Goetic Circles and Operant Fields

Regular readers of this blog know all about my advocacy of the operant field for practical magical operations. Instead of the traditional Golden Dawn use of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram followed by the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram, an operant field consists of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram followed by the Lesser Invoking Ritual of the Hexagram.

You can also open an operant field using a banishing Star Ruby and an invoking Star Sapphire (which as far as I can tell is how Aleister Crowley intended those two rituals to work), or any other combination of a general banishing pentagram ritual and general invoking hexagram ritual. The point is that you banish at the microcosmic level and invoke at the macrocosmic level.

How I usually explain this is that it works by banishing or clearing out the microcosmic space of your field of consciousness represented by the pentagram, and invoking into that space the macrocosmic elements represented by the hexagram. This interlocks the microcosm and macrocosm, and creates a space or field within which internal magical intents can more easily manifest into the external physical realm.

This proposal generated some controversy when it finally circulated enough to make the rounds of the blogosphere, with folks such as the late Donald Michael Kraig arguing that the operant field method is not the right way to use the forms. But I keep at it, because it keeps working for me.

At any rate, the interlocking of microcosm and macrocosm is essentially a symbolic representation of the "operation of the Sun" described in the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus. Once the magician has created the field, within its bounds "that which is above" and "that which is below" merge more fully than they do during regular conscious awareness.

When you banish at both the microcosmic and macrocosmic levels, it could perhaps be said that both realms correspond because they are devoid of influences, but the boundary between them nonetheless remains. That makes influencing the physical world by means of concentrated thought far more difficult, as the continued presence of the boundary creates additional resistance to the propagation of your magical intent into the world.


Now here's where I'm going with all this. Saturday night I attended a lecture on Goetic evocation - that is, "goetic" referring to work with the spirits of the Lemegeton, rather than the more general use of "goetia" referring generally with chthonic spirits of the underworld. Looking at the traditional design of the Goetic circle, I realized that another piece of evidence for use of the operant field had basically been staring me in the face for years. I don't know why I didn't see it before now.

When human consciousness is operating in its regular day-to-day mode, we experience the microcosm as the interior of our minds and the macrocosm as the exterior physical world. In the Western magical tradition, as I mentioned above, the pentagram represents the microcosm and the hexagram represents the macrocosm. So according to that symbolism, you might represent normal consciousness as a circle inscribed with a pentagram surrounded by hexagrams to the four directions.

Likewise, we might represent magical consciousness as a circle inscribed with a hexagram surrounded by pentagrams to the four quarters - and, in fact, if you even draw out a ritual like the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram, this is indeed the structure that you see. The pentagrams are placed at each of the four quarters, with the six-rayed star - that is, the hexagram - in the center in some fashion, whether it is "in the column" as per Crowley's language or "within me" or whatever other variation is employed.

The Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram as practiced by the Golden Dawn was based on a partial set of instructions laid out by Eliphas Levi in Transcendental Magic, in which he explains that you trace pentagrams to the four directions, call on the archangels, and so forth. And it seems to me that the most logical assumption is that this structure in turn was based on the circle diagram from the Lemegeton.

As you can see, four hexagrams are inscribed within the circle, and four pentagrams are inscribed outside it. So again, we see the image of the macrocosm (hexagram) placed within, and the microcosm (pentagram) placed without. In effect, this represents the inversion of normal consciousness in which the mind for the most part takes in sensory data from the outside world. This is magical consciousness, in which intent moves in the other direction, from thoughts into physical manifestation.

So this is the exact intent behind the operant field. What you are creating when you banish microcosmically and invoke macrocosmically, you are in effect building an "imaginary circle" that is designed to create a physical effect. The traditional "banish-banish" does not do this, at least not in nearly so straightforward a manner. To me, this provides further evidence that the operant field is a more effective way of using the Lesser Rituals of the Pentagram and Hexagram.

As with all of my theorizing, the general caveat applies. If you are working with these forms in the traditional way and you have found that's what works best, that's great. Keep doing it. But for anyone else, I would simply suggest trying both versions, recording your results, and from there figure out what works best for you. Most of the people I know who have tried both wind up preferring the operant field to the "banish-banish" that is generally taught, but you could always be an exception.

The key is to avoid letting your actions be governed by dogma. I did these rituals the traditional way for years before I figured a lot of this out. The key is to experiment, and find out for yourself what the best method really is for getting the results you are looking for from your practice.