What if it were true?
What if, in the time before, when the darkness could only be fought with guttering flame, those with free spirits congregated and cavorted on the heath. Wild women, and sometimes men, held black Sabbaths, calling on a goat-god, reveling in their freedom, spitting in the eye of the authorities – be they lord or church.
What if it were true?
That the cunning ones and the wise women would help those in need with a poultice, charm, or spell. But those who caused strife or abused their authority would be victims of a foul curse. The powers that be, when they stepped over the line, would be on the receiving end of blights that withered their crops, killed their animals, and suffered their homes a visit from the pox.
What if it were true?
That there were always those who were too different, too non-conformist, too smart to be caught in the bullshit. Those that worked alone, or sometimes in covens. Witches that walked among us during the day, but at night called down a wrathful goddess to take back for the people what belong to the people.
What if we could make it true?
Peter J. Carroll, father of Chaos Magick, has said, “Magick is best employed to tip the scales of chance in our favor.” It’s the little nudge that pushes probability. That sets us on the right path to fulfill our desire or our will.
Now we see the charade of global capitalism on the edge. Indigenous people are rising up in many nations to stop the rape of the land. Protesters have changed our language, pointed out the massive inequity in our system. Credit markets are failing. Millions in Greece and Spain march against the old oppression, relabeled austerity. The Earth itself is lashing out, saying, “No more.”
All it needs is a little push….
“Do as thou Will shall be the whole of the Law.” For many practitioners, their Will includes not only changing themselves but changing the world. Too often, those who seek to do practical magick are derided. It is called Black Magick, or Low Magick. Its adherents snickered at behind their backs. Pity laid upon them for their failure to see the Great Work.
What greater work can there be than giving voice to the voiceless, helping others who suffer, or saving the biosphere? Sitting alone is our temples seeking a mythical purely spiritual enlightenment or some kind of personal awakening, denies that we are part of a community, a nation, and a world. Every man and woman is a star but we all swirl in the spiral dance of galaxies to make up a universe. When that universe is out of balance what do we turn to?
First and foremost, every magician needs to do everything possible on the physical plane to realize their will. Casting spells at your political rivals is no substitution for good old fashioned real-world activism. In any way you believe your efforts are best targeted—through protest, or voting, political organizing, civil disobedience, or even bribery and violence—you must do your utmost to produce change before turning to magick. Doing anything else is an affront to magick. If your will isn’t strong enough to do anything more than a facebook post, what makes you think your mighty power can bring down Exxon-Mobile?
Like any seed you plant, magickal fruit only grows from fertile ground. But after the marching and shouting, as magicians, we can do a little more.
Using magick to make political change not only gives us another tool with which to tear down the establishment. It is in many ways, the weapon best suited for the job.
We often speak of egregores, the spirits that build up around social structures. Magicians more than anyone know how powerful these entities can be, especially when cemented with oaths and pacts. What is a corporation or a government if not an egregore? They are, in essence, a psychological and spiritual construct. Make no mistake; a corporate entity is more powerful and dangerous than any goetic demon.
Corporations have their own sigils and signs, constantly reaffirmed and cemented in our collective unconscious. For many of us, we were born, raised, and will die knowing corporate entities better than our own myths. How many will serve and sacrifice under the signs of McDonalds, Wal-Mart, BP, and General Motors?
This, better than any other explanation, tells us how these corporations can be lead by persons with the purest of motives. How their CEOs get up, go to work, and go home and love their families, all the while making decisions that will impoverish nations and poison the people. They serve a spirit now more powerful than the Church in Rome, and wealthier than the dreams of Solomon. And that spirit, given one task—make more money—will do so with all the ruthless inhuman efficiency of the vilest devil.
This is not to say there are no Black Brothers. I firmly believe that these were the men that Crowley was referring to, those who would be the masters of mankind for their own selfish gain. We often lament the decline of American manufacturing. We see our loss of supremacy in education, technological expertise, and even service. How does the US manage to continue dominating the rest of the world?
One, we excel at the use of force. In military strength we are unrivalled. But also, it is the unseen trillions upon trillions of dollars we spend on public relations. What was in more honest times called propaganda. In the art of controlling men’s minds, the US has no equal. Madison Avenue is a hive of Black Brothers seeking to control us, serving the corporate demons in their quest for more and more and more. As even Adolf Hitler knew, in Mein Kampf, after World War I, he noted that Germany did not lose by force at arms alone. It was the propaganda machine of Generalissimo Woodrow Wilson that truly carried the day.
Against such an army of Black Brothers, what can stand but the aeons old symbols of our spiritual heritage, carried forth to battle by their last believers?
Who are these spiritual warriors in the struggle? Who stands against the Black Brothers? As Jack Parsons said:
WE ARE THE WITCHCRAFT. We are the oldest organization in the world. When man was born, we were. We sang the first cradle song. We healed the first wound, we comforted the first terror. We were the Guardians against the Darkness, the Helpers on the Left Hand Side. Rock drawings in the Pyrenees remember us, and little clay images, made for an old purpose when the world was new. Our hand was on the old stone circles, the monolith, the dolmen, and the druid oak. We sang the first hunting songs, we made the first crops to grow; when man stood naked before the Powers that made him, we sang the first chant of terror and wonder. We wooed among the Pyramids, watched Egypt rise and fall, ruled for a space in Chaldea and Babylon, the Magician Kings. We sat among the secret assemblies of Israel, and danced the wild and stately dances in the sacred groves of Greece.
Sometimes we move openly, sometimes in silence and in secret. Night and day are one to us, calm and storm, seasons and the cycles of man, all these things are one, for we are at the roots. Supplicant we stand before the Powers of Life and Death, and are heard of these Powers, and avail. Our way is the secret way, the unknown direction. Our way is the way of the serpent in the underbrush, our knowledge is in the eyes of goats and of women.
Our fight is characterized in the nature of magick itself. Magick IS rebellion.
It is not thoughtless rebellion. It knows the score. Magicians know, just like the garment worker in Bangladesh, the immigrants in Europe and Dubai, and American fast food workers, that they are getting fucked and it’s the entire system that’s been fucking them all along.
Nor is magick prettified and packaged by New Age shops. As a devotee of Thoth, as much as I would love to say otherwise, it is not in the books nor online. Magick doesn’t require a college degree.
Magick is the ultimate fuck you to the patriarchal god, to law, to society and to reality itself.
If those of you on the right-wing of the political spectrum are beginning to suspect this sermon isn’t meant for you, you are correct. We are those that defy authority. We are those that destroy institutions. We are those that bring down the status quo. Feel free to step away now. Go and serve your masters if that is your will. If you foolishly believe that your worm will turn and you will be the one on top when the time comes, make sure to bring plenty of sacrifices to the God of Money. He only wants everything you hold dear, especially your freedom. As the wise shaman once said, “The things you own end up owning you.”
All we have are our tools. But what wondrous tools they are.
First we have fear. Fear of the Devil. In a masterful stroke of spiritual judo we have taken the adversary they created to keep the people in line and adopted him as our patron. To call on Baphomet is not only to adopt the truth of duality, but to scare the shit out of those who aren’t quite so certain of the great Demiurge’s ability to protect them from we that go bump in the night. And the amount of fear seems to be directly correlated to the amount they have to lose.
We have panic and fear, in the form of the curse. A force so strong that just the suspicion of it was capable of making otherwise stable and sober brethren of Christ go absolutely ape-shit attacking each other.
Add to fear our true magical arsenal, that which changes minds, and depending on your paradigm, can control everything on a sub atomic level. We have sigils and servitors. We have goetic demons and familiar spirits. All of this can and should be utilized in the battle.
This is your call to arms. It’s time for us to learn the secrets of the folk again. They’re not lighting bonfires on heaths all that often anymore. They’re organizing marches and protests and information wars. Can you deny the power of the March to Montgomery, of the Summer of Love, of Occupy? We need to get organized.
Right now we have a few scattered actions and dedicated groups. They rise up and sink away on Facebook. Or remain in the shadows like the Knights of Chaos at Arcanorium College.
What we require is a unified, pan-tradition, organization that can bring together magicians in the numbers that we need to make the change. An organization that can identify causes and targets, and lead us not only in physical resistance but magical as well.
Perhaps that’s your challenge.