Talking About Ritual Magick

Thoughts About Good and Evil

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 11:44:00 +0000

As a Witch, I see the world infused with the ever-changing power and wisdom of light and darkness, where the changing seasons are represented as the cyclic balance of these qualities that is ever changing. They take turns being dominant, ascending and then diminishing. Through impermanence, resilience, fulfillment and interdependence, nature teaches us its greatest mysteries. It is a perfectly harmonious blending of natural phenomenon that is always tending towards balance. I use that idealistic perception to examine and judge the world around me, noting to myself that this balance has a powerful effect on the various elements of the natural world as well as the spirit world.

Being out of balance is characterized as sickness and the diminishment of life for individual living creatures and the totality of life in the world, including and especially for humans. When the natural world itself is out of balance in a given geographic domain, then that situation produces an extinction event purging such a place of unadaptable life forms. Nature can change drastically by itself, such as the occurrence of ice ages and warming or cooling trends or by cataclysmic collisions with comets and asteroids. It can also be changed by the activities of human beings, such as the careless introduction of toxic pollution or greenhouse gas emissions. Ecological balance is the key to a living in a sustainable and habitable world.

“The balance of nature is not a static state; it is a dynamic equilibrium.” - John Muir

I have equated the occurrence of the transcendental cycle of light and darkness with the cycle of life and death, but where I stop short is to equate light and darkness to the qualities of good and evil. This is because they do not seem to be attributes associated with terrestrial life in general, and they are more concerned with the moral beliefs and values of both individual and collective human beings. There is no good and evil in nature, so these attributes are concerned with the sentience and the spirituality of human beings living in the world. Good and evil cannot, therefore, be considered transcendental attributes. By taking this naturalistic perspective about good and evil and making it a part of my religious practice, I have declared myself as a moral relativist. That, by itself, introduces the whole topic of the nature of good and evil, and whether or not it transcends human religious moral tenets and socially based laws. Certainly, there are rules against certain practices, and some of them are obvious and completely agreeable, and others are debatable. The human arbitrated laws of the land are the final determiner of what is legal and lawful in our socialized world, but bending or even abrogating those laws is the unfortunate practice of criminals, ruthless politicians and oligarchs.

Followers of moral relativism or cultural constructivism, as it is called, declare that all laws and moral values are simply relative to the cultures to which they apply, thereby making them more like social constructs. I believe that this perspective ignores that there are indeed some universal moral laws despite the different cultures in different geographic locations and times. The distinction of good from evil may be just an evolutionary adaptation to assist human survival and social cohesion, but there are boundaries that define civilized behavior. It is only when these human-determined moral values are grounded in transcendent precepts that they are taken out of the human sphere.

Many philosophers have argued about the issue of whether these laws are based on transcendental precepts, such as how religion typically sees them, or whether they are merely human values determined by politics and established for the benefit of the elite and then cloaked in religious theology to give them a more absolute quality. This certainly seems to be the case for the mundane idiosyncrasies of religious laws and practices. Avoiding pork may have been an expedient law to protect individuals from harmful diseases, but coercing women to wear head scarves to protect them from inciting lustful thoughts in men seem to be more about controlling and sequestering women from the body politic than maintaining the purity of intent between genders.

Outside of religious law and moral prescriptions, there is a body of thought that good and evil transcend human values, and these would be those philosophers influenced by the teachings and dialogs of Plato. Plato believed that good was an archetype and had a transcendent form, which he proposed was part of the highest reality, and that human beings perceived this archetypal ideation with intuitive approximations, since humanity cannot see the ultimate reality. Plato believed that if the Deity decreed the nature of good without good being a universal value, then it would be arbitrary and not truly good. From this perspective, Aristotle declared that good and evil are grounded in the nature of being itself, and defined it as that which either fulfills or damages the essential nature of a person, thus, making it above and beyond the basis for determining cultural laws and moral sentiments.

Good and evil, therefore, were archetypal qualities that were a natural part of the world as perceived by humanity. Christian theology, through Thomas Aquinas, incorporated Aristotle’s ideals into its natural theology, making good and evil a core essence of the manifestation of the world through the power and wisdom of the Deity. Of course, raising the idea of good and evil to the level of a godhead brought all sorts of difficulties to a monotheistic creed, such as the nature and origin of evil, and whether God was the source of both good and evil, which this certainly implied.

Making good and evil transcendent also introduced into the framework of religions and mystical speculation the idea of duality, since if God is good, merciful, compassionate and loving, then evil has its origins in either an opposing supernatural being, such as the devil and various demons, or it becomes a mistake or aberration in the formulation of the world itself. Early adherents to Judaism had no problem in seeing a Deity that did both good and evil to individuals and nations, and to a lesser extent, Islam held this view as well. Seeing the Deity as the source of both good and evil had an ancient precedent, which was believed by most early pagan civilizations. Yet Mesopotamian religious adherents had long developed the idea of demons, and this was picked up by other religions in the Middle East, especially the Persians. However, Judaism and Islam both adopted the concept of demons and devils later on in their development, likely due to the influence of Persian Zoroastrianism, which was a true dualistic religious creed.

Abrahamic faiths declared that their Deity was singular and had no competition, so theologians attributed the incidence of evil and the phenomenon of demons to the fact that human beings had the power of choice, to choose to do either good or evil, and they were tempted to do evil by demons. Followers of Luriannic Kabbalah believed that evil was the result of the shattering of the first emanation of the Sephiroth because they could not hold the absolute glory of the supernal Godhead, and therefore allowed the sparks of divine glory to fall into the underworld of non-being, which became the Qliphoth. This event allowed a contrary force to manifest that opposed the will-to-create that drove the Deity. Only within the Ain Soph was there the absence of good or evil, but from the emanations proceeding from Kether, there were tensions between a duality of severity and compassion resolved in the middle pillar, yet ultimately formulating in the distinction of good and evil in Malkuth. The Gnostic bishop, Valentinus, also promoted the idea that evil was introduced as an error of material creation, and not the fault or flaw of human nature.

Christianity developed the idea of the devil, or Satan, and legions of demons and their overlords as the principal source of evil, and that God gave them the kingdom of Hell from which to tempt humanity into committing sins. The rationale was that those who were destined to be bad and had led sinful lives were culled from the collected and departed souls from those who were good.

While the authors of Christian theology proposed that their religion was nominally a monotheistic creed (as inherited from Judaism), they also pushed it to deviate from that base over time so that they could more powerfully build up the role of devils and demons. They declared that those who were not forgiven for their sins or had not atoned for them in some pious manner, their immortal souls would be delivered to the powers of evil once they died, to be tortured forever in the underworld of Hell. It was a simple binary approach and explained why evil was allowed to exist, but only active in the material world. This belief functioned as a means of testing the faithful, who were given the dispensation of choice and wherever it might lead them. Thus, Christianity, while pretending to be a monotheistic religion of the Abrahamic faiths, was actually a dualistic religion that sequestered good and evil and made them morally transcendent. This Christian sentiment about good and evil, has, over time, influenced popular Islamic beliefs, but not so much Judaism.

More modern philosophers, like Emmanuel Kant taught that moral law, regarding good and evil, is considered a categorical imperative that is derived from pure reason and is independent of cultural determinants. That means good and evil are universal tenets which are binding whether individuals or societies adhere to them or not. Another perspective is the modern philosophical idea of moral horror that stipulates certain actions, such as mass murder or genocide, are genuinely wrong, and it is referred to by scholars as Moral Realism. Either of these approaches specifies that certain actions can be considered universally evil, and by inversion other actions could be considered universally good, and neither of these categories can be reasonably refuted.

Thus, Nazi officials who assisted in the killing of millions of Jews, or Japanese military officers who murdered prisoners of war, raped, injured or executed innocent civilians cannot hide behind the excuse that they were not responsible for their crimes. It is because the crimes they committed were against humanity as a whole, and judged independently of any national laws or directives, which allowed or compelled such actions. The excuse of just following orders was not enough to mitigate adjudicated war criminals from being sentenced to death. I, for one. would not want to argue against or disagree with such agreed upon international laws, and I would expect the politicians and combatants of any branch of the military in my country to adhere to these conventions as if they were sacred writ.

It would seem, then, that some laws that humanity has determined as a whole could be considered universal and applicable to everyone, such as crimes against humanity. Other laws and moral tenets could be considered to be relative to the place and time. Some of them approach universal laws and others would be socially or culturally determined. While universally accepted laws ordained by the conventions of nations could be considered candidates for transcendental qualifiers for the definition of evil, qualifying good is not as direct.

I think that on the transcendental level there is something more like what I originally discussed in the beginning of this article as the archetypes of harmony and disintegration, life and death, creation and dissolution, or expansion and contraction as symbolic qualities of light and darkness. These attributes are above the domain of the human mind and the social milieu of the human race, and so they are only dimly recognized in the human definitions of good and evil. From this perspective, good and evil are mostly relatively defined, but there are conventions and definitions of evil, and laws adjudicating them, that amount to universal tenets in the human domain.

In the occult and spiritual sciences, one can deduce a concept of good and evil as the overall polarity of creation and dissolution as found in the concept of balance and its product, harmony, or imbalance and its product, disintegration. I would propose that love produces harmony, and hatred, disintegration, and that these could qualify as representations of good and evil in our world of consciousness and unconsciousness. These qualities are the light and darkness within our minds. We all have the ability to love and hate within us regardless of whether our personal affectation is to identify with good or evil.

We have the freedom and power to chose good over evil, evil over good, or to even avoid making a choice. Externally featured is our outer persona and its associated values, and within us, hidden from view, is our shadow, which contains those things suppressed or deemed valueless. Therefore, the duality of good and evil reside in our very being and they may be in a constant state of conflict if our internal balance leans too far to one pole or the other. Our goal in becoming spiritually evolved and enlightened is where we can unite the light and the darkness within us, so that the polarity of good and evil are neutralized, and thus become whole and complete in emulation of the One.

A person who has mastered the light and the darkness within their own soul and has become completely unified so that there is no internal conflict, only unity, has finally become a whole person. You might ask me what a person who has gained this state would be like, and I would reply: “Harmony, love, compassion, mindfulness, imperturbability, and total submission to the One and the ever present Now; this is their ultimate state.” This does not mean that they are blind to the suffering of others, nor are they immune to the vicissitudes of human existence and its fragile mortality. They are, in fact, more human than what is typical of humanity. This is the goal that we should seek, but there are any number of different ways to achieve it. For a ritual magician, magical shadow work is the key to achieving wholeness and completeness, such as what I have proposed in the workings of Ordeal XV.

Frater Barrabbas

Equinox - Balance Between Light and Darkness

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 18:14:00 +0000

View of Loughcrew Cairin during the equinox

Archaic humanity did not specifically acknowledge the spring and autumn equinox as much as they engaged with the solstices for summer and winter. We know this because the orientations of the various stone circles, passage tombs, and megalithic monuments built by our ancient ancestors are accurately aligned toward the southern and northern extreme latitudes depicting the advent of the solstices. The equinoxes were just the points in between the summer and winter solstices. There were exceptions, such as Loughcrew Cairns in Ireland, where the passage tomb is aligned to the rising sun of the equinoxes instead of the solstices. Additionally, the Mnajdra Temple in Malta has a temple doorway that is precisely aligned to the equinoxes, and the Crucuno Rectangle in Brittany is a megalith that is aligned to the equinoxes; They represent a different approach to antique solar observances. Were they an exception or a variation? We don’t know.

Prehistoric societies would obviously note that the sun was either incrementally moving to the south or the north, and at a certain point the duration of day and night would be equal. Whether they marked the equinoxes as an important occasion is unknown, but it is very likely in some cases. All this, of course, is just conjecture on the part of archaeologists, but the fact that there are alignments shown in these edifices to the solstices and in some cases to the equinoxes lends itself to this theory. We just don’t know how archaic humans in the Neolithic age perceived these occasions in their solar calendar, and what they did to commemorate them.

Most of the calendars in early historical times in Europe and the Middle East were lunar based simply because it was easier to measure a month based on the interval between the reoccurring lunar phases. Ancient Greece had a number of variations to their calendars, but they were tied to the agricultural events of planting and harvesting than to the specific equinoxes and solstices. Hipparchus, in the second century B.C.E., accurately determined the equinoxes mathematically, and he also discovered the precession of the equinoxes over time. Yet this didn’t seem to have much impact on the calendars of antiquity.

Ancient Rome had a calendar that was slightly more solar oriented because it began around the vernal equinox, but it only had ten months of 30 days (March through December) and the rest were considered intercalated days of winter. However, the month was typically divided into three nine-day weeks, with three days in between for religious observations and market days. This early pre-Julian calendar was more strongly influenced by the lunar phases of the month and by the agricultural annual cycle than by the actual positions of the sun. The reforms established by Julius Caesar brought the early Roman calendar into alignment with the solar year, with twelve months and observations that included the equinoxes and solstices, but the liturgical year remained pretty much the same as it was before the Julian reforms.

Celtic and Germanic people approached their calendars in a completely different manner. Instead of hosting religious observances and celebrations on the solstices and equinoxes, Celts chose the midpoints between them. They celebrated four fire festivals that likely represented the vegetative cycle rather than the solar cycle. Whether or not they had astronomically pinpointed the exact midpoints for their religious festivals or selected them based on certain natural observations is unknown. Germanic peoples orientated their religious calendar on the summer and winter solstice, and the winter solstice was particularly emphasized. Slavic people who lived to the east of the Celts and Germans, appeared to observe and celebrate the spring equinox with fertility rites and specialized deities, and observed the autumn equinox as a time of harvest, feasting, and homage to their departed ancestors.

Christianity cleverly absorbed these various pagan calendric systems into their liturgical calendar of feasts, fasting, atonement, commemoration and celebration. They combined both the late Roman calendar and the Celtic and Germanic calendars into their liturgical cycle based on the occurrences of the life and death of Jesus Christ, and the events commemorating the apostles, the various saints and martyrs.

However, the observance of Easter, which was supposed to commemorate the birth of Jesus, occurs on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox. Thus, Easter, and the start of the Easter calendar and the end of Lent, is a lunar based event ensconced within a solar based calendar. The Easter liturgical cycle begins with Easter, culminates with the Pentecost, and ends with the celebration of Corpus Christi. I have stated in my books and writings that this cycle also mirrors the cycle of the Grail myth, along with the pagan chthonic antecedents that would be associated with that mythic cycle.

Modern Witches and Pagans have combined both the Celtic cross-quarter observances with the solstices and equinoxes to produce the eight spokes of the wheel of the year. However, I have shown in my writings and books that this singular wheel actually contains two cycles, which are the solar and the vegetative seasonal cycles. Joining these two cycles together illustrates the mysteries of the cycle of light and darkness, and the cycle of life and death. These are endless cycles, because the ascension of light is followed by its descent, and the ascension of darkness is followed by its own diminishment. Every year this cycle is repeated, seemingly endlessly.

Therefore, it can presumed that life follows the same cycle. That the event of birth is followed, over an unknown period of time, to death, and that death is nothing more than the transition from one life to another. However, the beginning of each vegetative cycle begins with new growth and not the resurrected life of the previous cycle. A tree might remain the same, but the leaves that appear each year are different. There is a lesson and a mystery to this observation which would qualify the belief in reincarnation as to what is actually reborn and what is lost forever in death, but I digress.

The endless cycle of light and darkness found in the ever changing solar year represents a natural balance where neither the light nor the darkness can ultimately dominate the year. As the light and darkness are in eternal transition, this cycle contains no moral or ethical constraints or judgements because it is purely a part of nature. It is model for all to follow, so that individuals, groups and nations seek to maintain a state of harmony between the light and darkness within themselves. From that balance within they can approach other individuals, groups or nations without prejudice or judgement. In this manner, they are at peace with themselves, and exist in a state of balance throughout their daily lives and social intercourse with others.

Adherence to the light over darkness, or darkness over light, is a mistake in the eyes of those who seek a balance between the two so they might discover the very core of its mystery. That mystery is the changeless state of the eternal present, which contains all darkness and light, and is the source of life and the repository of the dead. I count modern Witches and Pagans as individuals and groups who can and probably should follow the example of the endless and ever balanced cycle of light and darkness, having rejected the idea of choosing one over the other as a premise for their religious and spiritual beliefs and practices.

Knowing the balance of light and darkness within one’s self is the key to finding that singular source that resides in the center of all beingness, which is the point of unity and oneness. Beyond that singularity is the enfolding non-being of emptiness, the source of all that is and is not. I define a modern form of pagan enlightenment as the point where an individual becomes fully aware of this mystery and finds themselves within this state of union, thus, permanently changing the world that they see and operate through. It is also the path to obtaining the vision of eternity and timeless unity. Such a vision changes a person most profoundly, and reverberates in their consciousness even beyond the death of their body.

Happy Vernal Equinox to one and all!

Frater Barrabbas

Is My Witchcraft Magic LHP?

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:18:00 +0000

Over the many years I have met, corresponded with and engaged in discussions with individuals who identify as being practitioners of the Left Hand Path, or LHP. Despite the fact that I have found such practitioners to be more open to my techniques and methods of magic, I have never considered myself a member of the LHP community. I have adhered to the theological tenets of Witchcraft (sparse as they may be), which take a neutral and nonjudgmental approach to their spiritual and magical world view. Witches see the importance and the equality of the powers and intelligences of light and darkness, and we don’t feel it necessary or part of our creed to align ourselves to one or the other. We associate this kind of duality of light and darkness, or good and evil, with the prevalence of the influences of the Abrahamic faiths, which we are not a member. So, I have engaged with practitioners who consider themselves white light workers and lefthand path practitioners with equal aplomb.

However, when I compare my magical practices to either groups, and this includes practitioners of traditional ceremonial magic, I have much more in common with the lefthand path than the right hand or white light workers. One of the main differences between what traditional ceremonial magicians do when they conjure spirits is that they guard themselves with an empowered magic circle that is used to protect themselves from unwanted spiritual contagion, and focus their evocations into a magic triangle outside of that circle. They may even use a scrying table and a crystal ball to communicate with this being, all of this so they will maintain a separation between themselves and what they are evoking. I don’t have those restrictions imposed on my magical techniques of spirit conjuring, and because I use a system of immersion so that I may engage with spirits in their own domain, I have direct encounters with all the spiritual entities that I would either invoke or evoke.

Similarly, my acquaintances of the left hand path also claim to not use the methodologies of ceremonial magic, and in fact, they engage directly with the spirits with whom they engage, including demonic or chthonic godheads and demonic spirits. I suppose that a traditional ceremonial magician would find these kinds of direct exposure to be problematic at best, or downright dangerous or insane at the worst. Yet it is this very methodology where left hand path workers firmly agree with me on the methodology for conjuring spirits. I may use different specific techniques in my magical workings that are not shared with the LHP community of magical practitioners, but otherwise, our approach is the same. That dawning discovery on my part leads me to ask the question of whether or not my magic would be considered to be left hand path. Should I be considered a member of the LHP community because of the way I work magic, and of course, a more broader question would be, are Witches who practice witchcraft forms of magic part of the left hand path?

The answer to this question really depends on to whom it is asked. White light workers would definitely label me and other Witches as LHP. So, too, would many traditional ceremonial magicians, if they considered the magic that Witches do as any kind of competent system of magic. (Yes, I do get that ceremonial magician sneer at my forms of magic rather often.) That leaves only LHP practitioners to offer their opinion, and who often find that witchcraft based magic, whether low or high, is recognizable to them as kindred practices. Some of the LHP crowd have stated their opinions that the Horn God of the Witches is another form of Satan, to which many Witches have strongly denied, for various reasons. I have written an article about just this controversy, and my opinion is that they are not quite the same individual, but do pose similarities which some Wiccans have found disturbing.

If we consider the long history of witchcraft from antiquity to just prior to the modern age, we will find that the magic wielded by Witches was something of a mixed bag. Yet overall, it would have to be considered definitely LHP, even when considering the good works that later cunning folk who were variously considered Witches have accomplished. Witches throughout that time were outcasts living on the social margins who were feared and also sought after to perform specialized rites and magic that no one else could or would perform. That’s a far cry from the late 20th century Wiccans who vow to the public that they will harm none with their powers, and some of these groups have even rejected any kind of magical or witchcraft practices, which I find strange. Witchcraft religion without the practice of witchcraft magic is decidedly peculiar to me from both a traditional and a practical perspective. This is because all the Witchcraft theology, mythology and folklore vests Witches with the practice of magic, as proclaimed by the Goddess of Witches herself. To only practice the religion of Wicca without the associated witchcraft magical practices is to deny that this religion has the ability to empower the individual so they may deal with an unjust and unequal world. In fact, the phrase “Witchcraft magic” is actually redundant.

We Witches have no creed, no holy books, nor even any kind of religious laws, ethics, or official cannon, so whatever religious perspectives we have are based on the dialectic process of personal gnosis, literary corroboration and peer group assessment. The famed Book of Shadows is not a gospel or a holy book of laws and moral proscriptions; it is just a book of rites, celebrations and spells. It is more akin to a priest’s missal than a bible. Witchcraft is really about magic, and it is the kind of magic that can emulate the darkness or the light, but overall, it is a kind of magic that breaks the rules and upends the status quo, so it is decidedly not strictly positive or light serving, but more suitably grey, like the real world we live in. Those who espouse “An it harm none, do what thou wilt” are hardly the true representatives of even a religious Witchcraft, since there is quite a bit of subtlety regarding what is harmful, and the need to protect oneself, family, loved ones, friends, and political allies. There is also a revolutionary kind of quality to anyone who breaks the rules of decorum or seeks justice, or wants the status quo representing inherent inequality to be overthrown, and modern Witches fit that definition as well.

Thus, we Witches are naturally outlaws who walk a decidedly crooked path, and our magic can be considered more aligned to the darkness than to the light, but because we also work with positive magical works, such as healing, consoling, finding lost objects, settling ghosts and resolving hauntings, performing divination, invoking angels and projecting the healing harmony of nature into the material world, we can also be considered aligned with those who work exclusively with the light. However, whether we work for the good or for the ill (of deserving others), our social image is sinister, spooky and mysterious, as it has always been since the beginning of civilization. We are, in a word, a Halloween kind of people.

Frater Barrabbas

Thoughts About My System of Magic

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 17:59:00 +0000

I was working on the final proofs and edits for my first volume of Liber Artis Archaeomancy and that allowed me to take a critical look at the rituals that are contained in that lengthy tome. Doing that exercise made me wonder if the complexity and density of the ritual workings was something that anyone else would either appreciate or even bother to master. I also realized that those who are advanced enough to understand what I was doing in these rituals probably have their own way to doing something similar, and it is likely simpler but also unique to themselves. Those who aren’t as advanced would find these rituals to be too complex to be useful. This made me realize that what I am writing is not for the general public or even the general occult or magical reading audience, and that these books that I am writing won’t ever be big sellers.

What I do know is that they are relevant to the times and to my level of spiritual and magical development, and that I took my Witchcraft magic to levels of high ritual magic that few would ever dream of taking them, which meant that few would actually be interested in traveling that path. I sent out copies of my work to various parties, all of them advanced magical practitioners, so I guess they might give me a real peer review, or not. I must be doing something right because I find myself at times doubting the value of what I am doing, and the kinds of lore that I am sharing with my small reading public may make them smaller still. I am asking myself the simple question, who actually not only reads what I write but then attempts to perform the rituals that I have written in my literary works?

My previous article about how I define magic got some interesting feedback, where one individual who is an author felt that my definition of magic was more mystical than magical, and seemed to miss the simple point that magic is performed to get practical and material results, period. Yet when I read my rituals and look over my diaries, I can seen that there is so much more happening in them than just functioning as a means to an end. What can I say, other than this is the context of my experience, and that as a Witch, I have always mixed magic and religion. So, the expected outcome should have mystical overtones. I think practicing theurgy, which also seems to mix religion and magic together, might also make the outcome of a series of magical workings achieve spiritual visions and religious insights. Still, some of my closest associates agree with my assessment that magic is not simply a material objective realized, but it also has powerful spiritual and religious ramifications. Others, however, completely disagree. I don’t believe that either perspective is incorrect.

The true measurement of any published system of magic is dependent on what other magicians and practitioners think about it and whether they are inspired to appropriate some or all of it. At this time, I don’t know what the verdict will be regarding my system of magic. Yet in the future, probably after I am dead and no longer part of this world, the proof, as to the usefulness and utility of what I have written and practiced, will be determined. If my books disappear without a trace a few decades after my death or even sooner, then I will have at least contributed to the overall lore and fulfilled my obligations as a magical devotee of the Great Goddess. There will be nothing more left of me and what I once proposed as a different kind of magical system.

My life story is that it was through the discovery and engagement with the Goddess of Witchcraft that I became a competent ritual magician, something I had aspired to in those early years but failed to realize. Without the guidance of my powerful spiritual ally, the Great Mother, I would not have been able to plumb the depths of ritual magic nor would I have been moved and inspired to do so. Back then, what books were available were pulp occult books and the republishing of some of the more worthless writings on the subject, like the Magus or Transcendental Magic. What I had was a boundless imagination and a familiar sense for what passed as occultism and magic. Witchcraft liturgy and magical practices were fully open to me, at least as far as they went, but always, I had the Goddess of Witchcraft in my corner. It was through her and the inspiration that she provided me, and the amazing connections of good fortune and serendipity that seemed to bless my seeker’s path for all things magical. I made do with few books in the beginning, but was also able to integrate traditional magical and religious lore, and discard unuseable my own lore when I came upon books that had really useful information in them. Over time, I used this knowledge to perfect what I was already developing over the decades, and I did not completely discard my system of magic, but used what lore I found helpful and brought it into my system of magic, so that as I evolved, that system evolved as well.

One event that had a singular impact on my system of magic was developing it to be used in the Order of the Gnostic Star, or the E.S.S.G., as we originally named it. My need to translate this personal lore into rituals that could be used by others made it more objective and recognizable to people outside of my personal sphere. I continued to use this same approach as I developed new lore, making it always a part of the recognizable practices of the Order.

Over the ensuing decades, I have shared these rites and ceremonies with associates in my Order and others, and they have found them cogent and useful. I have attempted to write them in an accessible manner. Yet I have no illusions that those who are experienced but who have not previously read over my rituals or those who are beginners will need to acquaint themselves in depth with the methodologies that I use in my ritual lore. I believe that the best way for this happen is for individuals or groups to take my rituals and attempt to perform them, observing the spiritual effects and the magical manifestations for themselves. Since I have used this system of magic now for over 50 years, I have worked on it and revised it many times, and the results captured in my books represents the final distillation of the magical system I started developing in the early 1970's.

Recently, I have become more acquainted with Frater Crow, who has interviewed me three times over the past few years. He is one person who has followed my writings for years, and has read nearly everything that I have written. He and his associates are going to take my most recent books and extract and perform the rituals written in them, making changes so that the workings reflect their own particular gnosis. Frater Crow has realized the value of what I have written, and he believes that the magical rites contained in my books will definitely fit into his system of magic. I only need to give him as much support as I can to help facilitate this objective validation of what I have developed and written about over the decades. I will be looking forward to the day when we can trade experiences from the common body or ritual lore. I haven’t had that kind of collegial collaboration in many years, certainly not since I moved from Minnesota. This will the best validation I could hope for, knowing that individual magicians will always take lore from various sources and use it to build their own personal magical system, so what will be developed and performed will not perfectly match what I have done, nor should it.

I have never bought into the idea that magic must strictly adhere to what was practiced in the previous age, particularly the period of late Medieval and Renaissance Europe, since the context of those times is impossible to reproduce. We don’t believe, act or think like the people in those times, and the models of our world couldn’t be more different. Seven hundred years is a long time and a lot of changes have occurred in that duration, and a lot has not been documented and is therefore lost to us today. Ritual technology is not timeless, even though the results that magic produces may seem to operate in a reality that has not changed in two thousand years or more.

Yet the means to gain that timeless state of mind has profoundly changed, and what was once taken for granted has been lost to the ages. Thus, it has always been the rule that the technology of ritual magic must be adapted to the time in which it is being practiced. There is no possibility of reconstructing the world where the old grimoires were relevant, so what remains to be done is to adapt that lore and bring it into a magical system that is relevant to our world today. How that can done is take the beliefs and lore that we have today about magic, its functionality, myths, metaphysics, philosophy, and the ritual structures used in religions that support the practice of magic (or those that don’t but still practiced forms of it, like Catholicism), and build your own personal system of magic.

Building a system of magic is actually a delightful and imaginative work that uses various rituals and lore from other traditions, a lot of creative insights and inspirations, and above all, experimentation to fashion a magical system that works. You learn magic by doing it, whether successful or unsuccessful, since it is always an evolving process. It also helps to be consistent, and to have a basic spiritual practice underlying this work.

Since we don’t live in an age where people experience their spiritual myths and religious beliefs in their daily life, such as seeing and experiencing angels and demons, witches, the evil eye, miracles, having visions and revelations, we, as post modern people, will need to develop our ability to meditate and assume various levels of trance states to penetrate the world of metaphysical and paranormal phenomenon. That must be the first step that a ritual magician in training would master, since without that capability, the ability to see, feel and hear the Spirit World would be practically impossible.

Unlike the people of the previous age, we are insulated from that preternatural world, because of science, technological advancements, rationality, socialized humanism, and secular democratic government. These are, of course, not problems since they have made life for the common people more livable and free, and allow for greater degree of self-determination, although within limits. Still, to work magic, we must break through this barrier, and to do that, we must master the art of meditation, yoga, pranayama and trance states. Having a modern spiritual perspective and practice, and engaging with Deities that are approachable and even capable of full sympathetic personification, will certainly give the magical system builder the foundation upon which to build their modern magical practices.

Modern ritual magicians are not people of the Book, per se, they are more like the people of the library, since it is through the appropriation and adaptation of the global practices of religion and magic over the ages that they possess the source lore to build their own magical system.

Frater Barrabbas

Thoughts on the Definition of Magic

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 19:24:00 +0000

Recently, someone proposed that the specific definition that Aleister Crowley gave to magic in his work “Magic In Theory and Practice” did more harm than good regarding how magic is worked today. While I have attempted to define magic in my very first book, “Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick,” I saw that it lacked a certain clarity that I now possess. When I saw this statement on Face Book and the resultant conversation, my immediate thoughts were to agree and also disagree. Crowley wrote his thesis and defined magic in his book written in the late 1920's, and that was nearly 100 years ago. Is anything still absolutely relevant after that length of time? While I liked Crowley’s book “Magic In Theory and Practice”, I also found it to be very complex and not particularly easy to read.

My basic opinion is that Crowley was very much a part of the evolution of magic, and brought it from the 19th century to the 20th century. He further clarified and gave an elaborate but consistent definition to the word magic. He also used the spelling “magick” to differentiate it from the common magic of prestidigitation and causing illusion through trickery. I also adopted this spelling for a while, but found that it didn’t lend itself to referring to practitioners of magic as “magickians.” I have also come to believe that stage magic is just as much a form of magic, and that in the previous age that were considered part of the regimen of the art of magic.

Let’s look at what Crowley had to say about magic and how he defined it. This is the quote that has been proposed as the stumbling block for magicians today.

“Magick is the art and science of causing change in conformity with will.”

And also, the corollary definition, which is:

“ANY required Change may be effected by application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner through the proper medium to the proper object.”

This sounds like a proper scientific theory, although it is so obviously a truth that it probably doesn’t need to be proven empirically. Of course such a set of definitions would not exclude any number of mundane activities and therefore, could not differentiate them from magic. For instance, if I have an objective, such as finding and getting a new job, or looking for a significant other, I could use magic to aid in this work, but I could use regular mundane actions to do it as well. In fact if I were to engage in either of these pursuits and used magic to aid me, I would also need to engage in the associated mundane activities to ensure success. The purpose of combining mundane steps with magical ones is to bend the laws of probability for something to happen. I doubt that such a pursuit of material objects could be achieved by working magic alone.

That being said, it would seem that Crowley’s definition of magic is too general to be useful, but behind it are some very thoughtful clues as to how a successful magical operation could be pursued. This is the methodology of applying some kind of personal force through the correct medium or link to a given object to influence a probable outcome. That would seem to aptly define a basic operation using magic to achieve a material outcome, with the caveat that the proper medium is the all-important magical link. Crowley goes on to define what a magical link is, and I think that this was an important factor in defining magic. It just doesn’t explain all the other forms of magic that are practiced today. In that sense it might be seen as misleading, but I think that it is a useful but incomplete and overly generalized definition of magic.

If we look at the popular definition of magic as found in any dictionary, we come up with the following definitions. This, of course, is how magic is defined by popular consensus despite all of the years that it has been developed, refined and brought into the 21st century by practitioners and social scientists.

“The use of means (such as charms or spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces. An extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source. Incantations or enchantments. The art of producing illusions by sleight of hand.”

Popular consensus about magic requires a belief in the supernatural and that magical power is a supernatural force. Other popular definitions discuss engaging or conjuring of spirits and forcing them to produce supernatural effects and achieve material objectives through their intervention. In fact, in the previous age, before the European Enlightenment, human beings were thought to have no inherent powers and that it was only through the artifice of angels, demons or neutral spirits could a human being cause seemingly miraculous changes in the material world. Also, the public sees little difference between ritual or ceremonial magic and prestidigitation. They are all one thing, and if a person fails to believe in the supernatural, then the whole definition falls completely apart. It becomes, without this belief in the supernatural, a fraudulent activity, trickery and even criminal deceit.

The 19th century produced two individuals who changed the perception of magic in the various occult communities, those who had adhered to various beliefs from the previous age and were backed by the philosophy of late antiquity, which was neoplatonism. This was also the century when much of the Eastern systems of religious philosophy and metaphysics became available, through the efforts of various intellectuals and organizations such as the Theosophical Society, Spiritism, and various quasy Masonic organizations, such as the Golden Dawn. One of the chief proponents of magic in the 19th century was Eliphas Levi, from whom the Golden Dawn got its definition of magic, and where MacGregor Mathers made it into an accessible practice. Levi proposed a down-to-earth definition of what magic was, and detached it from the belief in the supernatural and the theatrics of popular stage magic. Here is how Levi defined magic.

“The three chief components of Levi's magical thesis were: Astral Light, the Will and the Imagination. Levi defined the Astral Light as a blind, amoral, universal force that sweeps all before it in a perpetual and restless search for equilibrium.”

Levi came up with this idea about the Astral Light from the writings of Carl Reichenbach, who conjectured that there was what he called an “odic” force in the universe, which was a hypothetical vital energy or life force believed to exist by many in the mid-19th century. Reichenbach himself was strongly influenced by the writings of Mesmer about animal magnetism. The idea of the existence of the Astral Light was picked up the Theosophical Society since it melded well with Eastern philosophies concerning the life-force or prana.

While Levi and the Golden Dawn brought the practice of magic from out of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance into the 19th century, the definitions that they used still seemed very nebulous and not very factual. While eliminating the idea of the supernatural was a good step in the right direction, it seemed that adding forms of metaphysics made the definition more confusing. However, when Crowley wrote up his definitions of magic there had not yet been anything succinct or definitive to say about how magic was actually defined. Still, it was an evolving process that continues to this day, and Crowley’s definition was just a step in that process. It is easy to criticize his definition and also to remark that it could easily lead one astray as it could help define what magic is and how it functions. Still, it is also important to see Crowley’s definition from the perspective of the context of the time in which it was presented.

Anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists spent a great deal of time from the 19th century and well into the 20th century studying and remarking on the phenomenon of the practice of magic in so-called primitive societies. While they accepted the idea that magic was deficient and based on superstition, they attempted to explain how these less enlightened societies believed about themselves, their world and how magic fit into that world. Frazer was the first to write volumes on the topic, attempting to universalize the idea of magic and to define its different component beliefs, and many others followed suit, such as Malinowski , Freud, and then later Jung, Marcel Mauss, and Daniel Lawrence O'Keefe.

O’Keefe was interesting because he speculated that magic was the expropriation of religious rites and ceremonies from public and state religions for the selfish purpose of achieving personal gain. He flipped the narrative that Frazer had developed (and Crowley accepted) that magic was the precursor to science. I felt that O’Keefe was quite correct for certain forms of magic as practiced in Europe from antiquity through the Renaissance. However, he did not take into account primitive forms of magic and shamanism that were the bedrock of what early societies defined as magic and did not depend on the expropriation of religious practices.

All of these various academic perspectives about magic were from an etic or external perspective, and they were not emic, or from the standpoint of the magical practitioner. They also did not define either how magic worked or what was happening in nature to allow it to function. I believe that only practitioners can define magic from the inside as long as they don’t seek to postulate some kind of unknown electromagnetic force as its underlying physical basis.

Jung brought up the idea of synchronicity and the powers of cultural and religious symbolism as archetypes of psychic transformation, and Campbell and Eliade discussed the powers and impact of cultural myths and their language that underlie the psychology of the individual and the societies at large. Magic also seems to employ a combination of imagination and metaphor that is a lot like what children do when the play pretend. Eastern religious philosophy talks about a vital force called prana, and this force is integral to life, and especially conscious life. It also functions as a metaphor that proposes that everything is connected to everything else, and that through this web of union, one individual may effect many individuals.

All of these theories seem to saying that the consciousness of the individual and the collective consciousness of the societies that they live in have a great and powerful influence on the social environment and its material basis in the world. They also seem to imply that the imagination as unfettered creativity, combined with the power of symbols and myths can make a phenomenon like magic part of the conscious equation. It can also produce great literature, art, poetry, theater, music, and the various powerful sentiments of human existence. It is the driver for religion and its individual exponent, mysticism. Within this perspective is what we would define as Spirit, and all the collective attributes of the religious and mystical phenomena of Deities, devils, angels, demons, nature spirits, mythical creatures, legendary heros and heroines, ghosts of our ancestors, and the hosts of what had once been defined as supernatural, now defined as the products of the greater mind of humanity. While Carl Sagon despaired over the continued human proclivity for what he defined as superstition, I see it as an integral part of the phenomena of human consciousness.

Science allows us to be rational and empirical when approaching the physical phenomena of the material world, and it has created mathematics, technology, medicine, chemistry, astronomy, astrophysics, engineering and the overall standards for objectivity. Yet science cannot explain the phenomenon of consciousness itself, and it cannot abrogate the necessary human tendency to sentimentalize, imagine, feel through emotions, and express oneself through passion. There is still a place for the Arts in our world, and may the Gods save us if we ever lose that important aspect of being human.

So, based on all of these ideas and theories, how do we define magic from an emic perspective? I will attempt to define magic here, but of course, mine is not the last word.

There are seven basic models of magic, and each explains part of the phenomenon of magic. There is the spirit model, the energy model, the psychological model, the stocastic model, the temporal model, the information model, and the metaphysical or theurgic model. What all of these models have in common is the peculiarity of consciousness. They represent different definitions and viewpoints on the phenomenon of magic, but they also fail to define it from a unified perspective. We can merge them into a single perspective that is relevant to the modern world, since previous ages had very different cultural foundations through which magic typically defined.

Magic is a psychological process that occurs in the mind and has no actual physical representation in the material world, except, perhaps, from the perspective of neurology. It relies on rare altered states of consciousness as its foundation, and it utilizes transformative symbols, religious attributes and belief systems woven into rituals and ceremonies and directed by symbolic tools and artifacts. It can be employed in a singular manner with a single objective, whether material or conceptual. It can also be employed to enhance, instruct, inspire, illuminate, and ultimately, cause its practitioners to ascend into a state of permanent enlightenment and union with the monistic exemplar of consciousness itself. It proposes a form of rapid and contagious spiritual evolution that can be achieved in a single lifetime, although it typically attracts those who initially seek material power over their lives and circumstances.

Magic is protean in its form and function because all models and perspectives can be shown to be correct in some manner, including that magic doesn’t even exist. It can be perceived differently by different people, and everyone who practices magic sustains their belief in it through their perception of its efficacy. There are very few rules that govern magic, and often what breaks the rules is more effective than what complies with them. It is also a phenomenon that seems to have a separate conscious volition and character, and it often behaves as if it were an entity instead of a phenomenon of individual human consciousness.

Magic is also the process whereby individuals build meaning, significance and a sense of purpose or destiny onto their life’s path, pulling them out of the meaninglessness of their trivial secular society, the happenstance of the material world and the seemingly autonomous universe at large. Modern magic is as important to our post modern world as organized religion was to the pre-modern and modern ages. Yet it remains to be seen if this varied process can meet or exceed the objectives of a human system of conscious evolution as religion had functioned in the past.

Frater Barrabbas

What is Armadel - A Person or Process

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 12:34:00 +0000

This is another article on the Grimoire Armadel, which I have been fascinated with ever since I bought the hard cover edition back in the 1980's. I have already written a few articles in the past about this subject, and this article mirrors some items that I have already written in my first article on the subject, and you can find it here. There are some new concepts and refinements in this article compared to the previous one, but you can read that article to get a broader idea about my approach to this wondrous grimoire.

The name Armadel, used for a specific grimoire, is often confused with Almadel and Arbatel. The Almadel is a scrying table made up of beeswax candles and a small table inscribed with sigils and a shew stone in the center. Arbatel is the name of a Paracelsian system of planetary magic that uses the seven Olympian spirits and their associated seals. Both of these systems predate the Grimoire Armadel, which was likely composed in the mid 17th century. So, these three similar names represent very distinctly different systems of magic, although the Armadel system does borrow some attributes from both the Almadel and the Arbatel.

An obvious question is to figure out what Armadel means, if it has any meaning, or whether it is a proper name for an individual lost to time, or if it is a process or type of magic. I think it is a process or type of magic, but there is evidence for other perspectives. What we need is a definitive definition, and that might not be available to us, since whether a name or a process, it was an obscure word that had a limited use by occult practitioners well over four hundred years ago.

Some authors have speculated that the name Armadel refers to an individual, whether legendary or actual. Since there are no famous individuals named Armadel, but there obviously are for Solomon, Faust, Saint Cyprian, or Albertus Magnus, then if we consider it to be a name we might be making an erroneous assumption. A version of the Key of Solomon in the British Museum has the title “The True Keys of Solomon by Armadel,” which could infer that Armadel was the pseudo name of a legendary author, or the “by Armadel” could be interpreted as “by means of” instead of indicating the author. Still, the idea that there was someone named Armadel has persisted. There are a few other 17th century anonymous grimoires whose authorship is attributed to Armadel, which only confuses the matter to properly identify what or who Armadel actually is.

I have used my rudimentary linguistic skills and I cannot find any kind of definitive word combination in Hebrew, Latin or Greek. So, it is word that exists without an actual meaning, or one that can’t be easily derived. It is likely some kind of a name. I had proposed in my previous article that Armadel was from the Hebrew A’arum Mod EL ערום־מאד־אלָ, which loosely means “God’s Powerful Skill”, but that was a weak translation. What I have gotten from translating that Hebrew phrase is “Naked from God.” Another approach could be Armata El, where the ‘t’ in Aramata became a ‘d’ like the word ‘armada’, and in Latin it means army, so it would be the “Army of El,” but this is also weak. It might simply be Arma di El, or “weapon of God” in Italian. None of these pseudo translations help to define what Armadel is from a magical perspective.

According to William Keith, in his introduction to the 2001 edition of the Grimoire Armadel, he states that the earliest published use of Armadel is to be found in a work written by Gabriel Naude, in 1625. In that book, which was a thorough study of the occult works at that time, he wrote about an author who had summarized the art of magic into five distinct categories. These were outlined as the following:

Art of Trithemius - for invention,
Art of Theurgy - for elocution,
Art of Armadel - for disposition,
Art Pauline - for pronunciation,
Art Lullian - for memory.

According to Keith, all these categories had a body of work associated with them except for the Art of Armadel. These five different categories seem similar to the five disciplines used to teach students the basic skills needed to be considered educated, and these were grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic and geometry. Theurgy is a form of magic that is closely related to thaumaturgy, doing the work of the Deity on the material plan, and thereby causing miraculous changes. I don’t know how that would fit with elocution, and the Pauline Art is based on a grimoire that is part of the Lesser Key of Solomon, and works with the angels of the hours and days of the week using a table of practice, thereby sacralizing any calendric event with angelic magic. It doesn’t seem to involve any kind of the development of pronunciation. Invention, disposition and memory seem to adequately define the Trithemian, Armadel, and Lullian arts. There are examples of four of these methodologies, but according to Keith, there is nothing to be associated with the Art of Armadel. I believe that Keith is wrong about Armadel having no examples or body of practice.

I believe that we can determine what the author meant when describing the Art of Armadel as “for disposition” if we examine that word carefully, since it has at least three different meaning contexts. There is the disposition of the self, which is the mood that we are in at the moment or our habitual emotional state. There is also the business disposition of a product or service (how it is disposed), and the legal disposition of a case, or its status or ending. I think that the meaning of disposition in regards to the Art of Armadel fits the business disposition, which would make it a kind of transaction between spiritual entities and the magician. Disposition of the self could also be employed if we would stipulate that the Art of Armadel has a transformative impact on the individual working it.

So, I think that what is transacted in this kind of magic is a form of knowledge or an inspiring insight or vision, or even to gain an intellectual skill. The later has representations in various grimoires and forms of magic, especially the Ars Notaria of Solomon, which is the perfect example of the Art of Armadel. However, the Ars Notaria has the accompanied verba ignota or words of power to go along with the prayers, the rigorous schedule of operation, and the powerful images; Liber Armadel only has the elaborately colored seals and a vague theological context without any kind of magical schedule for working them, nor any kind of magical language to empower them. These extra tools are omitted from the version of the grimoires that we presently possess. Despite the dissimilarities between the Ars Noteria and the Liber Armadel grimoire, I think that they are a part of the same kind of magical technology. The Ars Noteria is one of the earliest grimoires, and Liber Armadel is one of the latest grimoires. Yet there is a long line of these kinds of magical works from the 13th through the 17th centuries that infrequently appear. Thus, Armadel can be considered one of the disciplines of magic that has a provenance going back to medieval magic and even earlier.

One of the most powerful and profound systems of magic espoused in the middle ages was called scholastic image magic. It is defined by scholars as a system of magic that focuses on a three dimensional object or a two dimensional icon, such as a talisman or an elaborate magical seal in order to invoke or evoke a heavenly body or a powerful spirit to imbue it with power. The empowered object then acts as an instrument to inspire the operator, who then channels its effect into the material plane, or internalizes it into their mind. This kind of magic typically worked with astrological imagery and correspondences, but could also include angels, whether classical or of unknown origin; but the result was to powerfully alter the mind of the operator, and to empower them to change the material world, either directly or indirectly.

This type of magic emerged from Arabic and Jewish sources, and was utilized to build a body of magic in Europe, beginning in the 12th century. When we consider the Art of Armadel, we are examining this category of image magic where astrological symbols and correspondences or magical icons and seals of spirits in certain theological contexts were used to transform the operator and then through them, to alter their material or intellectual situation. Thus the Art of Armadel has a long history in the annals representing the various stages of image magic, and it is still important today. It is my belief that we can link the magical techniques of the notary art with image magic and correctly define what the Art Armadel is as a system and its importance and relevance today.

My most recent inspiration is that because the Grimoire Armadel lacks an invocative language or verba ignota to conjure and empower the various seals, I realized that because the Art Notaria of Solomon is closely related as a type of magic, and that it is focused on certain mastery of specific intellectual practices and disciplines, I might borrow the powerful verba ignota from that grimoire to use with the Armadel. It was like a significant piece of the puzzle dropped into my lap to combine some elements of the Ars Noteria with the Armadel. Since there are other purloined magical technics from other grimoires in the Armadel, why not add one more to fully empower it as a completed grimoire. I suspect that there is no precedence for doing this, but the idea seems inspired to me, so I will comb through the Ars Noteria and find those sections of powerful invocations that would match up with the theological based seals in the Armadel. I think that this is a fascinating approach, and I intend to follow through on it.

Overall, I believe that giving the title to a grimoire the name that represents an entire antique tradition of magic might be considered presumptuous or even hyperbolic; but examining the seals in this book reveals that it could be considered the final and powerful exemplar of that magical discipline. After the end of the 17th century, magic and even alchemy in the 18th century started to become labeled as fraudulent by the various legal systems of Europe and then by the intelligentsia, thereby being replaced by the empirical sciences. Thus, magicians lost the meaning of the discipline of Armadel and its associated magical arts. So, when this grimoire in two forms was found by Mathers in the Arsenal Library in the late 19th century, they were considered novel and mysterious. The colored seals certainly had an inspiring effect on Mathers when he perused these manuscripts, and he wisely saw them as very remarkable, which is why he translated and produced his English language version.

Even though Keith, in his introduction to the 2001 edition of the Grimoire Armadel, wondered why Mathers would have wasted his time translating this work, I think that anyone who has worked with these seals or realizes their provenance would know why Mathers engaged in translating them. I have found the Grimoire Armadel to be one of the most mysterious but also the most powerful grimoires that I have ever worked with. Keith said that this grimoire was a late and unremarkable version, unoriginal and derivative because it borrowed from other systems of magic. However, all grimoires are, for the most part, derivative; but they stand as a part of an evolving discipline. Each grimoire has something unique and empowering to offer the operator. Whether it is the Grimoirum Verum, the Greater or Lesser Clavicles of Solomon, Liber Juratus, the Ars Notaria, the Heptameron, the Almadel, the Arbatel, the Grimoire of Pope Honorius, the Grand or Petite Albert, the Red or Black Dragons, or many others, the Grimoire Armadel is a remarkable part of that history of grimoires and stands equally with them throughout the medieval period to the modern.

Frater Barrabbas

New Year 2026 - End of Stasis and Wintering

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 13:43:00 +0000

The New Year has started, and there were a few final items that need to be resolved so that I would be able to move forward with my magical life, and my wintering will finally be over. I wrote about my wintering a while back, and you can find the article here. It has been almost nine years since my last big magical working, and much has changed over that period. I moved first to Richmond in 2018, and then last year, I moved to Williamsburg. My house in Richmond was not able to accommodate a temple, so I went without a temple until I moved into my new home in 2025. Yet there were other blockages that prevented me from moving forward.

Since the first week of June, we put our old house up for sale, hoping for a quick sell. We had already moved into our new house by early May, and had effectively moved most of our belongings from the old home to the new. Still, after three months of not getting even a single offer, I decided to dedicate my new temple, recently assembled, to resolving that issue. Divination showed that there were larger economic issues occurring, mostly associated with the Trump administration and the tariffs that they had employed in a chaotic manner back in April.

Prior to April, it had been a sellers’ market, and after the tariffs went into effect, the market changed within 30 days to become a buyers’ market. This happened because the money needed to purchase a house was tightened due to the economic instability fostered by Trump’s on again and off again tariffs, and the uncertainty of the overall economic future in the U.S. Suddenly, there were more houses for sale than places to rent, and the money needed for loans was harder to get. All this created an economic storm that blocked the selling of our old house. We were locked into a financial situation of having to pay mortgages and supporting expenses on two homes, and that burden, while not small, we could support. Yet it made things economically tighter for us and overall, our transition to our new home, more difficult to complete.

I decided to take some magical action and activate my talismanic machine that I had set up in my temple. I placed a consecrated sigil, which would help us sell the house, into the center of the septagramic icon with the charged metallic talismans arrayed around it and fully energized. It had not taken me long to develop a suitable sigil and I consecrated it when saying a special votive Mass rite. I then used the energy of the Mass to trigger and activate the talismanic array. While performing this magic, I had a vision of myself standing on a rocky plateau in a deadly desert storm with a mighty headwind blowing against me. It seemed to block my ability to move forward while blinding me and scouring my face and hands. I sensed that this was a symbolic analogy showing the difficulties arrayed against me when attempting to sell our old home.

I heard a voice saying to me amidst the noise of the storm that these head winds are not of my making nor my fault. They are the results of powers beyond my control. Even despite the emotional impact that this vision produced in my mind, when I energetically invoked the talismanic field with its sigil imprint, the energy that I experienced inspired and powerfully motivated me to use my magic to aid our quest. I would endeavor to persevere despite the seemingly hopelessness of the situation. I knew, when I was releasing this talismanic field that I was fighting against the regime itself, which was seeking to thwart those of lesser economic means the ability to receive the material rewards of their hardworking efforts and their steadfast adherence to the laws of the land. It seemed that the storm was produced to afflict the little people and not aimed at the wealthy or the politically connected, who didn’t need to follow the laws or work hard to enrich themselves. I understood that it would take longer to achieve selling our old home, but I was set on this path regardless of the circumstances. Thus, in unleashing this magical field I was defying the regime, and I was going to war against the evils that were seeking to destroy the middle class.

Some days later, in the midst of this ordeal, I had Another vision that occurred when I was doing some divination on the progress of the magic that I had unleashed. On two consecutive Tarot card readings occurring over a few weeks, I was getting the Tarot trump Atu XVI, The Tower, at the end of the reading, and I naturally felt a certain dread about my future and the course that my magic was taking. When this occurred for a second time, much to my dismay, I felt my Deity reach out to me, and I heard a voice in my head instruct me to lower the price that I was asking for the house. We had already lowered it twice, but not significantly. It seemed that this new asking price would mitigate the possibility of financial ruin, which is how I interpreted the Tarot trump, the Tower. Because this card had quite unnerved me, I began to wonder if I was misinterpreting it. My wife and I were not in any kind of dire straights economically, but we were supporting two households and accumulating credit card debt. That could lead to difficulties if there was any kind of economic crisis that happened nationally, or if one of us lost our job.

Still, it was only after I had lowered the asking price of our house to the value I had been mysteriously shown that we began to get greater interest in the house, with several public showings sponsored by our realty partner. Our real-estate agent was also using whatever mechanisms she had to help us sell the house. The combination of magic, lowering the price at a strategic time and the efforts of our realtor helped to finally seal the deal. We got two offers during my Thanksgiving break, and chose the best and most secure one. That made the holiday quite exciting, and gave us something to be grateful for. Our wise choice in selecting a good real estate agency and the magic that I had deployed made all this possible.

We signed a contract in early December, and the house was sold in mid January. The couple who bought it had been looking for a home for quite a while and saw in our old home a spacious and affordable new home for themselves. They had been living in a cramped apartment and wanted a real home, and our place was just the right size and price, and they fell in love with it. Hearing their story really warmed my heart, and I wished them a very happy and bountiful future.

It would seem that the classical interpretation of the Tower card in the Tarot deck has greater nuance and alternative meanings than I initially realized. While it does often symbolize drastic changes, unexpected crises, and the overturning and fall of an established house or order, that interpretation was not correct for the two readings that I had performed. What I sensed through my intuition is that it symbolized the final transition of a household, so it can also mean the ending of an old residence and station in one’s life. It represented for me that the house was going to sell if I persevered, using my intuitive sense of what should be done (lowering the asking price). It was the end of a home life, but the beginning of a new one, which is a transition finally completed. There was no disaster nor financial bankruptcy, and I and my family were not brought to economic destruction by our own hubris. It was an ending, and as far as our old home was concerned, we had departed and were detached from it to make room for new owners. I will have to remember that subtle interpretation, and also understand that magical work can and does make material change happen according to one’s will or desire.

Because of all the economic turbulence created by the Trump regime, it took us over six months to sell the house. Yet I was grateful for that event when it happened, and I felt a powerful dispelling of my angst and economic worries. We also realized a large profit from the sale, and this would help us deal with any future blow-back coming from the Trump regime. We will sit tight, give money to the Democratic party (who else?), offer monetary help to the needy and the dispossessed, and vote for all elections, great and small. Hopefully, we can start off the next new year, 2027, with a profound shift in political power to the left, and the beginning of the deconstruction of the Trump administration. It will be a long and dreadful year starting today, but there is hope for the future.

What this also means is that I am now free to plan and perform new magical workings. My transition is complete, and my magical resources, so focused on selling the house, can now be used to perform other workings. Even though it is the middle of winter, I am realizing that the end of my long period of wintering is at hand, and that a new Spring and a rebirth to my magical practice is soon to follow.

Frater Barrabbas

Books Published by Frater Barrabbas

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 13:46:00 +0000

Here is the literary guide to books that I have written over the years, starting back in 2007, when I wrote my first book Disciples Guide to Ritual Magick. I had to learn how to write these kinds of non-fiction books, and it was quite a struggle for me. I am not a gifted writer, and it took me years to achieve a certain level of literary mastery. I have also included in this list books that are yet in the planning stages. All of this material was already developed and written years ago, but poorly written and not appropriately organized to pass on to my readers. Still, it represents my work of over 50 years.

1. Disciples Guide to Ritual Magick - first published 2007, republished 2024
2. Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick - revised 2013, republished 2024
3. Magical Qabalah for Beginners - first published 2013, to be republished 2027 as Practical Qabalah for Occultists
4. Spirit Conjuring for Witches - published 2017
5. Elemental Powers for Witches - published 2021
6. Talismanic Magic for Witches - published 2023
7. Sacramental Theurgy for Witches - published 2024
8. Transformative Initiation for Witches - published 2024
9. Liber Nephilim - published 2024
10. Mastering the Art of Witchcraft - published 2024
11. Abramelin Lunar Ordeal - published 2025
12. Magical Notary Art - published 2025
13. Liber Artis Archaeomancy volume 1 - to be published 2026
14. Liber Artis Archaeomancy volume 2 - to be published 2027
15. The Gnostic Tetrasacramentary volume 1 - to be published 2028
16. The Gnostic Tetrasacramentary volume 2 - to be published 2028

Books being written or in planning stages by Frater Barrabbas.

1. Ordeal XV - possible publishing date 2029
2. Liber Armadel: Grimoire of Image Magic - possible publishing date 2029
3. Liber Magister Magiae Talismanicae: Advanced Planetary Magic - possible date 2030
4. Liber Nephilim Additum: Additional Rites and Workings - possible date 2030
5. Liber Gnosis Stellaris Septem Radiorum - possible date 2031
6. Order of the Gnostic Star: Organization, Rites and Ceremonies - possible date 2032
7. Frater Barrabbas Tiresius: An Autobiography. Some time around 2035 or later.

Why have I written and plan on writing so many books? What drives me to do this kind of work, at the cost of time where I could be doing other things like living and engaging with my life? The amount of time it takes to write these books is no small investment, even despite the fact that it concerns rituals, ceremonies and other writings that I have penned or typed decades ago. I have a suite of hand calligraphed grimoires that will all be published in the next few years. While this is my legacy to the occult world and my contribution of a magical technology that I believe is fairly unique and very accessible to anyone who wants to master the art of magic as practiced by someone who is a neopagan and a part of the BTW of witchcraft.

Many years ago, when I was just in my late teens, I had an intimate relationship with the Goddess and could converse with her in my head, and she was my first teacher, guide and advocate. I believe that she opened the doors to the mysteries for me, but it was all conditional and there were strings attached. First, I belonged to her, mind, body, soul and spirit. Our bond was life-long and even after my life has ended. Second, that I share this knowledge she has inspired me to master, and that I ultimately write it all down in books so that many others would know of my magic and also that she was my primary inspiration. I committed myself to this task, knowing that whatever I achieved magically would need to be communicated to any and all who spoke English, and perhaps not even limited to those people. So, I am consumed with writing and completing this work before my time of life is ended, and considering my age, I decided to pursue this work with a certain degree of alacrity and disciplined focus.

Whether or not my work lasts into future, or if it even is seen as relevant to the study or pursuit of magic and witchcraft, or if magic and witchcraft have a future destiny in the next age, I will pursue my literary career, because the Goddess has willed it, and I, her faithful servant, will do my utmost to see it done.

Frater Barrabbas

Scrying versus Immersion

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 13:36:00 +0000

Lately I have seen a number of beautifully constructed scrying stands called variously Trithemius table of workings or watchtower scrying stands. I recall that Alex Sanders possessed one of these devices and they appear to be a popular tool amongst ceremonial magicians today, especially those espousing a more traditional approach to grimoire magic. As impressive and beautiful as these devices are, they rely on an age-old approach to interacting with the domain of Spirit, or the Inner Planes, and that is to activate one’s clairvoyant abilities and summon spirits, opening a “gateway” within the scrying stone to see and relate what the spirits say, or to receive symbolic and visionary imagery, or a combination.

While this might seem like a very impressive and powerful mechanism to communicate with entities and to gain a visionary insight into the domain of Spirit, and it has now become a very popular methodology, it is not the only method of communication and visual entry into that domain. It also relies on the abilities and attuned senses of the scryer, and I believe that clairvoyance is something that is neither consistent nor reliable. There are methods of astral projection, spirit vision, and a system that I have developed, which is what I call immersion. First, let’s look at scrying and see what it is like.

If we look back at the history of this technique or approach to magical operations, the most famous scrying sessions were those that were performed by Edward Kelly for Dr. John Dee. While Edward Kelly functioned as the scryer, what was passed by him to John Dee was carefully examined and given a coherent context, so that it was actually the two of them working together who brought forth the Enochian system of magic. Edward Kelly, by himself, could not have produced such an ordered and sensible system, and without him, John Dee could not have penetrated the unseen world of angels and good spirits.

Yet Edward Kelly was sporadic, moody, and not always able to produce results, and it is likely that some of what Kelly passed to Dee was not particularly significant, coherent, or informative. While the Enochian system itself is nearly peerless, much of what the angels and spirits passed to Dee through Kelly was deceptive, erroneous or even somewhat delusional. Promises were made by the various spirits and angels of wealth and fame, but failed to have any practical application or basis in reality. Kelly went off on one of his escapades seeking to exploit the secret of alchemically producing gold, and Dee succumbed to poverty and defamation after returning home. Without Kelly, Dee was never able to produce the results that he had previously.

This example of scrying is probably one of the greatest and best known, but other examples show an inconsistency in producing results that might otherwise be a potential occult breakthrough, like what Dee managed to produce, and instead have a tendency toward triviality and irrelevancy. Even Dee passed on a lot of communications in his diaries that are mostly irrelevant and trivial, making them particularly meaningless today to modern occultists. This tendency toward irrelevant communications was also what happened during mediumistic trance sessions in the 19th century Spiritualism movement. I believe that indirectly contacting the domain of Spirit either through a trance medium or a scrying session loses a lot of context and meaning by being displaced from the place where the spirits actually reside, which is a domain ruled by symbols and analogues, much like the place of lucid dreaming.

I think a better example of what is required for a closer, direct, and intimate communication are the mystery cults of the dead and death, where the candidate was expected to journey to a place or sacred location and experience the mystery physically and mentally immersed. This is true regarding the Eleusinian Mysteries, or others, like the Oracle of Trophonius with the famous grave passage, or the Oracle at Delphi, found in a remote cave. However, since I live in the U.S., I lack any such famous historically sacred place or location that could be considered a gateway into the underworld. However, the idea of a location where a gateway to the underworld could be found or even forced is a compelling example of what I have come to know as immersion.

Crowley, in his masterful ordeal, performing the 30 invocations of the Aethyrs and fully realizing their powerful and transformative visions, was done in the backdrop of the sacred space of the great Algerian Saharan desert. Crowley performed these rites in a physically sacred space, intoning the 19th Enochian key, and did not use any kind magic circle to protect himself or his accomplice. There also wasn’t any scrying stone or other kind of device. Crowley's experiences was direct and without any boundary or obstacle, so his magical experience was through immersion. I believe that the magical process of immersion made his book, “Vision and the Voice” containing these experiences far more potent than they would have been had he employed a system of scrying.

Unlike Crowley, I couldn’t travel to some far away land to perform my magic in some sacred place. Lacking any sacred terrain to make this kind of underworld egress, I did find two powerful and useful tools in my regimen of ritual structures. That is the triangular gateway ritual structure and the cross-roads negative vortex ritual structure. These are patently new ritual structures that I have not found in any other system of ritual magic. They work with the symbology of entering the underworld, and generate the appropriate energy fields that simulate entry into another domain, and combined together, produce a potent analogue of the underworld entrance that is a key to acquiring an immersion within the energized symbology of the underworld and all that it contains.

This magically defined domain that the magician has entered is highly suggestible, allowing the magician to define and establish a specific domain associated with a spirit that they would seek to summon. A magician then uses the symbols of correspondences associated with a specific spirit to build an imagos or image body for the spirit, and to define its home or domain. A spirit body is generated through an elemental or energy construct, and its intelligence is defined through the planets. A spirit’s name is its symbolic key, used to generate a sigil or seal, as well as lending symbolic clues to its essential nature.

Typically, a spirit also has a location within the Tree of Life (or below it), and has other symbolic qualifiers, such as the four elements, seven planets, twelve astrological signs, and also symbolic numbers and gematria word associations. All these symbols blend together to define a spirit and the place where it resides. When merging this symbology with the cross-roads vortex and the gateway underworld passage, it opens up the symbolic location where the spirit resides and allows for a direct exposure to this entity without a protective magic circle or triangle of evocation getting in the way. Using such a technique to gain a direct encounter with a conjured spirit makes such practices as scrying or evoking through a triangle seem anaemic and too displaced to have the kind of affect of a naked exposure.

Of course, my critics in the magical practitioner’s world would claim that such a direct exposure would be dangerous, and that it is critically important to shield oneself from potentially hostile spirits and the affects of their mind bending and twisted domain, whether associated with heaven or hell. Because I learned to perform conjurations as a Witch, I did not need to use any kind of protective magic circle to experience a form of immersion with the Gods and Goddesses of Witchcraft. Our magic circle was used to establish a boundary between the sacred realm of our Deities warded by the Dread Lords to fashion a world within a world. We did not need to be protected in our magic circle because it was populated with our powerful Deities and protective guardians. All we needed to perform invocations and evocations was to fortify ourselves to be able to experience such encounters, and to erect within that sacred precinct, a gateway and a cross-road vortex that open it up to the greater domain of the underworld. All magic and liturgy were performed in the same space, so the need for a magic circle of protection and an evocation gateway, as well as use of a scrying stone were for all practical purposes, unnecessary. Using that approach, I have build an advanced magical system based on a Witchcraft magical foundation.

To fortify oneself to perform this kind of magic without boundaries or protective areas, I have developed a methodology based on the Drawing Down rite, which I have renamed as godhead assumption. Since this is also a part of Witchcraft practices, to use it to empower and protect oneself seemed intuitively obvious to me. I made it an integral part of the magic that I perform very early on in my magical development, and it has me and many others quite well in the performance of this kind of ritual magic. Modern Witches and Pagans have always approached engaging with their Deities in a direct manner, and based on the structure of their magic circle and the rites of charging and empowering it, it would seem that ancillary rites to conjure spirits would be performed in a similar manner. Add to that set of liturgical and magical rites a godhead assumption and communion, and what you have is so sacralized environment that functions as the magical and spiritual base for all subsequent magical workings. These practices fuse the liturgical rites and magical rites to formulate a Witchcraft magical system that is entirely theurgic, and channels the Godhead into all the workings that Witches and Pagans might perform.

It is for this reason that I seldom use a scrying stone to gain any kind of magical contact with a spirit. I have no need for this kind of magical operation since I can just go and talk to the spirits first hand in their world. I can use spirit vision to travel with the spirits so they can show me places and give me visions, and I can use incubation, to peaceful sleep in their domain and to dream the answers to my questions. To me spirit vision or astral projection are similar, and sleeping in the activated symbolic domain of the spirit is similar to sleeping in the sacred space of a temple or grove in some faraway place. Additionally, directly engaging with conjured spirits in their domain produces a powerful transformative experience, which can trigger initiations and even brief forms of illumination. It would seem that what I have developed is, in my opinion, superior to the methodology of ceremonial magic that requires boundaries and obstacles so that spirits can only remotely engage with magicians.

My method of immersion is just another technique for gaining access to conjured spirits, and it is certainly not the only one. Scrying is a tried and true practice, and one that is guaranteed to be protected and safe. It also keeps the magician from having spiritual transformations and more direct communications such as might be produced if these boundaries were eliminated. Of course eliminating the boundaries requires fortifying the self through the agency of a Deity, and these kind of practices are specific to the ritual magic performed by Witches and Pagans, so they are not capable of being used by adherents of monotheistic faiths, who lack the agency of godhead assumption. There are possible exceptions, such as when a priest performs a mass rite and briefly becomes the Christ, but that mechanism has not been incorporated into magical workings as far as I know, and extending the mass rite in this manner might be considered blasphemous.

I offer the technique of magical immersion as another method, but I believe that is the best approach for Modern Witches and Pagans to practice the art of spirit conjuration.

Frater Barrabbas

Another Winter of my Discontent

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 13:27:00 +0000

Reading the national news these days is a form of self-punishment. Every incompetent action, bad-faith policy and focus on supposed “enemies of the State” by this administration makes my teeth grate. There is even an occasional oath and curse word uttered by me when reading, but most times there is a lot of head shaking. I knew that the Trump regime was going to be bad, but it has exceeded my expectations, and there appears to be no bottom to what Trump and his ass-kissing lackeys will attempt to do. With the Congress, Senate and even the Supreme Court enabling, encouraging and siding with Donald J. Trump’s descent into authoritarianism and single party rule, there is little that anyone can do to rectify this situation. The White House has been literally trashed, with the East Wing demolished, the Kennedy Center renamed to the Trump-Kennedy Center, and many other ridiculous and obsequious nonsense is happing every day, such that it could cause anyone who actually loves their country (but never unconditionally) to lose heart and succumb to despair. What we have is a unitary presidency, based on the fever dreams of the far rightwing conservatives who were appalled at the fall of Richard Nixon and sought to make the president a law unto himself, as long as he is Republican. (They wouldn’t want a Democrat to have the same powers, of course.)

Our nation has unwittingly become its shadow form, espousing ideals and beliefs that are completely contrary to those that were used to found our nation. A president acting like a dictator who is lawless and enabled for egregious overreach, with a compliant Federal law enforcement seemingly doing the work of a mob family, where news corporations and institutions are forced to comply to the whims of the dear leader with money and obedience. Where graft is not hidden but a public spectacle of presidential power, and where the whole point of power is to harm those people identified as undesirable, such as federal workers, migrants seeking asylum, foreign workers, and those who are poor and without opportunities. It is regime that appears to reinforce white privilege and Evangelical Christianity, but only rewards the rich and powerful. It is a place where corruption and lawlessness knows no boundaries as long as it is promoted by the president and his supporters, and where Congress and the courts have abrogated their powers, functioning as an instrument of the imperial presidency. It is also a nation that threatens allies, encourages despots, turns it back on the poor of the world, and seeks to start wars of conquest. This is not the nation that I believe in. It is more like some petty but dangerous banana republic with nuclear weapons.

In this winter of Trump’s first year of his second presidency, transitioning to his second year in office, I am filled with contempt for his cabinet of minions and the population of idiots who voted for Republicans over a year ago. Latinos came out in large numbers to vote for this scoundrel, and now ICE agents are rounding up Latinos even if they have green cards or are citizens. ICE and Homeland Security have become the Gestapo of the Trump regime, pushing forward their pogrom against brown and black people. The list of crimes and abuses of power is now so large that it must be astonishing to everyone what is happening here in our country, if they are paying attention.

It would seem that those minorities who voted for Trump, and the disaffected who worried about the Biden economy, and the poor white southerners who wouldn’t vote for a brown-skinned woman presidential candidate can now experience an even more chaotic instability, with inflation via tariffs, rising unemployment, and the loss of entitlements and government sponsored assistance. It has become a FAFO scenario, and unfortunately, we are all being collectively punished for the foolishness of a minority of disaffected voters. Those Muslims who voted for Trump or someone else to protest the genocidal war in Gaza and the Biden’ administration complicity now have a president who considers them to be undesirable migrants who should be somehow deported despite their citizenship. When deportation does occur, it isn’t to the place of the deportee’s origin, but to some maximum security prison in El Salvador.

Yes, all of this is quite bothersome, and I have found that to retain my positive outlook I need to be selective when reading the news. Too much will enrage me, and too little will isolate me, so I have to find a middle ground of being informed but avoiding too many news-worthy details that would make me angry. While typically there is magic and wonder in my heart at the events of the Winter Solstice, Christmas, and Chanukah, as well as the hope and optimism of the New Year, this year I feel that all the crimes pushed by Trump and his minions has spoiled the season for me. This is because, deep down, I really and truly hate and despise this man and those who passionately support him. The Trump and Maga crowd can all go to hell, as far as I am concerned. I have no pity for any of his supporters who are traumatized or injured by the actions of a regime that I don’t even consider to be American. They voted for these clowns, and so they deserve to experience the trauma and bitterness of their foolish choices. As for the rest of the many victims of this regime, I feel deeply and compassionately for them, but helpless to do anything to change their outcomes.

While I pass the time of the holiday season of 2025 in a dreary sense of sorrow for what could have been, and a dread of what might yet come, I realize that this is yet another winter season of my discontent. I am not young, and I have seen the conservative movement in this country grow ever more powerful, exclusive, and powered by White Christian Nationalism. It started with Ronald Reagan, and has proceeded with George W. Bush and Trump 45. Now, with Trump 47, our democratic republic is in serious danger of becoming a autocracy fueled by the money of oligarchs and led by rightwing extremists. This is a transition from a pluralistic democratic society to one that is exclusive, racist, bigoted and fascist. If our nation is to change and go in what I consider to be the right direction, will I still be alive to see a brighter and better nation emerge from the darkness? Or, will I see this decline continue until I, too, am a victim of its hate and brutality?

As a boomer who knew the previous generation in our country who fought the Nazis in Europe and the Imperial Japanese in the Pacific, I never thought I would see the day when fascism became a popular political option in our own country. It saddens me, but I also see the danger to myself personally. This is because I would not fit in country that is run by fascist Christian Nationalists, and it is likely that the goons from ICE will soon turn their attention to other “enemies of the State” and expand their jurisdiction to arrest and detain even citizens. We are actually close to that kind of autocratic state.

Here we are together facing this terrible possibility at the turning of the year, when we say goodbye and good riddance to the year 2025, and face the new year, 2026. However, there are signs that bring hope of a populous backlash against the Trump regime and that the rightwing autocratic movement is starting to show signs of losing its grip on power and that the days left to them to change the government and to establish a permanent power base are numbered. Next year there will be midterm elections, and the consensus based on the public mood does not bode well for the Republican party. They moved too quickly and aggressively pursued their Project 2025 agenda, and now it is seen as too great of an over-reach, and the American people are justifiably angry, dismayed, and firmly opposed to what has been done to them and their country.

If the Democrats win big next November and take the House and perhaps even the Senate, then Trumpism is doomed. If there is a massive political shift next autumn, it will likely carry into the Presidential election in 2028 as well. I believe that people are alarmed, angry, and deeply opposed to what Trump and his minions have done since gaining political power and pushing their MAGA policies and Project 2025 onto an unwilling electorate. I suspect the aftermath will be one where a number of MAGA principals will find themselves prosecuted by a newly empowered, independent, and Democratic DOJ. There will likely be a corresponding Project 2029 to right the wrongs perpetrated by Trump and his regime, and I hope that the Democrats take the notion of “no more Mr. Nice Guy” to heart and eradicate from our political body any tendencies toward White Christian Nationalism. I would like to see the racists, bigots, and the hosts of the stupid redneck people who empowered MAGA to go underground once and for all. I would also like to see the perpetrators and architects of the MAGA regime prosecuted and jailed for breaking the laws of the land.

We are country that contains people from all over the world, and there is no place at our democratic table for racists, bigots, and rightwing anti-democratic fanatics. Out nation is certainly not perfect, and the injustices that we have done to our citizens over the decades, and the injustices that we have done in the world can be readily atoned for if we vow to continue our work to make our country more just, both within and without, and fix what we have injured or broken. We have to remember that a just nation guided by laws, both national and international, and one that is dedicated to peace and prosperity, mercy and compassion for everyone, is a nation that people who practice faiths such as Neopaganism, Witchcraft, magic and occultism can feel safe knowing that their rights are protected. As practitioners of a minority religion that espouses ritual magic and occultism, we are like the canaries in the coal mine. If there is a sudden change from democracy to autocracy, we will be some of the first to be prosecuted and imprisoned. So, we need to be civically engaged, kept informed, and to vote our preferences both wisely and compassionately, to ensure that our nation of many races, ethnicities, genders, sexual preferences, and political persuasions stands firmly for democracy, equality, and justice for everyone.

Frater Barrabbas

Armadel Project for 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 01:02:00 +0000

Grimoire Armadel. Actual title: Liber Armadel seu totius cabalae perfectissima brevissima et infallabilis scientia tam speculativa quam practiqua

Translation (Latin): The Book of Armadel, or the whole Cabala, a most perfect, brief, and infallible science, both speculative and practical

It has long been a dream of mine to publish the Grimoire Armadel with all the additional elements and restructuring needed to make it a completely usable grimoire. I would consider it to be the highest achievement amongst all the books I have published and will publish. I decided this last autumn to try to make this dream a reality. Mathers had translated this manuscript from around 1897 through 1899, when he submitted the Book of Abramelin to be published, but this work was never published until around 1980, when his various papers and manuscripts were supposedly acquired by Gerald Yorke, and he and Frances King published a hardcover edition with an introduction through the publisher Samuel Weiser. A later edition, published in 2001, by Weiser, had a soft cover and an introduction by William Keith.

Here is a link to the edition that was published by Weiser.

First and foremost, I wanted to find an original digital copy of this manuscript from the Arsenal Library in Paris, France, to begin my work. I didn’t have a clue how to go about requesting that file, and a friend and neighbor said she would try to help me out, since she was an accredited academic. She was, unfortunately, not successful. The reason why I wanted a digital copy is to validate and verify the work that Mathers did, and to what else might be lurking in the pages. I also felt that what was published was either missing some parts, or was structured in some peculiar manner that made it difficult to use as a working grimoire. While I had extracted some seals from the grimoire to use in my gateway icons, and I found them to be very powerful indeed, I felt a strong desire to get the original manuscript, since it had some mysteries that I wanted to resolve.

As for the manuscript, the original version was likely written in the early to middle 17th century, likely part of a family of German Faustian grimoires, which was the veritable golden age of magical grimoires. The actual manuscript that I was looking for in the Arsenal Library was a translated copy penned in the late 17th century and was supposedly confiscated by the famous and first Lieutenant General of the Paris Police (Gabriel Nicholas de la Reynie) who led a purge of cunning folk, alchemists, poisoners, divinators, diabolists, abortionists, and sooth-sayers from the Paris area, who made it a business catering to the gullible whims and dark fancies of the upper class men and women attending the King's court in Versailles.

This pogrom was triggered by the notorious and infamous Affair of the Poisons scandal (1677) that rocked the court of Louie XIV. De la Reyine, as head of the police, aggressively pursued this perceived social menace for several years, so it went on for seven years until it quietly ended in 1684. It was, in many ways, a kind of Witchcraft persecution, since most of the victims were women, accused of heresy and poisoning, and several were burned as such. I believe that this grimoire was likely part of the larger confiscated hoard that these cunning folk possessed, and they ended up in the possession of de la Reyine. Additionally, De la Reynie's large collection of books, which contained many costly and rare papers and manuscripts written in Greek and Latin, were later purchased by d’Argenson (who became the next Lieutenant General of Police) another wealthy book collector, and that massive library ultimately ended up in the Bibliotheque de l’Arsenal collection, and then into the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (BNF).

No other version of this grimoire has turned up amongst the collections and libraries examined by academics who now are studying this literature. While it is rumored that there might be a German copy in some other place or location, which is possible, it has not appeared amongst any of the writings or reports from those academics who are studying them. It might be that the original German version was lost or destroyed. I believe that there are other copies or versions of this grimoire yet to be discovered, but none have surfaced so far. Since the Armadel was only known to a few French antiquarians and occultists like Mathers, it had little notoriety, Since a translated version only appeared in 1980, it likely that this obscure grimoire may exist in other libraries or collections and fail to be noticed by academics. However, a companion manuscript in the same set of book in the Arsenal Library, the Book of Abramelin, was found to exist in German, and it was an earlier and more complete copy than the French version. Some authors have commented that the tradition of the Armadel has more affinity to German grimoires than the French versions, and others have disagreed.

I have written a blog article about this grimoire and you can find it here.

So, to continue with my story, I was at a loss on how to find this manuscript. I searched the internet, but was not able to find any mention of the actual source. I found out that much of the Arsenal library had been digitized and was part of the BNF collection, but looking for it seemed like a fool's errand, since I found that the public face of the online BNF was not very helpful, especially for someone who doesn't speak French. I only lucked out when I had adjusted my web search to Liber Armadel (instead of the Grimoire Armadel) and found this web page, which had the BNF documents hyperlinked. It was a review written by Dan Harms (Papers Falling from an Attic Window) of the book Editions du Monolithe edition of the Armadel, although it was called Liber Armadel in the text.

Curiously, the manuscript number that I possessed was incorrect, and the link in the article shows two manuscripts as the source and not one, as I had originally thought. These are the BNF manuscript numbers MS #826 and MS# 2494. I then proceeded to download these two large PDF files of the BNF manuscripts, just as anyone else could do. These two manuscripts were available to the public without any kind of protection, other than a copyright disclaimer embedded in the documents, and pages of the manuscripts were stamped with the Arsenal imprint.

What I discovered is that the source of Mather’s translation consisted of two manuscripts and not one. MS #826 contains just the Liber Armadel with four pages of text added after the manuscript end vignette, the text of which was never translated. These I set out to translate them myself with my rudimentary skills, but my wife used ChatGPT to translate them from the cursive straight into English. That astonished me, but I am not very trusting or willing to rely on that approach and I wanted to find someone who has the time and can read French and Latin to help me. The other manuscript contains the Liber Armadel grimoire in the first set of pages, but the rest of the manuscript contains another lengthy ad hoc grimoire not associated with the Armadel material.

No one knows who the author or authors of the Aramdel were, nor what was the original source text, but the manuscripts appear to have been professionally scribed by local artisans for a fee. Still, I could imagine that the manuscripts had once belonged to Abbe Etienne Guibourg, or maybe Adam Lesage, two men out of the 32 mostly women who were the primary victims of the prosecution. Guibourg was a corrupted, debauched, and defrocked priest who reputedly performed several black mass rites; Lesage was the magician and spell caster of the accused group. These individuals were part of the informal group that the principle suspect, called La Voisin (Catherine DeShayes), ran as a profitable underground business. They, unlike many of the women, were not executed, but lived the rest of their lives imprisoned through the legal artifice “lettre de cachet.”

I have already started examining the manuscripts, and as I stated, translated the four pages after the end of the Armadel MS #826, and I have carefully looked over that text and found some remarkable things. The last four pages of this book were never translated by Mathers in his manuscript, which was published finally in 1980. The amazing great seal of the Uriel Operation was published, but not the accompanied text. Of course, all this appears after the end of the book, and it was not deemed important enough for Mathers to translate and include in his book. That omission turned out to be an incredible mistake, since those four pages in MS # 826, (129 - 132), contained the whole key to the grimoire. As it turned out, those four pages, translated by AI, were the key to the whole grimoire, and that surprised me. I am sure that it will astonish my readers as well, since this is the key that unlocks the process of activating the grimoire. I will keep that article from the public for now, but it will be an important part of my own rendition of this grimoire.

By a most curious turn of events, I have managed to teamed up with a French translator, Eric Gazano, who also happens to be a French national and lives just outside of Marseilles. We met on my author's Facebook page, where he introduced himself. I have shared the two online documents with him, and we have shared messages with each other. I won't be using ChatGPT to translate the manuscripts. That was just a one-time deal, and what it translated will be checked over by Eric. There isn't actually a lot of translation work to be done, because Mathers did a respectable job of translating the two manuscripts, at least the Liber Armadel part. Also, the second manuscript has a lot more material that is completely outside of the my target grimoire, which is of doubtful interest to me.

Here is one of the books that Eric has published.

Still, I want to compare the two manuscripts with the English translation that Mathers has done, looking for any text that was omitted that would be useful for building a modern grimoire. That is my sole purpose to writing this book. However, MS #2494 is a full grimoire manuscript with Armadel enclosed within it, but additionally, it has many pages of untranslated and never published material. There is obviously two different hands writing this larger book, and some of the pages in the middle are very difficult to read because the ink has faded so badly. I have told Eric that translating and publishing this unknown material would impress the English occult audience, thus making the contents of MS #2494 more accessible. I promised to get him some needed contacts to do this task, and some of my friends could help as well.

One question that I do have is what sections from the two manuscripts were used by Mathers to produce his manuscript, or if only MS #826 was the sole source as some have speculated, and that's where a translator will come in handy. We can also see if Mathers made any translation mistakes or omissions, and where the two manuscripts differ from each other. I am not able to pay Eric for his work, since he has the option of translating the bulk of the second volume, which has a hundred or more extra pages of an eclectic period grimoire to examine, translate and publish if he wishes. I will put his name on the future book as the translator when it is published, and give him some useful PR, and help him publish his work in the U.S., depending on what he has to offer. Getting publishers to publish occult books in France these days without academic credentials is tough for someone who doesn't have the right connections, unlike the U.S. in that regard. At least that is what Eric has told me during our conversations.

My plan is to take the translation that Mathers has already made, including material that he did not include in his work, and produce a modern magical grimoire that can be used by pagans, witches and ceremonial magicians in the English speaking world. Right now, the translated book that was first published in 1980, and later, a second publisher came out with a new version that was practically the same. Both were eminently fascinating, but was not very usable. In other words, it requires someone to develop a methodology for working magic with the incredible seals found in that book. So, it not only requires translating and deciphering, but also organizing and structuring so that it fits into a modern system of magic. I have my work cut out for me.

All of these occurrences, discovering PDFs of the manuscripts online, connecting with Eric, and getting a lot of support from my publishers seems to be telling me that now is the time for me to start working on this project. This is so exciting and it will be one of my life's long ambitions to publish a workable version of the Liber Armadel for English speaking occultists and magical practitioners.

Here and here are the links to the two BNF manuscripts:

Frater Barrabas

Mechanism of Spirit Conjuration

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 12:48:00 +0000

I often get questions from other occultists and people not acquainted with the invocation or evocation of spirits whether the phenomenon is actually real. Does the summoned spirit truly appear? Is it real or illusory? Does it cause strange paranormal phenomenon when it appears? I suppose for someone who has never experienced these occult phenomena first hand they would either doubt that they occur, or they would fantasize that they must produce striking events heralded by miracles and mind-bending paranormal occurrences.

When I respond by telling them that what transpires is amazing but also subjective, mostly internalized, and deeply felt from within, they seem disappointed. When I have accomplices working with me, they often experience the same kind of internalized phenomenon that I do; but the voices they hear and the things they see couldn’t be captured with a video camera. Sometimes, I have had individuals who worked magic with me vaguely sense something but really saw and heard nothing, while their compatriots (if there were others) experienced something very similar to what I experienced. This might be puzzling for some.

When two or more people experience something in a very nearly similar manner then we can assume that the experience has a certain objective reality. However, I am very certain that only those who are sensitive, open minded and empathic are able to fully function within a magical process. Some folks just don’t see or feel what I do when working magic, and that’s okay. I have spent most of my life working magic and so it is as real as anything else I can experience, but it is very different than having a mundane social encounter.

Magical phenomena are subtle, highly subjective, and they require a creative imagination to make them capable of being fully realized. That has more to do with how I perceive reality and my expectations than it has to do with the universality of the magical process. Magic is not for everyone, and not everyone can either sense it or engage it. I won’t say that practitioners of magic are born to perceive and engage with it, but it seems that those who are open, imaginative, sensitive, suggestive and empathetic are able to function as magicians. If you lack in any of these qualities, you can still learn to work magic; but lacking an imagination and an ability to be empathetic are obviously complete obstacles to functioning as a magician.

However, one of the cleverest questions I have ever been asked was when someone brought up the hypothetical issue when two or more magicians are summoning the same spirit. Does it matter who finishes the invocation first, and if one magician succeeds do the others get nothing, or perhaps some kind of busy signal with the message to try again later? Is there only one spirit out there to be summoned at any time? What if someone traps a spirit in a bottle, like what Solomon was reputed to have done? Is that spirit no longer available for summoning?

Those questions take some thought to answer. Is there only one version of a spirit out there in the spirit world? Why does one magician’s summoning experience, documented in, let’s say, a grimoire, different from another magician’s experience? This does happen, and it depends on the beliefs and ideals that the magician carries with them, how they see and value the spirit, and whether their attitude is to bind and dominate the spirit, or to engage in a cooperative quid-pro-quo relationship? I have heard of a situation where more than one magician performed a summoning against the same spirit at around the same time and both magicians had powerful and favorable experiences. Does performing a conjuration cause a spirit to become duplicated so they can exist in two or more places at once. What is the mechanism involved when a magician summons a spirit? What are they really getting and how does it actually work?

When we choose a spirit to invoke or evoke, we typically find it listed in a grimoire or some other list of spirits. There might be a textual character sketch of what that spirit looks like and what it can do for the operator. There could also be a sigil or a seal representing the spirit, and maybe a generalized invocation to summon that entity. There could be nothing more than a name in a list without any description, associated quality, or a sigil or seal to use in a conjuration. Whatever information there is, the magician will fill in the gaps using their art to build an image of that entity, the reason for summoning it (the task it is to do), and to derive a sigil for that spirit based on its name. All of this information describing a spirit, its function, and its symbolic signature, is a template or the abstract qualities associated with that spirit. When we seek to conjure a spirit; it is from the basis of a template of organized attributes that we perform this process.

After the invocation, and if the spirit appears in some form, then what we have realized is what I call an instantiation of that spirit. I use this word in a similar manner to what programmers refer to when they execute an instantiation in the code of a program. An instantiation is a real instance or a particular realization of an abstract quality or a template (defined attributes). This is the basis of object orientated programming, and it also works as a means to describing the phenomenon of spirit conjuring. When we summon a spirit, our symbolic template is used to generate an instantiation of that spirit, which appears real to us. If someone else performed the same invocation at the same then they would generate their own instantiation of that spirit. They might experience something completely different, but it would be founded on the qualities and attributes that they established when defining the template of the spirit. I believe that this process is also experienced when someone invokes or assumes a Godhead. What they achieve is an instantiation of that Deity, based on their beliefs, expectations, and perceptions.

When we summon a spirit and go through the process of binding, constraining and releasing, we have established a temporary instantiation with that spirit. What this means is that we are linked to that process, and while we could ask a spirit to help or favor someone else, we are the one who is connected to that magical process. As it is defined in magic, once connected then always connected. We can destroy that connection by burning or destroying the sigil or seal and by performing a banishing rite. Yet if we do not banish the spirit, and then later we die, that connection is forever gone. It cannot be transferred to another person without that individual performing their own conjuration. Even if there is a book of spirits that was passed on or somehow obtained by a second party, the sigils and seals in that book are dormant unless they are activated by the magic deployed by that second party. Past workings performed by magicians are part of their spiritual and magical persona and cannot be either taken away, given away or sold to another party. Because the core connection in a conjuration rite is the instantiation, it is something that is forever connected to a specific magic, and it must be replicated by another magician in order to be realized.

This brings me to discuss the Solomonic practice of summoning a spirit and then placing it into a bottle. A similar approach would be when a Voudoun bokor conjures a spirit and places it into their “prenda” or spirit pot. This instantiation functions as long as the magician keeps it relevant in their mind or if they should die. Once death occurs, then the magician’s tools, spirit bottles, personally activated book of spirits, and artifacts become dormant. Another magician could activate them, particularly if they knew the names of the spirits who were placed in a bottle, book or an object. However, non-practitioners would not be able to either wield these tools nor engage these artifacts because they would no longer be functional. The instantiation that made them fully realized would be gone, and so too, would the magical qualities of those objects.

Where this gets more complicated is when someone creates talismans. If a magician generates a talismanic field and conjures a spirit within it, then even if they were to die, the talisman would continue to function, and the spirit would be fully functional within that artifact. This is because when merging a spirit with a talisman, the talismanic field establishes and maintains the instantiation, thereby releasing the magician of the bond or connection to the spirit. Such a process is complicated and advanced, but if a magician were to do it, then depending on the spirit summoned, they could create something that would continue to keep the spirit fully activated, and such an entity could do good or harm, depending on the quality of the talismanic field.

The phases of the moon dictates whether a talisman is positive or negative regarding its output of intelligent energies. A waxing moon produces a positive talisman, and a waning moon produces one that is negative. If someone were perverse or vicious enough to set a negative talismanic field with a demonic spirit, then the artifact that would contain them would be a powerful form of a curse. A perpetual instantiation would make the realized demon quite powerful and very vengeful – it would be a pissed off demon seeking ultimate release from the talismanic artifact. This would be similar to a genie trapped in a bottle, except it is the talismanic field that holds the demon in a state of eternal evocation. I wouldn’t want to receive such an artifact as a gift, and that even destroying the talismanic field and releasing the demon could have severe repercussions.

Conjuring spirits creates a personal bond that is temporary, but a talismanic field joined with a conjured spirit makes a continuous instantiation of that spirit possible, causing it to reside practically forever. The only situation where this would be a positive outcome is if the magician invoked one of their Deities and drew it down into a statue or icon that was charged with a positive talismanic field. This is how I would propose to animate a statue or icon with the instantiated presence of a Deity. A God or Goddess being used in this fashion is a whole different equation when considering statue animation, and it is something that can be done without harming oneself or others, or angering the target entity.

A final consideration is that invocations and evocations are temporary, although the bond it creates is semi-permanent, subject to a deliberate disconnection or the death of the operator. A talismanic field merged with a conjuration is probably a poor choice for a magical working. This is because you can conjure a spirit to do something, or you can generate a talisman to do something else, but it might be really crazy to join them into a single artifact, because breaking the bond by destroying the talismanic artifact could have unwanted or very undesirable consequences.

Frater Barrabbas

Meeting the Devil and Ordeal XV

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 15:26:00 +0000

This is part 3 of a three part article that is the introduction to Magical Shadow Work and Ordeal XV. I will be writing a book about this ordeal in the future. Here is the basic understanding to this masterful challenge that all adepts must face in their magical and spiritual career.

I have proposed that the Devil is the master behind the process of transformative initiation, representing the role of the Dark Father to whom the initiate must find resolution in order for the initiation process to be completed. The Devil is also likely to be found as a sentinel at the cross-roads gateway into the underworld and also the gate-keeper for the return threshold. This should not be surprising to any traditionally initiated Witch, who engages with the Horned God and his agent, the Man in Black, during the dark rites of the underworld initiation. Therefore, in order for ritual magicians to achieve a greater transformative experience, they must ultimately open the gateway at their own cross-roads moment and face their own Devil as both the archetypal nemesis and their own personal shadow. Without achieving the transformation and individuation associated with this greater ordeal, a ritual magician cannot claim to have achieved self-mastery, which is the precursor for gaining a more permanent state of enlightenment.

Therefore, I have developed an ordeal to achieve and master this encounter with the Devil, and I have called it Ordeal XV. My use of the Roman numerals XV is to connect this ordeal with the Tarot trump card the Devil XV. What is depicted in that card is very much what I believe is a necessary part of the initiate adept’s pathway. It is similar, in a lesser fashion, to crossing the Greater Abyss, and it is very much required before the magician would seek that greater transition from initiate adept to master adept, and the revelation of the first rung of the supernal triad of the Tree of Life. So, after all the lesser ordeals have been mastered and the initiate adept has gained total confidence in all things magical, they must then evoke the Devil himself, and gain self-mastery and through it achieve individuation.

I am proposing this ordeal not because I believe that it is important, which it is, but because I myself have walked this path and intimately know its importance first hand. I have summoned versions of these devils and I have endured this kind of ordeal many years ago. When I performed it, it was not a complete and structured ritual process. It was multiple workings performed at different times, evoking multiple devils, and I performed them in segments all during the early to middle 1980's when I was in a kind of emotional and spiritual turmoil. What I am proposing now is the completed formulation of this ordeal, which is something that I did not possess all those years ago.

I believe that even the purest white-light magician must at some point deal with their darker attributes before they can gain a mastery of magic and self-mastery. It takes a lot of fortitude and courage to perform these evocations, particularly if one is too biased and aligned to the light. Yet for those who periodically dip their wings into the shadows, such as myself, it becomes an obvious stage in the road to enlightenment and illumination. Yet there is a reason for evoking the Devil, and in fact, the Ordeal calls for evoking no less than four of them.

Some writers have proposed in their books on Shadow Work that the shadow has two parts, one constructive and the other malignant. I would like to think of the shadow as being a single entity. Yet because even people with their outer persona and internal ego represent an illusory concept of unity, it could be said that the shadow is a loosely unified body that consists of many parts and faces, similar to our own unconscious psyche. When examining the beingness of the Devil we discover that this entity actually consists of many parts or fragments, and they are the reason for the concept of the legions of demons. There are many orders or denominations of demons, and their number is practically infinite, similar to the number of orders and members of angels. Thus, when encountering a devil or a demon it is important to get its name and association, which is actually appropriate when dealing with any kind of spirits.

Since there are many ways to organize or group demons or to select individuals to function as some kind of group or hierarchical structure, I have decided to use the classical methodology of the four elements. Thus, to select four devils or arch-demons in a group and present them in a specific magical ordeal as four preeminent challenges for adepts to meet and through them, achieve a greater personal resolution.

My choice of four arch-demons has a precedence in the archaic grouping of demons as being ruled by four demon kings; but other hierarchies of three or seven are more common. I have also departed from the traditional orientation and naming of my elected demons for these four elements. This is because I believe the most important grouping of four attributes are the four Gnostic Churches of the Tetrasacramentary. Since these four Gnostic churches represent the foundation for all my liturgical and magical workings starting at the point of adepthood (5th degree), then the four demon princes that I would choose to evoke in succession would be grouped according to these four churches.

I would group these four arch-demons within my four Gnostic churches in the following manner, using both ancient demon names and even one very modern one. I refer to these four arch-demons as the Involution Avatars, since the role that they play is to impact the initiate with the inverted gnostic attributes of the church or ecclesia with which they are associated, and this negative power and vision would trigger their shadow in a very profound manner. I would propose that the initiate perform the evocations of these four Involution Avatars every dark or new moon for four consecutive months, beginning in the month of October, and on the fifth month, they would bring them together and fuse their spiritual intelligences into a unified being. By doing that they would receive full psychic and spiritual restitution for all of the ills, pain, hardship and life’s ordeals that they have experienced, and elevate their shadow so that it becomes like a shining guide, or the Atman or Bornless One. These evocations rites, when performed successfully five months in a row without any lapse will ultimately heal the duality of an individual’s persona and the shadow so that they will be one; but the ordeal itself would be excruciatingly difficult.

Here are how I would characterize these four Involution Avatars who stand in the underworld for each of the four Gnostic Ecclesia of Thelema, Thanatos, Agape, and Eros. And these powerful arch-demons are the masters of the underworld initiation associated with each church. Where I have placed more than one selection, the initiate adept can choose one whom they wish to evoke in their ordeal, or they can choose more than one. I would recommend a thorough and deep research on each chosen demon before beginning this work.

Thelema - Element of Air - Involution Avatar Aiwas/Aiwaz and also Ashtoreth. Aiwas is the reputed the author of Liber Vel Legis or the Thelemic “Book of the Law,” the sacred scriptures of Crowley’s version of Thelema. He was also the voice of the Eighth Aethyr in the Vision and the Voice. While some have said that Aiwas was Crowley’s Holy Guardian Angel, I believe that he truly functions as the demi-god of the OTO and is the spiritual intelligence behind the modern creed of Thelema. Ashtoreth is a demon Grand Duke who was originally the Goddess Astarte, but was demonized in the Jewish religious tradition. He is depicted as a black faced and heavily bearded man riding a black dragon brandishing a large venomous snake in his left hand. He is attributed to the Qliphoth of Jupiter (Fortune Reversed by Rebellion) and is the prince of accusers and prosecutors. Both Aiwas and Ashtoreth seem to fit the arbiters of rebellion and the overturning of the old order. Since Thelema is associated with the Will, it would seem that the its shadow image would be chaos instead of order, and the fomenting of an internalized insurrection, which is like a person engaged in fighting against themself.

Entering into the underworld of the Gnostic current of Thelema would be to experience the complete shattering of the self and the relentless interrogation of one’s purpose or “will” in life. Since we all have weak moments where our ambitions are either thwarted or momentarily lost in the struggle of life, these lapses are amplified and used to question and persecute us as to whether we have any direction or basic meaning to our lives whatsoever. When anyone is measured and judged by the laws and powers of Thelema in its negative and dark attribution, we are always found weak, purposeless, and without direction. It becomes a great challenge to overcome this persecution and to persevere through adversity. That we take our idealized ambition and directive and defend it against all rational logic and the limitations, obstructions and the inherent self-sabotage that are powerfully arrayed against us. To persevere against all odds, and to continue to steadfastly move forward while enduring misfortune, limitations, persecution, and social denigration, will resolve itself into a peaceful coexistence with the chaotic changes of life. It is where the Sword of the Will has been tested and found true.

Thanatos - Element of Water- Involution Avatar Azrael, Samael, and Satan. Azrael is the definitive Angel of Death, who rides a pale white horse and is readily depicted in the Tarot trump Death XIII. Samael is the poison or venom of God (El), and Satan is the rebellious angel who leads the angelic revolt, and who is characterized as the singular depiction of the Christian Devil. These various entities represent the inverse or underworld of the Gnostic current of Thanatos, who transform death into a fearful and malevolent being who mercilessly takes life by guile or by violent force. There is no peace associated with this transition, and there is no mitigation or forgiveness. There is only regret, unforgiven malefactions great and small, guilt and despair. This is wholly contrary to the ideals of Thanatos which seeks to prepare us for death while still alive, thereby giving us solace and hope.

What the initiate adept must do is confront their own mortality with the idea that there are no second chances, forgiveness, or peace without facing and resolving the impermanence of all living things, and in fact, all material things. These arch-demons can be resolved into allies if the initiate adept can break their ties to ambition, desire and privilege, to be truly free from the unwarranted ties that bind us. Of the four chosen Involution Avatars, the one representing Thanatos challenges us at the very root of our existence and our purpose in life, and therefore, is the most severe and difficult to resolve.

The underworld of the Gnostic current of Thanatos is the unremitting grief, loss and oblivion of an untimely death. It is the hell of guilt, remorse, self-inflicted torments and endless pain, all dutifully unleashed upon one’s own being. Dante’s lurid depictions of the underworld describing his literary descent into Hell is the archetype of the dark underworld of Thanatos. There is no hope for forgiveness, salvation, justice, restitution, nor redemption from even the most minor wrongs committed; but only the utter and total stygian darkness of complete soul-less obliteration. Yet in this dark opressive world, the initiate adept must find a way to light a small candle of hope, which is that our own inner divinity, the God/dess Within, our Atman or Holy Guardian Angel will find a way to rekindle the light of life, even when the soul is oppressed with its ultimate termination. The ego and persona must die, but there is more to an individual human being than just their insular beingness and their narrow ego-tunnel. Through the power of surrender, of letting go, and embracing the light of the One, which is the non-dual source of all consciousness, the initiate adept can find their way through death to an awakening beyond light and life. To successfully overcome this challenge while still alive, through the relentless ordeal of the demon of death, the initiate adept learns to treasure life but to be always aware of the powers of darkness and death. It is a very sobering equilibrium.

Agape - Element of Fire - Involution Avatar Lucifer, Asmodeus or Prometheus. These entities are all associated with fire, so they are appropriate selections for the Involution Avatar of Agape, which is associated with the element of Fire. While the Gnostic current of Agape represents human sodality, the foundation of human culture, and the consent of the unified purpose of human life (the overall social contract), the underworld vision of Agape focuses on individual ambition and the unlawful exercise of selfish and ego-based activities. While these activities are performed by individuals who act against the status-quo, their unwitting gifts to humanity are both a boon and a curse. Lucifer, as the light bearer, falls from grace when he seeks to rebel against the tyranny of God, setting in motion the later human practice of defying the Gods, and also defying human convention and the basic expectations of a peaceful life.

Social revolution often runs counter to the good of humanity in the short run, and it is typically resisted by those in authority. Asmodeus is the fire demon representing the desire to break conventions, seek retribution and vengeance or to engage in liaisons that are unlawful and unwanted. He is depicted as a physically beautiful man who uses guile and charisma to seduce men and women into actions that are against their basic interests. Leaders who act contrary to the social benefit of everyone can cause upheavals, destruction, social enmity and civil war. Vigilantes seek social justice, but they are just unwitting pawns of unsanctioned vengeance, yet they are lionized in stories, media, and myths as heroes. These kinds of social revolutions might be important, but they have a staggering cost.

Likewise, Prometheus gave humanity the gift of fire and paid a steep price for that action, which went against the will of the Gods. However, while the gift may have promoted constructive uses of fire, but it also unleashed the negative uses of fire to harm others, whether by accident or by design. This event ultimately led to triggering the dark side of civilization, which is state sponsored warfare, the persecution of minorities, ethnic cleansing, and the unprovoked conquest of other peoples. These evils are still afflicting the postmodern world, but they could be identified as the backlash to the discovery of fire.

The underworld of Agape is the temptation of individuals to act against the will and the needs of the many for their own personal ambition. They are attacking the social contract that binds humanity together. This is somewhat like an Ayn Rand fictional plot, where the rugged and gifted individual disastrously rebels against the collective social status-quo and the prevailing sentiment of moral relativism and self-sacrifice. While the heroes of this theme are fighting for freedom and rational self-interest, they also cause destruction, injuries and fatalities, and social chaos. When individuals employ their will to overthrow the society in which they reside, then their actions must be accountable and measured against the common good. While Ayn Rand identified such individuals as revolutionary heroes, our complex society sees them rightfully as terrorists.

In this underworld scenario the initiate adept is tested to determine if their personal will and directive helps and promotes the social good in the short and long term, or whether their selfish interests will lead to harming others with no actual gain or social progression. This, then, is the nature of the test of individual human ambition, and anyone who seeks to make any changes to the world in which they live should be given this test in its most severe form, ensuring that they realize the cost of their actions and are made consciously accountable. Achieving clarity, selflessness, and affirmation about one’s personal directives and ambitions represents the process of passing through this important test.

Eros - Element of Earth - Involution Avatar Beelzebub, Belphegor or Pan Priapus. The Gnostic current of Eros is the ideal of Epithumia, the thirst for life, and the joyful realization of desire. While this current has a very progressive, constructive, and delightful representation of life’s essential experiences of procreation, birth, growth, and the blissful happiness and rejoicing of ecstatic release, it’s opposite is the perversion of desire, dissolution and extreme excess. It is debauchery without purpose, unbridled drunkenness, addled additions, and excesses towards the destruction and denial of life. It is the dark attribute of selfish desire and the cruel denial of consensuality, where power over others and their victimization is the principal ideation.

The demons Beelzebub and Belphegor exemplify the qualities of gluttony, envy, and slothfulness, intemperance and orgiastic excess. Without a guiding principle of balance, simplicity and ethical engagement, Epithumia becomes the road to dissolution and death. For those who love life and engage in the pure expression of love, the pleasurable banquet of exquisite food, drink and exotic drugs enjoyed in the company of dear friends and lovers amid the esthetic panoply of nature, they must possess self-discipline and a strong sense of ethical behavior. Sybarites of all persuasions must be self-disciplined and ethical otherwise they will fall into the cruel clutches of profligacy that will cause their ultimate death and leave the scarred victims of their perverse practices forever psychically damaged. Pan Priapus, as the personification of the mindless erect phallus is the god that exemplifies the complete lack of discipline and ethics that must be the regimen and rules of the true sybarite.

Entering into the underworld of Eros is to enter a chaotic world of drunkenness and delirium that challenges anyone who would dare follow the path of life and its pleasures. Only the complete ascetic is immune, and few if any of us would meet that requirement. The initiate adept is fully assaulted with the darkest expression and definitions of their periods of vulnerability, when they succumbed to drink, drugs, or nonconsensual sexual aggression, or were sexually dominated themselves by another. These fearful memories are given a powerful life as the initiate adept must deal with their own guilty conscience in personal acts that were dissolute and dishonorable. Here everyone is a victim, and everyone is condemned to the darkness of the unredeemed human animal. Even so, there is always a spark of light and life that is good, and only through empowering life and affirming its goodness even through darkness and adversity is the way found to overcome the fear and alluring seduction of the dark gnosis of Eros. Of all of the underworld gnostic currents, Eros is the most challenging to overcome and resolve because we all love life and its pleasures.

Resolution as the Marriage of the Shadow and Persona

Having passed through all four of these underworld depictions of Hell, and having resolved their imposing challenges, the initiate adept is then free to face them together as one since overall challenge. This is because they have become truly purged of the darkness and are fully clear and knowing of themselves through the contrast of light and darkness, life and death. The ultimate task for the initiate adept is to not only resolve these trials in a single cycle of four consecutive dark new moon nights, but to keep them alive within them as a means to measure and realize the truth about themselves. When the fifth new moon occurs in the sequence of months, then the final act in the Ordeal is consummated.

In that moment, the final and fifth stage, the initiate adept fuses all four arch-demons into a single being of darkness and light, the true nameless Godhead of Ordeals. It is also where the wedding ceremony or the union between the individual shadow and the persona is enacted, and the greater gateway of Light and Darkness, Shadow and Persona, might be established. It is an event where the doorway of the soul is always left open so that there might be a cyclic communion between light and dark.

This wedding ceremony is the Hieros Gamos of the shadow and the ego-based persona, made possible through the intervention of the magician’s God/dess Within, their Atman or individual godhead. This is because the ultimate resolution of the trump card The Devil XV is resolved through the trump card The Lovers VI. A magical jeweled ring, which is used to symbolize their union, is consecrated, charged, given and received (worn by the initiate adept), and a special underworld gateway rite is periodically performed as part of the magician’s magical discipline every new moon. It opens one up to the place where the shadow and persona go to merge and become one. This is an ongoing and never-ending process, since the internal psychic unity tied to the godhead is something that must be periodically consummated. It becomes part of the magician’s regular liturgical practice, unfailingly performed until that day when they emerge on the other side of the Greater Abyss, as a being that is whole, enlightened, illuminated and conscious of their singular godhead.

Whatever other ordeal that I might seek to promote to my readers, this is the one that must be undertaken at some point by anyone who would gain the final stages of non-dual consciousness in their lifetime as practicing magicians. Yet it is the Devil, in his various forms, who is the archetypal Shadow of all beings, that is arbiter of this ordeal, and it is through him that the master adept might gain their full mastery of the powers of light and darkness, and their mastery of life in all its vicissitudes.

Frater Barrabbas

World Shadow as the Devil

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 15:09:00 +0000

This is part 2 of a three part article that is the introduction to Magical Shadow Work and Ordeal XV. I will be writing a book about this ordeal in the future. Here is the basic understanding to this masterful challenge that all adepts must face in their magical and spiritual career.

While our personal shadow typically remains nameless and undefinable, the archetypal embodiment of this shadowy and mysterious individual does have many names and qualities as defined in our culture and our social world. In the west, including the middle east, that personage is the Devil or Satan, the ultimate antagonist and representative of all that is rejected in our societies. He is seen as too prideful or too despicable to be suffered as having any kind of important role or even to be acknowledged except as the repository of the sins of humankind. The social polarization of good and evil has created an archetypal personage that holds all the evil that has ever been committed by humans in the world, whether minor infractions and deviations from the expected norms or massive crimes against humanity and nature. Yet he is also the polar opposite of the Deity in monotheistic religious traditions, taking on the attributes of punisher, stern judge, and wrathful avenger as the dark side of the cultural Godhead. Since God is above and beyond the evil that afflicts the world, then it is up to God’s Shadow as the Devil to meet out justice and retribution.

As we learn by painful experiences, so too do we gain insight and wisdom through the struggles and critical ordeals that life presents us. Knowledge is often gained by bitter disappointments, and a life without struggle, resistance or pain is one that is devoid of constructive self-knowledge and self-improvement. Behind such lessons of life is our shadow, who seems to guide us as a primary instigator into and through life’s travails and difficulties. The shadow is both a guardian barring our way and a guide who instructs us in how to proceed, overcoming obstacles. Our greater lesson is to learn to be aware of the shadow’s psychic intuition and to listen to its teachings. As practitioners of magic, this is a crucial lesson to master.

The same holds for the cultural or world shadow as the archetype of the Devil, who shows us the darkness that we refuse to see, and instigates disruptive chaos against the seemingly mindless and the unwitting people who fail to hear and realize his warnings. Thus, Satan is both the punisher and also the teacher, indirectly overseeing the paths of the mage and the sage. Since the true aspect of the Deity is its unity, then the Devil, who is God’s shadow, represents that polar opposite which is necessary for the union of light and darkness to be fully realized. It is the joining of God and Satan into a single supremely paradoxical being that opens the doorway to true enlightenment and the realization of the One.

Yet to only acknowledge the good Deity and to ignore or disparage its shadow is to create an even greater paradox, which is splitting the Deity and fostering a destructive duality that cannot be logically supported or resolved, since it denies the inherent unity of all things, material, mental and spiritual. We can see the damage that Christianity has unleashed on the world by passionately adhering to a dualistic spiritual perspective that divides the world into the faithful good and the unfaithful evil. Such divisions are always a precursor to religious oppression and then followed by violent persecution. Religious wars are the most destructive kind of civil violence humanity has ever unleashed or experienced. The balanced path between the archetypal agencies of light and darkness is the only path to peace and constructive interaction. In order for that state of peace to occur we must all accept the fact that there are unresolved paradoxes and mysteries within the soul of humanity and the Soul of the World. It is imperative that we accept them as they exist and not to try to resolve them through religious interdiction.

As magicians we travel the path of transformative initiation, ever mindful that such a milestone is achieved when we encounter our shadow self in a land of shadows, our psychic underworld. At the zenith of this powerful psychic process, we meet two personages: our shadow opposite with whom we must unite, and our image of paternal authority with whom we must gain approbation. This stage where we meet our shadow occurs as a kind of wedding or Hieros Gamos where opposites are ceremonially united, to be followed by a new dynamic of empowerment. The next stage in the hero’s journey is known as “Atonement with the Father,” which represents the realignment that must occur once the self is made whole again. This is the stage where the hero must take on the laws and judgements of their culture and social position. It is only when there is a new balance established between the light and darkness of the self, mitigated by the laws, ethics and social graces of the archetypal image of the hero’s home, that he is released from bondage to become the apotheosis of humankind.

Yet the father figure that demands atonement is characterized, in my opinion, by the Tarot trump the Devil XV. I have made this analogy in previous writings, and it is based on my comparative mapping between the hero’s stages and the trumps of the Tarot. It is the Devil who has a central role to play in this cyclic process of psychological death and rebirth. While the shadow represents to us the individual that tests and challenges us so that we might gain a unified psychic wholeness, it is the Devil who orchestrates this process and who rules the underworld.

If we examine the Tarot trump the Devil, we see depicted on it two horned individuals with pointed tails, a naked man and woman, loosely (voluntarily) chained by their necks to a rock-like altar pedestal, jointly worshiping their diabolical master. In the center of the card stands the archetypal image of Satan in all his terrible glory. Upon this pedestal, he demonstrates in his pose the ultimate mystery in the words “solve et coagula” tattooed on his arms, one raised above pointing to the heavens and the other pointing to the ground. These words mean to dissolve and conjoin, which is the very process that the hero undergoes to achieve transformation. This Tarot trump is the mirror image of trump VI, the Lovers, representing a different kind of union of opposites. The Lovers VI is where the hero and his shadow join in the fusion of light and darkness as directed and sanctioned by a god, and the Devil XVI is where that union is tested, rectified and made whole. So, it would seem the entire mystery of our shadow work leads us to psychic union and transformation, where we receive the “devil’s mark” as a sign of our achievement. The two Tarot trumps are the key to this mystery, but first we must meet the Devil to determine our fate in this greater transformation.

Frater Barrabbas

Magical Shadow Work

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 15:04:00 +0000

This is part 1 of a three part article that is the introduction to Magical Shadow Work and Ordeal XV. I will be writing a book about this ordeal in the future. Here is the basic understanding to this masterful challenge that all adepts must face in their magical and spiritual career.

Shadow Work is a very popular topic these days and there are lots of books on the subject with a full regimen of practices and journaling. Some of the available online information advise would-be shadow workers to consult with a therapist and not try to do these practices alone. Others take a less intense approach that seems friendly to anyone. Certainly, those who suffer from mental health issues shouldn’t engage with this kind of work, but with the large array of practical applications and books on the subject, it seems like an inviting approach to gaining a full understanding of one’s self. There is almost a kind of New Age sheen to this topic, as it has become very popular over the last decade or two. However, a serious approach to this kind of work does require a solid psychological foundation and an overall healthy mental outlook on life, as well as a degree of openness, courage and self-confidence. Real shadow work is not for the faint hearted nor the superficial devotee of trends.

So, despite the hype and the alluring faddism regarding this practice, it is quite real and represents a true methodology to expose us to our darker selves, showing us an image of ourselves that contains everything that we seem to dislike or repress about ourselves. It also presents us with the means to integrating that shadowy nature back into our conscious selves. The shadow is the part of ourselves that has been displaced from our conscious self and is filled with those characteristics that we have been told by parents and authority figures are bad behaviors, inclinations or impulses. We start out in life without any real shadow, functioning as a whole but severely underdeveloped human being. As we travel through life our parents, teachers, and other authority figures judge our behavior, and encourage those activities that are considered appropriate in social settings and family life, and suppress those that are considered inappropriate or wrong. We grow up learning about the differences between good and evil, and we try, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much, to adhere to the standard presented to us.

However, the shadow does not just contain those attributes of ourselves that are negative or deemed socially unacceptable. Many people also suppress their creativity or their genius for doing things that are above average so that they might fit in with their peers and avoid rejection. Being too smart, too artistic, too insightful, and too anything will cause individuals to be rejected or not considered one of the peer group. The exceptions are physical beauty or athletic skill, which are more a part of genetics and good fortune than any kind of external social grace or internal reckoning. Being a member of the upper class certainly can make mediocre people into members of the “in crowd,” and avoiding extremes or forms of high excellence will ensure that one is an acceptable and accessible member of the group. Mediocrity is highly acceptable, but exceptionalism in any form has a social cost.

In ancient times people avoided outwardly showing any degree of material success or good fortune to their peers to avoid the effects of jealousy and the “evil eye.” That kind of cautionary behavior has found itself in the present age as well. Most people, therefore, leave behind their personal treasures as well as their potentially bad behavior to be accepted by their peer group and to become a favored and privileged member of their society. All of these qualities end up residing in our shadow, and often we are barely conscious of what we have sacrificed to be an approved member of our social group. We adhere to these standards of social acceptance whether we realize it or not, unless, of course, we perversely seek to break them.

Some people reject these standards partially or completely while others are incapable of following some or all of them, to their unfortunate social detriment. Those who don’t follow the expected norms are a deviant group where bohemians, revolutionaries, thieves, thugs, murderers, arsonists, and violent terrorists find themselves, but also anyone who is member of the suppressed and despised minorities. Our cultural shadow is like a big carnival tent containing a variety of marginalized or unwanted people.

As a Witch and ritual magician, I have found myself occasionally accused of being in league with various anarchists and secret cultists, and I am sure that other minorities, whether by racial, religious, gender, or sexual preference biases have found themselves placed in some suspicious group as well. It is easy to judge and condemn whole groups of people, especially those who are powerless to actively defend themselves. It has become a single-minded fad in our current national political culture, where oppressing the supposed “bad” (non-white or abnormal) people is a popular pastime of the recently empowered rightwing bigots, racists, misogynists, and fascists (who call themselves Republicans). One could easily say that America itself has succumbed to its dark shadow side with the activities and beliefs espoused by the current administration and their donor class backers.

This divergent pathway leads to the domain of shadows and the ubiquitous “Other” that represents how societies and cultures determine their own collective shadow. All of this should be included in the study of shadow work because individual shadows are characters that reside within a cultural shadow, and sometimes a person’s shadow whose conscious persona is considered part of the cultural shadow by others, would be solidly and boringly normal, if not also judgmental, racist and bigoted as qualities associated with their shadow self. I think that my own shadow has attributes that would express itself in a racist and misogynist manner while proclaiming to be a conventional and normal Christian man. I still use the names of God and Jesus in vain when perturbed, even though I am a steadfast adherent of Witchcraft. That is something to ponder.

Continuing with this analysis, a criminal might have a lawful and moral shadow, or they might simply be allowing their dark nature to be seen and projected without any kind of filter. What this means is that a person’s shadow is complicated by the culture that they reside in, and it is not really easy to determine the qualities of a person’s shadow. Defining one’s shadow is, therefore, not as simple as putting together a list of the things we detest or fear about ourselves. Our shadow lives in a kind of shadow land, so there is the problem of defining our shadow and the contextual shadow world it resides in. Still, the shadow gives us endless clues, particularly when we project the negative attributes of our shadow on to other people that we intuitively dislike, and project its positive attributes on to those whom we impulsively idolize.

Everyone who is a mature adult has some kind of dark side or shadow. A person might appear mannerly, gracious, kind, generous and compassionate, but they also have a shadow or dark side that is crass, odious, mean, selfish and indifferent. Unless people have addressed their darker and repressed side of themselves then they will be plagued with moments when their internal darkness leaks out regardless of how good they might appear to others. We all have our less than admirable moments of weakness when we show a side of ourselves that contradicts our assumed persona. Our persona is that which embodies the attributes of our self that we want people to always see. We may believe and insist that we are good people, but this is often only a mask that hides a part of ourselves that is decidedly negative. Our overall selves are complex and contain contradictory attributes, and because we need to present ourselves in some kind of unified manner, we will behave in a way that supports our self-belief and suppresses behavior that goes against how we see ourselves. Our persona is how we want to be seen by others, yet our shadow contains everything that we seek to omit from that self-definition, whether deliberately or unwittingly.

Contradictions and conflicts between the shadow and the persona can tarnish a well-meaning individual with hypocrisy and duplicity when their darker side accidently comes out of hiding. When a person insists that they are unanimously good in all their activities and intentions, they are similarly daring their dark side to come out and show itself at moments of frustration and helplessness. Claiming to be a force for good at all times is as much of a form of self-deceit as it is to claim to be always bad. We are never always one thing or another since we are so complex as individuals. Yet often our darker intentions and impulses will bleed out when we are unaware or when we are imbalanced by misfortune, surprise, moments of personal weakness, or self-doubt. This happens to us when we experience events that trigger a psychic interaction with our shadow, allowing it to briefly emerge. Events that can trigger a psychic inversion where the shadow dominates the self are different for everyone, since they are dependent on our life experiences, our affected persona quality, and our inherent psychological dynamics.

This is the reason why I am dubious at the claims of would-be spiritual teachers or political leaders who can do no wrong, and supposedly high-minded New Age folks who espouse to be exclusively white light practitioners of love, bliss and peace; since it is more likely that their shadow is darker than normal, and when it comes out, their followers are very shocked. It is for this reason that I see a parallel of the shadow with the theme of the Picture of Dorian Grey. Except in this case, the picture shows what we truly look like as adults while looking through a dark, obsidian mirror. It doesn’t matter how good a person we think we are, or how nicely we have behaved over our lifetime, when all that we have repressed has painted a picture of ourselves that we would find loathsome and despicable. That, in a word, is the dark trick played on those people who think that they are predominately or exclusively good. It is also why I tend avoid people who pretentiously idolize their own supposed goodness. It just rings fake and hollow in my mind. Even someone who is balanced and seemingly normal can be thrown off by the wiles of their shadow.

When I talk about the religious aspects of Witchcraft, I speak of the powers of light and darkness, not just light. There is a polarity in Witchcraft, both from a magical energy perspective and a theological perspective. There is no absolute light or darkness, but they take turns and work together to formulate the world we live in. The cycle of night and day, winter and summer and the points in transition between them are a natural representation of this interaction of light and darkness. From this point of view, there is no white or black magic, there is no good or evil. There is only our intent and our desire, our vector in life, and the consequence of our actions. This resonates both through our persona and our shadow. They are fully integrated into our magic and religion as two opposites that have a common source - the One. Thus, Witchcraft as a religion admits that there is a dark attribute to all conscious beings, preparing and opening us to experience the interplay of light and darkness, in nature, people and society, and in ourselves. Of course, light and darkness also represent life and death, and because most people fear death in some manner, then death itself, especially the death of the ego and the persona that we carry, is also an attribute of our shadow.

Liminal states can be found where the shadow and persona touch and meet, and it is here where habits and addictions reside that can pose health problems and self-destructive behavior, which is dimly conscious and yet still active. People can inform us that we have a drinking or drug problem or some other kind of socially unacceptable health issue, and typically we will deny that it is a problem until we fully realize it, often at the nadir of its effects on us. Conversely, we can find ourselves living an empty life that momentarily becomes filled with inspiration and joy, fueled by our repressed creativity or excellence, only to have it quickly depart when we recognize that we are engaging in something that we have deemed to be unacceptable about ourselves. The place between light and darkness, the persona and the shadow, is also the place of true religion, magic, and mystery. It is a place of twilight, marked by the intersection of the spheres of light and darkness, symbolically making a convex and concave joining of crescent shapes, combining together to formulate the archetypal image of the Vesica Pisces. This shape represents the mystery of the unified Self and the place between light and darkness.

This domain of twilight is the place where our dreams become powerful instruments of instruction and inspiration, if we are brave enough to open ourselves to that in-between state. In the shadow land are mysteries, magical powers, devils, demons, monsters and the host of the underworld. Yet there are also the various embodiments of Deity, Gods, Goddesses, Angels, ancestor spirits, heroes and heroines, and the ghost roads that interconnect them into a singularity. It is through the gateway of the twilight world that we can meet and gain inspiration through our exposure to that secret place.

It would seem to us that there is mostly a stasis or equilibrium between the darkness and light in our personality, and that would be true if we were not dynamic beings. Yet it just as often seems as if the darkness and light are at war within our psyche, and our ego-based persona seeks to maintain its dominance to keep the denizens of the darkness at bay. Yet often there are leakages and times when the darkness surprises us or even overcomes us, either momentarily or sometimes permanently, as in cases of mental collapse. Any perceived balance is either a deceptive illusion or the calm before the storm.

However, it is our closed attitude to the darkness within us that is the cause of our sufferings and problems. We constantly place an insoluble border between our shadow and our outward persona, but that doesn’t need to occur. If we understand that our inner psychic polarity can be mitigated by relaxing our borders between light and darkness, and eliminating our inner governing self-judgment, then we will realize that this polarity is nothing more than opposing or conflicting beliefs and ideas about ourselves and our world which are ultimately illusory. This is because our own personality, both the light and darkness, exist in a perpetual state of paradox. To accept this internal paradox is to realize the mystery of ourselves and the mystery of all human beings.

This state of mindful self-acceptance is also the most important first step of initiatory transformation, since we must enter into our shadow land and confront our individual shadow to undergo the process where we are made whole and spiritually complete. I have written books on the subject of transformative initiation, but the shadow and our inner underworld are the primary keys to spiritual enlightenment, only requiring one additional personality.

Frater Barrabbas

Liber Artis Archaeomancy - Two Volumes

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 13:54:00 +0000

This was my thirteenth book project, which I started and finished writing last year. It was the largest book that I had ever written so far, being in excess of 217K words. My publisher decided to break this book into two volumes, and since there are two different systems of magic associated with the term and concept of Archaeomancy, I felt that this was a good idea. When this book is released, it will be in two volumes, even though they won’t be released simultaneously. Still, they will be part of Cross Crow Books adjoining catalogues of new releases, and this will happen in 2026. Editing on the first volume wont start until December of this year, and this pause in my publishing regimen has given me time to relocate to a new home and endure all of the disruption that has entailed. I will also have plenty of time to finish my latest book project, titled “The Gnostic Tetrasacramentary,” which would have been my fourteenth book project, but it is now my fifteenth.

I have written a previous article on Archaeomancy, and you can find it here.

Archaeomancy is a system of magic that I started developing in the 1980's, but continued to develop through the 2010's. I have been working with this system of magic for forty years, refining and perfecting it until it has become a comprehensive system of magic for invoking all classes of angels and attributes of the Deity, and traveling into the Qabalistic Dimensions. This system of magic relies heavily on the modern Qabalah, using the structures of the Four Qabalistic Worlds and the Tree of Life to define two modes of magic. The first one is a regimen of invocation using the ritual mechanism of the Archetypal Gate, with the implication that the magician enters into the various predefined forty domains where the angelic hosts reside. I call this the Archaeomancy of the Forty Worlds, since it is ordered by the domains of Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah and Assiah through the ten Sephiroth, dividing each world into forty distinct cells.

The second system of Archaeomancy is the methodology of entering into the Qabalistic domains of the Tree of Life which I call the Dimensions using the artifice of the Transdimensional Vortex Gate. These eighteen domains are the prismatic triangular shapes established by the combined attributes of Sephiroth, Pathways, and the angular vectors associated with the Paths. This system of magic was given to me through my discourse with the Nephilim. They also gave me a rudimentary system of the Enochian Qabalah, since the structure of this system of magic required a more nuanced and complicated structure of the Tree of Life. I have named this system of magic Spiritual Archaeomancy, since it requires the magician to become a psychonaut and to travel into the fabric of the Dimension itself and join with the core of the spiritual Tree of Life, there to briefly experience the enlightenment gained through assumption and personification of the Godhead Avatar of that specific Dimension.

These two ritualized mechanisms, the Archetypal Gate and the Transdimensional Vortex Gate, represent elegant ritual solutions to complex operations. The Archetypal Gate ritual is a modular ritual structure that is meant to be used with little modification to invoke any of the four major classes of angelic spirits associated with the Four Qabalistic Worlds and the ten Sephiroth of the Tree of Life. While the Transdimensional Vortex Gate ritual is a highly customized rite that is used to enter into one of the eighteen Qabalistic Dimensions, it also uses a modular ritual structure so that magicians can use it to enter any of the dimensions, using only some custom attributes but maintaining the same overall ritual structure.

An overview of the ritual pattern for the Archetypal gate reveals that the staff, acting as a pylon between the base magic circle and the zenith of the heavens, allows for the inner eastern gateway to open itself into the domain of the Qabalistic World and allow the mind and soul of the magician to enter therein and commune with the target angelic entity within its own place of residence. Here is a quote that I used to describe the ritual structure of the Archetypal Gate magical working in my book.

“[T]he basic ritual pattern is to establish a powerful invoking vortex, and upon that foundation, erect an archetypal gateway aligned to the East. The staff is used as a pylon lintel tool to establish the archetypal hierarchy once the gateway is entered, and through the conduit of the charged and empowered staff, to invoke the target angel through that gateway using a specially written Enochian invocation.”

Similarly, the Transdimensional Vortex Gate ritual uses the power of the trapezoid to establish an entrance into the Qabalistic Dimension. The foundation for this work is the prior invocations of the Sephiroth and Pathways that border the Dimension. The three Aethyrs, positioned at the angular vectors of the Pathways, are each summoned in sequence, from lowest to highest, in association with the Dimension, and their unified expression and character becomes the symbolic key that is used to open that domain to the mind and spirit of the magician. Yet it is the four Emissaries who ward the Dimension who must be summed in that trapezoidal gateway structure, and through them, the magician meets and assumes the persona of the empowered Avatar of that Dimension. It is through this assumption that the magician gains the enlightened visionary wisdom of that domain, and momentarily touches the absolute spirit of the One, gaining the illumination of all eighteen Dimensions in a single moment of realization. Here is a quote that I used to describe the ritual structure of the Transdimensional Vortex Gate working in my second book in the Archaeomancy system of magic.

“To emulate the attributes of the dimension, the operator will erect a trapezoidal ritual structure that will use the three angles of the Northeast, Southeast, Southwest angles and the Western watchtower. At each of these four points the operator will draw a trapezoidal cross, intone a formula letter, verbalize a short invocation using a verba ignota from Liber Juratus, and invoke one of the four emissaries that make up the spirit of the Avatar of the Dimension. Once the invocation is done, the operator draws an invoking spiral to summon the spirit of the emissary. These four trapezoidal points are then drawn up to the Ultrapoint in a deosil circuit, beginning in the northeast and ending in the west. What this ritual pattern represents is a grand trapezohedron structure, which formulates the transdimensional vortex and generates a non-Euclidean space-time continuum completely separate from our own.”

These are the tools that I have developed and placed into these two ritual systems of Archaeomancy, which is the Archetypal Gate and the Transdimensional Vortex Gate, and they are, in their uniqueness, revelatory of my approach to working these kinds of magic. Whether the magician seeks to invoke any of the attributes of the Elemental Godhead, or the various classes of Archangels and Angels, or to enter into the very fabric of the Tree of Life to gain the wisdom of the Avatar of the Dimension, these two books thoroughly outline and discuss the process as well as providing the actual rituals to perform these operations. Thus, these two books are part of my legacy to the practicing ritual magicians who aspire, through the Qabalah of the 40 Worlds and the Dimensional Tree of Life, to seek to achieve enlightenment through the successful completion of the ordeals outlined therein.

Here is the advertisement for the first book.

“Archaeomancy of the Four Qabalistic Worlds is a complete system of magic that can be used to invoke angels of all classes and types. Archaeomancy is an obscure term that represents a new perspective in the practice of angelic invocation magic. It is defined as the primordial magic, or the magic of the source. It is also a methodology for traveling into the forty worlds that are revealed as the combination of the ten Sephiroth of the Tree of Life and the four Qabalistic Worlds, which is one of the definitions of the Inner Planes. Archaeomancy is the magical technology that is used to not only invoke angelic beings, but also to generate the domain in which they reside, where the magician enters into their world to meet the them face to face. Frater Barrabbas has defined this system of magic as the principal mechanism for an immersion within the Inner Planes, thus promoting the ritual magician as a spirit traveler entering into the World of Spirit to achieve a perfect dialogue with the spirits in that place.

This is a comprehensive work that will assist the intermediate ritual magician in being able to invoke and engage with the entire collective of angels as defined in the Western Mystery Tradition. While there are many books on the topic of angel magic, there has never been a book that addressed the invocation of all classes of angels. Whether a magician seeks to invoke the archangels, the Seraphim and Cherubim, the angels of the Shemhemphorash, or the ruling angles of the decans, or even the lesser servitors or messenger angels, this book, titled “Liber Artis Archaeomancy – Mastering the Angels of the Four Worlds” contains the rituals used to invoke them. Through the methodology of immersion that Frater Barrabbas has expounded on within this new book, there is far more to a magical invocation than just summoning a spirit.

Archaeomancy is an exciting and compelling system of magic, and Frater Barrabbas, in this his 13th book, explains thoroughly how to completely master this new system of magic.”

And, to complete this essay, here is the advertisement for the second book.

“This is Frater Barrabbas’ second book in the series on Archaeomancy, titled “Liber Artis Archaeomancy – Mastering the Qabalistic Dimensions.” It is devoted to revealing the Qabalah of the 18 Dimensions, which are those triangular shapes within the Tree of Life that are delimited by Sephiroth, Pathways, and the angular pathways, revealed as the ubiquitous Enochian Aethyrs. Frater Barrabbas has developed a system of magic that enables the spiritual traveler or “psychonaut” to pass through the structure of the Tree of Life to enter into one of those powerful domains, called the Qabalistic Dimensions.

Since the dawn of human consciousness, people have sought to enter into the inner domains of the Spirit World to engage and commune directly with their ancestors, spirit guides, avatars and deities. Premier amongst these travelers of the domain of spirit were the shamans, those spiritual healers and cultural revealers representing their tribes and nations. Every religion since has emulated the shamans and advocated singular individuals who had made the passage from the world of the living and the reality of light into the domain of the dead and darkness to merge with the very core of spirituality itself, that which is known as the One. Whether it was Orpheus, Odysseus, Heracles, Theseus, or Psyche for the Greeks, or Aeneas of the Romans, or Enoch, Ezekiel, Jonah or Isiah of the Jews, or Dante for the Medieval Italians, all sought to enter into the underworld and to return, renewed and enlightened. Now, in the modern world, Frater Barrabbas has assembled a system of magic using the structure of the Qabalistic Tree of Life to enter into the dimensional inner worlds of the Spiritual Qabalah to achieve temporary glimpses of the glory of the Deity and to obtain enlightenment and spiritual renewal.

Through the use of rituals that invoke the Qabalistic Sephiroth, the Pathways between them, and the Aethyrs at the angles, and through the artifice of the Transdimensional Vortex Gate, a magician, using the rites in this book, will enter into a domain of wonder and profound truth.”

While the schedule for the publishing of these two books has not been officially established, the first one should be available around June 2026. The second book will likely be available after that time, perhaps six months later, or December 2026. When these dates are fully established, I will happily let you know. I believe that these two books will add considerably to the knowledge base of the practicing ritual magician.

Frater Barrabbas

How I fell Out of the Man Box

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 13:28:00 +0000

Throughout most of my life, and certainly my adult life, I have never had any doubts as to who I am, nor have I ever felt deficient, nor penitent about my race or sexual orientation. I just felt that I was an ordinary person with unusual interests and pursuits. I am an elderly white cis-gender heterosexual male living in the post modern United States. I don’t feel any guilt for the prejudice and racism that has been unleashed on blacks or people of color by people of my race, nor the bigotry displayed towards those of other religious persuasions. Despite the fact that I am a product of white privilege, I believe fervently there is enough abundance in the world for everyone to be treated equally, fairly and with dignity. I also believe in the possibility for reparations and affirmative action, along with other programs to fix racial inequality. I am not politically conservative nor religiously exclusive, since to be this way goes against what I practice and what I myself promote. I don’t have doubts about my sexual preferences, and I don’t feel inadequate as a man nor troubled by my identity as one. I lean towards liberalism, but I am not part of the radical left, in fact I wonder if such a political perspective even exists anymore in our country.

I do take responsibility for racism and bigotry, and I try to address that whenever I encounter it, whether in momentary lapses in myself or in others that are close to me. I try to be mindful of the complexities of human expression and culture, and above all, to try and be open minded and compassionate to everyone. Of course I often fail at that attempt, but I am sensitive about the feelings of others and of my own behavior, and I seek to change when I am shown to be wrong or lacking in compassion for others. In fact, despite my many numerous flaws and inadequacies, I understand myself, my limitations, and seek to find peace with that knowledge. In short, I am who I am, but that’s all that I am. My friends and I call that the Popeye’s creed.

So, how did I manage to escape from all of the cultural pressures and discontinuity that seem to be challenging the definition of what it is to be a man in the world today? I don’t buy into the archetype of masculinity that has dominated the minds of most heterosexual white men, or even men of different races who are heterosexual. Like everyone else, I see the media personages of manly men, and I am amused and entertained by them, but not moved to emulate them in any fashion. Some men have become conservative both politically and religiously because within that mental perspective is a simple definition of manhood that they can easily emulate. Of course, taking that path will cause people to be at odds against the diverse culture that they live in, where plurality and tolerance are required in order to function and interact with others not like themselves. It would seem that accepting such a simple solution has very complex and negative consequences.

Yet for me and my situation, I got booted out of the Man Box because I identified with being a Witch, a ritual magician and an occultist. I had broken too many taboos and crossed the line in what was acceptable male behavior to earn anything but scorn and derision from any alpha type male. That happened when I was a teenager, and because I could talk to spirits and gods in my head (and I wasn’t crazy), I had no other choice but to follow that path. My high-school peers rejected my choice in religious activity, and I became a pariah wherever I went. There was also something unmanly about being a Witch, since it was an epithet usually associated with nasty, over-bearing, threatening, and decrepit old women. It also had amoral and diabolic associations, marking me as someone who was obviously on the wrong side of just about everything.

Prior to coming out as a Witch to my high-school peers, I had some moderate success joining the high-school football team, but I was definitely B or C team material, and not good enough nor talented enough to be first string. However, I was an accepted part of that crowd of athletes, that is, until I let it be known that I was a Witch and began to dress and act the part. I became a goth before that was even a thing, and my peers, especially the athletic crowd, ridiculed and mocked me. My junior year high-school year-book was tagged with much of this kind of verbal abuse, since I unwittingly let it out of my hands when seeking others to sign it. I soaked up all of the negative attention because I relished letting my true self come out and I openly defied conventions and proper decorum. These were interesting times for me, as you can imagine, but it changed everything for me, and I was no longer considered “one of the guys.” Instead I was seen as that weirdo Witch person, and some women even called me queer, before that epithet became indicative of someone who was either gendered or sexually non-binary.

So, before I even became fully an adult man, I was judged to be not at all manly or even a pretended manliness. Even my short and pathetic stint in the Navy didn’t change that image, in fact it made it worse because I was discharged as unsuitable for military duty. This was before Wicca was an accepted religion in the military and acting as a Witch was wholly unacceptable, and I took that discharge as a release from the limitations, enforced conformity, and regimentation of a military life. By the time that I was 20 years old, I was completely out of any kind of cultural definition of masculinity, and that fact was not only a relief and a way of achieving personal freedom, it was something of a badge of honor for me. I wasn’t like other people, and in fact, I was, in many ways, contrary to what others believed was normal and acceptable behavior. Since I was so outside of the norm, I saw no reason to be prejudiced against others who were also considered outside of the norm, such as gays, lesbians, radical left-wing types, and the hosts of the disenfranchised “Other,” and I was seen as an honorary member of that wonderful but despised group of people.

Gone was the pecking order of men who in groups sought dominance over each other, since I was never considered part of their group, and I had little interest in sports, drinking beer in bars, or attending churches or other expected social gatherings. I was an outsider, but I had no regrets since I was free to associate with whomever I wished, and I didn’t have to deal with the pressures and harsh opinions of my peer group. I didn’t worry about what sports team I was fond of, because I was not part of any group where that mattered. It was the same for me regarding politics and religion.

While white heterosexual men sought to deal with our changing culture, dealing with civil rights, women’s liberation, and then later the “Me Too” movement, and finding that adjustment difficult if not almost contrary to what they perceived as the edifice of manhood, I was completely onboard with these changes. I cheered them on since progressive social changes would mean that I would become more acceptable and mainstream, and some of the cognitive dissonance that I had to deal with would be diminished. While some men struggled or even lost ground with these social changes, I had already actually arrived at that point years earlier. My masculinity was not defined by culture or popular consensus. It was defined by my own inner sense of personal value and an acceptance of who I was at a core level. I had developed my personality without racial prejudice, bigotry, or the need to dominate, and I felt it was acceptable to feel and express my pain or loss in whatever seemed appropriate to me, not caring what others thought. I was notorious for quietly crying when watching the sad or poignant moments in a movie, and that was also true when I lost a pet or a friend. I saw any role that a man or woman might take on to be appropriate, especially if they excelled at it, and this made the stereotyped role models that were pushed when I was growing up as completely irrelevant.

Additionally, the myths and ideals in my religion supported gender role reversals and promoted equality and equity, even though early forms of Wicca were locked into the High Priestess and High Priest, Goddess and God kind of binary polarity, and allowed for a structure of initiatory hierarchy to be formulated. That proved to be ultimately untenable and it was the old tropes and patterns being forced onto a new religious system. In the present time, the traditional Witchcraft and coven social structure is being replaced by something that is much more egalitarian, and that is more in keeping with the true spirit of Witchcraft than what was earlier established by Gardner and his followers.

I followed this path of Witchcraft throughout its various winding and twisting and saw it become something of a fully realized mystery religion, and as this creed developed, so did I. I started this path back in the early 1970's, before it became a popular religious movement. It was a time when a few hundred of like-minded individuals would gather together in a park or a campground that included some of the various founders of the later expanding traditions. We were a distinct minority, and we were scattered across the country in communities where we were often few or even alone in our pursuits. Isolation often made us peculiar and insular, and without much of a social world in which to meet and greet others of like mind, we were sometimes loners.

My only regret is that taking such a path, and being judged as one of the Others, also meant that it was more difficult for me to find a mate or achieve a long term relationship. While I may have touched many individuals, and initiated many women into the Craft, I was unable to find anyone who wanted to join their life with mine. I found that women in general were mostly keen to remain part of the mainstream establishment, and that in many ways, they were the ones who enabled and maintained it. Whatever rejection and dismissal I got from mainstream white heterosexual men was amplified by white heterosexual women. I was neither socially attractive, handsome, materially successful, nor was I any kind of alpha male that they would identify as a suitable match. So when it came to pairing up, I was left outside and alone. However, I could talk to my Goddess and felt her love, and as it turned out, love was much more my path than fighting, resistance, or anger and hatred.

Unlike the much talked about Incels of today, I didn’t blame or hate women for my predicament. I saw myself as the source of the problem, and I also understood that I was an undefinable quality as a man because of my involvement in Witchcraft and magic. I took the good along with the bad, and knew that in time, I would find someone, or someone would find me. Meanwhile, I had a lot of magical rituals to develop, and continued to engage with my sparse Pagan and Wiccan community, walking a mostly solitary path in the beginning, but over time, seeing the popularity of my path continue to grow.

All of these experiences made me realize that I could do nothing more than just be myself. I could assume the persona of the Witch and Ritual Magician in social settings if I chose, or just be neutral and reside in the background, unmolested. This realization certainly was active when I began to be exposed to the Men’s Movement in my circle of Pagans and Witches. I found it to be problematical because it seemed to focus on the old themes of masculinity of the past ages, of the warrior, hunter, provider, father soldier, and the various exponents of paternity that I had originally rejected to be a Witch. These old themes seemed no longer relevant in our post modern world, so I felt that the Men’s Movement was not particularly useful in addressing these issues of role assumption. I think that the only thing a Men’s Movement would be able address, as comically as it would seem, would be the mystery of being gendered a male, but even that seemed overly simplified. Having a dick seemed too basic to make up any kind of religious practice, and considering the complexity of gender and that it was no longer perceived as binary, it also seemed to be irrelevant.

What could we, as men, ascribe to in this post modern world that would truly represent our ability to assume any role needed or desired? Roles that were typically associated with women would be just as appropriate as roles that defined the alpha male in the previous age. What role someone assumed was actually completely flexible and could not be confined by stereotypes or even archetypes. We have entered into a brave new world where any static definition for roles or for one’s identity are too limiting and too restrictive. If we reduce all of the social expectations for roles and eliminate the binary definitions to include any and all possibilities, what we are left with is to just to be whoever and whatever we feel is correct and appropriate, with the idea that we can be flexible and change our role whenever circumstances, situations or internal feelings dictate we should. Our world is constantly changing, and we should understand that nothing is either permanent nor fixed regarding our internal being and our cultural persona. Being inflexible and resistant to change is, in my opinion, a recipe for personal disaster.

In the end, roles are just superficial masks that we wear at the moment, and they cannot either define who we are or reveal our inner souls. We are just individuals, functioning both individually and collectively, and we embody our experiences of life, our relationships to others and ourselves over the long or short course of our life span, and that is all who we are, even at a deep spiritual level. We are a mystery of life and death, and learning to accept that fact is the beginning of wisdom. Our individuality and our fragile human existence is buffeted by change, and we, ourselves, are constantly changing. Nothing is permanent nor eternal in our sphere, and everything is ephemeral. If we seek to be truly free, knowing that nothing stays the same and therefore, too great of an attachment to anything brings with it the sorrow and despair of loss, we can live our lives liberated and even enlightened by this knowledge. We must therefore learn to lightly assume roles, follow our life’s path and be who we are without fear or regret, so that we might by guided by love and compassion for everyone and everything, especially ourselves.

Frater Barrabas

Breaking Out of the Man Box

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 13:28:00 +0000

For centuries, the definition of manhood occupied a very certain and narrow definition, backed up by social convention, regulated by laws, reinforced by religion, making it clearly an unquestionable quality. Male-ness was defined as a persona of self-control, stoicism, dominance of others (especially women, children, and non-citizens), self-reliance, individualism and an unquestionable adherence to the status quo. Being a man and acting properly also required one to know their place in life, and to acknowledge and obey their betters. Showing emotions and publicly reacting to grief, loss, physical pain, showing sympathy and exercising charity and forgiveness to strangers, and even compassion to transgressors were the kinds of weaknesses that a confident and proper man would avoid like the plague. The only kind of emotion that was not frowned upon was anger, hatred, violence (having a good fight, even with friends), and happiness or contentment. The silent man who did his duty without complaint and who showed no fear or pain, but who maintained his authority and dignity at all times, was the perfect role model of manhood.

Retrospectively, this coded behavior is called today the Man Box, and has a distinct definition for what a man should be like. Here is what Mark Green describes as the Man Box.

“..the Man Box is a set of rigid expectations that define what a ‘real man’ is. A real man is strong and stoic. He doesn’t show emotions other than anger and excitement. He is a breadwinner. He is heterosexual. He is able-bodied. He plays or watches sports. He is the dominant participant in every exchange. He is a firefighter, a lawyer, a CEO. He is a man’s man. And whether or not we’d actually want to spend any time with him, we all know who he is.”

I grew up seeing John Wayne exemplify this kind of ultra masculine persona, as did Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Silvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Wesley Snipes and of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger. These were real men, and the rest of us were just trying, more or less, to imperfectly fit into that stereotype. Real men were soldiers, policemen, firemen, lumberjacks, big game hunters, sportsmen, adventurers and mountain climbers, fighter pilots, scuba divers, roughneck builders of skyscrapers, fishermen, explorers, astronauts, wealthy industrialists and popular politicians.

You were considered a manly man if you performed one of those kinds jobs and was tall, athletic, and well hung. Others deferred to you, and you were considered an alpha male, while the rest were deemed to be lesser men, or beta males. Life was uncomplicated following this code, or so it seemed, and to fit into the definition of an alpha male conferred powers and respect, but it also required extreme self-control. An alpha male who became a drunkard, or engaged in criminal activity, or was found to be gay, or a cross-dresser, would immediately lose his self-respect and status. Being a lesser man also had its costs, since often respect and status were denied someone who was neither overly fit and physically confident or showed the wrong kind of emotions or had the wrong kind of interests. (Yes, that’s me!)

However, all of this began to change during the 1970's with the advent of women’s liberation, and it has continued as women have broken down barriers and gained positions of authority in the workforce. When I started my career in data processing (as it was called then), there were few if any women amongst my colleagues. Women were secretaries, and perhaps worked as computer operators, but men wrote the computer code and ran the businesses. In just a scant twenty years, all that completely changed, and I now work with men and women equally in my IT profession. Because I was never an alpha male, and even became quite an outcast when I got involved in Witchcraft and magic, I seemed to bypass a lot of what I came to see as an artificial and valueless persona or mask, and that what really counted was not how much a man you were, but how much of a human being you were. But that was my experience, yet other men continued down the pathway of finding it more difficult to define themselves in world where the definitions and values were rapidly changing and being socially transformed.

Now in the new millennium, things have changed so much and become so complicated that simple self-definitions can no longer help men to define themselves. The world is no longer binary, consisting of either good or evil, it is mostly just grey. Gender has been shown to be very complex, and the binary representation of yesterday has been replaced with more accurate genetic representation of what it is to be a gendered human being. This is also true for sexuality, since there is now an acceptance of gays and lesbians, as well as other kinds of consensual engagements between adults. Learning to respect how people define themselves, and to ensure that they have the right to express themselves sexually with full consenting participation should be part of the general perspective of being an adult member of our society. It wasn’t that way early in my lifetime, but it should have been if we were promoting freedom and equality for everyone. All of these massive social changes have been met with a certain degree of public rejoicing, but also a sense of fear, confusion and with some, feelings of inadequacy and rejection.

Those who identify as cis-gender heterosexual men in our post modern western world are generally experiencing a crisis of belief and self-definition because of all these changes. This is particularly true for younger men who are members of the Generations X, Y and Z. They were born into a world that had already changed, and were seeking to define themselves when the values of that self-definition were in a state of flux. It was also a world that was more difficult to be materially successful after assuming a massive education debt, and the loss of jobs and job training for those who were not cut out for college or higher education. It was a world that seemed to offer and promise everything, except the means to realize that promise. A definition of masculinity was always based on exclusive self-worth, status and personal dignity, and these could not easily be achieved if one was not also successful. Often self-worth came from interaction with our peers and authority figures when growing to adulthood, and any kind of continual rejection could doom someone to a life of failure and worthlessness.

I think that the men of the WWII generation and the Boomer generation did not have such a difficult time growing up because the issues of masculinity didn’t exist at that time, and the identity of being a heterosexual male was not facing any of the later massive societal pressures to change. The WWII generation of men were forced by circumstances to take on adult responsibilities as young men, quickly losing their innocence and their youth. There wasn’t any room in their lives, either before the war or even afterwards, for self-reflection or self-doubt. Their movie heros exemplified this kind of mind-state, and all seemed to be simply defined, even though it really wasn’t. In the shadows and behind the social facade lurked other kinds of men, whether of different races, economic status or sexual preferences, but like the emotional state of the manly man, these were intensely suppressed.

Boomers, such as myself, experienced the counter culture and were allowed to break out of the strict definitions of masculinity, to experiment, and to accept and be open to others who were different. Of course that openness didn’t really last, but many people who are older and educated now seem willing to accept these social changes, and in some ways, probably had a hand in making them happen. It was a kind of civil rights for those who were not part of the socially acceptable heterosexual mind-set. We were fortunate that we had the time to seemingly gradually change and accept a greater degree of freedom and acceptance of people who were not like the majority, but who included friends, children, and relatives, which were the kind of close associations impossible to reject. Over time we learned to accept these differences, and even encourage their expression.

Still, we had this media display that was ever saturated with uber masculine figures who functioned as vigilante loners, who through their power and single-mindedness, were able to exact justice and revenge. Comic book heroes were defined this way, and so were the heroes of movies, video shows, games, anime and cartoons. Violence and destruction were lionized, and those who tried to mitigate the injustice or succumbed to self-pity or self-abuse were considered weak, cowardly, and doomed. They were the victimized losers. Evil forces were clearly defined as the ubiquitous “Other” or were from inimical governments, or even our own government or deep-state. While such displays of masculinity were quite popular in my age, and even before (my parents’ age), not matching up with the ultra-masculine role model was not considered a big deal. We liked these ideals, played around with them, but we knew that they were fictional and impossible to fully assume. Those who tried would self-destruct, and we were told that true heroes did their jobs without any thought of being heroic or famous - that was for movie stars, politicians, televangelist minsters, and rock stars. The rest of us were okay just being who we were and trying to live our lives the best we could, knowing that we would never measure up to the heroic masculine ideal. Even though the Man Box still had a compelling hold on the masculine identity all throughout this time, yet the age of Hippies and later, Disco, seemed to mitigate it somewhat.

That was then, and a massively changed social world is what it is now. I got to see it change during my lifetime, but I also had the time to change with it. Not everyone was as open minded as I have been about gender and sexuality, and I knew from my experiences that there were individuals who were stuck in the past and who rejected the changes that were happening in our culture. These were individuals who were socially conservative, deeply religious and who believed that their religious based definition of the roles assumed by men and women were ordained by God to be what they have always been. Those who acted outside of these ordained norms or were their spoke-persons (Liberal Elite) were the hosts of Sodom and Gomorrah, blighted by sin, and seeking to unleash a diabolic evil in our nation. These individuals were the carriers of a highly restrictive and repressive definition of gender and sexuality, and they brought these beliefs from the WWI generation, through the Boomers and into the present age, particularly to the members of Generation X.

Typically, religious extremists would represent a kind of crackpot belief system that most would deride and then ignore, if it were not for other forces that have seized our economic world order. These forces can be traced to the emerging and powerful oligarchy that has all-but eliminated the possibility of economic mobility and the personal achievement of material success - a hallmark of our nation called the American Dream. It started in the 1980's with Ronald Reagan and the conservative wave that was popularized in that time, to run counter to the counter culture that was retreating. It became ever more powerful in the 1990's, with the ascending popularity of the religious right, and in the 21st century it was fully active as a fascistic form of Christian Nationalism. Yet this ultra conservative movement hid a sinister truth, and that is that those who were funding and promoting this ideology were the ultra-wealthy and connected, newly realized oligarchy. High tech spawned a group of mostly men who became fabulously wealthy, and what helped them achieve that was Reagan’s tax breaks for the rich and a supposed trickle-down philosophy that said the rich would benefit the middle class. Of course, that was all a deceitful line of propaganda, and the reality was that opportunity and taxation based redistribution began to disappear altogether.

Culture wars hid the truth of what was happening, focusing people on divisive ideology while the ultra-wealthy changed the laws to exclusively benefit them. Reduced taxes for the rich meant that there was no longer money for education, social services, infrastructure, and affordable housing and a job that provided a sustainable and livable source of income. These were all things that I was given when I legally became an adult. That was the world that I was born into. It wasn’t perfect, but a person could survive, even comfortably, if they worked hard and lived an honest life. There have always been wealthy individuals and privileged generations born into wealth, but the tax rate in the 1950's and 1960's ensured that high earners had their wealth redistributed to worthy social causes. That changed in the 1980's with the Reagan revolution. Now, the promises of getting a good education, finding a job that can readily support a family, being able to buy a home or find affordable housing have become less likely, opening up a chasm of debt, obstruction and limited possibilities.

Of course, the women’s liberation movement matured and brought women into the workplace, feminist activism was instrumental in changing the perception of discriminated and marginalized groups, such as members of the LGBTQ community and minority women. Women saw the opportunities inherent in the changing demographics of the workplace and sought higher education and therefore, greater status and better productive roles in society. The “Me Too” movement in the early 2000's brought a stark focus on the all-too common occurrence of women who experience sexual assault and how society as a whole have ignored their plight until now. That produced a movement for social change and placed extreme pressures on the male psyche, but for good reasons. Still, someone who is better educated and more experienced about the world will likely have a liberal or at least moderate political perspective, and young women today are exceedingly bright, well educated, upwardly mobile and very liberal, despite the effects of the ascending power of the oligarchy.

Since I was witnessing these changes from a perspective of being established in my career and economic status, I thought that the old model of the Man Box was finally going away. I had involuntarily opted out when I became a Witch and a practitioner of ritual magic, so I had very little invested in that way of thinking about masculinity. I welcomed the changes and looked forward to the opportunities brought on by the ending of a regressive social theme that had plagued so many men for so long. However, I was so dead wrong about that being the case, because young men were not experiencing the same upward ascent that young women were experiencing. I had missed out on that other perspective, although I had observed more young men saying things and acting in ways that should have clued me in regarding what was really going down.

Young men generally have a different story from young women, and that is one of decline. Women are going to universities in record numbers, and achieving graduate degrees, while men are conversely declining in numbers in these same institutions. Not everyone is cut out for college, and in my day there were trade schools that could nearly guarantee a good paying job once one graduated. There were also union apprenticeships, and entry level factory or construction work. Those jobs and their associated training regimens have largely disappeared. What is left are low paying jobs in various shops and stores, repair facilities, small businesses and fast food stores. Factories have become highly automated or have moved overseas to take advantage of low paying workers. Many of these low paying jobs force competition between native locals and immigrants. I have heard and met young men who had to live with their parents after getting or failing to get an expensive but worthless college degree.

For a man, self-esteem and status are still based almost entirely on material success, and not having the right kind of education or experience will doom someone to a lower economic status. The contrast between successful and upwardly mobile women and men who are experiencing a downward economic trend could not be more stark in our current society. This is a phenomenon that seems to be occurring in many parts of the world at the same time. Also, less education breeds a susceptibility to conspiracy theories, propaganda, urban myths, and can produce a counter dialogue fed by discontent and anger at the status quo. Throw in the factor of the internet, mass-misinformation, and addictive gaming activities thereby creating a population of isolated and disadvantaged young men, and the lack of success either with basic economics or with the opposite sex, and you have the essence of the current crisis facing young men.

What that crisis is causing is a blow-back of anger and resentment at the establishment, a desire to identify with the old trope of the Man Box, and a superficial adherence to Christian Nationalism promoting the overthrow of our constitutional republic and its associated liberal social conscience for a strongman led autocracy. In that world, somehow, the economic and social wrongs that have afflicted young white cis-gender heterosexual men will be overcome, and the old ways of manly men will be restored. Trump, of course, is the figurehead for this backlash, and it is fueled by the anger and the fear of a diminishing world of possibilities and the ending of white privilege. Of course these are the lies and propaganda spread by the ascending fascist political movement, and they hide the real villains, who are the ultra-wealthy oligarchs. The old ways won’t come back, and nothing will rescue the afflicted young men, because the oligarchs are planning for a reversal of the modern FDR-based social contract to create a servant class, and those on the bottom will remain on the bottom. As long as everyone continues to buy and consume on some level, the rich will remain rich - or so they think. The middle class made the oligarchs rich beyond their wildest dreams, and if the middle class falls, then the wealthy will ultimately fall as well.

So what do we do about this huge crisis? Part of the problem is economic, part of it is social, and another part of it is the phenomenon of the internet creating social isolation. If you don’t meet and talk to friends in public settings, it can make a person callous, and socially insensitive and blind to other people’s feelings. What is needed is a counter dialogue telling young men about who the real enemy of the people are and who are their backers, and focus their anger in a constructive manner. The solution is to vote those who back the oligarchy out of power and to aggressively reject them. Their solutions and promises are all lies and deceit, and the sooner the internet media starts calling them for what they are, the sooner the first stages of the fix will occur.

We need job programs and training, incentives for new technologies that solve social and climate issues, and the creation of new good paying jobs. We need affordable housing, better systems of social assistance and psychological counseling open to everyone, and universal healthcare. Maybe some kind of universal basic income as well to mitigate low wages. To pay for all of these expanded social programs we will tax the fuck out of the rich - make the oligarchs pay for it all. We should create a movement to bring young men out of their man-caves and into the public sphere, and we should build free public places for young people to safely congregate and socialize. It can be done, but first we have to put the squeeze on the ultra-wealthy and make them, and their crony corporations, pay their fair share of taxes. I envision a level of taxation to be similar if not greater than what is being done in Europe. Do we want a satisfactory public life with all kinds of amenities? Then we need a tax base to make that happen. The oligarchs have been given a free ride for too long, and to forestall the collapse of the middle class and the end of our vibrant and progressive culture, we as a collective group need to act.

There is hope for a better society, and hope that the current Man Box counter revolution can be safely and peacefully ended once and for all. It takes reaching out and communicating to young people, and to speak truth to power, and truth to lies, deception and social evils. Ending the oligarchy in this nation will open the gates to a brave new world, one where the issues of the day can be resolved by collective effort and a realization that we need to act and vote to further our economic interests, and to cut conservative religion movements completely out of politics once and for all.

Here is the silver lining (also from Mark Green):

“In a time of social and economic upheaval, what may seem like a raft of challenges for men and women actually represents a vast landscape of opportunity. The Man Box’s promise of economic security in exchange for social conformity is crumbling. Pension funds are collapsing. Jobs are gone overseas. Where there once was a promise of career security there is now none. The cheese that baited the Man Box trap is gone.

Into the vacuum of these broken social contracts, a new breed of men and women are emerging. Among these are men who work as full time parents. Men who take joy in supporting their families emotionally as well as financially. Men who are struggling to end the rigid gender roles that our culture continues to force on their sons and daughters. Men who express gender in much more diverse ways.”

Frater Barrabbas

Origins of the Marseilles Tarot Deck

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 13:53:00 +0000

One of first tarot decks that I possessed was the Marseilles Tarot deck, although I opted for other more modern and artistic versions of the tarot soon after I started down the road of being a reader and teller of fortunes. I was introduced to the tarot by borrowing and using someone else’s deck, which was the Swiss Tarot deck, and then immediately I was able to read them without much study. For some reason the symbology spoke to me, and I was able to give others and myself accurate readings. Soon after, I was given my own deck to use, and that started a long term relationship that has had no interruptions. You see, I was sixteen when I got my first tarot deck and I was just beginning to become acquainted with Witchcraft and ritual magic. At the time, I had felt that I was discovering an important part of my own internal mystery, and that a deeper study over time only made the tarot even more powerful for me.

I used several tarot decks, particularly the Morgan Greer Tarot, but I wasn’t in awe of the designs or the artwork because it seemed abbreviated and omitted important symbology. It wasn’t until I saw my first copy of the Crowley-Harris Tarot deck that I was quite inspired and used that deck, after finally purchasing a copy, exclusively for many years. Then a close friend introduced me to the Voyager Tarot deck back in the late 1980's, which I presently use today, although it is now out of print. I still work with the Crowley-Harris Tarot, and I also have a fondness for the Waite-Smith-Rider Tarot deck, especially the pip cards, which have vignettes depicting meaningful, visual attributes of the cards. However, I have never forgotten the Marseilles Tarot deck because I felt that it was the very first tarot that had occultic undertones. I had seen earlier hand painted tarot decks, or tarocchi decks, as they were Italian, and obviously based on the more basic playing cards that had become vogue during the early 15th century, when paper card stock and printing became available in the West.

While I did not have much in the way of any historical reference, I just intuited that the Marseille Tarot deck was the earliest version that was obviously based on occultism, since the symbology had subtlety but remarkably changed from all earlier versions of the Tarocchi decks. While the typical version of the Marseille Tarot deck displayed a kind of primitive or crude artwork, an earlier version of that tarot deck (Vachier Tarot de Marseille, 1639 CE) was graphically and artistically superior. For some reason, the later popular version of that tarot deck used the crude artwork, possibly to disguise the importance of the symbology, or to make it appear more harmless than it was. I suspected that the Marseille Tarot deck had its origins in the port city of Marseilles, probably in the early 17th century, and the artwork was produced by some unknown artist. I didn’t believe that the occult tarot was a creation of French occultists in the late 18th century, as modern academics such as Dummett and others had hypothesized. I didn’t have any proof as to when and where the Marseille Tarot had its origin, but I believed that it was older than the late 18th century. Little did I imagine that the actual history of the Marseille Tarot was being tracked down by a singular scholar, and that the true history would be even more interesting than what I had assumed.

Then I came across the book “Two Esoteric Tarots” where Caesar Pedreros interviews the authors and amateur historians Peter Mark Adams and Christophé Poncet, who discuss what they discovered when researching the sources and symbolism of the Sola Busca Tarocchi and the Marseille Tarot, respectively. These decks are artistically similar, and also unlike the other tarocchi decks of the time. Their painstaking research pushed the origin of these two decks back to the 1490's, where the Marseille tarot was the precursor to the Sola Busca tarocchi, and that the Sola Busca was likely modeled on the Marseille tarot. The style of the artwork and the themes employed in the trump cards appeared to localize them to Italy, which was at the forefront of art, literature, the rediscovery of Plato and the Hermetic Corpus in Europe, and the study of esotericism, natural magic and the occult. Perhaps the most illuminated thinker of that time is the one person who had translated both the Hermetic Corpus and Plato from the Greek to Latin, and that was Marsilo Ficino, who was employed as a scholar by the Medici family. While the typical artistically rendered tarocchi playing cards contained tropes and motifs that would later be used in the more occult versions, the imagery and content can be safely placed firmly in the mid 15th century. It was in that time that the advent of an occult version of the tarot had its birth.

Christophé’s historical search and journey led him to Italy, based on the supposition that an enterprise such as creating an occult tarot would have required designers, artists, engravers and printers, and it would have been a costly endeavor that would have taken a few years to have produced results. It is likely that Ficino oversaw the design of the tarot, along with Cristoforo Landino, and the artistic inspirations can be traced to Sandro Botticelli, whose known artwork like the House of God and the Devil as illustrated in the Landino version of the Dante’s Divine Comedy resembles the tarot trumps of the same name. Other possible contributors were the Veronese artisan and artist Felice Feliciano, and the engravers, printers, and the family that bankrolled this endeavor, the Medici, probably with other allied wealthy backers. This endeavor was kept strictly secret and discrete, since such a publicized endeavor would have come to the notice of the Inquisition. Once the playing cards were fully developed, we can imagine Ficino’s Academe would have developed methods for using them, playing “Platonic games”, as obliquely described in one of Ficino’s works.

While this is all supposition because no records of this endeavor exist, there are too many points in common to the artists and the scholars involved to dismiss it. Since the Sola Bosca Tarocchi was developed soon after the Marseille Tarot, and it appeared to borrow a number of formulations from that tarot deck, and its noted place of origin, Ferrara, is nearby to Florence, even though it was produced for the exclusive purview of a wealthy and eccentric Venetian nobleman named Marin Sanudo, it was an early part of the family of occult tarot decks. The Marseille deck was an illuminating, upbeat, and an optimistic work, while the Sola Busca was darker, grotesque, and distinctly antinomian.

What we have, then, is the place of origin and a time for the first occult Tarot to be conceived and produced, although its origin was in Italy instead of Marseilles. Still, the greatest esoteric and occult minds of the Florentine intelligentsia helped to create this Tarot deck, and it found its way into the public, and likely entered France via the Mediterranean port of Marseilles. The whole purpose behind allowing the occult tarot to spread into common usage was to seed the populous with the occult and Hermetic/Platonic imagery so as to communicate them with any who was insightful or educated enough to recognize and interpret these symbolic forms. It was a book of imagery that would spread the impressions and teachings of Renaissance enlightenment through the medium of the ancient symbolized wisdom of Hermeticism and Neoplatonism.

This form of communication allowed for its developers to express very heretical beliefs and ideals without the possibility of being identified and severely punished by the church, which would have been their fate if they had published these ideas in books. However, over time, the actual occultic meaning of the cards became obscure and then lost, and the use of these kind of cards was centralized to only a few locations, most notably, France.

The French have always seemed to have been enamored with the Marseille deck since it first came out, and savants of the late 18th century recognized the arcane nature of the Tarot and heavily speculated on the meaning and the source of the cards. It was Court de Gebelin in 1781 who famously pointed out that the Tarot seemed to have its origin in ancient Egypt and embodied a secret teaching, and whose numerous writings ultimately made the Marseille Tarot famous and popular once again. Other and later occultists, such as Eliphas Levi and Papus lionized the Tarot and sought to link it with the recently popularized Qabalah.

When the secret order of the Golden Dawn took the Marseille Tarot and redeveloped it, with an honored place along with their writings and teachings on the Qabalah, it bloomed anew, and when that literature was finally published and made public, it produced an explosion of interest in the Tarot, and therein began the process of designing and artistically rendering new and more modern versions. Crowley had already published his own versions of this Golden Dawn literature on the Tarot, and even designed his own version and commissioned Frieda Harris to paint it, although it was never published as a deck of cards until thirty years after his death. A Golden Dawn version of the Tarot had been designed by Waite and artistically executed by Pamela Cole Smith. Later versions of the Golden Dawn Tarot appeared, although long after the original order had passed away. In the 1960's and 70's several new versions of the Tarot appeared, and every decade since has seen many more published.

Still, it is important that occultists reintroduce the symbolic context that was originally incorporated into the symbology of the Marseille Tarot. Christophé Poncet and Peter Mark Adams are working to that very end. Christophé will be publishing a singular work identifying and describing the symbology of the Marseille Tarot, and Peter Mark Adams has written a book titled “The Game of Saturn” where he sought to unravel the symbology of the Sola Bosca Tarocchi. Both authors admit that their work is in its initial stages and that some of the symbology hidden in the tarot may never be fully understood.

What I have found fascinating is that much of the original intent of the Hermetic and Occult Tarot has been preserved in the basic symbology that seems almost universal, inspiring our modern imaginations, and the continual use that this divinatory tool has undergone for centuries makes it a living spiritual being. We may never know all of the original symbology and the knowledge employed behind it, but we will invent and derive what we do not know, so long as the Tarot is being used to peer into the unknown that veils our souls and our greater destiny. Its spirit is there to teach and guide us, if we can only learn to listen and apprehend its subtlety.

Frater Barrabbas

Lighting A Candle in the Abyss

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 21:07:00 +0000

This is my third blog for 2025, and I must admit that by the end of March, we knew that the Trump administration would do a lot of damage in the next two years. This is because they are already at it, taking a blow-torch and a chain-saw to the administrative state that so many people rely on. What is happening is pure Project 2025, and it is everything that the Democrats warned us it would be. They told us these things would happen, but a strategic part of the population didn’t listen. So, they voted in the worst person to ever occupy the Oval Office. Trump 2.0 is fueled by retribution, grievance, callowness, and greed. Elon Musk, the unelected co-president, is seen to be the front man to ensure that the wealthy donor class are the absolute winners, and the rest of us will just get screwed over. Any suggestion that Elon will give up his power and leave the oval office is patently false - he has too many vested interests to keep track on.

Speaking of graft and corruption, it would seem that Trump has no inhibitions about showing the nation and the world that he can be bought and sold. His bit coin introduction is garnering him billions of dollars, and the Qatari flying palace 747 plane gift will fall to him when he leaves office, not to mention all of the quid pro-quo transactions, and the pardons for purchase, the pro-bono lawfirm extravaganzas not to mention the tariffs, with their off-again and on-again impulsive changes, the associated stock market ups and downs, and those insiders who are profiting off of it. Compared to his first term level of corruption, we are seeing a landslide of graft and corruption on a scale unimaginable in a public servant, let alone a president. Throw in the tax break for billionaires, and you got an administration that any uber wealthy person would have to love and call their own.

Still, those who are being hurt by this administration, or will be hurt, include many of the fools who voted for Trump and his lick-spittle Republican panderers. Voters wanted a change, they wanted the economy to improve so they could financially get ahead, and where the price of eggs would drop. They collectively fear the “Other,” and they feel it’s okay to callously encourage officials to hurt the helpless and powerless, such as immigrants, people of color, gays, lesbians and trans-genders. What will happen is actually the inverse of all these peoples’ hopes, since everyone will get to experience a deep economic recession, the abrogation of laws, the elimination of the safety-net, and rampant inflation. That will come back on those who voted for Trump. There won’t be any government assistance to mitigate these disasters, and if an avian-flu virus pandemic hits us, we will be thoroughly screwed. The only thing that these voters will see that would give them some measure of satisfaction will be in the cruel treatment of migrant workers, undocumented immigrants, legal asylum seekers, and even documented immigrants and green card holders. As ICE begins its sweeping deportation exercise, many will be swept up, including those who are citizens born in this country. The prices of everything that undocumented workers do, from picking fruit and vegetables, to cleaning, fixing, painting and building, will suddenly be too expensive.

It is obvious that much of this change in direction will harm whole groups of Americans, and not just the people that racists and bigots impugn. Everyone, except the ultra-wealthy, which is the “donor” class, will get hurt by the cruel actions and mindless fumbles of the current Trump regime. We were warned, but the majority of people still voted for Trump. Now all of us will suffer because of the blind stupidity of this ignorant majority. The Republicans have around two years to do what they will to wreck the country and install an authoritarian regime, and then, if they are unsuccessful, they will likely lose their majority in the House and possibly even the Senate. Local elections will turn against them as well, and even some red states might finally be liberated from Trump intoxicated, craven Republican politicians. However, if they succeed, then we are in for a long dark period of American history. Whatever happens, it will be a long, long two years, and even if the house and senate are turned, the wreckage to our nation and even to the world will take its toll on millions of people. It will takes years, if even the damage can be fixed, and the world will continue on without American’s shining light of liberty and democracy to guide them, however imperfect.

When a person makes an emotionally based decision, like voting for a president, it’s difficult to admit that they were wrong. They will dig in, make excuses, blame everyone else to assuage their guilt, and never admit that they aided and abetted the worst sort of people to win an election. All of this horror show has arrived on the national scene and is unveiling itself for everyone to see, and there is nowhere to run and hide from the fact that quite a number of people acted in a selfish and stupid manner last November. I will feel compassion for everyone’s confusion, fear and pain, but I won’t forget nor forgive what a group of really knuckle-headed people did when they voted to elect Donald Trump for a second term.

That's where we're presently at due to the degraded state of the Republican party. That's the result of what Republican voters chose. Republicans primaried Trump and Republican voters PURPOSELY CHOSE HIM. Today, there's not a single Republican legislator who will choose country over party. None! This is because they all fear the MAGA voters, who will turn on them unless they continue to swear allegiance to their Dear Leader, Donald J. Trump. Cross the boss, and they could be primaried at least, or even violently accosted or assassinated. Which brings me to propose that these times and this turn of events be given the acronym FAFO. People voted for Trump as a joke, or a protest, or to put a thumb into the eye of the so-called liberal establishment for everything that the government has done from the pandemic until just last year. This acronym is revealed as the phrase “Fuck Around, and Find Out” and we are living it every day that Trump is in office.

We’ll see how this plays out. I hope and pray that we as a nation can recover from this terrible and foolish self-inflicted wound. Will we still have a republic in four years? Will the Trump regime’s mendacity and incompetence ensure their failure? I truly hope so, since the future peace and prosperity of the world relies on the American people to fix what they have broken, since not to do so will ensure that the future will be dark, desperate, and dangerous.

Do you think that as Witches, Pagans, and ritual magicians, this has nothing to do with you? That politics is irrelevant to our work in the magical religious arts? What happens to the most vulnerable in our society is a reflection on what could ultimately happen to anyone. As members of a small minority, we are a vulnerable group of people, especially to the empowered and active hoards of Christian Nationalists. There was a time when heretics were publicly executed, and in a period of chaos and the abrogation of civil society, those times could return. We have been warned, and may we yet be part of the resistance and the solution rather than the victims of the political storms to come.

Frater Barrabbas

Science, Religion and Magic - They are not opposed

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 21:12:00 +0000

A common myth and misconception about magic is that it is opposed to science, and somehow the two approaches to reality are completely different and inimical to each other. I believe that this myth has been propagated by individuals who are trying to debunk anything that would be considered occultic or metaphysical. Those who are spreading this myth tend to be scientists and the sober representatives of an ordered and rational society. Their belief that magic and the occult are superstitions that should have been discarded from the body politic two centuries ago is based on an erroneous assumption that somehow science is superior to religion in general, and occultism in particular. It’s the old trope of rationalism and the perfection of logic vs. irrational and superstitious beliefs based on ignorance (of scientific facts).

This is, of course, a false belief that is certainly contrary to the history of the origins of science, and that instead of being opposed to the gradual establishment of the scientific method, magic played a role in its development and evolution. In the Renaissance, magic and science were intertwined so much that modern scholars believe that they functioned as a unified perspective, where gradually, science grew out of and completely replaced the rationalism that magic brought to early scientific endeavors. At the present time, magic and occultism still represents a rational and disciplined perspective of the material and spiritual worlds, perceived as being united and indivisible, something that the discipline of science has rejected because spirit cannot be quantified in an empirical manner. While popular pundits for science would like our post-modern society to drop magic, occultism, and the supposed irrational attributes of religion, along with the perpetuation of mythic beliefs and religious world views, they remain stubbornly entrenched and viable within the human condition. There must be some reason for that phenomenon.

The reason that society hasn’t discarded all of the irrational and mythic beliefs, deposed forms of religious immersion, and dropped magic, spirituality and occultism after the supposed triumph of science and technology is because human beings are not robots. As organic beings, we have intense emotions and feelings, we engage with those around us and our social sphere within an emotionally charged bubble, we are moved by personal and cultural myths, we fall in love, get angry, fight with each other, start wars, make peace, and propagandize our relationships with everything in our world view. We are hardly the rational and logical, stoical and self-disciplined mass of people that some think we should be, like the propaganda spread from scientists and their media proponents. We have the ability to function rationally and to discipline ourselves to behave within certain socially acceptable parameters, but we can also act thoroughly irrational and express ourselves in an unpredictable and emotionally charged manner. We are human beings, and we cannot be adequately quantified, qualified, or predicated. As Number 6 said in the series The Prisoner, “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own!”

Since we are an irascible species, we cannot be defined, or to define the world, in a purely scientific and empirical manner because our humanity always intervenes. Still, there is no real struggle between the rational and the passionate of life’s experiences, because we need both to function as human beings. This brings me back to my statement that once magic and science went hand in hand, and for occultists and practitioners of ritual magic, they still do.

As a long time ritual magician with decades of experience, I can tell you for a fact that I do not readily succumb to conspiracies, urban myths, superstition, nor unwarranted religious beliefs. I am, in a word, innately skeptical. I am also open minded, and also grounded within my experiences, willing to accept what I sense and perceive as a fundamental part of my reality. I have to experience something in order to accept it as a fact for myself, but I am very curious about our world and the people who populate it. That curiosity and an open minded approach, guided by skepticism and a need to objectify what I experience in a highly subjective environment (magic and occultism) makes me closer to a scientist than a religious adherent who passionately believes their creed is true without any objective proof. That alone makes me pragmatic in my approach to magic, and I regularly subject my ideas and aspirations in that field to experimentation. In fact, regarding the functionality of magic and its practice, I accept nothing and test everything. What that means is the lore that I use is subject to experimentation, review, revision and even discarding unworkable rites and ceremonies that no longer serve their purpose.

There is a rationality underlying my work in the magical arts, as well as a discipline and a regimen of praxis that is always under constant development. I create new rituals to fill certain functions, test them, refine them, experiment with inspired ideas and constructs, and then revise older rites and ceremonies, or retire them as no longer useful. I function, albeit in a very subjective domain, as a kind of scientist as well as a creative artist. I believe that anyone who seeks to practice magic and engage with the philosophy and metaphysics of occultism also needs to be skeptical, objective, rational, mindful, and even a bit empirical in their approach to this art. This practice is an art, by the way, and I don’t consider it either a hard science or a soft science. I am engaged in a performative art form that has the power to transform my mind and ecstatically inspire me with visions and insights, which I call gnosis. Yet I also seek to apply objectivity and rationalism to what I do and the subjective nature of what I experience, because I am skeptical even of my own visions and what I learn from my intercourse with various spirits and entities.

Having made these various arguments about how I am both an artist and a scientist in my approach to magic and occultism, I can make some generalizations about the discipline of ritual magic and about ritual and ceremonial magicians. Science, without considering the human factor and its inherent limitations, that is, without magic, is a soul-less and unprincipled discipline that can only ultimately destroy human life on this planet. I know that is a pretty stark pronouncement, but when science and technology are employed without any ethical restraints or humanistic considerations, it will produce monsters and unleash forces or produce toxic materials inimical to human survival. Humanistic principles, ethics, insightful laws and wise leadership are the guard rails to ensure that science and technology proceed in a manner that benefits not only humanity, but life on this planet in general. Pure and unfettered science and technology are a danger to continued human survival without the intervention of humanistic principles. The arts and social sciences should be the inspiration and guide-posts to building a profitable and humane future.

Similarly, magic without science is also problematic. It is the epitome of pure absurdity, where one passionately believes nearly anything however irrational without recourse to objectivity or disciplined thought. Someone who approaches magic in this manner is more than just a fool; they are advertising their descent into madness and delusion. It is a state of mind where urban myths, conspiracies, fabulous lies are taken as truths however great the cognitive dissonance. While this state of mind might allow someone to be functional and not be institutionalized, engaging in magic and occultism with this kind of mental malady will only help them to step across the border between sanity and insanity. In my many years of practice, I have met individuals who were so impaired, and what they achieved was a tragic end to their fruitless pursuits, as they were either institutionalized or became suicidal. A fellow magician once told me that he thought that practicing magic would never cause anyone to go insane unless they were already on the boarder line between sanity and insanity. Because 1 out of 4 individuals suffer from some kind of behavior health issue then taking a sober and rational approach to the practice of magic is probably a good idea.

Another thing that I have experienced over the years is that some people find themselves wholly incapable of being able to sense the subtleties of the magical or spiritual world. I can see into the spiritual domain and have conversations with the entities within that world, and also engage with the forces and energies that reside there. I have an intuitive ability to expand my imagination that allows me to sense the domain of spirit. I have also practiced and honed these skills over decades of time so that they are a natural part of me. Probably one of the factors for me to have this ability is that I am very susceptible to emotional empathy with other people and even animals (I have a menagerie of pets). Perhaps I am wired with more mirror neurons than the average person, if that causes one to be too empathetic, and I have a natural aversion to opening up to strangers dues to this sensitivity. While I have these tendencies, I have met others who lack it entirely. What I have found is that it is fruitless to try to teach someone magic who doesn’t have this innate ability to emphasize with others and also use their imagination in a free and creative manner. I also find that such individuals have difficulty emotionally relating to religious practices or sensing the presence of deities in churches and temples. A person who does not have these sensibilities can only approach religion with either a steadfast fixed belief (without any corroboration) or to be an atheist who cannot fathom anything immaterial like spirituality.

Since I have a strong sense of the spiritual reality, religion is naturally a practice that I find important and significant in the practice of magic. Religion and magic seem to easily go hand in hand together, similarly to science and magic. It would seem that the ubiquity of magic is the real factor here, because it appear to go together with any discipline. However, I have found that my religious practice, which is melded into my practice of magic, making them one and the same, forces me to adopt a spiritual discipline that determines my overall life direction and guides my choices with ethical considerations and adherence and fidelity to my alignment to my chosen Deities. While I may not have a set of Ten Commandments or other dogmatic rules and strictures guiding my actions, I do have a strong sense of right and wrong as established and inspired by my religious worship. I believe that religion and magic should be in a strong alignment with each other, just as the rational and quasi empirical approach of science should guide the mental discipline of practicing magic. However, my religion is the core of my magic, and with me, they are indivisible. My Gods and Goddesses walk with me in my religious and magical life, but I also approach what I experience with a bit of skepticism and objectivity. The key is to balance the two approaches and to find a peace midpoint where they all meet and function as a very productive and insightful life process.

That said, I must make another pronouncement, and that is a magician without religion is a particularly monstrous individual. Such an individual is without the ability to emphasize with others and engage with spirituality and Deity, but they have developed an intuitive capacity to use magical energies, to enchant others with their false glamor and their fictional persona, and project their will into the world to powerfully influence others and to bend reality to benefit only themselves.

You might be wondering if such an individual actually exists in the world, and they do indeed exist, almost too numerous these days to discount it as an impossibility. You will find them as very successful hucksters of all kinds, con artists, propagandists, peddlers of crank cures and remedies, and perhaps the most successful of all of these individuals is Donald J. Trump, who is currently the nightmarish POTUS imperiling our country. Trump is a masterful and powerful magician, or so one of my close friends has pointed out to me and I have become a believer. Trump has gained this knowledge intuitively and implicitly through learning to manipulate the media, beginning when he was the star of his own reality TV show, the Apprentice. He is a man completely without any empathy, callous, pathologically narcissistic, but he has managed to convince a large population of dupes that he is a great leader who can solve all our nation’s ills. He holds large rallies in order to vampirize the emotions and adulation that he produces and then uses that power to enchant and gaslight the voters of this country. I would call that a succinct definition of a magician, but of a sort that I find monstrous and dangerous, not only to me individually, but even to the world at large.

If I were to classify the kind of magicians functioning in the world today, it would be those who engage both science and religion, those who lack science, and those who lack religion. Of the three, only those who have found a balance between science and religion are the true practitioners of magic, while those who lack science are harmless cranks, but those who lack religion are dangerous exploitive hucksters and con artists. It seems a narrow path to follow, and discipline, objectivity, empathy, and mindfulness greatly help the practicing ritual magician. However, it is a pathway that also has a lot of creative and productive output, and it allows for a great deal of variances in practice. Such a ritual magician is both harmless to others (but not weak and ineffectual) and yet helpful and inspiring to others with their wisdom, gnosis, and artistic perspectives. Still, keeping a balance is a good thing to achieve, and it takes advantage of the powers and insights of the art of magic without falling into the abyss of delusion or fecklessly catering to the complete exploitation of others.

Frater Barrabbas

Long Gap of Time

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 13:48:00 +0000

It’s been several months since I posted any articles to my blog, and maybe a few folks were wondering what happened to me. Well, a lot has happened on numerous fronts. First of all, I have relocated to a new home in Williamsburg, I have been writing a new book, and things have gotten really busy at my day job. The relocation has soaked up around two months of my time, and the fact that I am writing a new book has also taken me away from writing articles. Let me tell you about these interesting new events in my life.

As dismal and upsetting as the Trump 2.0 administration has been, I have tried to limit the amount of time that I would normally take reading the news. There is just far more bad and disturbing things going in our country and in the world today than what anyone other than a rightwing fanatic could stand, and to keep my sanity, I am instead picking and choosing the news that I read, ensuring that I am informed but not made angry and distressed from what I read. In late December I wrote an article that talked about taking a great leap from the year 2024 to 2025, but it seems more like the nation has fallen into the greater abyss, where gothic horrors hobnob with demons and monsters. Because I don’t have a government job, and because AI hasn’t made my work obsolete, I am somewhat insulated from these negative changes. I am witnessing my 401K fluctuate and I will need some luck in selling our old home in Richmond, but otherwise, I should be able to survive these changes, at least I hope.

I am, however, happy to report that I am making great strides working on my latest book project, which is titled “The Gnostic Tetrasacramentary” and contains all of the gnostic mass rites and liturgical ceremonies that have been a part of my magical regimen for decades. This book project will end up producing two volumes, since there is just such a large amount of rituals and ceremonies that I want to give to my reading public. Since I have published the books Liber Nephilim, Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, and soon to be published, the two volume set of Liber Artis Archaeomancy, and all of them require mass rites and liturgical ceremonies as an ancillary suite of practices, I felt it important to produce a book that includes all of those rites.

I also spent time writing about the four gnostic churches that I use in my magical work, my approach to modern gnosticism, the sacred solar and lunar calendar, and how all that integrates into a system of theurgy. The first part of the book comprehensively explains my approach to employing the mass rite and its associated ancillary rites into a magical priestcraft practice. The second part contains the various rituals and ceremonies that I have used to facilitate a functioning public church, with mystery rites based on the sun and moon, the calendric grail cycle, and rites for the life cycle of the congregation, such as naming, handfasting, requiem and other rites and devotional exercises.

Writing this book has been a slow process, at least for the introductory parts, but I will be able to recommence work on this book project and complete it by the fall. There is also the final editing for my two volumes of Liber Artis Archaeomancy, and the republishing of my book on the Qabalah with a new title. While the previous two years have seen several new books being published, the next couple of years will be more modest. I have three more books in the planning stages and they won’t become actual book projects until either late this year or the next year. I believe that they won’t be in print until the following year (2027), so there will only be three book projects that will produce printed books next year. However, there will be two volumes for Liber Artist Archaeomancy, and two volumes for The Gnostic Tetrasacramentary, and one book for my republished Qabalah book, and that adds up to five books altogether.

If you are wondering how I can write all of these books in such a short period of time, then I can reveal that much of the material used in my books has already been written, especially the rituals and ceremonies, and the devotional discipline. While I am writing expositions and explanations to accompany these rituals, and I am revising the rituals and bringing them into compliance with my current writing skills and occult knowledge, much of the work of developing this lore was completed back in the 1980's, 1990's and the early 2000's. I consider it my spiritual obligation to publish these books so that my legacy is assured and my methodologies will be added to the public knowledge of ritual magic and its practices and spiritual obligations. I am fortunate to have a publishing company who is willing to take on these books projects and bring them into printed copies, and I am grateful for that opportunity.

One of events that I am quite happy about is that I have relocated to a new home in Williamsburg that will be able to house a fully functioning temple and possibly an outdoor grove. I have been without a temple and a grove since I moved from Minneapolis back in 2018, before the pandemic. The last major magical working that I performed was for the Summer Solstice of 2017. I am eagerly looking forward to this coming autumn, when the weather cools down and I will start up my magical workings once again. I am so delighted that this opportunity will once again become a staple in my life process. I have deeply missed having a temple in which to work my ordeals, and there is a lot of unfinished work and a number of ordeals that need to be renewed, particularly the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, for one, and some continued experimentation in Spiritual Archaeomancy, engaging with the transdimensional vortex gateway workings. I am really looking forward to renewing my acquaintance with these ordeals, but also just being able to say a votive mass and meditate in sacred space will do my soul a great deal of good.

While I stood on the precipice last December, examining all of the possibilities that confronted me, I hardly knew what was going to happen. I am glad that things are turning out to be fortunate for me so far this year, but I am also saddened and also angry at the political turn of events afflicting our country. Will we survive the malice motivated onslaught of the authoritarian rightwing MAGA-Republican political movement that is seeking to destroy our republic, or will we witness the end of our democratic government and the beginning of an entrenched oligarchy fueled by rightwing fanatics? This year and the next will determine what direction we will ultimately be dragged, and how successful the Trump regime will be in erasing the American aspiration of democracy and representational government. They have another 18 months to get it all done, and if they fail to implement their agenda by the end of next year, then we can look to the Democrats to shift the nation to the left, restore some semblance of democracy and neuter the current administration. That is my hope for the future, so that the American dream of democracy will not fail and be fully restored when a new Democratic president takes office in 2029.

Frater Barrabbas

Year 2024 In Review

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Wow, it has been amazing year for me. So much has happened to me, both as a writer and a Witch and Magician that is seems difficult to unravel it all. Yet the year started off with a bang, and had many exciting developments. It also had one powerful disappointment, and that, of course, was the election results. I will briefly say a few words about that event, but mostly, I want to outline the amazing things that happened in the course of the year. Life has been good to me, and there is much to be grateful about, and people to be thankful for helping make this an amazing year for me.

I have been writing all year long, and what I have produced has been truly prodigious. During the year I wrote three books and submitted them to my publisher. These books will be coming out in the next two years. Titles for these books are Abramelin Lunar Ordeal (02/2025), The Magical Notary Art (04/2025), and Liber Artis Archaeomancy (Winter 2026). The manuscript for Liber Artis Archaeomancy turned out to have 217K words, so it will be a large and comprehensive work. Additionally, I have edited and revised Disciples Guide to Ritual Magick (08/2024), Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick (12/2024), and Practical Qabalah for Occultists (previously, Magical Qabalah for Beginners), which is likely to appear in print some time in Spring, 2026. I have completed six literary projects for the year.

However, during the year, I have seen six books printed and released, and these were in the following consecutive order, Sacramental Theurgy for Witches, Transformative Initiation for Witches, Mastering the Art of Witchcraft, Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick, Liber Nephilim, and Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick. My total output for the year 2024 has been ten books, written and edited both last year and this year. That is quite an amazing output. I am thankful that at present, there are no outstanding book projects awaiting me. I have completely cleared my occult book work-desk of all projects, so for the Yule period, I have been writing blog articles and working on the planing stages for next set of books. I have three books projects for 2025, although I will take my time planning, assembling, writing and producing these manuscripts, and then getting contracts and readying the documents for submission. Here is a list of three projects that I have planned for next year - they won’t be released until late 2026 and 2027.

The Gnostic Tetra-Sacramentary: Liturgies and Sacred Rites of the Magician Priestcraft

Since the system of magic that I espouse uses the Mass rite, Benediction, and other sacramental rites, I believe that producing a ritual workbook of the entire collection of rituals that I have used or planned to write should be developed as a manuscript and then published. The four Gnostic theurgical systems in the Order of the Gnostic Star, consisting of Thelema, Agape, Thanatos and Eros, each has a Mass rite, a Benediction rite variation, and other sacramental rites, such as the Rite of Naming, Gnostic Wedding, Exorcism, Excommunication, Requiem and the Holy Orders of Deacon and Pontifex ordination would be a part of this liturgical lore. Other ancillary rites would be included, such as the Gnostic Book of Seasons, Mass of the Great Goddess (full version), and the Rite of Beatification, and a Benediction rite to Santa Muerta. A full background to this Gnostic Sacramentary, and the use and obligations of rites of Priestcraft would be fully covered. This manuscript would likely be the first task that I would undertake for 2025 and would likely not be completed until autumn.

Ordeal XV: Rites of Luciferian Ascension

My previous book, Liber Artis Archaeomancy, focused mainly on the Angelic hierarchy and the magic associated with their invocation. However, a ritual magician must also traverse the paths of darkness and undergo the ordeals, and the challenges associated with the Devil in order to be truly and wholly spiritually evolved. One cannot avoid the darkness, especially the darkness of one’s own soul and being. Those who espouse the ways of light and who have not undergone and achieved victory and accommodation with their dark side can never be trusted not to unconsciously exhibit their negative ethos in a subtle and opaque manner. A true initiate must master both the Light and the Darkness to know and master themselves. Ordeal XV divides the darkness into the Gnostic Tetra-Sacramentary of Thelema, Agape, Thanatos and Eros, to develop the ordeals associated with the Involution Avatars Aiwaz/Astoreth, Lucifer/Promethius, Azrael/Samael, and Baalzebul/Pan Priappus. The fifth in this series is Sothis-Set, who are joined together with the four Involution Avatars to produce a tabernacle of darkness where the soul meets its ultimate challenges. This book contains all of the evocation rites and the Five-Fold Inverted Vortex, which is the heart of the chamber of trials. Included are the mystery rites of the Tabernacle of Sothis-Set and the associated Black Rites of expiation, purification, and release. The ordeals are introduced with a full set of background articles and analyses that explain in detail the nature of this ordeal, its purpose and ultimate conclusion. I will be assembling the material and writing this book from late 2025 to Spring of 2026.

Liber Nephilim Additum: Additional Rites of the Enochian Ordeal

While the book Liber Nephilim covered the basic rites needed to evoke the first two chiefs of the Nephilim angels, and also included the evocation of Lilith and other ancillary rites, other components of that working were excluded due to the limitations of the book size and length. There were quite a number of rituals and lore left behind. This book seeks to gather together all of the additional material that was not included in the original book. This book is broken into three parts, representing the topical areas that contained important but excluded ritual workings. The first part will contain the rituals for invoking the Enochian Bonarum, which I called the Binary Planetary Intelligences. I invoked seven consecutively to form a powerful planetary ordeal, with the eight workings invoking the ruling spirit Camara. Included would be diary entries of that ordeal. The second part would be the instructions and rites involved in the Enneagrammic Goddess Gateway working, representing the gate structure used in the Enochian Ordeals. The third part of the book would contain the additional rituals for the evocation of Turiel, Ramat’el, and Samael, the invocations of Seth and Enoch, the Enochian Mystery Vortex Rite, and the Convocation rites of Lilith and Enoch. The diaries for some of the workings would also be included. I may also consider including evocation rites for Lilith’s sisters and demonic queens, although there would not be associated diaries for those spirits. I would not begin to assemble, edit and write this manuscript until after Spring 2026.

***

So, those three project will take me into the middle of 2026, not including the final editing passes and other pre-production tasks. Much of this lore is already written, but other parts will need to written and everything will have to be revised and edited before it is ready for submission. We are looking at a lot of work that will need to be accomplished, and that will also depend on how things are going with me in terms of my health, day-job demands, and the likely relocation that will happen sometime in late 2025 or early 2026.

As for traveling and teaching this year, I attended the ConVocation convention last February and taught two classes. I taught a six-week series at Mama Luna’s occult book store in Richmond, based on the book Mastering the Art of Witchcraft beginning in April and extending into May. I attended and was the headliner at the Swamp Mystics mini convention in Tallahassee, FL. I also had a book tour in New Orleans in early November that was modestly successful, and I got to meet some exceptional folks who live there. I had wanted to revisit NOLA when I had first went down there in November 2023, and coincidentally, I was able to visit again almost a year later. I had promised myself to return, and that happened, thanks to the folks at Cross Crow Books.

For the coming year, I may teach my six-week class again, and visit a few more local occult book stores, I will certainly be returning to ConVocation this coming February, but I don’t have much plans beyond those events. The coming year will be one where I focus on the home front, since my wife is working out of town during the week days, and only is able to come home on the weekends. Because we have six cats and a dog, and my wife is absent during the week, it makes things more difficult for me to be away from home. That will change after we relocate, of course.

I will be relocating to a new home, and a priority for me will be getting a room for a permanent temple, and having a private outdoor location to host a grove would be a nice touch. I have been living in a small house since May 2018, and I have not been able to establish a place to work ordeal magic. I am planning on changing that situation, but the details of how that will happen, when and where, will have to be determined. There is a lot of magical work that I have left unfinished, so I would like to have the opportunity to finish these magical projects and formulate some a new ordeals. While I still have my health, I want to explore and experiment with new magical lore and additional magical ordeals. Of course, all of this work will feed into additional books, so that work will likely keep going until I can no longer write or have anything to write about.

All of these writing projects, relocating, getting temple space to work ritual magic, are quite exciting and makes me very happy and optimistic about my future. I have a great paying job, my wife is fully employed, and the future is looking to be very exciting. There is also the possibility of travel to Europe and Asia, and maybe even turning my literary talents to writing fiction once I finally retire. I hope to live many years yet to come, and there are still many adventures awaiting me. In January 2025, I will turn 70 years old, but I still feel pretty good for my age, and there may be many possibilities if I can manage to keep my health.

I am not happy or optimistic about the fate of our nation, since the election appeared to be about overcoming the status quo and exercising anger at the state of economy and at the sequestering that occurred due to the Covid19 pandemic at the ballot box. Since Democrats were nominally in charge during that period, especially the POTUS, people foolishly decided to punish them in the election. Over the last four years we have had a very competent presidential administration and until the mid-term elections, we have had reasonably good government. Now that a majority of the American people have voted to elect Donald J. Trump to another four year term, that period of seemingly good governance will evaporate. I am beside myself with concern and worry because despite all of the facts known about Trump, people still voted for him, somehow thinking that he will make things better, particularly with the state of the economy. As it will likely turn out, they will be proven wrong with a vengeance. Trump doesn’t represent either the middle class nor the down-trodden people who feel that the nation is no longer concerned with their difficulties, whether economic or social. Trump is a transactional politician who truly represents the oligarchic class, and it is they who impacted the election and ensured that he would be re-elected POTUS.

While some will blame the Democratic Party for completely misunderstanding and misrepresenting the will of the people, there were many who did vote against Trump and the Republican Party. There was also a significant group of people who could have voted but didn’t vote for various reasons. Would they have made a difference? Possibly, but we will never really know. People were angry about inflation, which was caused by a post-pandemic economic recovery and also corporate greed. People were also angry about being forced to wear masks and about the confusion associated with the nature of Covid19, that it was a new kind of virus and not enough was initially known about it. Of course, when Trump was president, he allowed, through his inactivity and lack of planning, over one million to die, and also helped to spread misinformation about various cures and that masks were ineffective. Biden’s administration pushed forward the actual plan that not only helped to reduce the effect of Covid19, but also ensured that the economy was able to recover with less troubles than other countries in the world. The fact of the matter is that president Biden got little positive press for cleaning up the mess that Trump left behind, and spent two years undoing what Trump had done in his four years as president.

Our main stream press is owned and operated by the donor class, and after just a few months, they had basically written off Biden and his presidency, and proceeded to ignore all of the good that he was doing in favor of pointless criticisms and blame for whatever was not immediately fixed and made efficient once again. They created a hostile environment that helped to tank Biden’s favorability while white-washing and sane-washing Donald Trump. The press is mostly responsible for Biden’s poor popularity, since they focused on what was not working or wrong and seldom mentioned all of the things that he and his administration had accomplished, which was probably more than what any recent president had achieved.

Whatever troubles happened domestically, Biden and the Democrats had mostly fixed. International crises, such as the invasion of Ukraine and the war in Gaza and Lebanon, were more difficult to manage, as foreign policy typically is to any administration. The crisis in the Middle East showed that the government of Israel was not interested in working with the Biden administration, even though they had the complete support of the U.S. I abhor Hamas, Hezbolah, and the Houthis for their terrorist activities and starting and intensifying the conflict with Israel, but I also abhor the government of Israel, who have become terrorists in their own way. It is a no win scenario, and I cannot blame Biden too much for supporting Israel, since not to support them would have been political suicide during an election year.

However, as it turned out, the donor class and the oligarches did not want either Biden or any Democratic candidate to win in 2024, since they believed that a more friendly and transactional Trump would be a better replacement. I believe that the only thing that I am critical of regarding Biden is that he shouldn’t have sought a second term and thereby allowed a younger and more energized political group of Democrats to be weeded out and ultimately selected through the primary process. Having a democratic process occur during the year 2023 and 2024 for the Democratic Party might have eclipsed the effect that Trump was having on the electorate with help from the media moguls. Whether that would have been sufficient to defeat Trump at the polls is debatable, yet considering that Harris came close to defeating Trump with only 100 days to campaign indicates that it could have happened that way. Still, thinking about the possibilities doesn’t change the reality that in January we will be getting a second dose of Trump and his MAGA miscreants.

For some reason people have written off the dangers of having someone like Trump in charge of our nation for another four years. I am thankful that he can’t run again, and that many who came out to vote for him this time might not have voted at all if it was someone else running without his celebrity status. However, I believe that he will cause a lot of damage to our nation and the world at large based on his various statements about domestic and foreign policy. Additionally, it seems that Trump’s choices for cabinet members and close advisors represent a wealthy group of oligarches whose role in government will represent a massive conflict of interest. Trump is very transactional, and for his wealthy supporters, the pay-off will be their ability to grift the nation and make it all legal and acceptable. We, the people, are in for a rough four years, all because of a large number of ill-informed and misguided individual voters.

A Canadian journalist has pretty much defined our moment with the following quotation.

“There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.” Written by Andrew Coyne

While I have a certain amount of excitement for my own personal future, I am quite aware that many others will not be doing so well. It is my hope that the incoming administration and the trifecta of their control of the government shows them as over-reaching, overly ambitious, incompetent and overall, a failure to make any significant changes. That is my hope for my nation in the coming years. I also hope that a lot of people think about what they have done to vote for Trump and the Republican Party, knowing that these people care nothing for those who aren’t wealthy or members of the oligarchy. Maybe having some painful experiences will be a good lesson in how to use their vote to help their own interests instead of listening to pundits and politicians who lie, cheat, steal and who pretend to be compassionate to the powerless and the advocate of the under-represented. Republicans, as a rule, represent a status quo that is all about the donor class, and no one else.

Frater Barrabbas

Traditional Witchcraft Covens - Still A Good Idea?

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 17:06:00 +0000

My path in Witchcraft has been a decidedly crooked one, and it has been one that would seem to paint traditional initiations and traditional covens as a questionable source for one’s engagement and advancement in its practice. I had a four year tenure in the archetypal “Coven from Hell” back in the late 1970's, where I witnessed my High Priestess and High Priest go over the deep end and assume tyrannical powers over their coven members. I saw two large and well attended covens get whittled down to just a small single coven, and from there, a complete collapse. My former HP and HPs left Witchcraft and became fundamentalist Protestant Christians, and my former HP wrote an infamous book titled “Wicca: Satan’s Little White Lie,” which I have fully debunked in previous blog postings. If anything, my first coven experience was a lesson in occult despotism and the fallacy of self-elected leadership in BTW covens. You can find the first in the series of threads about my experiences here.

My negative experiences with hierarchical coven structures continued when I became a High Priest and elder of an Alexandrian coven in Minneapolis. While I had no interest in functioning as a tyrant in any way imaginable, my partner, Thea, had other ideas in mind. She ran the coven in a despotic manner and made my allegiance and deference to her as a means to bind me while she ran roughshod over the members of our coven. Finally, when the coven had enough of this kind of childish and tyrannical behavior, they had the audacity to confront her about it, with my support. That made her resign her position as leader and to break up with me for not supporting her, even though she was completely in the wrong about how she was treating people. She left the home that I had provided her and officially resigned as High Priestess, while heaping scorn and recriminations on us all. Within a week we had replaced both her and myself with new leaders, but even then, having the power to make unequivocal decisions with little or no input from the coven members, made the new order only slightly better than the old one. Within two years, the coven had disbanded and was no longer functioning.

What these experiences have taught me is that there are problems with the type of leadership that a traditional coven employs, and that it takes very mature and accessible leaders to successfully run a coven that is durable and self-sustaining over time. While such a coven structure can work and be maintained, it is too susceptible to abuse and forms of ego-driven despotism. There are no checks and balances in a hierarchical coven structure, and the High Priestess and her partner, the High Priest, are the sole authority figures in the group. The only recourse that a member has is to leave the coven and either practice alone or form another group. I have found that individuals who have had to leave a coven because of a clash with the leadership often form a new coven that has inherited the same problems as the old coven. They just seem to exchange the old tyrants for new ones, and little is actually learned.

Don’t get me wrong, because there are good covens out there in the various communities that have lasted a long time, but these, unfortunately, are the exception rather than the rule. A good and well functioning coven is hard to find, but they do exist, and I have met a number of fortunate individuals who were members of such groups. It would seem that human nature is such that there is a tendency of individuals who lack personal confidence and who have little power over their lives to seek out positions of power within a coven group and then to rule the members in a tyrannical manner. It is, unfortunately, a problem of structure and human social dynamics that make a traditional Witchcraft coven hierarchy into a microcosm study of human despotism. Wherever you have two unelected leaders assuming power and authority over a group of novices mixed in with very few initiates with no checks or balances on their rule, then the temptation to take advantage of this social situation will be great. If the leaders are emotionally mature and know themselves and their limitations, and have humility and compassion as their ruling principals, then the coven will be managed and guided with wisdom and equality, instead of deceit and delusion. That, of course, is the ideal, but considering human nature, it will fall short of the ideal, or completely miss it.

Democracy is the missing ingredient for coven management, at least in my opinion. It is what has made Blue Lodge Masonry build and maintain lodge organizations that have lasted for generations. Leadership is rotated and decisions for the lodge are made through the artifice of voting. There are, therefore, checks and balances built into the organization. Within a small group like a coven, democracy is established by group consensus, and leaders are rotated or even elected to assume temporary roles within the group. However, an elected leader assumes a role that has certain responsibilities, but the group is ruled by consensus. Leadership roles then have all of the responsibility and none of the power associated with traditional coven leadership roles.

While there are many definitions of consensus, I have found that the best approach for any group decision is that it has a majority of the members in favor with none opposed. That means the group will decide to undertake certain directives and employ individuals to help make them realized, whether formally or informally. A major directive requires a formal vote, and simple decisions can be implemented with an informal vote. Any disagreement would need to be resolved before the group could move forward, regardless of whether the decision was determined by a formal vote or just an informal agreement.

What I am describing here is what I have called a “Star Group,” and I feel that it is the only kind of organizational structure that a small group or coven could assume to ensure that everyone is treated equally and fairly, regardless of individual experience or level of achievement. Each member represents the facet of a group star, and that they come together to forge a unified group with a combined purpose and direction. No one is has any greater authority, value or role significance than anyone else in the group, even despite the differences in knowledge, experience, initiatory achievements or community status - all are equal in the eyes of the Gods. Leaders are chosen to manage and direct certain events and activities, but authority is vested in the group. Leadership roles can be designated and rotated annually, or they can be chosen for specific activities. Everyone participates and there are no divisions or barriers placed between individuals within the group. All decisions are determined by consensus, and everyone has a single equal vote.

Star Groups are the optimal group structures for any small organization that seeks to engage in specific activities in a completely fair, equal and democratic manner. They are not prone to despotic rulership or the exploitation of lesser experienced members by more senior members. They typically have a high rate of individual satisfaction, and they guarantee equal engagement privileges amongst the members of the group. Additionally, they have the ability to resolve differences, or if that becomes impossible, then to formulate new smaller groups out of the old group. A Star Group allows for separations and mergers without having to damage the group or make it ungovernable. It allows for the possibilities of a group to have amicable separations and for groups to continue to grow and evolve over time, something that a traditional coven is not likely to experience. I have found that a Star Group is the only kind of organization that I would join and happily participate in, and that I would avoid, at all costs, either joining or running a traditional coven. That is my predilection based on my personal experiences, and it shouldn’t keep anyone from joining a coven if they so wish.

An initiation into a coven or group is little more than an acknowledgment that the individual who undergoes it is able to assume the obligations and responsibilities that the initiation grade entails. Traditional Witchcraft initiations are typically inner court ceremonies that empower and constrain an individual with oaths, allegiances and the assumption of a role and an identity within the group. Internal transformations can also occur simultaneously, but they are not guaranteed. It is only through an individual practice and discipline that a practitioner can achieve personal transformation and spiritual evolution. A coven cannot provide a member with this kind of achievement, but it can help one to develop a personal discipline and practice, and to guide and show by example what can be achieved through magic rituals and ceremonies. Transformative initiation is guided by both suffering and by ecstatic release, which are symbolized by the scourge and the kiss. Both scripted initiations and transformative initiations are an intimate encounter with the Deities and the individual, where the ordeal of psychic death and rebirth are fully enacted.

Since initiations are so profoundly personal and subjective, and they require a level of trust and intimacy that is beyond mere friendship, it must happen in an environment that is free of fear, coercion, and that can allow for the full empowerment and temporary ascendancy of the initiate. A badly run coven will likely be unable to provide this kind of environment to its members who undergo initiation, making the possibility for a true transformation impossible. Initiation ceremonies in such a group are performed not for the benefit of the member, but for the edification of the leaders, to enable them to assume greater power over the candidate. Therefore, real growth and transformation requires an equable social arrangement in the coven for it to occur, and lacking that will certainly make such an achievement much more difficult. If it happens at all it will be through the individual practice and discipline, and if that activity is prohibited by the coven leaders, then there would be little reason to persevere in such a group.

I discuss scripted and transformative initiation in my book on the subject, and it goes into much greater detail. If you wish to investigate deeper into this subject, then I would recommend my book, "Transformative Initiation for Witches," and you can find it here.

My advice to anyone who wants to form a coven or who is seeking to join one is to always to get to know the individuals in the group before making a commitment to join. If someone wants to start a coven, then I would advise them to ensure that there is some kind of consensus and rotating leadership positions installed in the group instead of assuming the role of authority figures regardless of one’s level of maturity or motivations. I believe that a traditional coven structure is too easily abused, and it readily leads to tyranny, coercion, and the exploitation of its members. Not all traditional covens are so corrupt, but the only way to find out is to cautiously get to know the leaders and engage socially with the members. Beware of coven leaders who seek potential members to quickly decide on whether to join or not, or who have sequestered the members from engaging socially with a prospective entrant. There are no NDA legalities binding members from speaking to outsiders, and if such a rule is in place, then you would be well advised not to join that group.

We all need to protect ourselves from exploitation and the social tyranny of bad groups and organizations. The only solution is group consensus and rotating leadership roles. Our path in the art of Witchcraft magic is difficult and arduous enough without having to deal with unelected authority figures and social exploitation within a magical or Witchcraft group. A badly run coven could potentially thwart a true seeker and push them back into a mainstream religious faction, or make them into cynical critic of all things pagan and magical. Those of us who are knowledgeable and are initiates have a responsibility to those who are just starting out to give them whatever aid and assistance we can and to also respect them as human beings with an equal right to be a seeker as anyone else. We should be open, accessible and willing to share with others who might find a great value in following the path of magic and paganism. Starting out on such a socially divergent path is a very difficult decision to make, so we who already know should do what we can to help make that decision both rewarding and fulfilling.

Magical and pagan seekers are rare, especially those who try to make it their life’s path, so the least we can do is to be encouraging, respectful and friendly to them.

Frater Barrabbas

Qabalah and Magic - When Combining them is Good

noreply@blogger.com (Frater.Barrabbas) — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 02:14:00 +0000

I have completed making edits and modifications to my book project, “Practical Qabalah for Occultists” and I have signed a contract with Crossed Crow Books and submitted the manuscript as part of the contractual obligation. This book is a republishing of the Llewellyn book “Magical Qabalah for Beginners,” which they decided not to republish and thus, returned the rights to me. I had the last manuscript version of the book in MS Word and also the galley PDF, and went through the manuscript and made updates to it so that it would more closely conform to the galley version, and also to make some additional changes, such as gender pronouns and other minor tasks, like capitalization consistency, etc.

What I found was that after all these years since 2012, I didn’t need to add or revise any of the content. Additionally, the text of the manuscript was written incredibly well, and in fact, it was probably some of the best writing that I have used in any of my books since that time. I guess it was a combination of passion and inspiration that made the writing of that book turn out so well. In some cases, I found the text to be almost lyrical, especially when describing the twenty-two paths. Going over the book with a fine eye for editing, I found that it was an excellently written book, and I was surprised that Llewellyn had made the decision to cease its publication. I am certain that CCB will be happy to take the revised edition and add it to their catalogue, perhaps sometime in late 2025 or early 2026.

Needless to say, this book represents a comprehensive background and practice of an occult version of the Qabalah, made relevant to Pagans and Witches and anyone else who is not of the Abrahamic religious faiths. What that means is that the book promotes a practice and methodology that doesn’t require anything additional. It is a complete and whole spiritual and mystical discipline by itself. There are magical aspects in the practices shown in this book, but they are more like theurgy than ceremonial magic. In fact, there really isn’t any ceremonial magical components in the book. The significance of this statement is that the Qabalah stands by itself, without any other practices or metaphysical attributes needed to make it a complete discipline.

Here is a quotation from my book, taken from the last chapter.

In the Book of Abramelin, the author, Abraham the Jew, tells his youngest son that he is giving him the wisdom of his knowledge of magic (in the book that he has written) because he must give the knowledge of the Qabalah to his eldest son. So it would seem that he has deemed to divide his wealth and wisdom between his two sons and the eldest receives, of course, the greater share. When I first read this passage, I was quite astounded, since it seemed to say that the knowledge of the Qabalah, in and of itself, was superior to the knowledge of magic. Here is the passage, found in the first book, chapter 9 (p. 34), where Abraham tells his son Lamech:

“The art of wisdom has its foundation in the secrets of the highest and in the holy Kabbalah, which belongs to your eldest brother Joseph, and not to you.”

It would seem, then, that knowledge of the Qabalah is not only greater than the knowledge of magic, but that through it, one could gain everything that magic would give and more. According to the Book of Abramelin, a mastery of the Qabalah is superior to the knowledge and practice of magic, and between the two, it is the greater prize by far. This concept becomes even more amazing to us when we consider that the purpose of the Book of Abramelin was to successfully invoke and manifest one’s Holy Guardian Angel.

To complete a practice of the esoteric Qabalah, one only needs to engage deeply with one’s religious faith, whether that be Wicca or some form of modern Paganism, and to use the practices in my book to build a complete religious, mystical and theurgic discipline. Ostensibly, an occultist can use my book and not have to perform any other magical rites to project their theurgic magic into the world.

So, if this is true then how do we employ the Qabalah into our ritual or magical ceremonial practices. The actual truth of the matter is that high forms of magic typically rely on an intrusion of the Qabalah to be merged with it so that it might have a greater impact in both the material and spiritual worlds. These forms of magic need the Qabalah, but the Qabalah doesn’t need any forms of ritual or ceremonial magic to achieve its objectives. Additionally, I have written five books on advanced ritual magical practices that can used by Witches or Pagans that doesn’t incorporate the Qabalah. That means that a Witch or Pagan could perform rituals of invocation, evocation, elemental magic, talismanic magic and sacramental theurgy without having recourse to the Qabalah. What that demonstrates is that the Qabalah is a distinct discipline, and that a magician can employ the Qabalah into their magic, but that choice is completely optional - there is no requirement to do so.

If employing the Qabalah into the practice of ritual or ceremonial magic is completely optional, then when would it be useful or optimal to combine it with the practice of magic? One of my complaints, and the reason why I wrote the “For Witches” series of books without any recourse to the Qabalah, is that I find that it has been overused. Not every ritual has to include Qabalistic attributes. Even the Golden Dawn did not always flavor their rituals with the Qabalah, although they did more often than was necessary, in my opinion. Yet I find that the Qabalah is used in a lot of rituals these days, as if to give them the authenticity that they might lack without it. My approach is to use the Qabalah when it is appropriate to do so, and then only when the function of the Qabalah is critically important to the working. Overuse, in my opinion, makes the Qabalah redundant, and diminishes its importance and its potency. Let me define where using the Qabalah is appropriate, then we can focus on where it would be redundant.

Tree of Life and the Four Worlds as a Map

The Inner Planes, as the domain of the World of Spirit, is actually formless and cannot be mapped or understood by any kind of model or structure. Since everything is related to the One in that domain, when truly apprehended, it appears as a unity without any differentiation. It is beyond conscious apprehension, and it defies the rational logic of language or the structures of the mind. It is like a mirror, and it reflects back to us our beliefs, religious signs, symbols, and metaphors, and the logical structures that we use to help define what it is. Yet none of these artifices approximate the true nature that it expresses. It is the great singularity, and beyond it, is the greater emptiness. Even the Qabalah, with its ideas of Ain Soph Aur can only dimly approximate the true nature of this phenomenon. This is true with all of the various religious, esoteric or occultic approaches to understanding the One that is the source and the ultimate object of all conscious beings. However, the protean flexibility of the One allows us to use models and language to stimulate and engage with this Unity, and we can therefore use the models, symbols, constructs and various glyphs to emulate our experience of it. But, we must never fail to understand that the models and linguistic artifices that we might use will always fall short of truly defining it.

The Qabalistic Tree of Life represents a model of the emanations that generated the many lights of consciousness from the One through a mathematical sequence of the numbers 1 through 10. This model uses the Pythagorean base-10 approach to describing the waves of emanations, but certainly other systems of numeration could be used. While numbers represent the emanations that flowed from the One to the Many, there is also a circuitous pathway for the Many to return to the One, and that is represented by the 22 Pathways that connect the 10 numbered spheres or containers of the light of the One. These Pathways are given the attributes of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, symbolizing that the means to regaining the apprehension and absorption of the One is through the holy literature of the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Bible.

Numbers, letters and words, waves of emanation and paths to unity, are the attributes of the Tree of Life. Yet there is also the finite structure of the Tree, and its placements of the ten emanations, and the relationships between them via the paths, that show its remarkable utility. These components can represent the structure of the Inner Planes, approached from the manifestation of individual consciousness and the ensouling of material beings from the unified and mysterious source. They are given various symbolic attributes, consisting of the four elements, the seven planets, the twelve signs of the zodiac, the thirty-six decans, the seventy-two quinians, the trumps of the Tarot, various Deities and metaphysical concepts of all religions throughout the world, and colors, perfumes, incense, gem stones, metals, minerals, herbal medicines, and every conceivable mental attribute and material element in the world of humanity. The Qabalah unites everything within its structure of emanations and paths.

Additionally, the Four Qabalistic Worlds also represent a map of the Inner Planes, since it is a four-fold definition of the Emanations and Pathways of the Tree of Life, collecting the myriad of attributes within the four worlds of the Absolute, Creation, Formation, and Manifestation, where the One became the consciousness of the Many. Organized within these four Worlds are the various residents, both of spirit and mind, which would represent the Godhead attributes, Super Archangels, Archangels, Angels and Demons, and the spirits of the Earth and the Underworld. These domains of consciousness are populated by various entities, as the emanations and paths are refracted through the Four Worlds, producing a more comprehensive spiritual map of what is largely a domain that is wholly and completely unified into a single expression of Being residing within infinite emptiness. The importance of the Qabalah is that is gives a structure and order to something that has no order or structure, but through the Tree and Worlds, we can apprehend in a small part of the truth, and thereby gain a significant spiritual perspective of the whole.

Another important factor is that the many different attributes of the 10 Sephiroth, 22 Pathways and the Four Worlds can be placed into tables of correspondence, thereby giving intrinsic meaning and comparative commonality to very different associated elements. Each Sephirah and Path has other attributes that help to give it meaning, such as the planets or signs of the zodiac, and to these are associated colors, gem stones, metals, plants and herbs, various Deities from other pantheons, and a host of other attributes. Singularly, they are not as meaningful except when combined and grouped together where they gain their greater importance.

For instance, a simple list of spirits in any order by itself is not as meaningful as when it is placed within a matrix associated with attributes of the Tree of Life, and fixed within one of the Four Worlds. Then each spirit in the list inherits a whole catalogue of attributes and a spiritual hierarchy to help qualify it, including a sigil to specifically identify it. When performing an invocation of a spirit and using this kind of table or matrix to characterize and qualify it, then that operation is what I call invoking through a grid or matrix, and it produces the best results because the spirit is fully defined before being summoned.

Therefore, the Tree of Life, the Four Worlds, and the tables of correspondences represent a significant methodology for defining the Inner Planes, characterizing various hierarchies of spirits and giving individual entities an identity, function and purpose. Defining the Inner Planes in this manner makes them accessible to the practicing magician, and gives a disciplined methodology to the mystic who seeks to regain that once state of One that is the source of all. The Qabalah functions as a universal repository of all religious and spiritual symbols, and embodies a spiritual discipline for both the mystic and the magician. It provides a roadmap through a world that has no distinctive geographic features, habitations, roads or pathways, milestones showing the distance traveled, nor does it contain any idea of a destination, since to enter that domain is to unwittingly and immediately arrive at one’s objective.

Arithmology - Number and Letter/Word Manipulation

Determining and defining the domain of the Inner Planes is one of the features of the Qabalah, however, it is not the only important and valuable technique. Since the Emanations are numbers and the Pathways are letters, then it would be obvious that mathematics and literature would be the products of these attributes. Although the Qabalah is limited regarding mathematics, it would be conceivable that any mystical system of numeration would be readily expandable to include geometry, algebra, trigonometry, differential and integral calculus, linear algebra, and beyond. However, the numbers are not only quantities, but they have an intrinsic esoteric value, so that working with them, and with alphabetic letters, which have their own intrinsic meanings, to form equations can be understood as having an occult value as well as a mathematical value. Still, this is beyond our consideration here, since we must limit our discussion to the traditional Qabalah and my profound lack of mathematical expertise.

Systems of arithmology in occult studies within the Qabalah include the practices of Geomancy, Notariqon and Temurah. Additionally, there are the tools of magic squares equating letters and numbers, the inherent numeric values associated with the letters of the alphabet, and the use of alphabet wheels that allow for the production of linear vectors representing the sigil of a name or phrase. Branching off of that methodology is the modern mechanism of generating sigil or glyphs from lettered names or phrases. Each of these techniques serve a magical and occult purpose, and they are used to expand the power of numbers, letters and words.

Gematria is a system of number substitution for letters, where the numeric values of the letters in a word are added together to get a total value. The value for specific words and phrases is then compared in a compilation called a Sepher Sephiroth, a book of numbers. The basic premise in Gematria is that words and phrases that have the same numeric value must be strongly related. This technique is most useful when the occultist has a body of written lore or holy scriptures upon which to apply, extracting occultic relationships between different words and phrases. It is less useful for someone who doesn’t have sacred writings, because then the words subjected to this kind of scrutiny do not have the context of holy writ to build meaning. I have found Gematria to be interesting, but I have found that some occultists overuse it, such as the manner that Kenneth Grant has employed it to announce as fact the most tenuous connections through Gematria. Without any critical alternative proof or corroboration, Gematria alone does not satisfy the need for deriving solid occult knowledge. This is, of course, my opinion.

Notariqon is the art of building and exploding acronyms. I have found this technique to be very useful, since I have used it to construct magical formulas where letters, words and declarations are expressed at certain ritual point intervals (like the four watchtowers or angles, or any combination), and then a combined formula word is derived when the letters and words are joined, causing the circle nodes that they represent to be unified. These formula words can be words unto themselves or they can have no meaning other than representing the holistic expression of the letters set to the circle points. All my advanced ritual workings use this mechanism so that the layers within a series of rituals are sealed and expressed in a unified manner, and the final expression of the working is where the first letters of each formula would be used to build a formula that would define the working as a unified structure.

While I use Notariqon to fashion and build acronyms and explode them as words that represent meaningful phrases, it is likely that a Qabalistic practice uses sacred writings would focus that methodology on deriving and building deeper meanings within the text of the scriptures. Since I don’t have that feature in my religion, I can use this technique in a more creative and free-flying manner. I still generate deeper meanings and themes when I employ it in my rituals, but it doesn’t tie back to any scriptures, which would give such constructs even more depth and meaning.

Temurah is a system of letter substitution, function primarily as a set of ciphers where the Hebrew alphabet is broken into two columns of 11 letters, and the association of one letter to its pair is the how letters are substituted. There are a total of 24 different ciphers that can be developed from this mechanism, where the alphabet is split in two and realigned to produce letter pairs. This technique can be used to uncover occult aspects of words or phrases, or it can be used to either disguise writings or to discover coded messages that used this technique to hide their true meaning from the profane.

Another technique of Temurah is used to substitute letters for numbers so they might be used to draw sigils and seals on magically numbered squares. This technique is called the Aiq Bkr or Qabalah of Nine Chambers, since it is a table of nine cells that contain like numbers distinguished by their factor of ten. Thus the first cell would contain the numbers 1,10,100, for the letters Aleph, Yod and Qoph, and if a Qabalist had to fit the letter Qoph into a magic square for Jupiter, whose max number is 16, then they would have to exchange it for a Yod to use the number 10 in the square.

Aiq Bkr requires the use of what is known as magic squares, and these squares are associated with the seven planets, from Saturn (3), Jupiter (4), Mars (5), Sun (6), Venus (7), Mercury (8) and the Moon (9). Magic squares are used to create sigils and seals for spirit names that fit within the category of one of the planets. Magic squares, however, is a system unto itself, and represents both a Qabalistic discipline and a system of magic.

Since Temurah employs a system to derive sigils and seals for spirit names using magic squares, then any other methodology used to produce the same product could be loosely associated with this discipline. Thus, the use of alphabet wheels to draw sigils, and the system that Spare developed to produce sigils and glyphs would also be a part of this occult technology.

The systems of arithmology are important to the practice, research and determination of meaning in the study of the Qabalah, but they are also very important in the writing and development of magical rituals and ceremonies. Since I have applied this methodology to most of the magical rituals that I have devised, especially the advanced rites, then this is a technique that is most useful and universal to my approach to ritual magic. I don’t use Gematria, but forms of Notariqon and Temurah are ubiquitous in the magical technology that I employ.

When to Use the Qabalah

This brings us to our final considerations about when it is appropriate to employ the Qabalah in ritual magic. First of all, I use forms of Notariqon and Temurah in nearly all of the my magical rites. If we consider the use of occult acronyms, both their expression and exposition, and the use of various types of sigils, then I make use of these techniques everywhere, but they just aren’t obvious or deliberately Qabalistic.

Where I employ the Tree of Life and the Four Worlds is wherever I need to work with a map of the Inner Planes. There might be other approaches to determining these kind of structures and their seemingly limitless tables of correspondences, but when I am performing any kind of invocation, evocation or in some manner, traversing the Inner Planes through my magic, then I will employ the Qabalah directly in my rituals, and add significant details and depth to my working that it would otherwise not possess.

If I am working simple of forms of magic, such as elemental, basic spirit conjurations, simple forms of talismanic magic, sacramental theurgy, or initiation ordeals, then I don’t have to use the Qabalah. This is why I was able to write the five books in the “For Witches” series without any recourse to the Qabalah. However, any complex magic that is being worked through a symbolic grid or that requires a spiritual hierarchy, or is traversing the Inner Planes will use the Qabalah, and my more advanced magic, which employs these methodologies, does indeed make extensive use of it.

This is the rule that anyone who would use the Qabalah in rituals and ceremonies should apply to their work. I would recommend using the Qabalah only when you need it, otherwise, I would recommend sticking with simpler methodologies so as not to overuse it. Overusing the Qabalah is to make it less meaningful and significant in one’s magical work, and I would advise you, my reader, to avoid that pitfall.

Frater Barrabbas