The Circle and Sigils

In responding to a question about the spells I have posted here I realized that I omitted a couple of points regarding the performance of those and other similar magical workings. In Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae Aleister Crowley writes the following:

1. The student must FIRST obtain a thorough knowledge of "Book 777", especially of columns i., ii., iii., v., vi., vii., ix., xi., xii., xiv., xv., xvi., xvii., xviii., xix., xxxiv., xxxv., xxxviii., xxxix., xl., xli., xlii., xlv., liv., lv., lix., lx., lxi., lxiii., lxx., lxxv., lxxvii., lxviii., lxxix., lxxx., lxxxi., lxxxiii., xcvii., xcviii., xcix., c., ci., cxvii., cxviii., cxxxvii., cxxxviii., cxxxix., clxxv., clxxvi., clxxvii., clxxxii.

When these are committed to memory, he will begin to understand the nature of these correspondences. ("See" Illustrations "The Temple of Solomon the King" in this number. Cross references are given.)

2. If we take an example, the use of the table will become clear. Let us suppose that you wish to obtain knowledge of some obscure science. In column xlv., line 12, you will find "Knowledge of Sciences."

By now looking up line 12 in the other columns, you will find that the Planet corresponding is Mercury, its number eight, its lineal figures the octagon and octagram. The God who rules that planet Thoth, or in Hebrew symbolism Tetragrammaton Adonai and Elohim Tzabaoth, its Archangel Raphael, its Choir of Angels Beni Elohim, its Intelligence Tiriel, its Spirit Taphtatharath, its colours Orange (for Mercury is the Sphere of the Sephira Hod, 8), Yellow, Purple, Grey, and Indigo rayed with Violet; its Magical Weapon the Wand or Caduceus, its Perfumes Mastic and others, its sacred plants Vervain and others, its jewel the Opal or Agate; its sacred animal the Snake, &c., &c.

3. You would then prepare your Place of Working accordingly. In an orange circle you would draw an eight-pointed star of yellow, at whose points you would place eight lamps. The Sigil of the Spirit (which is to be found in Cornelius Agrippa and other books) you would draw in the four colours with such other devices as your experience may suggest.

That sounds like a lot, but it's actually simpler than it at first appears. The study of Liber 777 is important for two reasons. First of all, when performing a ritual you want the correspondences to immediately leap to mind, which is impossible when simply working off a script. While it is possible to work magick successfully from a text, the better you know the symbols and objects corresponding to your operation the better your magical results will be. Second of all, knowledge of the correspondences will enable you to make your own personal adjustments to the scripts as they are written here. You can add appropriate magical weapons, incenses, essential oils, stones, metals, and so forth based on the correspondences and in many cases this will help to amplify the effect.

I don't work with physical circles very much any more since I have a permanent temple setup with altars at the quarters and so forth, but there was a time when I did. I often get questions about the best way to set one up, especially on a temporary basis. My personal favorite method is crepe paper. You can get rolls of it inexpensively in many different colors and it can be taped to the floor or a rug to in the appropriate shape. Traditionally a magick circle is nine feet in diameter if you have the space. Once you've laid out the circle, you can make the appropriate number of points around it evenly and set down the proper lineal figure. At each of the points of the figure you would then place candles, preferably encased in glass like seven-day candles. You don't want to inadvertently knock one over and set the crepe paper on fire - one downside of using it is that it burns really easily. You can use plain white candles or candles that are an appropriate color to the operation. For my rituals posted here, this would be the color of lineal figure, which should match the color of the hexagrams traced in the Greater Ritual of the Hexagram.

The Sigils from Agrippa can be found here. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see the Table, Seal or Character, and the Sigils of the Intelligence and Spirit of each planet. The Table is used to derive the Sigils but it is not generally traced on a talisman or ritual implement. The Seal and Sigils, however, should be. The Seal corresponds to the supernals on the Tree of Life, the Qabalistic worlds of Atziluth and Briah. It should be drawn in the King and Queen Scale colors. The Sigil of the Intelligence corresponds to the Qabalistic world of Yetzirah and should be drawn in the Prince (or Emperor in 777) Scale color. The Sigil of the Spirit corresponds to the Qabalistic world of Assiah and should be drawn in the Princess (or Empress in 777) Scale color. There are a few oddities, such as Sigils for the "Intelligence of Intelligences" for the Moon and Venus and the "Spirit of Spirits" for the Moon. As far as color goes, a spirit is a spirit and an intelligence is an intelligence, whether or not it is plural.

Generally speaking, the symbols should be drawn together on one piece of paper or parchment that will then serve as a talisman linked to the operation. For certain kinds of magical work, such as healing spells, you might want to draw the Sigils on your own body in the appropriate colors if you are healing yourself or on the body of the person you are trying to heal. In such a circumstance it is perfectly fine to use some sort of water-soluable marker for this since the Sigils only need to be present while you are performing the ritual. It you decide to use a paper talisman for such a ritual, though, carry it around with you after the ritual to maintain a contagion link to the spell or have the target of the operation do the same if the ritual was worked for someone other than yourself.

Fortune-Telling Ban Lifted in Vermont

St Johnsbury, a town in Vermont, has lifted a ban on fortune-telling and various other spiritual practices. The ban was enacted in 1966 and was quite comprehensive.

It had left little to chance, banning practitioners from telling fortunes or attempting 'to reveal future events in the life of another or by means of occult or psychic powers, faculties or forces, clairvoyance, psychometry, spirit-mediumship, prophecy, astrology, palmistry, necromancy, cards, talismans, charms, potions, magnetism or magnetized articles or substances, oriental mysteries or magic of any kind or nature; to undertake or pretend to find or restore lost or stolen money or property, gold or silver or other ore or metal or natural product; or to undertake or pretend to unite, or reunite or to find lovers, husbands, wives, lost relatives or friends.'

I'm of the opinion that laws like this are just plain silly and show that the legislature at the time had nothing better to do. Fraudulent mediums who claim to be able to predict the future for a fee and then fail to do so can be prosecuted under existing fraud statutes, and going after con artists is the only justifiable rationale for a law like this. I can't imagine anyone seriously arguing that tarot card readers are a threat to their community.

It's unclear how this law got on the books in the first place. Maybe somebody needs to do a reading to find out.

Why I Leave Skeptics Alone

There are quite a few magical practitioners who have it in for the "Skeptic Movement" founded by James Randi and centered around The Skeptical Inquirer magazine. I'm not one of them. While I do practice magick and know from personal experience that it works, I'm not fully convinced that proving this in an irrefutable scientific way is such a good idea. Furthermore, it is completely reasonable to expect there to be repeatable and consistant empirical evidence for any extraordinary phenomenon that we hope to subject to scientific scrutiny.

Skeptics actually perform two very valuable functions. First of all, they target confidence artists who trade on peoples' belief in the paranormal. Most people who make a living doing magick for others are fakes, plain and simple. Magick is actually a statistical effect, not a guarantee, and anyone who claims that their spells work all the time is lying - especially if they are asking for exhorbitant sums of money. Debunking these people is very helpful to society in general simply because money spent on their nonexistant services could be better spent by the desperate people these tricksters target and exploit.

The second function they perform is to undermine widespread belief in paranormal powers. Believe it or not, I consider this a very good thing, even as a magical practitioner. While I don't appreciate people like James Randi and Michael Shermer calling me an idiot, in the end their opinions are irrelevant to my own practices. A society in which I am considered deluded or misguided as opposed to dangerous is a much safer place for a magician like myself to live. In parts of Africa, Latin America, and Asia where belief in magick is widespread spellcasters often get strung up or burned by angry mobs. And even in the United States you get incidents like this.

In fact, if you can use magick effectively it is much better to live in a society that thinks you're a harmless crank than in one that considers you a demonic menace. So skeptics are really my friends, even when they consider me confused, insane, or both.

Winged Cats and the Paranormal

I've commented before that I see an enormous difference between "supernatural" and "paranormal" explanations for events. Skeptics generally treat the terms as interchangeable but in fact they don't mean the same thing. A supernatural event is somehow above and beyond the bounds of nature, not just as we understand it but in an absolute sense. It is axiomatic that anything supernatural is not only incomprehensible according to the current state of scientific understanding, but that it is actually impossible for any future science to ever understand it. Seeing as Arthur C. Clarke was right on the mark when he stated that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magick, any supernaturalist explanation of the world is in the same realm as the Christian concept of religious faith. It may be believed, but it cannot be proven or demonstrated.

Seeing as anything that influences the physical world must interact with physical objects it should be clear that if supernatural processes and forces exist in some sense they must pretty much by definition be completely useless. I think it's closed-minded to dismiss people who believe in supernatural forces or entities, but for anyone to expect a supernatural force to be able to accomplish material changes of any sort doesn't understand what they're saying or doesn't understand the implications of their own beliefs.

Paranormal is a qualitatively different term. It means above and beyond the normal, not above and beyond nature. The forces used by ritual magicians are paranormal forces, not supernatural ones, and they influence the physical world by making unlikely events more likely. They are also amenable to scientific research to a degree, such as the Princeton quantum diode experiments. We still lack a good experimental instrument to measure consciousness, but once such an instrument is perfected empirical magical research should be able to proceed at a much faster pace than it has historically.

That brings me to the winged cat. In The New Inquisition, a slapdown of the skeptic movement by the late Robert Anton Wilson, he comments that in the early part of the twentieth century the Fortean Society documented a report of a winged cat. Seeing as I had no idea how such a thing could be possible I've often joked about it over the years, but as it turns out the joke is on me barring some sort of photoshop scandal. The winged cats are apparently real, the result of a rare genetic mutation.

In fact, polydactylism (extra toes) is common in cats, so there's no reason to think extra appendages are that unbelievable. "Wings," though, are rare enough that you don't see them very often, even over the course of many years. They are, therefore, paranormal rather than supernatural, and scientific investigation of this specimen may even tell us which genes are involved. Now, if some enterprising individual starts breeding these as pets and they catch on, what was once paranormal could become normal. Assuming that there are no averse health consequences associated with the "wings," I would certainly consider keeping one. It would make a great conversation-starter.

So I suppose what I'm saying is that magick is like a winged cat. It's rare enough that people don't have much normal experience with it, but with better tools and more advanced science it can and almost certainly will be investigated.

Focus on the Family Weather Magick Fails

In the lead-up to the Democratic National Convention, a video producer from James Dobson's Focus on the Family group asked their supporters to pray for rain during Barack Obama's acceptance speech. They failed, and what that says about them is pretty darn pitiful.

Prayer is magick, at least when you are using it to influence the material world. It really isn't any different than casting a spell except that it uses a less precise and disciplined method and as a result is less effective than real ceremonial techniques. What's pitiful about this is that among their supposed millions of supporters Focus on the Family couldn't find one decent weatherworker. That implies there may be way fewer people with magical ability in the religious conservative community than I had previously thought.

Weatherworking is not that rare a magical ability. I'm very good at it myself and I know a couple of others just within my circle of friends. I have no doubts that I could have made it rain last night in Denver if I chose to do so, but apparently nobody in Dobson's circle has the ability. You usually only need one to get the job done, especially if you are casting for specific weather on a specific day months away. The more time you have, the easier it is. And the convention date has been known since the beginning of primary season.

Something like one person in fifty or so has high magical aptitude, so in a large group there should be a lot of them, but it would seem that either this is not the case or that the form of prayer used is such a bad magical technique that it produces little effect. In the latter case, maybe a number of their members have the ability but are still unable to get good results.

Or, of course, the DNC could have its own weatherworkers who are a lot better at it than these yahoos.

Scapegoating Satan and Metal Bands

Last week in South Africa a student, Morne Hamse, was arrested for a school attack in which he killed one of his classmates and wounded three others with a "ninja sword." Following the familiar story arc that seems to accompany cases like this, prosecutors first blamed the student's "experimentation with Satanism" but have now decided that he was actually influenced by a metal band whose music he enjoyed.

For some reason, prosecutors in these cases have trouble recognizing what is really going on and spend all sorts of time and effort identifying scapegoats with dubious connections to the case.

Harmse's parents have described their son's actions as a desperate attempt to "make a stand" after years of being bullied.

There's a certain species of idiot that contends bullying "builds character" and is good for kids. Here's a news flash - that's bullshit. Bullying for a lot of kids is really fucking awful. Those that don't go on to commit crimes are nonetheless more likely to become abusive adults and are often dogged by depression and other psychological problems that prevent them from living up to their full potential.

Bullies need to understand that sometimes when they bully mentally ill kids they are going to get killed or injured. A small percentage of the most messed-up kids will fight back, sometimes with deadly force. I'm not arguing that this is a justifiable crime or that the perpetrator shouldn't be removed from society - that's a given for anybody who hacks up another person with a sword. But I do wish that prosecutors would just look at the obvious motives in front of them instead of trying to figure out if they can find a way to blame the crime on music or occultism. They did the same thing with the Columbine shooting, another case of mentally ill kids retaliating with deadly force after years of bullying.

If we could get past this mindset maybe we could actually address some of the underlying problems. Schools need to step in and address bullying before it ever gets far enough to provoke even a mentally ill individual to violence. Also, students with mental illnesses should have access to decent and affordable mental health care to keep them from doing anything drastic. I know from personal experience that at least in the United States when kids are bullied the schools rarely do anything about it, and health care for mental illness is both stigmatized and underfunded. Finally, we could redirect a lot of resources our society currently spends trying to ban music, books, and occult practices that have nothing to do with any of these crimes.

UPDATE: Hamse appeared in court today and claimed that a ghost he met in a field instructed him to become a Satanist. Either he's agling for an insanity defense (how does South Africa handle insanity in criminal trials, anyway?), he's schizophrenic, or there's a ghost out there who's making a lot of trouble. I'm guessing it's one of the first two because I've never in my life come across a ghost that even mentioned Satan, and besides, real ghosts are pretty rare. On the other hand, about 0.5% of the population is schizophrenic.

Buffy is the New Harry Potter

Apparently Buffy the Vampire Slayer is to adult women what Harry Potter is to children - a malevolent force undermining traditional religious values. Or something like that. An article from Britain's Daily Mail cites Buffy as the reason many women are abandoning Christian churches.

The article quotes Dr. Kristin Aune from the University of Derby.

'In short, women are abandoning the church. Because of its focus on female empowerment, young women are attracted by Wicca, popularised by the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

'Young women tend to express egalitarian values and dislike the traditionalism and hierarchies they imagine are integral to the church.'

In fairness to Aune, she strike me as a genuine religion scholar as opposed to the crazies over here in the states who want to ban Harry Potter. Nonetheless, I have a hard time believing that (1) the large numbers of women abandoning British churches are becoming practicing Wiccans and (2) Buffy's extremely unrealistic portrayal of Wicca has anything to do with the decisions of those who do. It's not like real Wiccans can actually utter an incantation and shoot glowing beams of laser light out of their fingertips.

Maybe it just has to do with the traditionalist factions of the Anglican Communion who have become increasingly shrill in recent years about the practices of more liberal Anglican and Episcopal churches. When folks who are supposedly part of your religion throw a fit because the United States Episcopal Church dared to put someone of your gender in charge, I can see where it would be pretty easy to conclude that you just aren't welcome.

"Satanism" in Iowa

A Sioux City, Iowa man is on trial for the murder of his two daughters in what prosecutors are calling "a ritual from a satanic bible." The judge is currently ruling on whether or not Satanism can be mentioned at the trial. In fact, if we lived in less hysterical world it should be. Anton LaVey's actual Satanic Bible condemns any sort of ritual involving the killing of humans or even animals, so a good case can be made that Satanism had nothing to do with these murders.

The defendant, Lawrence Harris, claims to have been performing some sort of ritual that no actual worker of magick has ever heard of.

The girls' bodies were found in a second-floor bedroom of the house. Police say they had been stabbed and strangled.

Harris told police that he had been performing "some strange ritual" that had gone bad and that the spell could have severe consequences, court records show.

Presumably those severe consequences include being put in jail for murdering your kids. You know, because those are the consequences spelled out by our legal system.

Harris' attorney, assistant public defender Michael Williams, said during a court hearing on Wednesday that prosecutors are seeking to link what Harris says and does to satanism. Casting spells and practicing witchcraft is not proof of satanism, Williams said.

Nor should they be, though a ritual gone this bad is clear proof of reckless incompetence. Either that, or perhaps Harris' story sounds so unbelievable to me as a magical practitioner because it's completely made up.

Williams said he plans to use a defense of insanity and diminished responsibility. Woodbury County Attorney Mark Campbell said the evidence is needed to show Harris was performing a spell or ritual from a satanic bible when the girls died.

As I mentioned above, The Satanic Bible contains no such ritual. However, I suppose the defendant could have bought a copy of A satanic bible from just about anyone, including a guy in a trenchcoat standing on a street corner. Something like this:

"Can you sell me a copy of The Satanic Bible?"
"Sure, here you go. Ten bucks."
"But this isn't by Anton LaVey!"
"Oh, um, it's a different Satanic Bible. You can just call it Bob's Satanic Bible."

I'm not a fan of any sort of diminished capacity defense in criminal cases. It's pretty clear to me that if Harris killed the girls, and it sounds like he did, he should be sent to prison regardless of the context. He's either lying about his motive or so incredibly delusional and stupid that he's a danger to everyone around him. Society needs to be protected from him either way.