Call for Writers — Womens Voices in Magic

Email for inquiries and submissions: brandyeditor at gmail.com

Megalithica Books, an imprint of Immanion Press (Stafford, U.K./Portland, OR, U.S.A) is seeking submissions for an anthology on women working in the magical communities, particularly in communities where women have not been extensively published or in which women face stereotyping and misunderstanding within and without the community. These communities include (but are not limited to) groups and individuals working in the Golden Dawn, Thelemic, Aurum Solis, Alchemy, Chaos, and Experimental Fields.

Women have been involved in traditional and ritual magic since the late Victorian era. However women are often viewed as tangential to these communities or as soror mysticae, assistants to the magician. Today women are actively involved in ceremonial magical groups and lodges, alchemy, chaos magic, and Experimental Magic, overcoming stereotypes and creating new visions of magic within the communities.

Here are some suggested topics to give you an idea of the focus of this anthology.

Magical work

What magical work are you doing now? How do you describe it? Do you work alone, in a group, or in several settings? (For example, I do is traditional Ceremonial magic, traditional Witchcraft, experimental Ceremonial in a group setting, and I create experimental Ceremonial work.)

Women’s work

Is your magical work centered in a community where women do not have a strong presence, or in which women face stereotyping? Does it matter to your work that you are a woman? Do you feel that you approach the work in the same way that the men in your field do, or does being a woman affect your magic? Is that affect biological, cultural, magical, or all three? Do you present yourself to the world as a magical worker (”I am an alchemist”) or as a woman in your field (”I am a woman alchemist”)?

Stereotypes and prejudice

Has anyone ever told you “I didn’t know women were involved in that?” (”You’re the first woman I’ve met in the O.T.O.!”) Do outsiders assume that only men do the kind of work you are doing? Do people assume that because you are a woman you are doing the work in a particular way? (For example, do people assume that because you are a woman, you are doing psychological alchemy, not physical chemistry?)

Do you actively encounter prejudice? Do people talk to the man standing next to you rather than you? Are you silenced in person or online when you try to speak about your own work?

How do you counter stereotypes and prejudice when you encounter them? Are they only annoying, do they actively hinder your work, do they prevent you from doing your work? How important is it to you that your work is understood by others?

Women’s history

Women’s history has been difficult to document. This is as true in the magical fields as in any other endeavor. Mary Greer wrote about the lives of some of the early women in ceremonial magic in Women of the Golden Dawn. Are you aware of stories about women in the traditional and ritual magical fields that have not been told? Are you involved in documenting women’s history in the magical communities?

Soror mysticae

Stage magicians sometimes have women assistants. This image holds true in the magical field as well; Renaissance alchemists spoke of “soror mysticae” or women who assisted their work. Do people assume that you are not primarily directing or benefiting from your work?

Do you work on your own, with a partner of your own sex, with a partner of the opposite sex, or with a group? Do the people you work with support your work? Do you yourself have assistants whose work you direct?

Traditional cultures

In your work do you study or interact with people in other cultures and traditional cultures? Do the gender roles in those cultures differ from those of your own culture? Are those roles more or less restrictive, or just different? In what situations does your gender come up, and how do you handle those situations?

Honoring the cycle

Women’s magic has been associated with women’s fertility cycle. Do you find that comforting and supporting, or angering and limiting? How does your menstrual, pregnancy, and menopausal cycle affect the magic you are doing – deeply, tangentially, or not at all? Do you do any specific magic to honor the cycles of the body?

Feminism

If you are a feminist, do you present yourself as a feminist in the magical field in which you work? Are the others you work with in your field receptive to your feminism, or are they resistant or defensive around feminist discussion? Do you feel that feminism is central to your work, or do you see your feminism as social rather than magical?

Women’s communities

Is there a sense of women’s community in the field in which you work? Are you actively involved in building women’s community? Do you encounter resistance to this work? Are women you work with excited by women’s community? Do you and the women you work with see women’s community as a way to socialize, a magical path, a parallel community to the mens’ community? What is your vision for the women’s magical communities of the future?

Rough drafts are due 18 May, 2009. These drafts will be edited in a back-and-forth process with the editor. Essays should be 1500-4000 words, although if your work falls outside those limits, do submit it – we can discuss this during the editing process. Do drop us an email if you are unsure whether your idea fits into the content. The sooner you start the communication process the better, as after the deadline we won’t be considering additional ideas.

Essay requirements

• Citations for all quoted, paraphrased, or otherwise unoriginal material
• Bibliography of works cited
• Prefer APA format

Do write in your voice! If you’re academically inclined or trained, feel free to be as intelligent and technical as you like. If your work entirely talks in the first person about your own experience, please include this also. There is a wide range in women’s voices, and we are interested in being as inclusive of style as possible.

Compensation will be ($25) (paid via twice-yearly royalties from book sales) plus a free copy of the anthology when it is published and additional copies sold at 40% off the cover price to contributers. All contributors will be provided with a contract upon final acceptance of their essays, not when they are accepted for editing. If your essay is not accepted for the anthology, we will tell you after the first round of edits.

The anthology will be edited by Brandy Williams. She is the author of author of several pagan/occult nonfiction books. She may be found online at http://www.brandywilliams.org and her email address for this anthology is brandyeditor at gmail.com.

Immanion Press is a small independent press based in the United Kingdom. Founded by author Storm Constantine in 2003, it expanded into occult nonfiction in 2004 with the publication of Taylor Ellwood’s Pop Culture Magick. Today, Immanion’s nonfiction line, under the Megalithica Books imprint, has a growing reputation for edgy, experimental texts on primarily intermediate and advanced pagan and occult topics. Find out more at http://www.immanion-press.com.

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.

©2009 Taylor Ellwood
Edited by Sheta Kaey

From the rock beside the wall of water he stood and blew the white stag horn.
The dolphins leaped with joy.
The sea giants answered note for note the calling of the wise.

From the hills they came, from the cities, from the near meadows and the fields.

Songs paused in mid-measure.
Flowers remained unpicked.
Thoughts stopped unspoken.

The gathering had begun.

The shore beneath the obsidian cliffs became a rainbow as the masters gathered; each gloriously clothed by rank. Ruby gowns of the novice blended with the citrine and amber, flowed into the emerald and the sapphire, melded with the indigo and deepened to the royal amethyst of the select.

Whale song echoed from the harbor as the horn sounded again — deeper this time — a resonant minor tone that hung in the crystalline air.
The sky hummed with the approach of a star that was not a star, but all the colors of light and love: shimmering sunset pinks.

The wind carried the voice of the whales to those waiting on the beach
as if the earth herself were singing.

Joy unconstrained rolled from each tongue as the golden rays played across the sands, and wondrous beings glided down on wings of light to stand in snow white garb where they had stood for millennium.

And they gave the word:

As you have been told and will be told for a thousand thousand years
Teach love and joy.
Lift our children from the darkness.
Give them knowledge that they may be wise.
Wisdom is the mother of all creation.
Serve her well and she will be bountiful in her gifts and generous in her mercy.
Let each seeker know that the answers are within.
Comfort those who yearn and guide their path to the light.
Turn no one away, for even the darkest soul has a gift that illumination will reveal.
Find answers in your science and in your theology.
One without the other is but a cold stone; a half-written page.

Feed the dreamers. They are the seed of your greatness.
Cherish the singers. They are the voice of your soul.

Go beyond the myth of time and place.
Here and now, up and down.
You are with us as much as we are with you.
You have but to whisper and peace will come.

Work in celebration to bring forth the fruits of your labor.
Love in peace, to bear the fruit of your joy.
Put away the bitter wine of condemnation
Lest you become drunk with despair.
Do not judge the path another walks.
Walk your own path.
Water your own garden.
Watch your soul bloom.

Poetic Journeys is a semi-regular column featuring a wide variety of poetic styles. If you’d like to submit a poem, please send your submission to admin@rendingtheveil.com and we’ll happily review your material for inclusion in a future issue.

©2009 Judith Barnett

Jupiter enters Aquarius (Jupiter in Aquarius: January 5, 2009 – January 18, 2010) A technological era of economic advancement begins January 2009 with the planet of luck and fortune, Jupiter, newly entering the constellation Aquarius. Jupiter in Aquarius brings innovative solutions to economic problems. It also allows us to realize our economic strength as whole communities, bringing people together to work towards building financial strength and salvation.

A review of the past: Jupiter in Capricorn

(December 18, 2007 – January 5, 2009) Since December 18, 2007, Jupiter was traveling through Capricorn, focusing the magic of great wealth and expense on such Capricorn-like things as construction, building, banking, corporate growth, architectural feats, estate management, and administrative expertise.

Jupiter in Capricorn brought numerous types of business endeavors with regard to corporate takeovers, big shifts in property management and, as we’ve seen in last year’s American housing crunch, foreclosures in the banking industry. Capricorn’s key phrase is “I use,” and there has been no mistaking the fact that many people’s misfortune or mismanagement of financial affairs has been to the prosperous advantage of wealthy real estate tycoons and other such shifty manipulators of the economic slump which openly reared its ugly head in early 2008. It was also evident that big economic change was headed our way when, on December 11, 2007, Jupiter reached an exact conjunction with the power-monger, Pluto — on the Sagittarius/Capricorn cusp — bringing some seriously disruptive changes to our economic powers and to our overall perception of what it means to maintain and experience wealth.

The past year of Jupiter in Capricorn has been a time of loss and financial mismanagement for many folks in North America, yet we must remember that Jupiter’s domain focuses on gain, and those areas of life where fortunes continue to rise, not fall. Just as it is in any era of marked recession, where many have fallen, some do excel at unprecedented rates. As a general rule, Jupiter’s influence brings enthusiasm, stimulates economy and focuses on prosperity. Even in difficult economic times, Jupiter puts us in touch with the necessity to find, to develop, or to create new skills and new means to generate prosperity. Jupiter is often the catalyst in raising the overall morale. Out of the drive to create competent caregivers, and practical management strategies, comes the hope of maintaining and rebuilding a stable economic future. While Jupiter was in Capricorn, the key to successful gains came with the proper management of goods and services.

Capricorn is conservative by nature, and requires the flow of prosperity to be useful, attainable, applicable, substantive, and controllable. The old Capricorn adage, “I use,” implies that favors have been hard won, wages have been compromised, and bargains haven’t come cheap. The demands and expectations of Capricorns are often high, and their stealth and thrifty propensity to achieve material growth through unrelenting persistence gives this sign its not-so-jovial reputation of being cold, calculating, profiteering and exclusive. Despite the downside of this corporate attitude, efficient and well organized frontiers of economic growth continue to thrive in many parts of the world. While Jupiter was in Capricorn, economic shifts have indeed had some weight to them, and this past year has been an especially useful time to take note of exactly who prospered — and why.

Jupiter in Aquarius

(January 5, 2009 – January 18, 2010) Jupiter now travels through the humanitarian domain of Aquarius, bringing the focus of knowledge and science to economic systems. Jupiter in Aquarius implies a time of experiment and taking chances. It is here that the term “thinking outside the box” is accentuated, with Aquarius representing eccentric and unconventional means of thought, while Jupiter represents unyielding increase and rapid growth. No such “box” has a chance to contain the type of expansion and unusual avenues of economic strategy that we (humanity) are about to encounter. Jupiter in Aquarius may lead to unusual, but very humane and conscientious encounters with richness and prosperity. Aquarius is ruled by Uranus, bringing the radical and unpredictable qualities of chaos into the human equation. Jupiter expansively provides, while the radical energy of Uranus blatantly destroys all superfluous or unnecessary matter. Jupiter gloats over wealth, skill, and abundance; Uranus depletes, destroys, and strips away dysfunctional realities. Jupiter’s social appeal represents prosperous growth, valuable talents, fascination, joy, joviality, and the spreading of happiness. When Jupiter traverses through the Uranus ruled domain of Aquarius, the act of prospering occurs with a consciousness raising purpose, with innovative knowledge, and with a certain degree of chance taking and experiment. Jupiter in Aquarius brings economic changes which will affect the quality of our institutions and our public funding programs, which in turn affects each one of us individually. If there is a lack of expansion and growth for everyone, and too much economic suffering is occurring around us, the quality of life will eventually affect us on a personal level.

Aquarius focuses on how the overall good of humanity may operate and evolve. It seeks to undo and re-create outmoded or dysfunctional systems. This time of Jupiter in Aquarius will bring large sums of revenue that will be spent in the effort to create workable systems through the chaos of volatile markets. Jupiter in Aquarius takes us to a place where people can expand in unusual occupations and expertise. This may well be the time to invest in future markets that hold the most practical and feasible potentials for creating alternative resources and sources of power. Over the course of the next year, we will find ourselves adapting very quickly to some especially innovative uses of technology. Joy may be found in the power of invention. Through applied systems of knowledge and highly prized creative skills, as well as through unpredictable risks and the discovery of unbridled talents, Jupiter in Aquarius is likely to bring a very revealing picture of where our prosperous growth can be found.

Aquarius people will be able to enjoy some abundant opportunities and joyous personal experiences while Jupiter crosses over their natal Sun throughout the year to come. They will also have a strong influence on the wave of the economic future. The other air signs of the zodiac, Gemini and Libra, will enjoy the fruits of Jupiter being trine to their natal Sun signs in the next year. This will bring the potential for travel or financial boons of some kind for Gemini and Libra people. Leo folks would be wise to use their sensibilities and take precautions with their expenditures while Jupiter opposes their natal Sun over the next year. They may also find that the effort to handle massive volumes of business, or a large inheritance, may be overwhelming at times in the next year. Taurus and Scorpio people may discover that it will be especially difficult to keep up with expenses and opportunities in their lives while Jupiter squares to their natal Sun signs. They would be wise to proceed cautiously in business. Sagittarius and Aries people’s natal Sun signs will be in the sextile position to Jupiter this year, bringing the potential for business or career opportunities in those areas of life where these people have already been working hard, or where they have made some genuine effort to succeed over time.

This is a time of great change, as the slow moving planet Neptune, also in Aquarius, will be conjunct with Jupiter on December 21, bringing expansive spiritual growth to those seeking to broaden their awareness for social and economic growth. Jupiter conjunct Neptune will bring oil and gas resources into a revealing light as Neptune represents the realm of the oceanic underworld, the sea, and oil is one of the big commodities found in this realm. The time of Jupiter conjunct Neptune in Aquarius will also give strong clues about the spiritual evolution of our ideas of prosperity, and it will be one of the eye opening trendsetters of our economic outlook for the next decade or so.

Jupiter in Aquarius is bound to assist us towards an effort to uplift whole communities and to expand our awareness of the needs of others. Many social programs will be designed to improve people’s outlook, hope, and enthusiasm. We can also expect to see some very profitable breakthroughs for specific technological systems and in certain fields of science.

©2009 Annie Bones
Edited by Sheta Kaey

As told by one Misha McFatter:

In the beginning Sophia created Lilith and Eve in her image, and set them in an Edenic world of bliss where, in the passion of their love play, new ways of being were brought into existence, incarnating as various animals, plants, rocks, storms, rivers, stars, moods, ideas, flavors, and every conceivable thing. Lilith and Eve were not just the pinnacle of creation, they were active participants in the creative/generative process.

This continued for Seven Ages of Seven Ages of the world. The created world and the creative process were nearing perfection, making the abode of manifestation, of animals, matter, spirits, thoughts a worthy counterpart and Adorer of Sophia, mother of wisdom.

At the end of what was to be the penultimate session of love play between Lilith and Eve, a generative orgasmic celebration of duality that started with the vernal equinox and ended two weeks past the summer solstice, the mother of all Storms was born, casting forth lightning of both creation and destruction, of blissful culmination and agonizing annihilation, of rains cold and warm, of unstoppable passions and glacial detachments.

And winds never before seen in the Garden of Eden, which was the world up to that time.

Lilith and Eve held tightly to each other as the fingers of the wind tried to pull them apart, and finally, exhausted by more than three months of lovemaking and four weeks of Storm, the two primal lovers were pulled apart, and thrown to different sub-angles of the Garden.

Eve landed in woodland that was only partially thrashed by storm. The great wind of galaxies only lightly shook the trees, though a heavy rain fell. All the small fury woodland creatures peeked out of their burrows when they heard Eve crash to the ground, and recognizing the image of god that had called them into being, raced to her side, checking her for injuries. The bears acted as transport stretchers for Eve and, with the rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks covering her naked body up to her chin, took her deep into the heart of the wood to the bower of bliss whereupon no storm could ever touch.

It was August 1^st, and Eve would sleep well past Labor Day in the first week of September, when the Storm finally spent itself and a cooler, late summer breeze caressed the Garden.

Lilith was tossed about on the Winds of Dispassion and Feeling for a week longer, taken high into the sky where the Storm slapped hands of rain and fingers of lighting on the moon, to finally be dropped down in the most remote and mineral sub-angle of the Garden of Eden.

The Storm, done with her, deposited her in a rocky place of caves and hot springs, where deep below molten rock churned like her and her lover’s passions. Lilith found herself on her knees, naked and Storm tossed, hair wet and matted, wishing that she and Eve had gotten around to bringing tobacco and cigarettes into existence, because after all that she really needed a smoke.

Cold rains beat on her naked and spent form and on the land around her, making steam rise from the mud pots and mineral pools. Realizing a cave opened before her with a dull red glow, she crawled in on all fours,. Before she knew it, she was crawling up to her chin into warm, welcoming, comforting mud. The bottom gave out and she thrashed tiredly in the warm ooze, dirtying all but her face, and finally finding a slanted ledge to lie against.

It was August 7^th, and Lilith slept that way for a week.

She awoke lonely and horny on the morning of August 15th. As the first emanation of Sophia, she had a semi-conscious comprehension of the map of generation, and comprehended that the last round of over-the-top lovemaking was the penultimate union, and knew that the next time she and Eve embraced would be the final culmination of the universe of manifestation, and in the terminal orgasm of their lovemaking the universe and the goddess would be united, for eternity, in an orgasmic state beyond all possible manifest orgasms.

The prospect daunted her. After the rites of spring and the spawned Storm of all passions, what could be done?

Lilith wished that there was some new way she could be joy and the ultimate final rapture to her lover Eve, some as yet unknown way to create the ultimate in sensation and orgasm, other than the use of tongues and fingers and their organs of creation joined in the lightning flash of climax. Perhaps if she had a way in which her gateway of being could enter into Eve’s gateway of being, instead of the doors of generation opening to each other… a way that her door would open within Eve’s door.

Up until this point, Penetration did not exist in the act of lovemaking and creation.

Laying there in the mud, hot and horny, Lilith tried to imagine her gateway of being as something completely different, not something that new things passed thru, but something, like a person, that passed through gateways.

At the thought of this she felt her organ of generation burn with desire, and her breasts and nipples felt swollen. The warm caressing mud also felt reminiscent of Eve’s body wrapped around her; she cautiously moved her left hand down toward her heat, and when she touched the center of her creative fire, lighting raced through her body and she began to writhe and trash in the mud.

For the first time since she and Eve came into being, Lilith made love to herself, the image of the door that is not a door burning like an exploding sun in her mind. After seven days of bigger and bigger orgasms, the eidolon of the Enterer blazing firmly in her soul, it finally happened: orgasm and image became one. She saw the long sinuous shape of the enterer with its hooded head, and in the final moment combined of longing and loathing, she screamed in her passion “IALDABOATH!”, shuddered, and passed out.

She lay thus in the warm, welcoming mud for two weeks before awareness returned, but only awoke because she felt a stirring behind her gate of generation. Too tired still to move her arms to check what was going on down there, she felt her thighs spread apart on their own, and her pelvic region convulsed in undulating waves. Then she felt something biting, yes, biting like teeth, on the inner side of her veil of being. Biting, biting, tearing, through, pushing o my goddess what is happening and then she remembered her week long trashing in the mud, and as it finally brought through and pushed out of her, she was panting “oh no!… oh no! Not Ialdaboath… oh no!”

And she felt something slide out from her and rise out of the mud between her legs, its hooded head shaggy with mud, eyes like hot coals staring into her tired orbs.

“Thank you mother, for giving me life. Now I go to do what you cannot…” and with that the Enterer slid out of the pool of mud, and then out of the cave and into the last of the Storm of Passion. The rains washed the mud and blood from his glistening, sinuous body.

It was August 28^th. On August 31^st, the Storm blew away, and since this year it fell on a Friday, Labor Day was just a few short days away. The Enterer could smell where Eve was, and knew it was several days slither before he reached there. From the taste of her on the winds, he knew she was still asleep, but about to awaken.

The Enterer had but one purpose in life: to be the instigator of the ultimate orgasm that finalized the creation. For he was the bud-will of his mother Lilith’s intention. Nothing else mattered. He must cause Eve to have the best Orgasm ever, and nothing must get in his way.

So he slithered as fast he could, and arrived near the bower of peace just as Eve was waking up. Climbing into a tree, he watched Eve stand, and was totally taken by her Beauty. He must have her, he must make love to her, for he was an incarnation of Lilith’s lust for Eve and his will was the act of creation.

But from his mother’s own horror at him, he knew that Eve would never love him, never want him. Being born of his mother’s creative power, he had some few small creative acts left in him, so he willed himself to something like Lilith: The blue-blue eyes, the long dark hair, the heart shaped face, the full and able breasts, the curves of hips and legs. He could make himself over into all of that, but where his gateway of passion and creation should be, a smaller version of his true self hung, attached to his body, and seemingly with a will of its own.

Ialdaboath combed his long dark hair, looking something like his mother, and ambled around some shrubs, and stood before Eve with arms open.

Now Eve had taken a blow to the head when she fell in the forest, and after a Season and some of having her brains fucked out she was also a bit loopy, so when she saw the Enterer she said:

“Who are you?”

The Enterer was taken by surprise, having hoped he would be mistaken for his mother. He sputtered and said,

“Oh, I’m just A dame,” which the patriarchs were later to misreport as “Adam.” He continued “I’m Lily, Lilith’s twin Sister. That little Storm of yours blew her right back to the realm of Sophia, so I was sent to find you.”

“Hi Lily,” said Eve. “You look almost exactly like Lilith, except what is that where your gate of being should be?”

Ialdaboath was a bit stumped, but then the geis of his being took over his mouth with the following lie: “This is the key of creation. Sophia gave it to me in place of the gate of being. With it, I was to find you and stand in for Lilith for the final act of creation, the last series of orgasms that culminate in the ultimate climax that unites the created world with the Goddess.”

Eve, still a little loopy, but not totally dumb, asked, “What happened to Lilith?”

The Enterer told one more little lie. “She was blown about longer and harder by that Storm you two made, and was hurt beyond her own ability to heal. She sleeps with her mother now.”

Eve stepped a little closer, and looked into the Enterer’s blue eyes that were flecked with chips of red. Breathing the scent of Lily and reaching down to touch the serpentine key, she said, “Oh Lily, be Lilith to me, let us complete the creation in one final rush of passion and join with the Goddess for Eternity.” And as she grasped the key, it stiffened into its active form, and Lily suddenly knew how it was to be used. He lay down upon the turf as Ialdaboath and tore through a veil of generation for the second time, but this time from outside. Initially, it hurt for Eve, it hurt bad, but once that was passed the sensation was unlike anything Eve had ever known, and the orgasms that slowly came were more like earthquakes than lightning in a bottle.

And Ialdaboath, who knew he was the instrument of the final orgasm, was surprised to find that he, too, was about to know Orgasm, and for being created via half the mode of being, he had within him a partial fragmented version of the creative power, which rocked forth from him as a liquid light, entering into Eve.

It was different than Eve had ever known. Instead of something coming into existence in the world from lovemaking, now there was something inside her. As the Enterer slowly pulled out she felt that diminution, with a little bit left. Hot and sweaty, they both soon fell asleep.

The next day when Eve woke up, she felt the liquid light dripping out of her. Its draining departure made her want more. She saw that Lily was asleep, and that the serpentine key was in its solid and active form again. Wet with her own desire, she slowly rolled Lily onto her back and slid down upon the key of creation, slowly moving on it, and Ialdaboath awoke with surprise to find himself inside of Eve again, with her slowly working out the liquid light.

This continued on day after day, with Ialdaboath and Eve making love, falling asleep, waking up to make love, wandering around Eden eating fruit, and laughing.

The liquid light of Ialdaboath had another property besides creating a desire for more of itself. It caused memory to fade. Eve began to call her lover Lilith, and completely forgot about waking up to find Lily with the key of creation; it had always been this way.

On September 10^th, Lilith came to herself, still in the mud, which had solidified a bit, becoming more plastic. Slowly working her way out of the once more liquid earth, she crawled out of the mud, crawled out of the cave, and stood looking at the world after the Storm of passion. She dried out a bit, recovering, and felt under her covering of clay that her gateway of being had been torn and sundered, but would heal. Dreading what her son might be up to, she followed the baked serpentine track through the mineral land, and as she traveled the sun baked the mud on her body into a fired clay. Her matted muddy hair became like fossilized kraken tentacles, her beautiful body obscured by earth and rock.

After several days, she came to the end of the trail of the Enterer, baked into the land by the sun, and knew from the direction he was going that the final destination was the Bower of Bliss.

Frightened, angry and desperate, she began to walk as fast as possible through fields and woods, a look of terror on her face, and all before her fled in dread.

On September 21^st, the day of the Autumnal Equinox, she burst into the Bower of Bliss to find the Enterer and Eve fucking madly, the Eidolon of the Slitherer as firm and thick as a tree limb, battering its way into Eve’s Gateway of Creation.

Lilith screamed in rage, throwing back her head and shouting, “Ialdaboath, what the hell are you doing with, doing to, my girlfriend?!?!”

Ialdaboath, startled and afraid of his mother’s rage, let loose the liquid light sooner than he wanted to and fell out of Eve, hiding behind her.

“Uh, hi Mom. I’m just doing what you could never do.”

Eve looked to the Enterer and said: “Who is that Monster, Lilith? And why does she call you Ialdaboath?”

Lilith looked shocked and disgusted, as she saw Eve’s gateway of creation torn open, and the latest liquid light of Ialdaboath dripping out of her.

“Eve, it’s me, Lilith.”

Eve said “No, Lilith is behind me. You are some kind of Mountain or Rock Monster with my lover’s face.”

Lilith screamed with rage, leaped forward and moved Eve aside, grabbing Ialdaboath by the short hairs and yelling, “You little brat! You bastard abortion! Who did you tell my girl friend you were? Sophia?”

Ialdaboath sputtered, “Mom… I just told her I was ‘A dame’ and then I told her my name was Lily, your twin sister.”

Eve blinked in more confusion, “Lilith, why do you call that thing your mother? Sophia is our mother.”

The Real Lilith, tired of the confusion, grabbed both her lover and her son by the hair and angrily dragged them to the river that flowed out of Eden, threw them in, and plunged in afterward.

As the two recent lovers spluttered Lilith washed the clays from her body and hair, and the river milked up with silt. Her long black hair clean for the first time in a month, she plucked her girlfriend and her son from the raging waters and brought them to the shore, gasping like frightened fish.

Between the terror of being caught by his mother, and the plunge into the cold raging waters of the river of Eden, Ialdaboath’s image of his mother had faltered. While his face still appeared an echo of hers, now the peach fuzz of a beard graced his cheeks and chin, the breasts had flattened into hard, firm pectorals, and the curves of hip and leg were gone. While he reflected an image of god, it was all angles and hardness, centered around that which remained of his original serpentine form. And the blues of his eyes were replaced by red.

Eve looked at her first lover, with whom she had brought most of the manifest universe into being, and then at the second lover, whom she had thought was Lilith, who had taught her a new and deeper way to bring about the orgasm of creation. She found herself confused and torn, in love with them both.

And then, after nearly three weeks of being entered with the liquid light raining inside her she realized something had changed. While her lover’s latest shower was even now still dripping out of her, she realized that something had come into being within her.

As Lilith and her son argued back and forth about what he had done to Eve and why she had called him into existence, Eve announced, “There is a new life within me. A creation from inside, a new manifestation of the image of God in the universe. Lilith, from me, with the aid of your Son, I shall be the Mother of an entire race of sleeping gods. Sleeping gods who will experience the creation from the lowest level up, and after much striving will be finally worthy to join with God in Eternal Union.”

Lilith slapped Eve across her left check, living an image of her hand. “You cum drunk whore! You’ve gotten yourself knocked up, just six months short of our culmination of the manifest universe. We’ve gotta get that out of you now. This shithead over here tore me up on the way out.”

“No Lilith! The child is mine. Mine and your son’s. I’m going to keep it! And we will have more! The Key of Creation is the best thing ever! You need to try it!”

Lilith was completely disgusted. “Fuck no, you little bitch! This bastard tore me up on the way out. There’s no way I’m letting him back inside of me, no matter how good you think it is. You need to come to your senses, get that out of yourself, and come back to me.”

Eve, for the first time ever, began to cry and sob, looking back and forth between Lilith and Ialdaboath. “Don’t say that! Don’t make me choose! I love you both.”

“It’s him or me, bitch.”

Eve screamed: “Then it’s going to be him, for he can fill me with new life again and again; all you can do is make flowers bloom in the night sky!”

Lilith stood, shaking with anger, and yelled at Eve as she ran away into the woods “Fine, be that way. Know then that Childbirth will be painful and tear you apart, as the image of God is too immense to pass thru the gateway of being. And once that little beast pops out, you’ll be embarrassed on how it came to pass, and will hide your beautiful body, the image of all that is perfect, under the skins of your animal friends, which you will kill to assuage your guilt!”

Lilith looked at her cowering son and said, “Thanks a lot, Junior. You’ve just fucked everything up.”

Then, in a moment of remorse for what she had said, Lilith cupped her hands and broadcast her voice into the woods and said, “Eve, I’m sorry! If you can ever forgive me, come back to me.”

And this is why the world is the way it is.

And this is why the autumn is called the fall, since Eve fell away from her true path when she conceived on the Autumnal Equinox.

And this is why all men are snakes, as each one carries the image of Ialdaboath on his body.

And this is why some guy will try to steal your girlfriend.

Beyond the Veil is a regularly appearing column featuring fiction, including occult, horror, science fiction, and fantasy. If you’d like to contribute a story, please contact admin@rendingtheveil.com and we’ll be happy to review your submission.

©2009 J. Michael Glosson
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Purpose of Circles In Magic

There are two opinions about the purpose for the circle in ritual magic — the first view is that it is to keep something out, and the second view is that it is to keep something in. Both are correct, and although they may seem contradictory, both views are based on the same principle — the circle is a barrier that divides inside from outside.

Take a pencil and a sheet of paper. Draw a line segment on the paper. The line seems to divide one side of the paper from the other, but it has end points, and it is possible to go around those ends — the line segment is not a true divider. However long you imagine the line to be, it is possible to imagine the paper it is on to be larger, so that the line never truly divides the plane.

Draw a circle on the sheet of paper. You will see that the division made by the circle between inside and outside is absolute. Enlarge the circle, shrink it, distort it, and it makes no difference — as long as the circle is unbroken, it creates a perfect barrier. There is no way around it.

You might argue that in our first example, we could limit the size of the imagined sheet of paper, and then it would be possible to draw a line completely across it, and divide it in an absolute sense. Yes, but to limit the size of the paper we must first draw a mental circle around it, that defines its edge. The actual physical sheet of paper is limited in just this way — its edge is its boundary circle.

What can we say about the nature of a circle, based on this little thought experiment? We can say that a circle surrounds, encloses, contains, and excludes. It defines the edge of something, and by doing so, it gives what it defines a shape. Everything we see has a circle around it. If this were not so, we would not be able to distinguish one thing from another — they would all run together and merge in our minds.

That brings up another aspect of the circle — it exists in the mind. We draw a mental circle around any thing we chose to separate from all other things. When we look at an apple tree and consider the tree as a whole, we draw a circle around the tree that divides that tree from all other trees, from the sky, the earth, from all other things that are not the tree itself; but if we choose to narrow our attention and focus it on a single apple hanging on a branch of that tree, we mentally draw a circle around that single apple.

All circles are by their inherent nature magical. They define order from chaos. There is no separation in the natural world, there are only the separations we choose to impose upon our perception of the natural world. We construct our reality piece by piece when we draw circles of identity around objects and concepts.

If you have followed this line of reasoning, you will understand that names are magic circles. This is the fabled occult power of names. When we name a thing, we separate it from everything else. It comes into discrete existence in our mind at that moment. Everything we perceive has been divided in our mind from chaos by an enclosing circle, and that circle defines the name of the thing enclosed. The subsequent process of assigning an arbitrary word sound to the thing is secondary. We have already named it the instant we recognize its existence. That recognition makes the thing real for us — brings the thing forth into our personal reality. This is a magical act, even though it is seldom recognized as such, because it is so basic to the way our minds work.

The magic circle is usually understood in a narrower sense, as a circle drawn for the purpose of working ceremonial magic. It defines a space within which magic is facilitated. Exactly how the circle aids the working of magic has been a matter for debate.

In traditional Western spirit evocation, the circle was used to guard the magician from the malicious actions of evil spirits, who were excluded from the circle while the magician remained safe within its boundary. In modern Wicca the belief is that the circle retains and concentrates magical energy raised by ritual work, making it easier for the leader of the ritual to direct and release that energy for a specific desired use.

If you consider what was written above about the nature of circles in general, you can see that these two views are not incompatible. A barrier can simultaneously hold one thing out while holding another thing in. A fence around your back yard will keep your dog inside the yard, but at the same time it keeps other dogs out of the yard. The key point is that it cannot be crossed so long as it remains undivided.

The magicians of the Middle Ages and Renaissance were mostly concerned with calling up demons and spirits of a mixed type, for the performance of tasks that would have been beneath the dignity of angels, and unsuited to their natures. These tasks included such work as the finding of treasure, the harming of enemies, inducing love or lust in other persons, gaining social position or power, inducing a glamour of false appearance, and so on.

By their very nature these kinds of low spirits are not inclined to help or obey human beings. Yet they are more suited for selfish tasks than the benevolent angels. The magician got around this awkwardness by calling demons and spirits of a mixed type up outside the bounds of the magic circle, while he commanded them from the safety of the space inside the circle. This protective use of the circle is unnecessary when dealing with angels of a more spiritual nature, since they never seek to do harm.

Even so, the circle was drawn for other purposes than the evocation of low spirits. Wiccans employ it to contain and concentrate the power they raise by their changing and dancing. When the occult energy within the circle has filled the circle to such a degree that it can be felt on the surface of the skin as a kind of heat or electricity, the leader of the ritual releases it like an arrow from a bow toward its intended function.

You may ask how energy can be released from the circle, when the circle by its very nature is an unbroken barrier. This is an occult secret that until fairly recently was never explicitly revealed. I wrote about it in my first book The New Magus, which was published by Llewellyn Publications in 1987, and that may have been the first time this secret was clearly explained to a large number of magicians.

The circle by its nature cannot be broken and remain a circle. No point on the circumference of a circle can be singled out as an aperture without destroying the integrity of the circle, since all points must remain undifferentiated and undivided if the circle is to stay whole. The only way in or out of a circle is through the point at its center, which by the nature of a circle is defined. Yet all points within the area of a circle are the same – one mathematical point does not differ from another mathematical point by its nature, but only by its position.

The center is relative. Any point in space that the human mind chooses to make its viewpoint becomes the center of the universe for that consciousness. We think of ourselves as looking outward through our eyes from some point within our skulls, but this is arbitrary. We can just as easily regard the world from the tip of our right index finger, or from the cat lying on the fireplace hearth across the room.

The practical consequence from a magical standpoint, with regard to the circle, is that any point within the circumference (but not on the circumference) of a circle can be regarded by the magician as its center point, and used as an aperture in or out of that circle.

When the high priestess of a Wiccan coven releases from the circle the accumulated occult energy of a ritual to the fulfillment, she does so by opening the point doorway at the center of the circle. This happens even if she is unaware of what she is doing. There is only one way in or out of the circle, so to release the pent-up energy, the high priestess must open the center — that point within the circle that she chooses, by the focus of her will, to represent the center-point of the circle.

Points are opened by expanding them. The expansion of a point is accomplished by means of a spiral. Only spiral energy can move through a point. Wiccans raise what is known as a cone of power within the circle. The cone has a spiral energy and it focuses upon a point, which is the center point of the circle. It is through this expanded point that the concentrated energy of the ritual is released, to fly like an arrow to its target, where it accomplishes its purpose.

Necromancers working with demons from within a protective magic circle sometimes pierce the circle with a sword to manipulate objects, or to compel obedience from the demons they have evoked outside the circle. They seem to pierce the side of the circle with the blade of the sword. Probably they themselves believed that they were piercing the side of the circle when they extended the steel blade beyond its boundary.

This is not the case. As pointed out, a circle only remains a circle for so long as it is unbroken, and were it broken even for an instant, its protective power would cease. No, the blade of the sword actually extends through the point chosen by the necromancer as the center of the circle. This occurs on the subconscious level. By choosing a place from which to project the sword blade, the necromancer defines the center point, distinguishing it from all other points within the circle, and by projecting the blade he opens that point with spiral energy.

Circles of Stone and Dancing Rings

Mention magic circles to the average person and the first thing he will think of is Stonehenge. The sheer beauty and mystery of that ancient ring of standing stones on the Salisbury Plain has so captured the modern mind that it has become iconic. Yet it is far from unique. Similar stone rings of widely varying sizes and degrees of sophistication are to be found not only across England, or even across Europe, but throughout the entire world. The most ancient that has been discovered to date are probably the rings of curious T-shaped standing stones that have recently been unearthed in Turkey.

The place is called Gobekli Tepe. It is near the city of Sanliurfa, which lies around ten miles to the southwest. The unique T-stones were discovered in 1994 by a Kurdish shepherd, who happened to notice some curiously regular stone blocks poking up from the ground while tending his flock. What he discovered has been called the greatest archaeology find in history.

The stone circles excavated from under their covering of earth turned out to be over 12,000 years old — 7,000 years older than Stonehenge. There are an estimated twenty rings of stones, although only four have been completely excavated to date. Most of the stones are about eight feet tall, but one has been found in a nearby quarry that was 28 feet long, so much larger stones may wait to be uncovered.

The discovery at Gobekli Tepe shows that human beings were building elaborate complexes of stone circles even before they began to settle in villages and farm the land. That is how important the making of circles was to these early cultures. Undoubtedly they were used for religious rituals, but for ancient man there was no clear separation between religion and magic. Shamanism is an almost perfect blending of the two. The shaman is both priest and magician.

Some researches have contended that these stone circles were built to mark the windings of the stars and planets in the heavens — as a sort of elaborate form of sundial. But if this were their only function, or even their primary function, it could have been accomplished just as well with much less massive or elaborate constructions. Imagine how much labor went into the construction of Stonehenge, or Gobekli Tepe.

No, the circles of stones served a magical purpose that was of the highest possible significance. They defined a sacred space, concentrated ritual energies within that space, and protected it from defilement by disharmonious forces. The maintenance of these sacred spaces must have been more important to the peoples who built these great stone rings than any other purpose in their lives. They devoted generations of their lives to building them. The only comparable act of devotion in historical times is the construction of the great cathedrals of Europe.

A ring of standing stones defines a permanent circle to sanctify and empower a specific spot on the surface of the earth, but magic rings of an impermanent kind were also constructed for ritual purposes. The most ephemeral form of magic circle was that formed by the bodies of dancing witches, or the seated ring of chanting shamans. This sort of magic circle could be formed anywhere a nomadic tribe stopped for the night, and although its locality was always different, its manner of formation was always the same, and leant the ritual practice a continuity that persisted in spite of the ceaselessly changing landscape.

We can catch a faint echo of this kind of nomadic ritual practice in the books of the Old Testament that describe the early Hebrews wandering in the desert. Each night they erected a tent to house the Ark of the Covenant. The walls of the tent became the magic circle that contained the occult power of the Ark, and also excluded those who were considered unfit to approach the Ark.

Still more primitive nomadic peoples could accomplish the same ends without a tent, by defining the magic circle with their own tribesmen gathered into a ring. At its center a fire was probably maintained, and around this fire a shaman danced and sang to raise occult power. By dancing around the fire, the center point of the circle was opened, and the energy released to fulfill its function.

European witchcraft descended from shamanism. This is self-evident — there are too many parallels between shamanism and witchcraft to reach any other conclusion. Although we can only conjecture as to how primitive nomadic tribes must have formed their magic circles, we have a much clearer idea how the witches of the Middle Ages went about it. The practices of witches are described in the transcripts of the European witch trials.

These court records are to be viewed with the utmost skepticism. The confessions of witches were extracted under torture, or the threat of torture, and accused individuals tried to tell their captors exactly what they wanted to hear. Even so, the general consistency in the descriptions suggests that they are based upon some collective cultic activity — that there were indeed witches, and that they did indeed gather for the practice of magic and for worship.

This was the conclusion of Margaret A. Murray in her highly controversial yet influential book The Witch-Cult In Western Europe. Murray’s findings have been dismissed by most mainstream anthropologists yet her central contention, that the mythology of witchcraft represents an echo of a surviving pagan religion, or at least a kind of cultic set of magical practices with religious elements, cannot easily be dismissed.

We read in the testimony of accused witches that they gathered at their sabbats to perform works of magic and worship. Those recording these matters were Christian priests, so naturally in the transcripts of the witch trials, the works of magic are invariably supposed to have been evil, and the worship always to have been devil worship. Yet we have only the assertions of the Christian priests that this was the case. It seems more likely that the magic worked by witches at their gatherings was of a mixed nature.

Witches danced in a circle at their gatherings. This was known as the round dance or ring dance. Margaret A. Murray wrote in her 1931 book The God of the Witches:¹

The ring dance was specially connected with the fairies, who were reported to move in a ring holding hands. It is the earliest known dance, for there is a representation of one at Cogul in north-eastern Spain (Catalonia), which dates to the Late Palaeolithic or Capsian period. The dancers are all women, and their peaked hoods, long breasts, and elf-locks should be noted and compared with the pictures and descriptions of elves and fairies. They are apparently dancing round a small male figure who stands in the middle. A similar dance was performed and represented several thousand years later, with Robin Goodfellow in the centre of the ring and his worshippers forming a moving circle round him.

(Murray, God of the Witches, pp. 109-10)

Concerning the ring dance of witches, J. M. McPherson wrote in his 1929 book Primitive Beliefs In the North-east of Scotland:²

The ring dance usually took place round some object. Thomas Leyis with a great number of other witches “came to the Market and Fish Cross of Aberdeen, under the conduct and guidance of the devil present with you, all in company, playing before you on his kind of instruments, ye all danced about the said Cross, the said Thomas was foremost and led the ring.” These danced round the Cross. Margaret Og was charged with going to Craigleauch “on Halloween last, and there accompanied by thy own two daughters and certain others, ye all danced together about a great stone under the conduct of Satan, your master, a long space.” Here the stone was the centre round which they danced.

(McPherson, J. M. Primitive Beliefs, p. 169)

Discounting the slanders of the Church Inquisitors concerning the presence of Satan in the gatherings of witches, we can see in these ring dances the formation of a kind of dynamic, movable magic circle. As is the case with modern witchcraft covens when they form a circle for ritual purposes, the center of the ring had a focus for its concentrated energies. Usually this was the leader of the ritual, but the dances might also take place around a standing stone, altar or other object of power. The rotation of the dancers provided the spiral energy needed to focus upon the center of the circle.

The close correspondence between the ring dance of witches and the ring dance of fairies is part of the whole complex of strong ties that exist between the lore of witches and the lore of fairies. Fairy rings, naturally occurring circles that appeared in the grass of meadows and in woods, are the result of the growth of fungus under the surface of the ground, but they were thought to be made by fairies dancing with their hands joined. Other names for these circular phenomena were sorcerers’ rings (French: ronds de sorciers) or witches’ rings (German: hexenringe). By some rural folk they were thought to be formed when witches gathered at their sabbats to dance.

European witches met out of doors, under the moon and stars, and gathered in grassy meadows on in clearings in the forest. They danced on the ground, which was unmarked with symbolic patterns, forming the patterns of their rituals with their own bodies and with their movements. It shows how important the circle is for magical practice, that even under these conditions witches felt a need to define a circle with their dance.

Magic Circles in the Grimoires

The round dance of witches is perhaps the purest form of magic circle. European magicians did not have the option of using a dozen human beings with linked hands to form a circle. They worked alone, or with one or two assistants, and usually performed their rituals beneath a roof on a floor of stone or wood. It was the usual practice to draw or inscribe a magic circle on the floor of the chamber of practice prior to beginning the ritual, using charcoal or chalk. There were other methods for defining the circle – it could be laid down in the form of joined strips of fur or skin, or defined by a rope laid out on the floor, or even painted upon a canvas or rug that was unfolded across the floor – but the usual way was to draw or inscribe the circle.

The term “circle” is used here in its occult, not its mathematical sense. Ritual circles were seldom perfectly circular, or simple in nature. They consisted of concentric circles within a square, or multiple circles, or more involved geometric patterns such as pentagrams, hexagrams or octagrams. These complex patterns on the floor of the ritual chamber are still magic circles, in that they were used to divide inside from outside with a continuous and unbroken line, or set of lines.

One of the oldest of the grimoires, and the most authoritative, The Key of Solomon the King, describes the making of a complex circle. It is evident from its size and manner of formation that this circle is to be made out of doors on the ground.

The magician takes a cord nine feet in length and uses a sword to fix one end to the center of the working space. With the cord pulled taunt, he uses the other end to inscribe with a knife the line of a circle on the ground that is eighteen feet in diameter. A cross is drawn through the center of the circle to divide it into four quadrants – east, west, south and north. Into each quadrant is placed the symbol of that direction of space.

This is the actual magic circle — the magical barrier that protects the magician. Beyond this initial circle, which is called the Circle of Art, other elaborations are to be inscribed which are part of the compound magic circle but not its essential core. Three more concentric circles are to be drawn, each one foot larger in radius than the initial circle, so that three bands are formed by the four circles. Within the outermost of these circular bands, pentagrams are to be inscribed, along with the names and symbols of God.

A square is drawn outside these three bands, or four circles, and outside the square a larger square, so that the corners of the smaller square touch the midpoints of the sides of the larger square. The squares are to be oriented so that the corners of the larger square point in the four directions – east and west, north and south.

It should be noted that the illustration in S. L. MacGregor Mathers’ edition of the Key of Solomon (figure 81) does not match the description of how to make the circle (bk. 2, ch. 9). The confusion arises with regard to the concentric circles — how many there are to be, and what is to be put in them, and where it is to be put. The illustration in Mathers’ book shows only three circles, not the four described. I will quote the relevant passage of text from Mathers’ edition, then explain where the confusion arises. The numbering within the square brackets is mine, and has been used for the sake of clarity.³

Then within the Circle mark our four regions, namely, towards the East, West, South, and North, wherein place Symbols; and beyond the limits of this Circle [1] describe with the Consecrated Knife or Sword another Circle [2], but leaving an open space therein towards the North whereby thou mayest enter and depart beyond the Circle of Art. Beyond this again thou shalt describe another Circle [3] at a foot distance with the aforesaid Instrument, yet ever leaving therein an open space for entrance and egress corresponding to the open space already left in the other. Beyond this again make another Circle [4] at another foot distance, and beyond these two Circles [2 and 3], which are beyond the Circle of Art [1] yet upon the same Centre, thou shalt describe Pentagrams with the Symbols and Names of the Creator therein so that they may surround the Circle already described.

(Mathers. Key of Solomon, p. 99)

The first circle with a radius of nine feet is the Circle of Art. The second concentric circle has a radius of ten feet, the third concentric circle a radius of eleven feet, and the fourth concentric circle a radius of twelve feet. A gap is left in the north of each circle for the entrance of the magician after he has finished completing the drawing of the pattern. The magician closes the gap once he stands inside. This gap is not mentioned explicitly for the innermost and outermost circles, but it is implied. In some of the older illustrations of magic circles this gap in the north appears to be a permanent part of the circle — a kind of corridor for entry and exist (see Skinner & Rankine, The Veritable Key of Solomon, p. 70).⁴

The text seems to indicate that the pentagrams are to be drawn within the outermost of the three bands, between circles 3 and 4. It is not specified how many pentagrams are to be used, but Mathers’ diagram shows four. However, in the diagram they are located upon the square that surround the four circles, not within the outermost band of those circles. Based on the text, these pentagrams should be placed between circles 3 and 4, along with divine names, so that the band of pentagrams and divine names surrounds the inner circles. The text seems to imply that the divine names should be written within the pentagrams, but I believe this is misleading – the names should probably be written within the outermost band of the circles, between circles 3 and 4, beside the pentagrams. A pentagram should be located between each divine name. The symbols of the Creator may be the four Hebrew letters of Tetragrammaton, IHVH.

There is no indication in the text what names are to be written within the bands of the circles, apart from the outermost which does not even appear on Mathers’ diagram. The diagram shows in the innermost band the Hebrew divine names (which I have transcribed into Latin characters) AVIAL, ADNI, IHVH and TzBAVTh. The second band contains the words MI KMKH BALIM IHVH. These are the only Hebrew words shown on Mathers’ diagram.

The vast size alone of this complex magic circle would make it all but unusable. The smallest part of it, the Circle of Art, is a full 18 feet in diameter. The size of the larger square outside the concentric circles is around twice that width. To draw this circle indoors would require a room some 32 feet across, at least, in its smallest dimension. Many modern houses are not this wide.

Fortunately for magicians, the circle in the Key of Solomon is only one such design that may be used. At the opposite size extreme, some older woodcuts show the magician working within a circle so tiny, it is barely large enough to contain him. A few of these older illustrations even show the demons evoked into the circle while the magician stands outside it unprotected, but this is contrary to the usual use of the circle and should probably be considered an error. Malicious spirits are evoked outside the Circle of Art, usually into a triangle, but sometimes within a smaller circle with the magician safely within the larger circle. As is stated in the Key of Solomon, those who work within the Circle of Art “shall be at safety as within a fortified Castle, and nothing shall be able to harm him” (Mathers, p. 100).

Drawing the Physical Circle

Do not be alarmed if you cannot make out the letters of all the obscure names in the magic circles of the grimoires. Some illustrations of these circles are so corrupt, it would take a Solomon risen from the grave to decipher them. The Hebrew and Greek characters have devolved into nothing more than meaningless squiggles. Happily for the modern magician, there are an infinite number of possible patterns for the magic circle, and all of them will work effectively provided the magician who creates them follows a few basic principles, which I propose to give you. A circle you design yourself, if it is rightly designed, will always be more effective than a circle you copy out of an old book.

The first consideration of a magic circle is that it must be an unbroken line the end of which joins up with its beginning. It does not necessarily need to be perfectly circular in shape, although rightly made circles will usually contain at their root a single unbroken circle, beneath whatever elaborations have been added. Bear this in mind — base your magic circle on a simple, unbroken ring, and it will serve you well. It should be made as large as necessary so that you can work comfortably within it. A traditional size is nine feet in diameter, but for a single person working without an altar, a circle as small as six feet across will be fine. If you can make the circle nine feet across, you will be able to set an altar at its center, and you will have enough room to move around it.

The world is usually divided into four directions or quarters. The magic circle is similarly divided into four quadrants — north, east, south and west. It is not essential to physically mark these quarters of the circle, but you should be aware of this division, which is the most fundamental division of the magic circle. The magic altar is often placed at the center of the circle, and the altar has a square top with four sides. Each of its four sides should face one of the four directions. The room in which the magic circle will usually be constructed will likely have four walls. Again, these walls may be referred to the four directions and four quarters of the world. The wall that is closest to the east can be used for the direction of east, the wall closest to the south can be used for the direction of south, and so on. Align the sides of your altar with the walls of the room.

The divine names that are generally used to act as guardians of the circle are four in number, one name for each quarter of space. It does not matter which specific divine names you choose. The grimoires generally use Hebrew names of God culled from the Bible, either written out in Hebrew characters, or in Greek or Latin characters. IHVH, Adonai, Eheieh and Elohim are serviceable. You do not need to use divine names from the Bible if you have an aversion to conventional religions. Pagan divine names will serve equally well, provided that they are names or titles of the supreme god of the pagan pantheon with which you are working. If you were to use classical Greek mythology for your pantheon, you would choose four names for Zeus. If you were to use the Nordic pantheon, you would choose four names for Odin, or Woden. You will find that supreme gods always have a multitude of names and titles from which to choose.

These four divine names are applied to your inner circle, the root of your magic circle, which is called in the Key of Solomon the Circle of Art. Draw a second circle outside the first, so that there is from six inches to a foot of distance between them, and mark the names in this ring. They are your strongest final line of defense, your ultimate authority by which you command spirits of a malicious or mixed nature. Like the greatest artillery, they are powerful but not versatile.

Outside this first ring you should construct a second ring by drawing a third, larger circle, in which you should place the names of four lesser gods, or if you are working with the Jewish or Christian systems, the names of the four archangels, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel and Uriel. Each lesser god, or archangel, should be chosen to serve as the active arm of the divine name to which it corresponds. The archangel executes the will of God that is defined by the divine name of that quarter. It is the extension or projection of that power.

All the names should be written to be read from outside the circle, not from inside. This important detail is usually overlooked in the grimoires. It is the spirits beyond the boundary of the circle who will be barred from entry by the power of the names, so the names are written for their benefit.

A third line of defense should consist of a third ring, defined by a fourth larger circle, in which are inscribed four names of lesser or earthly spirits that are under the authority of the archangels or lesser gods of the second circle. These earthly spirits will execute minor and mundane tasks assigned to them by the archangels of the four quarters. In traditional Western Judeo-Christian magic, there are four elemental kings that may be used for this purpose, Djin, Nichsa, Paralda and Ghob. Sometimes the nature of the archangels is too elevated to effectively deal with material concerns, and when this is the case these earthly spirits act as their arms, just as the archangels act as the arms of the divine names.

If you have followed this division, you will now have three rings defined by four circles, each ring with four names written in it, one name for each quarter of the world. You may place whatever elaborations you will outside these circles, but the basic circle has already been made, and will serve any purpose to which it is put.

I’ll give the Golden Dawn arrangement for the four sets of divine, archangelic, and kingly names on the quarters, just as a reference. Other names may be used with equally good results.

• East: IHVH — Raphael — Paralda
• South: Adonai — Michael — Djin
• West: Eheieh — Gabriel — Nichsa
• North: AGLA — Uriel — Ghob

An attractive elaboration you can use, if you have sufficient space, is to draw a heptagram outside the outermost circle so that the circles fit within its open center. The form of the heptagram that has a line which reflects from every second point has a large space at its center. The names of the seven planetary angels can them be written at the bases of each of the seven triangles that form the points of this heptagram. This circle is excellent for planetary magic.

The question of what to use to mark the magic circle on the floor always arises. In past centuries a piece of charcoal from the fire was used, or sometimes a piece of chalk. Floors were usually rough boards in those times, or flagstones. Charcoal or chalk do not work well on a modern carpet, or even on polished hardwood.

A popular method is to lay out the circle with colored tape. This can be bought at any craft store. You can be conservative and use white tape for the entire circle, or if you wish, you can differentiate the fourfold division of the circle by using tapes that are colored the four elemental colors. The Golden Dawn correspondence of colors for the four directions would be: east — yellow, south — red, west — blue, north — black (or green).

Projecting the Astral Circle

Now I must tell you the most important part of casting a magic circle. What you have just made on the floor of your ritual chamber, this elaborate construction of three rings with its divine, angelic, and elemental kingly names, is not a magic circle. It is only the physical husk or shell of a magic circle. It has no life, no reality on the astral level, until you infuse life into it, and make it real.

It is for this reason — because the circle you have drawn or laid out on your floor is a dead thing — that I have not written about making a gap in the north to enter the circle. The circle does not exist until you empower it, so making a gap in the north is not necessary. You may just step across the edge of the physical circle to enter it.

To empower and bring the circle to life, it must be projected or cast on the astral level. This is done in the imagination, by a process of successive visualization, at the start of your rituals. The circle you envision on the astral plane will not correspond in every respect to the circle you have drawn on the floor, any more than the astral temple you have erected in your mind will match exactly your physical workspace.

To cast the circle on the astral level, you stand within the physical circle, visualizing yourself standing in the astral temple you have built up in your imagination, and then mentally walk around the inner edge of the physical circle, projecting the astral circle above it with astral fire so that it floats in the air at the level of your heart. If your physical circle is small, it is sufficient to turn on your own axis while projecting the astral circle in the air at heart level.

After you have projected the astral circle, you must sustain it in your imagination for the remainder of the ritual. It is not an empty exercise — when you make the astral circle, it remains in existence in your mind. The more clearly you can visualize it, the more potent its working. Never step through the astral circle once it has been projected.

The astral circle is projected from the right hand, the side of the body that projects. The right side is projective, the left side receptive. You can use an instrument such as a wand to project the circle, or your right index finger. If you use your finger, it is good to have a magic ring on that finger, the better to channel your energies. The astral fire of the circle is drawn out of your heart center and ejected from your wand, or index finger, in a continuous stream, as though it were a stream of burning liquid.

You can visualize this fire to be of any color, but a glowing yellow-white flame is neutral in a magical sense, and will serve for most ritual purposes.

I have developed a very specific way of projecting occult energies. I lay my left palm flat over my heart center at a comfortable angle, as though taking a pledge, and extend my right index finger. I then visualize astral fire shining from my heart-center the way light shines from a flame. I draw this fire out of my heart-center through the palm of my left hand, up my left arm, across my shoulders, and then project it strongly down my right arm and out through my right index finger. The astral fire traces an expanding spiral course through my body.

After projecting the magic circle on the astral level, you should invoke the names of the gods, archangels and kings by turning to face their directions successively, or by walking around the circle to stand in their quarters successively. Start in the east and turn sunwise. Call forth the power of IHVH in the east, then Adonai in the south, Eheieh in the west, and AGLA in the north. Return to the east and invoke the archangel of the east, Raphael, then go to the south and invoke Michael, then Gabriel in the west, and Uriel in the north. Return east and invoke the king Paralda, then the king Djin in the south, the king Nichsa in the west, and the king Ghob in the north. Return to your starting place in the east, or face east if you are turning on your own axis within a small circle.

In this way you will have gone around the circle three times, once for the names of God, once for the names of the archangels, and once for the names of the kings. This turning creates a whirl or tourbillion — a kind of occult vortex — that draws down magical power into the circle and fills it with astral light. If you have done the invocation rightly you will see this light strongly glowing in your visualized astral circle, and you may even see it in the physical circle, glowing on the air with a soft radiance.

You have in this way cast the circle and energized it. You are ready for whatever ritual work you intend to perform.

Breaking the Circle

When that work is finished, you must deliberately break the ring of the astral circle before you leave the physical circle. I say again, do not walk through the astral circle. Nothing so terrible will happen if you do, but by walking through it you demonstrate that it lacks substance. This is not a good practice. You want to make the astral circle so real, to tangible that it would be physically impossible for you to walk through it without breaking it.

Before breaking the astral circle, banish the four regions of space that lie beyond its barrier. By the authority of the God names of those quarters, command any spirits who may be lingering there to depart in peace. Do this in a quiet but resolute voice, or if you are performing a silent mental ritual, with firmly focused thoughts that are sub-vocalized in your throat. Pay attention to how the air of the ritual chamber feels after you banish the quarters. Does it feel calm and empty? Or does it have a waiting, watchful feeling? If it does not feel empty, perform the banishing a second time, or even a third time, with greater emphasis.

After the four quarters have been banished, it is safe to break the astral circle. When you have divided the circle you may draw it back into your heart center by reversing the steps with which you projected it. Break it in the east (that is the usual starting point used by most magicians, although I start my rituals in the south). Draw it into yourself by walking around it widdershins if it is a large circle, or by turning widdershins if it is a small circle. Draw it back into your heart through your extended left index finger, the side of reception.

Ring, Sash and Circlet

Various articles are worn by the ceremonial magician that are in themselves magic circles that enclose and protect the body, by which different forms of occult force may be concentrated or projected.

The magic ring is a standard article for traditional Western magicians. It is customary for a familiar spirit to be bound to the ring, so that the spirit lends its power to the ring, and may be called forth from the ring at need to perform services for the magician. A magic ring is described in the Key of Solomon, showing how ancient this instrument must have been. The Greek writer Philostratus described magic rings worn by the sage and magician Apollonius of Tyana, who lived around the time of Jesus, and the use of magic rings must have been old even in the time of Apollonius. Cornelius Agrippa was supposed to have worn such a ring.

In addition to serving as the receptacle for a familiar spirit, the ring is used to project power through the finger on which it is worn. Usually this is the right index finger, the most willful and potent finger for projection. As energy runs around the circle of the ring, forming a vortex of power, it is directed out through the point gateway at the center of the magic circle defined by the ring, and channeled along the axis defined by the extended finger.

Another magic circle worn on the body is the sash. This is usually wrapped three times around the waist of the magician and tied, although sometimes the sash is closed by a fastener in the shape of a serpent biting its own tail, so that the sash forms a symbolic ouroboros. The sash is sometimes made from seven bands of colored fabric or ribbon that are the seven colors of the rainbow and correspond with the seven planets of traditional magic. The sash I use is made of seven braided cords, each cord died one of the rainbow colors.

The function of the sash is manifold, but one purpose is to contain and concentrate vitality within the center of the magician’s body. It also offers protection against possession attempts, or other intrusions into the body by spirits. Different sashes sometimes form marks of rank within occult orders, just as different colored belts are ranks in the martial arts.

The third magic circle often worn on the body by Western magicians is the circlet, a band of metal worn around the head. Mine is in the shape of a serpent swallowing its tail, and is fashioned from copper. Silver and gold will also serve for making the circlet.

The circlet concentrates occult energy in the head, the seat of the will and the reason. It has the function of strengthening and focusing the mind. Its physical pressure on the forehead helps to awaken and open the ajna chakra, the third eye which is located between the eyebrows. The circlet is helpful during scrying for this reason.

Conclusion

There is no aspect of ritual occultism more ancient or more essential than the magic circle. Indeed, it is difficult to find systems of magic that do not use the circle in some form, and when they are found, they seem incomplete and naked. The magic circle is older than Solomon, older than Moses, and occurs throughout the world in all religions and systems of witchcraft and thaumaturgy. It divides, excludes, protects, attracts, focuses, and concentrates, as these functions are needed by the magician. It is used not merely for evocations, but for invocations, for charging of talismans, for scrying, for projecting accumulated occult energy, and even for meditation. A correct understanding of the circle, not only how to project it, but what it signifies symbolically, is the most basic knowledge any magician can possess, and no magician can be said to know anything of importance about magic who has not mastered the use of the circle.

Footnotes

1. Murray, Margaret A. The God Of The Witches [1931]. London: Oxford University Press, 1970.
2. McPherson, J. M. Primitive Beliefs in the North East of Scotland (International Folklore) [1929]. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1929.
3. Mathers, S. Liddell MacGregor. The Key of Solomon The King: (Clavicula Salomonis) [1888]. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser Inc., 1989.
4. Skinner, Stephen & David Rankine. Veritable Key of Solomon (Sourceworks of Ceremonial Magic Series). Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2008.

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

©2009 Donald Tyson
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Folks passing through on the naked rock under the high sun would joke that Stonehenge had somehow gotten moved to Arizona. But if they walked closer to the double circle of what they thought were stones, they would see that each marker was actually compacted metal, the crushed carcasses of motorcycles and cars. Intuitive travelers wondered what kind of man would build such a place and what kind of magic he worked there.

There were two men standing in the circle at noon of that day, the day the Red Engine ran wild. The man wearing only cutoff jeans, tattoos and scars, the one who had built the place, was called Spur, not without a sordid story behind it. He was hairless, middle-aged, muscles still working but starting to sag under his sun-cracked skin.

The scruffy young man with the black hair and gray eyes was Grief Tanner. He patted dust off his riding leather, glanced around, taking in the dilapidated tent and grimy Winnebago sitting on the far side of the circle as well as whatever lurked under a dusty tarp a few feet away, and shook his head. He didn’t belong to any bike club but he was a member of the Hallowjacks, the men who walked the borders, the cheaters supreme. That meant he didn’t want to be here.

“This is a real nice setup you’ve got here. Maybe you should have a realtor out to appraise it. It’s missing a bean bag in the center though. That would really complete it.”

Spur didn’t smile when he rasped, “It’s safe here. Nothing can get me in this place, my Steelhenge. I’m glad they sent you. I asked for you. The others aren’t riders.”

Grief shaded his eyes. “Yeah, well the others aren’t exactly itching to come running whenever you cry for help. Why don’t you just get to the point before I die of heatstroke, okay?”

The older man bent his head and cleared his throat of what sounded like gravel. “I rode with Mad Frank Madison, kid. I was part of his crew. The things we saw on the haunted roads of America… the things we did…

“I would take the Throttle Wolves over your Hallowjacks any day of the week, kid. We all of us had the skills, you know? But old MF was the powerhouse. Never seen anyone like him.”

Spur was silent a moment, lost in time, unaware that his desert-dry lips had cracked and started to bleed. He went on. “Didn’t save him though. Not when we ran into the Red Engine.”

Grief took a step closer to Spur. “Are you telling me you’ve seen it?”

Spur smiled, widening the split in his lips, and his eyes watered. “Oh, yes. I was the only one who escaped. And I never wanted to see that thing again but I have.” He waved a weary arm towards the markers surrounding them. “At night, the stars speak so clearly to this place. They’ve told me of it every night for the past three weeks. The Red Engine rides again and it’s going to be close tonight, to the east.”

“There’s a whole lot to the east. Where exactly?”

Spur’s face suddenly twisted up into fury. “You know damn well it doesn’t work like that! Exactly? Exactly? But I think… I think it’s going to be coming down Interstate 17. That’s my best guess.”

Grief turned and began to stride back to his ride. “Then I’ve got a few hours on the road ahead of me.”

“Wait, Grief. Wait a minute, I’ve got a basket case for you to use.” Spur turned to the object under the tarp and revealed it to be the ugliest, most piecemeal motorcycle Grief had ever seen.

Grief squinted at Spur as if he had lost his mind. “Why would I want to ride that piece of crap when my own crotch rocket is right over there?”

Spur stomped right up to Grief until his leathery face was just inches from the younger man’s. “I built it from the bikes of the Throttle Wolves. Went back when I was sure the Engine had moved on and got what I needed. Every single one of them is in this bike. I’ve been working on it off and on for more than twenty years. Every single way I could make this thing a talisman, I have.”

Grief stepped around him, approached the bike and ran a gloved hand across it gingerly. A series of chrome amulets had been bolted to its sides and sigils were etched into every surface. Grief removed the glove, touched the handlebars and felt a deep throb, a dark frequency of magic.

The older man continued, “I want that thing destroyed. I’m not a hero, though. I’ve got a little piece of the damn critter in the center of this circle and I built it so it can’t see inside or enter it. I’m not leaving here until the job is done. But I do want that thing destroyed.”

Grief looked from the bike to the man to the bike again, considering. Something wasn’t quite right and he couldn’t sense exactly what protections Spur had put on the bike. That was troubling but winging it was never a problem for Grief; some people find a little thrill in being less prepared than they know they ought to be.

A minute later, he was thundering away from the circle of steel on that cursed machine while Spur watched him go without the slightest trace of guilt or regret or anything on his face.

Hours passed before Grief found himself flirting with an older waitress in a diner off of I17. He had needed a break, Spur’s creation was only a slightly smoother ride than a jackhammer, and she had a smile he liked, the kind that looked like a chagrined frown with the edges turned up.

She was wearing it when he told her his name and she said, “So that’s your handle, huh? Grief. What’re you sad a lot?”

Grief spoke around a gushing mouthful of greasy hamburger. “Nope, it’s my given name. I’ve got a brother named Lament and my sister is Sorrow.”

She cocked an eyebrow in amused disbelief. “Yeah, right. If that’s true, then your parents need Prozac, big time.”

He shook his shaggy head. “Naw. My parents were mostly just weird on the surface. People were always surprised at how sunny they actually were. You ever hear of Mister Twisted and Little Miss Morbid? They were kind of like Elvira but —”

“Oh yes!” she said, clapping her hands in delight. “They used to host that one horror show! And she was in all those goofy movies! She was your mom?”

“Yep. And those movies are classics, okay?”

She leaned back, crossed her arms and inspected him, looking for signs of insanity. “Man, growing up under them must have been weird. Were they like that all the time? Did they actually think they could do magic?”

Grief shifted uncomfortably on his counter stool, glazed out the diner’s window to see a hulking semi pulling in. “Only the harmless kind. But it did get me wondering, wondering what was really out there, if there was any real power to be had, y’know? Started me on my path.” His voice trailed off and his grey eyes became distant for a moment before suddenly coming back. “But not them. They’re just good people.”

The waitress, whose name tag said Sarah, looked towards the window herself and glowered. “What is this asshole doing?”

The semi was positioning itself across the front of the diner, its trailer completely blocking the window’s view of the interstate. The hairs on the back of Grief’s neck rose and without knowing exactly why, he glanced around the diner, taking in almost a dozen other customers, including one family of four.

“Is there a back door to this place?” he asked Sarah and when he didn’t get an answer, he turned just in time to see her drop down behind the counter, limply flopping across the floor tiles. Thuds and clattering sounded all around him as the cook in the kitchen and the customers at their tables dropped like puppets with their strings cut.

A bell tinkled as the front door swung open and the man from the semi stepped in with a double-thump of his big black boots. Then there was only the sound of heavy breathing as Grief and this man, wearing a flannel shirt in the Arizona summer heat, stared at each other.

When he spoke, the movement of the man’s lips was barley visible beneath the tangles of his wild beard. “I smelled you. I smelled you and I remembered you. You crossed me and escaped me long ago but I never forget. And now I’ve found you.” The man gripped his shirt with both hands and tore it open, revealing a mangled mingling of flesh and metal and wire.

Grief rose slowly to his feet as two realizations hit home at the same time. First, the Red Engine, like a few other predators of the Torment Countries, could take human avatars, which meant the creature was much more powerful than he had wanted to believe. Secondly, Spur’s motorcycle wasn’t built to protect its rider but to tag him as a decoy and a sacrifice.

Grief didn’t have time to be flummoxed by either revelation. He turned and leaped over the counter just as the man from the semi bolted forward in a blur. When the man followed suit, leaping behind the counter, Grief leapt back out in front of it, keeping it between them.

The man laughed, rumbling phlegmatic sound, and the smell of cooking meat wafted from his mouth. “You really should let my proxy finish you. The true me is tearing this way and it won’t be long now. You don’t want to die that way. Some of your kind are at this very moment finding that out.”

Grief felt something try to grip his mind but he sloughed it off easily enough. “Look, I’m not the guy you think I am. You have eyes, right? Look at me.” It was silly, trying to reason with a nightmare like this, and Grief wondered if this was what it was like to panic.

The man plucked a gleaming vegetable knife from behind the counter, his runny pink eyes locked on Grief’s. “Roads. Roads turn a land into a nation, a planet into a world. I have ridden camels and horses and cars and turtles and beetles and men and so many others on so many worlds and the roads between worlds.”

He wagged the knife at Grief, his reflection flitting across its blade like a ghost. “Roads carry the men and their dreams just as arteries carry blood and I am the infection chasing you on the arterial tide.”

With savage suddenness, the man dove down and came back up with Sarah gripped by her neck in his left hand. A flick of the knife slit the unconscious woman’s blouse and bra and a rough jerk spilled her heavy breasts, so pale against the tan of her torso. With the flat of his blade, the man traced the contours of her left breast. “I ride the blood straight into the red engine of man. Under here. The most perfect part of you. I sing its praises.”

Grief cocked his head, weighing options, calculating, then bolted for the door. As expected, the man dropped Sarah and leapt over the counter with a joyous snarl. But Grief spun around before reaching the door and tossed a small object, a sliver of glass encased in amber on which an ovoid spiral-like symbol, a word from a language not invented by man, was etched. As he threw the object at the man and himself to the floor, Grief spoke the word aloud.

All of the diner’s windows shattered. Every glass, every light-bulb, every pair of spectacles and even the faces of every watch in the diner shattered. And all of it, every shard, converged on the man from the semi with the force of a hurricane wind. The spray of blood even reached the ceiling.

Grief was appalled to see the man still on his feet, swaying, the shards jutting out from every part him. But then he collapsed with a sickening explosion of crunches. He lay there twitching, still trying to drag himself towards Grief in the slick lubrication of his own blood.

But Grief was already out the door.

He hesitated before the bike and briefly considered ditching it, wondering if it might not be too late, if it had stained him with Spur’s aura so completely that the Red Engine would chase him even without the bike. Either way, it didn’t matter. Spur had betrayed him and that had to be answered. What better way than the lead his enemy to him?

He brought the bike to life with a roar and sped back the way he came.

The sun was nearing the horizon when they caught up with him on Black Canyon Highway dead in the middle of Phoenix. It was a disaster. When the cars finished crumpling and the metal stopped screaming, Grief was amazed to find himself still whole and alive. He couldn’t credit his own skill with his miraculous escape from the pile-up, so the bike must have been good for something.

He sat there, straddling the bike, gaping at the mess he had somehow weaved through, hearing the sobs of the injured, trying to get his breathing under control, trying to figure out how his luck could be so bad that this could happen now, when the driver-side door of a nearby shattered Volvo burst open. The man who stepped out didn’t seem to mind his broken arm, he just kept his gaze fixed on Grief as he limped towards him.

Grief gazed back in dawning horror. Proxies had just caused a smash-up on a major highway, injuring or killing God knows how many, in an attempt to get him. Muttering a non-stop stream of obscenities, Grief spun the bike around and escaped down Camelback Road, then turned onto a side street.

The proxy dove back into his Volvo and soon the half-wrecked car was limping after the Hallowjack. A dilapidated green van disengaged itself from the tangle of cars and joined the pursuit, its driver and passengers all flesh puppets of the Red Engine. The driver of a formerly sleek corvette also tried to serve his master’s will, but his vehicle was a crippled lost cause.

The chase was a darting, reckless one, serenaded by the blaring horns of outraged drivers. Grief cleared his mind of all concerns except speed and gave himself over to the motorcycle, the world tilting and blurring past him. The Volvo ended its run with a brutal collision with an SUV but the van would not be stopped. Still, it was too slow and disappeared from Grief’s rearview after a couple minutes, but he knew better than to think they weren’t still on his trail. They didn’t have to see him to find him.

The place for a stand presented itself: a gas station and car-wash, side by side.

He swung into the lot and skidded to a stop in front of a pump. The green van rounded the corner at the end of the street just as he jerked the gas hose from its holster. It took too many precious seconds to spray a barbell-like symbol on the pavement in gasoline. This was another word of the Omerta Tongue, the language of the Outer Roads.

The van, filled with dark and menacing silhouettes, swung into the lot just as Grief lit a match, dropped it onto the symbol and spoke the word. The match winked out when it touched the gas and the van exploded as its fuel tank ignited. Grief and two other men, who had been filling their tanks and trying to ignore the weirdo with the bike, were thrown to the ground by the blast, eyes burning and ears ringing.

Grief pushed himself into a sitting position, physically exhausted from what he’d done. He didn’t know whether to cry or scream when the van’s two front doors opened and a pair of flame-engulfed figures stepped out. One of them tottered, took two steps and then succumbed to the flame, collapsing to the pavement. But the other kept coming, lurching and flailing.

The horrified screams of the other two men, both of them frozen and disbelieving their eyes, snapped Grief out of his stupor. He wrestled the fallen bike back up to a standing position, mounted it and brought it to life just as he began to feel heat at his bike. The Hallowjack took off with a squeal of his tires and the proxy, so close but now defeated, collapsed. One roasting arm landed in the growing puddle of gasoline from the hose Grief had dropped at the van’s explosion.

The gas pumps erupted and the two stricken bystanders were washed away in tides of flame. Grief was not so far away that he did not hear the thunder and know what it was.

The sun had touched the horizon and lit the sky like an inferno by the time Grief had left Phoenix heading west on I10. The cost of this game blurred his eyes with tears, turned his stomach with nausea but he did not slow down. He had to win this thing now, not just survive it. He swore to himself that he would.

He didn’t know that this bad night for Phoenix wasn’t over yet, that the Red Engine itself would shortly enter the city, following Grief’s path, and triple the carnage and chaos already done. It would be a night of sirens and fire, a night of hell that the newspapers would never be able to explain.

The pale full moon and a crowd of stars lit the desert and witnessed Grief’s return to the circle of steel. He kicked up a spray of dust and dirt as he braked, tried to dismount and just flopped to the ground in exhaustion. But there was no time to rest, no time. The last few miles of his run had passed in terror; he could feel the Red Engine bearing down on him.

And now, a cloud of dust was just visible in the distance as something inhuman tore across the desert.

Coughing, aching, he got himself upright and stumbled towards the circle, calling, “Spur! It’s right behind me!”

Spur met him at the outer edge of the circle and leveled a shotgun at him. “That’s why you’re not getting in here, bro.” His words were ever so slightly slurred and his eyes were bright and glassy. He reeked of alcohol.

Grief dared to walk right up to the barrel of the shotgun. What did he have to lose? The small dust cloud in the distance was now less small and less distant. “You tried to get me killed. I came out here to help you and you tried to get me killed.”

Spur bared his crooked yellow teeth in a skeptical leer. “You came out here to help me? Nah, you came out here for the same thing we all did, thrill-seeker.”

“You got others killed. A whole bunch of folks in Phoenix —”

“People gotta die so that others feel alive, boy. Gas is a fossil fuel, you know. We burn the dead so that we can chase the dream, whatever it may be, so that we can feel alive. And I wasn’t even in Phoenix. You were.” As he spoke, the older man stared out past Grief, mesmerized by what was coming.

Grief turned to look and saw a shape in the dust cloud, a hulking figure on an enormous, jagged motorcycle. It made not a sound but ran silent as a shark. Grief broke out into a cold sweat and felt his knees weaken. If he didn’t get into that circle now he was going to die.

He turned back to the older man and forced himself to speak in a calm, almost soothing voice. “You know this isn’t right, Spur. That’s why you had to get drunk off your ass.”

But Spur didn’t look at him, just gasped, “All those flies, even more than last time.”

Grief spun around again and saw that the cloud around the creature wasn’t just dust. He could hear a low buzz that wasn’t in any way mechanical. It would be on him in a minute.

He turned back to Spur and said evenly, “Just be a man, look me in the eye and tell me this is right. Tell me this is what MF Madison would do.”

Finally Spur locked eyes with him and there was genuine sorrow in his faltering words. “Kid, this is the way the world is, y’know? Everybody’s gotta fight to survive. Somebody’s gotta lose.”

The buzzing sound began to distinguish itself into a thousand insect voices. In the same gentle monotone, Grief answered, “But what about when we met? You had woken the Starving Men and I got the other Hallowjacks to help you. That’s how people survive, by helping each other.”

The buzzing was loud, almost maddening, but Spur was caught in Grief’s imploring gaze and didn’t look away. His words were thick and hard to understand when he said, “I’m sorry but I can’t. I’m scared. I’m bad. Can’t let you in.”

The awful smell of rancid meat wafted over them and the rising hairs on the back of his neck and arms told Grief that he had seconds. He said simply, “Then we’ll both die. You took a step outside the circle, Spur.”

“What?” Spur started and jerked his head frantically, looking to his feet, then to the markers on either side of him, and he didn’t even have time to register that it wasn’t true before Grief had slammed into him, driving his knee up into Spur’s groin.

A motorcycle built of steel and bone and gristle, trailing a comet tail of flies, came skidding to a stop mere feet away from the struggling men. An massive figure clad in a long stitched coat of pale leather that had to be the flesh of men, dismounted and roared, its voice sounding like a lion’s from the bottom of a well.

Grief gave Spur a savage crack across the head with the butt of the shotgun and dove into the circle. Spur had just enough time to realize that the struggle had landed him on the wrong side of the border when a hand made of dull gray metal and bare red muscle landed on his shoulder.

“You lied to me!” shrieked Spur as the Red Engine pressed him down and began to dismantle him. Again and again, punctuated and interrupted by cries of agony, he screamed, “You lied to me!”

But Grief wasn’t listening. He had an oath to keep. He ran to the center of Steelhenge and found a small mound of dirt with a protective circle drawn around it. A few swipes of his hand cleared the grit away from the little glistening fragment of the Red Engine. Grief pulled a pen-knife from his pocket, pricked his finger, and traced the ovoid symbol onto the fragment in blood.

Grief looked back to see that the beast had paused in its work on Spur’s corpse and was peering into the circle, perhaps intrigued by this barrier to its senses. But it wouldn’t cross, couldn’t cross. There were rules that even beings like the Red Engine were bound by. It parted its mismatched jaws, the lower might have come from some kind of dog, and hissed.

Grief spoke the word and then howled in pain, clutching his finger. The Red Engine howled too when it felt itself suddenly jerked forward into the outer boundary of the steel circle.

Grief spoke the word again and the agony spread to his other fingers. The Red Engine struggled mightily but slid a couple more feet into the circle. Its flesh components began to run and sizzle like cooking fat.

Grief spoke the word a third time and felt as if his entire left hand licked by the unfathomable cold beyond death. The Red Engine, its talons dug into the dry dead ground, inched past the inner circle of markers. Its final hateful snarl echoed across the desert as its body erupted, flinging fragments of bone and metal and spraying liquid meat across the impassive faces of the markers.

Grief tumbled into unconsciousness.

The rude insistence of the morning sun’s heat woke him. Sun glinted painfully from the gleaming markers. Buzzing flies explored the remains of Spur and the creature that killed him. Dust and dirt caked his leathers and rained from his hair when he sat up.
He got himself a beer and some jerky from Spur’s Winnebago. He had to open them both using only his right hand. His left was numb and limp. He worked with it for half an hour, trying to get some feeling, some movement. He knew it was pointless but he had to try.

After his breakfast, such as it was, he took stock of his options. His own motorcycle was still in one piece, standing right where he left it, but riding it with one hand wasn’t a smart idea. There was the Winnebago but he didn’t intend on using any vehicle that Spur had a hand in ever again. As long as his right hand still worked, there was always traveling by thumb. He decided to hike the long miles on that unmarked dirt road all the way back to I10 where he’d hitch a ride.

He found a duffel bag in the Winnebago and packed it with some beer and food. He slung the bag across his back, took one last look around old Steelhenge and hit the road.

Beyond the Veil is a regularly appearing column featuring fiction, including occult, horror, science fiction, and fantasy. If you’d like to contribute a story, please contact admin@rendingtheveil.com and we’ll be happy to review your submission.

©2009 Bret Tallman
Edited by Sheta Kaey

(Disclaimer: This is not a how-to guide for spell-casting. It’s a quick look at some of the background and theory. I take no responsibility for the results of anyone mistaking the below text for an instruction manual!)

Previously, I made the point that any theory or description of how magic works will be necessarily subjective, partial and on some level utterly insufficient in fully describing what happens.

But I’m going to have a go anyway.

So, a magician takes patterns in their mind, forges meaningful connections between symbols, events, people and places and things. This set of patterns, their map of the universe if you like, orients them and shows possibilities of action.

What happens next?
That depends on the map.

There are a few ways of describing the overall patterns — the meta-models — used in most magical styles. A good summation of four rough types is here. Using that scheme, I’d describe what I do as a mix of the Energy and Information models, with a side-order of the Psychological. I don’t work the Spiritual model much, except when needed (i.e. if I encounter something that acts like a spirit!).

The Energy model — especially the Far-Eastern-styled variants — is pretty good for describing what I actually do and feel when I “do magic.” A “spell” to me is basically a series of instructions imprinted onto personal energy and send out on a push of focused emotion and intent. Like a martial arts punch — it’s not just the movement of hand and arm that matters, it’s the will behind it.

And, again like martial arts… it’s all about the breath.

If you look at most traditions, the words for magical energy all translate as “breath.” Mana, Prana, Baraka, Ch’i/Ki, Pneuma… they all seem to describe the same thing. Even a word like ‘conspiracy’ (which pops up now and again when talking about the occult…) means at root “those who breathe together.” The primacy of breath is one of the reasons so many systems instruct the beginner in some form of meditation — to teach breath control both as a quick and easy method for altering consciousness and as the basic tool of controlling and focusing one’s ch’i to be deployed magically. Meditation also teaches the student to cut down the signal-to-noise ratio in his mind, the better to sense the change in energies around him. To “detect magic.”

Again I should point out, it’s only a model. The use of the word “energy” in mysticism, especially these days, has been haphazard to say the least. Probably the only word misused more these days is “vibrations.” Or possibly “quantum.”

The Chinese term Ch’i has a lot of utility for me, mainly because Ch’i is considered a universal energy, pretty much like The Force. It scales up nicely — the same system used in acupuncture theory or martial arts is applied on a larger scale in feng shui. It also ties in to my own Taoist tendencies belief-wise. So, I’ll be using it a lot here.

(I’ve always had what could be called a sensitivity to magical energy, to both my own Ch’i and that in my environment. I usually feel it as a kind of temperature shift, sometimes as a tingle in my peripheral nervous system, sometimes even as a kind of ghost-of-a-smell. I’m pretty sure that this sensory input is only a symbol for whatever it is I’m actually getting information about/from, in the same way that the senses we call “smell” and “taste” don’t actually feel like molecules rubbing against our mucous membranes. It’s a shorthand, a symbol, like everything about magic — and it’s a good idea to remind yourself of that fact on a regular basis.)

Back to that spell. The next point to consider is, what is the spell for?

It can be for anything the magician can imagine. Though the intent alters the kind of emotional set and setting for the spell, it doesn’t usually change the mechanics of casting — though of course some techniques work better than others, depending on the intent. (You probably wouldn’t want to focus on feelings of anger and violence when attempting healing, for instance.) The key thing here is the magician must seriously want the instructions to be carried out, he must suit his mood to the intent, and he must formulate his instructions reasonably clearly.

I could go on at great length here about the morality of magic use — and I may do so at a later date. (Short version: I’ve seen no sign of any kind of automatic “Law of Three-fold Return” or similar retribution governing spell use. The morality of magical action falls to the caster. Though karmic payback isn’t guaranteed, often like energies will attract like. But it’s not inevitable that “bad magic” will lead to a bad end. Unfortunately. My own morality leans heavily toward the issue of consent. I never initiate magical combat — only defend or counter-attack when hostilities are begun. I don’t push healing unless I’m asked. And I never, ever, work love spells. To my mind, they’re the psychic version of date-rape drugs.)

The traditional, old school, Spirit-model-based magical styles of spellcasting are usually lengthy processes. The mage would have to thoroughly research the timing (both logistically and astrologically) of the casting, determine which spirits and entities have to be invoked or kept away, lay out surroundings which are conducive to those spirits, select tools in keeping with the occasion, make a magically clear and safe space, probably observe some kind of ritual cleansing beforehand, cast a circle, make ritual obeisance to the pantheon involved… and then finally cast the spell.

All very well and good… and those High Magic rites can have great beauty and efficacy. But from my perspective, most of that prep falls under the heading of “getting into the mindset,” reinforcing the associations in the pattern. For most people, generating the emotional charge needed for working magic requires a dramatic shift from “ordinary” reality — and the borders of the magical reality they are creating have to be fiercely guarded, lest they fall. They’re making a kind of Temporary Autonomous Zone, a brief suspension of the ordinary rules. Though this separation of the magical and the mundane has its uses, I find it mostly a false distinction. With practice — and a good understanding of one’s internal patterns of symbol and Ch’i — one can generate the right mood with a few muttered words, humming a snatch of a tune, or simply taking a slow deep breath.

The emotional push, the Ch’i generation and harnessing needed for magic, can be found in anything that matters to the mage and fits their internal map. Some find it in rituals as described above. Some get to it through sexual activity. Some from dancing, from the emotional climax of a piece of a music or a movie or beating the Boss Level in a computer game. Anything can work. The closer it fits both the intent of the spell and the internal pattern-map of the mage, is usually the better.

The mood is found, the intent created in the magician’s mind… then with a push (or a shout, or a waving of wands, or an orgasm, or…) the spell is cast. Instructions/requests given to the Universe to change according to the magician’s will.

Some kind of banishing should then follow. Even if there’s no clear delineation between the magical and non-magical space, the energies recently harnessed should be allowed to settle and disperse, any entities which may have manifested given leave to depart, and generally the whole place cleaned and tidied up thoroughly. The residue of a space where this is not done can deform, grow toxic… and sometimes attract unpleasantness. (Think of the neglected remains of a picnic, attracting ants. Replace “ants” with “demons” or “bad vibes.” You get the idea.)

Then comes the hard part… seeing if the spell worked.

Like everything else in magic, deciding whether or not a casting has actually had any effect is just about as subjective as you can get. (And that’s before you even start to worry about how it worked!) Quite often, the exact results aren’t quite as the caster imagined them; usually the changes in the world are small.

Maybe that’s all magic is — a way of nudging chance in a tiny way, allowing the repercussions to spiral outward like the butterfly wing altering the quantum flow of —

Bugger it. I said, “quantum.”

(Next on Guttershaman — much, much more on tradition, “authenticity” and such. And I use “the S word” again.)

©2009 Ian Vincent
Edited by Sheta Kaey

As a student of witchcraft, I endeavor to understand not only the practice itself, but also the reasons why witches do what we do. For myself, I find my magical practice much more meaningful when I reflect upon my actions. By meditating upon the nature of my spells, I gain deeper insights about my Craft, and even more crucially, a greater understanding of my unique place within our shared cosmos. Know thyself! This maxim — carved by the ancient Greeks upon the stones of Delphi — rings just as true today. Consequently, whenever I design or develop spells for my own use, I endeavor to shape those spells around my penchant for introspection.

For many witches and magicians, one of the first magical experiments to be undertaken is the crafting of magical shields. Magical shields are essentially defensive thought forms which turn aside or otherwise disable all the harmful energies that might come the caster’s way. While I persist in the somewhat controversial conviction that the number of genuine magical assaults is generally overstated — and those curses which do occur are rarely effective — in fact there are psychic and spiritual dangers out there, including curses and bindings cast by others, malicious and dangerous spiritual entities, and all manner of life-negating energy patterns. (I don’t deny there are real threats, mind you. I do believe that by searching for the obvious demon, we miss the soul-draining pessimism of our workplace, or the broad malaise of clinical depression. Most of the bad things out there don’t speak backwards or writhe when splashed with holy water!)

Once deployed, these magical shields interact with the surrounding energy patterns, and with a little introspection, the reflective witch acquires a deeper understanding of the cosmos as streams of energy. Do your magical defenses flare up brightly in the presence of certain people or situations? An instinctive activation of shields could signify unhealthy or harmful configurations of magical energy flowing from the circumstances, information which subsequently allows you to consciously protect yourself from harm.

Is your significant other yelling at you? Shields keep your emotional center from taking the verbal lashing personally, which enables you to approach the underlying issue constructively. Is your workplace draining your reserves, so that when you get home you crash in front of the television? Shields protect your personal sparkle of enthusiasm, even when you’re surrounded by drudgery or stress. Properly understood, magical shields guard against much more than formal curses and full-bore demonic sieges.

The process of developing magical shields itself teaches several valuable lessons. For one, the aspiring witch learns to raise and direct power towards magical ends. Moreover, the manifestation of effective shields demands good visualization skills; even the relatively simple egg of white light suggested for beginners encourages the caster to hone his imaginative focus. And as we’ve already seen, deployed shields teach us much about how energy flows through our immediate environs.

Beyond these immediate benefits, I believe the study of magical shields can teach us something more, something important about how we approach magic. The crafting of psychic shields can be a deeply creative endeavor, insofar as we employ different visualizations to effect specific ends. The basic shield deflects harmful configurations of energy, which is already a monumental leap over the alternative of getting struck. In my experience, however, very few witches and magicians cease experimenting once they achieve the basic egg-shaped shield formed from white light. Rather, they experiment with different forms, which deal with harmful patterns in unique ways. I suspect most practicing spellcasters who read this have implemented porous shields which selectively allow in positive or beneficial energy patterns. More exotic shields are possible, though. One may design and deploy thought forms which catch and hold the harmful patterns like flypaper. Adopting the opposite extreme, one may cover one’s shields with psychic grease and watch harm slide away harmlessly. Visualizing mirrors can even turn harm back upon the sender!

For some months, my usual pattern of shields followed my training in Aikido — accept the force of the strike as gift, then redirect this force towards the ground, where the energy can be recycled into healing forms. I still find this visualization extremely helpful when confronted by threatening circumstances. Still, my inner witch has been eager to experiment of late, and especially with the intersection of shielding and invocation.

Invocation is something which many people — many witches included — find intimidating. To invite another presence into one’s very being takes courage, and perhaps some small degree of insanity. On the other hand, I don’t believe we should fear the process of invocation, when we consider everything — everything which ever was and ever will be — already exists within every individual’s soul. The Goddess — by whatever name you call Her — exists inside you now, whole and healthy, patiently waiting for the mystical moment when you acknowledge Her presence. Likewise, every possible Form exists — in potential — inside your imagination. Invoked beings don’t arrive from without; they awaken from within! Once you grasp the whole complexity of the cosmos lies before your fingertips, genuine magic becomes possible.

With this paradigm in mind, I set out to develop protective invocations which could function as magical shields throughout the day. This experiment requires some rethinking of the traditional paradigms. Most purposeful invocations occur within some defined space and time, usually marked by a magical circle or some like means, even if the experience itself takes on the mystical transcendence of space and time. Shielding, upon the other hand, engages the proverbial back of the mind throughout the day. To hybridize the two practices, I needed to invoke my chosen Form, and then “set” the Form into a defensive posture for my daily activities, much like programming a burglary alarm and then arming the system. I’ll touch upon this process again momentarily.

For my first such experiment, I elected to invoke a dragon-like pattern of shields, emphasizing three particular aspects of the dragon — the claws, the wings, and the breath. The choice of a complex pattern was deliberate. I think one potential pitfall confronting those who consciously shield is the tendency to create one extremely powerful response for every problem. The issue here is plain: There is no single ideal response for every harmful pattern which may come our way. The deflection provided by an egg of white light is very effective against a wide range of threats, which together with its simplicity makes the bubble an ideal place to begin shielding. To borrow from the cliche, hammers are good at solving several construction-related problems, and they’re fairly easy to wield, yet when you possess nothing but the hammer, everything else begins to look like so many lengths of galvanized metal! Applying the metaphor back into my endeavors, I’m looking to broaden my magical toolbox.

The first aspect I invoked was the claws of the dragon. I envisioned my hands and feet sprouting razor sharp talons backed by inhuman strength and speed, which would then shred harmful energy patterns before they could reach my emotional core. Some threats require the witch to challenge magical force with magical force, though unlike the generally passive bubble-shield, this layer of defense actively seeks out and crushes those things which would bring harm. Moreover, I would add as caveat, the destructive element here severs harmful connections and influences, rather than wreaking havoc more directly upon the sources of such malign patterns. Often the author of some hex or other invests some significant portion of their focus or power into the negative patterns which they send out: When they lose their investment, such enervation is upon them.

Not everything is amenable to sheer force, however, even when such force is applied with the utmost skill. Sometimes the best solution means stepping out of the way and letting the negative pattern sail past harmlessly. This is fundamental to the soft martial arts — when the strike arrives, be somewhere else! Adopting a psychological mindset for a moment, this can mean rising above the fray and not taking a verbal assault personally. The dragon is a deadly predator precisely because he’s out of reach until he wants to close. Thus I envisioned the dragon’s leathery wings emerging from my back and bearing me aloft, above the realms where negative patterns dwell. Magical assaults generally don’t possess power over us unless we give them such power. So teaches the dragon!

The third aspect I invoked was the dragon’s fiery breath. The breath is perhaps the most emblematic element of the thought form we call dragon. We should take note the breath is something closely connected with spirit. Within the language of ancient Greece, the two words are one and the same! To conceive the dragon’s breath — or pneuma — to be laced with flames also acknowledges something important about his spirit. The flames are transformative, the powerful element of alchemical fire which converts one substance into another. By invoking the breath of the dragon, our own spirit takes on this transformative character. Sometimes the proper response to magical assaults isn’t outright destruction, or even evasion. Rather, with our thoughts and our words we can transmute harmful patterns of energy into something positive, spiritual ashes from which the flowers may blossom or the phoenix may rise. Energy itself is morally neutral, only the configuration of energy renders some particular pattern either life-affirming or life-negating. By taking the energy of the magical attack as a gift, we can transmute deleterious patterns into something more beneficial. This process isn’t always easy — Flames do burn, after all! — yet transmuting woe into weal can make for some of the most fascinating and satisfying magic.

The process that I’ve outlined here is an ongoing magical experiment, but one which has met with some success so far. Establishing shields by invoking a thought form does require practice. The visualization itself requires imaginative focus, and I find such shielding requires somewhat deeper reserves of magical power than relatively simple eggs or bubbles. Having shielding which not only dispatches the harmful pattern, but also recognizes and implements the best approach for each threat, requires somewhat more subconscious activity. Still, I think this price is well worth paying. Engaging the broader world with informed and creative magical tools requires intense personal effort, and I’m willing to give some to approach the cosmos more constructively. After all, this same cosmos provides all the magical power we could ever want! Thus we give some and we take some, always learning more creative ways to channel the goodness of the world.

I hope my notes here offer you, my readers, something to consider whenever you design your own shielding spells. Be creative, and don’t be afraid to broaden your magical toolbox!

©2009 Grey Glamer
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Folks frequently wonder what the real utility of convoluted rituals and ceremonies in esoteric workings. Most people find such methods overly elaborate and even stifling to their spontaneity.

For myself, I simply don’t have the natural sensitivity of many practitioners. As a result, I need the ritual to act as a check list. By following the ritual script, I ensure that I actually call upon precisely those entities which I wish and that I properly send them to their part of the plan. Ritual also provides checkpoints which ensure that energies have been raised and that some of the many opportunities for the work to go awry are covered.

Over the years, however, I have learned much more of course, and now I see that ritual, even the most minimal aspirations, have very distinct functions for anybody involved in esoteric experience. While I also cringe from slavishly following somebody else’s script, reworking the elements of other systems enhances those practices which I created for myself. In the process, I’ve uncovered a plethora of reasons for engaging in regular ritual activity. Rituals properly practiced provide effective exercises that develop the scope and the quality of the practitioner’s skills while also enhancing the spiritual development which so many desire.

Right now, however, be warned that this essay represents a distinctly minority report among modern esotericists. While these ideas are not unique to myself alone, they are not the viewpoints usually taken in the literature and correspondence which I have perused. Hopefully, the distinctions between the theoretical analysis presented here and what might be called the current majority opinion will be clearly indicated as the essay proceeds.

Exercise, Discipline, Transformation

No skill can be fully developed without practice. The frequency of that practice must be adjusted to each person’s needs, but the most effective practice occurs when the person uses some outside source, such as a coach or a guide book, to critique the work and its results. Even the simplest of rituals, once a person understands the principles of the working, provide such an outside guide. Certain things are supposed to happen at certain points. The ritual enables the practitioner to test whether or not they have occurred. Furthermore, most ritual traditions provide suggestions as to what may cause the rite to be less or more effective at these points.

The degree and intensity of such practice depends upon the commitment of the practitioner. Consider athletes. Folks whose primary athletic activity consist of ball games at company picnics and family reunions obviously will not invest the same time or intensity of a person who is preparing for the Olympics. On the other hand, every person needs to create some sort of regular physical activity in order to sustain his or her normal health.

The same is true in esoteric life. It seems that folks who are not truly called to adepthood, yet who drive themselves in these practices due to other psychological needs, find very different results from their working. Unfortunately, this often derives from the person’s need for empowerment, and he winds up seemingly looking for fights. Personally, I label these folks “power trippers.” Even when their intentions are extremely good, they tend to create messes. On the other hand, there are folks of high sensitivity and talent who suppress this side of their life. Frankly, the result here is all too often emotional instability and neurotic behaviors. Another problem in esoteric practice derives from folks who either do not study their craft or who do not practice what they study. Such neglect inevitably carries its own burden of problems.

Psychological, Unconscious, Paranormal Development

These problems created by the neglect or misuse of ritual in practice clearly derive from the psychology of the practitioner. These problems are linked directly to the primary effects and functions of almost all magical practice. No matter what theory of magic is applied, ultimately, the actual working patterns of every event derive directly from the mental and emotional structures of the particular person involved. In fact, it seems that the fundamental energies driving many paranormal and magical processes are directly linked to the emotional state of the people involved. Whatever else a magical ritual does, it evokes from our unconscious patterns and associations over which we have little conscious control.

Ritual provides the psyche with tools which can be used to deal directly with these unconscious experiences. While these may be “monsters of the id” or “higher selves,” they must be integrated into our personality to be productive. In fact, this alone is one of the major goals of many initiates. Integrating these forces into the psyche not only causes the psyche to become stronger, it also enhances its capacity to be sensitive and to be effective on other levels as well.

This increased capacity usually results in the practitioner discovering and developing several kinds of paranormal abilities. From the clairvoyant and clairaudient perceptions to psychokinetic phenomena and astral projection, these skills always expand the experience and effectiveness of the practitioner.

In fact, without the discipline of regular practice and evaluation, the truly talented individual will project his energies inchoately. This creates problems. Not only will the practitioner find himself suffering from vague illnesses and infestations of paranormal irritants, people around him will suffer irritation. This can lead to results as extreme as destabilizing relationships and actual psychosomatic illnesses similar to those suffered by the practitioner.

At the other extreme, folks who immerse themselves too much in the mystical mists tend to lose control of their lives. Not only do they begin to ascribe almost every event to some magical cause, they tend to neglect the natural mundane considerations vital to their well being.

In the balance between these extremes, a practitioner finds that they become increasingly aware of their own psychology and become more effective at engendering solid results from the steps they take to accomplish any task. The ancient principle of proper dosage applies: Too little, and the work is ineffective; too much, and the work is even toxic.

Man as Pattern Maker

One of the major functions of a ritual is to tap into the power humans have to provide patterns for things. The very shape of a body is largely determined by the psychosomatic effects of a person’s self image, for instance. Indeed, humans are such compulsive pattern makers that a debate rages over whether many patterns that we perceive are real or are imposed by our perceptions and creativity.

By using a ritual structure, the practitioner creates a pattern for the reality to be accessed and to be created in the working. In this way, the ritual acts both as a blueprint and a special tool to get the shape of the working and its effect more precisely crafted.

The difference can be compared to a cabinet maker who uses jigs and plans and measures carefully and someone who just cuts wood to a loose measure and slaps it together to make a bookshelf. A talented craftsman can create a lovely set of shelves from experience and eyeball. A klutz like myself desperately needs those jigs to create anything of durable beauty!

At the same time, even I can look at the pattern I’m given and decide to make changes in it to fit my own needs before I set up the jigs.

The symbols employed in a ritual have usually been developed over centuries to access the numinous energies in quite particular ways. This is a concept to which I will return, but here it means that by using proper symbolic materials and actions, the practitioner can access appropriate energies in a much more precise manner and deliver them within a more refined impact.

Evocation and Balancing and Integration of the Unconscious

Even if the effects of magic were purely psychological (and I’m going to argue that they are much more than that), calling on powers of any kind causes the inchoate turbulence of the unconscious to present many different things to our conscious awareness. All too often, a practitioner can be startled or even adversely affected by encountering these phenomena at an unprepared moment. The consequences of that can be psychologically disruptive, to say the least.

In the ritual, a practitioner not only can bring to bear spiritual power against these disruptive energies, but also s/he could symbolically direct these influences into a transformed pattern which would make them more productive. Very often, destructive patterns arise from a poor response to a real trauma or to a deep but unarticulated need.

Going further by deliberately seeking out those energies in a ritual, the practitioner gets the chance to deal with these problems with a calmer, more confident mindset. The psychological props of the ritual enable both the conscious and the unconscious to approach the problem and to find resolutions in the symbolic atmosphere. Many times, such symbolic understanding and reinforcement enable the practitioner to constructively alter his behavior and expectations. This can have a powerful an effect on his personality and environment.

Auric Fields, Orgone, and Other Energies — The Circuits of the Body

As a mage adjusts his/her mental and spiritual stance in a ritual, s/he materially affects the behavior and composition of those subtle energy fields which in aggregate comprise the aura. Among many other things, these fields are bio-electric, geo-magnetic, and heat. Infrared photography reveals much about the function of the auric envelope. Kirlian photography demonstrates its persistence. Even the simple tendency of stuff to stick together causes the area around the body to be flooded with chemicals and materials shed by the body.

These auric fields interact with the environment, much like a paddle in water. Most rituals advise you to make certain specific movements and to charge these movements with particular associations. As a consequence, these movements stir the environmental forces into particular patterns.

There is a simple set of exercises which can demonstrate this phenomenon. While doing relaxation and breathing exercises, these energies are concentrated to the point where many people can feel them. This accumulated energy field has many names, such as Chi, prana, and kundalini, and they may indeed be many different energies. In any case, while you’re conducting these exercises, if you have a partner, each should take turns feeling the energy field of the other. One simple way to do this is for one person to close his/her eyes while the other simply pushes a palm down over the bare skin of the arm. After some practice, many folks can tell when the other person’s hand is close, and if you rotate it, they can tell in which direction you’re circling.

Once these vortexes are established, they can be used as engines to empower the patterns crafted by the ritual into tangible as well as spiritual reality.

The Vital Importance of Tools

It is this very manipulation of such energetic fields that causes me to differ from the majority on the need for consecrated magical tools. Many modern writers discount the need or real efficacy of tools. They consider them entirely as psychological props with which an advanced practitioner can safely dispense. Even if they were just tools for accessing the unconscious patterns, as discussed above, their symbolic associations alone will cause real energies to be manipulated.

These energies, however, flow through the mage’s body and most especially through his nerves! If one believes him/herself to be “advanced” and tries a particularly intense working, then that energy blasts along some very delicate circuitry.

A tool which has been designed to wield those energies, such as an Orgone device, for instance, enables much greater energies to be manipulated while buffering the mage from the full measure of the current.

It is possible for a person to transmit lots of energy by grabbing up a live high tension power line — but unfortunately this seems to cause significant damage and the circuit soon fails. The same person, using the proper tools, can handle energies sufficient to power vast cities safely.

Ritual Reality

A further function of ritual involves even more subtle energies. Since sensing them seems to depend upon physical symptoms of events which actually occur in material reality, the practitioner needs ways to instruct the unconscious to act on non-material planes as well.

Debating the reality of astral, mental, spiritual, and other “non-material” planes of existence is beyond the scope of this essay. Every magical discipline, however, affirms the reality of these other modalities of existence. The simplest way I’ve found to explain them is that on those planes, things happen in ways different from the ways they happen in material reality. Time, space, and even cause and effect actually mean different things or work in very different ways.

Ritual, then, provides a sort of bio-feedback mechanism in which the practitioner trains his/her subtle selves to act on those planes. Further, such ritual often has the effect of enabling a person to enter altered states of consciousness in which she/he can become much more sensitive to and aware of these other planes.

Furthermore, in ritual, you will create a zone in space and time in which your magical constructs are real and dominant. This aspect is vital to the success of many magical workings. The process is quite similar to the psychological technique of “fake it till you make it.” By creating a reality in which the magic is real, that reality can grow to affect other “realities” as well.

This is, in fact, a basic principle underlying many magical processes. Erecting magical and psychic defenses involves creating shells of altered reality around you. Consecrating and charging talismans and amulets involves placing those material items into a very non-material matrix where entities and energies of the other planes can access them and use them as foci for manifestation.
It is this aspect that leads many traditions to create very specific and often elaborate rituals for people to pass through the perimeters of the sacred space created in a ritual. I’ve seen Wiccans “cutting and closing” doors in their circles and ceremonial magicians having conniptions if a bug disrupts the lines they’ve drawn on their magical floors.

Internal Illusions and External Beings

Another major contribution of ritual is that it provides a inherent system of verification. This alone is a vital contribution, as it seems no other legal hobby can produce such profound delusions in practitioners.

The sources of these illusions are manifold. Not only is the practitioner routinely entering altered states, in which normal mental processes and the senses can be distorted, but also s/he is rousing his/her unconscious associations, experiences and reactions into excited activity. Further, as magic involves concentration of will and desire, his/her emotional state can be very intense and thus inherently unstable.

One consequence of these considerations is that far too many practitioners seem to think that all magic is just these psychological processes given direction and focus so that the energies involved can create material transformations and manifestations. While this is clearly an aspect of magic, I strongly feel that limiting magic to such events is foolhardy. This is similar to saying that since the home court advantage derives from the emotional energy of the fans, that the team the fans cheer is not really necessary to the game! Saying that your magic only really affects your own psyche is similar to saying that the obnoxious car whose sound system blasts into the buildings a block away is only affecting itself.

When you do magic, you make noise and send out signals that other beings are going to notice and to which they will react. How can you tell if the sparkling or frightening being you suddenly sense is rising from your own unconscious or actually another being coming into your sphere?

This question is very complex, but ritual systems can provide the mage with a series of tests and touchstone considerations with which to evaluate these manifestations. Furthermore, a ritual system derived from an established tradition will even have established techniques which enhance the manifestation of those entities you want and impede the influence of entities and energies which would not be in harmony with your purpose.

This is especially important, as magic is will, imagination, and desire given sufficient force to affect the probabilities of what folks call “reality.” Obviously, such a process can be created by any strong emotion, disciplined mind, or shared experiences and feelings. These processes can be deliberately started by a mage or generated by the simple fact of human activity. Whatever their origin, these processes often assume a self-perpetuating reality such that they become essentially new creatures in their own right. Sorting through these beings is one of the functions of ritual.

Thought Forms and Larvae

The most common forms of these magical psychological constructs are called thought forms and larvae.

Thought forms vary from the very simple kind of association that advertisers like, such as “Pepsi Generation” or “I’d walk a mile for a Camel,” to the extremely complex patterns which give identity to a sports team or a company.

All of these patterns, however, require some emotional linkage to people to be effective and to survive. This creates the problem of “larvae.” Larvae are such patterns which are no longer being actively directed. If they survive, they exist by exciting emotional patterns in people. Since they no longer have their original source of energy, they will attach themselves to people who have an emotional need or vulnerability similar to the larvae’s pattern. Then they excite this emotional link to sustain themselves. The consequence is very unintegrated behavior and even self-destructive attitudes.

As a teacher, I’ve noticed these destructive attitudes all too often seem linked to negative self images. Math anxiety, fear of rejection, inferiority and bullying are actually fairly straightforward infections. Patterns which lead to substance abuse, co-dependency, and other problems are more complex and much more difficult to root out.In every case where a person has become victimized by such things, it is not enough to treat the superficial problems. Healing requires identifying that emotional point which acts as a receptor for such an infection and healing it.

Magical rituals help here on two levels. First of all, they enable a practitioner to identify and to disrupt the alien thought forms or even to shield himself from them. Secondarily, they provide a powerfully evocative symbolic structure to enable the unconscious to understand the basic problem and to find ways in which to heal it.

Egregore

Very complex and more powerful thought forms clearly become their own persons over time. These are called by various names in different magical traditions. Elementals, elementaries, and similar terms are often not talking about the classic sylph, gnome, etc. but refer more towards these complex forms. Astral servitors are created by advanced mages to accomplish some relative routine task just as industrial robots enable craftsmen to be more productive.

An egregore, however, is a much more complex and even powerful entity. Egregores can even be created into physical manifestation (as in the Tibetan tulpa) by deliberate magical activity. Much more frequent, however, is the creation of “group spirit.” School spirit, corporate culture, and so forth are such beings. One class which gives people much more trouble than they realize are the egregores of spiritual congregations. Magical orders are very careful about this; since they know they are creating them, they strive to be sure that their egregores have the qualities they want.

Unfortunately, the average church congregation creates these in abundance and hardly ever are at all aware of what they are doing. I firmly believe that many of the disruptive behaviors of religious congregations, from the tragedies of the Inquisition to the self-immolation of Jones or Koresh arose when the egregore of the congregation usurped the position of the true tutelary of the group.

Spooks

The persistence of these psychic, magical beings is most often experienced by people in the “haunt” phenomenon. Here an experience, usually traumatic, has created an echo or copy of a personality undergoing that experience that persists for ages in a sensible form.

I tend to doubt that these beings are usually truly souls of departed people, though such a thing can happen. This doubt is based on the fact that these phenomena rarely evince any depth to their personalities. In fact, most would fail the most rudimentary tests devised by computer programmers for artificial intelligence!

Yet, under the stimuli of sensitives who have procedures for working with these entities, they can be seen often to evolve and to grow to more complex beings. Even so, in many cases, these haunts turn out to be, like poltergeists, generated by the psychological storms of the very people they haunt!

Cross-Plane Manifestations

These generated pseudo-spooks, if you will, are a classic example of another reason to use rituals. No matter what level catches your attention when you act, all acts and all choices affect your reality on all levels. As a result, a subconscious effort can create these kind of phenomena to attract the conscious and spiritual awareness. Western esotericism is permeated with the principle “As above, so below.” In other words, what we do physically has a spiritual effect and our spiritual and imaginary constructions will have tangible effects.

Consider the principle elucidated by the Master, “As one speaks, so believing in his/her heart, so it shall be done unto him/her.” What you speak so often tends to become real. Folks who say of children, “They’re little devils,” are setting their expectations and thereby their reality to really regret their words. This is the principle behind the idea of positive thinking and positive affirmations, and is also a major principle empowering magic.

There’s a story of a salesman who suddenly leaped from the bottom performer to the top performer by changing one word. Every time somebody would rhapsodize on their child’s genius, the achievements of their favorite politician, the expectations of their favorite sports team, he began to say, “Fantastic!” He used to say, “Balderdash!”

Again and again, reinforce the principle of the old song, “Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and don’t mess around with Mr. In-Between.”

To return to the focus of our magical activities, be careful to say what you want to happen, because magic will cause material things to manifest in response to our mental statements. Further, magic will cause spiritual reality to manifest as a consequence of our physical actions. A mage has the responsibility of consciously directing this power to emphasize the materialization of the things he designs and to decrease the manifestation of the things which destroy.

Furthermore, ritual measures to bring about magical manifestation also provide patterns and energies for the nature of that manifestation. This is one reason why sympathetic magical rites always include some ritual or material which mimics the physical reality the mage desires. Perhaps this is one reason why ancient entities were so enamored of having biological sacrifices. The life forces and the material substance of the poor creatures sacrificed provided them materials with which to establish a manifestation on our plane without so great a strain on their native resources.

Landing Lights

In ritual, we set careful boundaries to what we will direct to happen, and hopefully also boundaries and limits to what we don’t want to happen. This is one reason for the triangle and circle elements of ritual. The circle defines the magical cosmos of the working and the triangle defines the limits and pattern of the manifestation. Believe it or not, this combination also aids the manifestation of forces friendly to the mage. Crossing from one plane to another is difficult — like flying at night without moonlight, they need those landing lights to find the designated field.

Boundaries

Ophiel wrote that if we don’t limit the desired effect of our spell, we may cause a disruptive influence to occur. An image for this might be a person who opens a faucet to get a glass of water, only to find that the spigot was meant for a high pressure fire hose!

Furthermore, every action creates a reaction. Now Newton was fond of “equal and opposite,” but magic doesn’t seem to work that way. Perhaps, “opposed on the same continuum” would define the operation better. So just as we need to be careful to set boundaries on what we want to happen, we need to set boundaries on how it may happen. Even more, we have to set boundaries to close off the enormous forces of opposition.

All too often, a person will work some ritual to gain wealth, for instance, to have a beloved relative die and leave them a bequest in their will. Another cycle involves the ritual obviously having good effect at first, and then the person suddenly finds everything flows back to a condition worse than when they started. Therefore, boundaries are needed. The Wiccan line, “an’ it harm none,” is a useful model. The more elaborate phrasing and details you can generate, the safer and the more effective your ritual will be towards achieving your goals.

This is even true in purely spiritual work. Consider the “Lord’s Prayer.” It glorifies God and places all under Her will at the very front of the incantation. Then it asks for “our daily bread” — the original language clearly carries the connotation of our proper quota. Then the hardest prayer of all — forgive us as we forgive others. This alone removes one of the major psychological and spiritual hurdles to benign manifestations. Then it moves on to the protective boundaries, “Do not put us to test, but deliver us from evil.” These boundaries are followed with a reaffirmation of the controlling principles and invocation of the operative powers.

Letting Go

One boundary which the apprentice mage often forgets is the boundary to the working itself. Each ritual, even the tiniest charm verse, needs a definite close and a dismissal to the work.

The first reason for this is that any working attracts and disturbs the energies and beings on several levels. Unless they are helped to clear away, they continue to influence the mage’s mind through images, feelings, and thought patterns. Contrary to the opinions of many, these include many beings and thought forms which are definitely not truly part of the mage’s own personality. Furthermore, the more developed of these entities will have their own agendas which may or may not truly advance the mage’s own spirit.

Not dismissing these energies, then, not only runs the risk of leaving your unconscious immersed in turbulent and disordered vibrations at a potentially unhealthy intensity, but also it causes many thoughts, images, and feelings to arise in you which are actually alien to you. Either condition can result in quite specific spiritual and psychological problems. The first may lead to manic behaviors and the second even to dissociative personality disorder.

The second reason is even more important to the practice of effective magic. If you do not release the energies, they cannot effectively do the task you have assigned to them. A jockey who constantly reins in his horse will not win the race. A lion on a leash is a guardian all too easy to evade. A vehicle can be driven with the brakes still set, but this definitely damages both the brakes and vehicle as well as making the journey last much longer.

In the dismissal, you send these powers out to do the job. If you do not trust either the powers you’ve raised or the directions and controls you have provided for them, you can not freely permit them to work. If you do not expect them to accomplish the task, then your own will and imagination admit and create the failure. Indeed, this is one reason for thanking them for accomplishing the task even before you send them to do it!

The dismissal can be anything from a simple gesture such as putting the charm in a bottle and capping the bottle or an elaborate rite such as closing by the Watchtowers. Either way, the dismissal restores the privacy of your own psyche and sets the magic into full operation.

Good and bad vibes

Of the many consistent themes in my writing, the term “verify” occurs frequently. You need to be sure that you are doing what you want to do and having the effect that you want to have. So I suggest that you consider ways to test your working before hand. What sort of things would indicate that it was starting to work?

Secondarily, since magic, by definition, works with realities that humans find difficult to observe directly, we need to verify that the forces and entities we think are participating are the true ones. As above, so below also works in reverse. Just as we have to be on guard against parasites and predators who pretend to be our friends in the material plane, we have to verify the nature of the beings we encounter on the astral and spiritual planes too. St. John wrote that we should test the spirits.

How?

St. Paul points out that the Spirit of the Lord will edify and create order — by which he meant that the loving harmony will increase and we will find ourselves better people. On the other side, spirits that tend to disrupt the process in which we grow to be more like our Master and more in union with the Deity are probably not good for us!

In addition to the elaborate rituals every religious tradition may provide for this purpose, we are provided with an innate capacity to discern these spirits. How do they feel to you? Do they help you feel better about others and yourself? Do they help you be a better person? Do they help you accomplish your tasks and goals in both the spiritual and the mundane social setting? Do they comfort you?

If not, then I’d be much more cautious in dealing with them. This system is not fully reliable by itself, of course. If it were, then con artists would find it hard to make a living! On the other hand, it can be a definite alert signal to conduct other tests.

Communication

This sensation of feeling the “vibes” off another being, even a human, is based on an unconscious gestalt of several features. We may perceive their aura, we may pick up on the electro-magnetic fields their body generates. We may be sensing the particles, hormones, enzymes, and excretions that every body drags around with it (a very good reason for frequent showers, by the way). We also may be actually sensing subsonic vibrations being generated by the other person. It turns out that our hair follicles can work very much like the sensing hairs in our inner ear to pick up on these signals. Moreover, our skin does have light sensitive components and a few adepts are able to see with their skin.

This is one reason why the insecure, shy, and socially unskilled person who is desperate to be accepted feels “creepy” while the real predators and creeps can seem so trustworthy, caring, and good. The person expecting rejection will be unconsciously providing your unconscious with a flood of signals to avoid them.

Yet this flood of signals and their attendant response are a communication. If we are going to evoke powers and beings in our magic, we need to be able to communicate with them. We need not only to be able to tell them what we want done and how, but also to hear from them the things they have to tell us. It does no good to be able to tell the car to accelerate forward, if we ignore the stopped truck in the lane in front of us!

For this reason, every ritual tradition will provide a number of disciplines to provide us with tools for such two way communication. At their base, all imply awareness of signs and a basic ability to meditate and to listen to the unconscious. In ritual, the mage drills and practices these techniques so that they become more effective and reliable.

Transformation

Establishing such good communication with our spiritual and our unconscious realities is vital for the full accomplishment of the “Great Work.” The imagery to describe this great work varies. Every tradition has it own language. The Buddhist seeks Nirvana. The Jewish Kabbalist seeks to free the Divine Sparks and to repair the Face of God. The Christian Mystic seeks union with the Divine. They speak of building up the City of God or finding the Kingdom of Heaven.

All of these terms speak of achieving fundamental changes in the mage. Initiations all have the purpose of bringing about a new kind of reality for the initiate. Christians say that their Baptism, for instance, radically changes the kind of creature you are. No longer descended from Adam but from Christ. While this obviously would give the Christian much better tools or cosmic posture, this by itself will do little to complete the transformation. For that, St. Paul says we must all strive and run and hope. A lion is much stronger than a cat, but it may be still ineffective as a hunter!

Anyway, this transformation means that you must move from one state of being into another. Magical ritual enacts this transformation every time you conduct it consciously. Such transformations can cause schizophrenia! You are consciously and unconsciously aware of yourself as one kind of being, and this awareness is reinforced by your society whether or not it is true. Now you are introducing changes which are sometimes impossible to be obviously observed but which are sensed and effective on the unconscious and spiritual planes. This destroys your identity with who you are and whom your society thinks you are.
This change is not only unsettling to you unconsciously, it can be lethal socially. Scientists once performed an experiment in which they removed a monkey from its family, died it pink, and put it back in the family cage. None survived two hours. Their own families tore them apart.

Not only do mages experience this “pink monkey” syndrome, the more effective their magic; they also experience “culture shock.” The easiest way to explain this is the feeling of dislocation that you feel when you return home on vacation after you’ve first been gone from home for quite a while. You know you don’t fit in anymore. You’re different. So you think that you must stand out in some way. You think everybody is talking about you, making fun of you, etc. In short, you go paranoid, and that’s just the start of the problem.

All these symptoms combine within another feature of the magical life: threshold sickness. The most common feature of threshold sickness is nausea. This can be very like motion sickness, and is probably a psychosomatic manifestation of the spiritual reality. Unfortunately, the stronger the occult threshold you are crossing, the stronger and weirder the symptoms. Poltergeist activity can manifest. Even more dangerous, you can project your symptoms onto others.

All of these problems can be healed effectively by having established strong and reliable mechanisms of communication beforehand. Sometimes people have to relearn their people skills, but being aware of the problems and reaching for these solutions will usually get folks through the crises.

The most important communications, however, are those which must be conducted between our conscious minds and our unconscious and our spiritual minds. If we have developed tools, such as art or poetry, we can observe and direct our process of change. Furthermore, if we maintain some sort of journal, we can see where we started and where we may go.

Obviously, as we change, the nature of our communication with the spirits will also change. The same sort of rules apply. Ritual again should provide the tools to enable this continuing communication and a means of testing and developing our transformation.

Transcendence

Ultimately, all magic tends to develop a sense in the mage that reality is not so solidly established as most folks assume. One extreme denies objective reality, claiming all that exists is what we generate ourselves by our beliefs. The philosophy which expresses this is solipsism. Another school claims that all that is real is the realm of absolutes, ideas, and archetypes. The philosophy which expresses this is Classical Idealism. Another philosophy expresses that all that is real is energy or vibrations, and that the classic realm of the Ideal, etc., is an illusion. This is the principle underlying modern phenomenology and also is actually hidden within many of the bromides of the “New Age.”

To all of these, I’d say that reality is not what we think it is, nor even what we directly experience; but the fact that we do experience and communicate means something is out there besides ourselves and is “real.” One of the effects of the Great Work should be a growing ability to sense and to deal with this ultimate reality.

Perhaps, at one point, we mages may even become transformed to the place where we ourselves live in that realm with full awareness and become truly part of the very forces with which we desire such intensely loving harmony.

When we follow through on all levels with the implications of our ritual traditions, I suspect that flashes of such experience happen. These are the moment of ecstatic union or enlightenment of which the greater mystics teach. In such moments, we transcend “reality” to another level of the Divine Dance. In such we experience something which transcends any conceivable capacity of language or art to fully communicate.

Such transcended is “trans-rational.” It goes beyond logic or reason or coherent language, and can only be dimly described by very weak analogies and metaphors. Hence the language of all art is “evocative” as it tries to magically evoke some tiny piece of that transcendence for the person sensing the art to experience.

Just as great art transcends genius to Divine Inspiration, may you find rituals to transcend the limits and trials of this plane to the vivid joys and visions and accomplishments which transcend all planes.

Ambrose Hawk is the author of Exploring Scrying (Exploring Series).

©2009 Ambrose Hawk
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Screaming in my heart
Pounding in my blood
Seeping through my skin
Flooding in my eyes

Body twitches to nerves unbidden
Muscles flex and relax with each step
Fingers reach unconsciously
Lips seek soft skin

No thought just feeling
No reason just emotion
No emotion but the need
No need but of you

Let my eyes see only yours
Let my tongue taste only you
Let my ears hear only your voice
Let my heart receive your love

Rocking body, panting mind
Gasping for a moment to think
Time is spirited away as
I reach for you

Arms unfold to bring you near
Legs shake with fear
Throat locks with feeling
Eyes well with joy

Know I need you
Know I want you
Know I love you
Know I fear

Poetic Journeys is a semi-regular column featuring a wide variety of poetic styles. If you’d like to submit a poem, please send your submission to admin@rendingtheveil.com and we’ll happily review your material for inclusion in a future issue.

©2009 Sarenth