My friends and I complain a lot about the occult section at the bookstore, mostly because hanging out at a bookstore and complaining is cheaper than a movie, even with the latte. Our favorite complaint is that there are no advanced books on magic.

Our second favorite complaint is the music they play, but that’s irrelevant.

I’ve kicked this idea around over and over, asking why there are no advanced books on magic. The question itself is faulty. There are advanced books on magic (I even wrote one). But the question fails in another way: It betrays a misunderstanding of the field.

Most books on magic are textbooks, because textbooks sell. People want to learn how-to, and if you ever find yourself in the enviable position of writing a book on magic, you might as well put the exercises in from the beginning because if you don’t, the publisher will suggest you do.

Publishers and readers have expectations for what a book on magic contains. A book on magic has exercises (which nearly everyone who reads the book ignores), and offers the same exact rigmarole — here’s how to move “energy” (rarely a critical discussion of why we’re using that clumsy and out-dated model); here’s how to relax; here’s how to see auras (two-thirds of the time, the books actually teach you to see retina burn, a not very mystical, and entirely useless, skill). Wiccan books will tell you how to ground, center, cast a circle, call the quarters, and eat cookies, in that order. Ceremonial magical books will have a chapter or a section on each of the sephiroth, planets, and elements. And all of this repetition and sameness is absolutely okay.

In fact, it’s necessary. Everyone learns differently, and every writer offers a new perspective on the old topics — at least, if the writer is doing his or her job. Some readers will want a step-by-step, logical approach without many frills. Others will want reassurance or an open-ended, experiential approach. The techniques of magic can be reduced to a small number — perhaps a couple dozen — but the application and presentation of those techniques is as manifold as those who practice magic.

The other reason that there aren’t many advanced books on magic is that there aren’t many advanced textbooks in anything. When one gets to the point of advanced study in any academic field, textbooks become less and less useful. In about seven years of graduate school (gods!), I bought an average of ten books a class every semester, so sixty books every year, and of those, maybe five were textbooks. The rest were primary sources, or anthologies of primary sources.

Similarly, economic factors influence the books that get published and, more importantly, distributed. A large chain bookstore is unlikely to carry advanced books in magic, just as it is unlikely to carry advanced books in physics. The markets for such books are small. Writers do produce works of magical critical theory, philosophy, or experimental results. But those sell slowly, if it all, so bookstores rarely carry them. You need to hunt.

This lack of advanced study materials leads to an interesting situation for those who study magic. Learning the basics is easy. Moving on is hard. It’s doubly hard because most people who study magic do so themselves; they’re autodidacts. An autodidact can learn a topic perfectly well; in fact, I’m mostly an autodidact in magic. But an autodidact faces specific problems of assessment, organization, and even emotional reactions that a teacher can support a student through (or, conversely, make worse).

What we need, then, is not necessarily better books on magic (there are lots of good ones), but a guideline for how to study this art in order to get over that chasm between beginner and expert. Such a guideline, in academia at least, is called a syllabus.

Most syllabuses are written by professors for their classes, but some universities have program-wide syllabuses adopted by the whole course. Most universities mix the approaches, with some parts of the syllabus coming from department or program-wide initiatives and some from the professor’s own mind. Writing a syllabus for self-study might seem a bit odd to those used to the university syllabus. After all, the university syllabus is written by an authority in the topic and offered to students as a guideline and, in a legal sense, a promise. But a syllabus is really just a plan for how to learn, and anyone can construct a plan, even without necessarily knowing much about the topic beforehand.

Writing a syllabus for magical study is much like writing one for any other topic, but there are specific features of magical study that complicate the basics. Nevertheless, every syllabus, regardless of its origin or subject, has three sections: objectives, a set of goals for the course of study; learning activities, a set of assignments or actions to be taken to achieve those goals; and assessment, a description of how the success of the student will be measured, as well as the success of the learning activities in promoting the desired outcomes. All three components, whether in mathematics, literature, or magic, are interdependent. A syllabus missing one of these elements is not a complete or effective syllabus.

A syllabus needn’t be a rigorous and complex document, however, especially for self-study. For example, I am currently learning the piano, and while I do have a teacher I have a syllabus of my own. Here it is in its totality:

• Objectives: I will learn to play the piano well enough to read, memorize, and improvise music. To enjoy the piano.
• Assessment: I’ll know I can read to my satisfaction when I can play a song through slowly with few errors after only practicing it for a short time (one or two weeks); I’ll know I can memorize music when I can play at least three classical pieces and five or six short folk pieces from memory; I’ll know I can improvise when I can play music from a fake-book at sight.
• Activities: I will take weekly lessons, practice at least a few minutes daily, and play for pleasure at least twice a week.

Obviously, I will not meet the objectives of this syllabus easily or even necessarily quickly. But notice that each objective can also be broken down. After all, I can memorize pieces one piece at a time. Notice also how flexible I am with the activities. If I really wanted to be good at piano I’d set myself a set goal, say, an hour a day. Of course, my second objective is the most important: to enjoy the piano, and I know how I would best enjoy piano, and that is at my own pace.

When writing a syllabus for your own self-study of magic, it can be as complex or as simple as you need, and this complexity comes ultimately from the objectives you choose. Therefore, a wise autodidact starts with objectives, which can be things you wish to know, things you wish to be able to do, or even attitudes you wish to develop. And keep in mind as well that you can think of it as a single course, rather than the whole totality of magic. A syllabus with objectives like:

• Learn to evoke spirits
• Learn to invoke gods
• Learn to heal
• Learn to make talismans
• Learn the Cabala
• Learn the runes

is a more overarching syllabus than one with objectives like:

• Learn the sephiroth of the cabala
• Learn the Hebrew alphabet
• Perform an invocation of each of the ten sephiroth

And the second set of objectives is more likely to lead to a manageable set of activities. By all means, begin with your overarching goals — what you really want out of magic — but narrow them down into specific courses of study to make the next steps more manageable. Any time you find yourself struggling with the next steps, go back and narrow your objectives, keeping in mind that you can always come back to the other objectives later.

Your objectives are always and only yours to define. But if you are new to the study of magic you may be unaware of what sorts of skills a magician needs, and so you might become stuck. At this point, those introductory books can be useful. You can head to a bookstore or library and browse through some of them, getting a sense for what they cover and defining a set of objectives from that.

Once you have your objectives, you need to skip ahead to assessment. How will you know you have achieved these goals? You should be able to come up with some indicators that are measurable and more or less objective. I don’t recommend giving yourself grades (most professors would avoid them if they could). Assessment and grading aren’t the same thing: assessment is determining two things: (a) am I learning what I set out to learn? and (b) is this method working to teach it to me? With regard to the first, remember that you cannot always easily judge your own improvement, especially by memory. Keeping a journal of your activities and reflections on your skills can be useful, therefore, so that you can go back and see “ah, yes, I really didn’t get that but now I do.” I find that a sense of embarrassment for how dumb I used to be is a fairly good sign: it means I’m just a little smarter.

You also want to assess your activities, but doing that requires having some. Activities include materials and exercises. Materials are those very books I’ve talked about earlier. At the beginning, you may wish to start with a fundamental text (some are listed in the bibliography). Later, in more advanced classes, you will find yourself looking at primary sources more and more, and less and less at the introductory textbooks. If you find these sources boring, or simply incomprehensible, keep in mind that no one says you must study advanced magic. It is not as if you’ll get a Ph.D. in it. Go that far only if you find yourself passionate.

You need to evaluate material before using it to learn from, especially because so many books on magic are, in fact, pretty awful. A lot of them are good, but some are — not. Ideally you’ll want to create your own set of criteria for judging an introductory book. (Once you have some practice down, it’s fairly easy to discern good advanced texts from bad — most people prefer the Arbatel to the Black Pullet, because it’s easy to tell which is real and which is nonsense.) To help you create your own criteria, here are mine. Remember that I am a grumpy man with a stick up my nose for critical thinking and good writing, and take that into account.

Criteria for Evaluation of Learning Materials

• Can I understand it? Is it written and organized well enough to comprehend, or is it filled with jargon I do not know and convoluted sentence structure? Is it often, like some theosophical materials, complex but reducible to simple statements that are often obvious or clearly untrue?
• Do its claims match with what I already know or suspect about the world with greater or lesser certainty? Obviously, I can be wrong and I need to occasionally read stuff that disagrees with me, but a text that tells me that science has discovered that Atlantis used crystals to power their machinery is wrong.
• Will it address one or more of my objectives?
• If I read a chapter, can I put the book down and summarize what things the chapter argued, or am I left with just a vague feeling? Vague feelings have their place — I actually think one of the chief purposes of occult writing isn’t instruction, but encouragement. And I might want one or more such materials. But if I’m trying to learn something concrete from a book, I need to be sure I can take something concrete from it.
• Does it have solid arguments and citations of its information, or does it just plop authoritative-sounding stuff in the midst of the text with no indication where it came from? My favorite of these is a book that lays out the totality of Druidic magical practices — without ever citing a single source, and making multiple factual errors (the druids did not have pumpkins).

Once you identify a set of materials that you wish to use, go request them from the library or buy them from a bookstore. Most introductory texts contain a set of exercises, but if you are an intermediate learner you need to make your own. An intermediate learner of magic has the task not just of building the skills of magic, but synthesizing them. So let’s imagine you have learned elemental pore breathing (a technique of drawing in elemental “energies” through the breath, promoted by Franz Bardon and stolen by nearly everyone else), the twenty-two path/letters of the Cabala, and the chakras. This rather hodgepodge approach now opens up doors for the intermediate magician to experiment with breathing the elements into particular chakras, or breathing the letters instead of the elements, or permuting the letters into chakras. The overwhelming proliferation of magical techniques that this mere synthesis can create is staggering.

Once you have your materials and your exercises determined, it’s wise to plan how you will assess your development. The single most productive way to do this is with a magical journal. Most people, however, do not understand the purpose of this journal. It is not merely a diary of your practices, although it can be. It’s also a critical reflection on your development and learning. Exams, papers, and so on work well enough if there is a teacher, especially in a university setting where a numerical grade must be assigned. But for an autodidact, the only measure of success is success. If, for example, you wish to learn practical talismanic magic, you may regard yourself successful when you have a 80% success rate, or when you have three successful talismans under your belt, or any other largely arbitrary measure. But if you are trying to learn something less concrete — if you’re trying to learn advanced techniques of theurgy, how do you measure your successful invocation? Obviously, if you find yourself levitating around the room, probably you did something right (or very, very, very wrong), but more likely you’ll end up after an invocation thinking, “was that just a fantasy, or real communication?” If you can record your experiences and your doubts in one place, you can reevaluate them later and see how they fit together with later experiences.

When it comes to devising a practice schedule, I suppose it’s customary for me to become stern and demand that you spend forty-five minutes a day doing magical exercises. What a hypocrite that would make me. You are better off setting modest goals, perhaps even tiny ones. Otherwise, you will simply skip lessons and feel guilty. Guilt is not educational, contrary to Puritan beliefs. Instead, if you decide that you will spend just ten minutes a day meditating, you’re more likely to do so without guilt — and before you know, you’re meditating for an hour as a habit.

When you finish a syllabus, it is time to look again at your overarching goals and define a new one. Skills build on each other. Once you get the hang of talismanic magic, what can you use it for? How can you combine it with other magical techniques that you’ve learned? The usual method of learning magic — studying with this person here, that dubious person there, this book, that book — can work for some people. Other people will prefer a more organized approach, even if they scribble their syllabuses on napkins and keep their magical notebooks on the backs of receipts.

People pay professors a lot (well, not that much) to offer them a hand over the intermediate chasm of their fields of expertise. We have, unfortunately, no professors of magic, and when we come to the chasm we need to find our own way across. The good news is, we can build our own bridges, especially if we’re willing to do a little planning.

A Tiny Bibliography

Introductory Books I Like

• Christopher, Lyam Thomas. Kabbalah, Magic, and the Great Work of Self-transformation. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2006.
  Covers some of the same ground as Kraig, but from a somewhat different angle.
• Dunn, Patrick. Postmodern Magic: The Art of Magic in the Information Age. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2005.
  This wasn’t meant to be strictly a beginner’s book, but I wanted to rethink the common conceptions of how magic works from the ground up, which necessarily involves a lot of beginner stuff.
• Kraig, Donald Michael. Modern Magick: Eleven Lessons in the High Magical Arts. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 1988.
  This book is a very good introduction to a particular kind of magic — Golden Dawn style ceremonial magic. It comes with the advantage of having a syllabus built in, although most people who have read the book have, unfortunately, ignored it. Not ignoring it is a very, very good idea.

Intermediate Books I Like

• Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius. Tyson, Donald, ed. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 1992.
  I know magicians who live by Agrippa, and there are worse ways to go. This text is a core source text for most of western magical tradition.
• Dukes, Ramsey. SSOTBME: Revised. The Mouse That Spins, 2002.
  Perhaps the single best book on advanced magic I have ever read. Explores the nature of knowledge, the structure of magical theory, and the role of magic in culture.
• Dunn, Patrick. Magic Power Language Symbol: A Magician’s Exploration of Linguistics. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2008.
  Magic’s about language. Or maybe language is about magic.

©2009 Patrick Dunn
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Warm and cool, dry and moist, light and shadow — As human beings, our conceptual frameworks freely draw upon dualistic oppositions. Because we who practice magic are human, our magical paradigms partake of these conceptual divides, though as Magicians we have an intellectual responsibility to question whether our basic assumptions about the world are beneficial, or even warranted, for our magical development. When we find ideas which are useful for our occult endeavors, then cultivating our understanding of these ideas should facilitate their adaptation and application. On the other hand, when our paradigms constrain our capacity to engage our world constructively, we should make the intellectual effort to modify — or even to jettison — the offending assumptions.

From the above examples, we can readily see the influence of dualism and binary reasoning both upon ancient proto-science and within contemporary occult theory. The pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles, when sketching out the fourfold division of the elements so integral to our contemporary magical thought, assigned to each element a primal quality based upon temperature and another based upon moisture, so that Fire was hot and dry, while Water was cold and wet. These pairs of essential qualities proposed by Empedocles — warm and cool, dry and moist — subsist upon binary thinking; without the assumption of either-or, they largely fail to “click” upon an intuitive level. An object may partake of some quality “Alpha” only insofar as the object does not partake of the opposing quality “Beta.” The composite substances which populate our visible world inevitably fall somewhere between these various extremes, yet by this thinking, the composition of any particular substance can always be defined with reference to absolutes, absolutes which can only exist in opposition one to another. Contribute heat, and thereby we move the object further from the primal absolute of cold. Take away water, and so much less does the object partake of the primal absolute of moist.

Taking the four primary composites of these qualities — what we would call the four elements — we have Fire (warm and dry) opposed to Water (cold and wet), and Earth (cold and dry) opposed to Air (warm and moist). Even in non-occult circles, there is the sense that each element acts as foil for its opposite. So when the practicing Magician first encounters the Watchtowers — and whatever their true origins and natures, they certainly seem to function as intelligences which personify the four elements — there arises the very natural tendency to perceive these four godforms as opposed, one to another, or to employ the paradigm and parlance of game theory, as engaged in a zero-sum game.

In the social sciences, the field of game theory has emerged to explain various social and economic interactions among several actors. Game theory proposes an individual faced with choices can be regarded as an essentially rational player of some game with defined rules, an actor who makes decisions and selects strategies in order to maximize their own self-interest. There exist many different kinds of games, with various actors and rules. One particularly crucial distinction is that between zero-sum and non-zero-sum games. In zero-sum games, one player can only advance when another loses ground by the same amount. If there are only so many bricks in existence, and all available bricks exist as part of two houses, then my house can only expand when yours contracts. (I would very much enjoy a new game room. You weren’t using that foyer, were you?) In non-zero-sum games, by contrast, one player’s advancement does not have to come from another player’s loss, and often there exist cooperative strategies by which all players may advance together. (Let’s work together to build shelter which we can share!)

By the default paradigm, one element meets and potentially neutralizes its opposite upon the zero-sum field of battle. Fire does battle with Water, and vice versa. Earth does battle with Air, and vice versa. According to this paradigm, an individual Watchtower seeks power and influence over the unfolding cosmos, and this power can only come when the influence exercised by the opposing Watchtower wanes. The question arises: Does this conflict-oriented paradigm constitute a legitimate way of viewing the world, and particularly the realms of magical phenomena? Does one elemental force, viewed as rational player attempting to maximize its power and expression, acquire and exert this power only at the expense of another elemental force?

I believe not. To realize the elements are not engaged in zero-sum competition, we need only to consider the visible world. The universe we experience is scarcely possible if we assume all the force of the four elements ultimately sums to zero. In any composite substance, one element would cancel out the opposing element, until only one was left. And yet in our diverse world we almost constantly find objects with the occult properties of opposing elements. Blood bears all the fluidity of water — and, in fact, blood is mostly water — yet blood carries the heat and sustenance so closely associated with Fire that we can hardly consider one without the other. Mountains extend their roots deep into the element of Earth, yet climbing these very mountains enables us to reach skywards and into elemental Air.

Returning to the field of magical correspondences, and especially those found in folk magic, we observe composite elements which defy any attempt to characterize the world as zero-sum. Citrine is one species of quartz, an expression of Earth, and yet citrine bears all the magical resonances of elemental Air. Quite recently I lit incense scented with pink carnation, an object brought to life by Fire, yet with energetic vibrations much more akin to Water. Indeed, “opposing” elements don’t so much neutralize one another, as they engage in complex interactions — often graceful dances, occasionally violent clashes.

As above, so below — So speaks the ancient and timeless wisdom penned by Hermes Trismegistus. Just as there are four elements which, together with ineffable quintessence, compose the macrocosm of our visible world, there are four elements which compose the microcosm of the human experience, and each macrocosmic element finds its echo within the microcosm. Thus we correlate the Mind with elemental Air, the Soul with elemental Fire, the Heart with elemental Water, and the Flesh with elemental Earth. Within these pairings, we discover further evidence that straightforward oppositions — and the resulting conflicts they suggest — rest upon an ultimately untenable paradigm, for the apparent oppositions implicit within the microcosm flow along different lines. Within the human spirit, the intellectual Mind is opposed not to the Flesh, as the macrocosmic Air-Earth relationship might suggest, but to the emotional Heart, which properly corresponds with the macrocosmic element of Water. Likewise, the physical Flesh finds its opposite not in the Mind, but in the spiritual aspect of Soul, an aspect which metaphorically burns with the passionate energy of elemental Fire.

Does the microcosm of the human experience really rest upon lines of battle different from those of the macrocosm? Does elemental Water quench elemental Fire outside the human soul, only to find its counterpart of human emotion at odds with the microcosmic equivalent of Air? Do the four elements we know so well, both outside and in, obey one set of interactions above, and quite another below? Such a disharmonious arrangement seems at odds with the Hermetic saw, and I daresay with our experience of the world as Magicians. My solution, which I hope will be no great innovation for most of my readers, is simple: To assume a world of straightforward, binary oppositions, subsisting within the context of a zero-sum game, misses the beautiful and terrible complexity of our world.

The apparent oppositions between Fire and Water, Earth and Air, are nothing more than assumptions which we as humans make about the most primal components of our world, assumptions which ultimately fail to capture adequately the complex interactions of these elemental forces. Likewise, our own microcosmic experience of the apparent conflict between Flesh and Soul, Mind and Heart, are persistent and pernicious illusions which keep us from conceiving the human experience as this experience really is. To be sure, we conceptualize such oppositions quite naturally within the context of our shared culture, and not without reason. The mistake is in assuming that these elemental forces exist in perpetual conflict with one another, a zero-sum game wherein one element only gains at the expense of another. Rather, we must consider the alternative model of the non-zero-sum game, wherein all players can advance (or decline) together. If we consider the Watchtowers as elemental intelligences which participate as players in the universal game of reality, we can observe more clearly the ways by which our shared reality reflects this essential premise of non-zero-sum games.

Considering life in all its myriad complexities, we observe life forms composed of all four elements, whether we regard the macrocosm of classical elements or the microcosm of human experience. These forms of life, upon the material plane and elsewhere, assume ever more sophisticated ways of interacting with their world and with one another, and while I’m hesitant to assign moral value to complexity in itself, certainly the development of sentience and the capacity for magical interactions with the world points towards life-affirming tendencies which evolve across time. This evolution occurs not within the context of a zero-sum game with clear winners and losers, but through non-zero-sum interactions wherein — through the complex dance composed of cooperation and dynamic tension — the Watchtowers intertwine to create the sophisticated and magnificent world we perceive everyday. Within this world, Air can imbue with power objects made from Earth, and the vibrations of Water can be placed in motion by the power of Fire.

Perhaps even more critically for the practicing Magician, across the human experience we all conceptualize certain oppositions which dissolve upon genuine introspection. The philosophical paradigm into which our civilization defaults recognizes a vast conceptual divide between human reason and human emotion. Through the Enlightenment, emotion was often shunned as something passive, something by which the outside world impinged upon the soul, all too often to the individual’s detriment. Today, alternative fields of study which brush up against the New Age movement often suffer from the opposite extreme, denigrating reason in favor of commitment to one’s emotions. The conflict between these two aspects of the psyche arises at least in part based upon our English language, which places Mind and Heart in opposition to one another. (By contrast, the German language contains the one expression, “geist” — etymologically related with the English “ghost” — which encompasses both Mind and Heart as one singular entity.) Understanding these apparent oppositions cannot lock the elements into zero-sum conflict, we can instead focus our attention upon those ways via which Mind and Heart can work in concert, in order to effect our True Will.

Mayhaps the most cogent argument for the conception of elemental interactions as an essentially non-zero-sum game may be found within the Magician’s Circle. Within this astral construct, we call all four elements, both macrocosmically and microcosmically. (And indeed, both macrocosm and microcosm meet within the context of the Circle!) As we call each of the Watchtowers, the power flowing into our Circle grows ever stronger, precisely the opposite of what we would expect if the apparent oppositions neutralized one another and summed to zero. Rather, we acknowledge all four elements both without and within, and through this acknowledgment we become part of the cosmic dance, the dance of ever increasing complexity which arises from non-zero-sum encounters among the primal forces of creation!

Over the coming months, I challenge you to consider the ways in which the elements combine and interlace to compose the beautiful and terrible cosmos which we inhabit. I’ve offered my intellectual arguments against that view of the universe which reduces to conflict, and ultimately to annihilation into a zero-sum state. I simply don’t believe we inhabit so bleak a cosmos. My faith in the cooperative nature of the elements, however, stems from something more experiential, moments of precious insight acquired through magical practice and developed with heartfelt introspection. I challenge you to practice, to reflect both with Mind and with Heart, and to arrive at those cosmic truths which best speak towards your experience of the world.

Blessed Be!

©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

In my most recent article for Reality Sandwich, “Magic: It’s More Than Just Finding Parking Spaces,” I discussed the stigmas or problem issues that surround the use of the word “magic” and the subculture of the occult, and I pointed out that until these stigmas are dealt with decisively, magic will never be rehabilitated. One commenter pointed out that it might be easier to say, “willful intentionality,” instead of saying, “magic,” because of all the baggage associated with the word. This leads me to ask, “Is magic another four letter word?”

Within the occult subculture, it could be argued that magic isn’t a four letter word, but I’m reminded of a recent incident where I overheard a description of a social networking meetup for local occultists. “We get together and hang out. We’ll talk about our jobs, or something fun we want to do, or plan when we’re going to go out and dance. We don’t about magic or any of the magical work we’re doing.” The passion that this was exclaimed with and the emphasis placed on not discussing magic at the meet up demonstrated an odd kind of attitude about magic, even from people who practiced it. It was as if people who came to such an event shouldn’t discuss magic, because it has no place in everyday life. Magic had become a four letter word.

While there is a lot of baggage associated with magic, another question I asked in the aforementioned article was about what the benefits of magic are, and in light of that question, I am going to use this article to address what those benefits are and why we shouldn’t treat “magic” as a four letter word.

One of the benefits of magic is that it provides access to alternate ways of knowing, ways of experiencing reality that fall outside the conventional approaches, such as religion, materialism, or science. Alternate ways of knowing incorporate techniques such as chemognosis, meditation, sex magic, ritual magic, energy work, but can also draw on disciplines outside of magic. The recent focus on semiotics and memetics is an example of practices from non-occult disciplines that have influenced magical practice.

Another benefit of magic is that it provides access to a variety of resources that fall outside the traditional spectrum of reality which we’re conditioned to believe in. These resources can include gods, angels, and demons, but also include cultivating our natural gifts, which may fall into disuse if not cultivated. A non-linear awareness of space/time, or the conscious manipulation of the physiology of the body is an example of accessing resources that fall outside the traditional spectrum of reality, but another example can be the intentional use of writing or collages to shape reality in a particular manner. By conventional standards, it would be argued that writing can’t directly shape reality. However, there are plenty of cases where writing has shaped a person’s life or events. William S. Burroughs and Ernest Hemingway are two examples; one knowingly did it and the other didn’t, with tragic consequences for him.

Magic also provides a person the opportunity to find answers to the spiritual questions s/he asks. Praying to a god is one way to find the answer, but the magician can also create the answer by his or her own efforts as well. And magic isn’t applied only to spiritual questions, but also to the practical concerns that can arise in living life. Utilizing magic to help you through a financial rough time or for healing a disease would be an example of a practical concern.

One could argue that everything I’ve mentioned above could be filed under “willful intentionality,” but would most people even understand that or know what “willful intentionality” meant? Certainly magic has its baggage and is sometimes a four letter word, but there are many associations with it that are positive. Many people have benefited from practicing magic and incorporating it into their lives. And many people, including yours truly, are proud to talk about magic with others, as well as practice it daily, instead of attempting to treat it as something you only deal with during special events or holidays.

Willful intentionality doesn’t have the negative associations, but it doesn’t have the positive associations, either. Another comment made to the aforementioned article was that if we were going to rehabilitate magic, it’s not a question of rehabilitating the term; it’s about rehabilitating how that term is used. I think this is an accurate point to make, and yet also a semantic one, because really what it points to is the need to rehabilitate the varied definitions of magic. Certainly, examining the definitions is important. It provides us an idea of how people understand the term as well as their own agenda for defining it in a particular way. But the application and processes also need to be considered carefully. When we do that, we aren’t just looking at magic from an abstract perspective, but also considering it from an experiential understanding of it.

Magic isn’t a four letter word. But how it’s been used and how it is understood has not always portrayed it in the best light. There is a lot of cultural and religious baggage associated with the word and even though it is marginally more acceptable now than it used to be, magic may not ever be free of that baggage. This may not matter to the occult subculture at all, but it does matter if we ever choose to take the concepts and practices of magic and present them to a more mainstream audience. At that point, “willful intentionality” may be the best choice of words to explain how those concepts work (or not, as I don’t think magic is just about an application of will and intent), but in the process we will have to lay out many of the underlying assumptions and beliefs inherent within the word “magic.” It makes for a semantic challenge, but also necessarily may force us to consider anew just what the benefits of magic are, as we share them with a broader audience than just the occult subculture.

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

©2008 by Taylor Ellwood
Edited by Sheta Kaey

The Otherkin community is a fascinating collection of individuals, all of whom feel as if they are differently souled. Although in human form, Otherkin believe that the essence of who and what they are originated elsewhere and can most often be associated with mythical beings, such as elves or faeries, dragons or gryphons. I was first introduced to the Otherkin community on the cusp of the new millennium, and, although I was skeptical at first, I came to accept that there is something to Otherkin claims. As someone who, because of my regularly need for the life-energy of others, has adopted the word “vampire” in reference to myself, I could hardly throw stones at Otherkin elves who explained that they did not believe that they were pointy-eared rangers straight out of Tolkien or D&D, but that the mythic archetype we have come to recognize as an elf best described what they felt their soul originate as. If we accept that the soul exists and, furthermore, accept that it is immortal, then we have to acknowledge that it has probably gone through a multiplicity of genders, races, and forms just on the basis that nothing — not even species or planets — lasts forever, at least not in the physical realm.

I had my widest exposure to the Otherkin community at a small Canadian convention called Kinvention North. From 2001 onward, I often appeared as a speaker there, and my presentations were popular with many of the attendees. When I was asked to do the closing ritual at Kinvention North 2004, I put a great deal of thought into the undertaking. As most people know, I have my own Kheprian system, and while I have ties to the ‘kin, I am foremost involved with the vampire subculture. Kheprian rituals have their own unique energy, and most vampire rituals are don’t really fit when working with the Otherkin. What I needed to do was design a ritual that was completely Otherkin in energy — and this would mean running ritual in a fashion that isn’t exactly normal for me. I’ve run both Wiccan and Pagan rituals very successfully, and so I knew this wasn’t beyond me as a ritualist. In general, writing a ritual in any tradition just requires the ritualist to tap into the unique energy that is the heart of that tradition. Each system has its own symbols, its own language, and its own archetypes. So to successfully design and run the KinNorth ritual, I had to essentially travel to the source of these in the mythic imagination and allow what I found there to flow through me.

To tap into this essence, I started with the symbol of the Otherkin: the Seven-Pointed Star, also known as the Elven Star or the Faery Star. As I understand it, this symbol is recognized by the majority of the Otherkin community, and it serves as an expression of Otherkin diversity. Because Otherkin by nature draw from a wide variety of races, traditions, and points of origin, the Star is one of the few common elements shared by all the Otherkin. As the archetypal common ground, the Star provided a point of entry into the vibration or “flow” of the ‘kin.

Prior to designing the ritual, I did some meditation with the Seven-Pointed Star. These were basically pathworkings where I approached the symbol of the Star as an archetype, and allowed it to speak to me. It soon became clear that there were several voices within the Star — one for each of its points. These were essentially Avatars of elements and races unique to the ‘kin.

To design this ritual, I let the Star Avatars speak to me. All Seven appeared in succession, revealing their forms and sigils for invoking. They each told me their Names and the symbols of office they wished to be represented by. They told me what elements, colors, and concepts they are associated with (although several were associated with common elements, they were never as simple as one element and one concept — the avatars are multifaceted beings, each as diverse as the ‘kin they embody).

Some came forward and spoke right away. These had bold voices that were hard to mistake. A few were less direct with me, even hesitant in their contact. The last one to come forward was the hardest to understand, for s/he was most unlike my own nature and anything I had a context for. But it was contact with this one (called Illana) that convinced me beyond a doubt that I was dealing with essences both unique and outside of me, as s/he was totally alien to anything I previously had known.

The Avatars each have many shapes and many Names, and during our conversations, they frequently shifted from one face to another while still retaining their overall “feel.” I’ve come to associate such flux with the ‘kin, so it really didn’t come as a surprise when it was a fundamental part of the avatars. The complexity and diversity of the Avatars was also in keeping with what I understand such avatars to be — which is essentially an embodiment of a higher emanation, a fragment of divinity that is more complete and closer to the Source than you or me.

As I had originally planned to only invoke the Avatars like Watchtowers at the Quarters, I asked the directions they were associated with — and in a few cases, the answer came as a surprise. The traditional Pagan directions are abandoned in favor of what the Avatars themselves declared. The least traditional of any of them, of course, was Illana, who seems to embody the most “other” element of all of them.

The Avatars had their own idea of how the ritual should proceed, and they didn’t hesitate in telling me so. As I had already agreed to serve as a channel in this and not impose my own expectations or traditions upon it, I let them speak freely. The resulting rite gives a great deal of time to the Avatars of the Star, and I have been assured that they will fill in the blanks when the time comes. During our interactions, they had made a number of other statements which, while mysterious at first, later proved to be true — so I’ve definitely learned to trust them.

The whole experience has been fascinating for me, as I don’t usually go talking to so-called “higher powers.” For my own rituals, I draw everything from my Self, and Kheprian rituals also draw only upon the Selves of those involved. But this is not a Kheprian rite I am running, and the ‘kin do not function by Kheprian rules. My role in this is purely as an intermediary and mouthpiece. I’m fairly certain that the things I tapped into were already there, and I’ve done my best to be a clear channel for them, allowing the information to come through with as little distortion as possible.

What I see before me is a very powerful rite — one that I think will be inspiring for those who participate in it. As we are dealing with Avatars and giving each of them a chance to speak, the real outcome and message of the ritual is an unknown and can only be experienced. I’ve built the framework, but the Avatars themselves will tell us what needs to be known. They’ve been very interesting to work with, and I look forward to future interactions with their energy.

Finally, because I know there will be a widespread interest in it, I am making this ritual available to the general community. Others who wish to experiment with contacting these Avatars are encouraged to do so. I am very curious about how they might manifest to other people and how harnessing their energy might serve to help and empower the community of Otherkin.

What I would especially like to see are rituals that integrate the Avatars in smaller group work. While a ritual that involves 70+ people is impressive just by dint of the numbers, there is often little chance for group participation all around. It’s very difficult to make time for everyone present in such a large ritual to directly participate in the action. Smaller rituals with ten to fifteen people have always seemed more personal and more ideal to me because everyone can play some role in the preparation and ritual action. I would be very interested to see the difference between this invocation run in a large group and how things play out in a smaller, more directly involved group.

Open Letter to the Avatar Hosts

2004-03-27

This is the letter that went out prior to the ritual to the first and second choices for the Avatar hosts:

“I’ll need you to meet with me about an hour before the ritual is actually scheduled to start. Come prepared to this and already wearing most of what you’re going to wear as the Avatar. We can touch up the costumes at this time, make any last minute changes, etc.

“Each Avatar has a sigil. I’ll apply this to your forehead with body paint prior to the ritual. This will be a minor invoking — kind of priming you to the energy but not fully calling the Avatar down. I’ll have veils to drape over each of you and, once you’re ready, you’ll be arranged around where the circle will be formed. Stand still, like a statue, and wait until you hear your Avatar called at this point. I want to build the mystery a bit, and I’ll have the rest of the people come in and form a circle around you, building energy in the center of the room.

“I’ll talk a little bit, doing the intro to the ritual, then I’ll call the “quarters.” When I call the Avatar you represent, pull off the veil, leave it where it falls, and step forward to the center of the circle. There will be a small table set up there with the Avatars’ symbols of office on it. Pick up the one that’s appropriate to you, and then stand in the center facing out toward the larger circle. All seven of you will stand in a tight knot at the center of the ritual space, almost shoulder-to-shoulder, looking out at everyone else.

“I’ll talk a little more, and then I’ll do the full invoking. This will involve me Calling the Avatar with a larger description and scribing the sigil in energy before you. The energy of the Avatar will wash over you completely at this point, and it will be like draping a robe of office over who you already are. You will hear/feel what the Avatar wants to say, but you will also have influence of how this is ultimately expressed. You will not lose your sense of Self totally unless you allow it; if you wish to surrender completely to the presence of the Avatar, that will be a matter of personal choice.

“The core of the ritual is that each Avatar is asked for his/her advice on a matter of importance to the ‘kin community. I’ll go right round through all of them, then dismiss them. When the Avatars are dismissed, step back out of the inner circle and move to a point close to the outer circle again, as the energy of the Avatar slips off of you. If you feel compelled to do or say anything before the Avatar fully departs, go with it — I have a feeling they have a couple of surprises for us.

“Attached is the full ritual in MSWord format.

“If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email me. I’ll be traveling a bit with the band the next few days but will make every effort to check my email in case there are any inquiries.”

Details of the Invocation

2004-03-27

This is a letter which explained my vision for the Avatar Invocation. It covers what I was aiming to accomplish with the Avatars, how I approached the KinNorth ritual, and what I expected from those individuals who would be hosting the Avatars.

“I am going to be a little more elaborate and organized with ritual this year than previously. The time we are in I believe calls for this. To this end, I would like to request your help with the ritual.

“The core of this ritual will be an invoking. I shall call upon avatars tied to each aspect of the Seven-Pointed Star. Individuals from the gathering will be chosen to embody these. As the rite progresses, I will invoke the Avatar fully into these people — much like Drawing Down the Moon, only the beings we are Calling are avatars of ‘kin archetypes rather than traditional goddesses and gods.

“The people involved in the invocation have to be comfortable with the idea of channeling something greater than themselves. This will not be like possession, where a deity or spirit takes complete control of your body and you have no consciousness during the events. This will be much more gentle.

“The energy of the Avatar will wash over you, and it will be like draping a robe of office over who you already are. You will hear/feel what the Avatar wants to say, but you will also have influence of how this is ultimately expressed. This is not intended to be possession. You will not loose your sense of Self totally unless you allow it; if you wish to surrender completely to the presence of the Avatar, that will be a matter of personal choice.

“In all cases, I’ve tagged people for the roles because the individuals already embody the archetype that Avatar represents to one extent or another, and in a way I would merely be invoking a greater aspect of their Selves. The resonant energy already present in these individuals will help facilitate the invocation.

“Each Avatar has a sigil, which will be scribed upon each person’s forehead, and each Avatar also has a symbol of office, which the person embodying that Avatar will take up once the Avatar is Called.

“Key things for this ritual to succeed: I need the people who will embody the Avatars to really get into their roles. For the ritual, I would want them to dress the part, adopting attire more elaborate than usual to help really build the ritual atmosphere. This rite is a little more theatrical than what I ordinarily run, and there is a conscious heightening of the mystique of the work that should help create an atmosphere appropriate for drawing the Avatars down. I want the ritual to really speak to people, and I want to allow the Avatars the freedom to speak in whatever manner they deem most appropriate for the time, the people, and the place of the rite.

“If there is time, we might experiment with an invocation of the Avatars for the “Come as you really are” party to see how it feels/works.”

Sigils and Descriptions of the Avatars

2004-03-27

The following is a list of the seven Avatars that manifested to me during pathworking on the Elven Star. Fenecai was the first to make contact, and true to his nature, he came on like a ton of bricks and was amazingly hard to ignore. Once I was certain I’d contacted something that was truly outside of me, I did further pathworkings to determine what directions the Avatars were connected with, their respective colors, metals, and other associations, and the qualities that defined them. All these are listed here, along with the sigils for each Avatar.

Fenecai (FEHN-nuh-kye)

• Title: Lord of Fire
• Gender: Dark/destructive masculine
• Element: Fire
• Direction: West
• Color(s): Red, orange, black
• Symbol: Rod of Kingship or pole-arm
• Metal: Brass
• Planet: Mars
• Races: The fierce dragons of the heights, phoenixes, stonewings, and sons of the forge.
• Essence: Destruction and renewal; cataclysmic change.
• Appearance: Big, broad-shouldered Draconian warrior with outspread wings. Wears armor and carries a halberd-type weapon. Shifts occasionally to a phoenix of flame. Sometimes in his draconian form, his wings and talons trail fire. Moves ponderously but then lashes out in sudden, powerful strikes. An alternate form is the Forge Lord, a fierce dwarven warrior with flame-red hair and beard.

Elerian (ay-LAY-ree-ahn)

• Title: Lord of the Shining Host
• Gender: Feminine androgyne
• Element: Light
• Direction: Above
• Color(s): White, yellow, silver
• Symbol: Musical instrument (lyre or flute)
• Metal: Platinum or gold
• Planet: Sun
• Races: Elves and all fey
• Essence: (Positive) magick, beauty, creativity and song
• Description: Lithe and fine-boned elf with pale skin and long, reddish-blond hair. Wears a long, flowing robe that is an almost luminous white shot through with gold and silver thread. Wears a collar or torque of gold. Carries a lyre, lute, or flute. Dreamy, flowing movements — exceptionally graceful.

Hss’tah Feliss (huss-TAH feh-LEESS)

• Title: Huntress-Priestess
• Gender: Dark/destructive feminine
• Element: Darkness
• Direction: Belo_
• Color(s): Gray, black, indigo
• Symbol: Small curved blade
• Metal: Silver
• Planet: Moon
• Races: Felines, and all who are children of darkness and shadow
• Essence: (Dark) magick, night, shadows, mystery — that which is hidden or obscured from view.
• Description: A petite, wiry felinoid whose short, soft fur is the color of deep shadow rippled with true black. Wears bracers of soft leather inscribed with designs. Minimal clothing, also of leather &ndash deep brown or black. Carries at least one small, curve-bladed knife. Sometimes appears covered head to foot in a soft black cloak. Moves gracefully, but in an almost threatening way — like she is constantly stalking something and just about ready to pounce. Has a dark sexual allure and this is visible in the way she moves as well.

Gwidorian (gweh-DOHR-ree-ahn)

• Title: Lord of the Wilding
• Gender: Positive/generative masculine
• Element: Earth
• Direction: South
• Color(s): Brown, green, earth tones
• Symbol: Living Staff (wooden staff entwined with ivy)
• Metal: Iron
• Planet: Earth
• Races: Therians, animal-kin, hybrids: centaurs, satyrs, etc.; all children of the woodlands, wilds, and earth.
• Essence: Vitality, sex, nature, all primal things
• Description: Variously a centaur, a stag-man, and a man-wolf. Ithyphallic (i.e., he’s hung and he’s happy). Has a distinct Dionysian aspect, and I keep seeing him with a wreath of grapevines (complete with dangling bunches of grapes) in his hair. If he’s wearing clothing, he wears a long, flowing cloak the reddish-brown color of both dried blood and rich earth. Beneath that, he wears a tunic of deep green (usually with his privates exposed).

Sephiriel (she-FEER-ree-el)

• Title: Storm-Singer
• Gender: Masculine androgyne
• Element: Wind (air)
• Direction: North
• Color(s): Light blue, gray, silver
• Symbol: Writing quill or sword
• Metal: Quicksilver
• Planet: Jupiter (he says Mercury is not a planet)
• Races: Celestials, angels, nephilim, children of air and winged ones.
• Essence: Thought, Will, judgment, the Word.
• Description: Tall, thin, and sharp-faced with shoulder-length pale (gray?) hair. Wears either a loose-fitting tunic of grayish-white material or the tunic with a breastplate of some non-lustrous gray metal that is neither silver nor steel. Also wears bracers, greaves, and a thin circlet of the same strange metal. A little haughty and detached. Economical but swift movements.

Neride Eyooli (neh-REED ee-YOOL-ee)

• Title: Lady of Waters
• Gender: Positive/generative feminine
• Element: Water
• Direction: East
• Color(s): Blue, green, purple
• Symbol: Scrying bowl or sphere
• Metal: Copper
• Planet: Venus
• Races: The wise dragons of the depths, nagas, undines, naiads, asrai, and all children of the tides.
• Essence: Healing, emotion, vision, flow
• Description: Long flowing hair with beads and shells tied to the strands. Kohled eyes. Wears nets or veils of many colors. Lots of jewelry. Moves fluidly, sensuously. She is also a dancer.

Illana (ehl-LAHN-nah)

• Title: We of the Dreaming
• Gender: Plural
• Element: Dream/magick/glamour
• Direction: Within
• Color(s): All and none
• Symbol: Sphere of crystal or a mirror
• Metal: Glass/crystal
• Planet: The multiplicity of worlds
• Races: All, the many-souled
• Essence: Glamoury, magick, Awakening
• Description: Veiled in iridescent, translucent colorless material that looks like it’s been spun from rainbows and spider webs. Almost completely covered head to toe. All you can clearly see are her hands. Everything else keeps shifting — and even this form is a compromise, for otherwise they keep cycling through a multiplicity of forms and faces almost too rapidly to see. The most uncanny and “other” of all the Avatars.

Invocation of the Seven-Pointed Star

2004-03-27

Here is the actual ritual as it was run at Kinvention North on March 14, 2004. The actual words of the Avatars were not recorded and were experienced directly by those present for the ritual.

Preparation:

An altar is set up in the middle of the ritual space. The symbols of office for each Avatar are arranged upon this: a halberd or war-axe for Fenecai; a flute for Elerian; a staff for Gwidorian; a quill and parchment for Sephiriel (or alternately a sword); a scrying sphere for Neride; a curved dagger for Hss’tah; a mirror or clear sphere for Illana.

The ritual space is cleansed, and those who will work directly with the Avatars prepare themselves to be receptive to the energy, meditating on their particular Avatar. Once the people who will embody the Avatars are ready, the sigils are scribed on their foreheads. As the sigils are scribed, the throat and solar plexus chakras are opened on each host to facilitate connection with the Avatars. The hosts range themselves around the inside of the circle and are covered with veils. Once they are ready, the rest of the participants enter and form a circle around the inner circle of the Avatars.

The Gathering:

First, I want you all to join hands and gather energy. Each of you draw from the essence of what you are, where you come from, all of the elements and forces that feed your soul.

Now, as a group, cycle, refine, and combine these. Weave these varying energies into something that is greater than the sum of its parts. As you refine it, focus it here, in the center of our circle.

What we are building now is a Between-space, a place of crossing over. You can envision it as a temple, or simply a glowing, sacred sphere. It is in this Space that I will invoke the Seven-Pointed Star.

As we work with the Star of the Otherkin, I shall serve as mediator.

I am Seth, Setem-Ansi, Sem-Asa. These are my Names. I am a Walker-Between, and in this rite, I shall be both Priest and Shaman, serving as the intermediary between you and the Avatars that we Call.

In this space we will have communion with beings greater than ourselves. I will not call them gods, for I do not recognize gods as most people understand them. We are all emanations of Divinity, and therefore all beings are gods in their own right.

And yet there is a hierarchy of emanation, and some beings are closer to the Source than others. Avatars such as these I shall call among us today. Now:

The Calls:

To the West, I Call thee, Fenecai, Lord of Fire: dragon and phoenix, who burns and renews.

To the East, I Call thee, Neride Eyooli, Lady of Waters: healer and seer who flows with the tides.

To the North, I Call thee: Sephiriel Storm-Singer: quick-witted angel whose sword is the Word.

To the South, I Call thee: Gwidorian of the Wilding: Earthshaker, therian and animal lord.

Above, I Call thee: Elerian, of the Shining Host: guardian of magick, beauty, and song.

Below, I Call thee: Hss’tah Feliss: soft-footed huntress and priestess of night.

And Within, I Call thee: Illana of the Dreaming: shaper of worlds and Awakener of souls.

West and East,
North and South,
Above, Below, Within.
I Call you here before me:
Stand with us now
as our Guardians and our Guides.

The Time of Changes:

Now my friends: The world is changing and we stand at the crux of it. We have longed for an Awakening, and now it rises around us like a tide. But as the veils slip away, our true nature is revealed. There is a crossroads here, and we must soon make a choice.

We can stay in the shadows and hope to hide, or we can raise our voices and show the world our souls.

By revealing ourselves, we take a great risk, but understanding and acceptance also lie along that route.

We can choose the path of caution and remain hidden among humanity. But even in hiding, our safety is not guaranteed.

This is our quandary: caution or risk? And if we risk revelation, do we have the strength and wisdom to succeed?

Guardians of the Races; Watchtowers, Avatars all!
We call on your power and wisdom to guide us in this time of change.

Invocations:

As each Avatar is invoked, the leader of the ritual scribes the sigil upon the air, sending this resonant energy into the Avatar’s host.

Fenecai:
Lord of the Sweeping Flame; Mighty-Winged One:
Ye who stand on the right hand of Destruction,
Tearing apart worlds so creation begins.
We seek your guidance: What can you give us that will help us succeed?

(Fenecai imparts his message)

Neride Eyooli:
She of the Flowing Veils; Mutable One:
Lady whose deep wells and healing waters
Reveal Future, Truth, and Consequence.

We seek your guidance: What can you give us that will help us succeed?

(Neride imparts her message)

Sephiriel Storm-Singer:
Angel of Action; He of the Swift Wings:
Keen-witted Judge and Guardian,
Who sunders illusion, captivity, and deceit.
We seek your guidance: What can you give us that will help us succeed?

(Sephiriel imparts hes message)

Gwidorian:
Lord of the Wild Places; Primal One:
Ye who call us back to our beginnings,
Hearkening to instinct and the lusty flow of life.
We seek your guidance: What can you give us that will help us succeed?

(Gwidorian imparts his message)

Elerian:
The Beautiful; Fair Scion of Light:
Ye whose music delights and inspires,
Gifting the worlds with magick and joy.
We seek your guidance: What can you give us that will help us succeed?

(Elerian imparts hir message)

Hss’tah Feliss:
Walker of Shadows; Lady of the Silent Strike:
Keeper of all things hidden,
Whose mysteries may empower or destroy.
We seek your guidance: What can you give us that will help us succeed?

(Hss’tah imparts her message)

And Illana:
The Many-Souled; They Who Exist Within and Between:
Whose glamour is both madness and revelation,
Throwing wide the gates of consciousness and worlds.
We seek your guidance: What can you give us that will help us succeed?

(Illana imparts their message)

(A moment of silence, to pause and reflect)

The Avatars have spoken. Let us take their counsel and their gifts. Let us each carry these things within, so we may draw upon them when next in need of wisdom, strength, and guidance. Armed with these things, let us walk boldly forward toward the future we have conceived.

Dismissal:

Avatars! Watchtowers! Guardians of the Star!
We thank you for your guidance,
And for joining us in this space.
Depart now freely and in peace.

Fenecai and Neride:
Peace, and depart.

Sephiriel and Gwidorian:
Peace, and depart.

Elerian, Hss’tah Feliss
Peace, and depart.

All you who are Illana:
Peace, and depart.

(as the Avatars leave, they break the circle from various points. Those hosting the Avatars take some time alone to release the Avatars’ energy and recover themselves)

This ritual now is ended.
Peace, and depart.

FIN

(All depart)


Michelle Belanger is the author of The Psychic Energy Codex, The Psychic Vampire Codex, and Psychic Dreamwalking, among others. You can read her blog here and visit her website here.

©2008 Michelle Belanger
Edited by Sheta Kaey

This leg of the Witches’ Pyramid is probably the simplest on the surface, since it involves doing the process that you’ve already decided upon. The decision to do the spell has been made; the caster’s Will is honed and ready to force the change; but now you get your tools out and start the chants to cast the spell. Sounds simple, right?

But there is much more than that to this aspect of magic. Daring to do a spell means you have a self-confidence that says you have the divine right to impose your Will on the universe, that you have the right to actually make things happen simply because you want them to happen.

To my mind, that takes a special kind of arrogance. To say to the Universe and to whatever form of Deity you honor, “I know better than you do, and I am going to make this action happen.” That sounds pretty severe and arrogant in my opinion.

It is saying that your life is not good enough. It is saying that you know how your life should be, in opposition to how it actually is, and it is saying that no matter what, you will use any methods, fair or foul, to force the outcome you wish to see.

It is daring the Universe to do its worst to you.

It is acceptance of not only the outcome, but also all the additional problems and unintended consequences of this spell.

Daring to do something can be a problem if you are going against the powers-that-be. If a deity has decided that the person you are trying to help is supposed to be sick at the same time you are trying to make them well, and you heal them anyhow, despite all the warnings and problems of that healing, there may be divine retribution. To Dare means you are willing and able to accept that and deal with it.

No matter what anyone says, there are powers in the universe that could be upset that you are doing this spell. Perhaps, it is because there will be unknown “butterfly effect” problems in another segment of creation. Maybe it is because there will be a power drain from something else that is needed and it may simply be that the desired outcome is supposed to be one that is out of reach. It is possible the binding you are doing is in opposition to the protection this God has promised to His follower.

Daring to do this spell then sets you up to be in direct conflict with that power. It means that there is the possibility that They will be upset with you and make your life “interesting” for a while as retribution and punishment.

Now, assuming that your Will and your Knowledge is up to snuff in this whole process, the Dare stage is when you actually start doing the spell. At this point, the recriminations and self-examination should be done, the decision made and now you actually get out your tools and start the spell. Just that act should throw you into an altered state of consciousness. This is the physical stage.

If we relate these legs of the pyramid to different sections of our being, then To Know is the mental preparation part; To Will is the spiritual part; and To Dare is the physical part of this entire process.

Remember what I was saying before about humanity being wish generators? Well, wishing for something is only part of the whole process. Wishing will only get you so far magickally; it’s the actual process of doing the spell that will achieve results.

But then there is still one part that needs to be addressed, and thankfully it is showing up in more and more teaching texts. Part of the To Dare process has to be actually doing the mundane things that will help the spell along.

In other words, if doing a spell for a job, Knowing what job you want is good; Willing that job into your life is another good part; Daring to actually do the spell is good; but having the courage to go out and face rejection over and over is the most important part.

Daring must also encompass the mundane. It does take effort and courage to follow through on the mundane side of things, if only because we might fail.

In a post he made in his LiveJournal, Taylor Ellwood made the very interesting point that most people are conditioned to avoid failure at all costs. As part of that, we are also not trained to accept success, and current societal standards are doing no favor by encouraging a similar mindset of “it’s okay to fail” in the next generation.

In any spell, simply beginning the process of the spell will open the door for failure. Failure will become an option. So one of the goals in any spellcasting process must be accepting that the spell might fail, and striving to prevent that failure. Don’t go into the spell with the thought that it will fail, but accept that the ‘nature of the beast’ is going to include the failure of the spell, and then strive to overcome it.

Of course, the standard excuse is to blame other factors for that failure. “The Stars weren’t right,” or “Goddess must have other plans for me,” or “It will happen eventually,” are all excuses that come very rapidly on the lips of those who try spells and fail.

But as one Doctor Who episode¹ pointed out, what if we dream the impossible? What if, despite all things to the contrary, we actually make it and make our dreams come true?

No one is trained to consider that, but we are trained to fail. So Daring to be courageous, to actually do what we say we want – that is real magick. To think that it is possible to achieve what we want, to have what we dream about – that’s wonder.

This attitude is prevalent in most of modern Western Society. The very first word that most children learn to understand is “no.” From then on it is “don’t,” “can’t,” “Ain’t gonna happen,” and more negative assertions. Very few opportunities in our life teach us how to succeed and what to do when one achieves a goal.

This is one reason that there are so many books and seminars that try to show people how to succeed. But I have rarely seen anything that shows you what to do when you do succeed.

Our culture is built on the supposition of failure, and thus to actually attempt something that is highly unlikely to work is an incredible step of confidence. Actually taking the step to face that possible rejection for the bare slim chance that we could have a better life is truly Daring.

This is the core of To Dare. It’s taking that leap of faith, that step that may pay off and may not, even after been told all your life that you probably aren’t going to make anything of yourself. You must be ready to take that step despite the array of problems in your way, from the mundane to the deities themselves. You must take that step, knowing that it may not pan out, but trusting yourself, your knowledge and your training to see it through anyhow.

Then you must have the confidence to follow through with the mundane work as well, to see the process through.

Then, to add another layer, Daring to continue, even if the original spell didn’t work – doing it again, despite disappointment in the past. Making sure that you do not, do not, do not quit, even when logic says “give up,” even when reason says “enough already,” and even when the universe orders you to cease, stubbornly going on is the essence of, the heart and soul of, To Dare.

Footnotes

1. Transcript of the relevant episode is found at here. The exact quote is this, when speaking of the End of the Human Race: “You lot. You spend all your time thinking about dying. Like you’re going to get killed by eggs or beef or global warming or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible. Maybe you survive. This is the year 5.5/apple/26. Five billion years in your future.” —The Ninth Doctor, “The End of the World”

©2007 Daven
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Aleister Crowley said that the True Will is one of the crucial things a magician should know, since the True Will is the basis of the being.

He goes on to talk at length about how True Will is the culmination of the basic core of the person. It is the most selfish part and is most concerned with the success and survival of the person — the part that is most likely to reflect what the person truly wants and needs.

It’s important to realize that just Knowing how to accomplish a goal or that Knowing yourself is not enough. You must also actively make the decision to do what you want, or all the training, all the experience is useless.

This is the essence of “To Will.” This is the actual decision point in the spell-casting process; it is when the magical process, the spell, actually begins. The training and study are the lead-in, the preparation to do the spell. Will is the stage where the decision that the spell is needed is made. It is when all the options are considered and the spell becomes one part of the overall process to cause the desired change to occur.

Many experienced magicians say that this point is when the spell is actually starting to be cast. This decision begins the consciousness shift to the altered states that are key to manipulating magic and successful ritual.

This act of deciding to cast the spell takes the process to the level of a goal instead of allowing it to remain as a simple desire like wanting to get a cola for lunch. It becomes a true desire, such as finding a job that will allow the caster to support their family better, one that motivates the caster to attain their goals no matter the cost or the obstacles placed in the way.

“To Will” also implies that the first leg of this pyramid has been attained. Knowing implies that you know what you really want, to the bottom of your soul. That is where your “True Will,” as Crowley put it, resides. Understanding your own Will, your own mind and desires, is paramount. How can you do a spell to bring success if you believe in the bottom of your soul that success of the spell means you will become something you despise? The ends are counter productive to your True Will.

Therefore, knowing your True Will is another critical part of this whole process.

The True Will is one part of every magician that should always be examined. Willing something into existence, as the Magician of the Tarot deck does, is a hard skill to master; you better be sure that this is what you want. There are no take-backs, no do-overs when you create something out of nothing.

Remember the advice, “be careful what you wish for, you might just get it”? That’s a heck of a double-edged sword.

Human beings are essentially wish generators with no off switch. Think of how many times you say, “I wish” in a typical day, without even meaning to. Once you start paying attention to that statement, you find that you say it a high number of times. You think it more than you actually say that phrase. And each of those thoughts and statements go out into the aether and have an effect there, even if we don’t see it.

Exactly like dropping a pebble into a pool of water, those ripples spread and start affecting other things and people. Eventually it does get reflected back, warped and diminished, but those reflections are still the original wish that was Willed into being.

So while a trained metaphysician and magician can create a situation that didn’t exist by will alone, they should always be cognizant of what can happen if they don’t watch what they think.

This discipline of the mind, of basic thought processes, should be one of the first goals for any training program of those who are psychically aware. Unfortunately, many of those who begin studying those who wish to begin immediately using power, to start casting spells without first understanding the discipline that is part and parcel of this path.

This series of articles is starting to show that there is a method to the Pyramid’s quick mnemonic, a level of depth that many don’t see. We can already see how “To Know” and “To Will” are fitting together and interlacing. It is becoming rapidly apparent that one cannot have just “To Know” without also having “To Will” and the other two legs of the Pyramid.

All this discussion on the Will may make you ask, “where do I train my Will into a razor-honed weapon?” I can’t help you with that because most of training the Will is about practice.

First you have to decide on a goal, preferably a goal that is difficult and which others say can’t be done. Then start on the journey to attain that goal. Along the way you must not despair and you must keep trying, believing even when it’s hard. Perseverance here is the key, although outsiders may see you and call you stubborn.

Keep doing that, over and over, keep out-stubborning the nay-sayers and keep attaining your goals, even if the effort may not be worth it in the end. That is a good primer for a strong Will. When problems appear, decide immediately that you will overcome them instead of denying the problem or capitulating to the problem. Your first reaction to a problem should be, “Okay, how do I overcome this?” instead of, “No, this can’t be happening.”

Choose goals that are attainable and reasonable. Don’t pick ones that are easily attainable, for that defeats the purpose of training. Pick ones that are difficult to gain, and then keep going at it until you gain that goal.

For example, one of the proudest moments I have had in my life was in martial arts when I severely hurt my hip in the dojo. I kept going anyhow with the night’s exercises for kicks, especially side kicks, which work the hips strenuously. I kept going even though I was in a lot of pain; I would not quit. I saw a lot of admiration in the eyes of my teachers that night.

There are all kinds of opportunities that present themselves. Just watch out for them, and understand that when you are training your mind you can’t give in even once, for that tells the subconscious that it’s okay to give in occasionally. It is the subconscious that really needs to know that you have a strong Will. If you choose to give up occasionally, this action destroys all the headway you have made during your training.

When you decide to out-Will a situation that could defeat you, you must carry through to the end, no matter where that decision leads.

Humanity is the only species I know of that can create simply with their thoughts. It is a huge gift and an awesome responsibility. This ability must be tempered with experience and wisdom. Knowing when to use Will is as important as knowing how or why.

The Will then becomes the paintbrush of Creation, and like all tools, it should be kept in good working order and put away safely, so it is not used inadvertently or carelessly.

©2007 Eric “Daven” Landrum
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Eric “Daven” Landrum is a Seax Wiccan and the author of Daven’s Journal.

Ever heard of the stereotypical “poor Pagan”? The one who barely lives paycheck to paycheck, drives a hunk o’ junk around because s/he has no credit, and never seems to get ahead? This stereotype, when it comes to money, is justified by the idea that being poor is virtuous. The rationalization is that it’s okay if you’re in debt, and/or don’t have much money — you’re keeping it real by not being too materialistic or capitalistic. But this virtue of being poor isn’t really a virtue at all. For many (but not all), it’s a rationalization for why a person is poor, so that s/he can feel better about his/her decision to stay poor. Pagans aren’t alone in this, but it seems that we are pretty good at providing reasons for accepting poverty over wealth. For those Pagans who are disabled or chronically ill, poverty may not be a choice, but instead an unfortunate reality that can’t be avoided. Even so I have a suggestion at the end of this article as to how we as a community can help the members of our community who aren’t as well-off because of situations radically out of their control.

While you don’t have final say on how much you’re paid at a job, or the social situations you’re in that can negatively or positively impact your life, you can decide what you choose to do with your money. Even the debts you pay were debts that you took on, whether it was to purchase luxury items on a credit card or to deal with an unfortunate situation such as a car accident. You may never have complete control over your life or the situations you’re in. But you do have control over your reactions and how you choose to deal with a situation.

You also have complete control of your attitude when it comes to money — but you might not learn you have that control until after you’re knee deep in debt and sinking further. The problem that many people face (not just Pagans) is that they aren’t educated in financial literacy, i.e. how money works. High schools generally don’t teach many classes on finances and other real-world issues and unless you decide to take courses in college about accounting or other related majors you likely won’t get the education there. At home, unless your parents talk to you about money and how they handle it you likely will only learn how they handle it from observation. (And, of course, if your parents don’t handle money well, chances are you won’t either if you use them as examples!) Most of us learn what not to do with money, and that through hard experience, which is the absolute worst way to learn about finances.

This is because you usually have to make costly mistakes to learn. Run up some credit card bills and you’re stuck with high interest rates and struggling to pay the debt off. Don’t put money away into savings or investments and you may find yourself working a fast food job in your eighties. Spend too much on books, video games, and other luxuries and you may not have enough money for the bills, therefore accumulating even more debt. Live paycheck to paycheck and when something big comes along, such as the transmission going out on your car, or an uninsured medical emergency, you’re not going to have any way to pay for it. None of those experiences strikes me as particularly virtuous or desired.

Pagans don’t have to be poor. I suggest, in fact, that we adopt the attitude that having money is a good thing. Money is good to have because it can insure relative self-sufficiency, and it can pay for unexpected situations, such as an accident or sickness. Money can pay for education and provide security for old age, and it can allow you to travel to other countries and experience other cultures at their source. Of course, those are just a few reasons why having money is good; I’m sure you can think of plenty of others.

We first need to look at our current attitude toward money. Take a moment and look at a bill or a checkbook or something else that’s financially relevant. Take a pen in your hand and on a blank piece of paper write down your initial impressions when you look at the financial artifact and think of your monetary situation. If you find yourself writing and/or thinking of money in negative terms then you need to adjust your attitude. The reason you need to adjust it is because your attitude about finances is sabotaging the conscious choices you make when you have money.

Because most people haven’t been taught financial literacy we usually have negative experiences with money. This negativity imprints and we soon regard money as an affliction or a problem as opposed to a means of offering potential security and/or freedom from bad circumstances. Certainly this was the case for me, up until recently. I always had some form of debt that needed to be paid off and yet no matter how I tried I just couldn’t seem to get ahead or feel confident that my money would last beyond the current paycheck. But one day, having complained about money for the umpteenth time, I happened to pick up a book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert Kiyosaki. The core concept I got from this book was that I alone was responsible for how I spent my money and that my education about money and how I thought and felt about it greatly shaped my spending of it¹. This seems like such an obvious point, but to someone who felt that money was an amorphous force that controlled his life, I found it to be liberating. No longer did money control me. Instead I could take control of it.

I suspect that many other Pagans, were they to examine their attitude about money, would come to a similar realization. Although this awareness is liberating, we still need to undo the negative attitudes we have. There are a couple of ways to start doing this and I’ve found both of them have really helped me get a handle on my financial situation.

Meditation, Magick, & Consciously Loving Money

My first solution involved meditation. I prefer using Taoist meditation practices that involve dissolving internal energetic blockages. These energetic blockages usually also have emotions, beliefs, and attitudes attached to them. By dissolving the blockages I can allow myself to feel those emotions, beliefs, and attitudes, and then consciously change them so that they no longer sabotage me². However, any technique will do provided it allows you to enter into a state of mind where you are receptive to examining and changing your beliefs on a particular subject. The reason this is important is because our everyday mundane consciousness tends to operate on autopilot, which means we don’t always examine why we are doing what we are doing. By being contemplative and reflective about the problem we can see it from a perspective outside the everyday tunnel vision. This in turn can lead to conscious change.

Once you’ve examined the attitude and decided you want to change it, you need to determine what you will change it into. For example, I changed my attitude of money from dislike into love of money. I decided that I would love money and in return invite it to love me. Using meditation, I changed my memories of bad experiences with money into positive experiences where I learned to love money. I visualized myself in the various moments where I’d gotten negative imprints about money. I then visualized myself changing the actual occurrences into ones that were more positive in terms of how I handled money and felt about it afterwards. Through these meditations I was able to undo the negative imprints and create more positive ones that helped me feel more comfortable with handling money.

To reinforce this positive attitude further I decided to create an entity that would encourage my wife and me to love money and become more knowledgeable about it. My wife made a pouch out of blue leather (we associate the color with money). In the pouch we placed a couple of coins and other personal effects that represented our desire to change our attitude and approach to money. I then came up with a phrase: “I love money.” I took out the repeating letters, condensing the phrase into “Ilvmny”, which was now the name of the entity. To bring the entity to life we decided that the energy that would feed it would be both the spending and receiving of money. Every transaction would give the entity energy to perform its task, which was to help us cultivate better financial habits. Our first transaction was to go out and buy books on money management. After each purchase and every time we make a sale, deposit a check, or invest in stocks we hold the pouch and say, “Thank you, Ilvmny.”

Although my first solution was to use magic to help me change my attitude, I also knew I needed to learn more about money. It wasn’t enough to have a positive attitude about it. Something I’ve noticed in myself and many other people, Pagan and otherwise, is a decided lack of knowledge of how money works. Living from paycheck to paycheck illustrates this because it involves using money strictly for day to day survival with little preparation for the future. My second solution was to acquire financial literacy.

Financial Literacy: Making Money Work for You

When you live paycheck to paycheck, you’re working for money. This is what seems to happen to a lot of people. We go to work, we make money and we spend it, putting little, if any, aside for a rainy day or retirement. When a situation does come up we wish we had more money to solve it, even though it’s not really more money that will solve the problem — it’s making money work for you.

First, you first need to learn how money works. If no one talked with you about money and how to use it responsibly then what you need to do is educate yourself. This doesn’t have to involve evening classes at a college (and in fact that would probably be the most expensive and least successful way to learn about money in the immediate real world). Instead, I’d suggest going to your local bookstore or library and looking in the business and finance section. You’ll probably want to get several books on how to handle personal finances because you never want to get just one person’s opinion on any situation, let alone how to handle money. I’ll list a few recommendations at the end of this article, but you might also want to see what members of your family or friends have read about personal finances. Speaking of family, if you have kids, start talking to them about money as you learn. You can never educate your children about money too early. In fact, you may help them avoid mistakes you made and come out ahead when it comes to retirement and other financial matters.

Many people don’t pick up books on money because they think such books will be loaded with technical financial jargon and hard to read. But a good book will explain the different terms and principles in a clear and concise manner. They also may think that money management is boring. While it may not be as riveting as, say, a mystery novel, once have a basic understanding you may find that it’s actually an interesting subject to learn about. Even if you still don’t find the subject fascinating, it’s important to educate yourself about it. You don’t need to know the intricacies of the daily life of a stock broker, but knowing the basics of how money works and how you can make it work for you will make your life a lot less stressful.

Making money work for you means learning how to invest in stocks and IRAs, maximize your 401k plan, and getting the most out of your bank accounts. When you know how to make money work for you, it becomes its own magic, with the result being more numbers than you had before, provided you take advantage of the systems in place. For instance, with stock investment, you don’t have to invest stocks through a broker. You can invest in a company directly. This allows you to make your money work for you and know where that money is going. At the same time the wealth that is generated isn’t wealth you had to earn. Instead you let other people (i.e. the employees in the company) earn it for you. To use another example of making money work for you, there’s a lot more to a bank than free checking or savings. Do you know the interest rates of your account? Do you know the other options available to you at a bank? Do you know the differences between a bank and a credit union? Knowing the answers to those questions can impact how much your money works for you as opposed to you working for it³.

Ideally, when money works for you, you have money to pay your bills, some set aside in savings to take care of emergency situations and some applied toward investments for your eventual retirement. You want your money to grow in such a way that a lot of the money you make isn’t even money you had to work for. Your goal isn’t necessarily to end up rich (though that doesn’t hurt) but it is to end up financially secure, without having to worry how you’ll pay off your debt or take a day off work without pay or even retire. If you do want end up rich you may have to take some risks, and that involves a different level of financial literacy, which focuses on how to take those risks and hopefully come out ahead⁴.

Are We Getting Too Materialistic?

I suggested earlier that the poor Pagan stereotype is not virtuous, for the simple fact that being in debt and/or having to worry whether you’ll make your ends meet each week or month is never an ideal place for anyone to be in. But is having money evil? I think, in and of itself, money isn’t good, evil, or any other moral value we may place on it. It is however a force, one that must be acknowledged and respected because it’s one we interact with everyday. Even learning how money works won’t necessarily make you more or less materialistic, though it will help you become better informed about your spending habits.

Where the virtue (or lack thereof) comes in is with you and your choices. Once you know what your spending habits are you can choose to change them. If you find yourself spending most of your money on luxury items for yourself, perhaps it’s time to stop purchasing them. Find other uses for your money such as your child’s college fund or funding for that trip to Europe you’ve always wanted to take, but never had enough time or money for.

Another stereotype that Pagans are accused of is of not offering enough public services or charities that help the community at large. As Pagans become more successful with money this perception can be changed. When you have more money to spare you can put some of it toward the charity or public service of your choice. Better yet, you can help those members in your community who are poor and have no choice in it. Adopt a Pagan family or person who’s less well off. Donate money or food or other goods to help them out. Support your community and in doing so create a closer connection so that everyone can benefit. Remember though that money alone won’t solve the world’s problems or even that of a local community. Devoting some time to public service or giving some food to food banks or doing some other form of community work is equally valuable and worth doing.

Loving money doesn’t mean you’re a materialist and out to steal from the poor. Loving money merely means that you enjoy being prosperous and prefer it over other circumstances. You won’t turn into a yuppie or a snob by choosing to love money, unless you want to. For me, loving money isn’t about putting money before everything else; it’s really loving the idea that I don’t have to worry if I’ll be able to pay this or that bill or feel guilty because I wanted to buy the latest Jim Butcher novel. There’s enough to worry about in life. Security about money or bills or buying a book without clean out your checking account is something all of us can have provided we accept that having money doesn’t equal being materialist. Remember, it’s your choices that define how you think of yourself and who you are.

Money is a medium. Without it, we can’t easily survive. With it we can enjoy what life offers while establishing financial security for the rough times and old age. Remember that it’s not how much you make that insures a good relationship with money. It’s how you use the money you do make that determines if you have a good relationship with it. Even someone who doesn’t make a lot of money can still come out ahead by using the resources s/he has wisely. And you can always help other members in the community who aren’t in as good a situation as you are. None of us have to be “poor Pagans.”

Footnotes

1. Kiyosaki, Robert T. (2000) Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! New York: Warner Business Books
2. Frantzis, B. K. (2002) Relaxing into Your Being: Breathing, Chi, and Dissolving the Ego Berkeley: North Atlantic Books
3. If you don’t know the answers I’ll leave it to you to do some research. It’s worth your time, trust me.
4. More on this in a later article, as I’m still learning and researching!

Recommended Reading

• The Motley Fool: You Have More Than You Think : The Foolish Guide To Personal Finance by David and Tom Gardner
• The Richest Man in Babylon: The Success Secrets of the Ancients by George S. Clason
• Smart Couples Finish Rich: 9 Steps to Creating a Rich Future for You and Your Partner by David Bach

© 2007 Taylor Ellwood
Edited by Sheta Kaey

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

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” — Albert Einstein

The source of ethics is the subject of much controversy and debate, and I hope that it will always remain that way. The religionists say that ethics are divinely inspired, while the atheists insist that ethics come from being human, the ability to empathize, and a mindful recognition of the connection between himself and his fellow man. In other words, they claim being ethical is a human trait. While considering this, one might see this as a paradox: ethics as a uniquely human trait illustrate the divine nature of man on the one hand, and on the other we must question how human a quality can be when so very few humans seem to possess it. Perhaps this is what is meant by “let my servants be few and secret¹.” The Western Mystery Tradition has always been preoccupied with being more than human. If we look around, we can see why this is necessary.

The atheist blames religion for the world’s woes because he generally feels that people should do the right thing out of humanity or principle, rather than fear, and yet this is a terribly unfair assessment. Not all religion is fear-based, nor are all religious people acting out of fear when they do the right thing. One must learn to take the bad with the good. Despite the many instances when evil men have used religion to justify killing and torture, a lot of good has been done and continues to be done in its name. The notable movie personality Martin Sheen once said, “We shouldn’t be critical of Christianity, because it hasn’t been tried².” If Christianity hasn’t been tried, then how much less can we say of Thelema? Even more disturbing is the idea that 2,000 years can come and go with so very few people ever adhering to their chosen paradigm.

Adherents of Christianity have, for the most part, only given lip service to the teachings of Jesus. It is true that people are healed, fed, and taken care of in dire times, but at the cost of their soul — the motivation for this aid has always been to convert. This made me think of the hypocrisy inherent in so many religious zealots who insist on representing their sect because doing so gives them a feeling of superiority. They appear to be better than others, but their actions do their chosen paradigm a great disservice. In other words, it isn’t the religious paradigm that has failed, but the adherents (if, after all this, we can still call them that) for not being sufficiently sincere to subject themselves to the inconveniences imposed by their chosen beliefs. They are only adherents when it serves them to reach their desired goals.

The religionists blame atheism for the world’s problems, insinuating that a belief in God is necessary for ethical behavior. Again, this is misplaced blame. They believe that people are incapable of acting rightly or honorable unless they are motivated by fear. Atheists can have conviction. Neither Buddhism nor Taoism requires belief in a “god,” and yet right action is a great preoccupation for adherents of both of these religious paradigms.

The ethical atheist may be more genuine than his religionist counterpart since the atheist is generally motivated by compassion, love, and/or enlightened self-interest, while the other (at least if he subscribes to the concepts of hell and eternal damnation) is largely motivated by fear and selfish self-interest. Perhaps the best way to explain the problem with religion-based ethics is to reference the 2004 US elections, where many people voted for the person that supposedly exemplified “Christian values” such as homophobia and a hatred for anything they saw as “liberal.”³ Crowley was clearly right about the shortcomings of so-called democracy⁴.

While it is true that religion can advocate high ethical standards, we would err greatly if we were to identify ethics exclusively with religious conviction. If ethics were confined to religion, then we would only see them in the actions of religious people. If this were true, then how do we explain the ethics of the atheist? Ethics are not synonymous with religion.

So what are ethics? I define ethics as a standard of right and wrong that dictates what humans should do in terms of rights, duty, and commitment to society, justice, or specific virtues, such as the Eleven Virtues of Thelemic Knighthood⁵.

Most importantly, however, are ethics as the development of one’s personal standards. That is what an ethical person does. Feelings, laws, and social norms often stray from what is ethical, so we must constantly test our own standards to make sure that they are rational and well-founded. The study of ethics is the noble endeavor of scrutinizing our own beliefs and conduct, and the work of ensuring that the institutions we shape achieve the standards worthy of those chosen beliefs. This is an application of ethics that doesn’t seem to be getting much attention today. To say it a different way, the study of ethics is important because it will guide us away from decision making based on peer pressure and the desire for external validation, and help guide our lives in accordance with our own personal internal compass. It doesn’t get any more Thelemic than that.

Nietzsche and many of his contemporaries went to great lengths to show that there was no such thing as because all that we do, no matter how well intentioned, benefits us in one way or another. In other words, there are no selfless acts. But we already know that. Perhaps the English journalist Gilbert Chesterton said it best when he wrote:

“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues[…] virtues gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians care only for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful⁶.”

Nietzsche explains that any altruistic act creates weakness because compassion and charity are insults to the individual to whom they are directed,⁷ and that those actions, as well intentioned as they may be, cause a sort of dependence rather than empowering the individual to rise up or fail on their own strength. Many Thelemites sincerely believe that this is what will cleanse the human race of all weakness of body and mind and create the ideal man, and that this sort of disregard to the suffering of one’s fellows is to be credited for the greatness that humanity has already attained.

Crowley seemed to subscribe to this idea as well, and if one reads through his comments on Liber Al
, this is how he has chosen to interpret some difficult passages of The Book of the Law
. It is somewhat ironic that very few people seem to follow Nietzsche’s or Crowley’s advice of questioning all things.

• Crowley was rather jaded toward the end of his life. His later comments reflect an attitude contradictory to what he wrote of the text when he was young and idealistic.
• His views were, unfortunately, very biased against every idea associated with Christianity. Given his parents’ strict, conservative household one can hardly blame him for this, but the reader should keep in mind that he obviously had trouble with this and it may have colored his interpretation of the message he was receiving.
• Neither Crowley nor Nietzsche have considered that compassion might be a human trait⁸ or that there may be a very good reason why people feel good when they do things for others. Nor have they considered how compassion, reverence, and empathy have contributed to human evolution. Humans help one another. As painful as it is for some to acknowledge, no man is an island, nor would we have developed communities, societies, or anything of lasting value without cooperating with others. Strength also comes in numbers.
• It is illogical to demonize compassion, reverence, and empathy simply because of the selfish nature of altruism, since compassion, reverence and empathy can come from other places. And as far as the “weak” are concerned — without people like Einstein, who had trouble spelling his name until he was eight⁹, or without Stephen Hawking we may not have dared to venture beyond already known ideas about the nature of time and the universe. John Merrick¹⁰ exemplified courage and inner strength. It is difficult to imagine never having heard a melody made by Chopin, or the teachings of Crowley himself, had they been allowed to die simply because of their debilitating illnesses. Strength comes in many forms, and often it only becomes apparent later in life. “Every man and every woman is a star¹¹.” This is not to say that everyone has something worthwhile to contribute to human evolution, but in an ideal world, everyone would have the opportunity.
• Christianity seems to dictate that altruism implies that a person’s primary ethical responsibility is to others first, while egoism holds that one’s primary obligation is to oneself, and toward advancing one’s own self-interest. Nietzsche, Crowley and others have categorized altruism as a “slave morality” without any redeeming qualities. I also concur. Both Nietzsche and Crowley have noted that what appears to be an altruistic act on the surface actually furthers one’s self-interest, and they say it like it is a bad thing. A person’s self-interest must come first, and there are many ways to further one’s self-interest. For example, the Order of Thelemic Knights does not engage in charitable campaigns because its members are trying to learn to be altruistic; we do so because it furthers our own personal growth. That others benefit from our work began as a wonderful coincidence we’d like to keep.

Different Ethical Paradigms, or Why Kant We Just Get Along?

The five examples listed below represent the most popular forms of ethics used today in everyday life. It will become apparent that each has its strength and weakness. There are numerous more which could not be included here due to the limited scope of this dissertation. There are approaches within approaches. To make matters more confusing, every method described below could be used to justify unethical behavior.

In the Utilitarian approach, for example, there is the Ethical Egoist, who concerns himself exclusively with his own benefit, while a Consequentialist Utilitarian works toward the good of all who are affected by an action or deliberation¹². Both look for a positive outcome or opportunity, but they differ on who should benefit.

Frequently, Utilitarianism will require that one do what is best for the greatest number of people, rather than what is good for oneself — but that isn’t to say that it cannot be used to justify something considered unethical by every other standard. For example, a Utilitarian could make the case that prisoners with life sentences should be used for medical experiments, arguing that discoveries could be made which would benefit millions of people of much higher character. This treatment of prisoners would not hurt the majority, and one could justify it by making the claim that the prisoners deserve to pay for their crimes in a way that would benefit society. If a prisoner should die in the experiments, then the scientists and doctors could endorse their experiments with the statement that, had they lived, they would be a burden to society since taxpayers have to pay to house, feed, and clothe them for life.

The bottom line is that whether we understand ethics or not, we still have the choice of doing the wrong thing or the right thing. Ultimately, we have to rely on our own self-knowledge, sense of self-worth, pride, integrity, and sincere effort to get us through tough decisions. You should also keep in mind, as you read this, that no one uses one method exclusively, but that they borrow what seems most comfortable to make their own ethical decisions.

The Utilitarian Approach

Utilitarianism was conceived by the English philosopher and political radical Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Jeremy Bentham spent most of his life critiquing law and strongly advocating legal reform, and came up with the system to assist lawmakers in deciding which laws were the most ethical. In a nutshell, the Utilitarian approach dictates that the most ethical decisions are the ones that result in the least evil¹³.

United States politicians and lawmakers tend to be Utilitarian or Consequentialist¹⁴ in their problem solving. The most important consideration is what effect the policy will have on the average citizen.

When using Utilitarianism to look for an ethical course of action, we might approach the issue by first asking ourselves a few questions. It might go something like this:

What are the options available to us?

Who will be affected by our decisions?

What benefit or harm will each course of action lead us to?

After those questions have been answered, we chose an option that will cause the least amount of harm and benefit the greatest number of people. In Utilitarianism, the most appropriate action provides the most benefit to the greatest number.

One of the clear shortcomings of the Utilitarian approach is that there is a tendency to ignore justice. Apartheid in South Africa comes as a good example in recent history, when South African whites decided that all South Africans, black and white, would be better served under white leadership. Those arguing in favor of this view claimed that social conditions declined in African nations that exchanged exclusively white governments for black or mixed governance. The proponents of apartheid predicted civil war, financial decline, food shortages, and social instability following the establishment of a black majority government. These predictions did not occur when apartheid ended. If it had, then the white government of South Africa would have been ethically justified by utilitarianism, in spite of its discrimination.

The Rights Approach

The Rights Approach¹⁵ is rooted in the philosophical works of Kant, whose focus was on the right to choose for oneself. This philosophy supposes that humans have a moral right to choose freely, and that this freedom of choice is what gives humans their dignity and separates us from objects that can or should be manipulated. In other words, every human should be respected and given the choice to live their life in accordance with that choice. To say it another way, it is unethical to demand that a person act in a fashion that they have not personally chosen.

“Every action is right which in itself, or in the maxim on which it proceeds, is such that it can coexist along with the freedom of the will of each and all in action, according to a universal law¹⁶.”

Some of the rights listed below might remind you of Liber OZ. In fact, Liber OZ is so close to the human rights this ethical approach dictates that it is entirely possible it might have come to Crowley as a result of Kant’s writings. See for yourself:

The right to truthful information. The right to be told the truth about matters that may affect our lives.

The right of privacy. The right to do, believe, and say whatever we choose, provided that we do not violate the rights of others.

The right not to be injured. The right not to be harmed unless we knowingly do something that warrants retribution, or we choose to risk such injury of our own free will.

The right to what is agreed. We are entitled to hold a reasonable expectation of what is promised to us by people with whom we have freely entered into a pact or covenant.

When using the Rights Approach to explore an ethical course of action, we only need ask ourselves one question: does our decision/action respect the rights of everyone?

We only need to look at the deceptively titled “Patriot Act“¹⁷ to see how our rights are violated in the USA. With the implementation of this act, Americans lost the following freedoms and rights:

Freedom of association. Government may now spy on religious and political institutions even if they are not suspected of criminal activity, discouraging individuals from pursuing their right to freedom of association. Specific groups have been branded “terrorist organizations,” making membership in them illegal.

Freedom of information. Government has closed immigration hearings and has held hundreds of people without charging them with criminal offense, and has applied pressure to public and civil servants to withhold once freely available information from the public.¹⁸

Freedom of speech. Government may subpoena information from public librarians (such as individual patron records, listing books that were checked out), and may punish them if they alert individuals.¹⁹

The right to legal representation. Government officials may monitor once protected attorney-client conversations in prisons, as well as denying legal assistance to Americans accused of crimes.

Freedom from unreasonable searches. Government may search and seize property and papers without probable cause.

The right to a speedy and public trial. Americans may be declared “enemy combatants” and imprisoned indefinitely without a trial.

Right to confront accusers. Not only can Americans be jailed without being charged of a crime, but also they do not have the right to confront their accusers.

In short, under the Rights Approach, it is clear that the provisions in the Patriot Act, which circumscribe citizens rights as described by Kant and enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, are unethical. Furthermore, the Patriot Act opens the door to future legislation further limiting or completely eliminating these and other rights. Government agencies are protected against accountability by way of increased secrecy and lack of judicial oversight, checks and balances.

The Fairness or Justice Approach

This method is very similar to the Rights Approach, but has its origins in the teachings of Aristotle, who states that favoritism and discrimination are unethical and unjust, because giving benefit to someone without a justifiable reason is unfair to those denied those benefits. He teaches that discrimination is unreasonable because it burdens people who are no different than those spared from the same burdens. The fundamental moral questions for using this method are:

How fair is an act?
Does it deal with everyone in a similar fashion?
Does it demonstrate preferential treatment or bias?

Consider ballot measure 36 in Oregon’s Spring 2005 elections. This measure amended Oregon’s constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. It is a reaction to Oregon’s gay community in general (which rightly feels discriminated against), and specifically against Multnomah County’s ruling that denying marriage licenses to homosexual couples was a discriminatory practice that denied homosexual couples the same benefits available to married heterosexual couples.²⁰ These people pay taxes, and should receive the same treatment and benefits as other socially responsible taxpayers, regardless of sexual orientation. If a true separation existed between Church and State, this wouldn’t be an issue at all.

This political issue is a good example of a violation of The Fairness or Justice Approach and the Rights Approach described above as well as the rights declared in Liber OZ²¹.

Rules, such as the Equal Opportunity Act, the Fair Housing Act and the like will always exist, no matter how well we evolve, so long as someone is denied the same opportunities as others. I realize that these laws are rather arbitrary, and oftentimes when misused they can be a source of reverse discrimination.²² As a result, many shortsighted individuals have rallied to put an end to these protections, but if they succeed, we will never see the true geniuses rise up above the rest because they will not have an equal field on which to begin to prove themselves.

Consider this for a moment. On the one hand, we have the head of a corporation who had the best education money could buy, who never had to struggle with paying rent or putting food on the table, who inherited his father’s fortune and who took over as the figurehead of the organization. On the other hand, we have a foreigner (or single mother) who comes to this country with little more than a dream, who lives in one of the many shanty towns, ghettos or ‘projects,’ who attends the overcrowded and underfunded public school systems and grows up to have his or her own tailor shop. Who is the superior being? Is the accumulation of wealth the sole genetic trait for strength, or are there others?

The Common Good Approach

This approach to ethical problems began some 2,000 years ago with the writings of Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. It suggests that a person’s own good is inextricably connected to the good of the community. In other words, members of a community are duty-bound to the pursuit of common values and goals. In recent times, John Rawls has defined “common good” as “certain general conditions that are…equally to everyone’s advantage²³.”

This methodology approaches social problems by making certain that the policies, systems, institutions, and environments we so often take for granted are beneficial to all. Affordable health care, public safety, world peace, justice, and environmental issues are all subject to consideration.

Furthering the common good compels us to view ourselves as members of the same community and questions regarding of the kind of society, order, fraternity or neighborhood we want to develop and how we are to achieve it are the dominant considerations. This does not mean that the Common Good Approach disregards the rights of individuals, but rather, it provides us with the opportunity to look for the things we have in common instead of the things that make us different.

For example, if you feel that the children and loved ones of politicians who start wars should not be exempt from fighting those wars, or that politicians should send their kids to public schools, or that politicians should live in the neighborhoods where they work while earning the same salaries of the average citizen living in the area, then you might be using the Common Good Approach.

The Virtue Approach

The presumption made by the Virtue Approach is that some ideals that will accelerate our own personal and universal evolution, because when one of us rises up above the norm, the whole of humanity benefits from the evolutionary leap. They make us better people by helping us to develop. We begin to develop a sense of the required virtues by reflecting on our own potential.

Virtues empower us to behave and act in a manner that leads us to our highest personal potential. Virtues, once embraced, become a characteristic trait. Additionally, an individual who has accepted virtues will be predisposed to act in a manner consistent with his or her ethical principles because virtue relates to ethics. A virtuous person is an ethical person, and those few that truly and sincerely embrace The Eleven Virtues of Thelemic Knighthood can inspire amazing changes in character.

Most of the questions one might consider while using the Virtue Approach deal with the compromises one is making to their character. For example:

What sort of person will this action make me?
Will I be compromising my character or betraying my beliefs or myself?
Will this action reflect badly on my chosen philosophical/religious paradigm?
Will this choice of action promote, or interfere with, my development?
Is this behavior befitting of the sort of person I am trying to become?
Is this behavior and its consequences in line with my True Will?

The Virtue Approach concerns itself with self-worth. It holds that one’s integrity and honor are reflections of the individual’s true nature; therefore, there is an emphasis on action and works. This approach to ethics is a very popular substitute for rule-based (deontological) and results-based (consequentialist) ethics. In fact, the Virtue Approach to ethics was created out of frustration with ethical concepts of duty and obligation. It was a reactionary response to the use of convenient, but unbending and ineffective, moral rules and principles that are often used as standards to all moral situations²⁴.

How the Virtue Approach varies, from, say, the Utilitarian and Consequentialist Approach, becomes apparent when using the following classical ethical dilemma: A man’s wife becomes very sick, and he spends an astonishing amount of money to attempt to save her life. In fact, with the amount of money he spent trying to save one woman, he could have saved ten women he didn’t know. The utilitarian would say that the man should have used his money to save the greater number of people. A virtue ethicist would argue that placing the welfare of loved ones above the welfare of strangers is essentially good because it isn’t natural for humans to make life-and-death decisions based on some mathematical moral calculation. They would also argue that few people would want to live in a world where we forsake our own spouses to save strangers.

Applied Ethics, or Ethical Problem Solving

Unfortunately, no templates or guaranteed methods provide nice, squeaky-clean solutions to ethical dilemmas. Wouldn’t that be nice? Ultimately, we are all going to have to get our hands dirty, but maybe we can arm ourselves by looking at the facts, understanding ethics and choosing to be ethical so that we can minimize damage. First and foremost, cause no harm.

At the very least, ask yourself the following questions:

Do I have all the facts?
What are my options?
What option will lead to the most balanced end?
What benefits will my decision provide, and who will benefit?
Will my course of action violate anyone else’s rights?
Will my action show unwarranted favoritism or discrimination?
Which decision increases the common good most?
Is my chosen course of action harmonious with my own ethics?

Footnotes:

1. Liber Al Vel Legis — The Book of the Law I:10
2. It is a little absolutist to claim, “it hasn’t been tried,” without simultaneously discounting the work of some remarkable individuals, such as Mother Teresa, for example. But it is easy to agree since very few adherents of Christianity are actually doing the work of Christ.
3. Such as affordable healthcare, education, and scientifically-based research.
4. “The principle of popular election is a fatal folly; its results are visible in every so-called democracy. The elected man is always the mediocrity; he is the safe man, the sound man, the man who displeases the majority less than any other; and therefore never the genius, the man of progress and illumination.” —Liber 194 — An Intimation with Reference to the Constitution of the Order
5. Valor, Nobility, Discernment, Pride, Compassion, Fidelity, Passion, Strength, Discipline, Self-Reliance, and Hospitality.
6. Gilbert Chesterton, Orthodoxy, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1959), page 30.
7. The Anti-Christ. Section 7. He uses the word “pity.” Many wrongly (and conveniently) lump pity with compassion.
8. Either as a natural occurring phenomena, something evolutionarily useful, or both. Current research may be on the verge of providing scientific data to support this view.
9. According to his mother, didn’t speak until he was three. Little Albert was terribly dyslexic.
10. The “Elephant Man.”
11. Liber Al Vel Legis — The Book of the Law — I:III
12. Always look for a way to benefit everyone… including oneself.
13. “Evil” is an emotionally loaded term, and this is why I have chosen to use it.
14. Consequentialism is a branch of Utilitarianism that dictates that we should do whatever increases the chances for good consequences. What one does to achieve these good consequences is irrelevant. What matters is that the good results are maximized. It’s a counterpart of deontological ethics.
15. I have refrained from criticizing The Rights Approach by referencing Liber OZ to make this point because I felt it would be redundant. Most anyone that reads this will already have first-hand experience of the tremendous potential for abuse in that document.
16. The Science of Right by Immanuel Kant, 1790.
17. The Patriot Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. The name was carefully chosen in order to alienate those that disapprove of the gross restrictions and violations of constitutional rights proposed by the act.
18. The Freedom of Information Act.
19. Librarians have rebelled against this act by changing the way they keep records.
20. These benefits include, but are not limited to, medical benefits for their lovers, better opportunities for low interest home loans, the right to visit an ill partner in the hospital, the right to make end of life care decisions for partners, the right to inherit in cases of intestacy, the ability to adopt children, joint filing on income tax returns and other social benefits afforded to heterosexual couples.
21. But the most important philosophical issue in this debate is whether or not the State can determine who can and cannot marry in a country where the separation of Church and State is guaranteed. If that separation truly existed, then the argument would be between the heads of the churches, and not a matter for government.
22. Reverse discrimination takes place any time that well-qualified native applicants are overlooked for employment in favor of people of color or a certain sex just to meet some arbitrary criteria.
23. A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. Belknap Press; Revised edition (September 1, 1999)
24. Marriage, as it is today, would be considered unethical in this approach.

©2007 Gerald del Campo
Edited by Sheta Kaey.

Gerald del Campo is the author of A Heretic’s Guide to Thelema, New Aeon Magick: Thelema Without Tears, and New Aeon English Qabalah Revealed, among other works. You can visit his blog at http://solis93.livejournal.com and his website at http://thelemicknights.org. Gerald serves as Senior Managing Editor of Rending the Veil. He also writes music and plays in bands.

This corner of the Witches’ Pyramid¹ is not only what it appears to be on the surface. It is not solely “book learning.” It is also knowing that you possess the skills to put what you have learned into a practical application, using the knowledge you have garnered to put your magic into practice, knowing the means to cast spells, and doing inner alchemy.

For example, there is the classic Greek admonition “gnothi seauton,” or know thyself. Carved at the entrance to the temple in Delphi, the Greeks inculcated this belief in their society, believing that each individual must know himself before he could dream of approaching the oracle. Otherwise, what he might learn on the journey of oracular discovery could well be catastrophic to the psyche.

This admonition is not a new one in the context of magical study. Many authors and classic magicians have said this through the ages, most notably in recent times Aleister Crowley. Heck, alchemy was all about self-discovery, and there have been many transcendental movements through the ages focused on discovering the self.

This journey of self-discovery remains at the core of similar movements to this day. The most natural thing in the world is to look for answers to questions like “who am I?” When one group, such as religion, doesn’t satisfactorily answer those questions, it is normal to look for groups who do. If that quest takes people into esoteric fields of study, then so be it.

Magic and religion are only two of many different ways to start this journey of self-discovery. Unfortunately, most of the other methods that society accepts are expensive or time-consuming, like psychologists or self-help books. I can think of only one other freely available method of self-exploration: the BDSM community. But that pathway demands its own price. It is also very far outside the norms of society, making it anathema to many.

This is how it should be. For any esoteric discipline, such as divination, a magician must start with knowledge of self. With that foundation, a magician can separate himself from the process he is calling into being. He then has the ability to see where his prejudices and his insecurities have influenced the process he hopes to create. Put simply, because of having this anchor point, he can be more efficient in his magical pursuits.

A starting place is important in this or any journey. Just like trying to navigate in space, you can find a destination easily enough, but you must have a beginning point.

In many classical references, we find that that this discovery is mandated. In Aeschylus I: Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides (The Complete Greek Tragedies) (Vol 1), Zeus lays down the law: mankind must suffer to be wise.² This theme repeats itself in the Gardnerian Wicca initiation and in many other groups’ initiations. Any practicing magician must understand that those who are unwilling to sacrifice will not have the knowledge they seek available to them.

There is a direct correlation between how much the student will learn and how much of his own pleasures he is willing to sacrifice to attain that knowledge. Those unwilling to pay the price demanded will not achieve the knowledge they seek. This means that the student must be totally aware of how much he is willing to give up and what he is willing to do without to attain his goal.

Then we come to another often-overlooked aspect of “To Know” — the consequences. Let us assume that the magician actually knows who he is, where he fits and so on. He also knows what kinds of prices he will be paying and has made the decision that those prices are reasonable to attain what he wants. He also knows the techniques involved in actually casting the spells and the theory behind that process. This same magician also has to be aware of what kinds of outcomes are most likely, as well as the potential unintended consequences.

Many think of magicians as amoral creatures, but this is simply not true. A magician has to be more aware and willing to take care of the unintended consequences of his actions, if only because of the “butterfly effect.” A corporation comes in and clear-cuts a forest. This tragedy will have global repercussions. It will have future consequences as well. But I know of no corporation that can affect the past by their actions. Magicians can affect the past and do, at times.

It is up to the magician in question to be self-policing and to deal with the messes he creates. It is only enlightened self-interest. If the magician wishes privacy to do his work, then he must be invisible. If he casts too wide a spell and it affects those other than the intended target(s), he must be willing and able to deal with the consequences. Time and experience will teach him to understand how to limit those effects. Personally, I don’t think he should be casting spells unless or until he can mitigate those effects.

The Military says, “Information is king.” In the battlefield, in magic, in growing up, knowledge is the whole battle. If you know something, you can deal with it, you can cope with it, you can assimilate and correct problems caused by it. But you cannot do that without knowing what “it” is.

All these factors combine to make this leg of the Witches’ Pyramid a very important one. To recap slightly, a magician must know himself, know the skills necessary to cast a spell and understand how to deal with unexpected outcomes of the use of those skills. It is helpful to be able to plan ahead and anticipate problems before they occur, as well.

Once the magician understands himself, he can take the step to understand others around them, since it is most likely that others want the same things he wants. Conversely, by seeing qualities in others he can also find those same qualities in himself and work to bring them out.

Robert Heinlein had a wonderful concept for this called “grok,” a verb that means, “to drink.” He defined this concept very well in Stranger in a Strange Land. Grokking something is to know it so deeply that the boundaries between you and it are lost. He then knows the other part of himself so deeply and so intimately that it is impossible to separate out those elements that are “other” and “self.”

Is it reasonable or possible for a magician to grok and simultaneously separate enough of himself so that he can see where the magical process is messing up due to some aspect he is projecting into it? I think it is.

We aren’t dealing with minor truths here, ones that are immutable and verifiable like 2 + 2 = 4. We are dealing with Great Truths that are mutable and subject to other factors, with the result that all answers are just as true. It is possible to be so intermingled with a spell as to have it profoundly impact and affect ourselves, indeed, why would you do a spell otherwise? At the same time it is possible to be objective enough to see where those factors of self that we don’t care for, but which are intermingled with the spell, are affecting the spell.

Once again, this mandates that we know ourselves, if simply so we don’t fall into Oedipus’ trap of dancing to a tune we neither hear nor understand. When he went to the Oracle at Delphi (the same oracle where “Know Thyself” was carved on the lintel), he was told that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Since he didn’t want to kill the people he knew as his parents, he left, argued with a man on the road, killed him and married that gentleman’s widow. This fulfilled the prophecy, as it turned out.

Had he known himself and his life, he would have discovered that the man he killed was his father. Thus, all of this could have been avoided had Oedipus known himself and the truth.

The skills necessary for this corner are obvious, but the knowledge of when to apply them is just as important. It does no good to spend years learning how to cast a spell if those skills are never used. It also makes no sense to go through all this training and sacrifice if the knowledge gained will only be used for the most mundane of purposes. Knowledge of where and when to apply those skills is paramount to a successful outcome.

When you know yourself, you are aware of the energy you are raising, what it feels like when it is static, when it is moving. You will understand how to give that energy shape and purpose. It’s very important to be able to recognize and separate your body’s reactions from those of the magic you are invoking. You also have to know when you have a situation where the bodily reaction you experience is caused by the energy you are using.

One of the basic exercises in my “Energy Work and Magic” class consists of taking in a massive amount of energy that the students have been gathering over the course of two months, and holding it in their bodies for 24 hours. This shows them very clearly what that energy feels like, what their bodies feel like and how they reacts. This exercise is critical so the students know how to operate despite having the energy overload, because that energy interferes with their perceptions and balance.

There are those of us who have medical problems, such as diabetes. I am on medication for my diabetes, but if I couldn’t separate myself from the magic I’m working with, I would never know if my spell was working or not. The energy of the magic is very similar to how I feel when I’m going into sugar overload.

This is a set of skills that the current crop of instant spellbooks seems to gloss over or skip altogether. The student is the one who suffers from this lack.

Knowledge is the key. Information is the key. To know. And knowing is half the battle.

Footnotes

1. It has been pointed out to me that this is known by another name, the Magician’s Pyramid. Since I have never heard of this before now, I did not include this fact in the article. I didn’t want to comment and speak on a subject of which I have no knowledge. But it does not surprise me that this meme or philosophy has been used in other groups, as it is another Great Truth.
2. Referenced from here.

©2006 Eric “Daven” Landrum
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Eric “Daven” Landrum is a Seax Wiccan and the author of Daven’s Journal.