Tag: magick

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?

There’s something awe-inspiring about knowing that in the deserts of Kemet, over 3,000 years ago, someone was using the same incantation you used today.

Magick to Get Results

I hold this axiom of chaos magick to be self evident – magick should be performed to get results. Practicing rituals just to call oneself a magus seems an enormous waste of time and energy. The results a magus seeks can, however, be somewhat nebulous.

In fact, magick seems to work better with a wide target. Conjuring to obtain $500.00 tomorrow at noon will most likely result in failure. Performing a ritual to ensure the commercial success of a book you have just written stands a much better chance of succeeding.

It has become apparent to me that this may be where we separate the good magi from the mediocre. One needs to have a good sense of what magikal operations are worth doing.

I don’t have anything against sigil magick. I’ve used it myself, but I seem to have greater success using ritual magick. For whatever reason, my unconscious mind taps into the long and drawn out processes of the ritual. I also believe that ritual magi are better at raising gnosis due to the constant practices that ritual magick advocates.

Here’s where I am hitting a wall. I see the wisdom in taking the common rituals used by the Golden Dawn and Thelema, The Rituals of the Pentagram, The Hexagram, The Star Ruby, etc., and adapting them to my symbol system. I respect that magi in the past have had success with these practices. At the same time, I balk at performing any magick that does not seek some kind of result.

In all of my research, I have yet to find WHY ceremonial magi perform the Ritual of the Hexagram. WHY do Thelemites perform the Star Ruby? The Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram seems self evident as a basic exercise in raising gnosis and manipulating magikal energies, but they can’t all serve that same purpose? Can they?

I was wondering if one of my excellent tumbler followers could tell me, why do you perform these rituals? What are their purpose?

A New Path

No one can deny that we all follow our own path, but many of us share the same way-markers. In youth, the faith, or lack thereof, of our parents spurned us to explore new avenues of spirituality. Denying the bankrupt patriarchal and self-denying philosophies of our kin we delved into Wicca, or Heathenism, or Thelema. Something in these religions spoke to a past life memory, or a desire to be free, or for some to connect with the spirit of nature. A rare few went down these paths following family tradition, but even these mystics found something inherently wrong in the monotheisms crushing our culture.

In the words of Lon Milo DuQuette:

“In a world that’s gone hellishly mad we’ve always taken comfort in the fact that the faith of our fathers is the one thing that remains solid and unchanging. It occurs to very few of us that perhaps for the last 2,500 years the faith of our fathers has been one of the main reasons why our world has gone hellishly mad.”

But we few did recognize the inherent flaws in a religion that treats the earth and its inhabitants as things to be used and owned. Yet strangely, DuQuette, one of the most recognized magickans of our time is also responsible for bringing the mystical basis of that “faith of our fathers” to the masses.

Some of us went down yet deeper paths. We left behind, with fondness and friendship, the kitchen witches and grove tenders, looking for something deeper than Gardner, Starhawk, or Cunningham could offer. We knew that there were roads well shrouded in the secrecy and the arcane. Ancient knowledge that beckoned the disciplined mind to explore the depths of gnosis and ritual. The way-markers for us were The Golden Dawn, Agrippa, Goetia, and Crowley. Those not afraid to turn that faith of our fathers on its head, and spit in its eye.

Yet when we opened the temple doors what did we find inside? The trappings of that bigoted and hateful false demiurge that our ancestors bowed and scraped to. When we asked for the key to the book of knowledge, they handed us the Kabbalah. They told us learn Hebrew, call on the servant angels of the oppressor. Once again, submit before the tribal god of a desert people. Call him Adonai – Lord. Call him Agala – Mighty One. Ask that all the glory and power belong to the vain creator forever and ever.

To my dismay they took a tree, rotten at the core, and hung upon it the entirety of creation. Every color, smell, sound, and number went on the tree. They stole the old gods and nailed them to their tree. Some would tell you the secrets to all magick lies within the branches of that diseased foliage. And they have the audacity to call it the Tree of Life.

This is where my path seems to diverge. I told them no.

Why would I go backwards instead of forwards? Why would I want to chain myself to a system that uses Hebrew letters, calls on the Hebrew god, and takes form from the Hebrew misogynists that scribbled it down?

Do not mistake this for anti-semitism. I will have no congress with faiths that crush all others under the doctrine of ours is the only way. I will have nothing to do with a god that cries out for blood again and again. I don’t care if you call him Jehovah, or Yahweh, or Allah. I don’t see much use for a Buddha that tells me that I must disconnect from the mother that gave me birth in order to achieve enlightenment.

I will not submit. I am magus.

There’s still that need though. That itch where the unconscious memories of our race collects in our souls. We started down this way because we felt something calling us from past aeons. We embraced the pagan gods. So why should we forsake them now?

I understand the hypocrisy here. Wotan, Ra, and Morrigan called for just as much sword-work as the god of Israel. They have just as much blood on their hands. Yet that blood has faded with the passage of centuries. And after all, none of them claimed to be perfect. They left themselves room to grow and to change.

I used to loathe going to the bookstore. I resented having to hunt for nuggets of wisdom in a sea of drivel dumped into a category called “New Age.” Rare indeed were serious tomes sandwiched between pop-astrology and UFO hunting. The term “New Age” became, for me, synonymous with hippies and moon-eyed overaged flower children, not a one of them capable of the rigors demanded of a wizard.

One thing Crowley and his followers did do for me is ease my revulsion of the New Age. I have come to embrace the eschaton, look forward to the cycle, and know that it comes not from mindless platitudes, but on the back of a beast, in the eyes of a sacred whore.

So why not make Loki, Tiamat, and Osiris gods for the New Age? While we won’t get them to behave all the time, they may come to see the wisdom of nonviolence and tolerance. They can embrace the values of our modern times much easier because they have no treatise currently in circulation that condones torture, rape and slavery.

Being a magickan, your familiarity with circles has probably given you warning. If we once again throw off the shackles of Judaic thought where does that leave us? Are we once again cast adrift? Doomed to have no underpinnings stronger than knife, wand, and cup? No, and yes, but with anticipation, not apprehension.

Ancient pagans left us a wealth of strong philosophical and magickal theory. You know it’s there. You need only prune the tree of its withered branches. Be brave enough to let go of that yearning for a great oneness and revel in the chaos of the multitude.

This is our chance to develop our own system of correspondences. Containing the heady brew from our collective unconscious but making it relevant to our current knowledge and place in the universe.

Quantum theory has brought us one step closer to the truth. Matter and energy are the same thing, interchangeable. Every thing in the universe is only an expression of the arrangement of its sub-atomic particles. As magickans have suspected all along what we see, touch, and hear comes into being from thought. It is, in its essence, only information. And as carriers of the WORD, as Thoth carries the WORD of Ra, we can manipulate that information as we see fit.

All information can be diluted to two states, yes and no, positive or negative, to be or not to be. 0 or 1. Repeated to infinity in accordance with the song of the gods the 0s and 1s shape everything.

The symbol for this New Age of information is the same as the old symbol. Though the Egyptians certainly never saw it this way, their gods held the expression of this concept in their hands.

0 + 1 x ∞ =

We do not truly believe you went to the moon, but you did. You may not believe we achieve enlightenment in one life time, but we do.

Wade Davis quoting a Tibetan Buddhist monk