COMSELH AOIVEAE ("Circle of Stars"): An Enochian Microcosmic Ritual

This ritual grew out of a desire to begin a series of Enochian rites with our magical working group, Comselh Ananael. I had a pentagram ritual called the AOIVEAE based on the Golden Dawn Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram and Aleister Crowley's Star Ruby, but as we discussed various ideas related to an Enochian pentagram ritual it became clear that a better ritual might be constructed by moving away from the pentagram as a universal symbol of microcosmic magick. Particularly, the same article that influenced the design of our revised Lesser Ritual of the Hexagram, Michael Sandborn's The Unicursal Hexagram as Hyperbola, suggested the use of the Unicursal Hexagram as the ideal glyph for working with the Operant Field Model. The ritual evolved from there, as a Unicursal Hexagram ritual rather than a pentagram ritual. However, it essentially performs a similar function to the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram - aligning and increasing the coherence of the magician's interior world.

In The Book of Thoth Crowley relates the Unicursal Hexagram to the elements rather than to the planets. This is also how the figure is shown in the Golden Dawn essay on lineal figures that is included in Regardie's The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic. When dealing with elemental pentagrams it is not the case in the Golden Dawn system that deosil invokes and widdershins banishes - tracing deosil invokes Fire and Water and tracing widdershins invokes Earth and Air - but the rule always holds with planetary hexagrams. This supports the notion that the Unicursal Hexagram is more elemental than planetary.

The bottom point of the Unicursal Hexagram represents Passive Spirit, while the top point represents Active Spirit. The four side points then represent the classical elements. As Sandborn comments, the rose at the center represents the point of balance and in reference to the 0=2 formula the dynamic ground from which creation emerges. The figure thus may be visualized as a three-dimensional form with the center receding from the viewer. The 0=2 formula describes how the universe comes into existence, from the unity of pure nothingness (potential) to the separate polarities of substance (actual).

The Enochian System of Magick was explored by John Dee and Edward Kelley in hopes of discovering the building blocks of the universe. The Angels they contacted responded by giving them instructions for the building of a "Great Table" - a fourfold table of letters that supposedly represents the spiritual "wire frame" upon which the structure of the universe is created. This table consists of four square quadrants, and a "black cross" representing unity that binds the four parts of the table together. If the Unicursal Hexgram is mapped onto Dee and Kelly's Great Table, The side points of the hexagram represent the four quadrants and the rose, top, and bottom points represent the black cross, also called the Tablet of Union.

This is not to imply that the quadrants of the Great Table necessarily correspond to the elements. Elemental spirits are represented on the Table, but the Golden Dawn practice of assigning elements to the four quadrants does not correspond to what Dee and Kelley were told, even if it seems on the surface to be a logical assumption. The Kings who rule over each quadrant are attributed not the elements but to the four directions, meaning that they correspond to spatial orientation rather than states of matter.

Incidentally, this has been one of my major contentions with the Golden Dawn system of Enochian magick. Attributing the elements to the four directions is not necessarily unreasonable, but working as though the elemental rather than the directional attribution is primary flies in the face of the original material. The Golden Dawn system uses two elemental arrangements, the "winds" model for microcosmic work (Air = East, Fire = South, Water = West, and Earth = North) and the Zodiacal model for macrocosmic work (Fire = Aries = East, Earth = Capricorn = South, Air = Libra = West, and Water = Cancer = North). This schema works well for practical magick and is for the most part sound. The quality of the winds is based upon earthly phenomena, and the Zodiacal model is based on the arrangement of the heavens.

The problem is that the founders of the Golden Dawn assigned the elements to the Enochian tablets based on the directions from the "winds" model. BATAIVAH, for example, is the King of the East in the original material, so he therefore became the King of Air. This is fine so far - for microcosmic work. In macrocosmic operations, however, BATAIVAH's tablet is moved to the west because he is the King of Air and Air goes in the west according to the Zodiac arrangement. For the Golden Dawn directional arrangements to harmonize with the original material, the elemental attribution should change because the direction should be primary. Therefore, for macrocosmic operations, BATAIVAH should become the King of Fire and his tablet should remain in the east.

In order to keep the symbolism of spatial orientation distinct from that of the elements, the Unicursal Hexagram is traced toward the center point to banish and away from the center point to invoke the quadrant that corresponds to a direction in this microcosmic ritual. In the corresponding macrocosmic ritual, COMSELH MADRIAX, the same figure is used but is traced between the elemental points and the top and bottom. Resonance is vital to working operant magick because the microcosmic and macrocosmic rituals must harmonize so that a magical field will open. In the case of the COMSELH AOIVEAE and COMSELH MADRIAX rituals this resonance is accomplished by using the same lineal figure for both rites, unlike in the Golden Dawn system where the microcosmic ritual (Lesser Pentagram) uses the pentagram of Earth (as an amalgam of all four elements) and the microcosmic ritual (Lesser Hexagram) uses the hexagrams of the elements which resonate on a symbolic rather than a geometric level.

Part I: The Tablet of Union

This version of the ritual is still based on the original AOIVEAE and borrows some key sections from that rite. In particular, the pentagram still makes an appearance in the opening and concluding sections. This is done to energize the body of the magician with the energies of the Black Cross or Tablet of Union. The ritual begins with the tracing of the Pentagram of Active Spirit over the body of the magician as the Angelic names of the five elements are intoned. On the Tablet of the Watchtowers, the element names form the central cross, which is called the Tablet of Union. The Tablet of Union can also be drawn as a grid of letters, like so:

E X A R P
H C O M A
N A N T A
B I T O M

In the Angelic language, EXARP (EX-arp) is the name for elemental air, HCOMA (HCO-mah) is the name for elemental water, NANTA (NAHN-tah) is the name for elemental earth, and BITOM (BEE-tohm) is the name for elemental fire. EHNB (EH-nub), the word formed by taking the first letter of each of the other four elements, is the name for Spirit, the fifth element that binds the other four together.

1. Face the east. If you are working in an Enochian temple with the Holy Table in the center, stand to the west of the Table so that you are looking across it to the east, since you always face the Table when it is present in the temple. Trace from your left hip to your right shoulder, visualizing a green line connecting those two points. Intone NANTA (Earth).
2. Trace from your right shoulder to your left shoulder, visualizing a blue line connecting those two points. Intone HCOMA (Water).
3. Trace from your left shoulder to your right hip, visualizing a yellow line connecting those two points. Intone EXARP (Air).
4. Trace from your right hip to the center of your forehead, visualizing a red line connecting those two points. Intone BITOM (Fire).
5. Trace from the center of your forehead to your left hip, visualizing a shimmering bright electric violet light connecting those two points and completing the pentagram. Intone EHNB (Spirit).
6. Clasp your hands over your heart and intone either IAD (ee-AHD - God) or the name of your Holy Guardian Angel if it is known to you. Regardless, you will want to use IAD in any public ritual so that you will not reveal the name of your Holy Guardian Angel to onlookers.

This charges the body of the magician with the active magical energy of the five elements.

Part II. The Unicursal Hexagrams

At this point the structure of the ritual diverges from the original AOIVEAE. In the original ritual, pentagrams corresponding to the four elements were traced to the four directions as the name of the corresponding King was vibrated. Most Enochian pentagram rituals involve vibrating the names of the Kings to the four directions. Gerald Schueler published a pentagram ritual of this sort which may have been the first publication of the form. However, in comparing the Kings to the godnames used in the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram it is apparent that the Kings are more personified and specific, whereas the godnames from the LRP represent more general principles.

The new version of the ritual takes a hint from Dee's conjurations. These conjurations summon angels from all four directions beginning in the east. This full circle represents a complete creation, and is necessary in order to produce effects. Therefore, the four words of power corresponding to the directions should represent the process of creation itself. Furthermore, since the Angelic language is spoken of in the original material as the language of creation, every word of the language is effectively a word of power that reflects the essence of its definition. The words used reflect the descent of the lightning flash along the middle pillar of the Tree of Life, beginning in the east and ending in the north. They are as follows:

• East: MADRIAX - The Heavens. This represents the three supernal spheres.
• South: ROR - The Sun. This represents Tiphareth.
• West: GRAA - The Moon. This represents Yesod.
• North: CAOSGO - The Earth. This represents Malkuth.

The Unicursal Hexagrams that are used correspond to the directions represented by the subquadrants of the Great Table according to the associations found in Dee's conjurations. They are traced toward the central point to banish and toward the point related to the direction to invoke. The directions are attributed here along the same lines as the quadrants of the Great Table.

• Upper Left: East
• Upper Right: South
• Lower Right: West
• Lower Left: North

The colors are those given for the "cloths" seen by Kelly in his initial vision of the Enochian universe. Kelly had a second vision, the "round house" vision, in which the colors are slightly different but in one of our magical operations we were told that the first vision was the most accurate as far as the colors of the directions are concerned.

1. In the east, trace the Unicursal Hexagram of the East in red and vibrate MADRIAX (MAH-dree-ahx).
2. Turn to the south. In the south, trace the Unicursal Hexagram of the South in white and vibrate ROR (ROHR).
3. Turn to the west. In the west, trace the Unicursal Hexagram of the West in green and vibrate GRAA (GRAH-ah).
4. Turn to the north. In the north, trace the Unicursal Hexagram of the North in black and vibrate CAOSGO (kah-OHS-goh).
5. Turn back to the east, completing the circle. Pause for a moment and hold the visualization of all four hexagrams surrounding the temple.

Part III: The Names of God

The next portion of the ritual aligns the magician with the twelve Names of God. There are three names for each of the four quadrants, and they are taken from the horizontal line that divides each quadrant in half. These Names of God are attributed to the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The magician first places each group of names in the appropriate direction by intoning several short phrases in the Angelic language. This alludes to the arrangement of an Enochian temple according to the Dee material. Each of the twelve names was to be written on a banner, and these banners were to be placed along the edges of the magical circle. The directions used here are taken from the 1587 reformed version of the Great Table.

1. Extend your arms in the form of a cross and intone the following:
   
   

   RAAS I ORO IBAH AOZPI (RA-as I O-ro i-BAH a-o-ZOD-pi - "In the east is ORO IBAH AOZPI"),
   SOBOLN I OIP TEAA PDOCE (SO-boln I o-IP te-a-A pdo-KE - "in the west is OIP TEAA PDOCE"),
   BABAGE I MPH ARSL GAIOL (ba-ba-GE I MEH-peh ar-SAL ga-i-OL - "in the south is MPH ARSL GAIOL"),
   LUCAL I MOR DIAL HCTGA (LU-kal I MOR di-AL hek-TGA - "in the north is MOR DIAL HCTGA").

   
   
2. You then make a widdershins rotation to balance the initial deosil rotation of tracing the hexagrams. The first circle may be thought of as representing the Lightning Flash, while this final section may be though of as representing the Serpent of Wisdom and concludes with you arising as "the all-powerful" who has unified the energies of Heaven and Earth. Arms still outstretched, make one widdershins rotation while intoning:
   
   

   MICMA AO COMSELH AOIVEAE (MEEK-mah AH-oh KOHM-seh-lah ah-oh-ee-VEH-ah-eh - "Behold, the circle of stars")

   
   
3. Once the rotation is complete and you are facing east again, clasp your hands over your heart and intone:
   
   

   OD OL IAIDON NOTHOA (OHD OHL ee-AH-ee-dohn NOT-ho-ah - "And I, the all-powerful, in the midst").

IV. Conclusion

If this ritual is being performed in conjunction with any other magical working, this step is deferred until the conclusion of that rite. That is, unlike the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram this ritual is not repeated at the end of the working that it opens. Instead, sections I-III are followed by whatever additional ritual work is being performed. Once the additional work is concluded, the temple is closed with the following section. Unlike the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram, the ritual is not repeated at the end of the operation, but simply closed.

The conclusion is complementary to the first section - rather than the Pentagram Active Spirit, the magician traces the Pentagram of Passive Spirit and the final line is visualized in deep purple rather than bright violet. Otherwise the intonations and visualizations are the same.

1. Trace from your right hip to your left shoulder, visualizing a green line connecting those two points. Intone NANTA.
2. Trace from your left shoulder to your right shoulder, visualizing a blue line connecting those two points. Intone HCOMA.
3. Trace from your right shoulder to your left hip, visualizing a yellow line connecting those two points. Intone EXARP.
4. Trace from your left hip to the center of your forehead, visualizing a red line connecting those two points. Intone BITOM.
Trace from the center of your forehead to your right hip, visualizing a deep purple light connecting those two points and completing the pentagram. Intone EHNB.
5. Clasp your hands over your heart and intone either IAD or the name of your Holy Guardian Angel if it is known to you. As in the opening, you will want to use IAD in any public ritual so that you will not reveal the name of your Holy Guardian Angel to onlookers.

At this point the magician formally declares the temple closed if this ritual was used to encapsulate a larger working. Otherwise, the rite is at an end.

Operant Affirmations

You've all heard of Affirmations, right? They're very popular with the general New Age crowd and are sometimes considered to be the sort of fluffy spirituality that a lot of magicians ridicule. The basic idea is simple - set aside some time during your day and meditate on a simple statement of intent. Depending on who you read, there are small variations in the method. Sometimes you say the statement aloud a certain number of times, sometimes you write it out a certain number of times, and so forth. Repetition is an important part of the method, and is thought to facilitate making the statement become reality. This is magick - don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Most of the affirmation web sites do not contain much new information, since the method is so simple and on the surface it seems there is little to discuss. Here's one, though, that's kind of interesting - DailyAffirm. In fact, I think a good case can be made that the author of the site, Jeanie Marshall, presents a model of affirmations that conforms to the operant paradigm. It is important to understand that the basic operant methodology is not just limited to formal ritual magick. It can be used in the context of just about any coherent symbol set, even one as open as the basic affirmation technique.

What follows is a basic guide to New Age sorcery, comparing Marshall's method with the formal operant ritual template.

Suggestions for Daily Practice

Daily practice is absolutely vital to any practicing magician. This point cannot be emphasized enough. As I've mentioned, trying to be an effective ritual magician without doing daily practices is like trying to be a professional football player without doing any sort of exercise or conditioning during the weeks between games. It just doesn't work. Unfortunately this point is hard to get across - a number of popular authors in the occult field are researchers rather than actual practitioners, and I have also met a number of magicians who reached a certain point in their practices and just stopped because they felt that they no longer needed those practices. Naturally, if you were to decide at some point that you no longer wanted to work magick, stopping your practices might be appropriate - they take time and energy that could be spent doing other things. Still, the point of learning to do magick is not that once you learn it you realize you don't need to do it. The point of learning to do magick is so that you can do magick! Otherwise it wouldn't be worth the trouble.

So that being said, what sorts of daily practice should the aspiring magician undertake? Here are some suggestions from my own practice.

• Meditation. If you can do nothing else, meditate. There are many different meditation techniques, and in my experience there is not that much difference between them. You should select a style or technique that appeals to you and go with it. I personally practice Tibetan Vajrayana meditation, but that is a personal preference on my part based on how my mind tends to work. I do think that Vajrayana appeals to many of the same people who find ritual magick a compelling spiritual path - it incorporates mantras and visualizations and because so much is going on in the practice there is little room for the mind to wander.
• The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram or equivalent. This ritual is the foundational ritual of the Golden Dawn tradition for a reason - it works. There are many rituals that are constructed along similar lines, such as Aleister Crowley's Star Ruby, Sam Webster's Milk of the Stars, and others too numerous to list here as the basic form can be adapted to just about any pantheon or set of symbols.
• The Lesser Invoking Ritual of the Hexagram or equivalent. I have found that opening the operant field on a daily basis using the LBRP-LIRH combination is the fastest way to get noticeable results from any subsequent practice. There are also a number of LRH equivalents, such as Crowley's Star Sapphire.
• The Middle Pillar Ritual or equivalent. The Middle Pillar Ritual was written by Israel Regardie and is a method by which the names of God corresponding the spheres on the middle pillar of the Tree of Life are vibrated while the magician visualizes energy of the appropriate color filling the point on the body related to each sphere. There are also equivalents to this ritual, such as Crowley's "Elevenfold Seal" which appears in Liber V vel Reguli. As a Thelemite, I use Crowley's version which invokes the Thelemic deities rather than the Judeo-Christian names of God used in Regardie's Middle Pillar. I suspect that Regardie was thinking of the earlier Elevenfold Seal when he wrote his ritual, which would mean that the Middle Pillar is in fact a variation on Crowley's ritual rather than the other way around. Nonetheless, I give the Middle Pillar here as a "standard" because I am of the opinion that more magicians are familiar with it.

The above set of practices is completely adequate for the aspiring magician. Daily meditation practice should be done in a separate session from ceremonial practice. Ceremonial practice can consist of the three rituals shown in the order that they are given, and of course more can be added. When it comes to practice, more is usually better. Here are a couple of other pieces that I add to my own practice that may or may not be applicable to yours.

• Holy Guardian Angel invocation. This is fairly free-form and I add it following the Animadversion. I vibrate the name of my Holy Guardian Angel and visualize celestial light raining down from above and filling my body until I can imagine it glowing from within. I then say the following benediction adapted from Crowley's Gnostic Mass:
  
  

  Fill me with the Divine Light, set my True Will in motion, and bring me to the accomplishment of the Great Work, the Summum Bonum, True Wisdom and Perfect Happiness.

  
  
• The Prayer of the Aeon. This is from Crowley's Mass of the Phoenix, and is not a mere parody of the Lord's Prayer as it may at first appear.
  
  

  Now I begin to pray, thou child
  Holy thy name and undefiled
  Thy reign has come, thy will is done
  Here is the bread, here is the blood
  Bring me through midnight to the Sun
  Save me from evil and from good
  That thy one crown of all the ten
  Even now and here be mine
  AMEN.

  
  It is a prayer of aspiration to the attainment of the sphere of Kether, the crown of the Tree of Life, in which all opposites dissolve into unity. I use the prayer as the conclusion of my practice, ending on the final vibration of AMEN.

Hopefully this will give you some idea of how to assemble your own practice. Sticking with the practice is what is really important, so you should not try to incorporate anything that doesn't appeal to you. That will only lead to you dropping the practice, which obviously is not desirable.

Magick: Operant Versus Psychological

One of the primary concepts you will see mentioned here often is the idea of operant magick. While the subject is involved enough that I wrote an entire book about it, understanding how I use the term will help you understand how I design rituals. The word Operant is adapted from behavioral psychology, in which Operant Conditioning is the term used for the reinforcement of a behavior according to some statistical schedule that increases the likelihood of the behavior being repeated. It refers to the use of magical practices to influence the likelihood of certain conditions arising in the world - that is, operant magick is magick that directly influences the physical world without working through the intermediary of the magician's attitude or behavior.

Ritual magicians tend to fall into two camps, which I term operant and psychological. Operants believe that it is possible for fixed thought and intention to influence the physical world directly, while psychologicals believe that all of the effectiveness of ritual magick can be explained by a combination of psychological factors. I'm an operant, in that I believe direct influence is possible and have seen it in action. The operant perspective is the more open of the two, in that it recognizes both psychological and operant components of magical outcomes. The psychological perspective, on the other hand, rules out any operant components and has much in common with materialistic skepticism.

This is not to imply that psychologicals do not believe in the effectiveness of magick. Mastery of magick in the psychological realm is by no means without value. Imagine if you could edit your memories - we are shaped to a significant degree by our experiences, and being able to, say, simply eliminate traumatic memories from the mind is a powerful method for shaping your current life. Biofeedback has shown that mastery of the mind also confers some control over physiological processes - Indian yogis can slow their heart rates and breathing, and Tibetans learn to generate increased internal heat so that they can more easily tolerate their native climate. Motivational psychology has been shown to be highly effective in some situations, and magick is similar but better.
One might think being able to do such things would be enough for me, and indeed it would be. The trouble I have with embracing the psychological perspective is that in my own practice I've seen a lot more.

I mentioned in my article on Hermetic Metaphysics that the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory has found evidence that intention can influence probabilities in the material world. The probability shift is tiny, ranging from .01 to .05 percent depending on the subject, so one might conclude that while the shift may be real it is too small to be useful. Without magical training, I tend to agree, but with training and aptitude I believe that those probability numbers can be increased substantially.

Magick is like a martial art for your mind. It trains you to fix thought, manipulate symbols, and visualize forms. Doing it well requires some amount of inborn aptitude, just like becoming a Karate champion or professional athlete, a lot of training, and constant exercise. One of the big problems with the way some writers talk about Western esotericism is that the system is seen as a sort of ladder and once you reach a certain point you can stop doing basic work such as daily practice.

This is a belief that produces a lot of psychologicals, because operant ability requires constant exercise. With my current practice, I find 3-4 sessions a week are sufficient to maintain my ability to influence probability. Anything less and the ability slowly drops away like an underused muscle. New Agers come at esotericism from a radically egalitarian point of view, something to the effect of the belief that anyone can have realization and once this happens you should just be able to do magick without really working at it, but this idea has never made any sense to me. It would be like me saying that with enough practice I could become a professional football player (which is just plain silly - I'm short, not particularly strong, and have asthma, all of which are part of my genetic makeup) and then simply quit exercising and expect to maintain the same level of conditioning.

A really good way to rate your operant ability is to play Powerball. It sounds silly, but I'm completely serious. First of all, maintain your daily practice. This is the foundation of all your abilities, and I will address good daily practice sets in another posting sometime soon. Once you have that down, put together a ritual with the intention of winning the jackpot. Buy a quick pick ticket, perform your ritual, and see how well you do. Buying tickets and performing the ritual over time will give you an experimental group. You will also want a control group, in which you would buy a ticket but would not perform the ritual. After you have two reasonably large groups, compare them and see if there is a difference.

This is what convinced me that there was more to magick than psychology, incidentally. When I do a ritual I always get at least one number out of six and sometimes two. My personal best is four numbers, which was one of the trials from the experimental group. Since the odds of getting one number out of six with a number range from 1 to 60 is 6 chances out of 60 or about 10%, I shouldn't be doing nearly as well. This pattern has kept up for many years so I have a hard time believing it is just a statistical fluke, especially since in the control group my results are seemingly random and match the odds due to chance. I have gotten the best results with invocations of the Sun and of Jupiter, which seem to be about as effective. One magician online claimed that he got the best results with Mercury, but I found that breaking down the experimental group Mercury did not do quite as well.

I highly doubt I'm ever going to win at Powerball simply because of the probabilities involved - the odds of winning are about 80 million to one against and that's one heck of a probability shift. On the other hand, I've made a profit playing even though half of my entries are in the random control group, and if magick is indeed the ability to shift probabilities then essentially it is the power to summon luck. So you never can tell. If I win, folks here will certainly be among the first to know and I'll even post my ritual.

Hermetic Metaphysics

Western philosophy generally recognizes three schools of metaphysical thought, those of Aristotle, Plato, and Immanuel Kant. Platonic metaphysics contends that the ultimate reality can be found in the world of ideal forms, or in modern terminology the mathematical relationships that form the basis of our understanding of the physical world. Aristotle's system, on the other hand, contends that ultimate reality rests in the physical world and material objects, and that mathematical forms are merely descriptive. These two schools dominated Western philosophical thought for more than a thousand years, until Immanuel Kant attempted to resolve the contentions between the two schools in the Eighteenth Century.

European Renaissance Hermetics also developed a system of metaphysics that receives a lot less attention in academic circles, but in fact this system includes many ideas that are similar to and predate those found in Kant's system - with one extremely important difference.

"The Method of Science, the Aim of Religion"

Want to know how modern magicians develop their personalized magical systems? Read this paper - "The Method of Science, the Aim of Religion" by Alfred Vitale. It's long and difficult in spots if you're not used to academic writing, but it might just completely transform your perspective. It certainly clarified mine.

Alfred is an OTO brother and a member of the Association for the Study of Esotericism. He presented this paper at the first ASE conference and I was so impressed that I cited and summarized the basic model in my book. It is the most accurate analysis of the process I go through when I develop rituals that I have ever seen.

Alfred identifies six distict stages in the development and dissemination of a personal magical system. I really can't do his paper justice in a few words, but here is a basic summary of the model.

• 1. Identification of Pure Esoteric Sets. This stage consists of the study of existing spiritual traditions. Generally speaking, spiritual traditions that have been practiced for a long time are still with us because their methods for transforming consciousness work. All magical operations depend on the manipulation of consciousness in order to produce realization and changes in the objective world.
• 2. Deconstruction into Functional Parts. This stage consists of separating the tradition as a whole into discrete components, which may be informative (such as correspondences), practical (such as ritual techniques), or theurgic (such as a pantheon of deities). In this way, spiritual traditions may be treated as collections of technological systems with similar components.
• 3. Extrication of Functional Parts from System. This stage consists of separating a component identified in stage 2 from the tradition as a whole explored in stage 1.
• 4. Re-Integration of Parts into a Unique, Individualized System. This stage consists of combining the component extricated in stage 3 with the magician's overall practice according to similarities between components identified in stage 2. The system is then tested with the new component in place to determine its effectiveness, and is either accepted or rejected on the basis of efficacy as defined by the magician.
• 5. Proselytization of System to Gain Adherents. While magicians rarely proselytize in the same way as conservative religious groups, most want to explain their magical systems and teach them to others. Currently, this is most commonly done through the medium of published magical texts, though classes and online discussions represent other vectors of transmission. As a matter of fact, I'm doing it right now.
• 6. Data Integrity. This is the stage at while dynamic spiritual systems slowly become dead traditions, giving way to orthodoxy. A living tradition loops through the first five stages over and over again, integrating new data as it gains adherents who do their own research and then report back. However, it is a human tendency to identify with ideas and once adherents become attached to the methods of the system they tend to resist changes to it.

This model is, simply put, amazing. The stages match those used in my personal work and in that of just about every effective ritual magician that I have ever known. Read the paper, think about it, and if you're so inclined let me know if the model matches elements of your own work.

Recent Initiations

Over this last weekend I acted as initiator for two First Degree initiations at Leaping Laughter Lodge, the local Twin Cities body of Ordo Templi Orientis. Two weekends ago, I was also involved in a Master Mason degree at my Masonic lodge, Braden #168, for ten candidates - the largest group we have initiated in all the time I have been a member of the lodge.

A hundred years ago most men belonged to fraternal orders of one sort or another, many of which had initiatory rites largely based on those of Freemasonry. These days many books on magick and witchcraft support the concept of "self-initiation" and the popularity of secret and semi-secret fraternal orders has waned from what it once was. Does that mean that formal initiation has become a quaint anachronism, or is it still an effective spiritual technology?

What the concept of self-initiation gets right is that regardless of the rituals and ceremonies you go through and the degree titles you hold, you have to do the corresponding spiritual work yourself. There is no real way around this basic truth. Spiritual realization is experiential - it cannot be taught or even directly explained. Because of this a degree title does not guarantee spiritual wisdom or power. In many organizations, advancement to higher degrees is contingent upon service to the organization rather than actual spiritual attainment, and the fact that someone is a hard worker in the mundane realm says nothing about their capacity for magick or mysticism, or the quality of their realization.

Nonetheless, formal initiation is a powerful method for imprinting the mind with concepts and ideas that will facilitate the spiritual evolution of a dedicated spiritual practitioner who takes those lessons to heart. The secrecy that surrounds initiatory traditions is related to a powerful psychological techique - the mind becomes more sensitive and attuned to information when it is placed in a situation of uncertainty, so an initiatory ritual will create a much more powerful imprint if the candidate does not know what is going to happen. Enough has been published that it is possible with some diligence to locate the degree work of most initiatory orders, but if you ever plan on taking the degrees all you are doing is cheating yourself.

Comselh Ananael Ritual Template Part IV: The Closing Procedure

This posting covers the closing of the temple following the Conjuration and Charge. For the most part, the closing portion of the ritual template is short and self-explanatory without elaborate visualizations. Once the energy has been raised by the rite and either internalized by the participants or placed into a material basis of some sort, the invoked or evoked forces are released and the temple formally closed.

X. The License to Depart

Officiant: O thou (Yod-name) and thy ministers (Heh-name), (Vav-name), and (Final Heh-name), because thou hast-diligently answered unto our demands, and hast been very ready and willing to come at our call, we do here license thee to depart unto thy proper place; without causing harm or danger unto man or beast. Depart, then, I say, and be thou very ready to come at our call, being duly exorcised and conjured by the sacred rites of magick. We charge thee to withdraw peaceably and quietly, and the peace of HERU-RA-HA be ever continued between us.

All: So mote it be!

Officiant: Peh Resh Kaph Tau. The word is PAROKETH. In and by that word (makes the Sign of Closing the Veil), I close the veil.

Officiant moves to the southeast, with all participants rotating appropriately. All then reverse circumambulate three and a half times giving the Sign of Silence when passing the east. The temple should be visualized dropping back downwards into Malkuth where the gold light fades and the room reverts to its normal appearance. At the conclusion of this, all arrive back at their original positions.

XI. Dedicating the Merit

All: May the benefit of this act and all acts be dedicated unto the complete liberation and supreme enlightenment of all beings everywhere, pervading space and time. So mote it be. May the benefits of practice, ours and others', come to fruition ultimately and immediately and we remain in a state of presence. AH!

XII. Closing

Officiant moves to the west of the altar and performs the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.

Officiant: I now declare this temple duly closed.

One knock with banishing dagger. The rite is at an end.

Commentary on this section follows.

The License to Depart is "lawyerly" just like the Charge should be, though I have rarely had problems dismissing summoned entities and it likely does not need to be this detailed. Each of the names used is addressed in the same order as in the Conjuration, and all are instructed to return to their usual places of habitation. Spiritual being do not exactly move from place to place - an evocation or invocation is more like tuning a radio to a specific station than putting a physical being in a specific place, which is why the same entity can be summoned by multiple magicians at the same time. Still the License to Depart is important. It is analogous to "tuning out" or turning off the radio so that the signal is no longer perceived.

Heru-Ra-Ha represents the union of form and emptiness - that is, the entire universe. The summoned entities are thus blessed by the totality of existence. This is an important practice - regardless of the entities summoned, the best perspective is to respect and treat them with politeness, even when it might be necessary to command them. In that case, be firm and courteous, keeping in mind that as a magician you are their superior but just because it is so does not mean that you have any reason to mistreat them or have contempt for them. The proper attitude is summarized well in Liber Librae, the Book of the Balance.

The circumambulations followed by the opening of the Veil of Paroketh are reversed here, with the Veil of Paroketh being closed and then all participants circumabulating counter-clockwise. Each circumambulation and Sign of Silence brings the temple down from Tiphareth one sphere at a time until the space arrives in Malkuth at the conclusion of three and a half rotations.

Dedicating the Merit is another practice adapted from Tibetan Buddhism and discussed in Sam Webster's Pagan Dharma 2. Merit is not the desired outcome of the ritual, but the positive spiritual consequences of performing it in the first place, so you are not negating the results of your ritual by Dedicating the Merit. Instead, you are turning your attention to the interconnection of all sentient beings and the development of enlightened mind. Buddhism teaches that when you dedicate merit to the welfare of all sentient beings (which, by the way, includes yourself but is not limited to yourself) you receive more merit in return because the act of dedication is virtuous. By extending the dedication to the virtue of all acts, not just the ritual, a feedback loop is set up in which merit increases beyond measure because as you receive the merit from performing the dedication that merit is dedicated, producing more merit, and so forth. The eventual result is enlightenment within a single lifetime.

The temple is closed using the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram on its own, without the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram. If the two banishing rituals are performed together, they shut down magical influences in both the microcosm and macrocosm and create what I call a banishing field. This field negates all magical influences it its vicinity. In practical terms, if you have charged a spirit with some task and then close with a banishing field, you stop the spirit from doing anything and the ritual will fail. This can be a good technique if a ritual starts producing unwanted effects or if you change your mind about a spell that you already cast, but otherwise it should be avoided if you want the spiritual beings that you summon to be able to perform tasks that take longer to complete than the duration of the ritual. The banishing pentagram ritual clears your mind, but allows the macrocosmic forces set in motion to keep operating.

This concludes the Comselh Ananael Ritual Template. If you decide to use it to construct a ritual, let me know how it goes and how well the ritual works. We have found this set of forms to be very useful and hope to publish a series of rituals based on it at some point in the future.