Some Further Thoughts About the 40 Qualified Powers

A while back I wrote an article about the 40 Qualified Powers, which are a useful set of energies and they have a comparative utility to the 16 Elementals. You can find that article here, but I have had further thoughts about these energies and I wanted to put them into an article that would work along with what I have already written. The ritual pattern that is used to generate the 40 Qualified Powers is called the “Pyramid of Powers” rite can be found in my book entitled “Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick - Omnibus Edition.” The rituals is examined in chapter 7 of Book 2, and the Qualified Powers are defined in chapter 8 of Book 2. I would recommend getting this book and adding it to your collection because there a quite a number of useful ritual patterns and open-source rituals in that work.


There are a number of different ways that one can utilize the Tarot as a magical tool, since it is a repository of quite a large number of magical and occult correspondences. The Tarot and the Qabalah are intertwined, particularly in the 19th and 20th century European occult versions of those disciplines. A magician can take a certain specific point of reference and look at the Tarot in that manner to discover all sorts of useful symbologies and practical referential correspondences. One such perspective is to look at the Tarot through the perspective of magical energy. What one would find would be three groups of magical powers. The first would be the sixteen elementals based on the court cards, the second would be the forty qualified powers, and the last would be the transformative powers of the twenty-two trumps of the major arcana. One could also split off the four aces to produce the foundational structure of the spiritual dimension of the four Elements.

Similarly, one could also look at the Tarot through the perspective of spirits, and with this perspective a whole array of a spiritual hierarchy would be revealed. There would be the hierarchy of the 36 astrological decans, the sixteen elementals spirits (as found in either the angelic or Enochian systems of magic), and the interaction of the various spirits associated with both the cycle of initiation and the cosmogonic creation/dissolution cycles of the trumps. Either approach, energy or spirit, will reveal the powerful magical underpinnings of the Tarot. The energy perspective reveals the magical powers that are available to the magician using the energy model of magic, and the spirit perspective reveals the spiritual hierarchy that is available for the magician to conjure. Additionally, the 36 decan based number or Naib cards, represent an actual spiritual domain that is grounded in the zodiacal hierarchy that permeates the three spherical levels of celestial, earth and underworld. The Tree of Life can also be mapped to this structure, although not in a very clean and concise manner unless the four Qabalistic Worlds are employed.

Therefore, the Tarot is a very powerful repository of all things occult and magical, and it could be considered the preeminent magical grimoire. I have also written about this concept in one of my articles, and you can find it here. While quite a number of magicians are examining and studying the latest in published grimoires and expounding about the latest developments in the arena of evocation and spirit conjuring, one book is typically ignored. That book is the redoubtable Tarot, which was fashioned to be the basis for all forms of magic in the Western Mystery tradition. If a student were to study the Tarot in a great deal of depth and intensity then I believe that such a person would be able to expand their magical perspective to achieve all magical objectives using both magical energies and spirits embedded within the symbolic correspondences of the humble Tarot cards. It is the most important grimoire and magical treatise of all time, and it is the source for all of the magical and occultic systems in the West. And, it can be used for divination, either to passively receive or actively project the patterns thereby randomly derived. Perhaps one of the greatest exponents of the Tarot is Aleister Crowley’s book “The Book of Thoth.” It was one the last books that he wrote, and it is one of the best, in my opinion. 


Getting back to our topic about the Qualified Powers, I have been seeking to encapsulate these magical energies in such a manner that other practitioners of magic would see their utility and usefulness. I had assumed that the Qualified Powers were called such because they were the product of a base element qualified by an attribute of Deity. However, there is more to them than that, or at least that is what I have discovered by pondering them in greater depth. Allow me to explain what I mean by this statement.

Energy magic is typically reduced to working, in some manner, with the four elements. You can readily extend this model to include a number of different qualities of energy, but they are all based on the four elements - Fire, Air, Water and Earth. You can define these four elements in many different ways, including physical, occult and spiritual qualities. In extending the definitions of the four elements you can make their utility more refined and useful. However, you can also do this by combining with other things to create hybrid energy structures. This is the basic concept regarding the energy model of magic that I have employed in my magical system. I don’t know if others have also used this mechanism, but this is what I have found to be quite efficient and useful. The occult and magical symbol for the four elements is the pentagram, which represents the four elements tied to a fifth, which is spirit. In this manner, spirit is said to be the synergetic fusion of all four of the elements - it is the quintessential element. A magician can use the pentagram to generate/invoke or dissolve/banish any of the four elements and spirit. The basic magical technique for generating element powers using a pentagram was first employed in the Golden Dawn rite of the Superior Pentagram.

Now whether these energized elements or their hybrids are seen as being generated through the vital force of the magician’s body or through some symbolic artifice is not particularly important to the energy model. In the version of the energy model of magic that I work, it would seem to me that this energy source has its origin both within my body (as a trigger) and also outside of it. One of the reasons that I believe this is that however much energy I can raise through the artifice of magic, I don’t seem to be draining my own essential energy. Once triggered, it seems as if the magical energy that I have generated for a magical working has an endless supply. I can feel this energy pass through my body, for certain, but the ecstatic results of this energy flow seems beyond what would normally just reside in my body. When using the energy magical techniques and projecting what feels like a considerable force into the material world, I feel highly charged and energized after the working instead of feeling depleted or tired. I always have to ground off the excess in order to keep myself balanced and not emotionally keyed up. Working with the energy based system of magic can make one feel “high” or even drunk because of the emotional impact of the ungrounded energies.

As far as energy hybrids are concerned, I have incorporated three different energy structures, and these can both engage magical energies and energy based spirits. The most basic structure is to be found in the sixteen elementals. These powers consist of the hybrid pair of a qualifying base element combined with the same or another element. The permutation of four produces the number sixteen, so there are sixteen elementals. These energy based entities correspond to the sixteen court cards in the Tarot. You could use just one of these cards as the focus for generating an elemental. The other two are the 28 Lunar Mansions (Talismanic Elemental), which are represented as the hybrid combination of an element and a planet, and the 40 Qualified Powers, which are represented as the hybrid of an element and a Deity attribute.

To generate an elemental I employ the pentagram device and the eight node circle octagram (consisting of a double pyramid) as the ritual pattern used to generate what I call an elemental vortex. I can further qualify this energy by using the Enochian spirit name pair and the Enochian call for a specific elemental. However, an elemental force, even when summoned using a spirit name, has to have some kind of specific magical device to link it to some external objective - known as the magical link. The energy is focused into the center of the magic circle using a deosil circumambulation spiral from the outer periphery of the magic circle to the center. The power is released through the artifice of a widdershins circumambulation spiral from the center to the outer periphery of the magic circle, where the energy is projected outside of the circle as a kind of magical “bolt.” In order for the magical energy to find its target it must first be imprinted with the link, which is usually in the form of a charged or consecrated sigil. I consider an elemental magical power to be “unqualified” because it requires a sigil to imprint and direct it to its objective. As a joke, I often say to my students that elementals are kind of dumb and need to be qualified in order to work.

While the generated elemental is considered an unqualified power, both the Lunar Mansions and the Qualified Powers are qualified powers. What this means is that these magical energies also contain archetypal qualifiers that further define the energy (with a spiritual intelligence) so that it has a specific function and objective already determined. Both of these energy systems don't require the imprint of a magical link in order to set them to a specific objective. By definition, these kinds of magical energies already have an objective, and that is why I refer to them as qualified powers. You can use a sigil to imprint and further refine their innate function, but it is not required. Once generated and released, qualified energies will automatically empower the magician’s intention to fulfill the working’s magical objective. Thus qualified powers are also intelligent magical energies, since they are imbued with an archetypal intelligence. The 28 Lunar Mansions are actually a subset of the 40 Qualified Powers, since the seven planetary archetypes are included in the 10 attributes of the Deity.

The structure used to generate one of the Qualified Power is the magical pyramid vortex, and the device is the pentagram. The focusing and exteriorizing spirals are used just as they are in the Elemental Octagram, but the focused element energy field is imprinted with a symbol and quality of attribute of the Deity. This causes a fusion, within the vortex field, of the element and attribute, thereby qualifying the magical energy. One could also further qualify it by performing an invocation of a specific polytheistic Deity, vibrating a Qabalistic Sephirah Godname, or even just using the Tarot card itself. The magician should make certain that the energy is fully imprinted so that there appears to be a kind of energized Godform in the center of the circle. Then when this qualified energy is released in the same manner as an elemental, it will intelligently and automatically proceed outward from the circle to fulfill its objective. The ritual to generate a Qualified Power is more simple than the ritual used to generate an elemental, and since there are 40 different powers, one can have a greater variety from which to choose. As I said, you can also use a sigil to give a qualified power even more of a precise focus, but it is not required. All that is required is to develop a mechanism for symbolically defining one of the ten Deity attributes.

Coincidentally, the technique for using the 40 Qualified Powers was something that I learned using a very simple cone of power augmented by setting an invoking pentagram of a specific element to the four watchtowers and then imprinting that energy using one of the 10 Qabalistic Godnames. It was a very simple version of the Pyramid of Power rite, but it was amazingly effective. I was taught this simple technique in the old Alexandrian coven in which I first learned how to work real magic. Sometimes I wonder if any other Witches perform this kind of simple but effective magic.

Frater Barrabbas