Review: Ritual Versus Ceremonial Magick

A while back I received a copy of Joseph Lisiewski's Ceremonial Magic & The Power of Evocation as a gift from a fellow magician who bought it based on the promotional description and of course the cover art, which is just plain cool. When I read through the book, though, I found it absolutely infuriating. Lisiewski is convinced that the only kind of magick that can ever work has to be performed by following one of the old grimoires to the letter, without making any changes or innovations to the ceremonial forms. He even goes so far as to equate someone who spends years learning and perfecting modern magical forms to the sort of idiot who makes statements like "I set up my magical circle when I put on my belt" - simply because Golden Dawn magick is not a literal reproduction of a grimoire text dating from before 1350.

As I thought more about it, though, I realized that part of my reaction was due to the fact that what Joseph Lisiewski and I do magically are fundamentally different - Lisiewski is a ceremonial magician whereas I am a ritual magician. To most people, and even the majority of practitioners, “ritual magick” and “ceremonial magick” are synonymous. However, there is an important difference between the two terms. In a magical and/or spiritual context, ritual is defined (http://www.dictionary.com/) as:

1. an established or prescribed procedure for a religious or other rite.
2. a system or collection of religious or other rites.
3. observance of set forms in public worship.
4. a book of rites or ceremonies.
5. a book containing the offices to be used by priests in administering the sacraments and for visitation of the sick, burial of the dead, etc.
6. a prescribed or established rite, ceremony, proceeding, or service: the ritual of the dead.

Ceremony, on the other hand, is defined somewhat differently in the same context:

2. a formal religious or sacred observance; a solemn rite: a marriage ceremony.

The difference between the two is that a ritual consists of the necessary instructions for performing a ceremony, whereas a ceremony refers to a specific performance of a given ritual. Ceremonial magicians like Lisiewski work from grimoires. They do not write or develop their own rituals, but rather adhere as closely as possible to the ritual as specified in the text. The reason that Lisiewski's book is annoying to me is not that it is wrong, exactly, but that he covers ceremonial methods while asserting that they are the only possible way that anyone could get magical results. Also, his condescension toward anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't help matters. While there is nothing wrong with practicing ceremonial magick and ceremonial techniques work for many magicians, for me such an inflexible approach is not particularly compatible with Scientific Illuminism as it tends to enshrine past magical techniques as unchanging dogma.

A ritual magician looks deeper into the mechanics of magick and designs ceremonies based on his or her understanding and insight. In my own professional field of software development, the difference between a ceremonial and a ritual magician is similar to the difference between a coder and a designer. Purely ceremonial magicians like Lisiewski are essentially technicians – they know their rituals and understand when and how to use them, and possess the technical skill to produce good results. Ritual magicians work at the level of liturgy and rubric, creating and testing new magical forms in order to buildup a repository of innovative magical techniques that can address new problems beyond the scope of the old grimoires, or address the same problems more efficiently and effectively.

The fundamental problem with the "pure ceremonial" approach is that even the grimoires written before 1350 must have come from somewhere. The Renaissance "Faustian Grimoires" are almost certainly fakes - they came out after the Faust legend became popular and detail remarkably similar ritual procedures to those found in the fictional account - so an earlier cutoff date is not completely out of line, but for earlier grimoires some ritual magician must have sat down and put the text together. I see no reason why a magician who lived during the Middle Ages would necessarily be able to write a better ritual than I can, given the sheer volume of information that the modern world makes available to me as sources.

It would be truly fascinating to see how these Medieval ritualists complied and tested their texts. The Enochian system of John Dee and Edward Kelley enjoys a fearsome reputation among modern magicians, perhaps because it is literally the only example we have of a complex magical system where the actual transcripts of the spiritual operations that led to its creation are available. This leads to a lot of controversy among practitioners, but it is also a goldmine for ritual magicians everywhere - the building blocks of the system are laid out for study in their original context. The system is also by most accounts particularly effective, maybe because of all the innovations that this open structure enables or maybe because the older grimoires have been degraded by centuries of copying errors.

In the end, it is more Lisiewski's exclusivist attitude that makes his book less worthwhile than it might otherwise be than any particular technical errors. He includes an annoted version of the Heptameron, a famous Medieval grimoire, and gives solid instructions on how to use it. I prefer ritual magick to ceremonial magick simply because I'm essentially a hacker by nature and I'm always looking to enhance and improve my techniques. On the other hand, a ceremonialist will probably that find the book does have some useful advice as long as he or she ignores the pontification.

Want to buy your own copy of Ceremonial Magick and the Power of Evocation by Joseph Lisiewski? Order from my Books and Media page and you can help support Augoeides.

Thelema and the Pure View

This article started off as a comment that I was considering posting on Pyrrhotechnics, a blog belonging to a friend and OTO brother, but never actually made it into the comments there or onto the previous version of this blog. My friend was commenting on people who consider themselves Thelemites but nonetheless criticize Aleister Crowley without really understanding his work or practicing his teachings. In response, I posted the following:

Tibetan Buddhists address similar issues with regard to the proper attitude to take toward their lamas in a very succint manner. In their tradition it is said that it is said that if the lama is viewed as an ordinary human, the resulting attainment is that of an ordinary human; if the lama is viewed as a Buddha, the resulting attainment is that of a Buddha; and if the lama is viewed as a dog, the resulting attainment is that of a dog.

Substitute Magus for Buddha and this same idea strikes me as applicable to the proper attitude to take toward Crowley in Thelema.

"Is a God to live in a dog? No!"

The attitude of regarding a Tibetan lama (which incidentally is the Tibetan translation of the more familiar sanskrit guru) as a Buddha is called the Pure View. On the surface it seems counterintuitive, especially since lamas do not actually claim to be enlightened beings themselves and in many cases will actively deny being enlightened if asked. In effect, this attitude could be criticized as "faking it" - you may know that the person giving the teaching does not claim enlightenment, but you are deliberately choosing to regard his or her words as enlightened speech anyway.

Judging from the history of Eastern religious movements in the West, Westerners are not very good at cultivating this sort of attitude. The tendency seems to be for Westerners to either accept every word the teacher utters as truth, or to devalue both the teacher and the teachings. There seems to be little middle ground, which I would argue gives rise to the criticism of Western teachers such as Crowley. Furthermore, this sort of black and white thinking strikes me as sloppy and not particularly conducive to the cultivation of genuine spiritual realization.

The Pure View does not require an abandonment of critical thinking regarding the teachings themselves. Crowley published an extensive set of spiritual techniques and practices, and I do not believe I have ever met anyone who actually makes use of all of them. Thelema is a very individualistic spiritual path and it is left for every student to decide for themselves whether or not a given teaching is appropriate or useful. It does, however, counteract pointless criticism of the teacher. If you believe a spiritual teacher to be genuine you should respect him or her as though you would respect a fully enlightened being.

Where Westerners seem to have problems is that they often assume that if they do not hold the same opinions and have the same personal quirks as their teacher there is something wrong with them. Frederick Lenz, for example, was a self-proclaimed teacher of "American Buddhism" and told his students what movies they should watch, what music they should listen to, and where they should work - all the while collecting the majority of their income. That anyone went along with that sort of teaching amazes me - it simply is irrelevant whether or not you and your teacher like the same movies. I have some things in common with Crowley - for example, I enjoy writing both fiction and nonfiction, ritual magick, philosophy, and chess. On the other hand, I have little interest in mountaineering, writing poetry, or painting.

Crowley produced an enormous body of written work and for better or worse just about every opinion he held is likely in print somewhere. However, unlike most other gurus and teachers he actually helps his students out by offering a handy classification system for his writings. From Thelemapedia:

• Class [A] consists of books of which may be changed not so much as the style of a letter: that is, they represent the utterance of an Adept entirely beyond the criticism of even the Visible Head of the Organization.
• Class [B] consists of books or essays which are the result of ordinary scholarship, enlightened and earnest.
• Class [C] consists of matter which is to be regarded rather as suggestive than anything else.
• Class [D] consists of the Official Rituals and Instructions.
• Class [E] consists of manifestos, broadsides, epistles and other public statements. Some publications are composite, and pertain to more than one class.

Furthermore, Crowley considered himself a Scientific Illuminist who practiced "The method of science, the aim of religion." One of the key points of the scientific method is its universality. If a chemist discovers that two substances appear to interact a certain way, the proper scientific response is to replicate the experiment and see if the original reaction can be reproduced. It would be ridiculous to claim that the experiment must be wrong because the chemist who discovered it holds an unpopular political opinion or has problems in their personal life, and to engage in a lengthy debate over the merits of such accusations rather than just running the experiment does nothing to advance the discipline of chemistry. By definitition, Scientific Illuminism does not work with a static body of teachings, but instead allows for experimentation and improvement. If you do the work, this becomes obvious - as long as you work along experimental lines and test out your practices as you modify them.

Buddhist teachings regarding the Pure View are actually very similar to Crowley's advice given in Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae:

In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth, and the Paths, of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things certain results follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.

Whether or not the Pure View has objective validity, the practice itself is important and useful and can lead to real spiritual awakening.

Apocalypse Thwarted!

Satanists all over the world today must be mourning the loss of the Antichrist, who recently took a circular saw and cut off the hand that bore the Mark of the Beast. Then, to make double sure that the evil would not return, he microwaved it. So much for the Revelation...

...and I'm not making this up!

People can talk all they want about how ritual and ceremonial magicians can go crazy or have mental problems, but I have yet to hear of anyone in the magical community doing something this ridiculous. Then again, for all I know this guy might have just saved the planet - with a microwave oven.

The Saddest Harry Potter Ever

Back when the Order of the Phoenix film and Deathly Hallows novel came out I wrote that I was tired of Harry Potter entries and wasn't going to write any more of them. I never really got into the books but have enjoyed the films, and there certainly is something to be said for a popular phenomenon that introduces young people to some of the ideas behind ritual magick, even if what is portrayed in the story is often nothing like the real thing.

I guess I was wrong in suggesting that I would write no more about Harry Potter, because this may be old news, but it's the funniest thing ever. Not content with shipping lead painted trains and beads covered in psychoactive chemicals, Chinese entrepreneurs tried to push their own fake Harry Potter novel back in 2002. They didn't do anything logical, either, like scour the Internet for fan fiction and then assemble it into a book. No, they took the entire verbatim text of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and changed many of the names to match those of Harry Potter characters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon

The "authors" added a new first chapter in which Harry is conveniently transformed into a Hobbit and a conclusion in which he is transformed back at the end of the book. I'm now imagining all sorts of stupid things I could do using this method. How does this sound?

Harry Potter and the Sandworms. Young Harry, Ron, and Hermione are magically transported to the planet Arrakis, the only place in the universe where a rare spice that heightens magical abilities can be found. Lord Voldemort seeks to kill Harry and take control of the spice that will allow him to fully regenerate his body. He launches an attack upon Arrakis in order to destroy the boy wizard, but in the ensuing confusion Harry escapes into the desert along with Ron and Hermione. There they meet the native people of Arrakis who consider them prophets because of their magical abilities and lead a rebellion to take back the planet from Voldemort's henchmen. After achieving their great victory they return to Diagon Alley by flue powder.

Clearly I'll be a bestselling author in no time!

Do Careless Magicians Really Go Crazy?

The original version of this article was posted on 9/26/2006 on the old Augoeides. It has been reworked with a new introduction and conclusion.

If you browse magical forums on a regular basis you will often come across somebody eager to point out that failed magicians go "crazy" in some fashion, and that they often wind up in mental institutions. This idea is mentioned in a number of introductory books on ritual magick and also happens to fit nicely with the ending of The Craft, the 1996 film about Wiccans who could kill people, cast illusions, levitate, and summon lightning storms. I found the movie to be fun back when I originally saw it but not very accurate on a number of points - including this one.

As I mentioned in my biography, I have a degree in psychology and in my course of study I reviewed a fair number of case histories of people who actually were institutionalized. I also have been involved in the magical community here in the Twin Cities for many years. I have yet to come across one person who wound up institutionalized because of something that went wrong in their magical practice. I have known practitioners who have run into problems from time to time, but usually the worst thing that happens is that they give up on the magical path. In my own experience, the effect has been the exact opposite - when I have run into problems over the years, my magical practices have helped to keep me sane.

This is not to say that there are no magical practitioners with mental illness of one sort or another. This should be expected - almost a third of the population of the United States has some sort of mental illness with depression (at around 24% of the population) topping the list. The question is whether or not magical practitioners have higher or lower rates than the population as a whole. If the rates are similar, there is unlikely to be any sort of causal relationship. In statistical research, correllation does not imply causality, but causality by definition implies a correllation. If the rates are lower, magick may actually help to mediate the effects of mental illness, and there are some similarities between ritual magick and psychotherapy.

In the 1980's, various religious conservative groups came out with wild claims about the effects of role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragon. They claimed that some large-sounding number of suicides were linked to gaming and therefore it was dangerous, especially for teens. The only problem was that these groups failed to understand their statistics. By taking the large-sounding number of suicides and dividing it by the number of people believed to be gamers, the resulting percentage was less than half the suicide rate for the general population. I don't know that this statistic means gaming can prevent suicide, but it does not constitute evidence for the claim that gaming is dangerous.

I've developed a suspicion over the years that claims of magick having the potential to cause mental illness might be based on a similar misunderstanding of anecdotal information. Schizophrenics often exhibit delusional beliefs and what psychologists call "magical thinking," but this term is not actually related to magical practices. It could better be called "superstitious thinking," the idea that completely unrelated things are somehow connected and influencing each other. In all the case histories of schizophrenics that I have read, none of them include any references to magical practices. Some paranoids claim to be attacked by spirits, but for others the enemies are aliens or government agents and it seems like whoever "they" happen to be the profile of the illness is generally the same. Bipolars in manic phase sometimes claim to have magical powers, but I have never seen a case where the claimed "powers" were based on any sort of disciplined spiritual practice or magical system.

In my opinion magick is more difficult than dangerous. Usually the worst thing that will happen if you cast a spell wrong is nothing, since we don't happen to live a Hollywood reality where one false word or gesture will unleash the power of a spell in some manner that involves most of your temple being engulfed in green fire or at least a bunch of windows breaking. Many people experiment with magick and leave the path when they fail to see results, but most of them wind up as psychologically intact as when they started out. I will say that the overlap between spiritual practices and mental illness could make for some fascinating research that will answer the question once and for all.

Whither "Syncretist Garbage?"

A version of this article was posted on 9/25/2006 on the previous version of this blog. It references two blog comments that were current at that time, one on the old Augoeides and one on another site. Despite these external references that are no longer current, it makes some good points outlining my basic approach to the Enochian magical system.

Enochian magick generates a lot of controversy among modern magicians. For example, in response to one of my original Enochian rituals, one of my OTO brothers wrote:

S.S. makes plain in this post an issue that I have been wrestling with for some time: What to do with the Golden Dawn system? For every minus that the G.D. has against it when paired with the original material, I find a plus. Just to give a couple of examples: I am very into the color scales and I love using the truncated pyramids.

Then, in a thread on the old Augoeides related to Patricia Shaeffer's Enochian Letter Essences, the following comment was made:

There should be enough available in Dee's material to create a system capable of querying itself and generating further revelations. Indeed, that should be the real test of its merit. Any external confabulations will, at best, produce syncretist garbage like the Golden Dawn's, or, at worst, waste time endlessly.

I work from the Scientific Illuminist perspective that contends magick should be a progressive science - that is, it should change and evolve as effective techniques are developed and ineffective ones are discarded. While I would have described myself as a Dee/Kelly purist many years ago, I have also more recently included more syncretic concepts into my Enochian work, including some ideas from the GD system.So when is syncretism a problem, and when is it a good thing that advances the discipline of magick? That's the big question, especially with the Enochian system.

Much of this controversy centers around the contrast between the original system dictated to John Dee and Edward Kelly and the elaborate system developed by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Wynn Wescott of the original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. It may very well be that many of the grimoires of the Medieval and Renaissance periods were originally transcribed using similar methods to those used by Dee and Kelly, but it is only the Enochian system for which we actually have the majority of the research notes and are able to refer back to them. The GD system was derived in part from those notes, but it also incorporated a number of elements from Hermetic Qabalah and as a result there are some sigificant differences between the two systems.

1. The GD system makes use of a pronunciation method for Angelic words that is different from the pronunciation notes made by Dee.
2. The GD system brings in a whole collection of Qabalistic attributions not mentioned in Dee's notes. This includes the color scales, truncated pyramids, and so forth.
3. The GD system treats the 91 parts of the Earth as "Governors," when they are places and not spirits in the original notes.
4. The GD system uses a version of Dee's Great Table based on a set of communications in 1584. A second version, more coherent version of the Great Table from a 1587 communication is used by some modern magicians, including myself.
5. The GD system attributes the Calls to the quadrants of the Great Table according to a system that is not found anywhere in the Dee and Kelly material.
6. The GD system does not emphasize the use of the temple furniture and other implements that were described to Dee and Kelly.

Unlike my OTO brother quoted above, I do not make use of the truncated pyramids in my own work, more because I've never really sat down and worked with them rather than because I think there is something wrong with them, but I do use the GD color scales extensively for talismans and lineal figures and those attributions work very well. I think that the GD magicians were correct in the basic premise that there is a Qabalastic structure to the Enochian system. However, in some cases I think problems arise because the Qabalistic model was favored over the original instructions in places where there are contradictions.

I have two basic rules for integrating syncretic elements into the Enochian system. First of all, the new material may add to the original system (1) as long as it does not contradict the original instructions, and (2) as long as it works. The first rule is fairly easy to apply, but the second requires solid research and experimentation. When applied to the list above, the first rule eliminates (1) and (3) outright. Many modern magicians are now moving away from GD pronunciation, so the use of the language itself is moving more in the direction of the original system. Some modern magicians have also commented on the misunderstanding of the relevant section in Dee's True and Faithful Relation that resulted in the GD confusing the Governors (12 zodiacal spirits attributed to the Tribes of Israel) and the 91 parts of the Earth.

(4), The controversy over which version of the Great Table to use, has solid arguments on both sides. Magicians who use the 1584 version note that it was received around the same time as other significant pieces of the system such as the Calls and that it was dictated to Dee by Kelly. The 1587 version was obtained by Kelly scrying on his own, after most of the elements of the Enochian system had been received. The 1587 version is the newest version of the table and is more coherent than the sometimes conflicting communications regarding the 1584 version. Also, from experience I know that sometimes dictation makes it more difficult to put together something as complex as a large grid of letters. At the same time it has been argued that the 1587 version could have been fabricated by Kelly, especially among those who favor the "Kelly was a con artist" narrative that characterize some biographies of Dee. I use the 1587 version because after much experimentation I found that it seemed to work the best of the various versions I tested, and this is a good example demonstrating that in the end, experimentation is the only way to resolve questions where the original material is contradictory.

(5), the order of the Calls, is a case where there is no contradiction between the two systems because no order was ever specified in the original material. My main problem with it is that when actually working around the Holy Table (that is, the altar table, not the grid of letters - Dee used "table" for both) using Dee's conjurations to the quadrants, the Calls mentioning directions become confused. I can go into more detail in another article, but briefly we know that each quadrant of the Great Table (the grid of letters) is attributed to a direction, and in theory a call that refers to the north should be recited when opening part of the Table attributed to the north and so forth. Some of the Calls mention directions, and these do not match when using the GD order. Also, the last four Calls (to me) clearly fall into the same group based on their content, but the GD system groups calls 3-6 together (which I agree with) and then subdivides the remaining 12 into four groups of three (which I disagree with) rather than three additional groups of four.

(6) turns out to resolve itself quickly and easily with experimentation. Enochian magick works without the furniture and implements, but the more you have the better it works. This has held up for me over the course of many years. I still don't have a perfect Enochian temple, but I do keep working on it whenever I can and one of these days it will be complete.

This leaves (2). There is one big problem that I have with GD attributions for the quadrants of the Great Table. The GD system attributes the four quadrants to the elements, which is logical and does seem to work. However, the mistake is that in the GD system the elemental attribution becomes the primary attribution of the quadrant, when in fact the original material names the direction as primary. BATAIVAH is the King of the East. However, when switching from the microcosmic "winds" model to the macrocosmic "zodiacal" model, BATAIVAH is treated as the King of Air and his quadrant is attributed to the west. I am convinced that this is incorrect - rather than BATAIVAH moving from east to west his attribution should shift from Air to Fire. Again, I have testing this out and in my own experience shifting BATAIVAH to fire seems to work better. It is important to note that the truncated pyramid system is still usable when shifting the elements rather than the names - the pyramids themselves just wind up attributed to different letters depending on whether you are working microcosmically or macrocosmically. This could also be an interesting avenue for research, and I may try it out one of these days.

Experimentation is crucial, and I will conclude with the comment that when you are experimenting with new magical techniques what you are looking for is an objectively measurable paranormal effect. Anyone can put together a ritual, perform it, and have it "feel good." The human mind is very malleable, and it's easy to convince yourself of just about anything if you put enough energy into it. An effective spell makes something happen that is relatively unlikely, or produces a real and lasting change in your perception of the world above and beyond what you could manage with self-hypnosis or NLP or any of the other "sleight of mind" systems that do not incorporate the concept of magical energy. The former is the best test because it can be measured directly - (1) did my objective occur, and if so (2) how unlikely was it? A more powerful spell can make a more unlikely thing happen - it's that simple. You will want to record your successes and failures over time with different techniques so that you can go back through your notes and determine which of the techniques you are testing produced the best statistical results. Whichever technique is the best is the one you should use, and remember that there is a lot of individual variation. You need to do your own work, though research done by others may point in a certain direction.

The "Whimsical Little Wizard" - What Gives?

I like to think I have as much of a sense of humor as the next person, and I try not to take myself and my magical practice too seriously. In fact, I don't have a lot of respect for practitioners who never crack a smile, wear all black, and go on and on about how people or either scared of them or should be. I think that if H.P. Lovecraft were around today he would be amazed at how close to the truth his stories were - working magick involving his Great Old Ones may not reduce the unwary to gibbering lunatics, but it sure makes them deadly dull.

That being said, the "whimsical little wizard" really bugs me.

First off - what the hell am I talking about? Here you go - check the upper right corner of the page.

http://www.light.org/index.php3?id_col=1220CL440491

When I was putting together my bio for the previous version of Augoeides I included a link to the Church of Light, an organization to which my great-grandmother belonged. I didn't bother to click on the link since it wasn't all that important in the overall scheme of things. It's a historical family note, not a group with which I'm affiliated in any way, and from the Google text it was clear that the link was for the right organization. If you go to the page, though, you will notice on the top right a "whimsical" cartoon wizard with the caption "our whimsical little Wizard will speed you into the next dimension."

ARGH!

How is it that this kind of thing gets associated with magical practices? I don't think I've ever met a member of the Church of Light and my great-grandmother died before I was born, but according to my father they were sincere and reasonable people back when she was still alive in the early sixties. I'm sure the cartoon was added with the best intentions. "Hey, people will think this is cute and they won't find us scary." That's all fine and good, but it also gives the impression that the group is a bunch of yahoos. There's no reason to put up a "scary" page, but some degree of scholarly decorum gives a better impression than childish, cutesy drawings.

The page, even as it is, would be substantially better without the cartoon. The Tree of Life diagram is nice, even though I can't really work with the Church of Light system very effectively because all of their Qabalistic associations are different than the Golden Dawn/Crowley model that I have worked with for many years. For all I know the "wizard" may help their recruiting of regular folks and the Church of Light may have the numbers to prove it. I can just about guarantee, though, that the sort of people who are likely to become highly skilled magical practitioners will be turned off by anything that makes magick look cute and silly. Real magick is anything but.

Improving Solve et Coagula

This article was originally posted on 11/7/2006 on the previous version of this blog. Since then, my magical working group has experimented with the revised formula and obtained some interesting results. Those will be summarized at the end of the article.

Reading through Enochian Initiation I was struck by some of the similarities between Frater W.I.T.'s experiences and the experiences of my own ritual group when we attempted a series of elemental invocations based on the solve et coagula formula used by most modern magical orders. The idea is for the most part simple and logical - it consists of a series of initiations based on the arrangement of the four classical elements and adds the element of Spirit at the end of the cycle to bring the other four elements back together and integrate the experience. Frater W.I.T. found that Earth and Air were relatively easy, but going from Air to Water was much more difficult. This is what we noticed as well - Earth and Air went quickly, everyone had little trouble showing up and making time for the related practices, and nobody's life exploded. I was laid off from my job at the time toward the end of Air, but as I had been considering quitting for many months and being laid off instead gave me a sizeable severance check, I can't really consider that much of a disaster. Water, however, was a different story. A number of people in the group ran into various personal problems and the series dragged out as we wound up having to reschedule a number of the workings. We pushed on and finally finished Water, Fire, and Spirit but it took us a lot longer than we originally expected and the end of the series was not nearly as smooth as the beginning.

After much deliberation, I think the problem may be with the solve et coagula formula itself, which requires a rethinking of one of the most basic initiatory structures of the Western Esoteric Tradition.

Solve et Coagula essentially means "dissolution and unification." Solve is the root of the English dissolve and Coagula that of coagulate. It is a formula that is drawn from European alchemy that describes the process by which substances are distilled into their component parts, each individual portion is then purified, and finally the components are recombined to create a synthesis of the purified elements. In initiatory work, time is spent working with each of the elements on its own and once this is complete Spirit is invoked to bind the elements back together. The most common pattern is the inverse of YHVH - Earth, then Air, then Water, then Fire - although some orders work the pattern in order of density - Earth, then Water, then Air, then Fire.

One of the biggest difficulties with this pattern is the problem of rushing ahead. As realization expands with the invocation of the "higher" elements, problems that remain in the "lower" elements can be magnified and manifest in pathological ways. In theory, if one were to completely master Earth once could move on to Air without encountering any problems. The difficulty there is that complete mastery of an element can take a lifetime, and it is difficult to know when to move on. A lot of magical and pagan folks have ongoing trouble with Earth - I have certainly met quite a few of them who have problems holding down jobs and managing finances. Frater W.I.T. was guided by the Enochian Angels who told him when it was time to move on, which is an effective way to work so long as the communications you are receiving are accurate. It is hard to implement this in a group setting, though, in which a standard initiatory pattern is desirable.

So what to do? I read a fair amount of Ken Wilber, who synthesizes a lot of psychological research related to personality development and connects it with stages of spiritual development. In Integral Psychology Wilber outlines how the personality develops by integrating new stages of awareness in a series of concentric rings, each of which includes all previous stages of development. This is different than the "great chain of being" model exemplified by the "perennial philosophy" in Western Esotericism in that rather than metaphorically climbing a ladder in which the steps are separate states that are predicated upon but not inclusive of the previous steps, in that Wilber's model is much more holistic. Each new step includes the whole of personality development in addition to itself, and the result is a more integrated (or in Wilber's terminology, "integral") concept of psychological development.

When we worked with our elemental series each element was invoked for six weeks. For the first week we invoked the element as whole, and then during the next four the parts of the element would be invoked individually (for example, Earth of Earth, then Air of Earth, then Water of Earth, then Fire of Earth), and on the last week we would invoke the Spirit part to bind the other four parts together. The daily practice corresponding to this included our regular rituals (Lesser Pentagram/Lesser Hexagram or Star Ruby/Star Sapphire, and some sort of general invocatory practice like the Middle Pillar or Animadversion to the Aeon) along with the Greater Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram for the element we were working with during each six week period. This structure was based on solve et coagula and the idea was to completely immerse ourselves in each element as we worked through the series. These rites actually seemed very effective and a number of people in the group had interesting realizations, but they were not completely successful in that various problems arose in peoples' personal lives that to some extend derailed the practice.

Wilber's model suggests a new way to invoke the elements. Rather than working with Earth, then switching to Air, then switching to Water, then switching to Fire, and then finally invoking Spirit, the magician could begin with Earth and then add the subsequent elements in order as they are invoked in a series of initiatory rites. The specific daily practice for this would consist of beginning with the Greater Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram for Earth at the beginning of the series, but keeping the Invoking Pentagram of Earth in the north (its proper microcosmic direction) when moving on to Air. Air then stays in the east along with Earth in the north when the magician moves on to water, and finally with the addition of Fire the magician would be tracing the pentagrams of all four elements to the proper microcosmic directions. This maintains the foundation established at the level of each element, which could at least in theory act to stabilize the realization more effectively than invoking each element on its own. For the period invoking Spirit, something like Liber V vel Reguli would be ideal, especially since it uses the inverse pentagram that represents spirit condensing into matter.

The elemental series could also be integrated with a practice like Liber Resh vel Helios in which the invoking pentagrams and Golden Dawn grade signs used in the Greater Ritual of the Pentagram could represent "the sign of his grade" given prior to the adoration. As with the pentagram ritual, pentagrams could be added as the series moves along. The magician would start by making the Earth pentagram and sign to all four directions, then keep making the Earth pentagram to the north but move on to making the Air pentagram to the the other three directions and so forth.

So here's what the whole thing would look like following the standard inverse YHVH formula.

Basic Daily Practice

Star Ruby
Star Sapphire
Animadversion to the Aeon
Liber Resh

The first three rituals should be done once per day, more often if desired and time permits. Liber Resh should be done throughout the day. Remember that if Daylight Savings Time is in effect, noon and midnight are actually more like 1 PM and 1 AM.

First Six Weeks: Earth

Make the Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Earth to all four directions when performing Liber Resh.Use the Greater Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram for Earth. This follows the Star Sapphire and precedes the Animadversion to the Aeon.

Next Six Weeks: Air

For Resh, make the Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Earth for midnight, Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Air for morning, noon, and evening.For the Greater Pentagram, make the Invoking Pentagram of Earth in the north and the Invoking Pentagram of Air to the other three directions.

Next Six Weeks: Water

For Resh, make the Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Earth for midnight, the Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Air for morning, and the invoking Pentagram and Sign of Water for noon and evening.For the Greater Pentagram, make the Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Earth in the north, the Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Air in the east, and the Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Water to the south and west.

Next Six Weeks: Fire

For Resh, make the Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Earth for midnight, the Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Air for morning, the invoking Pentagram and Sign of Water for evening, and the Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Fire for noon.For the Greater Pentagram, make the Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Earth in the north, the Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Air in the east, and the Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Water to the west, and the Invoking Pentagram and Sign of Fire to the South.

Next Six Weeks: Spirit

Resh is same as Fire.The Greater Ritual of the Pentagram and Animadversion to the Aeon are replaced by Liber Reguli, which includes the Animadversion.

This can then serve as ongoing daily practice once the elemental series is complete. Some sort of dramatic initiatory ritual could be substituted for the first week of each element, or added so that the series goes from 36 to 42 weeks. As a bonus, you could add something like Liber Samekh for the rest of the year and attempt the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel for the last ten weeks.

Update - December 2007: This article was written about 13 months ago. In the meantime, my magical working group decided to go forward with a second elemental series of invocations inspired by this pattern. We also incorporated some ideas from Mark Stavish, who works with the elements by density order rather than inverse YHVH. This changes the sequence so that Air and Water are switched, making the order Earth -> Water -> Air -> Fire -> Spirit. We repeated the original series, but using Stavish's order along with practices similar to those outlined above, though not quite as extensive. We used the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram, a modified version of the Lesser Ritual of the Hexagram, and a Golden Dawn-inspired ritual for invoking the elements, since not everyone in the group is as familiar with Crowley's rituals as I am.

The results were very different from the first set of invocations. There were relatively few crises while we were actually working the series and unlike the first time around we didn't reach a point where getting the rituals done became much more difficult. This could be attributed to a number of factors, but I am of the opinion that the revised practices were the key. I think that using the Stavish order was helpful as well in that the density-based order creates a better and more stable foundation for ongoing magical work, but in the end I think problems were magnified by isolating the elements in the first set of rituals and this led to all sorts of difficulties. Furthermore, for whatever reason none of these problems really resolved themselves during the first series, but seemed to only exist to create static.

During the second series some problems did arise, but it seemed as if those problems held off their full intensity until the series was concluded and the situations those problems produced led to real resolutions. On the basis of these observations, I am now working with the tenative working hypothesis that solve et coagula really does require a more effective replacement.