Announcing the Office of the Readings

Thelemic high holy days are nearly upon us. On March 20th, 1904 Aleister Crowley performed the invocation of Horus that led to the writing of the Book of the Law on the 8th, 9th, and 10th of the following April. This will be the fourth year that my magical working group celebrates these holy days with a series of readings from the Holy Books of Thelema along with selections from the EGC Gnostic Saints.

March 20th is the invocation of Horus, and April 8, 9, and 10 are the three days of the writing of the Book of the Law. There are 22 days from March 20th to April 10th, and each day is associated with one of the Major Arcana of the Tarot, going in reverse order from The Universe to The Fool. The various readings are selected so as to conform to these attributions for each day.

I will be posting each day's reading on this blog under the office of the readings tag. Happy holidays, everyone!

New Sins for the 21st Century

After winking Limbo out of existence last year by Papal decree, the Roman Catholic Church has published an updated list of sins for the current century.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23557650/

New sins include:

(1) Genetic manipulation. Not Biblical, but consistent with the Church's position on embryonic stem cell research.

(2) Taking drugs. Totally new and mentioned nowhere in scripture.

(3) Pollution. Follows from the Old Testament injunction making humans stewards of the Earth, though not directly addressed in Old Testament law.

(4) Maintaining income disparity. This one, at least, is right on. Social justice for the poor was one of Jesus' central teachings and is often ignored by modern churches. It's nice to see it formally addressed.

My next question is when these sins come into effect. Do we get any sort of waiting period? Or are they in effect at the moment of publication? If I forgot to recycle a can the day before the new list came out, am I still going to Hell? And regarding drugs, do legal ones count too? The injunction is actually against drugs that “weaken the mind and cloud intelligence” so I'd think alcohol would count, but so would lithium (used to treat bipolar disorder, but degrades cognitive ability over time). Caffeine is on record as making people think slightly faster, so I'd think it would be exempt.

Oh yeah, I forgot for a moment. I'm a ritual magician so I'm already going to Hell, at least according to most Christian churches.

A "Kinsey Report" on Magick

I watched the film Kinsey last night, which was quite good. It tells the story of Dr. Alfred Kinsey and the events that led up to his groundbreaking studies of human sexuality. One of the things that really struck me about the story is that Kinsey was motivated to study sexuality because in his time so little was known about people's actual practices and experiences. There had never been a large-scale scientific study of sexuality, and people kept accounts of their sexual experiences to themselves rather than sharing them with others. Magick today is treated much like sexuality was in Kinsey's time, and maybe what we really need to help us understand the practices and experiences of magicians is some sort of large-scale study done along similar lines.

One of the reasons that Aleister Crowley's work is so important to modern magicians is that Crowley was an obsessive diarist who kept accounts of all his magical operations and their results. His work gives us a good account of one magician's journey from Neophyte to Magus and brings out into the open a process that until his time had been the hidden core of the Western Esoteric Tradition. Crowley recommended that all his students do the same, but unfortunately to this day nobody has produced a magical record that is as detailed or as enlightening. Crowley was an exceptional person, but at the same time he recommeded his practices to everyone and believed that most people would get some benefit from them. I can say that this is true for me, but without more data that's really as far as I can go.

This is where science comes in - a perfect case for the application of "The Method Science, the Aim of Religion." An interview process similar to Kinsey's could produce some very informative results if designed properly. The biggest issue I see is that the sample size would be much more limited than what Kinsey had to work with. Just about everybody has sex, but only a certain percentage of the population practices mystical forms of spirituality and some subset of that group actually practices magick. Most of us analyze our own results and try to to build on them as we walk the path, but I would love to see a book that chronicled accounts of successful and unsuccessful operations from thousands of people. I don't know what such a work would do to the magical arts as a whole, but I would really like to see it happen.

Now if I can just get a grant from some big foundation I'll be in business - but there's a tough sales pitch. "See, I want to do this large-scale study of magical spirituality to help us understand the mysteries of the universe. Are you willing to underwrite my research?"

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.