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.

Comselh Ananael Ritual Template Part III: The Conjuration

The conjuration follows the Watchtower Invocation. This is the hardest part of the ritual form to generalize, since it must correspond to the energy desired by the magician and as a result there are many possibilities. The colors, godforms, and so forth may be found in Aleister Crowley's Liber 777 and some practice working with the correspondence tables is necessary in order to use them effectively in the construction of rituals. Also, the Greater Rituals of the Pentagram and Hexagram should be committed to memory along with the corresponding names.

VIII. The Conjuration

Officiant performs the Greater Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram or Hexagram corresponding to the type of energy being evoked, using the Heaven of Assiah name as the godname following ARARITA. All rotate appropriately, visualizing the golden sphere shifting to the Queen scale color of the sphere associated with the operation. For elements use Malkuth and for signs of the Zodiac use either Chockmah or the sphere corresponding to the planet that rules the sign.

Officiant: Let the divine light descend!

All visualize a column of light in the natural color (King scale for paths, Queen scale for spheres) materializing in the center of the altar, extending to the edge of the containment structure and running from the ceiling to the floor. There is a short pause. Officiant then conjures the spirit with all joining in on the vibrations of the names. Each of the names should be vibrated a number of times corresponding to the sphere associated with the operation.

At this point four names are used. They correspond to the four letters of the Tetragrammaton - Yod, Heh, Vav, and Final Heh. These letters relate to the four scales of color used in the Thelemic and Golden Dawn systems, the four elements, and the four Qabalistic worlds. The latter association is the most important for selecting spirit names. For the energy of the rite to manifest, the spirits called upon must be related to each other and span the four worlds. As an example, for a planetary ritual the names would be the corresponding Name of God (Yod), Archangel (Heh), Intelligence (Vav), and Spirit (Final Heh). Each name is vibrated the appropriate number of times, and there is a short pause while the Officiant waits to perceive the presence of the evoked entity. When all four entities are present, the Officiant moves on to the Charge.

IX. The Charge

Officiant: Wise (Vav-name), enliven this material basis and imbue it with the necessary will and intelligence that it may sustain itself until its objective is fulfilled, which shall be (state the objective of the rite here). Mighty (Final Heh-name), empower this material basis that it may influence the material world and maintain its own coherence according to these objectives with sufficient strength to guarantee complete, perfect, and immediate success in (restate the objective of the rite here), and with sufficient fortitude that its influence will endure and thrive.

All: So mote it be!

All then begin chanting the four names while concentrating their attention on the material basis. As this is done all should visualize the four beings within the column over the containment structure with the Yod-name near the ceiling and the Final Heh-name just above the material basis. These can be visualized as detailed beings or as globes of light - the Yod-globe in the King scale color, Heh-globe in the Queen scale color, Vav-globe in the Prince scale color, and Final Heh-globe in the Princess scale color. Iridescent energy like lightning in the King scale color should be visualized flowing downwards through them and filling the material basis so that it glows with a pure light in the Queen scale color. Officiant feels the energy building in the material basis, and when it feels "full" rings the bell chime on the next Final Heh-name. The chant stops and there is a short pause. The energy flow stops, but the four beings remain visible and the material basis continues to emanate Queen scale light.

Led by Officiant, all give the Sign and assume the godform corresponding to the energy evoked.

All: (Vibrate Heaven of Assiah name)!

The four beings are then visualized descending into the material basis, which becomes glows with brighter Queen scale light. There is a short pause for this visualization.

Led by Officiant, all give the Sign of Mater Triumphans and assume the godform of Isis nourishing the magical child that is the result of the operation.

All: AUMGN!

The bell chime is then rung. The Queen scale light is visualized being completely absorbed and integrated into the material basis. There is a short pause for this visualization. The material basis is then wrapped or covered.

Officiant: There is success.

The sphere of golden light is now all that remains around the temple. There is a short pause. The closing follows.

Commentary on this section follows.

It is difficult to overstate how important the Greater rituals are for effective magical work. Unlike the Lesser rituals, which are general, the Greater rituals are used to evoke a specific force - an element, planet, or sign of the Zodiac. Amazingly, many modern books on ritual magick do not even cover them. The Greater rituals provide a standard way of tuning the magical field to a specific type of energy.

In Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae Aleister Crowley recommends that the Greater rituals use the name of God corresponding to the rite (the Yod-name). In our own work we have found that it is effective to use the Heaven of Assiah name as it is a general name for the force evoked acting on the material plane.

This ritual template includes additional details regarding the containment structure that would be used for an evocation. For an invocation, the lights and beings should simply be visualized filling the temple and at the conclusion of the charge should be visualized dissolving into the participants. This effect can also be produced by evoking the force into the elements of a eucharist within the containment structure and then consuming the elements.

Understanding the Y-H-V-H structure is very important for working ritual magick of this sort. A full commentary on the nature of the four worlds is beyond the scope of this article, but in brief they can be described as follows:

• Yod-Atziluth-Fire-Kether and Chockmah-King Scale: This is the realm of archetypes and Platonic forms.
• Heh-Briah-Water-Binah-Queen Scale: This is the realm of creation, in which specific instances of archetypes differentiate from the ideal forms of Atziluth.
• Vav-Yetzirah-Air-Chesed through Yesod-Prince Scale: This is the formative world where these specific instances of archetypes begin to take form in a process that culminates in material manifestation.
• Final Heh-Assiah-Earth-Malkuth-Princess Scale: This is the conventional material world, in which the forms of Yetzirah manifest.

The selection of names corresponding to each of the worlds is probably another article in and of itself.

The charge should be as lawyerly as possible. This is not because the spirits will necessarily try to trick the magician as some sources claim, but because like anything magick follows the path of least resistance. If a spirit can create a relatively likely and therefore simple outcome that fulfills the letter of the charge, that is exactly what it will do. If you ask a spirit to bring you a car, it is a lot easier for the spirit to arrange for you to find a matchbox car in the park than for a vehicle to materialize in your driveway. Lon Milo DuQuette has an interesting story about summoning a car in My Life With the Spirits, but for the most part such a thing is really difficult. Kids, on the other hand, lose toys all the time.

The Vav-name gives the evoked energy form and direction, while the Final-Heh name provides the energy itself. Both of these must come together for the ritual to be effective. In the case of planets, the Intelligence is Vav and Spirit is Final Heh. One of the errors in the tradition that appears to originate with Francis Barrett's The Magus is that the Spirit should be used for evil operations and the Intelligence for good operations. In fact, the two work together and are essentially neutral. One shapes and governs the force while the other empowers it. The Intelligence can be evoked on its own for the purpose of obtaining information, but evoking the Spirit on its own is a bad idea simply because it is a blind force that cannot be directed without the Intelligence.

The vibration of the names is then done to charge the material basis with energy. The visualization here is even more complex than the ones found in the Watchtower Invocation, but again, we have found that intricate visualizations such as this one substantially increase the effectiveness of rituals. The four names are visualized in the four colors and then energy flows from Kether to Malkuth through the channel created by summoning at all four levels of the Tree of Life. The energy is in the color of the King scale, as Atziluth is its point of origin. The material basis glows with light in the color of the Queen scale because the related sphere on the Tree acts as a container for the raw energy of the archetypal world.

The sign and godform along with the Heaven of Assiah name seal the energy into the material basis. It is then stabilized and integrated with the sign of Mater Triumphans, the godform of Isis, and the vibration of AUMGN. The Officiant then affirms this by stating "There is success."