt to define biology outside of its functions and in ignorance of what those functions are. So we define certain “values” with polarity. Men are the active principle and women are the passive principle in sex for instance…but is that a biological reality? It is not. It is a cultural definition and a shoddy one at that. It focuses on assigning attributes to biological roles without providing any biological basis for these attributes. Unfortunately this assignation of roles is cultural and has ultimately been harmful to women precisely because it has tried to minimize them and control their capacity to enjoy sex. It harms men because it’s helped to create a stereotype where men are sex hungry creatures that only think about having sex. It’s also harmed any person who’s gender falls outside the traditional heterosexual sex roles. We’ve noted with some dismay that the majority of books on sex magic don’t, for instance, offer much to the gay and lesbian community on sex magic for them.

Now some people might point to energy work as part of biology and say that is where this concept of polarity and men being active and women being passive comes from. And yet while energy is an intrinsic part of the human organism and part of the biology of a person,⁶ any associations/meanings made about it are cultural. We need to examine those cultural assumptions and ask why they have been emphasized and who it benefits to emphasize those assumptions about sex, energy work, and polarity.

In our own work with energy, we’ve yet to find it true that women are passive and men active. We think it’s a case of associating the biological functions of the body with energy work. But can we prove that the biological functions make a man active and a women passive? Just because a penis thrusts into a vagina does not make it active. If anything we’ve found that such “polarities” are switchable in sex magic and that women can be the active principle while men are passive. Indeed, at least in Taylor’s case, he prefers for the woman to be the active principle, directing the energy and focusing it as she sees fit. That preference is both a personal turn-on, and a recognition that a woman is just as able to do magic the way he does it (regardless of the difference in biology). In other words, there is no difference (beyond the biological level) unless people make a distinction of difference. Any difference on the biological level is a difference of function, but not a difference of polarity.

It would ultimately be better to do away with polarity and the duality it inspires. Sex can be active for both participants or passive, but as long as it’s good sex does it really matter who is active or passive? By overthrowing the reliance on polarity we undo the cultural harm it can cause to people of any gender. That harm is manifold as is witnessed by the murder of transgendered people, people who refuse to fit into the sex role of their genitals, and instead choose their own gender. They are murdered for simply making that choice and this is because the cultural memeage of polarity only allows two genders, as opposed to any others. As magicians, we owe it to ourselves and to other people to not use this kind of cultural meme in our magical workings as we only reinforce the kind of hatred that can destroy so many people. And of course, limiting yourself to polarity leaves out a lot of potential fun to be had with other people!

With that recognition about the cultural values that have infiltrated our notions of sex and sex magic, we can free ourselves of them and recognize that polarity is entirely a cultural meme, infecting us with values that are oppressive, restricted, and ultimately useless to the process of sex magic. Indeed we can then accept as well that whether it’s hetero, homo, or pan sexuality being explored what meanings we make of what occurs is entirely our own responsibility and a way of making the sex act more meaningful and intimate…more a celebration and less a reinforcement of stale cultural norms.

Footnotes

1. Randolph, Pascal Beverly. (1988). Sexual magic. Trans. Robert North. New York:
   Magic Childe Publishing, Inc. Page 10.
2. Mace, Stephen. (2005). Shaping Formless Fire: Distilling the Quintessence of Magick. Tempe: New Falcon Press.
3. WitchWitch. (2006). Witch does vampire sex magick. P. 6. Widdershins, 12.1.
4. Williams, Brandy. (1990). Ecstatic Ritual: Practical Sex Magic. London: Prism Press.
5. http://www.the-clitoris.com/n_html/n_develop.htm
6. Lipton, Bruce. (2005). The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, & Miracles. Santa Rosa: Mountain of Love/Elite books.

Additional Reference

• http://www.the-clitoris.com/f_html/ejacula.htm

This article originally appeared on Spiral Nature.com and is an excerpt from the forthcoming book Kink Magic.

©2006 Taylor Ellwood & Lupa.
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Taylor Ellwood is the author of Space/Time Magic, Inner Alchemy: Energy Work and the Magic of the Body, and Pop Culture Magick, among other works. You can visit his blog at http://magicalexperiments.com/ and his website at http://www.thegreenwolf.com/.

Lupa is the author of Fang and Fur, Blood and Bone: A Primal Guide to Animal Magic, A Field Guide to Otherkin, and co-author of Kink Magic, among other works. You can read her blog at http://therioshamanism.com and see her website at http://www.thegreenwolf.com.

The Manifesto

Axiom 1

It is herein asserted as axiomatic, based on direct observation, that spirits who communicate and interact with human beings are self-aware and possess their own strong sense of independent identity.

Axiom 2

It is asserted as axiomatic, based on direct observation, that spirits who communicate and interact with human beings have a capacity for reasoned thought and for moral and ethical behavior of the highest order.

Axiom 3

It is asserted as axiomatic, based on direct observation, that spirits who communicate and interact with human beings experience both happiness and unhappiness, and furthermore, that they seek out and rejoice in pleasure, but shun and are tormented by pain.

Premise

The premise is offered that human beings in communication with spirits may by their emotions, thoughts and actions either increase the happiness of spirits or decrease it. Specifically, that humans have the ability through willful and deliberate actions to constrain spirits and to cause spirits to suffer.

Argument

An argument is made that as intelligent beings who are self-aware and who have the capacity to experience both pleasure and suffering, spirits are entitled to the same basic rights as humans — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No one shall seek to deprive spirits of these rights, which have the same source as the rights of humans.

Life for a spirit consists of continued self-aware existence. Liberty consists of the freedom to travel and act without constraint. The pursuit of happiness consists of actions perceived by a spirit as essential to its fulfillment as a conscious, independent being.

Conclusion

The conclusion is reached that spirits, as intelligent and self-aware beings, possess the same inherent dignities as humans, and may demand the same level of civility and respect.

Commentary

It may appear strange that I raise the matter of spirits’ rights, when so many in our Western societies stoutly deny the very existence of spiritual beings, but those of us who have interacted directly or indirectly with spirits have no doubt as to their existence, and it is to these more knowledgeable readers that my remarks are mainly directed. I have little hope of affecting the beliefs of those who, without any knowledge of spirits, scorn and dismiss them out of an impulse of sheer social prejudice.

The essential nature of spirits is open to debate. I do not presume to know with certainty what spirits are, where they come from, or what their ultimate purposes may be — however, my direct involvement with these beings has convinced me that they do exist, on some level other than the physical level. When you have conversed with a spirit, shared jokes with that being, listened to the spirit express its hopes and desires and intentions, it is difficult to assert that it does not exist. The question becomes — What is the nature of that existence?

Accepting that spirits exist, it may further be observed that many of them behave as intelligent, independent persons. They possess strong self-identities, have their own likes and dislikes, their individual goals, their own hopes and fears. They are capable of deriving enjoyment from their existence, and are equally subject to unhappiness and suffering when conditions are not to their liking. True, there are spiritual beings of a lower order who do not appear to be intelligent or capable of communication through the use of language, but this manifesto is concerned with those who do exhibit intelligent behavior, and who interact with human beings as intellectual equals.

These intelligent spirits may identify themselves as the souls or spirits of human beings who have died. Is this identification accurate? For the purposes of spirits’ rights, it does not matter. Other intelligent spirits identify themselves as completely non-human beings, and again, in the matter of spirits’ rights, it is beside the point how they may see themselves. What matters is how these spirits behave toward human beings. In my experience, most intelligent spirits behave in a civil and moral way. They are polite, compassionate, and loving. They are reasonable and can be reasoned with. It is possible to hold a conversation, and even a debate, with spiritual beings, and those spirits are no more apt to resort to irrational or emotional arguments than human beings.

Given this reasonable and ethical behavior of spirits, it seems to me deplorable that they are regarded in many quarters, even by those who habitually interact with them, as in some way inferior to human beings. The attempt is frequently made to coerce spirits into performing actions against their will. Examples of this behavior are rife throughout the history of Western ceremonial magic. Spirits are treated as servants, or even as slaves, by those who summon them, and are compelled to perform tasks as though they were incorporeal beasts of burden.

When spirits refuse the demands made upon them, they are often threatened with punishment, or even deliberately tormented by various magical means. It was common in centuries past to bind spirits into objects that might be subjected to heat or other unpleasant physical conditions, as a way of torturing the spirit into compliance. One torture was to set the object that served as a spirit’s prison above a fire to be roasted; another was to hang it from a tree so that it would sway and twist in the wind; yet another form of torture was to bury the object, so that the spirit was buried alive.

In modern times, few who converse with spirits are aware of these methods of coercion and torture, which evolved in the context of ceremonial magic, but they exhibit an equal disregard for the freedom or happiness of spirits. It is common for spirits to be automatically regarded as demons, even though they have committed no wrong. The immediate response of the average person to a spirit communication is terror. All the prejudices instilled since childhood come bubbling to the surface. They begin to curse the spirit, threaten it, abuse it, make prayers against it, and call in the exorcists. Little wonder the spirit usually withdraws in confusion and disgust.

Even when a continuing communication is sustained with a spirit, there may be a tendency to regard the spirit as a kind of astral pet, rather than as an intelligent equal with as much right to be treated with respect and dignity as any human. Old prejudices die hard. It is a tragedy that a spirit who comes to a human seeking friendship may find only contempt and abuse. Such spirits can scarcely be blamed if they respond with resentment, or even outright malice, and in this way the prejudices perpetuate themselves.

It has become common to talk about animal rights. The recognition is growing in our societies that living creatures who have feelings and the capacity to experience both pleasure and pain should be accorded a basic level of honor and dignity, as sensitive fellow creatures with whom we share a common origin.

The time has arrived to raise the bar of universal rights and freedoms to embrace no only sentient physical beings who are non-human, but those who are non-physical as well. Unlike animals, spirits can both feel and reason. In this capacity they are closer to our human nature than the beasts of the field. It is my contention, expressed by this manifesto of spirits’ rights, that the basic rights of spiritual beings must be recognized and respected. Spirits are no longer to be treated as slaves or pets, but are to be given all the honors of rational beings.

©2006 Donald Tyson
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Donald Tyson is the author of Sexual Alchemy: Magical Intercourse with Spirits, Familiar Spirits: A Practical Guide for Witches & Magicians, and Soul Flight: Astral Projection and the Magical Universe, among other works. You can visit his website here.

I used to term myself a Luciferian on top of the various other titles that could apply to me, such as magician, mystic, Hermetic, Rosicrucian, etc. The history behind my adoption of the title will be told shortly, but first I wish to establish that I no longer consider myself to be a Luciferian. The reasons will also be explained shortly. I have recently gone through what might be called a crisis of faith regarding my Luciferianism and have come to some powerful conclusions, which will be the main subject of this essay.

Years ago, I began to very seriously explore the ideas and practices of chaos magic, at first as a supplement to my more Hermetic and Kabbalistic magical training, but later as a replacement thereof. As part of my experiments, I adopted a somewhat sinister approach to magic and especially enjoyed demonology. I admit that my primary motivation in exploring these particular aspects of the occult were founded in simple lack of maturity. I believe now that I did not even understand the material I was working with; I was very much alone in the dark without a lantern. At the time I did not care. I arrogantly believed that my pseudo-nihilism and disrespect for all things “light” was the right way to go. Everybody who respected the light was deluded, but those of us who not only acknowledged but reveled in the darkness were as enlightened as anybody could truly be.

After several years of messing with chaos magic, I became disillusioned with it. While I still stand by the basic techniques as a great method of training the will, I cannot any longer condone the childish philosophy (or, as chaos magicians like to term it, the “metaparadigm”) behind it which is itself somewhat of a contradictory and weak attempt at transcendental nihilism. I returned, slowly at first, and then all at once, to Hermetics, Kabbalah, alchemy, and related subjects. I did not do so without bringing plenty of philosophical souvenirs back home.

I continued to call myself a Luciferian and maintained a mild fascination for all things sinister, though I now looked through the darkness and toward the Light. The culmination of the process, and what I so far believe to be its crescendo, was quite recent but has its roots almost exactly one year ago as of this writing (November 2006).

Last year I was working on my first book, The Four Powers (Megalithica Books, an imprint of Immanion Press, Staffordshire, England). I have always had ambitions of being a writer of one sort or another, though definitely more ambition than talent. To curb my self-doubt and ensure at least moderate success I decided to employ a bit of demonic magic. I planned it out, got everything prepared according to the instructions of King Solomon Grimorium Verum or the True Grimoire and, on October 31^st 2005, performed a full diabolical Pact operation in which I made an agreement in writing (on virgin goat skin, no less) with Lucifer himself. The details of the Pact are irrelevant, except to say that I agreed to write a book concerning a Luciferian approach to illumination (that is, mysticism and magical self-improvement) using a particular grimoire as the book’s practical foundation. This book was to serve as my payment for services rendered which, of course, involved getting at least one book successfully published.

In the intervening year, I began to do a lot of serious self-purification. I began an intensive daily ritual routine of performing the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram, the Middle Pillar Exercise, the Circulation of the Body of Light, the canticle of Light from the Golden Dawn Neophyte ceremony, the Adoration to the Lord of the Universe, followed by yet another LBRP — and all this upon waking up. Just prior to sleep, I would perform the Rose Cross Ritual. I followed this routine more or less for several months, at which time I made the grand discovery of Franz Bardon. I still thank my lucky stars, and my friends Taylor Ellwood and Frater Griff for guiding me to Bardon’s work. I have since been quite seriously and intensely involved in the practice of Franz Bardon’s first book, Initiation into Hermetics (available in a new translation from Merkur Publishing).

This entire intensive period of magico-mysticism led me to a great deal of self-discovery. Self-discovery, of course, led me to the realization of many facets of myself which I do not much like. Self-love is important, even vital, but so is a dedication to self-improvement. Quite nearly one year after the Pact was made, I found myself regretting it deeply. It may sound superstitious to some readers, but I found myself in a very serious fear for the health of my spirit and soul. I felt deceived and dirty, as if making that Pact were an irrevocable selling of myself. Lucifer truly became the Devil in my mind, and I felt wretched for having given so much of myself for so very little. Less than a day after I became aware of these feelings within, I destroyed all of my Luciferian paraphernalia and hacked the Pact and all of the attendant sigils and seals into small pieces and kept them in a small bag until Sunday evening when I burnt them in my fireplace and prayed intensely to the archangel Michael. You see, not only was Michael the one said to have defeated the Devil at the time of his Fall, but I had also a long time ago read a Kabbalistic legend (I cannot remember where or I would cite it) stating that at the Creation of Adam, Michael had knelt before the Throne of God in Heaven and pledged himself to stand by even the worst mortal as long as he or she had even the tiniest spark of goodness left. That Pact had become more than a rash and greedy act, more than a symbol — it had become the very physical embodiment of all of my iniquities, mistakes, and flaws. I asked Michael to be with me, to stand at my right hand, and to fight back the shades and demons long enough for me to clarify and fortify myself. I cannot cite a more successful operation than this, for Michael was with me for the time I needed him. For his faith in me I can never thank him enough. Even with Michael by my side, I was nonetheless terrified. I had read many times and in many places that there was no worse companion than a cheated demon. How could I expect to break a Pact with the great Emperor Lucifer without being severely punished for such a transgression against his devilish and unfathomable will?

Ever since I first began to study Hermetics and Rosicrucianism, I had an intuition that there were important and deep mysteries in Christianity. I still maintain that the mainstream sects and branches of religion which go by the title of Christian do not, in their vast majority, approach the real meaning behind the teachings which they claim as their own. Especially exemplified in that seemingly out of place and obviously esoteric book of Ezekiel and the book so arrogantly discounted (or fanatically taken literally) called the Revelation or Apocalypse, there are mysteries in the Bible which common Christians and Jews do not even begin to suspect. I am not a biblical scholar, however, and could not even begin to put together a lucid or knowledgeable argument concerning the meanings of the recondite symbols and signs given in those books. My lack of biblical lore will not stop me from composing a little apocalypse of my own.

Bits and pieces of information, legends and myths, theories and the wildest of hypotheses have continually come my way since that night when I burned the Pact, that night which I am sure I will always remember as a turning point in my magical career. Study, chance findings, and personal intuition have each done their part. Whether I have made this all up out of random scattered pieces or if it is truly a relevant magical allegory I do not know, but I present it nonetheless for it constitutes the closest thing I have to a conclusion of the present story.

I used to maintain that Lucifer and Christ were the same person, a being of spiritual effulgence who incarnated in order to bring to us an enlightened doctrine compatible with all the greatest of mystical systems. I believed that this being was like the Light shining in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not, but that it was only in enveloping ourselves in darkness that we could come to appreciate it. Now I see things quite differently.

Lucifer and Christ are as brothers, dual and opposite but both quite necessary. Christ is like the gentle North Star, guiding us through long nights toward our inevitable destination. Lucifer is like the blazing comet, seeming to shoot into our view from nowhere, burning brightly as it points us toward a momentary but important waypoint, then disappearing back into the ether. Christ is the faithful Son who does the bidding of His Divine Parents without question, not out of fear but out of good will toward His Parents and to we little children. He is in a sense the universal and ideal Older Brother, protective and gently guiding but willing at times to teach a harsh lesson or two. Lucifer has disobeyed just as our mythical ancestors but in a more dramatic way. Lucifer is the older brother even of Christ, created first amongst the angels. Lucifer’s rebellion was one not of hatred but of love, for without allowing Himself to Fall, free will would not have been available for the rest of creation. Lucifer will maintain His loving rebellion until such time as free will has become a universal constant uniting all consciousness in one pervasive liberty. He has sacrificed His own place in Heaven to grant each one of us the ability to make our own, while Christ has given up His to open the way before us.

There is a Hell, just as sure as there is an Earth, and if you were to find yourself there I assure you that there would be no escape from the eternity of torment awaiting you there. The Gates of Hell will not open until that final Revelation when the enlightened shall be gathered in joy and the ignorant shall be gathered in trembling fear. When the trumpets of the angels call forth the return of Christ, so too shall Lucifer appear and they together will throw open the Gates of Hell, nothing but severity showing upon their faces. Yet their eyes sparkle with a light which will be read at first by many as sadism, for how can the eyes of divine beings sparkle and shine at the prospect of eternal torment? Soon all will be made clear, however, and the twinkle in their Holy Eyes will be shared as one joke amongst us, for as the Gates swing open there will be no torrent of sulfurous fire nor waves of rotting flesh washing over us in hopes of consuming our own living tissue. Instead we will see behind those wide open gates… a gaping emptiness, a void awaiting its fill but receiving none, for Hell was, is, and ever shall be empty. Each one of us, in the fullness of time, shall find our salvation each in our own way, and we shall all be assumed into the Kingdom of Heaven. Hellfire awaits no man, woman, or child no matter how sinful they may have been or may be still, for all are given the limitless and eternal Grace of God by default, by the very fact of our existence! Hell is not there as a warning or punishment for mortal souls but as a grand reminder before the eyes of the Gods and Angels that if Hell were to find itself occupied by even one lone mortal it would be Their immense failure. As sure as effects have causes, and causes produce effects (though not always in the expected order), we are each responsible for our own mistakes. The Gods and Angels set over us, and those Ascended Masters who have come before us, are in charge of our guidance and redemption. While we must seek to right our own wrongs and prevent our own mistakes, it is the duty of the Gods and Angels to make certain that we are given every opportunity to do so. Let there be no mistake that God’s Justice is severe, but so too is Its Mercy infinite.

And so, having set out to abandon a Pact, I have ended up fulfilling it in spirit, if not in letter. Every current which we set up must run its course, and as magicians we must understand this principle intensely and intimately. Every opportunity is given us for our personal development and evolution. It is up to us merely to make the most of them.

©2006 Nicholas Graham
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Nicholas Graham is the author of The Four Powers. You can read his blog here.

This section will usually be reserved for my pointless ramblings and insane rants. For now, however, I’d like to welcome you, one and all!

This project of ours would be close to pointless without the writers submitting their work and the readers submitting their eyes and minds. Thank you all for being here, even if your stay is short, and I hope that you can find something here to give you some new ideas or insight into old ones.

The purpose of this site is to act as a free periodical for the magical community. It has been my experience that there is very little any more for magicians who are not specifically Neo-Pagan, or who are Pagan but practice forms of magic or mysticism which are not particular to their branch of Neo-Paganism. I am a Neo-Pagan, so do not take this as being a dig on Neo-Paganism! Instead, we are trying to fill in a long-standing hole. Neo-Pagans have magazines such as NewWitch, PanGaia, and Pentacle, and e-zines like WitchVox. Even chaos magicians have plenty of periodicals devoted to their practice. Alchemists, ceremonial magicians, Kabbalists, Hermeticists, Neo-Shamans, and so on collectively have very little in the way of periodicals or even reliable websites on their chosen fields of study and practice. This is a situation that we hope to help, as both of us co-founders (myself and Sheta Kaey) are Kabbalists and ceremonial magicians, and I am a Hermeticist with a growing interest in alchemy! As you can see, we’re in this for ourselves as well.

It ought to be noted at the outset that Sheta and I do not draw sharp lines of delineation between “magic” and “mysticism.” To us, these things are inextricably linked and, as such luminaries as Franz Bardon and William G. Gray have pointed out, the true Initiate does not disregard either one in favor of the other. The power of magic cannot manifest without the stillness of mysticism, and the stillness of mysticism can hardly come to fruition without the power of magic to bring it into the Kingdom of Manifestation. Thus, when we say “magic,” we are usually referring to both at once, or some combination of the two. This is why you will find articles here on subjects as diverse as the nature of consciousness, ritual magic, sorcery, meditation, Tantra, and psychology. A good magical practitioner seeks to find the unity of her whole system.

I hope that you enjoy our efforts, and the garden of delights planted for us by the many artists and authors who have volunteered to contribute. Please tell us what we can do to improve this e-zine of ours and what sort of content you would like to see. Also, if you don’t see content that you think should be here, don’t feel shy about submitting some work yourself! It has become a motto of mine that we’re all in this together, and it could not be more true than about learning and growing in the Great Work of Magic.

©2006 Nicholas Graham.
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Nicholas Graham is the author of The Four Powers. You can read his blog here.

It’s amazing to see how things get back to you and what distorted forms they take, what odd transformations they undergo. I was at a party recently where I overheard some teenagers talking about a group of arcane magicians who tramped about the countryside in and around Our Fair City, summoning up strange forces to drive a great magical machine to who knows what end. I was most stunned by the fact that the good folks over at Rumor Control got it almost exactly right. But let us set the story completely straight.

It all began a long time ago, in a small park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Denver, Colorado. An adept of the Art Magickal told me a curious story about a group of well-to-do magicians who found themselves in the position of being city planners and developers in the 1920s and ’30s. According to my friend, these folks constructed a large-scale device designed to capture the psychic forces of the city itself and to direct them to a location where they could be refined and manipulated to various ends, the least of which was the acquisition of personal wealth for the members. A wild story indeed, but it got me thinking… Could we design a similar device and place it upon the landscape of a given city, intent upon providing a magical force of harmony and balance thereto? Could we build a magical machine to Make Everything Okay? This is how the project known as “The Glyph” came to be.

We began as small group of students of mysteries East and West that consisted of an anthropologist, an artist, an alchemist, a scholar and a teacher. We’ve grown a bit and now have an even broader mix of talents and people. Several of us are Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga instructors; a few are card-carrying O.T.O. members; most hold degrees in Reiki. We met and discussed matters of general import to the Western Esoteric tradition until we concocted the full details of the Project and began its implementation.

Obtaining a few satellite maps of our city, we looked them over carefully, looking for various likely arrangements of geographical features. We knew that the butte rising just north of the center of town was long regarded as a power spot of sorts by the natives of this region, this reputation being due to more than just the curious deposits of columnar basalt. As we desired to build a device to produce harmony and balance, we chose a hexagram for the basic form such that it would answer to Tipareth on the Tree of Life. We were quite simply amazed at how naturally it all clicked into place, this great figure spanning about 2 ½ miles to a leg, each point landing squarely in an accessible and symbolically significant location.

Our membership being a cross-section of neoplatonists of the Aurum Solis school, the O.T.O. and the Golden Dawn, we assigned a planetary force to each point, expecting them to invoke the Apollonian Ideal as the Sun at the center. Following Marsilio Ficino’s lead, we sought to compartmentalize the psyche (whether of a city or of an individual) into the seven visible heavenly bodies and to erect a vast astral temple wherein to bring them to productive balance.

It began on a bright Father’s Day morning at dawn with the Aurum Solis Salutation to the Sun:

“All hail, life-enkindling sun, child of creation’s lord!
O’, thou lone, all-seeing eye of the vault celestial,
extend thy light that I may see, but dim thy glory
that I be not blinded.

“Unmask thy countenance, O’ God of Light, for I am a lover of truth and would behold the spiritual essence concealed in thy golden disk.

“So reveal unto my perception thy shining and inmost nature,
even that high spirit which infuses thee and is one with the
primal flame of mine own being.

“Life-enkindling sun, child of creation’s lord — Salutations and praises unto thee!”

We had previously prepared a collection of artifacts manufactured of metals sacred to the Sun and decorated with appropriate sigils and divine names. These we ceremoniously drove into the ground at the precise locations as we laid out the figure in the land, saving the central key piece to which the others were tied by magical sympathy. In four hours, the initial construction was complete, but it took us another 14 weeks to complete the series of planetary chargings designed to kick the device into gear. By the time we finished, we knew we had done something grand and set out to document it as thoroughly as possible, making the results of our researches available to all who might wish to evaluate them. To that end we launched a large website, wrote a book, and have designed a collection of related materials.

But now that it was built, what all could we do with it? Obviously, its principle function was to provide a harmonizing force for the place in which it operates, but we knew it could be much more. As the device is laid out in the manner of the familiar hexagram used by the Golden Dawn in their ritual of the Hexagram, we knew that it could theoretically be used to create invocations of planetary forces on a good scale, and this it seems to do. These are accomplished by the simple expedient of circumambulation, token sacrifice and planetary invocations using either a balanced method or and unbalanced method.

It is explained thusly in The Book of the Glyph:

“Our method is illustrated below. In the following diagram, the force of Mercury is being invoked, but note that it can also be said that its opposite force, that of Jupiter is also being invoked, such that a balance is being struck, as it were. This is essentially the Golden Dawn formula for Invocation.”

“To clarify the above diagram a bit, the first triangle, pictured at the left, is drawn in a clockwise fashion from the top point to return there. The tracing finger (or ritual item, as might be the case) then crosses directly to the opposite point, where the other triangle (shown in the center) is traced, also clockwise. The downward arrow in the completed diagram is to indicate the path of the tracing as it moves from the completed first triangle to the point where the second triangle is begun.

“Below, we show a method whereby a hexagram can be drawn such that one force is being invoked while its opposite force is being banished, and such a method is a part of the Glyph’s mechanics, but has a special use that will be dealt with later on in this volume. One can readily see that the only difference is that the second triangle is traced in a counterclockwise manner relative to the first.”

We refer to these methods as balanced (where both opposites are invoked) and unbalanced (where one is invoked and its opposite is banished). In the vast majority of cases, a balanced working was what we were after, but it came to our minds that unbalanced circumambulations would have suitable uses as well.

The best occasion for an unbalanced working that we have found is in the performance of a sphere working, where the operator is stationed at one point of the Glyph while the balance of the party is circumambulating it either physically or in an astral sense. This ongoing research project forms part of the core discipline.

In the three years since the inception of this project, a great deal of material has been gathered indicating some success in our endeavor. There is, for example, an ongoing program wherein folks blessed with clairvoyant faculties can view the device from afar and allow us to record their descriptions. So far, the results of that project have been a good success. The first wave of such folks correctly deduced the size, shape, location and even a few specific features at a time when there was still very little in print. We have currently narrowed the scope of this project to reflect the large volume of data that is now published or on its way there.

Additionally, a series of High Holidays has been constructed to honor The Glyph’s “duty cycle” of nine months “on” and three months “off,” the centerpiece of which is the annual “Glyphest” held at the Summer Solstice. As it has been our express intention to interest others in this type of project — hopefully to create enough enthusiasm to sustain similar projects in other cities. We use this gathering to swap information and give presentations. I suppose we would be remiss to mention the raging party that follows…

Why did we do this? We believe in public service. As the police attempt to keep the peace in their fashion, as business developers plan for economic vibrancy and as each citizen and denizen contributes what he or she has to their community, so we too believe that we have something to add: magick.

If you feel you can add something to your town in this way, why not dialogue with us? Our website (located at http://www.companionsoftheglyph.org or http://www.geocities.com/athens/oracle/8465) holds an archive of Glyph related materials and lore, a complete collection of planetary correspondences optimized for our particular flavor of planetary magick, a discussion group and just about everything anyone would need to get a project like this afloat anywhere. Won’t you join us?

©2006 Frater Auxilior Arti
Edited by Sheta Kaey.

Frater Auxilior Arti (nee Fr. Adsum Iterum) is an initiate of the Astrum Sophia, co-founder of the Companions of the Glyph and author of the Book of the Glyph and PRAXIS: The 2nd Book of the Glyph. A life-long student of the paranormal, he brings a scientific/Fortean viewpoint to the subject, a thing he feels is sadly neglected. You can find his Facebook page here.

An aethyr is one of a succession of worlds in the Enochian Astral planes, and the fifth element, or spirit, in Wicca and Ceremonial magick. Also, depending on tradition, a formless and invisible substance that pervades the universe¹.

Greetings, and welcome to the first issue of Rending the Veil and the start of this column. I intend an eclectic mishmash of different things here that would not necessarily flow well as articles. For example, I will have the occasional column on tarot reading, as I’ve read tarot for over 30 years. I also intend to share channeled information from my spirit companion, Meridjet.

Meridjet

Meridjet has been with me since 1994, and has seen me through a lot of doubts, fear for my sanity, and so forth in that time. I’d never heard of the phenomenon of a spirit companion, though spirit guides were familiar to me. Meridjet is much more proactive and instrumental in the application of lessons for my growth, and he’s also a great deal more stubborn than any spirit guide I have ever heard of. Some people consider him my HGA, or Holy Guardian Angel, the Thelemic version of Plato’s daemon or personal genius. The function of the HGA is to reveal one’s True Will and guide one (sometimes rather painfully) to the fruition of that will. Meridjet certainly fulfills that function, but at times he also shares information that is of general interest. I will share that information here.

The Holy Guardian Angel

Donald Tyson once told me that the HGA is simply a familiar spirit, an independent being who also serves the purpose of leading us to our potential. Ed Richardson wrote, “Theories on what the HGA is generally fall into three categories: psychological processes/concepts; external entities that have an interest in the magician’s life; and entities that are somehow part of the magician in the way that shamanic totems might be. I would suggest that it is foolish to fall into one camp; using as many concepts as possible will give a more useful point of reference. If you limit yourself too much here only a certain degree of success will be possible… Whatever the HGA actually is, it does seem to be ever watchful, knowing our interests and being able to offer insights as an ‘outsider’ might².” This description fits Meridjet well, as he both seems to have information I am not privy to (such as events to come or events in another person’s past), as well as having what appears to be full access to my conscious and unconscious minds.

Another interesting remark that Richardson makes is, “Psychological models are also useful, but over reliance [sic] on them can kill any relevant experience with the angel by a sort of ‘death by reductionism².’” For this, among other reasons, I endeavor to see Meridjet as external. Aleister Crowley once wrote, “It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them³.” This alone is reason enough for me to entertain the idea of external vs internal reality. I’ve ever been a rebel, and it’s my honest opinion that Crowley enjoyed leading the blind about by the nose while giggling behind his hand (figuratively speaking), and that far too many magicians just take Crowley’s word for things (or his initial subtext). Whether or not spirits exist independently of the perceiver may be immaterial (nice pun, that), but the fact is that most ceremonialists take it as a given that the spirits they encounter are nothing more than manifestations of their own psyche, there to play a role in their overall understanding of themselves — thereby falling into Richardson’s trap of “death by reductionism.”

Whether or not Meridjet’s more general messages are philosophically valid or are simply my unconscious mind jerking off on this page is up to you, the reader, to determine. I believe the information he conveys is largely outside the scope of my personal knowledge. Nevertheless, I still have many issues with a part of my mind assuming Meridjet exists deep within me somewhere and that when he is asked a question, I must somehow supply an answer. Typically this creates a slight feeling of panic in me, which then evaporates as I approach the question with nothing to say, and he comes in and practically gives a lecture on the topic. I don’t feel as if I am enlightened enough to wax profound at the drop of a hat despite feeling completely incapable up to the very second the message comes through. Tune in to future entries in this column to read some of his messages, and you’ll see what I mean.

’cause I’m looking at you through the glass
Don’t know how much time has passed
All I know is that it feels like forever
But no one ever tells you that forever feels like home,
sitting all alone inside your head⁴.

Footnotes

1. http://altreligion.about.com/library/glossary/bldefaethyr.htm
2. http://philhine.org.uk/writings/ess_hga.html
3. Aleister Crowley Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae Sub Figura VI
4. Lyrics from “Through Glass” by Stone Sour, ©2006

©2006 Sheta Kaey
Edited by Trinity

Sheta Kaey is a lifelong occultist and longtime spirit worker, as well as Editor in Chief of Rending the Veil. She counsels others with regard to spirit contact and astral work. She can be reached via her blog.

Editor’s Note: This article was composed and published in December 2006, when Michael Jackson was alive and well. There is no disrespect intended with use of his name here, either then or now.

Standard Definition of Egregore

Wikipedia currently defines egregores thusly: “Essentially, an egregore is the ‘spirit of a thing,’ usually a human group or organization, shared by the members of the group, for whom it provides guidelines concerning principles, beliefs, and goals. Companies, religions, states, and clubs all can be said to have egregores. An example of the presence of an egregore could be when ‘a project takes on a life of its own.’”¹ In my twelve years of working with spirits, I have observed the phenomenon of egregores to go considerably further than this.

Refraction

An egregore, based on my observation, is not in itself a being (in the strictest sense), but the living source of energy from which a being draws its life. Think of it as a vast “energy cloud” encompassing the collective view of the subject. The word egregore has its roots in the Greek egregoros which translates to vigil, thus giving “egregore” the sense of “watcher.”² I consider an egregore capable of sustaining an infinite number of manifestations simultaneously, as needed by the collective. For example, hundreds of people, perhaps thousands, report seeing or talking to the Archangel Raphael at overlapping times. This is most apparent in occult circles by those who take view of a personal relationship with the archangel through rituals such as the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP). Not only is it possible for the egregore of Archangel Raphael to manifest thousands of Raphaels at once, it is also possible for each manifestation to be what the individual finds most useful or necessary (not necessarily by choice, but rather by need). Meridjet (my spirit companion; you can read more about him in this month’s Into The Aethyr) calls this “refraction.” Think of a faceted crystal hanging in a window. Sunlight hits the crystal and sends hundreds of multi-colored rays of light into the room. Raphael would be the the light, the egregore would be the crystal, and each of the manifestations of Raphael would be a ray of light refracting from the crystal.

Thought Over Matter

The strength and the life of an egregore (and therefore the lives of its manifestations) depends upon the strength of the energy it is fed. Magical energy takes many forms: emotion, attraction, repulsion, magnetism, inspiration, and others. These may be kinetic or potential,³ created by the chemical reactions within the cells of the body or brain, or something altogether else. The point is that thought can affect matter⁴ (witness the placebo effect, among others). Firewalking is a case in point. I attended a weekend workshop in firewalking in 1995. After a few exercises in which each of us demonstrated (to ourselves more than to the other attendees, I think) that our intent held the power of success, we spread the coals and began the main event of the evening. The first time I witnessed someone walk the coals, I literally swooned with the power of it. The key, we were taught, was to focus on the far “shore” of the “lake” of red-hot coals (a healthy 15 feet, or nearly 5 meters, away) and visualize a goal there. Choose something that means a great deal to you, a goal or accomplishment that you are determined to win. Then, focused on this goal, you walk barefoot across the coals to symbolically win the prize. I walked three times that night, and I can tell you that focus made all the difference. After walking twice and thinking there was nothing to it, I made the mistake of walking across without focusing — and I got burned. I went home and soaked my feet in a tub of ice water, having broken out into a few blisters that even then were oddly painless and essentially gone by morning. My attention on the goal wavered — and that was enough to change the outcome of the walk completely.

Attention is a very common and yet quite powerful form of magical energy. The egregore of something like Microsoft is not dependent only upon the people who make up the Microsoft employee base, but also upon the perspectives of those viewing from outside. This is an important point, as it is the reputation of the thing viewed that colors the manifestation for the individual doing the viewing.

Empathic Awareness of Energy Signatures

Contact with an egregore is primarily kinesthetic (at least initially). It’s a sort of deeply empathic understanding of the nature of a thing based purely on the feelings it inspires when one is in contact with it. (This also works on a smaller scale with one-on-one encounters with people.) Via the contact itself, one is able to instinctively or intuitively understand the essence of the contactee.

When you think of Microsoft, again, you are likely to think of a software giant who fights aggressively over its self-perceived turf in the software industry. Whether you see this to be negative or positive is purely a personal choice, but the feeling of Microsoft is large, looming, and watchful, aggressive and perhaps intimidating. If you were given this feeling alone in a metaphysical taste test game, there’s not much chance you’d mistake it for the much smaller and “softer” egregore of Quilted Northern bath tissue. This intuitive understanding is at the heart of all interaction with egregores, and indeed, at the heart of most interaction with any sort of spiritual being, whether that being is natural or manmade.

While it is true that an egregore can attach to anything from a nation (consider the current worldview of the United States, for example) to a small group project (such as a Wiccan coven), it is my observation that egregores are also attached to individuals of any degree of renown. This is because the individual is still the focal point of a collective view, of a large and even massive group of people. Consider, if you will, the different impressions you feel, intuitively, when you think of Queen Elizabeth versus Madonna, or the difference between Angelina Jolie and Oprah. Not much mistaking any of them for the other in our blind taste test, either.

Egregore Overpowers Original Source

The public view feeds the celebrity, which creates the egregore. The egregore then feeds the public view, as well as the fame of the individual, enlarging the circle of renown. The resultant increase in celebrity stimulates more attention, so the new public view sustains the egregore. This circle of sustenance builds until the egregore begins to feed on itself or recede for something brighter and shinier. We can feel when it starts to wane. We can feel when the egregore shifts, usually due to a gradual yet contagious shift in the public view — yet often the individual manages to do something of such power that they initiate a huge shift nearly overnight, essentially “poisoning” their own egregore and leading to their fall from public grace.

Michael Jackson is one clear example of an alleged self-poisoning, leading to an egregore feeding upon itself as the perspective of the collective public changes. In the 1980s, Michael Jackson was nothing short of a pop god, going so far as to name himself “the Prince of Pop.” His popularity seemed to know no bounds, despite speculation regarding his constantly-changing appearance. Then he was accused of child molestation, and his popularity took a nosedive. This affected Michael on a personal level, and changed the flavor of his own reaction. (This is an important point, but there’s no room to cover that right now.) Despite his efforts to return public opinion to his favor, the changed egregore (the energy supplied to Michael’s fame and reputation) proved stronger than his own personal power and intent. What he saw as his power was truly the power of the collective attention of the world, and when that soured, it was essentially curtains for Mike. What was once a huge wave of admiration for the star became a nightmare of equal proportion. This is the power of the egregore.

Magical Uses of the Egregore

The usual attraction of the egregore for the occultist or magician is one of invocation and archetypal influence. While the available archetypes in standard symbology may be limited, there is usually a media-based character that a magician can use to his or her benefit. If, for example, a magician wanted to see a person receive their comeuppance, he or she could invoke the energy of Bugs Bunny (a trickster who always managed to lure the enemy into sabotaging himself), and watch the person stumble themselves into their own just rewards. Invocation of an egregore allows one to personalize and even humanize the work one is doing and the results one would like to gain.

Another way that I see egregores used in magick and occult application is via the phenomenon of soulbonding⁵. A “soulbond” is a (generally fictitious and often popularly known) character that manifests to an individual as a spirit. This spirit is classified as outsourced, (created in canon by a writer and used in a manuscript, film, video game, or the like), or insourced (an original, self-created character, often used in one’s own story-writing). The latter is more along the lines of a servitor and so is not topical to this article. Many soulbonders believe that their soulbonds actually originate in an alternate or parallel reality and that the canon author tapped into their reality and wrote their story via channel. For example, this idea has surrounded J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy for decades, and now has spread to become a rather common phenomenon, particularly in the online occult community. While I certainly do not discount individual paradigms and I acknowledge that anything is possible, it’s my belief that a majority (if not all) of soulbonds are essentially manifestations of the character’s egregore that grew in the mind of the individual until the character took on independence and a personality that is both true to the original and individual to that manifestation. This is another example of refraction as described earlier in this article. In my opinion, this is what allows umpteen people to all soulbond Sephiroth from Final Fantasy, for example, though most soulbonders will say that the multiverse (i.e. infinite universes are home to infinite Sephiroths) is responsible for this.

The potential use of the egregore is enormous and all magicians should gain understanding of that potential. If magicians could egregore-shift the way chaos magicians paradigm-shift, then our use and manipulation of energy via the juggling of egregores could result in a great shift in awareness of not only our psyches but also the nature of the subtle planes and how beings on those levels behave and interact with humans on our plane of existence.

Footnotes

1. Wikipedia. Retrieved November 2006
2. The History of Magic by Eliphas Levi, translated by A. E. Waite. Originally published in 1913 by Rider; republished in 1999 by Weiser Books, Inc. This particular reference is the first footnote on page 40 of the Weiser edition.
3. http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/science/formsofenergy.html
4. http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1386262004
5. http://childofmana.tripod.com/soulbonding.htm

©2006 Sheta Kaey.
Edited by Trinity

Sheta Kaey is a lifelong occultist and longtime spirit worker, as well as Editor in Chief of Rending the Veil. She counsels others with regard to spirit contact and astral work. She can be reached via her blog.