More Thoughts on the Greater Ritual of the Hexagram

For a long time I have been working with the Heavens of Assiah (Liber 777, column VI.) as the "godnames" for the Greater Ritual of the Hexagram when working with practical magick. The original idea was that I should be tuning the magical field to the proper force in the material world (Assiah) in order to manifest material change, and this idea has worked very well, especially in conjuction with the operant field model. The godname itself is more properly attuned to Atziluth, the archetypal world, and therefore I would use the godname for more mystical workings intended to orient my consciousness higher up on the Tree of Life. Again, this seemed to work well.

In Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae, Aleister Crowley's instruction is that the godname should always be used with the Greater Ritual of the Hexagram. He mentions nothing about using the Heavens of Assiah and neither does any other author, though Crowley is not very clear on what the Heavens of Assiah are actually used for in any of his writings that I have come across. Having experimented with using the godname in practical rituals for many years, I feel pretty confident that the Heavens of Assiah do indeed seem to work better for me, at least as far as objectively measurable practical workings go. Incidentally, if anyone else has experimented with this variation of the form I would be interested in hearing about any results that you would be willing to share.

Last night I had an interesting realization about the Greater Hexagram during my regular magical practices - treat the ritual like a pyramid rather than like a flat plane. Trace the hexagrams to the quarters while vibrating the Heaven of Assiah name, and then imagine a pyramid with the hexagrams at the four corners. Point to the top of the pyramid, vibrate the godname, and conclude with the later Golden Dawn "Let the divine light descend!" which I have always liked. This tunes the space as a pyramid with the base in Assiah and the point in Atziluth. Has anyone else tried this? It feels more complete than either the Heavens of Assiah or godname version alone.

On the drive into work today I also had a thought that this structure could be inverted. You would trace the hexagrams to the four quarters using the godname, then imagine an upside-down pyramid with the hexagrams at the corners. Point to the downward tip and vibrate the Heaven of Assiah name - but "Let the divine light descend" wouldn't really be appropriate. The next thing I think I'm going to try is using "Let the lightning flash descend!" for the "upright" version and "Let the serpent of wisdom ascend!" for the "inverted" version. I haven't tried that yet, though, so I have no idea how well it will work.

Has anybody else out there played around with the Greater Hexagram? What results have you gotten with different variations?

Pardons for British Witches

A political movement in Scotland is attempting to secure pardons for everyone convicted under British witchcraft laws that were repealed in the 1950's. All I can say is it's about time! Witchcraft laws are and were just plain silly, and were often used to prosecute anyone who was deemed undesirable in their community. Most of these people did no magick at all and were coerced into giving confessions under torture if they confessed at all.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080228/od_afp/britainscotlandlawshistorywitchcraftoffbeat_080228171153

An interesting relatively recent case that is being addressed by the pardon movement is that of Helen Duncan, who was convicted in 1944. She was a medium who appears to have been genuine enough that she was able to obtain information about the sinking of a British battleship that the government was covering up in order to preserve troop morale during World War II. Even though genuine spiritual powers seem to have been involved in the case, the real reason for her conviction was still political - she uncovered something that the government didn't want anyone to know.

The repeal of Britain's witchcraft laws set the stage for the arrival of modern Wicca, which was first publicized by Gerald Gardner in 1954.

Forthcoming Articles

I will soon be receiving the archives from my old Scoop site, so that means more articles will be republished here soon. I hope to have most of the substantive pieces available on this site so that they don't just disappear into the ether, and hopefully they will prove fruitful for further discussion. Keep watching this space for updates.

A New Wand

One of the first magical tools I ever purchased was a wand. I bought it at the Renaissance Festival all the way back in 1989 and have used it ever since. It is primarily made from glass and pewter with a large quartz crystal on the tip and has served me very well over the years. The one problem with it is that it is relatively fragile and I have had to repair it a number of times. Even though it is a very beautiful piece of work, I realized within a couple of years that it was mostly constructed as a decorative piece rather than as a magical tool that would hold up well to regular use.

I have been in the market for a new wand for the last couple years, but good wands are surprisingly hard to find. The most prominent local company here in the Twin Cities, Oliver's Wands (http://www.oliverswands.com/), managed to turn me off big time at a Pagan festival a few years back despite the quality of their workmanship. Their display transparently catered to the Harry Potter fan crowd by advertising wands with "core enchantments" of various mythological items and substances. These wands had obviously not been cored in any way which struck me as fundamentally dishonest, and furthermore their website confirms their attitude toward using their wands as ritual tools (http://www.oliverswands.com/about.htm). To their way of thinking, their wands are simply Harry Potter toys.

I was looking for a magical tool, not a toy for my kid, and even if I were I'm not about to tell my daughter that her wand has a "phoenix feather" at the core when it obviously does not. I think lying to kids is really lame, and "feeding their imagination" is not a good enough reason to do it. Incidentally, there is such a thing as a phoenix. It's a bird from South America, and while it doesn't burst into flames or anything like that I still think a wand cored with a genuine phoenix tail feather would be pretty cool, especially if I were a Wiccan who associated the wand with the element of Air. But I digress.

In addition to my distaste for the cheesy marketing, one of the things I was specifically looking for was a wand with a crystal in the tip and Oliver's doesn't make those - after all, wands in the Harry Potter universe are all just made of wood. I imagined what I would ideally want and came up with a basic design. The wood should in some way be associated with the will (since I associate the wand with Fire according to Aleister Crowley's attributions), a crystal point should be at the tip, and a tumbled crystal should be at the base. According to the various theories regarding chi, orgone, or whatever you want to call spiritual energy, a round stone is receptive while a pointed stone projects energy in the direction of the point.

During the course of my research I identified the wood that I wanted - purpleheart, also called amaranth, a rare wood from South America. In Liber 777 amaranth is attributed to the sphere of Chockmah and by extension the degree of Magus, and while Crowley was almost certainly thinking of the European amaranth flower when he wrote up his correspondences, amaranth wood is so-called because its leaves look nearly identical to those of the European plant. Morphology is very important in magick, since similar things are connected. Also, the wood is very hard and dense with a deep reddish-purple hue resembling the deep red of a star ruby, one of the stones associated with Chockmah. Based on these characteristics I think a good case can be made that purpleheart is in fact associated with this sphere despite it coming from a different botanical family than European amaranth.

I then turned my attention to the crystals. One of the realizations that I had while meditating upon this was that the crystals should be related to the True Will of the magician and will be different for each person. Crowley writes that when the grade of Magister Templi is reached a "star is cast forth" into one of the spheres on the Tree of Life below the Abyss and it is in this sphere that the True Will of the magician resides. While I'm not about to claim the grade of Magister Templi, I'm of the opinion that the basic nature of one's True Will is not that difficult to figure out. The easiest way to tell is by looking at the things you naturally do well. It was revealed to me during one of my magical workings that mine lies in the sphere of Mercury, which should have been obvious to me long before. I write, I design rituals, I program computers, and I do magick. What could be more Mercurial than that?

Consulting Liber 777 I found that the stone associated with the sphere of Mercury, Hod, is opal, and the stones associated with the path of Mercury, Beth, are the opal and agate. It further occurred to me that a stone associated with the path should be placed at the tip (projective) and a stone associated with the sphere should be placed at the base (receptive). I could have used opal for both, but opal tips are pretty difficult to find so I decided to go with a carnelian (red agate) point for the tip. I had my design, but I needed to figure out where to get it.

Around the same time I decided to try and find a wand as a gift for a friend. We had determined that her True Will was in the sphere of Jupiter, which meant that the best stone for both the tip and the base was amethyst. What I needed was a purpleheart wand with an amethyst point and the tip and a tumbled amethyst at the base, but I was unable to find anyone who could make such a wand. I headed off to the National OTO convention thinking in the back of my mind that maybe I could find a wandmaker there who could do some sort of a custom job. What I found in the vendor room there was the exact wand that I had envisioned - purpleheart, tumbled amethyst base, amethyst point tip. I purchased it and it made a wonderful gift.

I recently wrote to the wandmaker and commissioned my own wand with the opal base and carnelian tip, and received it this last weekend. It is a lovely piece of work and I highly recommend the maker - Haunted Woodcrafts in Rochester, New Hampshire (http://www.hauntedwoodcrafts.com/). I look forward to many years of ritual use with this wonderful implement, and I know where to go if I ever need another wand as a gift or as a tool for some specific working.

Spelling "Magick" with a K

I first issued this call to the online world on 6/25/2007. It bears repeating, especially with some of the results that have been showing up in the Newsreel under "Magick."

There has been a lot of discussion in the esoteric community over Aleister Crowley's spelling of "Magick" with a K. Some find reverting to the Elizabethan spelling of the word pretentious, while others contend that it draws a useful distinction between the spiritual arts and sleight-of-hand. As a Thelemite and student of Crowley's work I prefer the K spelling, but it was not until I started compiling articles for my blog that I discovered how useful the trailing K really is.

Two words: Google News.

Try it sometime. Go to Google News and do a search for "magic." These days, the Elizabethan spelling is not so much about distinguishing "the Science of the Magi from its counterfeits" but about distinguishing it from sports reporting, book and movie reviews, and bad metaphors. A search for "magick" yields a more relevant result set. The only real wrinkle there is the handful of musicians who use "magick" in their album titles, but to be fair most of them are interested in Crowley and their music could be relevant in for some searches.

I hereby issue a call to bloggers and journalists everywhere - spell "Magick" with a K when you're talking about occultism, even if you think it's pretentious. Web searchers, myself included, will thank you.

AOIVEAE - An Enochian Pentagram Ritual (V3)

This ritual has been on the Internet for awhile at my old website and has been revised and modified a number of times. It is essentially an Enochian version of the Golden Dawn Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram. This is the third finished version of the ritual.

A number of writers have come up with Enochian pentagram rituals of this sort and they all share certain similarities. It is pretty clear that the most logical names to use when tracing the pentagrams are the threefold names of God from Dee and Kelley's Great Table (ORO IBAH AOZPI, MPH ARSL GAIOL, OIP TEAA PDOCE, and MOR DIAL HCTGA) and the most logical equivalents to the Archangels are the Kings of the four directions (BATAIVAH, RAAGIOSL, EDLPRNAA, and ICZHIHAL).

Beyond that, though, there are a number of differences between my version of the ritual and the other versions that are available.

1. Instead of trying to reproduce the Qabalistic Cross I instead begin and end my version of the ritual by tracing the figure of the pentagram across my body accompanied by names from the Tablet of Union. To me this embodies the statement in the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram "About me flames the Pentagram." The ritual begins with the Invoking Pentagram of Active Spirit and ends with the Invoking Pentagram of Passive Spirit, setting up the two basic polarities of the suble body.
2. I use the directional arrangement from the Reformed Great Table of 1587. There is some discussion among magicians regarding which version of the Great Table is the "best" but I have found that I get better magical results with the Reformed version. It's good to test this out, because your experience may vary.
3. For this version I have finally given up on the idea of associating specific elements with each direction. Most authors do this using the Golden Dawn arrangement, with which I have some issues. In fact, the original Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram uses the Pentagram of Earth for all four quarters. I have done the same here.
4. There is no English in my ritual - the entire text is written in the Angelic language, which I believe makes it more effective. It works even better if you do it while wearing the Enochian PELE ring.
5. My final statement is completely different from the Golden Dawn version. It is a Thelemic allusion to the union of Nuit and Hadit.

Here is the full ritual text.

1. Stand in the center of your temple facing east. If possible, wear the Enochian PELE ring. If you wish to use a magical weapon, use the banishing dagger for the banishing form and the invoking wand for the invoking form. Your Air Dagger and Fire Wand can double as these, but I prefer to use dedicated tools.
2. With your finger or magical weapon, trace from your left hip to your right shoulder while vibrating NANTA (Earth), from your right shoulder to left shoulder while vibrating HCOMA (Water), from your left shoulder to right hip while vibrating EXARP (Air), from your right hip to your forehead while vibrating BITOM (Fire), and finally from your forehead back to your left hip while vibrating EHNB (Spirit). Then clasp your hands over your heart and vibrate IAIDA ("The Highest"). Visualize the pentagram traced over your body in bright electric lavender.
3. In the east, trace the Banishing Pentagram of Earth while vibrating ORO IBAH AOZPI. The pentagrams should be visualized as formed from burning flames and as vividly as possible.
4. Turn to the north. In the north, trace the Banishing Pentagram of Earth while vibrating MOR DIAL HCTGA.
5. Turn to the west. In the west, trace the Banishing Pentagram of Earth while vibrating OIP TEAA PDOCE.
6. Turn to the south. In the south, trace the Banishing Pentagram of Earth while vibrating MPH ARSL GAIOL.
7. Turn back to the east. Extend your arms to form a cross and vibrate:
   
   RAAS I BATAIVAH ("In the East is BATAIVAH"),
   SOBOLN I EDLPRNAA ("In the West is EDLPRNAA"),
   BABAGE I RAAGIOSL ("In the South is RAAGIOSL"),
   LUCAL I ICZHIHAL ("In the North is ICZHIHAL").
   
   Make one full spin counter-clockwise while vibrating MICMA AO COMSELH AOIVEAE ("Behold the Circle of Stars"), then clasp your hands over your heart while vibrating OD OL, MALPRG, NOTHOA ("And I, Through-Thrusting Fire, in the Midst.").
8. With your finger or magical weapon, trace from your right hip to your left shoulder while vibrating EHNB, from your left shoulder to your right shoulder while vibrating BITOM, from your right shoulder to left hip while vibrating EXARP, from your left hip to your forehead while vibrating HCOMA, and finally from your forehead back to your right hip while vibrating NANTA. Then clasp your hands over your heart and vibrate IAIDA. Visualize the pentagram traced over your body in dark, deep purple.

This is the banishing form of the ritual. The invoking form is the same except that the pentagrams should be the Invoking Pentagram of Earth and they should be traced to the quarters in clockwise order. The directional names remain the same. Also, the spin should be clockwise to align with your initial clockwise rotation.

A number of variations on this ritual are possible. It can be adapted to fit the Golden Dawn directional arrangement without too much difficulty - you swap the names associated with the west and south, so that you vibrate OIP TEAA PDOCE in the south and MPH ARSL GAIOL in the west, and switch RAAGIOSL and EDLPRNAA when calling the Kings. I like to trace the pentagrams as I vibrate the associated name, but you could also visualize the pentagrams on your forehead and "fling" them to the quarters along with the vibrations as in Aleister Crowley's Star Ruby.

An Enochian Greater Ritual of the Heptagram

Here's a chance to engage in some cutting-edge magical research. Over the years my magical working group has done some work with John Dee and Edward Kelley's Enochian system. In one of those operations we received names in the Angelic language for the five classical planets that are not named in Dee and Kelley's Calls. The two that are named are the Sun (ROR) and the Moon (GRAA). I did the scrying for this session, and while I am not normally all that great a scryer this particular operation seemed to go smoothly. When I asked the spirit for the names of the planets I was immediately struck by the image that the first letter of each planet's name corresponded with the sound of the appropriate Hebrew letter according to the Golden Dawn arrangement. Prior to that, I had never noticed that ROR begins with the same sound as Resh, the Hebrew letter corresponding to the Sun, and that GRAA begins with the same sound as Gimel, the letter corresponding to the Moon.

Here are all seven classical planet names, including the five that we received.

1. Venus - DMUZ
2. Sun - ROR
3. Mars - PAROTH
4. Jupiter - KYLMA
5. Mercury - BANRO
6. Saturn - TUR
7. Moon - GRAA

Knowing these names makes it possible to construct a ritual akin to the Golden Dawn Greater Ritual of the Hexagram for the Enochian system. Rather than using the figure of the hexagram, the figure of the heptagram seems more appropriate to Enochian work given the significance of the number seven throughout the system. The seven Ensigns of Creation, one for each planet, are place on the Holy Table in the shape of a heptagram. For the purposes of this ritual, I have associated the seven planets with the points of the heptagram in the order of the seven Ensigns. This is the order in which the names appear on the list above, beginning with the top point of the heptagram and moving clockwise. As with the Golden Dawn Greater Ritual of the Hexagram, to invoke a planet you start at the appropriate point and trace clockwise, while to banish a planet you trace counter-clockwise instead.

Since this ritual follows the Golden Dawn structure, the last word that is required is some Angelic equivalent of ARARITA. This is a Notariquon or acronym for "One is his beginning; one is his individuality; his permutation is one” and in addition is a formula of seven letters, also alluding to the planets. As it turns out, the Calls contain a pretty good match: GE-IAD-I-L, meaning "Our Lord and Master is All One." Not only is the meaning very similar, it also consists of seven Angelic letters. I pronounce this phrase in the Calls as geh-ee-AHD EE LAH, though it could also be run together as geh-ee-ahd-EEL, which has four syllables like ARARITA. I plan on starting my testing of the ritual using the standard pronunciation, since in some ways five syllables is really more appropriate than four. As I see it, this ritual conjoins the planetary and elemental spheres, and five represents the pentagram, whereas four represents the cross of the elements and could be said to exclude Spirit.

For visualization of lineal figures, I use the Golden Dawn flashing color method. I visualize the lineal figure itself in the color associated with the planet and then visualize the figure in the center appearing in its compliment. This helps to make the visualization more intense and is also easy to practice - just build the figures you will be tracing out of construction paper or paint them onto a piece of paper in the proper colors and meditate on them. The contrast makes for a strong and lasting memory impression.

The proper colors depend on whether you are working along active or receptive lines. The Golden Dawn system actually has four color scales attributed to the four Qabalistic worlds, called the King, Queen, Prince, and Princess scales. The four worlds correspond to the four letters of YHVH and represnt the realms through which potentiality manifests as physical reality. For normal use, you should only need the King and Queen scales. The former is used when working active magick, whereas the latter is used when working receptive magick. In terms of the Tree of Life, paths correspond to the King scale whereas spheres correspond to the Queen scale. The paths represent magical powers of various sorts, whereas the spheres represent mystical realizations. You can consult column XLV: Magical Powers [Western Mysticism] of Liber 777 for a complete list.

The colors for the planets are as follows:

Venus - King scale emerald green, compliment scarlet. Queen scale green, compliment red.
Sun - King scale orange, compliment blue. Queen scale yellow, compliment purple.
Mars - King scale scarlet, compliment emerald green. Queen scale red, compliment green.
Jupiter - King scale violet, compliment yellow. Queen scale blue, compliment orange.
Mercury - King scale yellow, compliment purple. Queen scale orange, compliment blue.
Saturn - King scale indigo, compliment pale yellow. Queen scale black, compliment white.
Moon - King scale blue, compliment orange. Queen scale violet, compliment yellow.

So this gives the basic structure of the ritual. The heptagrams are traced to the four quarters just like Golden Dawn hexagrams - you start at the point with which you are working and trace clockwise to invoke and counter-clockwise to banish. You start in the east and trace the appropriate heptagram to each direction moving clockwise. The heptagram should be traced with a single point up, just like the Ensigns are arranged on the Holy Table. You vibrate GE-IAD-I-L when tracing the figure in the color of the planet and vibrate the planet name while tracing the astrological symbol of the planet in the center in the flashing color.

This ritual has not been tested yet, but my hypothesis is that it should make Enochian planetary workings more effective. This is because it uses the Angelic language and not the "intermediary" language of Hebrew. It is not that Hebrew works poorly with the Enochian system - actually in my experience it is the only language besides Angelic itself that works well and it is found in John Dee's diaries. Notably, Dee and Edward Kelly contacted the traditional four Archangels and addressed them by their Hebrew names. As with any magical working posted to this site, I invite you to try it out and post your results. This ritual should follow the Golden Dawn "Lesser" rituals of the Pentagram and Hexagram or their equivalent.

Could Magick Protect Memory?

Recent brain imaging studies have found that memory and imagination are closely linked. The hippocampus, a small structure in the limbic cortex, has long been recognized as a key area of the brain for forming new memories and it now appears that it is equally instrumental in imagining future events. Another recent study compared the ability of young versus old adults in a simple test that involved either remembering a past episode or imagining a future event based on a cue word. Younger people were able to both imagine and remember more detailed accounts in terms of both the images themselves and related emotional content.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22784217/

As the Boomer generation ages the popularity of puzzles and brain teasers has increased, based on studies that show using the brain's ability to work through problems can delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. If memory and imagination are indeed linked, magick that involves the visualization of lineal figures and detailed godforms might have a similar effect. It is even possible that complex visualizations could do a better job of strengthening memory than Suduko.

While there are too few elderly ritual magicians for us to get much of a sample size, I've never heard of a practitioner who was later struck with Alzheimer's disease, even at advanced age. Another tradition that is much larger and also uses complex visualization is Tibetan Buddhism, and I can also say that in my studies I haven't come across any well-known Tibetan lamas who suffered from dementia in old age. Given how common Alzheimer's is I'm sure there have been some, but it certainly seems as though the incidence is significantly reduced compared to the general population.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22421976/

This could make for some interesting future research.