Talking About Ritual Magick

Pagan Grimoire of Ritual Magick

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:41:00 +0000

We have covered quite a bit of territory in this blog so far, and now I want to show how everything that I have written in the past can be assembled together to form a unique grimoire of ritual magick for the intermediate or advanced pagan or witch. We should keep in mind that when I define ritual magick, I am, of course, speaking about the magickal rites blended seamlessly into the liturgical rites. As far as I am concerned, they are one and the same, which is what makes modern witchcraft and paganism so unique. Unlike the past, particularly during the period of pagan antiquity in Europe and the Middle East, in the present time there are no prohibitions in the Western world for practicing magick along with religious rites. There are some important reasons for combining these two practices into a common spiritual and magickal discipline, and while we have covered that in past articles, we should touch on it again as we list the rites and practices of the pagan ritual magician.

We can divide this pagan grimoire into four categories, where each category has its battery of rituals and practices. These four categories are: core rites, key practices, magickal workings, and religious and mystical exercises. Of these four categories, magickal workings contains just the basic system of materializing magick. The other three categories are mostly comprehensive and therefore, would require very little additional lore. However, let us examine each of these categories and see what they contain. We will find that the elements of each category contains rites and practices already thoroughly covered. The task that the erstwhile pagan magician must perform is to write up and assemble these rituals into a single body of lore, which is spiritually consistent throughout.

Core rites: The most essential workings are the mystery rites of the Moon, Sun and the Self (Initiation). The phases of the moon and the seasons of the sun determine the overall cycle of workings and the performance of rites. The solar cycle is used for connecting to the earth and its overall process, and the lunar cycle is used for performing materialized magickal workings within the internal psychic mysteries of all living things.

These mysteries are both magickal and liturgical, but represent the continual periodicity of the magickal calendar. Throughout these various lunar phases and solar milestones are the actual points of spiritual transformation for the individual practitioner, who through the constant practice of ordeals and ceremonies, will also grow and evolve. Rituals structures used in the core rites are the spiral vortex, double gateway, cross-roads and the inner circle. There are also specific themes for the lunation types and phases, the seasonal full moons, as well as the calendric wheel of the year associated with the solar seasons, and the greatest mystery of them all, which is the twenty-two stages of the cycle of initiation.

Key practices: These are the practices that establish and maintain a proper spiritual alignment, as well as performing basic preparations and the essential capability for mind-control. We have already defined the practices of alignment as devotion, invocation, godhead assumption, communion and spiritual service. Perhaps the most important of these rites and practices is godhead assumption, since everything else is pivotal to this rite. Preparatory rites and practices would include daily meditation and contemplation sessions, periodic divination and self reflection, study and using the power of allegory. Also included would be ablutions (bathing), prayers, preparatory meditation, and circle/grove consecration (making sacred space). All of these rites and practices are thoroughly memorized and practiced on a regular basis.

Religious and mystical exercises: These are the pagan or wiccan liturgical practices that are not covered in the previous two categories (core rites and key practices). Such practices would be based on the operator’s base religious affiliation, and would represent his or her presence in the community. Adapting the lunar and solar calendars to one’s basic pagan spiritual practices and their associated spiritual pantheon is a very important task, since it adds continuity to the practice of magick and liturgical ceremonies. As an example, the traditional rites and ceremonies associated with the eight Sabbats and the thirteen Esbats, and thereby integrating them into a solitary magickal practice would represent one of the objectives of this category. Another area is the development of the magician’s personal religious cult, where his or her focused Deity becomes a representation of the magician’s higher self. Practices that are performed around the shrine, with its statues, symbols, fetishes and offerings, and the various associated devotional activities would be a prime example of this category. So would any form of godhead mediation performed for the benefit of the members of one’s pagan lineage, or even sympathetic outsiders.

Magickal workings: These rites are associated with any material based objective that the magician might seek to realize. The pyramid of power rite, which can generate any of the forty Qualified Powers, is the first level of magickal workings that the magician can easily employ. The lunar mystery is the core practice where the pyramid of power rite can be deployed through a variation on the mystery pattern. The methodology for performing the pyramid of power within the lunar mystery working has already been covered. However, the structure of the lunar mystery rite is such that other and more advanced workings could be worked within the same overall structure. This would allow for the employment of an elemental octagon, for instance, or even for talismanic working.

Perhaps the most important feature of this kind of ritual system is that it has the qualities of being performed within a modular structure. What that means is that a single ritual can be used to produce a number of different energy structures. Although there are forty unique Qualified Powers associated with the matrix of ten godhead attributes and the four elements, there is only one ritual which is used to generate that force. All the operator has to do is to change the attribute symbology and the invoking pentagrams, and then the generated power structure is different. Typically, when I write such modular rituals, I leave blanks for the key symbols and their associated ritual devices. I also produce a table and place it in the ritual appendix so that I might use those specific symbols and qualities in an actual ritual. A modular ritual is easy to use and easy to follow when performing a working, since I don’t bother to fill in the blanks with every possible variation. I would recommend this approach to my readers when they go about writing their own rituals.

One other mechanism that is used in this simple system of pagan ritual magick is the ubiquitous sigil. Since I use the sigil as an operant link for the generation of the Qualified Power, it performs two duties for one specific working. It can stand by itself and act as a magically qualified tool (once it is consecrated and charged), and it also functions as a link for the spell. The sigil is a symbolized construction representing a specific desire, and as such, it is inherently magickal even without performing the pyramid of power working. Associating the sigil with the Qualified Power causes it to be imprinted, and exteriorizing it will ensure that the desire is projected into the material world. Once used, the sigil can be destroyed, or can be kept and reused to intensify the specific objective with further workings. If a sigil has a generic desire that could be used to satisfy a number of different scenarios, then it becomes something akin to what Spare referred to as his alphabet of desire.

Examples of all of these rituals and practices associated with the four categories of a functioning pagan grimoire can be found in my published book, “Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick: Grimoire.” I would recommend that if you are serious about assembling the rituals for your own personalized system of magick, then acquiring this book will greatly help you to accomplish your desire to possess and actively use your own grimoire of rites and practices.

Frater Barrabbas

Key to Transformative Initiation

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sat, 19 May 2012 16:25:00 +0000

One of life’s greatest lessons is that nothing stays the same. Everything changes due to deliberate plans (one would hope), accidents or the fortunes of fate (whether good, bad or indifferent). Attempting to stand still and maintain one’s world is the surest way to get overtaken and completely run over by changing fortunes. The world doesn’t wait, and it would appear that it doesn’t sleep, either. We indulge in hubris and stasis at our own future peril!

So, if you are engaged with a progressive system of magick or esotericism, you are expected to at least attempt to incorporate the power of change as a means of evolving, growing and ultimately, achieving self-mastery. This is the only thing that can coerce an impending transformation to be progressive instead of regressive. Let me explain what I am talking about here, because I believe that it’s one of the more important topics in which any occultist can engage. It is the literal expression of “To be, or not to be.” To ascend, or to descend! And this pivots naturally on our choices, whether explicit or implicit.

Change is guaranteed to happen, it is therefore, imminent, and our life is buffeted by these changes. Human beings are self-conscious about their lives, and so we experience the calamities of good and bad fortune with the overarching need to find reasons and explanations for it all. Often, such explanations are nothing more than ad hoc explanations, and at times, even these tailored rationales seem weak and artificial, leaving us to ponder and wonder (and never satisfactorily answer) why things happened the way they did.

Still, those of us who are attempting to engineer a more empowered and self-determined future can be assured that even the attempt to do so is met with at least some positive outcome. This is because we have in our hands the tools of our very apotheosis, if we can but learn to recognize and use them. We are not chaff being blown every which way by the wind, and over time, a deeply contemplative existence will reveal to the spiritual seeker patterns and archetypes that parade through the inner mental lives of all humanity, often unknowingly and invisibly. These archetypes are symbolic portends, showing that deep inner processes are constantly at work, even when we are asleep. Harnessing these powerful symbols is the whole key to learning to control and master the processes of inner and outer change, which progressively empower and spiritual evolve the one who has learned to activate them. Even catastrophe, short of death and destruction, cannot turn back or defeat someone who is armed with this knowledge.

What are these mysterious symbols and archetypes that are active in the deeper psyche of humanity, and how can they be directed? These symbolic structures that mysteriously guide and fortify the self are the archetypes of the cycle of transformative initiation, also known as the Hero’s or Heroine’s Journey, since these cycles have a certain gender orientation. We have already covered the Hero’s Journey, and how the twenty-two stages match up with the twenty-two Tarot trumps of the Major Arcana. Seventeen of these stages represent the actual process of the inward and outward psychic journey of transformative initiation, and the other five represent the greater Cosmogonic cycle, which represents the whole cyclic history of the world and the universe (divided into five ages or aeons). You can find a synopsis of that comparative cycle here. Yet this cycle is the most essential cycle of human existence, characterized by the diurnal cycle of life on our planet - the constant round of light and darkness, life and death, wakefulness and sleep. Within the various stages of sleep are found dreams, and within the psychic tumult of existence are found flashes of inspiration, insights, visions and answers to life’s most perplexing questions. It would seem that life and its fortunes does indeed have meaning and significance, but it’s up to us to ultimately determine the nature of that meaning.

Since we have in our possession the all important Tarot deck with the twenty-two Trumps of the Major Arcana, we have both the tools and the mechanism of not only understanding our own process, but also controlling and directing it as we see fit. Armed with the Devil’s Picture Book, and knowing the secret of the cycle of transformative initiation, we are able to understand, know and direct ourselves towards the most inspirational and profound level of being possible to us. All we need to do is to apply this archetypal cycle to our own process, through divination and through applied theurgy, and the very process of spiritual ascension becomes our immediate and most valuable possession. Of course, building up these tools and deliberately using them to foster transformational initiation is not an easy task, and it is one that few either know or fully comprehend. In some ways, it is a very simple matter to develop a system of magick that causes progressive transformation, yet it is a practice that requires time, patience, deep inner insights, dogged persistence, and something more important than anything else, a rapport with one’s higher self.

Transformative initiation is nothing more or less than the activation and periodic use of the temple of the mysteries, and in this special case, the Mystery of the Self. There are the mysteries of the moon and the sun, and there is also the mystery of the self. The archetypal cycle of light and darkness is also found deep within the psyche, and it is the key to progressive transformation. However, there are other components to this kind of working, and these are the typical ritual structures associated with the mystery rite. As in the mystery temple of the moon and the sun, the mystery temple of the self is performed within the sacred space of a consecrated circle, and activated through the ritual power structures of the spiral vortex, double gateway, cross-roads and the inner circle. Yet within that inner circle are imprinted the twenty-two stages of the transformative initiation, arrayed in the sequence in which they are to be experienced. There are certain signs, portends and preparations that must be noted before the mystikon of the self is erected, but once engaged, the process must be fully experienced, from beginning to end, without interruption. The alignment of the Deity is an important aspect to this process, but then so is the pattern itself, starting with the underworld gateway, and ending with the gateway of ascension. The combination of these two attributes, the activated Godhead, and the pattern which leads to ascension, ensures that the transformative process, however difficult, will be progressive and foster spiritual evolution.

One other important factor is the attitude of the seeker, since sentiments can skew the process in one direction or another. Thus it is important for the seeker to be positive, to act as an unmitigated optimist buoyed by a belief (even if it is ridiculously false) that everything that happens is meant to happen as fate, and that one’s ultimate objective in life will be achieved, as if aided by all of the powers of the universe. This ambitious and powerfully inspired way of living life is encouraged by a constant activity of self improvement, education, meeting and exceeding expectations, seeking challenges, and forever striving for excellence. One of the ways that the seeker can achieve this buoyant state of mind is to periodically commune with his or her chosen Godhead. In that communion, the seeker obtains secret knowledge, self affirmation and empowerment. To live in the aura of the Godhead is to know the power and majesty of living a charmed life. Another name for it is “serendipity.” If and when the seeker is able to obtain this empowered sentiment, and maintain it no matter what happens, then he or she will ultimately realize perfect union and the exalted apotheosis of the grace and favor of the Godhead. It is the Godhead that lies at the center of the mystery of the self, reflecting as if through a mirror darkly, the visage of the individual mortal human being.

The core of the mystery of the self is one’s relationship with the sponsor Deity, that aspect of the Godhead that most closely represents the magician’s higher self. That relationship begins with a certain attraction and fascination to a specific cultural pantheon, and over time it starts to focus on one specific Deity within that pantheon. The magician begins to personalize the Deity, and establishes a devotional relationship with it. If the Deity reflects an idealized polarized mate, then there is also an element of love and desire blended into the devotion. Otherwise, the Deity can assume a Godhead reflection of the magician, becoming, over time, the perfect representative of the magician’s higher self. We have already covered in extensive detail the nature of the magician’s personal Cult of the Deity, where he or she is the priest, spiritual mediator and the congregation, all as one. As this relationship becomes ever more important, the image and character of the Deity begins to be assimilated by the magician.

Therefore, the core of the mystery of the self are the various operations and rites that establish an alignment with a specific Deity, and develop it within the mind and soul of the magician until it becomes coexistent with the Higher Self. The rites and techniques of building and maintaining a potent relationship with one’s sponsor Deity have already been discussed, but that list is simplistic and quite obvious. Alignment with a Godhead is established through the artifice of the following practices.

Devotions and various cultic practices (meditative contemplation upon the beloved Deity),
Oblations, offerings and sacrifices,
Invocations, orisons and paeans,
Communion (sacred food and drink - sacramentation),
Godhead assumption (can include sacred sexuality).

Spiritual service should also be included in this list, since the personal cult of the Godhead maintained by the magician also requires him or her to be an active spiritual force in the community at large. To function as a priest/ess requires the ability and periodic necessity of mediating and channeling the Deity for the benefit of others.

Of all of these practices, the rite of Godhead Assumption is the most important, since it forges a potent, intimate and direct relationship between the magician and the target Deity. Over time this practice will cause a blending of the Deity with the personality, mind and soul of the magician, until the distance between them becomes ever more diminished. The reason that this rite is so important is that it reveals the Godhead as an image of the macrocosmic self, the self as godhead. Godhead assumption assists the magician to realizing his or her inner deity, which is the key to awakening and becoming conscious of one’s higher self. Later on, this simplified rite assumes a more complex configuration, as found in the rites of the Bornless One invocation, the Lunar Abramelin ordeal, and the Talismanic Portae Lucis working.

Ritual magick, by definition, specifies that the magician performs magickal rites while under the assumption of the Godhead, and this done even in the most simplistic and earth-based magickal workings. Not only does this kind of innate assumption exercise protect the magician from any adverse impact, psychic attack or hostile aggression from some spirit, but it also empowers and instructs the magician each time he or she performs an assumption. Thus, in this manner, all magick becomes a form of theurgy, since every magickal operation is done through the assumption of the Godhead. It is this constant immersion within the aegis of the Deity that the magician also achieves strategic and progressive triggers for transformative initiations. Also, by performing ritual magickal ordeals, the magician undergoes certain incremental challenges and is forced to evolve, grow and to learn about the techniques of magick; but also the very process itself reveals many inner psychic structures as well. The overall effect of this kind of theurgic ordeal based magick is to consistently and potently pull the triggers of one’s own inner process of spiritual evolution.

Magickal ordeals also cause one to experience the domain of magick and all of its spiritual entities, Godhead attributes, powers, and the associated visions, insights and profound phenomenal apparitions. The magician is powerfully influenced on all levels of his or her being through the theurgic ordeals that the magician is performing. These visions, insights and apparitions are written down in the magician’s journal, and then they become the intense subject of meditation, contemplation, research and mystical speculation. Through a combination of known spiritual and mystical lore, as determined by study and research, aiding one to examine and make sense out of various magickal experiences, the magician will learn new things about his or her deeper self as well as develop new magickal lore. One important tool that is used in this process of examination and analysis is the Power of Allegory, where certain motifs or symbolic constructs experienced in a magickal working are used in a contemplation session. It is through contemplation where symbols and constructs are given free reign in regards to cognitive associations and even projected fantasy.

All of these elements are a crucial part of the practice of the ritual magician, but one element is of even more critical importance, and that is establishing a spiritual discipline. A spiritual discipline consists of the iterative and periodic practices, where all of the above rites and forms are performed in daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal variations. These various practices must be performed on a regular basis so that they become embodied in the mind and soul of the magician. In time, a spiritual discipline becomes the very foundation of life itself for the magician, and there is a blending of the mundane aspects of life along with the spiritual, until eventually, they become one and the same.

We have covered the elements of a magickal and spiritual discipline, and you can find that article here. However, while all of the above rituals are important, practicing them in an iterative and cyclic manner, diligently and consistently without fail, is the true key to acquiring the ability to control and direct transformative initiation. By assiduously adhering to a magickal discipline, a magician is all but guaranteed to experience a series of profoundly meaningful, significant and progressive transformative changes. Through the power of the spiritual discipline, all things become possible for the magician to contemplate and achieve.

Frater Barrabbas

Sex Magick Made Simple

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:33:00 +0000

One of the most abused and controversial topics in the area of ritual and ceremonial magick is the art of sex magick. It would seem that anything having to do with sex is somehow a hot topic, and if you mix it up with magick and the occult, then it will automatically produce a heady brew. Right? Well, maybe not so much.

What I found over the years is that some individuals who talk a lot about sex magick and pose as sex magicians are fairly incompetent at both. In my perspective, if a magician is competent as a magician and also happens to be a competent lover, then he or she might consider joining the two practices. Of course, unless the objective is to perform what is known as the “rites of solitude” ( a form of magickal masturbation), then the target partner in this work must also be magically and sexually competent.

So it really takes two magically and sexually competent individuals, who also happen to have a strong relationship bond, to produce a good, solid, sexual magickal working. Anything below this standard is either just gratuitous sexual occultism or likely to go very much awry if consistently practiced. If you want to experience the worst that this combination has to offer, all you need to do is to be severely lacking of any of these requirements. There’s a reason why the Great Rite has often produced something more akin to the Great Wrong - I leave the rest to your imagination.

In a nutshell, the fundamental requirements for sex magick are:

Magickal competence,
Sexual competence,
A good solid relationship.

I know that Crowley boasted that he could work effective sex magick with any two-bit hooker he happened to meet. Yet I believe that having a good partner is an important key to truly experiencing a long lasting, profound, deeply meaningful and satisfactory sexual magickal practice,. You might disagree with me, and you are free to experiment however you choose. My own personal experience is that it is better to engage in such activities with someone to whom you have a strong relationship, rather than engaging with an appealing stranger who might know very little about either magick or even sex. To assume that everyone knows how to adequately perform sex and be a good lover is highly naive, to say the least. It’s almost as naive as to assume that everyone knows how to work magick.

Another important factor in the art of sex magick is to discover the great lover within oneself. This is a difficult concept to relate, but we all have within us an aspect or attribute of our own potential desires and sexual aspirations. There’s an old saying that if you can’t find something within yourself, then you aren’t likely to find it outside of yourself either. This is particularly true about finding and engaging in any kind of spiritually qualified love. It is a state that is found within the deepest recesses of your being, and it is the essential “you” as the ultimate lover. That lover within is a lover first and foremost of one’s self, then other people and ultimately, of life itself. It is the trigger of personal ecstasy, and in order for it to be discovered, you have to come to grips with your own self. In other words, you must love yourself fully and completely before you are able to really love anyone else. What this means is that in order to be an effective lover, you must be whole and also an autonomous individual. Loving for the sake of filling a void within yourself is one of the weakest reasons for loving someone. Obviously, self loathing and feelings of being unloved or being unlovable are extremely counter productive to discovering the lover within.

I am also not talking about any kind of obsessive self-love, or as it is called, narcissism. What I am talking about is freely loving who you are and what you are without rejecting anyone or anything else from that equation. Discovering the lover within is to learn that life’s decisions about love should never be discriminating, exclusive, rejecting or having to choose one person or path over another. It’s about the concept of inclusion and not exclusivity. Although that kind of openness is quite difficult to realize in life, you should always understand that who you are, what you are, and who you are with are all products of your choices, whether deliberately made or even coerced by necessity.

Narcissism is excluding everyone from the possibility of affection except yourself, usually because of some innate fear of rejection or even paradoxically, low self esteem. This contrasts with self-love, which is the state of being wholly and completely inclusive of everyone and everything. Self-love, or the lover within, is the core root of the powerful love instinct brought to its highest level of spiritual embodiment. Of course, the lover within is also an attribute of the resident (and often slumbering) higher self, and it represents the ray of love that permeates all things; from the Godhead down to the smallest aspect of beingness. Love holds everything together in a synergistic embrace, and it is the essential quality that should be emulated when one seeks to engage in sacral sexuality.

This brings us to the next important consideration in regards to sex magick, and that is the difference between sacred and profane sexuality. Sex magick must, by definition, be that kind of union that occurs within sacred sexuality. I believe this, even though much of what passes for sex magick would be considered profane sexuality. In my opinion, there is a difference between sexually manipulating and using someone (even willingly) to produce a specific material end through the use of magick than the joining of two individuals from the level of spirit down to their very bodies. If perfect union emulates the One, then sexually using someone is just the opposite. Sexual coercion within a magickal context is something that I consider to be quite negative, perhaps even vile, and it could even be labeled as a form of psychic vampirism.

Sacred sexuality is where the sex act is ritually performed in sacred space between two freely loving and whole individuals who have brought out their inner lovers and seek to bond at the highest level possible. Thus, they have activated their inner deities, and it is through them that they will perfectly and ecstatically join together in emulation of the One. During this profound and powerful union, the operators may engage in projecting mutual desires into the world of forms, and thus, through the power of ecstasy, potently impact them.

For a very simple and uncomplicated approach to sex magick, devoid of all of the eastern and western esoteric methodologies and intricately detailed mechanisms, there are nine basic elements involved in a practice of sex magick. Like any other methodology, once the basics are mastered, then the practice may evolve, incorporating other techniques, systems and methodologies as needed. Yet for the aspiring Pagan or Wiccan sex magician, I will focus on just the most basic elements involving these techniques.

Sacred Space - This can be a specific room where the operation is to be performed. It should be private, clean, uncluttered and be able to accommodate sexual activity, so having some kind of floor padding (a bed, couch or futon) would be appropriate. Also, building a simple shrine to the specific godhead of each participant, as well as equipping it with flowers, incense, soft lighting, music, beautiful pictures, and whatever else is needed.

Sacral Nudity - The mind-set that is recommended for this activity is to perceive the act of disrobing and being nude together as something akin to revealing the body (and the deeper self) without any obstacles, conditions or impediments to being fully accessible to one another. It is a state of mutual vulnerability. Decorating the body (body painting), sensual bathing, massage, anointing with oils and balms are all important preparatory rites for sex magick. The idea behind this state is that there should be no barriers between oneself, the Gods and one’s partner. This state should be comfortable, and also even a bit awe inspiring by itself.

Spiritual Devotion (surrender) - Another preparation for sex magic is to become aligned with not only your personal aspect of the godhead, but also with your partner’s godhead. You should learn to see your partner as the deity that they aspire to be, thus aiding them in realizing this ambition. Days should be spent giving devotion to each of these two elected deities with periodic offerings, invocations, paeans, hymns, love poetry and even spiritual service in the community. Not only should you try to realize your own personal godhead, but you should also realize the godhead of your partner. In this manner, over time, you will experience a profound sacralization of your love for yourself and your partner. In your eyes, your partner should begin to assume an idealized form, as if they have been physically transformed. While you are doing these things to your partner, your partner is also doing the same to you.

Mutual Godhead Assumption - The goal of this practice is to realize through godhead assumption your own materialization of the deity, as well as that of your partner. In order to accomplish this task, you will have to undertake a regular period of meditation, breath-control, mantra intoning, and staring fixedly at some object or image. This meditation session is performed with your partner, and the object of your fixed gaze should be him or her. Also, focusing on specific points on your body while performing a mantra intonation, you should be able to activate that point, and then link it with the same point on your partner’s body. Thus, erogenous zones are powerfully stimulated and awakened. Polarization is also an important factor, regardless of whether the couple performing the work is straight or gay. One of the couple will assume the more passive and receiving role, and the other, the more aggressive and sending role. The ultimate practice should be performing the drawing down rite on your partner, and then having him or her do the same for you. Basking in this aura of mutual godhead assumption will establish the threshold state needed to engage in sacral sexuality.

Sacramentation - The key to this concept is that everything which is blessed and associated with the Gods is a sacrament. Once within the state of godhead assumption, then blowing one’s breath, making signs before it, and touching it with the hands will bestow on that thing the essence of the Deity. In this manner, all substances, such as food, drink, perfumed oils and balms, lotions, elixirs and even drugs, once blessed and imbued with Spirit, become literally, sacred substances. Once blessed and transformed, these substances are used or consumed by the participants, which in this case is the couple performing the work.

Sacred Sexuality - These are the ritualized stages and phases of sexual and coital union between the properly prepared partners. While it isn’t necessary to learn all of the variations of love making, postures and techniques, it is important to approach this act with the highest degree of reverence possible. Every touch, every step of seduction, and every act of love and devotion to one’s partner is a highly charged ritualized act. It should be approached outwardly in a relaxed and even languorous manner in the beginning, so that every sense is super stimulated, and that the lovers experience everything to the fullest measure possible. Basic postures should vary, of course, based on what one is capable of doing without injury or excessive physical strain. Once physical union is established, then the triggers of excitement, rapture and finally, ecstasy, can be released and fully engaged. But the whole point of this work is to control the body and mind, and allow this process to gradually achieve its end while fully engaging all of the senses as well as the mind and the emotions. The goal is to accomplish a kind of mutual orgasm.

Mutual Intent - The whole purpose and intent of this work are the mutual objectives that the couple are seeking to realize in the material plane. It is projected from the state of mutual orgasm, which can give it a greater possibility for manifestation than through any other kind of magick. The desires that make up this mutual intent must be as heartfelt and energized for each of the participants. The mutual intent should be something that the couple focuses on as they undergo this whole process of sex magick. As an added boost, the mutual intent can be conceptualized as a sigil, drawn or painted on parchment or some other appropriate medium, and then charged and blessed as a sacrament. The sigil can be stared at by both participants as they achieve orgasm, projecting a powerful vector of force through the sigil into the material world.

Mutual Orgasm - The ultimate object for sex magick is for the participating couple to experience some kind of mutual orgasm. For this reason, the masculine impulse for quick ejaculation is tempered so that it may occur when the feminine orgasm occurs. Of course, if the sex magick is performed between same sex couples, then the equation for mutual orgasm becomes more easily realized. Orgasm represents the release of energies, the occurrence of ecstasy, and the ensuing visionary languor that follows. It is at that moment of mutual orgasm that the couple project their desires as the mutual intent into the material world through the waves of ecstasy.

Spiral Vortex and Cone of Power - In previous writings I have compared the male sexual orgasmic cycle to the energy structure known as the Cone of Power. I have also compared the feminine sexual orgasmic cycle to the energy structure of the Spiral Vortex. In sex magick, both of these energy structures are superimposed and fused into a single expression, which is the double cone of power. Where the spiral vortex is magnetic, the cone of power is electric. I would also assume that the mental state of the participants would also produce a different polarized kind of energy field, where the passive receiving role would assume a magnetic spiral vortex, and the active sending role would assume an electric cone of power. Therefore, these combined energy structures would approximate the roles of those engaging in sex magick, regardless of their actual gender.

These nine topics represent a simple and direct way for a couple to engage in sex magick. Yet in looking over these nine sections, you can see that my approach uses a combination of pagan religious devotion along with simple techniques of ritualized sexuality and a developed mutual intention. It is the sacralization of sexuality along with the binding of mutual intentions (accompanied by mutual orgasm) that characterizes this approach to sex magick. I found that using what I had already learned and mastered as a pagan and a witch was the simplest and most efficient way of performing sex magick. There are many ways to solve any given human puzzle, and my methods are just one of many to developing a simple methodology for working sex magick.

Frater Barrabbas

Lunar Mystery Ritual Working

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sat, 12 May 2012 14:49:00 +0000

Since all of the elements that are required to build up a lunar mystery ritual working have already been covered in detail (in this blog), we can now show how they can be assembled to produce a ritual magickal system that can utilize the power and mystery of the moon to produce qualified changes in the magician’s material world. After all, this is one of the purposes of learning and mastering all of these elements - to become proficient in changing the material world through magick. As I have stated previously, the moon and its cycle is the key to making effective magickal changes in the material world. Certainly, you can work magick and ignore the moon altogether, since nothing should interfere with the ability to work magick whenever it’s needed. However, what I have found out over the many years of practicing magick is that focusing on the moon will insure that magickally established changes will be more profound and lasting when the phases of the moon are incorporated.

So, what are the elements that are needed to build a lunar mystery ritual working? I have said that we have already covered them in previous articles, but perhaps a review is in order so you can refresh your mind about what I have already covered. If we list the elements, it will become patently clear what those items are, and I can reference the appropriate links so you may revisit them if required. Coincidently, there are seven topical elements that are required to build a lunar mystery ritual working. These elements are:

Sacred Space and Circle Consecration,
Spiral Vortex - Power Base for the Lunar Mystery rite,
Double Gateway (Western - Underworld Gate, and Eastern - Ascension Gate),
Pyramid of Power - Power Base for Spell Casting via Sigil Magick,
Forty Qualified Powers - Energy Signature selections for the Pyramid of Power,
Sigil Magick is the method for deploying the Operant Link,
Lunation Cycle and the Phases of the Moon.

These seven elements represent the essential components of the magick of the lunar mystery, although the real trick is to be able to weave them together into an elegant and concise ritual working. That, of course, is the subject of this article. Essentially, there are two aspects to this kind of working, that of the lunar mystery working, and that of a specific working to effect a change in the material world. These two workings are merged together to formulate a series of three ritual workings, to be performed between the advent of the New Moon and occurrence of the Full Moon. You could perceive these three workings as representing three different phases of a larger overall working consisting of 1.) setting the foundation, 2.) projecting the desire, and 3.) celebrating its climactic release. The three phases characterize the methodology of this kind of magickal working, and it is based on a more simpler pattern incorporated in some witchcraft traditions.

This kind of ritual working series would be impossible to perform without the innate qualities and capabilities of the spiral vortex. Unlike a simple working incorporating a cone of power, the vortex allows for the seamless re-entering of a magickal power structure so as to increase and amplify its influence. This kind of activity is incapable of being done except through the artifice of the spiral vortex, which allows for the sealing and unsealing of power structures, and to avoid the necessity of performing banishing rites and building up the magick from scratch. Instead, there is a certain continuity to the overall working, even though it is split into three separate working sessions. These separate working sessions incorporate the of Law of Three, which is the initial establishment of the power structure, the full empowerment and the final exteriorization. A full working of this type also incorporates the capabilities of sigil magick, where that sigil becomes the operant link for the overall working.

The environment for this overall working is the lunar mystery cycle, which has already been discussed. This environment is established by rituals that would normally be used to penetrate the lunar mystery, which is that constant monthly variable of light and darkness, and its association with all living things. To recap that ritual pattern, let me list the steps that would be used in performing a lunar mystery working.

1. Establishing Sacred Space.

2. Erecting a spiral vortex - the energy field that most “resembles” the sealed container of a telesterion is a vortex. The vortex has the properties of amplifying and isolated all energies and actions performed within it. This makes the perfect foundation for performing a mystery.

3. Underworld Gateway - a western aligned gateway establishes the internal transition of the isolated chamber of the mysteries, and draws it deeper into the spectral unconscious domain of the underworld.

4. Erect the cross-roads - a four or eight node cross-roads establish a powerful nexus point where all forces and aspects of Spirit may descend or ascend. The four or eight nodes can be qualified to represent the specific nature of the mystery, whether Lunar, Solar or Self.

5. Establish an inner circle - overlaying the cross-roads is an inner circle, representing the place of the interstice where Spirit resides and where one may actively engage with it. The inner circle is drawn and then opened like a gateway portal.

6. Introit of the Mystery - the preliminary rites that are performed just prior to the activation of the mystery rite are as follows:

Erection and veneration of the World Pole (Stang): The celebrant places a special sacral staff or Stang in the center of the circle, acting as a conduit between all worlds. The staff or Stang may be set up to stand by itself, or it may be held by the celebrant or an accomplice.

Godhead invocation, assumption and sacral consecration: This is where the celebrant summons the specific godhead associated with the mystery, then performs an assumption rite so the spirit of the godhead and the celebrant are merged. Yet the celebrant is still conscious and able to function (at least at this point in the working). Sacraments associated with the mystery are blessed and charged by the celebrant. (A more serious offering can be vowed at this point, with an initial partial payment showing that one’s intention is good.)

7. Mythic Theme - the mythic theme is presented as a narration, with symbols and fetishes used to emphasize the theme of the mystery. Once the theme has been fully presented and completely experienced, then the special sacramental food and drink are shared (this is the last thing that is done). Of course, in the case of a lunar mystery rite, the mythic theme would revolve around the eight point lunation cycle and the four lunar phases. Each of these points and phases would have a specific spiritual and magickal significance.

8. Inner circle is closed, sealed, then the four or eight nodes of the crossroads are sealed with sealing spirals. Then an eastern gateway is opened and the Celebrant, along with accomplices, ascend out of the chamber of the mysteries and into a new dawn of rebirth and restoration, passing the eastern gateway much like the rising of the sun. (The western gateway points are sealed just before the eastern gateway is established.)- This is, of course, the double gateway representing the full cycle of descent and ascent.

9. An outer feast is assembled, where food and drink are blessed and shared. A portion of this feast is given as an offering to the godhead associated with the mystery. The rite is concluded.

***

Considering that this lunar mystery rite is rather long, and focused exclusively on the lunar mystery itself, variations on this pattern would have to be developed to incorporate a specific working to project a wave of change into the material world. That pattern would incorporate the pyramid of power rite, using one of the forty qualified powers and a sigilized link, and it would look like the following ritual structure. The only qualification that this ritual would have is that it would be performed within sacred space (i.e., a consecrated circle).

Ritual Pattern: (Consists of establishing the power base, summoning the qualified power, and releasing the qualified power.)

Establishing the Power Base:

1. Statement of Purpose

2. Setting the Five points of the magick circle, in a deosil progression (Angles and Ultra-point) with the base element to the four Angles and Spirit Masculine to the Ultrapoint, using the invoking Pentagram device.

3. Drawing together the lines of force of the five points, using the sword to create the geometric pattern of the Pyramid.

Summoning the Qualified Power:

1. Circumambulation spiral deosil to the center of the magick circle, with three revolutions (walking the spiral), and resonance of the charged field.

2. Centering power through the Self (Mesopoint) with the power chant.

3. Charging the Magickal Link. Summoning the Qualified Power (qualifying the base energy).

Releasing the Qualified Power:

1. Exteriorization – circumambulate spiral three times widdershins, starting in the center and proceeding to the outer periphery of the circle, using extreme resonance with a releasing power chant.

***

These two patterns, the lunary mystery and the pyramid of power, can be used together to formulate the lunar mystery working in three parts. What this means is that the first and last part of the working will focus on the lunar mystery rite and the lunation types of the moon of the first crescent and the full, while the middle rite (occurring as the moon is waxing gibbous) would be focused on generating and projecting the energy of the spell. Positioning these three workings in this manner creates a kind of wrapper for the overall working, and ensures that the power of the moon is the foundation for the projected spell.

This second or middle working, then, would have a slightly different ritual pattern than the lunar mystery rite proper, incorporating in its core the pyramid of power ritual. How this is accomplished is to remove the typical focus of the ritual and replace it with the pyramid of power working. I would imagine this working to be succinctly shown in the following list of steps.

1. Perform the mystery working, from step 1 to step 5, where the inner circle is established within the cross-roads.

2. Declare the intention and unveil the sigil - then perform an intense focused meditation on the sigil. (The sigil is then charged with the operator’s breath, incense and making appropriate signs over it.)

3. Perform a brief (and shallow) godhead assumption. (All workings within ritual magick engage one’s personal deity, and through it, to perform the magickal operation.)

4. Perform the Pyramid of Power working within the gateway, cross-roads and inner circle ritual structure. (This includes all of the steps associated with establishing the power base, summoning the Qualified Power, and then, releasing it through a process of exteriorization.

5. Close inner circle and Western gateway with sealing spirals.

6. Erect, open and enter the Eastern gateway (ascension) to fully realize the specific working.

So that is the ritual pattern for the middle working, where the actual empowered spell is released into the material world. However, that act of releasing is done as the moon is powerfully waxing, and when the full moon occurs, the empowered spell is fully realized, imprinted as it is with the temporal footprint of the lunar cycle and the season of the sun. These three rites focus and raise the inherent transformative powers of the moon, intertwining them with the empowered spell, and ensuring that what has been intended becomes imprinted into the material reality of the operator.

In my opinion, there is no more potent combination of magickal workings than an empowered spell integrated into a focused realization of the waxing cycle of the moon. A magician could generate a talisman or even evoke a goetic demon, but that would be far more elaborate and involved than this simple methodology. It is made more complex by the fact that the lunar cycle is integrated into it, but that only assists it in becoming a manifested quality associated with the magician’s temporal domain.

As I have said previously, you don’t have to integrate your working with the lunar cycle, but doing so will produce a much more profound and long term effect.

Examples of these specific rituals can be found in either of my two books, “Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick,” or “Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick - Grimoire.” I not only discuss the mechanisms of these rituals, but give a very pertinent example of how they might look. In the “Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick” series, I present rituals that require customization, allowing the magician to formulate a body of rituals that represent his or her own personal system of ritual magick.

Frater Barrabbas

Portae Lucis Report and Other Matters

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:56:00 +0000

It’s been over a week since I last posted an article to this blog, and I must say that I have been very busy with my job, not to mention completing the final revisions for my book and doing many other things that seem to fill my day to overflowing. Luckily, things are starting to wind down somewhat, and I can start catching up with my articles. I have quite a few planned for the next month or so, but I just haven’t had any time to write them up. So it will take a few days before I can get some of these new articles completed.

As for the revisions to my manuscript and forth-coming Llewellyn book “Magical Qabalah for Beginners,” I just completed the last changes and considerations for the revision task. The manuscript will be soon transmitted to the production team and begin to be formatted and laid out for printing. There’s nothing for me to do at the moment, which is a relief, since the revision process took me a lot longer than I thought it would. What I need to do now is to find other authors who would like to examine the manuscript and write up a recommendation for it. I have some ideas, but if any of my readers are published authors and would like to spend some time going over the manuscript, just send me a private email. The publishing date is still scheduled for March 2013.

The Talismanic Portae Lucis working is now at the point where I have generated the three four-fold elemental talismans of Saturn, the Sun and the Moon. (I am enclosing a picture of what they look like, just so you know that I am not promoting a fiction.) Producing these three talismans has been an arduous process, to say the least. Now that the temperatures are warming up and the days are getting longer, I am feeling a certain amount of anticipation, as the date of the final working is approaching. On the last day of May, I will generate the talisman that is representative of myself and my magick, and that will be a four-fold elemental talisman of Mercury. I will also seek to perform a full invocation of the Demigod, Hermes Thoth, who I have chosen to act as my sponsor for this working. Dates for the final Portae Lucis are presently scheduled to occur between June 17th and the 19th. Some of the work will be done in my outdoor grove, and some of it will be performed within my temple. Having the flexibility to be able to work both indoors and outdoors is one of the benefits of having a house in the country. I will need to prepare the grove, since I haven’t had any time to do this task. It has also been raining nearly every other day, so the weather hasn’t been cooperating either.

Anyway, I am on target and within my appointed schedule to bring this working to a final and powerful climax. So I am eagerly looking forward to seeing the final elements of this working completed and the vista of a straight path from Yesod to Binah open up and reveal itself to me. I will produce edited versions of my journal entries for all of these workings, so that I might share with you mostly everything that happens, and verify that a talismanic version of this working is both valid and capable of producing the desired effects.

Frater Barrabbas

Third Talismanic Working for the Portae Lucis

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:42:00 +0000

On Monday evening I performed the third talismanic working for the Talismanic Portae Lucis Ordeal. Once again, I was put through some pretty difficult trials, and this time I recognized those issues as being negative attributes of Saturn. After realizing this fact, I was able to find a similar series of negative attributes that I have had to experience for each one of the four-fold planetary talismans. This might be considered very subjective or even something of a stretch, but for each of the four-fold talismans of the Sun, Moon and Saturn, I have experienced the negative qualities of those three planets. Allow me to explain what I mean by making this claim.

Just prior to working the first talismanic rite for the four-fold elemental talisman of the Sun, I came down with a really serious stomach flu virus. I was very ill for 48 hours, and barely recovered when I had to perform the rite at the last possible date to incorporate the lunar mansion during the waxing moon. I would equate the stomach flu to a solar type influence, due to the fact that the point in my body that was most afflicted was the solar plexus. I even pulled a muscle in my side and I had to individually treat it so that I would be able to perform the ritual working.

Then, as I was preparing to do the second talismanic rite for the four-fold elemental talisman of the Moon, I found myself in the situation of great difficulty in regards to acquiring the silver disk and preparing it for the work. The disk finally arrived with less than two days before I needed it, and my attempts to fabricate a disk met with failure, not to mention a bloody cut to my hand. Issues of trust, communication, fear of failure and self-wounding characterized this working. I would place this list of difficulties as negative attributes of the moon.

Finally, exactly a week before I was to do the third talismanic rite for the four-fold elemental talisman of Saturn, I experienced the tragic death of one of our beloved cats. I got to taste the full range of negative attributes of Saturn with the dramatic passing of Stars, and that was death, loss, grief, sorrow and melancholia. It almost seems like I had to undergo this terrible minor tragedy as part of the Talismanic Portae Lucis Ordeal. I hope that this will be an end of the tests and obstacles at least between now and when I actually perform the final rites for this ordeal. It would seem that I have had to pay a price to successfully complete this working, and such a price leaves me wondering what might have happened if I hadn’t decided on taking on this ordeal. That’s pure speculation, of course; but because I am engaged with this working, then what happens prior and during the individual workings becomes significant and meaningful to me.

Not to be outdone for the occurrence of Saturn, I will have to direct a lot of my efforts this week in doing some extensive trimming on my submitted revised manuscript for Llewellyn (Magical Qabalah for Beginners). It would seem that the extensive revision work that I did has ballooned the size the manuscript, and now I will need to scale it back in order to get it in scope for what is, essentially, a beginner’s book. I know that I am not a gifted writer, and that I tend to overwrite and over develop a theme when I am composing. I just can't say anything in twenty words or less, and I supposed that I will need to take this to heart in order to complete the next phase of revisions. All of this weighed heavily on my soul as I prepared to perform the working on Monday evening.

All of the preparations, which included the creation of the five sigils, the etching of the lead talisman with the sigil of the angelic ruler of the lunar mansion, and the various other preparations were all done during the lunar mansion of Al Sarfah. I had postponed doing any of this work until the very day of the working because I wanted everything to be achieved during the period of that lunar mansion. I felt that it would make the working even more imbued with all of the qualities of that mansion. The pall of Saturn was on my spirit, though, and I felt the overwhelming aspects of my job, magickal commitments and literary commitments weigh me down. If I let my emotions get the better of me, I would feel as though I were being crushed by everything that needed to be done. I felt that I needed to start making lists and doggedly going through them. Making a list allows you to prioritize and engage with the things that need to be done first, and eventually, everything on the list gets done. Of course, it’s a good idea to cut back on making more commitments so the list remains manageable. While meditating, I received some insights on how I could put together a small workshop to be presented at one or two of the local occult book stores. I want to focus on the ritual structures of the vortex and the double gateway, and present them with the concept of building up a mystikon. I will think more about this in the future, since I have more than enough to do now.

The working was started right around 9:02 pm as the planetary hour of Saturn clicked into place, and I completed the circle consecration and the Mass in good time. I felt invigorated and impelled to complete what had been started. So I focused on the work and managed to perform all of the rituals without any significant misstep or issue. As I performed these rites, I felt that I was generating a very heavy, potent and highly charged energy - it seemed to match the qualities that I would have expected for Saturn. At the end of the ritual, I felt buoyed and elated, which helped me to overcome my feelings of being overwhelmed by everything that I had to do. I sensed that it was more important to be busy than not, and that the large amount of work would assist me in getting through these difficult times. I completed the working around 10:15 pm, and left the talisman covered by a cloth to begin the incubation period of three days. I had luckily found a vial of Dragon’s Blood oil and used that to anoint the back of the talisman. So the stacked sigils, the velvet carrying pouch, the anointed talisman and a covering cloth all sat in the center of the septagram trigon on the central altar, lit by a vigil candle. I will retrieve the talisman and burn the sigils on Saturday morning, when I will then have the three required talismans to perform the Portae Lucis ordeal in June.

My next planned working in this ordeal is to generate a Mercury talisman on May 31. Then, I will prepare myself for the Talismanic Portae Lucis ordeal, which will begin on June 17. We are getting closer to the launch date, and so far, this ordeal has been quite difficult to accomplish. It seems like there is always something happening that could (if I allowed it) thwart or deflect my attempt to complete this ordeal. I am hoping that things will get easier once I get closer to the final target date, but I seriously doubt it. It’s more likely that there will be more challenges and issues to deal with as the final date gets closer.

Frater Barrabbas

Passing of a Beloved Fury Friend

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Stars - the Fireball Magical Cat

Last Saturday my girlfriend and I got back from a three day visit to see my father in Sun City, Arizona. He is now into his mid eighties, and with the recent passing of my mother, I felt he needed some company. My girlfriend, Grace, had never seen my father’s home, so we flew out there for a short trip. We left three of our cats in the house with plenty of food and clean cat boxes. They have a cat door to the house, so they’re free to come and go as they please. We have four cats, but one is ailing and needed to be put up with the dog while we were gone. I thought that the cats would be fine, and we have left them home before without any problems. They are usually quite happy to see us when we return, but cats are so independent that I wondered if they even missed us.

Since I moved out to this oversized house in Minnesota, I have had the company of several cats. Some of them have gone (taken by their masters when they left) but for a while we had four furry cats and one dog to keep us company. I must admit that cats are very magickal, and I am quite taken with them. My favorite cat is Jynx, who follows me around like a dog and spends as much time as he can at my side or laying by my feet - even when I am writing up documents in my office. I have to say that I am really close to Jynx, and he is very close to me as well. But that’s not who this story is about (thankfully).

One of the other cats (brought here by Grace) has the name of Stars, and he has been the most interesting, amusing, crazy, wild and wooly all-black Maine Coon that I have ever met. Sometimes he was obnoxious, waking me up in the middle of the night while tearing around the house. Other times he was astonishingly funny, with his Halloween cat impressions, leaping straight into the air with arched back; and he had the habit of being a living dust mop, picking up any and all debris from the outside world. He would leave a trail of debris from the cat door into the house, along with tufts of his generous fur. (One of my nicknames for him was “Pigpen.”) Stars loved the outdoors, and he hated winter because it really cramped his style. He would run up a tree and hug it like a big black Koala bear in the middle of winter, and he liked to stalk and attack nearly everyone, zipping out from behind a tree or bushes during the summer, and then prancing away.

He fancied himself a hunter, yet rarely caught anything; but it was fun to watch him stalk a chipmunk or squirrel, only to be left far behind and staring up an empty tree. One time I was startled when I saw him perched at the very top of our house, three stories up, sitting on the very edge of a slanting roof, staring down at the world like some kind of gargoyle. He was always on the move, and when the days were warm, he seldom came indoors, choosing to spend his time basking in the sun or hunting throughout the neighborhood. He often was perched atop an old dilapidated hunting stand that was located on the edge of the woods, sleeping in the shade, with his big bushy tail going back and forth like a clock pendulum. Stars liked to hang out with the rabbits and seemed to make friends with lots of other critters - except for rodents. He even invited a stray cat to come and live with us, and then we had four instead of three cats. Stars' cat friend was named Faust, and they often were outside together, although, seldom actually together.

I can remember one time late at night going to the door to help Stars deal with something that had frightened him (a rare occurrence), and when I got to the door and turned on the porch light, there he was, corned by a pissed off possum. Luckily my presence spooked the possum and it took off, while Stars decided (for once) to come in for a while. (The look on his face was worth a million laughs.)

Another time he was treed due to something that had scared him during the night, and he managed to climb up (and then down) a tree that was around 50 feet tall. Stars made quite a racket on his way up the tree, so I was awakened and had to go and find out what was up. He was a veritable fireball and nothing ever seemed to phase him or slow him down. He was also totally fearless, insanely reckless, or at least until he ran into something that was a lot bigger than him. He had a very large outgoing personality, but he was also very affectionate when he felt like being that way. He would even attack our dog, slapping him a couple of times across the face with his claws and then running away - and our dog is a 70 pound Pitbull-Labrador combination. Grace and I would often come away with bloody scratches if we tried to pet him when he didn’t want to be petted. Other times, Grace would pick him up and cradle him in her arms like a baby, and he purringly loved every minute of it.

Stars was Grace’s cat, and he loved her more than anyone else. He was affectionate with me, and adored it when I took time to feed him some special food. His purr was loud and spasmodic, and his cry was like a soft rusty hinge. I wasn’t close to this cat, but he found many ways to show me that he loved and appreciated me, often rubbing up against my legs when I was walking the dog outside. Stars was FIV positive, so his life span was going to be short no matter what he did or how careful he was. Yet he wasn’t careful or cautious. He lived life in the fast lane and had no regrets for whatever befell him. Since winter disappeared early this year, he has had many more days of being outside during this period, and has made the most of it.

When we came home, we were greeted by two of our cats, and the next day, my girlfriend went and retrieved the other cat and our dog. However, Stars was missing. This wasn’t too surprising for us, since he was so often outside, but after the second day, we started to get concerned. Stars usually came home to stuff his face with food (he was a very messy eater) before going out again. As a sign of what was to come, before we had left, Stars had visited my girlfriend in the middle of the night and did his usual body walk and nose and facial licking exercise. That was a particular habit of his, and it didn’t matter if she needed to sleep or not. It was like getting a fish smelling facial with a purring accompaniment. However, during the two nights that we were home, Stars didn’t come to visit his mistress, so Grace was worried and so was I.

On Monday afternoon, Grace had some errands to run, and on her way back home stopped at the local vet office to see if maybe someone had dropped Stars off. He wasn’t there, of course, and on her way back home she spied something dark in the ditch by the side of the road nearly two blocks from our home. Normally she would have ignored it (it looked like a small pile of dirt), but this time, something urged her to stop and turn the car around and check it out. Alas, it was Stars laying there on his side. He had been dead for a couple of days, and the birds had taken his beautiful luminous green eyes. It was obvious that he had been hit by a car, maybe during the evening. Perhaps he was chasing something, or being chased by something, but it looked like his skull was heavily fractured. It had been raining for the last couple of days and it had been cool as well, so all traces of his last moments were washed away. She put his body in the car and drove him home, and then set him down in his favorite flower bed for a temporary respite.

After my phone conference for work was over, I went down to the yard to look over poor Star’s body. He was a sad sight, I must say. We had picked out a nice old purple pillow case to wrap him up in, and his favorite orange ball was placed in there beside him. I dug a deep hole in the sacred grove and we gently placed him into it. Grace said some words and put a few handfuls of earth on the cloth entombed kitty, and then I used the shovel to properly bury him. We then both embraced and bawled our eyes out after saying goodbye, and we are still feeling hurt and sad today. I never knew how much I loved that crazy cat until he was gone. He has left a big hole in our world, I suppose it was because he was one in a million.

We will create a more fitting memorial for Stars other than the stone that is covering his grave now, but I can’t seem to shake impressions that he is skulking around, waiting to pounce on something from out of the cover of some bushes. I have communed with his ghost (at least it seems that way), but he died the way he lived, a reckless fireball that was fearless and probably a little bit crazy, too. I think that he preferred to go out in a blaze of glory rather than what was awaiting him a few years in the future (since he was FIV positive), and maybe he knew that this life would be short. Anyway, he is now immortal and a permanent fixture of the ancestor spirits of the grove. I feel that he is now one of our guardians and will look after the house and grove when we go on another trip. I saw an image of him curled up and sleeping in the far end of the grove, near the statue of the Garden Nymph (where he is buried). He loved the outdoors, and now he never has to come back into the house ever again.

He was a very unique cat with an unusual personality. We will miss him greatly. May the Cat Goddess Bast assuage his cat-like soul.

Frater Barrabbas

A Very Busy Spring

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Looking at the calender, I am shocked by the fact that here it is nearly the end of April and I am deeply engaged with work, work and more work. I guess there’s no rest for the wicked, even though I haven’t even had any time to be wicked. The balmy days of March have become the nearly frigid days of April calends, even despite the flowers and leaves coming out early. It represents the peculiarity of the weather this far to the north. However, Beltain is coming, and following that, the celebration of May Day in the Twin Cities. This includes the madcap left-wing workers’ parade and the Heart of the Beast outdoor presentation. This year it will all take place on May 6, so perhaps the weather will have warmed up somewhat to make the occasion more enjoyable.

May Day is also when I must complete and turn in the revisions and resubmit my manuscript for the upcoming Llewellyn book “Magical Qabalah for Beginners.” I have added more text to certain strategic chapters to help make it more self explanatory and comprehensive, and I have also applied some of the new insights that I had when assembling my two classes on the Qabalah. Once I submit the manuscript with revisions, then it will be subjected to the more rigorous process of editing, where the manuscript will be refined, perfected and prepared for publication. The date when this book will be available is still Spring 2013, so I will inform you about the up-coming milestones, once they are achieved. Hopefully, I will have a more definitive printing date in the near future.

***

There has been quite a bit of hubbub on the Golden Dawn blogosphere, which seems to be typical of what has been occurring there as of late. The HOGD and A+O organizations are fighting a furious battle against obviously regressive reconstructive forces, which have been characterized by them as the McGoldenDawn. It brings to my mind the image of a kind of demented Ronald McGoldenDawn mindlessly and happily plugging his wares, along with the whole cohort of cartoon-like characters representing the varieties of fast-food occultism. We have been warned about this temptingly easy and cheap meal. It may temporarily fill you up, but in the long run, it will kill you with all sorts of industrial level diseases and malnutrition. I think that is a useful analogy about the current state of affairs. The additional revelation that the organization of SRIA (Societas Rosicruciana In Anglia, or the Soc Rose) is the godfather-like puppet master behind this conspiracy seems to make complete sense to me. Although, it also seems like a pathetically contrived conspiracy, since such a push against the A+O is doomed to failure. Also, those who are behind it don’t seem to be very intelligent or gifted.

However, I think that the overall motivating factor for individuals to attack the A+O is because they are terribly jealous and filled with a deadly envy. This is due to the fact that the A+O organization has a wealth of new materials that have never been published or revealed to the public, and they also have the trust and care of the secret chiefs. Thus they are blessed in a manner that no other Golden Dawn group has been blessed in the last century. So if David Griffin wishes to be overly dramatic, comical and passionate about the defense of his organization, then he has every right to be that way. Not being in his shoes, I don’t really know how I would react if I were in a similar situation. So to judge him harshly as some have done is to do the entire Golden Dawn a great disservice. (Just imagine yourself in his place, and ask yourself what would you do to protect the honor and integrity of the A+O?)

Just to give you an idea of how bankrupt certain reconstructionist groups have become, all you need to do is to compare them to myself and the humble little organization that I am helping to run. The Order of the Gnostic Star has a handful of members and a great wealth of ritual and liturgical lore. Most of this lore was designed and developed in directions and from sources that are not to be found in books or any other materials. In the library of the Order are a series of unique ritual systems consisting of hundreds of rituals and liturgical rites. Every year, more materials are being added to this foundation. How is that occurring?

First of all, the whole basis to our work is completely experiential, and the focus is mostly theurgic ordeals. We work our ritual magick to converse with spirits and aspects of Godhead within our spiritual hierarchy, and thereby discover new connections, new insights and new techniques. This new material is used to develop new lore, which in turn helps those who are using it to discover new insights. This process is self-feeding, producing a cycle of creativity that seems to be boundless. We obviously have some very dynamic inner plane connections that are powerfully active, making our tiny organization one that has a constantly evolving and growing foundation of lore.

Therefore, we are happy to keep our noses in our own business, and for the time being, seem to need nothing outside of that work to sustain us. Since we are gifted with this potent egregoric connection, we don’t spend any time grousing about other groups or declaring that this group or that is fraudulent. In fact, I am quite happy and satisfied with the progress that our own work is following, and I have discovered that it is often quite all-consuming. I don’t have time to be jealous of anyone else’s work, and I feel that someone like David Griffin is to be honored for what he is doing in regards to the lore of the A+O.

Since I have access to David, he does tell me some of the things that he is doing (or at least as much as he can considering that I am not under the Rose, as it were), and I don’t feel envious, jealous or spiteful. I am hoping that all of David’s work is a smashing success, since that will benefit many occultists and initiates following the Western Mystery tradition. He certainly doesn’t seem to be doing it to magnify or edify himself, so that makes him different than some of the other GD leaders whose opinions and diatribes I find myself constantly bombarded with whenever I search the internet. All of this reminds me of the way that Republican pundits declared that they wanted the newly elected president of the U.S. to fail, just because he wasn’t the leader of their party. If the president of our country is a failure, then we all suffer accordingly. I think that the same analogy can be used in examining how a number of pundits in the Golden Dawn community seek to vilify and disparage David Griffin and the A+O. Instead, we should wish him and his organization well, since it can only benefit everyone if he is successful.

David is very busy doing his work, which I might add is quite massive, and he has to interrupt that work to respond to the inanity and mendaciousness of those who are fighting against him and his organization. I can only wonder how much more he could accomplish if everyone just focused on their own work instead of seeking to glorify themselves as they attempt to uproot and demolish the very overall organization that they are supposed to be building and defending. They obviously have too much time on their hands, and they also seem to have a paucity of new lore and breakthrough insights. They are running on empty, since the Regardie Golden Dawn material is nearly exhausted in its capacity to enlighten or help determine self-mastery. Anyway, it all seems very simple to me, but then again, I have no stakes in the war of egos, but would see great merit in whatever new groundbreaking materials would become available to those of us who are initiates. I suspect that the one group who will truly amaze and astonish the western occult world in the near future will be the A+O, and not the overly glorified stooges of the McGoldenDawn franchises.

***

Very recently I saw a comment on one of my older blog articles about Michael Bertiaux. Incredibly, Allen Greenfield, who was the author of that comment, has whined that I have defamed his very fine reputation with rumors of his supposedly infamous initiatory relationship with that man. While I personally don’t know what transpired between Allen and Michael, I did hear quite a lot of salacious speculation from individuals who had inside knowledge of that affair. I can only report what I heard and also what I knew then about Bertiaux.

Michael never freely gave away any of his magickal secrets, lore and lineages. He always made someone pay a price of some kind for what he had to offer. Typically, it was some kind of gratuitous exchange, and it could be as supposedly harmless as giving him a picture of yourself and perhaps other personal possessions. (Although what he claimed to do with that picture and those personal possessions would trouble even a hardened magickal operator.) Michael claimed that he sought some kind of compensation from his students as a natural part of his teachings, and that he could and would function like a psychic vampire if given the opportunity. He has even stated this fact in his written work (referring to some victim students as “human batteries”), so it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone if he did behave that way.

I happen to know one individual who was able to get consecrated by Michael Bertiaux and not have to give more of himself than what would be required just to be initiated. That person was my esteemed brother Lugh, who told me that he had to threaten Michael with physical harm in order to get him to behave himself. All I know is that if I had wanted Michael Bertiaux’s consecration and magickal lore, I would have had to give myself to him, body and soul. (Michael certainly made that clear to me and said as much.) That was the bargain, and I found it much too steep, while others eagerly sought what he had to give at any cost.

Of course, all of this happened thirty-four years ago, and at a time when Michael was in his prime. No one stays the same, and I am sure that Michael Bertiaux is very likely different today than he was back then. However, I have no interest in ever finding out, since I don’t need to bolster my episcopal lineage by tying it to him. I also have found very little useful material in his book, the “Gnostic Voudoun Workbook,” and the little material he gifted me before I cut ties with him. Keep in mind that I had to fend off Michael’s advances, and that he also behaved this way with my teacher, Bill Schoebelen, and anyone else who sought his knowledge and power in those times.

So I found Allen Greenfield’s claims of defamation to be quite ridiculous. How can I defame someone whose own spiritual and magickal corruption has become a monumental barrier to being anything other than a pathetic excuse for a human being. Allen, who was an honored seventh degree initiate of the O.T.O. and an inspector general, was kicked out of this esteemed organization because he publically claimed that the Outer Head of the Order was a fraud.

I have had a number of encounters with Allen Greenfield over the last few decades, and I can say for a fact that everyone of them was quite negative, if not completely distasteful. I have described a few of those encounters in one of my previous blog articles, so you may remember me talking about him when spinning the tale about my past history. I might be a bit less disdainful of Allen if he hadn’t also sought to corrupt and negatively manipulate the local bodies of the O.T.O. in Atlanta. The sad fact is that there were two local bodies that were forcibly closed in the Atlanta area in the last couple of decades, and they can be pretty much attributed to the nefarious influences of Allen Greenfield. Perhaps now that the O.T.O. has kicked Allen out of their organization, the local bodies of the O.T.O. in Atlanta might actually be successful, but only if they keep him far away.

Perhaps it’s not ironic that I have met some really stellar individuals who are initiates in the O.T.O. over the long period of my occult career. Lon Milo Duquette is a brilliant and kindly gentleman, and Scott Stenwick is one of the foremost occultists and magicians that I have ever met. I went through the first four degrees of the O.T.O. and I have found that organization to be sound, successful and benevolently challenging. Many of the magicians that I have met who are initiates in the O.T.O. represent the cutting edge of magickal knowledge and expertise. I am proud to have been a member of that organization, and as an initiate, I would keep their confidences and implicitly respect those who are deemed their leaders. I have had other callings in the last few years, and allowed my membership to lapse after I had achieved the third degree, since by that time I had begun to follow an altogether different path than the O.T.O..

However, even though I follow a different path today, I still respect the tenets and practices of the O.T.O. and I consider the writings of Aleister Crowley to be one of the greater sources of my occult studies and researches. I don’t consider myself an exclusive Thelemite, but I have found a life-long respect for that philosophy. Still, I think that Allen Greenfield has shown himself to be completely unworthy of that organization in every way, and I believe that they had good reason to expel him with extreme prejudice. So how could I possibly besmirch someone who has made it a lifelong career to be a complete jackass to everyone around him?

***

Some other interesting things to share with you, my readers, has to do with the recently translated Gospel of Judas. When the National Geographic came out with their translation, I didn’t jump on the band wagon and attempt to realize what that newly found codex actually means to us today. I admit, though, that I find the Gnostics of antiquity interesting and fascinating. So when another new Coptic codex comes along, I usually end up reading it. This time, back in 2007, I was involved in other things and didn’t get a chance to see the National Geographic special that painted a startling new image of the disciple who supposedly betrayed Jesus. It wasn’t until recently that I downloaded that special via Netflix, and I found its theme to be quite interesting.

Judas Iscariot has been vilified over the centuries as a greedy and selfish opportunist who exemplified the Jewish persona in the eyes of faithful Christians. Judas had become the excuse and euphemism for antisemitism, but with this new gospel, he was seen instead as the close confident of the messiah who was convinced by Jesus himself to betray him. Of course, this seemed a bit too good to be true, and as it turned out, a new and more careful translation has shown the opposite to be true.

The Gospel of Judas was written by Sethians, and it was a sinister literary tool crafted to discredit the apostolic succession of the twelve disciples, and so completely overturn the ascendancy of the emerging Catholic Christianity. I found this interesting bit of information in a book written by Dr. April DeConick, entitled “The Thirteenth Apostle.” This book is quite excellent, since it also gives the reader a thorough insight into the Sethian Gnostic tradition. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in Gnosticism. The Sethians freely mixed the Judeo-Christian religious system with an applied occultism and magick, which makes it appropriate and relevant today, more than 1,800 years later. You can find this book on Amazon dot com, at this link.

In the future, I will write a more thorough article on this book. Right now, I need to get back into my manuscript and finish up all of my work. I also have another magickal working that will be performed on April 30, so there will be some more interesting data on the ongoing Portae Lucis working that I am seeking to accomplish just before the Summer Solstice.

Frater Barrabbas

Lunar Mysteries and the Art of Moon Magick - Part 4

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Greater Wheel of Fortune

All of these factors regarding basic astrology seem to ignore one important consideration, and that is the personal cycle or wheel of fortune of the magician performing the magick. Even the most optimal and auspicious signs and portends will avail the magicians naught if they ignore important factors about their own waxing and waning material fortunes. Magick done during a weak trough in the personal fortune of the magician will produce nothing, or it might even cause losses and misfortune. Perhaps the most important knowledge that magicians can possess that will enable them to work magick on their own personal material circumstance is self knowledge, and knowing their own personal timing.

In the many years that I have worked magick I have discovered by accident and trial that certain times of the year are better for material based magick than others, and that there is a pattern to this cyclic process. What I discovered is that there is a personal wheel of fortune that systematically turns, so that half of the year has the potential for material increase and the other half is better suited for planing and positioning oneself for more optimal times, when action is met with results. The year is cut in half, and one half fosters increase, and the other, decrease.

It may not be true that the poorer half of the year actually experiences losses or setbacks, although this certainly can occur; rather the richer half of the year seems to effortlessly assist one in the pursuit of material gain and personal advancement.

The simplest way to determine this wheel of fortune is take one’s birthday and add to it exactly six months. So if you were born on January 5, (as I was), then your halfway date is July 5. So for me, the two most important dates are my natal return (birthday), and six months later in the year, which would be a point where the sun would be 180 degrees from its natal position. I am a Capricorn according to my natal sun sign position, and my annual halfway point is under the sign of Cancer. I have found that for me, the time of increase begins at the halfway point in the year, and proceeds to a climax at my birthday, and then declines until the halfway point is again achieved. For me, the best time to plan and reorganize is during the winter, after the holidays and before summer. After the summer vacation period, I am ready to start putting into action everything that I have learned and determined in the previous six months.

First thing that you must do if you are calculating your greater fortune is to find that halfway point in your yearly cycle and note it down. Then look at the past several years and see if you can see a pattern as to when important material advancements occurred for you. It won’t be perfect, but I think that you will find that one of those half year cycles was more auspicious for you than the other, which is better for planning and regrouping.

A good way to highlight this analysis of the cycle of the greater fortune is to astrologically examine the transit sun to natal chart sun positions and what they mean. Looking over a book with these aspects defined will demonstrate just how important these two points in the solar cycle of any given individual. I have distilled the aspect definitions for these two points as they are defined in the book “Planets in Transit: Life Cycles for Living” by Robert Hand, p. 55 & p. 58.

Transit Sun conjunct Natal Sun aspect: This is the Solar Return, when the Sun returns to the position that it had when one was born. This aspect represents new beginnings, the ability to perceive the whole year ahead as if one were standing upon some metaphorical ascent and looking across time at the events for the coming year. Therefore, a birthday is an important point in anyone’s life, and it is a time of fruition and renewal.

Transit Sun opposition Natal Sun aspect: This aspect represents energies in life reaching a culmination, events cause realizations, revealing a critical point of success or failure. Situations judged to fail now appear to fail. The way to success opens up and is revealed.

So as you can see, the halfway point for the year is a kind of judgement point, a time and place where one thoroughly examines all of life’s activities, especially those that bear upon one’s fortune. Those objectives that are shown to be failing should be either adjusted or ended, and those efforts that appear to be gathering momentum for success should be steadfastly continued. New opportunities may also arise that will need to be judged as to their worthiness and a change in course may be called for to take advantage of them.

Lesser Wheel of Fortune

Correspondingly, there is also a lesser wheel of fortune that involves the Moon, and so this lesser cycle is more characterized by the emotions than by material gain, although it is true that if the emotions are not aligned with one’s greater material purpose, then all one’s endeavors will ultimately fail. This lesser wheel of fortune has the same basic components as the greater wheel. The natal chart lunar position is extracted, and the halfway point in this cycle is determined by plotting a position that is exactly 6 zodiacal signs ahead of the natal Moon position. Just break natal Lunar cycle from the point at the date of birth to a point 14 days later; this is the Lunar midpoint. So there are two halves to the month. One is auspicious for emotional expression, the other for generally for emotional internalization.

The key to this emotional wheel of fortune is that it’s better to perform magickal workings so that they achieve their climax up to but not far beyond the full moon. The waning moon represents particularly difficult times for me, and it’s much better to use that time for reflection, divination and contemplation, allowing the unconscious mind to unload some of its internal pressures and negative or dark-self perceptions in a controlled environment. It’s also a good idea to synchronize the greater and lesser wheels of fortune so that magickal workings and mundane actions involving material advancement occur during the better half for both patterns.

We can also analyze the transit aspects of the Natal Moon with the Transiting Moon and get a very clear idea of the kind of forces that are active. Like the Sun, we can examine the aspect where the Transit Moon is in conjunction with the Natal Moon, and the aspect where the Transit Moon is in opposition to the Natal Moon.

Transit Moon conjunct Natal Moon: This is called the Lunar return, and it occurs once every month. It represents the beginning of an emotional cycle. It’s a time of emotional sensitivity and emotional intensity. It has a magnetic effect, and tends to attract external events and people to its emanating field.

Transit Moon opposition to Natal Moon: This aspect represents deepening moods and powerful emotions. One becomes self-absorbed and loses objectivity, which tends to create emotional oppositions with others. It’s definitely not a time to be dealing with relationship issues, business partnerships or emotional issues involving family or friends.

(See “Planets in Transit: Life Cycles for Living” by Robert Hand, p. 104 & p. 105.)

Both the Greater Wheel of Fortune (external life events) and the Lesser Wheel of Fortune (internal emotional events) will affect the magick that is to be worked on a practical level. The Greater Wheel has precedence over the Lesser Wheel, but both should be considered for a given strategic magickal working.

Epilogue - Moon Magick

We have covered all of the relevant material on the Moon from a scientific and occult perspective, and we have seen that the Moon is very relevant to material based magickal workings. We have also covered the fact that effective magick requires some kind of temporal signature to act as a link between the forces generated and focused, and the time and place where they are needed. And we have also examined the factor of timing, both from the standpoint of the Sun and the Moon, but also from the perspective of the individual who is working magick.

The most important thing that we have learned in this article is that there is a complex interrelationship between the cycles of the sun, earth, moon and the internal cycles operating within the individual magician. Magicians who are contemplating earth-based magickal workings to effect their material situation need to determine their greater and lesser wheel of fortune so that they can know the best time to perform this magick. So it’s very important to have both the material factors and the emotions in as perfect alignment as possible to ensure a successful outcome.

A rule of thumb in determining the when and the how of lunar magick is that the need and the factor of necessity always trump timing. The nature of timing is always used for long term and strategic magickal workings, but not for emergencies or immediate needs. Still, lunar and solar considerations are always helpful, and it’s a good idea to use them wherever possible.

Before I sign off, here is a list of books that can be used to further research about the moon and its various qualities. All you need to do is to acquire these books (or some suitable alternatives) and assemble the material into your own “Book of the Moon” for pagan liturgies and ritual magick. I would also recommend Christopher Warnock’s mini-course on the lunar mansions. You find all of his course material at the website at this site - the price of these courses is modest and well worth it.

Alexander, Skye (1988) “Planets in Signs,” Whitford Press, West Chester, PA

Filby, John & Peter (1984) “Astronomy for Astrologers,” The Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, Northhamptonshire, UK

Hand, Robert (1976) “Planets In Transit: Life Cycles for Living,” Para Research Inc., Gloucester, MA

Jackson, Nigel (2003) “Celestial Magic - Principles and Practices of the Talismanic Art,” Capall Bahn Publishing Sommerset, UK

Rudyar, Dane (1986) “The Lunation Cycle: A Key to the Understanding of Personality,” Aurora Press, New York, NY

Warnock, Christopher (2006) “The Mansions of the Moon,” Renaissance Astrology, USA

Frater Barrabbas

Lunar Mysteries and the Art of Moon Magick - Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Lunar Mansions

The Twenty-eight Lunar Mansions are used specifically for talismanic magick, and they represent some of the most effective magick that one might want to generate. The mansions are represented by specific planetary qualities associated with a segment of the zodiac that is exactly 12 degrees and 51 minutes. The method used for determining the lunar mansion is astrological, based on lunar positions calculated from an ephemeris. In order for a mansion to be active, the moon should be in that specific zodiacal sign and degree period when the magickal operation is to be performed. Waxing and waning moons have a specific effect on the quality of the lunar mansion. A waxing moon is where the outcome is typically positive or a blessing, while a waning moon outcome is generally negative, or considered a curse. The period for performing positive magick based on the lunar mansion is always when the moon is waxing, from the point immediately following the new moon to just prior to the full moon.

First use of the lunar mansions for magickal purposes probably goes back to the ancient Egyptians and Chaldeans, whose cultures were both avid in their observation and tabulation of astronomical phenomena. This is also true of the Indian culture, so the possible sources for lunar mansion work can be found in all three of these ancient cultures.

Western magickal use and qualifications of the lunar mansions are adapted from the grimoire entitled the “Picatrix,” which was a purported 11th century Arabic magickal book, likely distilled from lost or now unknown Greek magical books. The lunar mansions are used to charge and empower magickal talismans. A talisman is blessed and charged at some point during the period of the lunar mansion, thus allowing the mansion to passively influence and impact the talisman. Since the moon travels through the zodiac at 14 degrees per day, it will only reside in a specific Lunar Mansion for slightly less than a day. In order to take advantage of a lunar mansion, the moon should be waxing within the lunation cycle, so any lunation type, from crescent type to just before full moon, can be employed. This short period of less than two weeks will limit the number of possible elective lunar mansions that can be employed during a specific seasonal period of the year.

Here is a list of the 28 mansions of the moon, as distilled from the book, “Celestial Magic” written by Nigel Jackson. I have also included the quality of the talismanic elemental (planet and element) as well as the associated Enochian senior name. Notice that the cardinal signs of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn have three mansions, and the other signs, two.

Mars of Fire: Senior: Aaetpio Mansion: Al Sharatain (#1 Horns of Aries) - 0̊ Aries
Jupiter of Fire: Senior: Adoeoet Mansion: Al Butain (#2 The Belly of Aries) - Aries 12̊ 51ʹ
Venus of Fire: Senior: Aapdoce Mansion: Al Thurayya (#3 The Many Little Ones - Pleides) - Aries 25̊ 43ʹ

Mars of Earth: Laidrom Mansion: Al Dabaran (#4 Eye of Taurus, the Follower) Taurus 8̊ 34ʹ
Sun of Earth: Iczhhcal Mansion: Al Haqah (#5 The White Spot) Taurus 21̊ 26ʹ

Mars of Air: Habioro Mansion: Al Hanah (#6 Brand or Mark, Little Star of Great Light) Gemini 4̊ 17ʹ
Jupiter of Air: Aaoxaif Mansion: Al Dhira (#7 The Force Arm of Gemini) Gemini 17̊ 9ʹ

Jupiter of Water: Saiinov Mansion: Al Nathrah (#8 The Gap or Crib, Misty, Cloudy) Cancer 0̊
Saturn of Water: Ligdisa Mansion: Al Tarf (#9 Glance of the Lion’s Eye) Cancer 12̊ 51ʹ
Sun of Water: Raagiosl Mansion: Al Jabhah (#10 The Lion’s Forehead - the Brow of Leo) Cancer 25̊ 43ʹ

Sun of Fire: Senior: Edelprna Mansion: Al Zubrah (#11 The Lion’s Mane) Leo 8̊ 34ʹ
Saturn of Fire: Senior: Arinnap Mansion: Al Sarfah (#12 The Lion’s Tail) - Leo 21̊ 26ʹ

Venus of Earth: Alhctga Mansion: Al Awwa (#13 Wings of Virgo, the Barker) Virgo 4̊ 17ʹ
Moon of Earth: Lzinopo Mansion: Al Simak (#14 Spike of Virgo, the Unarmed) Virgo 17̊ 9ʹ

Venus of Air: Ahaozpi Mansion: Al Ghafr (#15 The Covering) Libra 0̊
Mercury of Air: Avtotar Mansion: Al Jubana (#16 The Horns of the Scorpion) Libra 12̊ 51ʹ
Saturn of Air: Hipotga Mansion: Iklil Al Jabhah (#17 The Crown of the Scorpion) Libra 25̊ 43ʹ

Venus of Water: Slgaiol Mansion: Al Qalib (#18 The Heart of the Scorpion) Scorpio 8̊ 34ʹ
Moon of Water: Laoaxrp Mansion: Al Shaula (#19 The Tail of the Scorpion, the Sting) Scorpio 21̊ 6ʹ

Moon of Fire: Senior: Asndoad Mansion: Al Nava’am (#20 The Beam, The Ostriches) Sagittarius 4̊ 17ʹ
Mercury of Fire: Senior: Anodoin Mansion: Al Baldah (#21 The City or District) - Sagittarius 17̊ 9ʹ

Mercury of Earth: Acmbicu Mansion: Al Sad Al Dhabih (#22 Lucky One of the Slaughterers) Capricorn 0̊
Saturn of Earth: Lhiansa Mansion: Al Sad Al Bulah (#23 Good Fortune of the Swallower) Capricorn 12̊ 51ʹ
Jupiter of Earth: Aczinor Mansion: Al Sad Al Su’ud (#24 The Star of Fortune) Capricorn 25̊ 51ʹ

Moon of Air: Htmorda Mansion: Al Sad Al Ahbiya (#25 The Butterfly - Lucky Star of Hidden Things) Aquarius 8̊ 34ʹ
Sun of Air: Bataivah Mansion: Al Farch Al Mukdim (#26 Fore-spout, First Drawing) Aquarius 21̊ 43ʹ

Mercury of Water: Soaixnt Mansion: Al Faragh Al Thani (#27 Lower Spout, Second Drawing) Pisces 4̊ 17ʹ
Mars of Water: Lsrahpm Mansion: Al Batn Al Hut (#28 The Belly of the Fish) Pisces 17̊ 9ʹ

A good source for information regarding the Lunar Mansions can be found in the books “The Mansions of the Moon” by Christopher Warnock, and the “Picatrix” as translated by John Michael Greer & Christopher Warnock, and also the book “Celestial Magic” written by Nigel Jackson (which I mentioned above).

Important Solar & Lunar Interrelationships

Solar and lunar eclipses are the most auspicious times for working any kind of magick, and if magickal workings can be performed during those times, then they will be greatly enhanced and empowered.

Eclipses of the Sun and Moon occur when the Sun, Moon and Earth are in a specific and proper alignment. Not only are they auspicious, but are typically rare occurrences. This is especially true for solar eclipses, but not as much for lunar eclipses.

Solar eclipses occur when the Moon is new, since it is then that the Moon is conjunct with the Sun. If the altitude of the Moon to the ecliptic (celestial equator as seen from the Earth) matches so that the Moon appears to cover the Sun, then there is an observable eclipse somewhere on the earth. (Solar eclipses on average only last around 8 minutes if they are total eclipses, less so when they are only partial eclipses.)

Lunar eclipses always occur when the Moon is full and the Earth’s shadow falls upon the Moon. They are more common than Solar eclipses because the Earth’s shadow is much larger than the Moon’s shadow on the earth.

Moon’s altitude is the height that the Moon appears over the horizon. In the northern latitudes, the Moon is low when it’s near the southern part of the horizon, and high up when it’s near the center of the sky. (Of course, the reverse would occur when one is located in the southern latitudes.) When the Moon appears to be moving from the southern to the northern hemisphere, called the ascending node, and when appears to be moving from the northern to the southern hemisphere, called the descending node.

Points of intersection between the ecliptic and Moon’s altitude are the points where an eclipse can potentially occur. The inclination of the Moon towards the ecliptic is approximately 5 degrees and 8 minutes, so events where the Moon’s shadow would pass over the face of the Earth are rare, because they require an exact match between lunar altitude and the ecliptic.

A rule of thumb as to where the moon will appear in the sky during certain lunar phases and seasons is found the following table. The higher the northern latitude, the more pronounced is the position of the moon during a lunar phase.

Spring: Moon is high in the sky when in the first quarter, down low when in the last quarter.
Summer: Moon is high in the sky during the new moon, down low when full.
Autumn: Moon is high in the sky when in the last quarter, down low when in the first quarter.
Winter” Moon is high in the sky during the full moon, down low when new.

(Of course, this is true only when the observer is in the northern hemisphere, and it would be the opposite if one were in the southern hemisphere.)

As far as the northern latitude is concerned, the most auspicious full moon is during the winter, and the most auspicious new moon and waxing moon phase is during the summer. During the spring, the full moon is part of the ascending node, and during the autumn, the full moon is part of the descending node. These two facts also have an impact on the magick, giving a greater impetus or slightly detracting from the magick that is worked during these two seasons respectively.

Additionally. In the northern latitudes, a Solar eclipse is most likely to occur during the summer, when the new moon is in alignment with the ecliptic, and a Lunar eclipse is more likely to occur in the winter. This is important to consider when seeking to incorporate either a solar or lunar eclipse into one’s magickal working.

(Continued...)

Frater Barrabbas

Lunar Mysteries and the Art of Moon Magick - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Phases of the Moon and the Lunation Cycle

Lunar cycles, that mark the changing phases of the Moon, occur over a period of twenty-eight days. So there are a consistent occurrence of lunar cycles that make up the solar year, representing the oscillation of light and darkness, diminishment and increase, which change the apparent shape of the moon and also the times when it is present in the sky. The moon passes through the entire zodiac in a single month and its synodic period lasts 29 days and 12 hours, which is pretty close to the thirty day average period for a calendric month.

The moon also changes its shape as it makes its passage across the celestial equator, and this is due to the constant changing angular relationships between the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth. Thus, the moon travels swiftly through the zodiacal signs, averaging around 14 degrees in a twenty-four hour period. The sidereal period of the Moon is 27 days, 7 hours and 43 minutes. What this means is that the moon makes a complete revolution from any given point back to that point during that period. The sidereal period is, therefore, more accurate and so it is used by astronomers. When we say that the Moon makes its cycle in 28 days, that is an average approximation of the synodic and sidereal periods.

A full moon occurs when the Moon is at a point opposite of the Sun in relation to the Earth. Therefore, a full moon always occupies the exact point opposite of the sun within the astrological zodiac. A new moon occurs when the Moon is conjunct with the Sun in relation to the Earth. Therefore, the moon is in same exact zodiacal sign and degree as the Sun when it is in the phase called the new moon. A new moon symbolically represents the time of renewal and reinvigoration, when seeds are planted and ovulation ideally occurs. Full moon represents when these processes reach their maximum potential, and it is the ideal time for harvesting and also for the onset of menstruation. The quarter phases are where the Moon is waxing from new to full, or waning from full to new, representing when the Sun and Moon at right angles to the Earth. (I am not implying that a woman’s period is directly aligned with the phases of the moon, although there is an ideal association between the cycles of the mon and fertility cycle of women.)

Moon rises in the middle of the day when it is waxing and in the middle of the night when it's waning. The direction that the “horns” or tips of the crescent moon are facing indicates whether the Moon is waxing or waning. Horns pointing to the east indicates a waxing moon, and horns pointing to the west indicates a waning moon.

The cycle of the moon is called the “Lunation” cycle. It’s symbolized on a personal level as the struggle for conscious evolution, beginning first with awakening into individual self-consciousness and egoic awareness. Moon also has two qualities that are expressed by the lunation cycle. These two qualities are the zodiacal positions that it occupies as it moves across the celestial equator in a single month, and the four lunar phases that it makes as it crosses the path of the sun and the earth.

The elemental quality that the four phases of the moon has are:

New Moon - Earth
First Quarter - Air
Full Moon - Fire
Last Quarter - Water

Four phases of the moon are defined in astrology as the specific angular relationships that occur between the moon and the sun. These angular relationships are broken into 90 degree quadrants. The qualities of the phases are symbolized by the aspects of conjunction, ascending square, opposition, descending square, and arriving again at conjunction.

New Moon to First Quarter (0̊ - 90̊) - individualism and impulsiveness
First Quarter to Full Moon (90̊ - 180̊) - maturation and fulfillment
Full Moon to Last Quarter (180̊ - 270̊) - formulation and objectification
Last Quarter to New Moon (270̊ - 360̊) - fruition and also dissolution

Lunation cycle is actually an extension of the well known four phases of the Moon, producing eight types that characterize the lunar qualities. Each lunation type has its specific properties, and is extremely useful for working earth-based magick that affects the material based concerns and enterprises for humans, and even animals.

The lunation cycle of the moon is called the lesser cycle of transformation because it represents the variations of the reflected power of the sun and is far more mutable and subtle in regards to its affects on the life cycle of the individual human being when compared to the sun. While the solar cycle symbolizes the greater cycle of transformation, representing the seasonal milestones as well as the annual and multi-year achievements, the lunation cycle is critical to the resolution of deep and internal issues and complexes as the self strives to become individuated and self-illuminated.

In the lunation cycle, the four lunar phases are broken into eight divisions (types) consisting of 45 degree segments. Each segmental division of the Lunation cycle lasts approximately 3.5 days (84 hours). Each of the phases and the types of the lunation cycle are useful for a different kind of magick. Therefore, they represent a different mystery in the process of individual development. Lunation types include two states of the balsalmic (healing) and two of the gibbous (swelling) moons, adding four more types to the regular four phases.

Balsalmic phases are defined as the ascending and descending lunar crescent, which occurs just before and soon after the new moon. Gibbous phases are defined as nearly full, which occur just before and soon after the full moon. The following table was distilled from Dane Rudyar’s book “Lunation Cycle: A Key to the Understanding of Personality” (see pp. 50 - 56).

New Moon Type - 0̊ - 45̊- Emergence - Subjective, impulsive, novelty
Crescent Type - 45̊ - 90̊ - Expansion - Self assertion, self confidence
First Quarter Type - 90̊ - 135̊ - Action - Crisis in action, strong-willed
Gibbous Moon Type - 135̊ - 180̊ - Overcoming - Clarification, revelation & illumination
Full Moon Type - 180̊ - 225̊ - Fulfillment - Objectivity, formulation, manifestation
Disseminating Type - 225̊ - 270̊ - Demonstration - Disseminator of ideas, populist, teacher
Last Quarter Type - 270̊ - 315̊ - Re-orientation - Crisis in consciousness, inflexibility
Balsamic Type - 315̊ - 360̊ - Release - Transition, seed-state, germination

Looking over the above table, one can get a pretty good idea how to use the Lunation Cycle in magick and as well as pagan liturgy.

A powerful bell curve can be imagined when examining the key words used in this table. The latent powers of the unconscious mind emerge on or just after the New Moon, and then continue to grow as the moon waxes. From emergence, to expansion, to action, then to overcoming, the lunar energy reaches a climax with the Full Moon, whose forces are defined by the keywords: overcoming, clarification, revelation and inner illumination. Then the energy begins to wane, but a gibbous moon after full still has power and also an important role to play. So at this point, the lunation type becomes objectified and capable of communicating what has been precipitating within the unconscious mind. Then, there is a critical re-orientation or re-alignment, and finally, a release, where the energy fully submerges and all is once again outwardly quiet.

New magickal workings would typically start during or just after the New Moon phase, where a type of internalization is at its point of maximum effect. Then, one builds up the powers and magickal structures until on or just before the occurrence of the Full Moon, where the power is outwardly expressed as a climactic expression of force. Afterwards, the resolution that one is seeking through magick is either revealed or not. Then, with the exteriorization of all the energy, one seeks the solace of self-reflection, as the powers of the unconscious mind sink into its internal source. The waning moon, particularly at the point of the Balsamic type is useful for healing and for divination, so the entire lunation cycle is practical for the application of many kind of magickal operations.

Here are some key points about using the phases and types of the lunar cycle when you work magick. You should not only consider the astrological and astronomical environment (sun and moon signs), but also realize that magick is best served when performed at the most auspicious time. Therefore, timing is important!. The Sun and Moon are indicators of whether or not the time is right for a given magickal action. To unleash the most effective magick you must build up in a symbolic manner the “temporal snapshot” of your world, to establish the time and location where the magick is to be applied. This “temporal snapshot” is what I call the temporal link, and it’s amazing how many people don’t seem to realize how important making such a link is to the overall success of large-scale, magically assisted undertakings.

Small scale workings don’t really require a temporal link, but I have discovered, nearly by accident, that producing a temporal link for large scale workings helps to do two important things. These two things are:

To establish a temporal signature that will be intelligible to spirits and magickal forces,
To mark a spiritual mile-stone and to give it a focus in the present space-time continuum.

Establishing a temporal link can also be useful in establishing a time-limit for a given process to produce the results, even incrementally, that the magician is seeking.

The temporal link can consists of the following six elements (listed below). It should, at the very least, contain the combination of the seasonal, diurnal Solar aspects along with the phase/type for the Moon. These two elements will produce a symbolic expression of time. Additionally, the place (space or location) is defined as the exact point where the magick is projected into the earth (through the temple or grove).

The temporal symbolic link consists of:

Solar Hour as Planetary Hour
Sun in Zodiacal Sign - in relation to nearest Equinox or Solstice
Moon in Zodiacal Sign - Seasonal Moon in relation to the four phases
Lunation Type - 8 phases of the Moon
Geological matrix - latitude, longitude and altitude
Internal domain of the practitioner - natal zodiacal chart, progressed and transit chart.

Of these six items, the first four are most critical and used to determine the magickal equivalent of the temporal signature or link. In order to cause material manifestations and alterations one must first determine the temporal signature.

Moon in the 12 Zodiacal Signs and Full Moon Lore

As previously stated, the Full moon always occurs in the zodiacal sign opposite the Sun. It has specific astrological qualities, since the full moon represents a certain degree of fruition for spiritual and occult activities. The zodiacal sign that the full moon occupies is therefore quite significant, since it specifically qualifies it. There is also specific folklore that is associated with the full moon occurring during a month, and this folklore is often used to qualify any full moon working, whether liturgical or magickal.

First we will begin by examining the Moon in the twelve signs, so we can examine the qualities of those twelve aspects in greater detail. The moon signifies emotional energies and internal states of consciousness, and as it passes through the twelve signs, the qualities change and mutate according to the qualities of the astrological sign. (I have distilled these moon signs from the book, Planets in Signs, by Skye Alexander, pp. 71 - 96.)

Aries - boundless enthusiasm, assertive, emotional outbursts, highly energized, individualistic, impulsive, to live for the moment.

Taurus - easy going, placid, devoted friend and lover, simple and basic needs, emotionally centered and earthy, possessive, love of material things, luxuries, believes happiness can be bought, resistant to change.

Gemini - gregariousness, sociable, good communicator, restless, always seeking new stimulations, important of being unfettered, curious about everything.

Cancer - sensitive feelings, changeableness, emotionally expressive, heart rules head, strong empathy, maternal instincts, nurturing, protective of family and friends.

Leo - self confident, optimistic, cheerful, natural leader, always seeking attention, self centered, love of drama, creativity, strong willed.

Virgo - emotionally subdued, internalized, outwardly aloof, tight self-control, overly critical, self deprecating, helpful to others, service, selfless, concerned about the welfare of others.

Libra - emotional balance, need for harmonious interactions, displaced emotional expressions, sense of propriety, social tact and social awareness, compromising, indecisive, artistic, musical.

Scorpio - emotionally passionate, secretive, intensely sexual, seeks total union, jealous and possessive, can be vindictive, ruthless.

Sagittarius - happy go-lucky, optimistic, witty, affable, very sociable, loose emotional ties, importance of friendship, need to be free, disdainful of smothering and restrictive relationships.

Capricorn - emotionally internalized, unexpressive, deeply serious and sober, depressing, devalues self, fear of rejection, loyal, devoted to friends, family and lovers, reliable, practical, responsible.

Aquarius - unpredictable, explosive, sudden outbursts, strong sense of social justice, passionate about causes, rebellious, stubborn, willful, anti-authority, bohemian, radical, visionary.

Pisces - deep and intense emotions, secretive, introverted, psychic, empathic, compassionate, vivid imagination, reclusive, shy, seeks refuge, desires to be alone.

So the moon will acquire qualities depending on the sign that it is in as well as the sign that the Sun is occupying. Since the Sun changes its sign around the 20th of the month, the full moon will occur in the opposite sign. For each monthly full moon and its lore, we have two possible qualities for that full moon, depending on when in the month it occurs. Here is a list of three items to examine and research when planning on a full moon working:

When seeking to qualify the full moon, combine the astrological qualities with the seasonal Full Moon folklore.

Check almanacs and other sources of folklore to qualify the full moon for a given month.

Build up a booklet of Seasonal Full Moon lore and astrological considerations (Moon in 12 Signs) to use for liturgy and magick.

Here’s an example of what you might assemble as information for the full moon in the month of June.

June - Strawberry Moon or Mead/Honey Moon

After the abundant flowers of the previous month have bloomed and passed away then the fruits begin to form, and strawberries are some of the first fruits to be harvested. Flowers also bring the bees which gather the pollen and produce honey, and from that is brewed the beverage called mead. June is also the time of the Summer Solstice, and the advent of the warm days of summer, and the planting of the rest of the crops in the more northern and less temperate lands. This month is partitioned by Gemini and Cancer.

New Moon in Gemini - time for planning gatherings and celebrations
New Moon in Cancer - protection against harm, nurturing and growing
Full Moon in Sagittarius - happiness, fulfillment of pleasure, new liaisons
Full Moon in Capricorn - material gain through hard work and organization

I assembled most of my full moon lore from, of all places, the Farmer’s Almanac. You can find that source in an online web-page here. There are also lots of other sources for lunar folklore as well, since most pagan publishers will have a book or two on lunar folklore.

(Continued...)

Frater Barrabbas

Lunar Mysteries and the Art of Moon Magick - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:38:00 +0000

This is part one of a four part series on Lunar Mysteries and Moon Magick. I will be posting this series for the next four posting intervals. Moon magick and lunar mysteries are very important, so I think that these articles are timely and quite relevant.

Believe it or not, I once heard someone complain to a group of pagans that every full moon was practically the same, and that the monthly full moon rites that this person’s coven engaged in were boring and repetitious. When I heard this complaint, I was completely astonished! Obviously this person didn’t know very much about the moon, nor that each full moon that happens during the calendric year is unique and has a large body of folklore to go along with it. The moon is probably the most important celestial body in the sky, next to the sun, and certainly, it’s the most interesting. Yet hearing this complaint made me realize that the knowledge which I had acquired about the moon and lunar magick was not so common within the Pagan and Wiccan community. So for this reason, I decided that it would be prudent to put together an article on the lunar mysteries and the art of moon magick. If anyone is seeking to work magick that will affect their material aspirations, then knowing something about the moon is pretty important.

In fact, the most important consideration for any large series of workings involving earth-based magick is to harness the mysterious cycle of the moon and its mythology and folklore. In order to accomplish this task, the occultist is obligated to sift through a lot of moon lore, both scientific, astrological and esoteric in order to truly understand the significance and use of the moon in the art of magick.

This article will attempt to perform that task for you and help you to examine all of the various elements required to become proficient at using the moon for both pagan liturgies and practical forms of magick. There’s a lot of material to cover, but I decided to pull together a selection of that specific lore that will help you to make this mastery a lot easier. I would advise you to acquire some books on astrology and also some books on the various folklore and myths associated with the moon. Having this knowledge at hand will certainly make your pagan full moon rites and practical lunar based magick much more effective and esthetically pleasing. Let us now move on to examine all of this material.

Occult Beliefs vs. Scientific Explanations

We live in age where everything is seemingly explained away by the prowess of science, where there are no unfathomable mysteries nor is anything capable of withstanding for long the inquiry of modern empirical minds. Everything is reduced to the objective eye of science, and yet, and still, the average person stands in awe of the constant changing cycles of the moon. Science has debunked almost all of the myths about the moon, yet they persist in common discussion even amongst educated people. So it would seem that the moon still casts her spell on the minds of humanity, and the apparent lunar mysteries persist despite our scientific explanations and even our most adventurous explorations of her rocky crust.

There are good reasons why all the myths and folklore about the moon persist, and why they will probably continue to exert a powerful influence on the mind and soul of humanity until the end of time. As long as human beings live on this planet and experience the various phenomena of the moon, sun, planets and the stars, they will have a psychological impact on human sentiment - there’s no escaping this fact. We are complex psychological beings, and merely the apprehension of facts alone does not rule our life nor dispel superstition or emotional sentiment. We also need to consider that science alone does not have a monopoly on objective truth, and that dissenting opinions and the powerful influences of culture are just as compelling as the consensus of science and scientists.

The moon changes its shape throughout the month, seemingly never to appear at the same place or in the same guise. As the moon transforms itself, the tides of the seas and oceans seem to obey its cyclic passages, and the darkness of night is turned into twilight, illuminating a spectral landscape. The basic nature of the lunar mystery is that the moon changes its shape and its brightness, seeming to follow an endless pattern of constant change. The moon appears during both the day and the night, but it’s at night time when the moon’s effect is most dramatic. The moon is a symbol of transformation and seems to represent all that is changeable and ephemeral in our world, including the life cycle of all things living and breathing on this planet. This mystery is the mystery of light and darkness, life and death, the changing seasons, which are seen in the apparent movements of the moon, sun and the earth, and their complex interrelationship.

Science has explained all of this phenomena in an undramatic manner, dispelling all of the myths and false assumptions made about the effects of the moon on the earth. We should examine these facts and then quickly pass over them because knowing what science has said about this topic does help to shape our opinions and clarify the occult beliefs and associated phenomena with the practice of ritual magick. We will not hold onto arbitrary beliefs and promote falsehoods in the guise of good occultism. Science has done an adequate job of explaining the objective and material universe that is both within and all around us, and we would be foolish to easily dismiss these carefully tested and empirically determined truths.

Still, science has nothing to say about the nature of the human soul, the nature of Spirit and the internal perceptions and sentiments associated with the human psyche. In fact science refuses to even examine a phenomenon unless it can be measured, and that measurement verified by repetition. Some might question the methods of measuring these phenomena and the theories that underlie them. These are topics that are outside of the supposed empirical universe, and therefore, are the topical areas most suited to the discourse of religious and occult philosophies.

Therefore, we shall refrain from stating that the moon’s gravitational effects or the effects of the light of the moon have any dramatic impact on individual human beings, animals or small inanimate objects. What is affected by the moon is the human mind, its perceptions, sentiments, and inner spiritual reflections, and these we will address in this article. Humanity has been staring into the night sky for untold millennia, and this fact alone has shaped human beliefs and opinions long before science was ever organized as an academic discipline.

We will focus on the folklore and psychological effects of the moon, sun and their apparent motion and alignments, and how these may be used to great effect in the practice of ritual magick. Therefore, we need to look at several items as we examine these interesting facts and their use in practical occultism. (Here is a list of seven items for us to consider.)

Phases of the Moon - four quarters, lunation cycle - psychology and basic folklore as well as assumed physiological effects. Considerations about elemental magick as associated with the lunar phases should also be examined.

Seasonal full moon folklore and astrological aspects of the full moon phenomenon. Each full moon has its own qualities and special characteristics, and these qualify the magic that is performed.

Twenty-eight lunar mansions - planetary and talismanic considerations. The lunar mansions can be used to project beneficial as well as baleful magical powers.

Solar and lunar interrelationships - eclipses both solar and lunar - cycle of light and darkness, life and death, as projected upon the wheel of the year. Also we should consider the tidal cycles such as spring, neap and proxigean spring tides.

Greater and lesser wheel of fortune - solar and lunar wheels of fortune - personal cycle of material and emotional increase and decrease.

Practical magic always has an element of timing in addition to initiative and action. Knowledge of one’s own personal wheel of fortune is a determinant of successful material based magic.

Key to integrating the lunar and solar cycles into one’s magic is learning to incorporate a type of lunar telesterion (temple) into one’s magick. This temple is defined in ritual magick as an energy field consisting of a vortex encompassed with a double gateway, where the mysteries of the seasonal sun and lunar phase are declared and expressed as a symbolic link, which also acts as a temporal link.

These seven items are quite important for the occult considerations in working magic and causing an impact in one’s personal material world. They also don’t in any way violate the premises currently vogue in the scientific community, since they are concerned with a domain that science has either nothing to say about or is incapable of making any kind of determination or measurement. But first we should examine some of the objective facts about the moon.

Some of the factual points that science does make, which we would have to incorporate into our thinking consists of the following items. From a scientific perspective the Moon is:

A spherical rocky body that is the one and only satellite of the planet Earth,
Nearly a third of the size of the Earth ,
Distance from the Moon to the Earth is a mean distance of 238,600 miles,
Moon has a complex elliptical orbit around the Earth,
Equatorial radius is 1,080 miles,
Lacks an active magnetic field, so it likely doesn’t have a molten core,
Earth and Moon actually orbit each other, possessing a common center of mass that is not the center of the Earth, but only approximately 2,900 miles from the surface,
Moon and Earth exert a powerful gravitation pull on each other,
Moon pulls the oceans slightly out from the Earth as it passes closest to it. ( Actually, the Moon is pulling up on the oceans and the Earth is pulling down. The combination of these forces causes the tides.)

If the Moon did not exist, then the Sun would still cause diminished cyclic tides. Tides are the gravitational effect on large bodies of water - oceans, seas, large lakes, rivers, even the atmosphere and crust of the earth. (Large things are so affected, but not things that are relatively small.) The gravitation effect of tides is caused by a combination of the Sun, Moon and Earth. This interrelationship also causes solar and lunar eclipses and the lunar phases of full through new.

Moon’s gravitational force is only one ten-millionth of the Earth’s gravitational force, and the Sun’s is only 40% of the Moon’s force. Therefore, the Moon’s gravitation effect has no discernable impact on animals or people. Lunar and planetary light is also insignificant, since it is merely reflected light whose origin is from the Sun. Sunlight, however, does indeed powerfully affect the Earth.

Some of the natural phenomenon associated with the period tides affecting large bodies of water has the following qualities:

“Because the earth rotates on its axis the moon completes one orbit in our sky every 25 hours (Not to be confused with moon's 27 day orbit around the earth), we get two tidal peaks as well as two tidal troughs.

These events are separated by about 12 hours. Offshore, in the deep ocean, the difference in tides is usually less than 1.6 feet. The surf grows when it approaches a beach, and the tide increases. In bays and estuaries, this effect is amplified. (Example: In the Bay of Fundy, tides have a range of 44.6 ft.).

Since the moon moves around the Earth, it is not always in the same place at the same time each day. So, each day, the times for high and low tides change by 50 minutes.” - (See the web page for the source of the above quotation.)

Spring tides are exceptionally strong tides that occur when the Sun, Moon and the Earth are in line, such as when the Moon appears to be full or new on the Earth. Neap tides occur when the Sun and Moon are at right angles to the Earth, canceling out their gravitational forces and producing a weaker variation of the high and low tides, such as when the Moon appears to be in either the first or last quarter.

Perigee points are defined as celestial events where the Moon is closest to the Earth, and the Earth is the closest to the Sun. These events occur, of course, during specific times of the year and during specific seasons. Lunar perigee occurs twice a year, in late December through January and late June through July, depending on the northern or southern latitude. Solar perigee occurs once a year, also in late December.

Every 18 months an unusually high tide occurs, and this is called a Proxigean Spring Tide. It occurs when the Moon is at its closest point to the Earth (called the closest perigee, or proxigee) and is in the New Moon phase (meaning that the Moon is between the Earth and the Sun). These are significant events in the astrological calendar of the practicing occultist - there are bi-annual (Lunar), annual (Solar) and semi-annual cycles (Lunar and Solar) that effect the tides of the oceans on the earth, and by analogy, the fortunes of individual human beings. (This is, of course, a very important point.)

Lunar affects on human behavior, also called the “Transylvania effect” have been pretty conclusively demonstrated to be false. This was done through an effective analysis of whether the full or new moon have any affects on any specific behavior, maladies or social phenomena, such as alcoholism, mental attacks, menstruation, violence, murder rates, and even stock market variations. All of these correlations have been found to be statistically insignificant. What does seem to be operating are people’s beliefs, cultural myths, folklore and emotional sentiments. Science would judge such causes as not being statistically relevant, but they do seem to impact behavior, and in an almost predictable fashion.

Still, there are some hotly contested areas of dispute within the various disciplines of medicine and biological research. Medical research still shows correlations between medical phenomena and either full of new moon - however, that research is in dispute. The final verdict is as yet unknown. We, however, will not engage in this debate because our topic is not determined by objective empiricism, but rather by psychology and culture.

(Continued..)

Frater Barrabbas

Second Talismanic Working for the Portae Lucis

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Inertia is a terrible force when contemplating an extended working that covers the period of four months. It also seems that the preparations for the Portae Lucis working are fraught with difficulties and issues that have bedeviled me from the very start. While I have managed to be hale and healthy for the next working in this series, there were other events that could have either postponed or even terminated this working. Let me tell you what I had to endure in order to complete the second talismanic working.

I had been working with an occultist friend who runs an online shop to purchase three inch metal disks. I chose brass for the Sun, silver for the Moon, lead for Saturn, and Zinc for Mercury. The brass and zinc disks were sent in a reasonable amount of time, but the silver and the lead disks had not yet arrived (I am still waiting for the lead disk as I write this article). I had corresponded with my supplier, but still the required disks didn’t show up. About ten days before the working was scheduled, I sent out a request to get my order filled as quickly as possible and received no reply. In fact I hadn’t heard from my supplier in around two weeks, so I started to worry about the working, and in fact, decided to assemble a plan B to fabricate the disks myself. I discovered an obscure warehouse on the other side of town that provided me with one foot square 18 gauge nickel silver and brass plates. I then needed to figure out how to cut out the three inch disks from the metal plates.

I was busily working on plan B in the days before the working, which hadn’t turned out so well for me. I decided that I might have to go to a machine shop to get disks punched out with a machine die cutter, but decided to try my hand it anyway. I managed to cut my hand attempting to hacksaw out one of the disks, so I went and got myself a high powered Dremel with cutting disks. While I was trying to figure out how to use the Dremel, I finally got an email from my supplier letting me know that the silver disk was mailed out that day, just seven days before the working. I was relieved, but still I managed to cut out one very rough disk that will need a lot of work before it could ever be used.

What I needed to finish it was a bench grinder but I had none at the time. However, on Monday, two days before the working was to be performed, the silver disk arrived in the mail, although it had been obviously cut in a hurry and the edges were rough and slightly jagged. I did what I could to smooth it out and polish it, and then I etched the mansion ruler angel sigil on it with an electric diamond tip etching pen. The disk was ready for the working with only a single day to spare, but at least I could complete that part without having to delay or reschedule. All in all, it was a bit nerve wracking to say the least.

Then, on Wednesday night I performed the second talismanic working for the revised Portae Lucis. For this working I generated a fourfold empowered silver talisman of the Moon, under the auspices of the Lunar Mansion, Al Simek (Spike of Virgo, the Unarmed). This time, with a revised version of the rite that combines the elements of Fire, Air, Water and Earth to the planetary intelligence (Olympic Spirit), the working went quite well. Nothing was forgotten or had to be spontaneously evoked at the moment, which is what happened last time. However, what I did notice all too well was the power of inertia affecting me in no small way. I might have not been recently ill like the last time, but I did get a headache and felt fatigued early in the evening. I even found myself wondering if I could just perform the rite at another time and take it easy that evening. I made certain that such thoughts were sufficiently quelled (or laughed off) and I took a couple of Tylenol pills to get rid of the headache. Considering everything that I had gone through to get the silver disk prepared and ready, the thought of not doing the working was patently absurd.

I performed the Mass of the Goddess before the 9:47 pm CDT time when the planetary hour of the Moon would begin. The Mass rite was used to charge the five sigils and the silver talisman to make them ready for the actual working. A little after 10:00 pm, I set the magick circle and locked in the planetary hour of the Moon, and then performed the rites to invoke the combined four-fold talismanic elemental of the Moon. It went successfully well, except that there was one unusual issue that I felt compelled to rectify before actually starting with the talimanic invocation.

Just before I began the actual invocation, I heard a rather loud feline yowling just outside the door of my house. I suspected that some kind of altercation was about to occur, and that it sounded like the bully-boy cat named Faust was about to have a row with some other cat just outside my door. I didn’t want that to interrupt my working or distract me from what I was doing, so I cut a door in the circle and sealed it as I left to investigate. I went barefoot and in my robes outside in the cool moonlit night and saw Faust crouched down near another cat who was also crouched down. It was a temporary standoff, but it would soon become a full blown cat fight because Faust was an inveterate brawler. The other cat was my favorite (and the source of most of the house cat mischief), named appropriately, Jynx. I gave out my notorious big cat hiss and after making more racket than they were making, I managed to scare off both Faust and Jynx. The night returned again to the tranquility that I had desired for my working, and I went back in the house, opened a door again into the circle and then sealed it after I passed through.

The rest of the talismanic invocation went smoothly without interruptions, although I had a little bit of a problem with the programmed music. I felt the power build up to a proper crescendo and then it was focused into the silver talisman. All four talismanic elemental intelligences had been successfully invoked and fused into a single intelligence and force, and that was projected into the silver talisman. Once the rite was completed, I covered the talisman with a special cloth and began the incubation period of three successive days. The spirit gateway was closed, the power structures in the circle were sealed and the rite was properly ended. However, I felt completely drained of all physical power, and I was dead tired, mentally tipsy and barely on my feet. It was just around 11 pm when this working ended, so it had only taken me less than an hour to perform, but I felt like it had taken a lot longer and it was much more draining than I had thought it should be. All of this portends quite well for the final unveiling of the second talisman in this series.

You might be curious about how and why I am incubating the talisman after it’s charged. I incubate the talismans for around 72 hours or three days to allow for the charge to be completely absorbed into the talisman. Three days is very likely a traditional period of time for incubating a talisman, since the number three is typically found in most forms of invocative workings. How I do this is to stack the sigils together and place them in the center of my central altar where the septagram trigon is ensconced. I then place the metal talisman disk over the stacked sigils, and then I cover it with a small cloth. A vigil candle burns nearby and I also burn at least one or two sticks of incense daily to keep the atmosphere sacred and magically empowered. This incubation then continues in this manner, with candlelight and incense, for a full three day period. Once the incubation is complete, then I anoint the back of the talisman with a specially charged oil and place it into an appropriately colored velvet pouch. The talisman is kept in that pouch until it is needed, so in this manner it is protected from any contamination or harm.

Since I had charged the solar talisman at the end of February, I have been meditating on it every single night nearly without fail. I keep it in a special ocher velvet bag, and the back is anointed with Sandlewood oil. I will anoint the new Lunar talisman on Sunday Easter morning (with Lotus oil), and will continue the meditation sessions after that point with both talismans. Around April 30, the Saturn talisman will be charged, and I will then meditate using all three talismans. I will continue to do this until the time when I have to deploy them in the final Portae Lucis working, which is scheduled for June 19. I look forward to continuing this working and experiencing the final stage just prior to the Summer Solstice. I suspect that this event will be likely the most auspicious and potent that I have ever experienced before. It may even make the coming summer to be glorious and quite a celebration of life itself.

Frater Barrabbas

What Price Is Eclecticism or Depth?

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:05:00 +0000

(Dedicated to you, but you weren’t listening.)

There are basically two dimensions that rule how a ritual magician will collect and/or develop his or her ritual lore. Wide ranging or narrow and deep. Combinations of these two dimensions often represent whether one is attempting to integrate too many dispirit elements without a sufficient depth or whether one is two narrow and too deep, being therefore unable to see the forest for the trees. Of course, the best approach is the middle ground, which is carefully gathering together various related ritual lore, creatively inventing what is missing or omitted while keeping the new elements relative to the acquired elements, and basically using an overall theme to keep things tightly integrated together.

What anyone wants to avoid is attempting to reinvent the wheel, or to create something in an intellectual vacuum. One of the points that John Michael Greer made in his class on pagan magick was that too often magicians attempt to develop something that already exists in some tradition or another, and that they tend to use popularly defined beliefs and tastes to achieve this task. They don’t (for whatever reason) perform an extensive research to see what is already out there and what other experts have to say before attempting to build something. We are all guilty of doing this, and in my early years, I was particularly guilty of attempting to reinvent the wheel.

The first question that confronts anyone who is beginning on the path of becoming a ritual magician is where to start? Do we just jump in and start working magick as soon as we have a few tools and a few books? Do we look for a tradition and seek admittance to the nearest group, or do we just go it alone and damn the consequences?

Experimentation is the key to mastering the art of ritual magick, but at some point, the magickal devotee needs to be trained in an authentic tradition. This will help him or her to build a foundation for all future work, and having some kind of foundation and access to a teacher is very important. I have covered this ground previously, so I don’t need to go over it again.

Acquiring a tradition will also determine the frame through which all future acquisitions will be measured, valued and adopting. If some new technique, methodology or philosophy doesn’t fit in with one’s current tradition, then it will likely function poorly with the other elements of that tradition. In time, due to additions and revisions, the adopted tradition will end up becoming uniquely one’s own, and this is the overall objective of this kind of work. This is called revisionism, and it is a natural part of any competent and advanced magician learning to master his or her trade.

What traditions would I recommend to the erstwhile student magician? There are quite a number of specific spiritual traditions that are very friendly to the practice of ritual magick. Some are actually magickal traditions more than spiritual or religious traditions. The Golden Dawn comes first to mind, and then, the O.T.O. and the A.A., Druidism, Wicca or Witchcraft, any form of Western Paganism (Greek, Roman or Egyptian reconstructions), to be followed by forms of Western Theosophy, and finally, by any esoteric version of a mainstream faith.

However, the first seven in my list are, in my opinion, the better candidates to help the aspiring student develop their own tradition of ritual or ceremonial magick. Some of these traditions have a complete system for working many varieties of magick, and others are more or less incomplete, requiring the adherent to invent and develop various systems of magick to fill in the holes.

So what are the essential categories of magick that will need to be developed if they don’t exist already? Here is a list, but it is not comprehensive and doesn’t include other and corollary disciplines (such as esoteric astrology or alchemy).

1. Low magick or earth-based magick

2. Elemental magick

3. Divination

4. Planetary magick

5. Astrological magick (Lunar Mansions & Decans)

6. Qabbalistic Magick (Sephiroth & Pathways)

7. Invocation and Evocation (Godhead, angelic, demonic, neutral spirits)

8. Godhead Assumption and magickal religious practices (magickal liturgies)

9. Ascension and Theurgy

10. Myth building, liturgy creation and the channeling of Godhead

11. Magnum Opus (Great Work)

You should consider this a generalized list of the eleven categories of a magickal regimen, and of course, the devil is in the details, as they say. Also, it is quite possible to have various substitutions to this list, so it is by no means exclusive or somehow carved in stone. However, it does give a specific enough of a list to compare to what is in your own magickal regimen.

Eclecticism is a useful tool, but it’s one that can be over-used. A disciplined practitioner must be insightful enough to be able to discard old techniques and methodologies for new ones that are better and more efficient. Often, redundancy haunts the typical student, making them unwilling to put aside old tried and true lore for the sake of efficiency and to eliminate duplication. Collecting must always be balanced with organizing, and then if necessary, purging and discarding. The real curse of eclecticism is being a pack rat and keeping everything no matter how outdated or inefficient. The most ordered personal grimoire has maybe one or just two different methodologies for doing an operation, and each of these “tools” should be kept in optimal condition and readiness. As the saying goes, the better the tools, the better the results of the work. Also, a poor workman blames his tools (instead of his lack of ability).

Then another issue is to determine how deep one should go with developing and working with a particular methodology. Based on the list above, the numerically higher elements in the list would require a greater degree of development and research to formulate the most optimal and structurally elegant solution. Certainly, the last four can take a lifetime to master and complete, while the other seven can be brought to a certain level of competency and expertise without having to be over-developed.

An important key is to keep one’s personal grimoire very ordered and moderately structured, since these will be the rites and practices that one will work with on a regular basis. Disorder makes such work difficult, if not even impossible. It’s also important to allow for a level of simplicity to rule over one’s collection of lore. Rituals should be readily easy to perform and have a certain natural flow to them. There is nothing worse than piling too much into a ritual so that it becomes so dense that it collapses of its own weight and becomes unworkable. Culling and making things more efficient should operate on each individual rite, and on the personal grimoire as a whole. This is not to say that some ritual workings won't be elaborate or quite complex, since some operations may require a large number of steps. It’s just that the magician should be aware and practice efficiency where-ever possible.

As I stated in the beginning of this article, the worst-case for eclecticism is to produce a disordered system that contains a great deal of redundancy and whose lore contains so much extraneous stuff that the rituals are difficult to perform and even less effective. An unbridled eclecticism will easily fill a whole house with a lot of unnecessary and unneeded junk, all of which will interfere with the ability to perform even the simplest working.

Someone who focuses too intently on depth will ultimately be unable to perform the simplest working because he or she is living under the requirement that everything must be perfect and thoroughly researched in order to be effective. It’s easy to spend eternity in the developing of lore, but none of us have an eternity that we can waste in this exercise. At some point the magician must experiment and work with what he or she has in their repertoire and move forward. Mistakes made in a ritual working seldom doom an operation, and in fact, they often appear as markers that real magick is alive and functioning well.

Perfection is, therefore, an esthetic virtue but not a requirement for effective magick. This is a painful lesson that competent magicians need to learn. It can have the effect of making magicians less productive and capable as they become more advanced and knowledgeable of their art. If you ever find yourself musing about how simple magick was when you were just starting out, and how it also seemed more effective in the past than today, then you are likely afflicted by the disease of perfection, and it’s time to break out and be more spontaneous. Getting in too deep interferes with one’s ability to see other possibilities or to explore another variation. It can also interfere with the ability of just doing magick for its own sake.

So these are some of my rules of thumb when developing rituals and expanding magickal lore. The best advice is to find a middle ground between being too eclectic, derivative and redundant on one hand, and being too much of a perfectionist, or going too deep in any one direction. Be balanced, open to new possibilities and seek to be organized, efficient and engaged. Taking on such an approach will make the path of acquiring a magickal expertise one that is filled with joy, mystery and the manifestation of the unexpected wild magick that often seems to flourish all around us, but we’re too damn busy to notice.

Frater Barrabbas

René Guénon and “Against Reincarnation”

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Continuing with my series of articles about reincarnation, I would like to examine the ideas and written opinions of an occultist named René Guénon, and particularly, the article entitled “The Case Against Reincarnation,” written by Joscelyn Godwin, which appeared in the Winter 1997 edition of the Gnosis magazine. Some occultists have lionized Guénon’s writings, and others have considered him quite a pompous, arrogant and opinionated man. I have collected several of his translated works and have found them somewhat difficult to read, which might be due to the fact that the translations are more accurate than actually readable. Mr. Godwin’s translations and analysis of Guénon’s writings, particularly on this topic, seem to better represent his thoughts in an accessible manner. You can find the entire series of Guénon’s books translated into English and republished through the imprint “Sophia Perennis.”

Also, I wanted to comment briefly on a few remarks that one or two individuals have made regarding my previous articles in this series. First of all, I am not at all making light of anyone who ardently believes in reincarnation. If anything, I am challenging the typically accepted ideas that surround a belief in reincarnation. I haven’t said that reincarnation is impossible (although Guénon does make this statement, as we shall see), but I am just questioning the logic and built in assumptions associated with the popular belief in reincarnation. As occultists, no belief system should be accepted without some critical thinking and analysis.

While I may make light of what I consider to be the more abusive aspects of a belief in reincarnation (such as someone making unjustified claims of having been someone famous), I do respect the overall assumptions and personal beliefs that someone might have who believes in reincarnation. If my words have found offence or have disturbed some of my readers, then all I can say in my defense is that I have approached this analysis with the same critical thinking skills that I have successfully used in my own occult work. All I ask is that those who read this series of articles ask themselves some questions and do a bit of self examination after reading them.

French Occultist René Guénon

René Guénon (1888 - 1951) was a French author and intellectual who continues to be influential in the study of metaphysics and occultism, having written on topics ranging from metaphysics, sacred science and traditional studies to symbolism and initiation. (See the Wikipedia article for a thorough biographical examination of René Guénon - you can find it here.)

René Guénon not only expounded on the religious systems of Hinduism, Taoism and mystical Islam in his various books, but he had actually received initiations and instruction within these traditions as well. He was one of the earliest Europeans initiated into a lineage of Shankaracharya (Indian Vendanta) and he also received a consecration in Jules Doinel’s French Gnostic church. He was fluent in a number of languages, and declared that spiritual traditions must be handed down from teacher to student in order to keep those traditions relevant and alive within the culture that gave them their meaning. He was against borrowing terms and concepts from one culture to be used in another, and believed that the West had lost its valid esoteric traditions because of materialistic science and religious intolerance. He was often at times an opponent of the Theosophical movement and an ardent critic of the popular occultism of his day. His voluminous writings were first written in French, but were later translated into over twenty languages. He died in Cairo, having become something of an adopted Egyptian and a follower of mystical Islam.

In the article “Against Reincarnation”, Joscelyn Godwin had located the original source of René Guénon's opinions and theories about reincarnation in a single a book entitled “L’Erreur Spirite” (The Spiritist Fallacy) published in 1921, which, I might add, was one of the few books at the time that had not been translated into English. Godwin took the responsibility of distilling and paraphrasing the contents of this book into the salient points used in his article, stating that a mere translation of the work would be too difficult, since Guénon had a tendency to “extreme wordiness and philosophical abstraction,” which would distract the reader from its inherent and important message. However, that book has since been translated into English, and I have found it readable, although quite wordy with long and uninterrupted paragraphs. By the way, this book was written by Guénon to counter the popular beliefs and practices of Spiritualism, which had impacted much of occultism in the late 19th century. It was the proponents of Spiritualism who brought the concept of reincarnation into the popular imagination, only to be later picked up by theosophists and western occultists.

Ostensibly, the proponents of reincarnation believe that the same being can be born more than once in a human body while Guénon holds that it cannot occur. This is because he emphatically states that a human existence is only one of a myriad of possible manifestations through which the totally of being, which he calls the Universal Being, can manifest. The individual “beingness” of a human being is only the outer manifestation of this Universal Being, and only that greater entity re-manifests itself after the life of the individual human being perishes. If we value the individual human manifestation of life too greatly, then we misconstrue the nature of that Universal Being, which through its greater perspective cannot have such a bias. We also function as beings trapped in the web of space and time, and perceive events in our lifetime, as well as all lives in general, as sequential occurrences; but this would be considered an illusion from the point of view or perspective of the Universal Being.

If we recall that Guénon had been trained and initiated into a sect of the Vendanta tradition in India, and that followers of Vendanta (especially the Advaita sect of Shankara) believe that the individual spirit called Atman is undifferentiated from the absolute Godhead called Brahma, then we can easily understand where he is coming from. Guénon believed that the indestructible element of an individual human being was essentially the same as the absolute Godhead, therefore it must exist in a state that profoundly transcends the individual self and its associated ego-body structure. This individual and internal Atman would not be limited by space, time or any aspects of the material world. Guénon believed that this absolute attribute of the individual was the only thing that could survive death, and in fact, he believed that it was completely untouched by the occurrence of death and mortality. If this is true, then it would explain his apparent hostility towards reincarnation and spiritualism. So this is what Guénon was referring to when he discussed the concept of the Universal Being; he was referring to the transcendental Atman.

In the book “The Spiritist Fallacy,” Guénon shapes his arguments against the possibility of reincarnation, stating unequivocally that it defies the concept of a trans-temporal, trans-personal inner Godhead which has no limitations. If we can agree that the universe has an infinite number of worlds, and that the material world is just one of an infinite number, and that life is not limited to this single planet but extends throughout the multiverse, then it does seem absurd that the individual Godhead incarnating as a human being would limit itself to just a series of sequential human lives instead of engaging with a multiverse of possibilities. As Guénon so succinctly puts it in his book, The Spiritist Fallacy, with the following quotations:

“[U]niveral and total Possibility is necessarily infinite and cannot be conceived otherwise because, including all and leaving nothing outside itself, it cannot be limited by anything whatsoever.”

“Only within a finite set can one return twice to the same element, and even then that element would not be rigorously the same except on condition that the set in question is a closed system, a condition that is never effectively realized.”

“[I]n universal existence, a return to the same state is an impossibility. In total Possibility the particular possibilities, which constitute the conditioned states of existence are necessarily defined indefinitely multiple; to deny this is also to limit Possibility. This must be admitted on pain of contradiction, and suffices to establish that no creature can pass twice through the same state.” (See “The Spiritist Fallacy,” p. 180, translated by Alvin Moore, Jr. and Rams. P. Coomaraswamy Sophia Perennis 2003)

Godwin follows up with his own estimation of this perspective, which implies that a human incarnation is likely to occur only once for any individual spirit.

“In an infinite series, such as that of integers, each term appears but once. Likewise, in the infinite variety of the universe, experienced in its totality by every being, no single state need or can be repeated. The being contains (or to use the bead metaphor, passes through) them all, without singling out any particular state for special treatment through repetition.” (See “Against Reincarnation,” p. 30, para. 2)

What Guénon and Godwin have both said is that a single lifetime is unique and unrepeatable, which agrees with what I had often thought about the uniqueness of the genetic and temporal footprint of a living being. However, Guénon goes further to state that the essential nature of that being also cannot be repeated. This claim, if true, would go against almost all theories of reincarnation, and most particularly, the popular notion of reincarnation that he encountered in France in the 1920's, proposed by contemporary occultists and theosophists. As we discussed earlier, the issue of reincarnation is principally a question of what actually gets reincarnated, and according to Guénon, only the totality of being can and does re-manifest itself, but never in the same manner or through the same individual being. Godwin explains this logical pronouncement with the greatest of ease and efficiency.

“Guénon’s language and dry logic may obscure the grandeur of his view. Human life, he seems to be saying is not such a special and unique thing that beings are clamoring to experience it again and again. Beings including you and me are tremendous things, with unlimited vistas of lives in modes we cannot begin to imagine.” (See “Against Reincarnation,” p. 30, para. 3)

Thus from this viewpoint we can deduce that Guénon believes that corporeal life is but one of a myriad possibilities, and that to insist that a being should always be manifest in a material and human guise is so limiting as to be astonishing. As Godwin states: “With ‘indefinite possibility’ before it, it is absurd to imagine a being forever imprisoned in the closet of the physical universe, as the materialists do; or ever returning there, as the reincarnationists do.” As for the beliefs in reincarnation held by the Hindu religion and by Buddhism, Guénon states that they are misinterpretations of two completely different processes, which are metempsychosis and transmigration.

As Godwin points out in his article: “From the point of view of the essential being, so-called ‘death’ is nothing but a change of state, which might just as well be called ’birth into a new state’ inevitably a non-material one, if one follows Guénon’s principles. This manifestation of a being from state to state is called ‘transmigration’, although in fact the being has nowhere to migrate to. It is more a case of innumerable lives manifesting [due] to the being’s mere existence.” (See “Against Reincarnation,” p. 31, para. 8)

Godwin goes on to point out that the serial manifestation of lives, seemingly sequential and having causal links to each other, and comprising of an evolutionary chain is illusory. Godwin also states that Guénon’s constant assault on reincarnation is because he feels that it obscures the real fact that “this unchanging self which sustains all the myriad states and who conscious attainment is the summum bonum.” The realm of the ego, which acts as the center of a human life is transitory, illusory and ephemeral. It is a grave mistake to elevate this transitory shadow of the true self and then to project it into the past and future as the self that is reborn in other bodies. As Godwin puts it so eloquently: “As soon as we die, we leave the human species behind forever.”

Guénon attributes the first appearance of the popular Western notion of reincarnation not with the advent of Theosophy or even Spiritualism, but to the French Socialists of the early 19th century, such as Charles Fourier and Pierre Leroux, who found it a tidy explanation for human inequality. While I am not able to thoroughly examine this claim, I was able to look up these two individuals in Wikipedia. Charles Fourier was an important French utopian socialist and philosopher of the early 19th century, and Pierre Leroux was a French philosopher and political economist from around the same period. Of these two individuals, only Leroux was reputed as believing in metempsychosis, who made it a part of his social theories (which were more in line with propaganda than scholarship),so I can at least verify the credibility of Guénon’s claim.

If metempsychosis was a popular notion amongst European intellectuals in the early 19th century, then it could have had a powerful impact on how reincarnation was defined by later organizations such as the Theosophical Society and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, who both lionized and developed this belief into a complex system. From those organizations this doctrine passed into the sentiments and beliefs of the common populous. However, as we examine reincarnation from its historical sources, we will see more clearly where the origins of the theosophical theory of reincarnation came from as well as the digression of the popularly held belief.

Guénon's book also contained some theories that explain the occurrence of anecdotal evidence of reincarnation, as well the occurrence of ghosts and other paranormal phenomena. These phenomena are caused by what Guénon calls “psychic residue,” which are the energies or subtle parts of one's organic being. These energies are then separated or jettisoned from the body when a person dies, and while they slowly disperse and decompose, they can seemingly take on a life of their own. These residues can take the form of the body that they once inhabited, thus forming apparitions or ghosts, and they can also be picked up by individuals, sensed in dreams, manifesting as visions or even cause individuals to be possessed. Guénon also discusses in his book that some of these psychic residues are also passed down from parents to children in a kind of psychic heredity.

Since these energies are not unified through a physical body, they generally appear in a fragmentary manner, like the broken shards of a personality that once lived in another body in another time. However, without the constant renewal supplied by the physical body, these energies slowly dissipate; but they can and do continue to exist for long periods of time. Yet such a partial or fragmented entity, even though it is sensed and perceived in dreams and visions, and seems real and meaningful to the observer, it does not originate from one's own self. The apparition, however seemingly real, is only the fragmentary residual energy of a completely different person who happened to live in another time and place. Ghostly phenomena are the effects of mindless and soulless entities, since the true self or being that acted as the core of such an entity was retracted back into the Universal Being upon the death of the physical body.

Guénon defined this process of residual association that seems to influence individuals and cause them to believe in reincarnation as a form of metempsychosis. This definition is somewhat different than the classical definition of metempsychosis, which has its origins in ancient Greece (we will fully examine this topic below). However, Guénon wanted to differentiate the illusions of past lives and ghostly apparitions from the transmigration of the true self.

According to Guénon, metempsychosis occurs when the psychic residues associated with past incarnations appear in association with another being, human or animal. “Sometimes this gives the impression of reincarnation, as when a being contains identifiable psychic residues from the past. In such a case, one may remember past lives, but in the deepest sense they are not one’s own. They are an inheritance from other beings who will never reappear on the earthly scene.” This explanation would account for all of the anecdotal accounts and proofs for reincarnation, and it would further explain why the child who would become the current Dalai Lama was able to remember some things associated with the previous Dalai Lama, but could not gather together all of the memories and abilities that the previous mature individual possessed into the body and mind of the young boy.

We have covered all of Guénon’s views about and against reincarnation and its associated phenomena, and we can now make the following points about these views, assisting us in building an alternate theory to that which is defined by the Theosophical Society or held in the popular imagination.

The true self, representing the indelible and immutable part of an individual being, is actually a vestige of the Universal Being, temporarily incarnating as a human being. The Universal Being is unlimited and ‘indefinite’, or infinite, while individual human beings are limited and definite, both in their characteristics and in their physical manifestation in the space time continuum.

In the infinite variety of the Universal Being, no single state is ever repeated, which is to say that the true self that emanates from that universal state will incarnate as a human being only once, and then never revisit that state ever again, since it has an infinite variety of states in which to manifest itself.

Death is but a rebirth into another state, and that the true self engages in a form of transmigration from state to state, never repeating the same state twice, although this is illusory, since from the standpoint of the Universal Being, all states are co-existent or ‘co-present’, meaning that they do not occur in a sequential or serial manner. There is no time and space from the perspective of the totality of being, there is only the eternal now.

Reincarnation asserts that the true self is continually manifested in a corporeal body, but this would actually be against the odds, since corporeality is only one of an infinite series of possibilities for manifestation. Reincarnation also assumes the primacy of incarnating into a human body, which Guénon has shown is an absurd bias for human centric thinking that must be rejected.

Anecdotal evidence for reincarnation can be explained as a process of ‘psychic residue’ left over from previous incarnations, and that dreams and impressions of previous past lives can be explained as a function of metempsychosis. The action of ‘psychic residue’ also explains the occurrence of ghosts, apparitions, and a sense of familiarity that one might find with places and events in the near or distant past.

The belief in reincarnation in the Hindu and Buddhist religions is vastly different than the way they are held in the West. The popular belief in reincarnation as proposed by occultists and New Age adherents is the product of sentiments and ideas that have their origin in 19th century Utopian Socialism, progressive theories of social equality, and modern concepts on spiritual evolution rather than Eastern religious philosophies or Greek Philosophy. (We will prove this point in the paragraphs below.)

What remains is for us to examine the historical precedents for reincarnation, and also examine this belief as it is held in the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism to make our point that the current belief as held in the West is neither ancient nor concurrent with Eastern beliefs. It is, in fact, a very recent and modern creation, fashioned to give comfort to occult intellectuals who fear the oblivion of death; but it has also been responsible for propagating misinformation about the nature of the true self. This sentiment has also fostered a kind of false sense of personal immortality, in some cases allowing individuals to complacently delay their search for pathways to individual enlightenment. This is because they have subscribed to the belief that enlightenment takes many lifetimes, instead of it being available to everyone in this lifetime.

(To be continued..)

Frater Barrabbas

Public Interpretation is a Writer’s Responsibility

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 19:40:00 +0000

There is quite a dust-up going on in the Golden Dawn community, and I am not particularly interested in getting too deep into it. However, the source of the controversy is the latest book that Nick Farrell has writen about one of the founders of the Golden Dawn, S. L. MacGregor Mathers. I will admit that Mathers was quite a controversial figure in his time, and like all human beings, he had great virtues and terrible failings. Like most founders of occult organizations, he was a complex man who is now both honored and maligned by modern posterity.

Ever since Ellic Howe’s book “Magicians of the Golden Dawn” and Francis King’s book “Ritual Magic in England,” it has been fashionable to paint Mathers as a sociopath and to declare that the Golden Dawn was based on deception and ruled by tyranny. Of course, my favorite book about the Golden Dawn’s history is still the one penned by Ithell Colquhoun, entitled “Sword of Wisdom: MacGregor Mathers and the Golden Dawn.” I truly wish that this book was republished in a paper back, since it is one of the few books that deals with the various personalities of the Golden Dawn and its various offshoot orders in a fair and compassionate manner. I am lucky that I own a copy of this book, and it’s one of my treasures.

Ms. Colquhoun wrote her book in manner that she did because she was an occultist and a one time member of the order. Ellic Howe and Francis King were never members of the Golden Dawn, and in fact, Mr. Howe was a historian with little compassion or actual sympathy for the order or its various members. Francis King’s relationship with occultism was very complex. While he managed to write and publish some excellent occult books, he also delighted in reporting on the most salacious and scandalous aspects of the modern occult movement. To this day, I don’t really know if Mr. King ever belonged to any occult organization, so if he wasn’t very sympathetic to the various founders of western occultism, it shouldn’t be too surprising.

Therefore, if someone is a member of an occult organization, you would think that they would be sympathetic to their subject matter if they happened to write a history of their order. However, the latest writer attempting to write the history of the Golden Dawn, and to make a name for himself as both the cutting edge historian and insightful occultist, is Nick Farrell. In his latest book, “King Over the Water,” he has sought to enlighten the public about Mathers and his various failings while attempting to exonerate the order and its teachings. This is quite a balancing act, to be sure. To quote the advertising on this book as it is marketed in Amazon dot com:

“In King Over the Water, Golden Dawn magician Nick Farrell paints a picture of the founders of the Golden Dawn becoming out of their depth as the Order began to create magicians. Rather than painting Mathers as an eccentric genius, Farrell sees him as an autocratic fantasist. He sees Mathers struggling to keep up as his students rapidly became better than him at the system he created, and shows how he was unable to raise his game to help the Order develop further. ”

You can read over this advertisement and it becomes pretty obvious that the book seeks to show Mathers in a particularly bad light. Instead of giving him credit for having founded the order and written most of its lore, he instead seeks to show that the lore stands above and beyond Mathers, who wasn’t apparently up to the job of building a comprehensive system of magickal occultism. I had judged this book to be just another a “hatchet job” on Mathers, so I haven’t bothered to purchase this book yet, but maybe I will so I can at least do a modest job of critiquing it. I am not an expert when it comes to the history of the Golden Dawn and its various affiliates, but I know the basic history.

The Golden Dawn was founded around 116 years ago, so attempting to investigate the intentions and motives of its founder ends up being nothing more than a guessing game. There are historical records to be certain, but the individuals are now long dead, and their life stories are fragmentary at best, or in the case of Mathers, there are still a lot of mysteries. I believe that it would be better to honor the founders of the Golden Dawn for their unwitting contribution to western occultism and the practice of magick rather than attempting to reveal them as failed human beings. After all, we all have virtues and flaws, and we all accomplish some things and fail to accomplish others in our all too brief of a lifespan.

However, one thing that Nick Farrell did write up in his book that has particularly offended the active organization and honored initiates of the Alpha et Omega is an ambiguous line that he wrote in his book. David Griffin has quoted that part of the book which he found quite offensive, taking some sentences that were actually in two paragraphs and putting them together. However, after examining the actual two paragraphs, I still believe that David presented the basic idea of what was being said. The wording is very ambiguous, and of course, no names are named, so it’s up to the reader to determine the actual meaning implied.

Whenever an author uses such phrases it’s because he or she doesn’t want to get sued for libel, or at least create a greater controversy. David and his colleagues at the one and only Alpha et Omega operating in the world (as far as I know) have taken this to mean that Nick is calling their organization a “cult.” Here is a paraphrase of the what was said in Nick’s book, and what has gotten the A+O crowd royally pissed off.

“By the end of the 20th Century this availability of [Golden Dawn] information enabled various reenactment groups to be established. Some of these groups are sound... Unfortunately, other groups border on religious or political cults, typically centered on a single leader.... Typically such groups claim a link to that section of the Golden Dawn Order known as the Alpha et Omega or AO.”

I don’t know about you, but if someone wrote something like that about my organization, even if it was couched in ambiguity, I would be quite upset. Nick has denied that he was singling out David’s organization, and has said that he was referring to the recently fallen GD patriarch, Bob Zink and his group. Whatever Nick Farrell’s intention when he wrote these two paragraphs, the interpretation is wholly in the provenance of the reader, since he elected to use innuendo instead of clearly stating his meaning. If the A+O organization is upset at what Nick wrote, then they are fully justified, in my opinion.

As a writer, I am responsible for how people interpret my words, regardless of my intentions. I might say something that I consider innocuous in one of my blog articles or in one of my books, but if a group of people find it offensive, then I am responsible for their umbrage. I can ignore it, or attempt to explain my meaning, or just wade into the conflict and call my detractors names and start a flame-war. The sensible thing to do is to apologize and to write a retraction. I had to do that act of humble contrition on more than one occasion when I wrote something which was erroneous or managed to anger some of my readers. This can happen to any writer, and whether one’s intention was pure and the offending writing was an honest mistake, it doesn’t really matter. You wrote it and so therefore, you own it. It’s just a fact of life that anyone who seeks to be a writer has to deal with this kind of public backlash at some point in their career. The best advice is to be compassionate and seek to amend the wrong if possible.

However, instead of attempting to mitigate the anger that some in the Golden Dawn community felt about what Nick Farrell had written, he has steadfastly refused to take any responsibility, and in fact has resorted to calling his detractors “Brown Shirts,” as if to say that they represent some kind of fascist wing of the Golden Dawn community. That was like throwing gasoline on a brush fire, and it only made things a lot worse. Not only did Mr. Farrell write a hatchet job book on Mathers, but he also insulted some of the members of an operating second order faction. Why anyone would do this is beyond my comprehension. The notoriety will undoubtedly sell more books than what might have happened without the controversy, but the legacy that Nick Farrell is leaving to the rest of us is anything but positive and constructive.

Of course, to deal with this issue, David Griffin has decided to engage in some melodrama and a bit of tongue in cheek, talking about a Godfather-like conspiracy operating behind the scenes. (The only real conspiracy is hubris, personal vanity and egotism.) Some months ago David was comparing Farrell and Zelewski to the Star Trek Borg, which I might add was a humorous way of dealing with individuals who had caused him no small outrage. I guess making fun of your adversaries is better than trying to somehow silence them. If the propaganda against David was correct, then we could expect a mafia style assassination of his detractors, but of course, that won’t really happen. (We won’t get a blog article telling us that Nick Farrell sleeps with the fishes.) What has really happened is a number of adepts in the A+O are quite upset at their treatment by Farrell and company. They are outraged by the slander and the constant attacks against their organization. They aren’t guilty of starting any of these altercations, but they are quite zealous in defending themselves. Who can blame them for that?

As for myself, I am watching this all happen on the internet through the venue of various Yahoo groups and blog articles. There are those who are defending Mr. Farrell and showing their disdain and disklike for David Griffin and his associates, while others are defending their right to practice their lore in peace and goodwill.

All of this is very simple to sort out. The A+O has declared that it is in contact with the same group of secret chiefs that Mathers was originally in contact with. Having met the gate-keepers of this clandestine organization, I can say for a fact that I believe that their claim is legitimate. That really shouldn’t matter to any other faction of the Golden Dawn. They can seek out a connection to this group, or find their own connections, or use the various available inner plane contacts to develop their own lore. There isn’t any need to defame the A+O for making this claim, and there is plenty of room in the world for more than one faction of the Golden Dawn to peacefully coexist.

Still, in order for there to be peace in the Golden Dawn community, various individuals need to refrain from writing and publishing negative broadsides about other factions in the overall organization - or for that matter, writing hatchet jobs on the founders. Until that happens, then it seems obvious that there will be a lot of friction and occasional flame-war flare-ups.

I find this overall state of the Golden Dawn community very sad and disheartening. Instead of engaging in a war of words, I think that it would be better to teach the public (and other magicians, such as myself) about the benefits and social obligations of being an initiate and adept of the Golden Dawn. In time, even this latest flame-war will die down, but I hope it does end soon. Maybe if Mr. Farrell would apologize for what he wrote about the A+O (regardless of his intentions), that would be a good place to start, in my opinion.

Frater Barrabbas

Nature of the Reincarnation Conundrum - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

This in turn brings forth yet another consideration of how to measure reincarnation in regards to spiritual maturity. Some in the New Age community refer to individuals as either “old souls” or “new souls,” and give those who are older an exalted status in the hierarchy of spiritual evolution, whether or not they have actually done anything in their current life to earn this regard. They have the potential of greatness because they are an "old soul," which is kind of a circular argument.

A humorous exchange occurred between two individuals at a New Age convention that I attended years ago brings to my mind two opposing ways of looking at this issue. I overheard an older man loudly bragging to a pretty young female student and her witty young companion about his supposed long lineage of life-times, “I have documented over a hundred lifetimes that I had, spanning over three thousand years!” It was almost as if he was saying that he was superior to everyone else due solely to his spiritual longevity and its recollection. His arrogance was readily thwarted by the reply of the young witty companion who completely reversed the situation. He stated that the large number of life times was probably more indicative of a continuous string of mistakes and stubborn ignorance rather than spiritual sagacity, since if he was so enlightened, why was he still being reborn?

Of course the old sage couldn’t answer the question intelligibly, and was humiliated by someone who was obviously not his spiritual equal. The rest of us found this exchange highly amusing, but it highlighted an important point. The question is, how can we objectively determine spiritual maturity if we must also take into account many lifetimes including the present one? Does it not become then simply a matter of subjective belief and possible fancy? Unless a peer group evaluates a person’s claims and forces a certain degree of objective clarity and mental discipline, then anyone could claim nearly anything, no matter how absurd. Since in most cases there is no peer group or authority to judge someone's claims, this is precisely the kind of unbridled ridiculousness that occurs in the greater New Age community.

Then there is the life story of the current Dalai Lama of Tibet who is currently living in exile in India. I became acquainted with this story through the movie Kundrun, (released 1997 - directed by Martin Scorsese) which I also later verified by examining his official written biography. (See his web page located here.) When the previous Dalai Lama died, his attendants began to search the country for his reincarnated self, and after a couple of years they discovered a young boy living in a remote village who seemed to have the memories of the old Dalai Lama. The young lad was tested, and he was able to recognize and pick out personal objects from a collection of real and fake artifacts, choosing only those that had actually belonged to the old Dalai Lama.

I have quoted Wikipedia’s entry for Dalai Lama: “When Tenzin Gyatso [the current Dalai Lama] was about two years old a search party was sent out to find the new incarnation of the Dalai Lama. Among other omens, the head on the embalmed body of the thirteenth Dalai Lama (originally facing south) had mysteriously turned to face the northeast, indicating the direction in which the next Dalai Lama would be found. Shortly afterwards, the Regent Reting Rinpoche had a vision at the sacred lake of Lhamo La-tso indicating Amdo (as the place to search) and a one-story house with distinctive guttering and tiling. After extensive searching, they found that Thondup's house resembled that in Reting's vision. They presented Thondup with various relics and toys - some had belonged to the previous Dalai Lama while others had not. It was reported that Thondup correctly identified all items owned by the previous Dalai Lama, exclaiming ‘That's mine! That's mine!’”

However, even though this young boy seemed to have some of the old Dalai Lama’s memories, he still had to be taught how to read and write, trained in the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism, taught the discipline of being a monk and later on, how to be a spiritual leader, not to mention that he also had to grow up and mature to become the great man that he presently became. He couldn’t just use the past memories of the previous Dalai Lama and thereby dispense with any training. So the fact that he was reincarnated didn’t also mean that he had total recall of everything from that past life.

This could be conjectured as a kind of narrative proof of reincarnation as well as its limitations, and it is something that I think about when attempting to dismiss reincarnation out of hand. There have been other anecdotal evidence presented, showing that reincarnation seems to occur, and at least in some rare occasions, could be verified. However, these anecdotal forms of proof would not be acceptable to a thorough and rigorous scientific inquiry; but they could at least demonstrate that the phenomenon of reincarnation in some form was at least possible.

Christians have a more simplistic eschatological doctrine to follow and also one that does not have so many additional considerations and qualifications in order to make it plausible. Christians believe that a person lives only one life, and when it's over they are judged for what they did during that life. Once a person's soul is judged, it is either rewarded with entry into heaven or condemned to the fiery depths of hell until the final judgment. This model is very old and was used by many ancient cultures in the past, such as the ancient Egyptians, who excelled in developing a culture devoted to a life after death.

While I concur that this model is much more efficient, backed by historical antecedents and seemingly plausible, the final judgment and the irrevocable condemnation to hell does not fit well with my spiritual sentiments of justice and redemption, nor does it lend itself to any kind of spiritual evolution. Of course, the final judgment always had an escape clause, which is a certain shady method to get past it. Whether one was an ancient Egyptian or a modern fundamentalist Christian, there was always a way to certain salvation (such as the spells of the Book of the Dead, or being saved by Jesus). I rejected this doctrine as Christian dogma a long time ago, but I also failed to fully embrace reincarnation as an alternative.

The various pros and cons about reincarnation put me into a difficult situation, since as a member of a modern earth-based spiritual movement, the tenet of reincarnation is part of the accepted doctrine. Yet this doctrine is one that I just couldn’t fully accept, since it seemed too implausible and was misused by the ignorant masses to promote all sorts of ridiculous ideas. I admit that I struggled with this problem for quite some time, and I had my own impressions and romantic notions to deal with as well.

As a teenager I had believed that I was once an Atlantean magician and high priest, and even managed to put together a magickal system that I thought was a restoration of that very ancient system of Atlantean magick and occultism. I also had memory fragments of other lives in other times and once thought that these were proof enough for reincarnation. The notion of reincarnation was pleasant to believe in, since the other available perspectives were so forbidding, namely final judgment or oblivion. But as time progressed and I became older and more mature, I began to intensely question these romantic notions and could no longer accept them even as subjective facts, since they defied any real empirical analysis. So I decided to leave these questions for other studies and practices that were more immediate to me and grounded in the present. I felt that there was little point in attempting to answer these questions or to organize my doubts into something of a sensible alternative theory.

Then over a decade ago I was reading the Winter 1997 edition of the Gnosis magazine (See the magazine Gnosis, No. 42, Winter 97 - pp. 28 - 32) and read an article that galvanized my opinions and helped me to materialize my opposition to popular reincarnation. This article not only addressed my doubts, but it also gave me an alternative perspective to explain this phenomenon in a much more plausible and logical manner. The article was entitled “The Case Against Reincarnation” and it was part of the thematic edition on “Death and the Afterlife.” It was written by Joscelyn Godwin who is an obscure writer to many occultists, but whose academic career is highly esteemed. He is reputed to be a gifted musicologist and translator, known for his work on ancient music, antique paganism and occult based music.

However, the article was concerned with translations of materials written by the equally obscure French esotericist René Guénon who, in his metaphysical examination of popular reincarnation, not only determined that it was false, but that it was also logically impossible. He also supplied a number of explanations for other related paranormal phenomena, and I found these to be both compelling and an answer to my many years of searching, not to mention my dissatisfaction with popular reincarnation. I also used the insights that this article presented as a springboard to examine the history of beliefs around reincarnation, including an examination of those beliefs as they are held in the Hindu and Buddhist religions as well as the Greek antecedents, such as metempsychosis.

I discovered some very valuable things in the process and even managed to organize my own thoughts into a theory of death and the afterlife that acts as a counter theory to the popular belief in reincarnation. I also found that the eastern definition of reincarnation, particularly the Buddhist, made more sense to me than what is being followed in western occult groups and the New Age in general.

Frater Barrabbas

Nature of the Reincarnation Conundrum - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

In modern occultism, whether it's New Age, Neopagan, Wiccan or Theosophic groups and organizations, there is a wide-spread belief and support for the tenets of reincarnation. This belief is so prevalent in these groups that it seems to be an accepted fact, and one is judged either a fool or an unbeliever if he or she does not accept this doctrine as truth.

New Age adherents attend workshops to assist themselves in determining and remembering their past lives, and Wiccan followers speak platitudes about being reborn again with friends and family. Wiccans even reserve a special kind of hell for oath breakers and others deemed cursed by the Goddess, since they are denied this benefit of rebirth with friends and lovers, and are forced instead to be reborn and wander the earth with strangers.

Theosophists have established a doctrine of reincarnation that proposes a kind of long term cycle of spiritual evolution. This cycle is where individuals engage in a long series or chain of lifetimes in order to ultimately evolve into ascended spiritual masters. Once having achieved that goal they then exit the reincarnation cycle and continue to aid and assist humanity with its collective spiritual evolution. If it were not for the thorny problem of verifying and proving that reincarnation is indeed a fact, perhaps the Theosophical model of reincarnation would make the most sense since it's so well thought out and documented.

For those who are believers, the popular consensus of reincarnation is that we as individuals experience multiple lives, and that we are influenced today by what we have done in those past lives. We are ruled by a balance of virtues and flaws that have been a part of us since our nebulous origins, and that these positive and negative effects continue to follow and haunt us from one lifetime to the next.

These powerful influences are given the label of Karma, and they are an inescapable component of the influences of reincarnation. What happens to us in this life is not so much determined by our actions and intentions, but by actions and intentions that were part of our past lives. We might be so greatly influenced by past lives that free will and self-determination would be illusions, since all is predestined by events and actions that happened long ago. Thus a person murdered in this life could have been a murderer in a past life, because his karma would have required the previous murder to be balanced out by being a victim in this life. Diseases, accidents and other maladies that afflict us could be considered the result of wrongs perpetrated in past lives and not adduced so much to our current life style and choices.

With so much of our actions, intentions and even our goals pre-determined by our past lives, it's a wonder that there is anything newly emerging in the typical person for their present life. Perhaps there's a mix of the past lives and personalities with our current inner self influencing us today, with the past having less of an impact than the present. We could grade things as being less influential if they happened further in the past, and more influential if they happened in a recent life, thereby judging past life events as being more or less relevant to the present.Of course, there could always be exceptions.

In whatever manner we seek to organize and understand these influences, reincarnation creates a very complex model of human volition; where individuals have to carefully sift through their motives, intentions, actions and even the accidents that have occurred to them in order to determine what is being influenced unduly by past lives.

If reincarnation is considered a fact, then all of these speculations, and indeed even the required examination of past lives through regression hypnosis and trance, become very important tools to understand the totality of the self. However, if it's not a fact, then these activities could be considered extraneous and even counterproductive to self realization.

My experiences with the social fad of reincarnation and karma have not made them more plausible or acceptable to me, and in fact many of the problems with these powerful concepts are amplified by how people thoughtlessly and carelessly use them. The fault is not theirs, though, since there is no real authority to guide them in these beliefs and judge their pronouncements as accurate and believable or erroneous, and so mitigate what is implausible and even ridiculous.

There are many individuals who claim to have had past lives, and some even seem to have vivid memories of these past life experiences, which is all very well and good. However, many also seem to hold the romantic notion that they are the reincarnation of famous individuals in the past, such as Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Napoleon, Washington, Queen Elizabeth I, Hannibal, Catherine the Great, or numerous other luminaries. Seldom have I ever heard anyone talking about having been an anonymous Chinese, Middle Eastern or European peasant, or some common cutthroat or nameless criminal, which would be much more likely if one considers the odds.

Reincarnation has been made romantic and glamorous in its common usage, and seems to be increasingly used to add prestige and a depth to people who would otherwise have shallow and uninspiring lives. Perhaps the most absurd element of popular reincarnation is that there is probably more than one individual claiming to be the reincarnation of the same famous person. To straighten out this conflict there would have to be some kind of mechanism to explain this phenomenon, either by verifying one claim over the other (or denying both claims) or by proposing that both are correct, with some kind of bifurcation of the reincarnation lineage occurring. Who is to say what that mechanism would be, or if there could be any criteria for judging such claims?

There is also another problem to consider, and that is what does it all signify? If some man or woman claims to be the reincarnation of Cleopatra, then what does that tell us about who they are in their present life? In my opinion, it really tells us nothing about the person living in the present time, since the life of Cleopatra was lived so long ago and all of the factors and the historical context of that life are long gone.

Promoting a famous past-life personality seems to be nothing more than a cloak or mask to hide the real truth of a person's sense of inadequacy and unimportance. Certainly, the claim of being the reincarnation of a famous person could not be taken seriously in a court of law, where someone would try to lay claim to the legacy of a famous person. So we are left with more puzzling questions and insolvable conundrums by accepting reincarnation rather than carefully judging it or considering that it might be fatuous as it is popularly defined.

The most difficult argument for reincarnation is attempting to define exactly what aspect of the “self” gets reborn if it does in fact occur. There is also the difficulty in defining an eternal and immutable aspect of the self, since by dint of its definition, such a thing would be inexplicable and incapable of being defined or discussed. If we consider that each individual is a unique product of genetics, culture, time, circumstance and life experience, and that this uniqueness affects all that is a determinant for an individual life, then such a life is impossible to be repeated at a later time.

If we also consider that life as we understand it is centered in the body, where reside the emotions, mind, ego and perhaps even the individual soul, then when that body perishes in death, so too must perish all of the other unique qualities of that individual as well. An individual life is precious, since once it is gone, the loss is permanent and irreparable.

There may be something that is permanent, immortal and eternal in regards to a human being, but it could not be related in any direct or conscious manner to what is based on the self as defined by the mind or by the living body, since these elements are verifiably perishable. The typical adherent to popular reincarnation seems to assume that their ego-based mind somehow manages to survive death, but there is no concrete evidence for that survival.

The lack of empirical evidence for an immortal soul would force theologians and occultists to define it as something ineffable and essential to the self; but not a part of that self which is perishable. The fact that they have defined the human spirit in just such a manner should be no surprise. Yet this would make temporal memories (life experience) and emotional or mental sensibilities incapable of being transmitted from one life to another, since they would not be a part of that immortal self.

So we are left again with the problem of defining what exactly gets reborn, and if it's so abstract and distant from the nominal self, what relevance does it have to the living and perishable part of a human being? Other questions that would need answering are how does reincarnation function, how long is the duration between death and rebirth, how is the new life chosen, or is it just randomly assigned, and who or what guides the spirit as it makes these transitions and implements these decisions?

One element that can be pointed to is that even with the large population of people currently inhabiting the planet, there is still 15 dead people for every one living. That number has been reduced in half since the 1960's, and might drop even further in the future. While one could conceive that there is a possibility of each person on the planet having multiple previous lives, there is also the possibility of a growing number of individuals who might be living their first life in the chain of reincarnated lives.

Eventually, if the population continues to grow as it has, the number of living people may outnumber the dead, and then it would be likely that the majority of people would be “new souls” who have never experienced reincarnation. Other souls would have to be very archaic as well, since we would assume that all available “souls” would be used up before “new souls” would be fashioned. (There is also the question - how are new souls made, and who or what makes them?)

To be continued...

Frater Barrabbas

Thoughts About Reincarnation

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

I must humbly state to one and all that I don’t believe in the popularly held belief in reincarnation. I have thought long and hard about this tenet for a couple of decades, but I just can’t subscribe to the belief that reincarnation is a regular part of the human equation. I have a number of reasons for having this opinion, and I have decided to voice some of these opinions in a series of articles that will seek to represent my long exploration of this issue.

One of my objections to reincarnation was that I believed that there were more people alive today than the population of those who were dead. In other words, if the population of living people was greater than the number of dead, then there would have to be a lot of new souls living in the world today. “New souls” is the term for someone who hasn’t been previously reincarnated, which means that this life is their first and only life. I don’t know where I had acquired that little fact as being verifiably true, but it appears that it is actually an urban myth. Maybe I got it from the comedian George Carlin, but it has been in my head for many years.

Last month, Chas Clifton posted a short blog article that pretty much demonstrated that my belief in the living out numbering the dead was completely false. It doesn’t necessarily prove that reincarnation is a fact, but it does show that at least one of my objections to it has to be reconsidered. Mr. Clifton had a link in his article that led to an another article in the BBC News magazine about some scientists who used a bit of deduction and statistics to count the number of dead people going back to around 10,000 BCE.

Their results indicate that there are, even at the present rate of population growth, around 15 dead people for every living person today. So the dead outnumber the living by a significant margin, at least for the moment. That means that every living person today could have had several past lives at the very least. So another urban myth is challenged and shown to be false by science. I find that a bit ironic, however my other objections to popular reincarnation stand, and I will be presenting them in the near future.

Here is Chas Clifton’s short article in his blog “Letters from Hardscrabble Creek,” and this is the long article found in BBC News magazine. I also thought that the following quote from that magazine article pretty much puts this bit of controversy to bed, and I will include it here.

“This means that we are nowhere near close to having more alive than dead. In fact, there are 15 dead people for every person living. We surpassed seven billion dead way back between 8000BC and AD1.”

In the near future, I will be presenting a multi-part series of articles stating my issues with reincarnation and Karma, particularly how they are perceived in popular culture and various New Age and pagan communities. I don’t believe that reincarnation is impossible, mind you, I just think that it’s a very rare phenomenon which has little or no bearing on the considerations for personal spiritual evolution, personal destiny or free choice. We are, more or less, self-determined individuals, and our personal fate and destiny is very much tied to what we do in our present (and in my opinion, only) incarnation. Some individuals can pretend to be “old souls” who are nearing their final spiritual evolutionary stage due mostly to their superior conduct in supposed past lives, and others can even present highly subjective proof of their past lives. This might be enough for them to prove without a doubt that reincarnation is part of the human equation, but it doesn’t mean that the rest of us need to swallow this belief without using any of our critical thinking skills.

What I intend to show in future articles is that I am highly skeptical about the popular beliefs about reincarnation and Karma. I think that these terms are particularly misused by many who subscribe to the notion that they were important people in the past, and that fact somehow makes them important people today. Pre-Christian paganism didn’t actually believe in reincarnation per se, instead a mechanism of metempsychosis was promoted, which is quite different than the popularly held notions about reincarnation. To ancient pagans, all life engaged in the dance of life, death and reincarnation, and that a person could be reborn as an animal or even a tree. Later on, Greek sages began to establish moral criteria for the direction of this process of reincarnation, but prior to that, there were no boundaries nor moral determinations. All life was considered sacred and therefore, ensouled.

I will also demonstrate that these popular beliefs in reincarnation are part of our modern world view, and are not to be found in either Hinduism or Buddhist religious tenets. To a Hindu or Buddhist sage, the terms reincarnation and Karma have very different meanings than how we popularly use them. Understanding this difference, and going back to the source religions that developed these terms, will help us strip away the urban myths from the real (and in my opinion) more interesting religious tenets from the East. I might not accept those tenets, but at least they make a lot more sense to me than what folks talk about in the New Age communities when they use the terms “past lives” and “Karma.”

Stay tuned to these future articles, and let me know what your thoughts are about popular reincarnation beliefs.

Frater Barrabbas

Adventures at Paganicon 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 17:03:00 +0000

All Snakes Day

Paganicon occurred over the weekend, and I fully attended and engaged in the various planned and unplanned activities. Overall, I would say that this pagan convention has turned out to be quite good. There were 50% more people attending this year than the previous year, and folks from as far away as Indiana and Winnipeg, Canada, attended. I also made some new friends, restored connections with some old friends, and basically had a good time. The weather over the weekend was quite warm for this time of year, and I am sure that some new record highs have been registered. Last year it was pretty cold outside with many traces of winter still visible, yet this year there was no indication that winter was even active. Gone was the snow and ice, and the temperatures were in the high 70's, which is very strange for the Twin Cities in mid March.

My two back to back classes on the Qabalah were initially fairly well attended. I expected a maximum of 15 attendees, and that’s how many showed up. However, after the first hour, all of those attendees except two departed to attend other classes, and most of them went to see Christopher Penczak’s class on Ascension Magick. I can’t blame them for departing, of course, and I quickly discovered that I had far more material to present than I had time to present it. Each section took longer to complete than I had anticipated, so what I was able to present to the attendees was a partial introduction instead of the whole thing. Also, considering that most of the people left after the first hour was up meant that there wasn’t enough ground covered to really segue into the next section. So the remaining two attendees and I engaged in conversations about some of the rest of the material, and I answered a number of questions.

This was the first time that I had attempted to present these two classes, and considering that they will be incorporated into an 18 hour three day intensive, I am not too worried about re-sizing them or scaling them down. Instead, I will seek to break them into sections and expand them so they will be fully vested with all of the information that I would want to present in a much larger format. So, I was satisfied with the overall results of the two presentations, and I did learn something about how much time I will need if and when I present the full weekend intensive. Some of my attendees gave me good feedback and told me that they are looking forward to the new book that I will be publishing via Llewellyn in March of 2013.

Christopher Penczak was the main speaker for Paganicon, and I must admit that I was completely unfamiliar with any of his writings. I’ve seen his books in the book stores, and it is fairly obvious that he is a prolific writer with many books in print. Christopher has put together a complete system of witchcraft, publishing his books in series of instruction manuals regarding his Temple of Witchcraft system. I attended his Friday night class on the Three Rays of Witchcraft, and I found his class to be quite engaging and interesting. What became apparent to me is that Christopher has managed to successfully pull together some pretty amazing and radically different philosophies into the revised foundation of witchcraft. I have always maintained that modern witchcraft is fairly incomplete, and that in order to make it a more comprehensive system of spirituality and magick, one would need to fill in the holes using other sources.

What Christopher has done was to pull in sources of occult and spiritual lore that I wouldn’t have chosen, being either unfamiliar with them or at least felt that they wouldn’t work together. These disparate sources include Reiki, Theosophy, the Alice A. Bailey teachings, other various New Age sources (Ascension), as well as pagan Druidism, ceremonial magick and the Qabalah. At first glance, these very difficult occult systems might seem to be contradictory and incapable of being blended or merged together, but Christopher has managed to artfully merge them together as if they were meant to be worked as one overall system. I found his way of moving seamlessly from one system to another without any jarring contradictions to be quire remarkable. Still, from my own experienced standpoint, I wouldn’t employ very many New Age systems in my own revised and developed tradition simply because I would find such a syncretism to be inelegant and esthetically unappealing. That’s just my personal opinion and tastes in occultism, and they in no way negate what Christopher has accomplished. In his thoroughness, he has given birth to a comprehensive system of spirituality and magick, and all of it is based on a foundation of witchcraft. I found that to be both attractive and compelling, and I saw that others who were attending his lectures and rituals found it attractive as well.

The Three Rays of Witchcraft are, of course, based on the first three Rays of the Seven Ray system of Theosophy and the Bailey teachings (being the Red, Blue and Yellow Rays). Christopher merged the concept of these three rays with the traditional witchcraft (Clan of Tubal Cain) concepts of the three paths of the straight, the bent and the crooked, which he had perceived through a three-fold ray vision, where the three rays emerge from a common point or source. This theme is well established in Christopher’s book, Three Rays of Witchcraft, which you can find here. However, one point that he made in his talk that I found very illuminating is where he discussed the origins of his vision, and that it represented how many seekers have approached a more comprehensive practice of witchcraft - or for that manner, any system of occultism.

According the Christopher, most practitioners are inveterate eclectic collectors of many diverse and often different and divergent techniques, philosophies and ritual lore. He compared it to a totemic magpie collecting shiny bits that it steals while it browses around for food and novelty items. These attractive baubles end up in the magpie’s nest, and after a time, the nest is full of completely unrelated, shiny and colorful junk. Occult eclecticism is the disease of the inveterate collector, and often times what is collected might seem important, but ultimately, in order to become an integral part of one’s personal spiritual or magickal discipline, it must have both relevance and some degree of relativity to the rest of one’s regimen.

Often this process of making a unified system out of a lot of disparate parts is to first begin to order them in some manner, perhaps to extend the analogy of the magpie, this act of creating order would be to formulate a collage or a mosaic out of these various seemingly unrelated elements. This effort at finding unity in diversity is very important, because the mere fact that one is manipulating powerful spiritual symbols and philosophies will trigger a visionary event where the structure and image of a meta-system will be revealed to the seeker. For me, this meta-system was the Tree of Life, for Christopher, it was the Seven Rays. Later on, he was able to find a synthesis between the Seven Rays and the Tree of Life, and all this could be accomplished due to the unifying vision that he had of the Three Rays.

I found this obvious biographical trope about how Christopher himself was able to merge several unrelated occult systems together into a unified system (the Temple of Witchcraft) useful in my own discussion of the importance of using a kind of meta-system to order and organize the various collected systems and methodologies of the practicing occultist, and that this action of ordering will have a profound effect on the seeker. It was true with me, and it was also true for Christopher Penczak, so in a sense, our approach to crafting a unified system are very similar. In some ways, his story corroborates my own, and it lends greater power to the idea that working with the symbols of the Qabalah as if they were dynamically alive is the key to making it truly a powerful system of occultism. Without this approach, the Qabalah is nothing more than a glyph and a bunch of tabular lists, along with some very arcane lore about creation, cosmology and the final dissolution. Making it come alive is the whole key to empowering oneself and being able to use the Qabalah as a metaphysical system in the study and practice of magick.

Saturday night was the “All Snakes Day Ball,” which was a costumed ball. Since I had too little sleep the night before, and I had to help out with the security for an hour, I missed some of this soiree, but what I did see was quite amazing. The cash bar was a bit steep in price and the selection of available drinks limited, but overall, the ball room was well decorated and well attended. I ducked out a bit after 10 pm and went back to my room to crash, but the dance continued until midnight.

Sunday is when I took part in a panel that discussed the organization and presentation of the four public Sabbat events that had been held in 2011 under the aegis of NordCog, a local pagan organization (Northern Dawn and Covenant of the Goddess). On the panel were three of the presenters, the artistic director (Paul) and the presiding leader (Steve). The panel turned out quite excellent, and that was the end of my involvement in the Paganicon pageantry. I did attend a really good class on Helenic Polytheism put on by Cara Schultz, which was scheduled before my panel. Cara focused on the rites and practices that would have been performed in the home during a typical lunar month, and how those beliefs and practices are deployed in the modern Greek pagan household. The class was short, succinct and highly informative. I thought that Cara did an excellent job of presenting her beliefs and practices.

So I gathering my things, made some final shopping transactions, and drove home from the convention, quite satisfied with the whole event. The temperature was almost 80 degrees outside, so I had the window down while I was driving. I got home tired and sweaty, and was amazed at the very weird weather that we were having for a mid March day. If there were any doubts about the impact of climate change, then perhaps how this winter has turned out should allay any doubts whatsoever.

Needless to say, I think that Paganicon was a tremendous success, and it will be interesting to see if it is sustainable. I am already thinking about next year’s convention, when I will have a new book out in print, and be focusing on marketing myself as a knowledgeable Qabalist.

Frater Barrabbas

Stumbling First Steps - Story of Teenage Insanity

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Following up on my article on how a beginner can break the ice and make his or her first steps in the practice of ritual magick, I was reminded of my own first steps. It was a particularly awkward time for me, since I was just an overly impressionable teenage boy when I started my journey. I thought that I would reminisce about those early times just to show my readers that my own path started out on very shaky ground indeed. Perhaps we can all see this as an object lesson in how not to approach a serious study and practice of ritual magick.

My early history as a practicing magician, although it happened so many years ago that it’s now just memory fragments, was not a study in miracles and amazing accomplishments. If I could be labeled anything in those early days of being a ritual magician, it would be with the words “incompetent” and “delusional.” Now you might find that statement rather shocking and harsh, but it is also unfortunately true. My magick rarely produced any material effects, and yet I persisted in my magickal efforts largely because I believed that I was an especially gifted and great magician. Luckily, I am no longer burdened by such delusions, but back in those days, I believed that I had great powers and a special knowledge which no one else possessed. I can chuckle to myself about it now; but back then I took such notions in deadly earnest, much to the dismay of my friends and acquaintances.

To be fair to myself, though, I was, after all, merely a teenager who possessed very little information in which to build a solid occult foundation. I didn’t have any teachers, and the number of good books in print on magick back then were very few, and I might add, prohibitively expensive for me. Not only was I quite young and a bit immature (we’re talking about a 16 year old boy), I also hadn’t yet bloomed intellectually and was still functioning as a remarkable underachiever - a common occurrence in those days. My notebooks from that time show a writing ability that was sub-par and an intellectual grasp of the occult that was based mostly on urban myth and personal fancy. Reading over them today is almost embarrassing for me, but they represent my unromantic and factual history.

What I did have back then was a very powerful visual imagination fueled by some pretty egotistical delusions about myself and my personal destiny. I worked magick as often as I could get away with it, considering that I was living in the same house as my parents. Yet most of what I was doing (according to my surviving notebooks) was pretty rudimentary and not particularly sound. What I lacked in terms of knowledge and reference materials, I more than made up with personal zeal, imaginary insights and questionable spiritual communications. Through the power of inspiration and creativity, I eventually put together a magickal system which surprisingly managed to work. Yet until that time, I was blindly stumbling around and maybe even a bit insane.

However, I suspect, based on the sparse journal entries in my notebooks, that much of what I did magically failed to produce any results whatsoever. Since I was living in a fantasy world, the fact that my magick failed to produce results didn’t seem to affect me very much. I was in too deep to attempt any amount of critical thinking at that time. It’s no wonder that when I got booted out of the Navy in 1974 that the service psychiatrist had identified me as an acute psychotic, and maybe, for a few years during that time, I was probably about as deranged as he had reported me to be. However, I was quite functional and could be reasoned with to a point by my parents and friends, so I didn’t need to be institutionalized. Besides, I crashed back to earth soon afterwards and was flexible enough to survive it, and in fact, I was able to quickly move on. Life as a teenager back then could be fraught with insane notions - “And all your children, are insane!” (Jim Morrison/Doors - "The End") I also suspect that not too much has changed since then.

Living in that kind of delusional state is not what I would recommend to anyone who is seeking to become a ritual magician. Perhaps the greatest thing lacking in my occult path at the time was someone older and more mature who could have given me direction and helped me curb my more egregious habits and predilections. Yet such a teacher didn’t exist at the time, so physical necessity itself intervened and forced me to adapt to the real world and its limitations. It was these events that functionally ended my childhood and forced me to deal with real issues and practical considerations. Compared to my friends, I started this path into adulthood a bit behind the curve of the bell-shaped graph of normalcy, but I eventually caught up with them, even though it took me several years. You could say that for a few years I was something of a “lost boy,” living in a dream world and oblivious to the real world that was all around me.

What moved and shaped me back then was likely the fact that my childish imagination was still overly febrile, and I could exist in my fantasy world without the rude material world intervening. In that kind of environment, the powers and knowledge of magick thrived regardless of their formulation, or that they were based on any kind of traditional occult knowledge. However, once I fell back to earth, then my magick started to be consistently tested against the hard facts of a remorseless physical reality, which was quite unsympathetic to my more delusional beliefs. Examining my notebooks, I can see that once I returned from my failed stint in the military, my whole perspective about magick changed dramatically. I began to become much more organized, and the few books that I had acquired were much more influential in my work. I relied less on my fantasies and urban myths, and sought to build a solid occult foundation. It took me a few years to complete this process, but the end result was a dramatic change in both style and substance.

By the advent of my 21st birthday, I had acquired some important books and tools that had pushed my knowledge of magick to a point where it was based on real traditional occult knowledge. However, I had gone as far as I could, and I couldn’t progress any further without some kind of outside intervention. I had gotten to the very boundary of developing such ideas as the vortex and the magickal gateway, but they weren’t mature enough yet to be useful, since they had been based on too much creative speculation and not enough solid expertise. I had grown to become a big fish in a tiny pond, and in order to really grow, I needed someone to guide and teach me, and I needed a much bigger pond! Had I failed to receive this outside help then I likely would have stagnated to the point where I would have quit working magick altogether, something that had been nearly unthinkable to me just a couple of years before. However, at that very point in my occult career, I was introduced to Christopher and Alexandria, and then soon afterwards, eagerly joined the Coven from Hell, and everything after that point changed forever.

To work magick with individuals who were experienced and knew what they were doing was such a potent and wonderful shock to me that it literally launched me to the next stage in my magickal studies. The contrast between the time before this event and afterwards was so astonishing that I doubt I could have simulated it in any other way. I had to have a teacher and I had to experience group magickal workings in order to really understand what was possible. The magickal powers that I experienced were so much greater than what I had been able to generate by myself, and it was nothing short of incredible. As an example, I had pushed the envelope so hard during that time that I had gone through all three degrees in my coven in just under two years. I suspect that I had set a kind of record, since the coven curriculum was quite broad and deep.

I am certain that others have had the same kind of experience the moment they made the transition from being a solitaire worker to being a member of a group practicing group magickal workings. Yet when I made that transition, it helped me to finally objectify something that had been too locked up in subjectivity to really amount to much. I had been working magick since I was around 16 years old, and in that five years I hadn’t figured out how to objectify what I was doing, even though I had gotten a few of my friends involved. Objectifying my magickal process was likely the most important thing that I was to accomplish in my long occult career, and it was the triggering event that led me to develop the magickal system that I use today.

So what does all this rambling discourse on my past follies and exploits have to do with the present world? It has to do with the fact that a solitaire practitioner, without peers or teachers, might be able to progress to a certain point of competency in their development using books and other materials, but they will need a socializing environment if they are to continue to evolve. I know that this was true for me, even though I had become something of a virtuoso for a while.

We all need teachers and peers in order to truly progress beyond our own limitations, and unfortunately, they are in short supply. However, part of any occult discipline should include the search for associates and like-minded seekers, and I believe that such a search, even if conducted in the most inhospitable environment, will ultimately be successful. I also believe that an occultist who is on the path to becoming an accomplished ritual magician will be able to acquire associates and a social circle of peers just as he or she will be able to acquire books and magickal tools. Such acquisitions are an important part of any magician’s path and process of spiritual and magickal evolution.

The key to all of this is for the magician student to somehow achieve that profound and special moment when his or her magick is objectified through interacting with others, and nothing else can do that like working group magick or magically engaging with one’s peers.

Frater Barrabbas

Magickal Mentoring and Breaking the Ice

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Occasionally, I get an email from someone who wants me to teach them magick. They either want to be an affiliate in the Order or somehow to get me to teach them more directly. I usually shy away from such requests because I believe that the only way that you can really and effectively teach someone how to work magick is by doing it in person. Allow me the opportunity to work with someone in my temple, and I could probably teach even the most stubborn dullard how to work magick. But, the key to this kind of magickal mentoring is getting face time with me, and experiencing magick in a shared environment with plenty of “hands on” experiential work. In my honest opinion, this is the only way that I can effectively teach someone how to work magick from scratch. It would require someone to live in proximity to me in order to establish this kind of relationship, and it would depend on how much spare time I had to devote to such a task. For those who live far away, the possibilities of working with me are greatly diminished.

What I don’t have at my disposal is a program for learning ritual magick from the very beginning that I can give to long distance students. Some other magicians have this kind of program, such as the redoubtable Jason Miller, who offers an online course in magick, which I would recommend to any beginner. I suppose if I had the time and wasn’t saddled with a full time career, then maybe I might assemble something together for those who want me to teach them magick. What I do have is four books in print, and these should help either the experienced beginner or the intermediate student develop and build their own system of magick based mostly on the energy model.

However, I don’t have any books or materials for the beginner who doesn’t have any real experience or is ignorant about how to work magick. The reason for this is because I believe that the first steps in learning to perform ritual magick should be accompanied by someone who is experienced and who knows how to do it. Analogous to a medieval guild, I think that someone who really wants to master magick will need to be an apprentice to an experienced magician for at least a couple of years. Otherwise, attempting to learn magick without the help of an experienced sponsor can be quite difficult. You can spend decades reading all of the available material written on the subject, and even watch videos of people working magick, but at some point, you have to actually get some experience or forever be an “arm-chair” magician.

Doing magick is the only way to learn it, and there is no replacement for that kind of experience. Without an experienced teacher, the first steps will be awkward and will likely fail to produce the desired results. This often stops the erstwhile magician in his or her tracks, because the awkwardness and the failure would seem to bring about two lines of thought, both of which would likely end all but the most steadfast student’s experimentation. Either the would-be magician will believe that he just doesn’t have what it takes to be a magician, or he will decide that maybe magick consists of far more fantasy than reality.

Certainly, real magick doesn’t operate as it does in the movies or TV shows. As an experienced magician, I can’t tell you how insulting such TV shows as “Supernatural” are to everything that I know about magick. Our culture is steeped in fantasy, hype and misinformation in regards to magick, and attempting to get the very first spell to work can actually be quite underwhelming. Very quickly, a student who is on a successful track to learning to perform magick will realize how subtle and seemingly unremarkable most magickal phenomena appears when it does happen. It seems to operate under most people’s ability to sense and comprehend. Indeed, for the beginning student who hasn’t sharpened his or her sensitivities, magick can seem to be buried amongst the mundane occurrences of the lives of nearly everyone, including those who are avidly looking for signs of it.

Where are the rays of sparkling magickal light blasting from the finger tips or emitting from the eyes? Where are the plethora of demons, angels and other spirits miraculously manifesting in material form? Where are the miracles and the astonishing destiny-laden events? Real magick, to the beginner, seems so subtle and barely there that it could be chalked up wholly to one’s imagination. Later on, as the senses for magick and the corresponding sensitivity for occult patterns kicks in, the very world itself seems to literally change before one’s eyes. But that event occurs slowly and gradually over time, and sometimes it almost seems to arrive completely unheralded. Since magick is very subtle and requires an earnest effort at mind control and sensitivity training, an experienced teacher can more ably show a beginner what to do in order to see, feel and observe the occurrence of magickal phenomena. An inexperienced beginner might even successfully produce a profoundly magickal effect and not be sensitive enough to realize its significance.

So what can a beginner do if they don’t have an experienced teacher to guide them along the first steps of learning to perform ritual magick? Perhaps the most important thing any beginner can do is to be consistent, stubbornly persistent and to start doing rituals or something magickal every day. At some point the student has to actually begin performing magick in order to “break the ice” and start getting some real experience. Inertia is a terrible force, and it often keeps the beginner from engaging in any experimentation. They can be equally afraid of success as they are of failure.

First thing that any beginner needs to do is to assemble the basic set of magickal tools. These are the four elemental tools of wand, dagger, cup and dish. In addition, having an incense burner of some kind, candle holders or oil lamps, an altar, a robe and rope belt, charcoal, incense, spring water, sea salt and perfumed oils should round out the needed supplies. Yet the most important item is to have a room dedicated to the work. The more permanently dedicated the room, then the better the results of the magick performed within it. It is important to be able to work rituals in privacy and a quiet environment. If that means working ritual at odd hours when the rest of the household is asleep or away, then that fact will have to determine the available time slots for a magickal working. Assembling the materials isn’t particularly difficult, but dedicating a room and being sequestered for an hour or more is often one of the more problematic sticking points.

Second thing is to choose and adopt a specific tradition and then to assemble the books or materials on that tradition. What is required is to study and examine this material until it is completely familiar. Then extract some of the ritual activities and write them up in your own hand. You will need a set of rituals to perform a quick daily exercise, and then others to perform more elaborate operations. Get a blank book and begin to write up journal entries about anything that might be important, from dreams, thoughts, insights to any experience that might be achieved while working ritual. My first published book, “Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick” might be ideal for someone who is seeking to put together their own discipline. The rituals contained in that book are useful and can be modified to function at the level of the student magician. You can purchase a copy of this book here, but there are a lot of other useful books as well.

Third thing is to learn to meditate, and develop a meditation regimen that is performed daily, at around the same time, every day, without fail. A meditation session should include breath control, visualization, mantra intoning and assuming a comfortable seating posture (the basic Asana, Prana-yama, Mantra and Mandela disciplines of Yoga). In addition, learn to perform the discursive meditation technique. This methodology is from the Catholic technique taught for many centuries and was called the “lectio divina.”

(Discursive) meditation - reflective reading of sacred texts and other material.
Affective Prayer - spontaneous reaction in response to these reflections.
Contemplation - reduction of meditation and affective prayer to a state of quiescence.

Perform a combination of the fourfold Yoga techniques mentioned above to establish the baseline of consciousness, and then use the discursive meditation technique to examine and reflect on strategic passages from one’s study regimen. This operation should be performed every day without fail, so it becomes the foundation for any and all magickal work. This discipline will also cause one to become far more sensitized to magickal and occult phenomena.

Fourth thing is begin to perform magickal experiments. Start out doing something small and minor every weekend. Just setting a magickal circle and meditating in sacred space can achieve some interesting results over time. However, it is important to establish some small goals and to seek to achieve them with the aid of magick. Over time, these goals can become more elaborate and concrete.

Fifth thing, learn more than two forms of divination. I would recommend that any student worth his or her salt should master the Tarot and astrology. Learning Runes, the I-Ching or Geomancy would also be helpful.

Sixth thing should be adopting a spiritual discipline along with the magickal discipline. Making the magick become more aligned to one’s religious and spiritual perspectives gives it a greater importance and significance. If you are a pagan, then working with the cycles of the earth, such as the Lunar and Solar cycles, becomes an important element of your magick.

Seventh and the most important thing of all - once you start this regimen, then don’t give it up for at least two years. If you stop performing your regimen of daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal activities, then you will have to start them all over again just catch up to where you were before you stopped. It takes around two years of doing this kind of constant, periodic and consistent work before anything dramatic starts to happen. If you have a hands-on teacher, then this period of slowly growing and evolving happens a lot faster, of course. But if you are alone, then you will need a couple of years before all the parts of this spiritual and magickal discipline start working together to produce the effects that could be considered dramatic and profound. Keeping a journal will certainly help you figure out that certain patterns and other phenomena are happening and are in fact, quite real (since you have documented them). At some point, you will have to perform some kind of self initiation and truly dedicate yourself to the work of ritual magick, and when that has happened, then you might be able to call yourself a ritual magician.

One final thing that I would like to advise any beginner who is seeking to become a ritual magician is to never attempt this work in any kind of social isolation. Make certain that you have available friends and associates who are also seeking to work magick or involved in some kind of occultism. It can be very important to have someone to talk to if something strange or weird happens and you need to objectify it. Being completely socially isolated is, in my opinion, highly undesirable.

Learn about what is going on in your local community in regards to occultism or paganism, and then seek out individuals of like mind. Do engage in social activities and make certain that you can cultivate some close friends and confidantes. Having a community of occultists to talk to could help you keep your mental balance at a particularly difficult time in your magickal career. Who knows, you might even find amongst your acquaintances someone who is an experienced ritual magician, and who might share some ritual space with you, thereby giving you leg up on your own evolving magickal process.

Frater Barrabbas

Top Ten Grimoires - My Opinion

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Recently, Chas Clifton, in his blog, “Letters from Hardscrabble Creek” had an interesting link to an article in the Guardian about the top ten grimoires of all time, written by Owen Davies, the very publisher of the book “Grimoires: A History of Magical Books.” I highly recommend the book and author, since I found a lot of useful information about the historical lineages of various grimoires. Anyway, the article on the Guardian isn’t very new, but I missed seeing it, and Chas Clifton pointed it out in his blog. Chas Clifton often has interesting stuff written up in his blog entries, and I enjoy reading them.

Anyway, the article put together a list of the ten most influential grimoires in history, and rounding out the bottom was the Necronomicon and the Book of Shadows. These books actually wouldn’t have been put on my list of important source grimoires for magick, but Owen Davies was listing those that have had a large social impact, and I must bow to his wisdom. You can look over his article and make your own judgement, but I decided to take a swag at putting together my own list of grimoires. So the question is, what are the top ten grimoires that I would actually recommend someone purchase and examine, with an eye to purloining lore for personal uses? After all, that’s the main purpose that I would buy an expensive limited edition book. It would be for the purpose of adding needed lore to my magickal work, since I am not really in the business of collecting books for their own sake.

First of all, I don’t belong to that popular crowd of magickal practitioners who believe in the sanctity of the grimoires. It has become nearly a fad to pick out a grimoire (or two) and then faithfully practice it exactly as it was written, allowing for no substitutions or deviations. The idea is that the old time magicians and sorcerers knew what they were doing, and we, today, have lost this knowledge, so we must rely on the old books to practice magick as it should be practiced.

Of course, this presupposes that all of the other myriad collections of modern magickal systems are defective, corrupted, and mostly useless. Since I am a terrible revisionist, and I have actually invented whole segments of the ritual lore that I regularly use, I would fail to make the grade of being a proper magician in the eyes of these folks. Perhaps they would ignore the fact that my magickal techniques not only work for me, but they work quite effectively for others, too. The very fact that I have crafted a new magickal system using old and new parts would make what I am doing a complete contradiction to the grimoire purists. In fact, I have only within the last decade or so actually started to incorporate some of the lore from the old grimoires, and then, only what I consider to be the choicest bits. I am certain that my approach to the old grimoires is a lot more like a ghoul picking over dead bodies than an antiquarian sorcerer who worships the old practices.

Secondly, there is the problem of attempting to reconstitute the culture that underlies any one of the old grimoires, some of which have their origins in the early Renaissance or even late middle ages. The fact that a single grimoire is actually an archetypal representation of many unique variations over time, and that the grimoire purists are using published texts that are really translated reconstructions doesn’t seem to really bother any of them. In the end, the grimoire purist and the ultra-modern revisionist are really doing a variation of the same operation. They are both reconstituting a tradition or practice in the modern world, using modern perspectives, tools and other accouterments. Grimoire purists can pretend to be practicing an antique discipline, but without the cultural context that went into producing their cherished book of spells, they are in fact modern reconstructionists at the very least, or modern revisionists. None of us can recreate the culture of the 17th century or earlier, so we have to use the cultural context of a modern world perspective and creatively adapt our work.

Anyway, I have written up my opinions on this subject before, so we don’t have to belabor that issue any further. This is just one of several sticking points that I have with anyone who espouses a grimoire purist perspective. My magick stands in dire contradistinction to the whole grimoire purist movement, and I must say that I am freaking proud of that fact.

According to Owen Davies’ article, the top ten grimoires in his esteemed opinion are as follows: 6th and 7th Books of Moses, Clavicule of Solomon, Petit Albert, Book of St. Cyprian, Dragon Rouge (variation of the Grande Grimoire), Book of Honorius, 4th Book of Occult Philosophy (Le Grande Albert), The Magus, Necromonicon, and Book of Shadows. These might be the most popular books that have had the most impact on European and American cultures, but they are not the most useful books, in my opinion. I would scratch the Necromicon and the Book of Shadows off of the list to start with, and then assemble, in some kind of sequence, the books that I think are the most important grimoires.

Outside of this list of my top ten grimoires would be the source books that were so important to the birth of my current system of magick, and I should make mention of them as well. Two books that had quite a powerful influence on how I work magick were Israel Regardie’s Golden Dawn and Paul Huson’s Mastering Witchcraft. I can also include The Magus in this list, but when Agrippa’s Books of Occult Philosophy later became available, the poor quality of this book became readily apparent (so I abandoned it). I also expropriated ritual structures and ideas from the pre-Vatican Priest’s Mass Missel, and I did use, for a few years, pieces from Simon’s Necronomicon. I should also mention Lady Sheba’s Book of Shadows as well, as being one of the earliest source books that I borrowed heavily from for a while. However, we are talking about grimoires, so let me get on with listing the Top Ten Grimoires, in my humble opinion. Keep in mind that these books are not exactly ordered according to their importance to me (they are all equally important).

1. Greater and Lesser Keys of Solomon - this would include the Veritable Key of Solomon, and the Lemegeton, or Lesser Key. The Lesser Key usually consists of the Goetia, Theurgia-Goetia, the Pauline Books, the Almadel and the Ars Notoria of Solomon. Of these, I have made the most extensive use of the Goetia, Theurgia-Goetia, the Ars Notoria and to a lesser extent, the Greater Key of Solomon. I have found the verba ignota in the Ars Notoria to be quite powerful and very useful.

2. Book of Abramelin - since I have developed my own version of the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, this book has become much more important to me than it was earlier in my magickal career. Prior to building up that working, this grimoire was nothing more than a curiosity, since I didn’t have the time or resources to devote the actual ordeal outlined in the book.

3. Four Books of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa. The three books are readily identifiable as having been penned by Agrippa, the fourth book is questionable. However, the fourth book is quite useful in that it usually has a copy of the Heptameron included in the appendix, which, I might add, is also a very useful grimoire. My opinion is that if someone wanted to adopt a Renaissance methodology for practicing ceremonial magick, then Agrippa’s books would likely be the best resource. I often find myself going back to Agrippa’s writings when researching a specific occult perspective or methodology, however, I only obliquely use the materials contained within them to practice my system of magick.

4. Liber Juratus - Sworn Book of Honorius - while the rituals and other workings in this grimoire have not been particularly useful to me, I have found the verba ignota written in the various psalms to be extremely powerful. I have used them in my magickal mass rites and in other workings as well. I have found this language to be even more powerful than Enochian. The language in this grimoire is very similar to that found in the Ars Notoria, and they may be related, since their place and time of origin is analogous (early 13th century Germany).

5. Enochian Diaries of Dr. John Dee - these books and writings, and other books that are based on them, have been very important and useful to my work. The fact that I have used the Enochian Keys or Calls for many years as well as working with a number of the spirits (Elementals and Talismanic Elements, and their associated spirits) in that system’s hierarchy would make these writings very valuable to me.

6. Arbatel - this grimoire contains an entire system of planetary magick based on the seven Olympian spirits. Since my first approach to planetary magick was through the Olympian spirits, and it’s something that I still use today, I would have to rate this grimoire as very important.

7. Picatrix - only recently translated fully into English, the Picatrix is a useful resource for astrological magick. I have expropriated the system of Lunar Mansions from this work to use in my own talismanic workings.

8. 6th and 7th Book of Moses - this grimoire was also just a curiosity to me until Joseph Peterson came out with his definitive version of the book, having discovered a more uncorrupted German source to work from. The language or words of power used in this grimoire is quite potent, and so are some of the sigils, characters and special lamens. While I have not yet extracted any lore from this grimoire, it is high on my list of future projects.

9. Grimoire Armadel - one of the most curious and likely incomplete grimoires is the Armadel. The reason why the Armadel is on this list is because it probably represents a lost system of magick from the renaissance period, known as the art of Armadel. I haven’t had time to reconstitute this grimoire in a published format, but I have figured out how to make use of it. I have expropriated several of the characters from this grimoire and used them to decorate my magickal gateway keys. The net result was very powerful indeed, leading me to conjecture that the entire grimoire is worth reconstituting.

10. Grimoirum Verum - just a year ago, this grimoire wouldn’t have been on my list. However, I have been convinced by Jake Stratton Kent that this grimoire is both important and strategic in regards to working with goetic daemons. I haven’t found any use for this book yet, but it is also one that I intend on researching in the future. Other grimoires from this branch would probably include the Grande Grimoire, Grimoire of Pope Honorius, the Black Pullet, the Dragon Rouge and the recently published Dragon Noir. The Enchiridion and the Dragon Noir have been published together in a book entitled “Crossed Keys,” which I mentioned in a previous article. The tenth position is a kind of catch-all for any other miscellaneous grimoire that I might have missed, and for the more supposedly disreputable grimoires, many of which are in my collection.

So that’s my list of the ten most important grimoires, and I am certain that you have your own list as well. As you can see, it differs remarkably from what Owen Davies has written down in his article, but then again, he’s a historian, and I am a practitioner. We are bound to disagree on just this little matter, and that’s quite acceptable to me.

Frater Barrabbas

Further Thoughts Regarding the Qabalah

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:17:00 +0000

I have completed assembling the lecture notes for my two lectures at the upcoming Paganicon lectures on Saturday, March 17 (at 9 am). That work also includes the handouts, since I always believe that the attendee should have something that’s printed up to take from the lecture. These tasks took a lot more labor than I thought they would, but the results have been, in my opinion, quite extraordinary. I am very happy with what I have put together for the two lectures, and I think that those who attend will get quite a lot out of them. They aren’t comprehensive, of course, but they will at least give the attendee enough information to be able to kick start their own studies.

Sometimes, the best way to figure out how to present something is to first assume that you know nothing about the subject matter, and then assemble the discussion in order to succinctly define what the topic is and how it can be used. In order to do this, you have to distance yourself from what you know, and then try to explain the problem from a fresh perspective. Detaching and then re-engaging in a completely new way can really help you to assemble a lecture that’s fresh and exciting. It forces you to look at the subject matter with new eyes, and that can really help you come up with a better way to describe the major points of your lecture.

What this operation did for me was to boil down the Qabalah, in terms of its theories and its practical applications, to the absolute essentials. So I think that I will be able to present my information in a manner that makes little or no assumptions, and manages to cover all of the important concepts. In each lecture, I have identified one very important key concept that helps to define the contents of the entire lecture. I am so excited by these key concepts that I wanted to share them with my reading public, since many of you probably won’t be able to attend my lecture in person.

First thing I discovered as I was assembling these two lectures was that the first one, which will be an introduction to the Qabalah, has too much material to be covered in just under 1 hour. So I decided to expand the Intro lecture to be 90 minutes, with a ten minute break after just an hour into it. I then shortened the Practical Qabalah lecture to be around 45 minutes, so both lectures should fit into the combined 150 minute slot. I thought that doing the two lectures in this manner would most efficiently use the time that was allotted.

Here is the Key point for the Introduction to Qabalah Lecture:

Qabalah encapsulates Symbols - these symbols are either religious or occultic, or both. Symbols are not signs. Signs represent something else - they are place holders.

Symbols are conscious markers for deep level psychic processes that are transcendental and transpersonal, and usually mysterious to most people. Focusing on symbols can give one access to deeper layers of meaning and collective significance. Sources of symbols are numinous, archaic and inexplicable. With these concepts in mind, we can say something about the collective symbology of the Qabalah, which contains the symbology of all the religions of the world.

Accessing these symbols is done through meditation, contemplation, path working and various forms of theurgy - Practical Qabalah. Organizing symbols into groups or structures also has an unintended affect.

Tables of correspondences are various arrangements of the living Symbols of the 32 elements of the Tree of Life. To learn everything that one could learn about the Qabalah, accessing the Symbols represents a greater quest than reading and studying a large body of books. The important task is to make the Qabalah come alive for the practitioner.

Correspondingly, here is the key point for the Practical Qabalah lecture:

The First Power of the Practical Qabalah is ANALOGY. The Power of Analogy is able to group, configure and compare various disassociated religious symbology to create a unified field where everything is connected to everything else. Creating connections in this manner causes symbols to become triggered, activating them so that the reveal their importance and meaning. (In magick, causality is believed to be absolute, therefore, by creating connections, one is working a form of magick.)

The Power of Analogy is the foundation of Qabalistic speculation, and it was used to create new connections and extend the meanings of religious symbology. (‘As if’ approach.)

So as you can see, these two key points dove-tail, and the first key point is repeated from the Intro lecture in the Practical lecture. Also, note that because of the nature of symbols, how the power of analogy really shapes and profoundly impacts one’s study and practice of the Qabalah.

This leads me to a rather humorous story. Years ago, I was experimenting with putting together different variations on the Tree of Life, attempting to see if I could discover a new way of encoding the 32 elements of the Qabalah. I was talking to a friend of mine about what I was doing while we were both visiting the local occult book store, when some old man with a white beard overheard what I was saying. He turned to look at me and gave me one of those disapproving looks, mixed with a certain amount of shock and disbelief. Then he came over and interrupted my conversation, sternly rebuking me while shaking a gnarled finger in my face, saying emphatically that manipulating the Tree of Life was not only very impious, but downright dangerous. I could screw up the whole universe by mucking around as I was supposedly doing. (Who in the hell did I think I was, after all!)

Of course, my friend and I smiled at this rude interruption, and we just nodded to the old codger, as if to acknowledge that we heard him, but offering no comment. He then turned around and stormed away, and we both shook our heads, collectively sighed, and continued with our discussion as if nothing had happened. I can’t remember the guy’s name or even exactly when and where this scene occurred, but I remembered it as being quite silly. “Yeah man, somebody actually believes that changing the Tree of Life will wreck the whole freakin’ universe! Right!)

However, now that I have come up with this very fascinating and even startling perspective on the nature of occult symbols and how they function in the Qabalah, I not only remembered this conversation, but it doesn’t seem so absurd as it did many years ago. If organizing and shaping the structure of the tables of correspondence or formulating a glyph that contains them will have some kind of impact on the one doing it, then that old codger wasn’t really too far off.

Will the world end if I turn the Tree of Life upside down? No, of course not. But it might have some impact on how I see and perceive things within my own magickal and spiritual perspective. The impact is individual and very subtle, but it does exist - the very nature of magick makes it so. So that old guy was right, but perhaps if only he had really explained himself instead of acting like a cranky old fart, maybe I might have learned something then that I only recently discovered now. Then again, maybe he was really as clueless as I had thought he was back then.

How odd is the world, so filled with irony! Yet it often takes advancing age to remember and appreciate it.

Frater Barrabbas

Ides of March - Bitter End of Winter

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 15:24:00 +0000

After having a rather mild winter with little snow, we got buried with half a foot of snow on the very last day of February. There has been some additional snow adding to what we already had, so it looks like a very wintry landscape right now. The beginning of March always looks like this even though it’s supposed to be the month when the Vernal Equinox occurs (not to mention St. Patrick’s Day), but that’s the way it is, living up here in Minnesota. Winter has a tendency of lasting from now until the middle of April, but I am hoping for an earlier reprieve.

Meanwhile, as the months have been slowly ticking away through the long period of winter, I have realized that I have still have a mountain of work to do, and less time to do it if I am to have any kind of outdoor life when summer finally does come. I have to admit that sometimes I am an inveterate procrastinator, and other times I can waste a lot of time reading some pulpy fiction book, occupying my thoughts over some pointless political blog or watching too much television. I guess it’s time to bring some discipline to bear on myself and start working more tirelessly on the many projects that I have in front of me. Getting seriously ill with the flu in the last few days has shown me that I don’t have time to burn, and I need to renew my efforts in getting things done before the winter months are over. (So much to do, so little time, really, to do it all - it’s the story of my life, and everyone else’s too.)

Luckily, I was able to perform a very condensed version of the Talismanic Elemental process allowing me to generate the first of three talismans for the Portae Lucis working. At least that ordeal is more or less on schedule. I have other magickal workings that I would like to perform in the weeks and months ahead, and I have made little progress in getting them done. I guess I will have to redouble my efforts.

With the advent of Spring also comes the annual Paganicon convention, which is a newly started pagan gathering in the Twin Cities. I have elected to present two classes on the Qabalah, and the schedule has recently been posted. My two part lecture will be presented back to back, so I will have a time slot of approximately 150 minutes to present an introduction to the basic theory and cover the various aspects of the practical Qabalah. Unfortunately, my class is competing against a well known local celebrity and also the key note speaker. My classes also will be starting at 9 am Saturday morning (March 17), so we’ll see how many folks show up to my lecture series. You can find the schedule here, on this web site.

I must admit that I haven’t put these classes together just yet, but considering that I have a mountain of material produced from doing my book research, it shouldn’t be too difficult for me to assemble a class on the theory and practice of the Qabalah. I have already put together a class outline, so all I need to do is to fill it in. I will usually build up the lecture notes for the lecturer, and produce some class notes to hand out to the attendees. I can say without any trepidation that I truly know this material inside and out. My task will be to communicate this material in a manner that is compelling, interesting, and perhaps even amusing. What I will have to avoid at all costs is to be boring, redundant, or pedantic. I will need to have passion when I am expounding from the lecturne, so that means that I will have to drink a fair amount of coffee and be wide awake when 9 am roles around.

So far, though, the class notes are coming together pretty well, although I am just in the starting stages so far. Here’s a quote from the definition of the Qabalah. What do you think of that? Does that sound interesting? Hopefully, it will be interesting when I present it in a couple of weeks.

“In the Qabalah, truth is believed to be obscured, hidden and unknown to common humanity. Thus, the Qabalah is an esoteric doctrine that uses systems of analysis to determine the nature of these hidden truths and reveal them. Causal connections (between things) are considered to be absolute - they are found everywhere. Therefore, everything is connected to everything else, and all connections are meaningful and significant. If, by extension, everything is connected together, than at some point there is a place where that unity can be resolved into a singularity - where the All can also be revealed to be the One.”

I think that I am off to a good start on the class notes. I’ll share some more material from them in the near future.

***

After an incubation period of more than three days, I went and examined the Solar talisman that I had generated in my working on last Tuesday. I was very pleased with the results, I must say. I picked up the talisman in my hands and could it feel vibrating with an intense power. With four talismanic elements projected into a single talisman, it did feel quite super charged to me. I think that I will find many uses for this talisman in the future, and I might even consider doing this later in the year for the planet Jupiter. A super charged talisman such as this can be used to charge other older depleted talismans, even if the planet is different.

Yet I am still pondering over what I had to go through in order to complete the first talisman of the Sun for the Portae Lucis working. I am quite amazed that I had the wits and fortitude to see it through. How much easier it would have been to just reschedule it instead of making the attempt. All of the nice neat and efficient plans that I had made, including determining the times when and also how I would perform this working were all basically tossed aside due to completely unforseen events. Believe me, getting very sick wasn’t on my schedule, and it certainly disrupted and even profoundly shaped the working, forcing me to rewrite the base ritual, which I must admit is much more efficient and succinct now.

Was it all just happenstance or have I started a process that will turn out to be far more difficult and profoundly challenging than I had originally thought? Also, doesn’t this amazing set of occurrences show that magick is not something that is controllable, predictable and, thereby, scientific? I had a good solid plan for generating this talisman, and it was a magickal working that I had done many times before, although not quite in the iteration or concentration of elements. The fact that my plans went completely awry shows, once again, the wiggly and chaotic nature of magick. I am certain that there is some good irony in everything that happened to me in the last several days, but right now, so soon after being so very ill, I can’t see the joke. Maybe I will see it at a later date, who knows.

Another interesting thing happened to me in the last couple of days might also seem to be a part of the magick. On Friday, I got an email from my long lost friend, Lugh McGhee. He was looking for me on the internet and later on told me that I had been on his mind in the last couple of days. I was very pleased to get back in touch with Lugh, and I had even previously written an article about my fond associations with him in the past. We had some really great adventures together years ago, and I was sad that we had gotten out of touch and I hadn’t heard from him in over seven years. That changed on Friday afternoon, much to my delight. Lugh is still living in Miami and has once again expanded his magickal and occult purview to include other areas of study and practice than his Santerian priesthood. We have decided to collaborate and share lore again, so I was quite happy with that result. I also wonder if Lugh’s sudden impulse to getting back in touch with me had anything to do with the Solar talisman that I recently generated, since his nickname, Lugh, is the Celtic God of the Sun. Interesting, but once again, who knows? I don’t doubt that Lugh may also feature in some manner with this coming work.

Also, I recently heard that Lugh’s close friend and lover from the early Circle days, De-anna Alba recently passed away. That was a very sad event, indeed, but I had never really known her very well, and when Lugh and I had our adventures, they had already broken up. I told Lugh about that passing, and he remarked that she had been around the same age as us, so she had definitely passed away well before her time. When I think of all of the things that I have yet to complete, see and do, I am grateful that I am still very much alive, healthy and living well. I am very sad to hear of De-anna’s passing, and I hope that it was painless, quick and uncomplicated.

More snow will fall tonight, and I must focus on finishing the class notes for my Paganicon lectures. Weirdly, the weather will shift and become quite warm and sunny by Tuesday, which will likely melt a lot of snow covering the ground. Despite that joyous thought, I must continue pluggin away at my tasks. Once they are done, then I will have some time to focus on the next set of tasks that await my attention. My regular job is going to be demanding a lot more of my time in the future, and I suspect that my blog articles will be slightly less substantive than they have been. I have been promising that I will be writing shorter articles, and think that the time has come to enforce that discipline, too.

Frater Barrabbas