Month: July 2012

Answering more questions about magick

I am not an expert, but I am happy to share what I have learned.

A follower asked:Yes, thank you. That’s very interesting. I have the same sort of troubles with the Judeo-Christian flavor of Qabalah. Would you be willing to describe the process you go through to build correspondences after you’ve decided on an effect? I’m sorry for bothering you with so many questions!


Here’s an example. A while back I created a muse. Take a look at the description from my old blog.

I wanted her to not only be my servant, but a servant of the goddess Babalon. So when I created her sigil it included the Star of Babalon. As mentioned in the blog post, there were also lots of roses involved. The cigar I included to make her part Loa.

It’s pretty easy to build up plenty of correspondences in a ritual with a little research. The hard part is when you try to create something more abstract, like Qabalah, where all of those traits become linked. I am only beginning to do that work myself. For me, that required a long examination of my current beliefs and trying to distill them down into their most basic parts.

I wanted to use Egyptian philosophy and beliefs as a basis, to match the use of an Ankh as the base symbol, but found it to be difficult to find ideas to work with, without learning ancient Egyptian and going to the source material. But as I looked more into Greek philosophy and terminology, it seemed better suited to the task. They were what some consider the greatest pagan thinkers, plus, Greek has had a direct influence on our language and thought in Western culture.

This is what I came up with:

I could go into what all of that means if you like. As a magus I would like nothing better than to have others adding fuel to my belief system. The point is, now that I have basic ideas to associate symbols and objects with, I can start building my own version of 777.

Logos = 1 = The Sun = White = Candle

Binary = 2 = Sirius = Thoth = Logic = Blue = Pen & Scroll

Khaos = 3 = Earth = Khepra = Potential = Black = Robe

And so on. The important part is never to become moribund in the system. Binary things may be associated with the stars Sirius, but Thoth is a Moon god and should be associated with that body. Also, don’t worry about building out too far. Only when you need a correspondence and you can’t find one through research that makes sense, look at your base concept and use what you associate with it.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.

Noam Chomsky (via difference-is-happy)

A follower Asked

“Regarding your post, “A New Path” (http://scrollofthoth.tumblr.com/post/23588181603/a-new-path),


I was wondering if you could go more in detail about the ideas behind this. Specifically, I was wondering which parts of the Qabalah you think are useful/real enough to be kept. I was intrigued by the post and considered doing something similar.”

I believe that all paths to the divine are valid, as long as they do not denigrate another. So if Qabalah works for you, and you can incorporate it into a world view that does not preclude others, go for it. Qabalah, however, does not work for me. It’s just the way my mind works. Being based on Judea-Christian concepts, it will always carry that baggage for me. It is a system that points to a single creator God, which doesn’t sit well in my world view. It doesn’t make it lesser, it just makes it not for me.

As to what from Qabalah should be salvaged, that’s all a matter of what you are trying to purge the system of. I think that all magikal practices benefit from a system of correspondences. It facilitates what chaos magi call “sleight of mind”. The theory goes that the conscious mind does not perform magick well because it is shackled by the perception of what it believes is reality. The sub-conscious mind, however, does not have these limitations. If a magus can influence his sub-conscious mind, then they will get better results. Unfortunately, the sub-conscious mind does not work on a direct 1=1 basis. It works symbolically. Essentially a system of correspondences is a related group of symbols that you can imprint on the sub-conscious using gnosis.

Red = Love, 7 = Lucky, Mars = War, are all basic correspondences. But the more indirect you can make correlations the better it works. There is a down side to this. As some magi spend so much time developing a system they believe capable of containing all meanings, they fail to get on with doing the magick.

For me, a good rule has been, come up with a desired effect, and then build a system of correspondences around it. Stop when you think you have gone far enough to perform the working. Add it to your existing system and move on.

So far I have found that having correspondences for scents, colors, planets, gods, and a few higher concepts, like eschaton, have been enough for me. I find no need to add tarot cards or astrology, yet. I think if you build your own system based on need to perform magick rather than need to know the system, it helps prevent over doing it. You should also stop when you feel like you are forcing something into the system that doesn’t belong. Like when certain hermeticists equate Odin with Hermes. Do they seem like the same type of god to you? Nope, me neither.

Did that answer your question?