Sage vs Mage in Ritual Magic

In our imagination, we have two characters from our folklore, and these are the mage and the sage. A mage is, of course, a magician, with his tall cap, long white beard and staff, typically associated with Merlin or later, Gandalf. He is the great wizard who can summon angels, demons and demigods. A sage is more obscure, being a person who is wise, the counselor of great leaders and the author and exemplar of religious or philosophical movements. A sage can also be a holy man, or wise religious leader, representing the mystical side of the human experience. These two individuals as archetypes represent two different facets, one is the magician and the other is a religious leader. They would seem to represent diametrically opposed factions of magic and mysticism, and in medieval Christian Europe, this was a popular theme, although it was more complicated in reality than it was perceived in popular folklore. However, the sage and mage were seen as one and the same in the Greco-Roman world, since philosophers were often believed to have arcane powers and occult knowledge.

Magic and religion have always intertwined and intersected at various points, although it is religion, or in the guise of philosophy, that has appeared mostly dominant in that relationship. The archetypal magician that emerged in late middle ages seems to embody both a religious role and a strictly magical one. Grimoires from the past age contain ceremonies and tasks best performed by a cleric, or by a hired cleric for the use of a lay-person or secular ritualist. This is because the spirits that were the target of invocation or evocation were wrapped up in religious beliefs and liturgical lore, and Christianity blurred the boundary between what was supposedly secular philosophy and religious tenants, becoming what was considered then as the highest form of intellectual activity, which was theology. It was Christian theology that embodied both the religious ethos of the time and also, unwittingly, a magical ethos. Thus magic had to appear intermixed with religious rites to engage in a kind of sacred technology.

While European ceremonial magic in its early period (11th - 14th century) was nominally a system of angel magic, functioning as an adjunct practice of trained clerics or monks associated with their sacred duties and almost sacramental in their practice, all of this changed in the early Renaissance. It was at that point when religious practices and the practice of magic began to diverge, and also when the trafficking with demons began to take prominence in the various grimoires and manuscripts on magic at that time. While the Christian Church divorced itself from the practice of even positive and constructive forms of magic, the emerging lay population of academics and their student followers began to engage in these discarded methodologies, and sought to capitalize on the powers and abilities associated with goetic demons despite the proscriptions of the Church.

The practice of engaging with negative or hostile spirits was not new to the traditions of magic, since it had its sources in antiquity with the practices of the goetic shamans who intervened in ghostly hauntings and served chthonic deities, it was redefined as demonology by a Christianized culture. Still, from the 16th to through the 17th century, which was the golden age of grimoires, the magician was required to curry the favor of God and to assume a level of spiritual purification before being granted the authority and power over neutral or demonic spirits. Magic still had a very religious foundation, and those who wished to evoke and coerce demons to satisfy their material-based ambitions had to assume a level of spiritual superiority over the spirits that they commanded. One can see this everywhere in the grimoires of the previous age, as the invocations to the Deity, the prayers, the assumed piety, the expiation and a strict requirement for a degree of spiritual purity still was considered essential to the practice of sorcery. This is because it was believed that only by the mercy and power of God could a magician be warded and escape the wily onslaughts, deceit and cunning of demons.

After the 16th century, magic started to become religiously agnostic and morally ambivalent, as it was practiced by individuals who had little relationship to religious practices other than being a lay person attendant at religious observances. They did not need to engage in an authoritative manner with the Deity, since vesting themselves in the superficial accouterments of their faith seemed adequate to deal with wayward demons. The church had lost its precedence over the practice of magic, and even the presumption of holiness was replaced by a nominal faith and belief in the process, but with the self-serving aim of personal enrichment, or the enrichment of clients who were willing to pay dearly for this service.

Parallel to the practice of ceremonial magic in the 17th century were the practices of alchemy and astrology. Additionally, there began to be an interest in hidden or occultic knowledge, and the fraternal organizations that began to be seen in Europe were first associated with the Rosicrucian movement begun in the early part of century, and then through the decades became a real underground movement that involved the study of the Jewish Kabbalah, alchemy, astrology, and also, to a lesser extent, ceremonial magic. In the 18th century, these secret societies were popularized by Masonry and various Masonic offshoots. The Illuminati had their origin at this time, and there were also the practices of Egyptian Masonry, and many other similar secret organizations. Still, it would seem that the Masonic movement, the Protestant Reformation, and the various secret brotherhoods had pushed the practice of ceremonial magic into a more secular and non-religious environment, where the individual through their piety and personal fortitude, could command spirits and demons to do their will. However, magic had already seen its popularity begin to fade, and the social myth of the magician was seen as an erroneous or fraudulent path to wisdom and power.

By the time of the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, ceremonial magic became the proclivity of the eccentric, the occultist, the madman or the charlatan. The magician seemed like the antithesis to the religious leader, or sage, both great and small; but was also at odds with the ascending scientism of the academics. Magic was an unsanctioned, underground practice of dubious individuals, since it had been drained of most of its religiosity, and infused with a materialistic and cynical ambition to manipulate the world against the rational prejudice and derision of science. As magic became degraded, the image of the magician appeared to be consigned to the ash heap of history, and the mythic image and folklore seemed to show that any attempt to acquire power, material gain, and unsanctioned wisdom by making a pact with Satan always ended badly. This was when the myth of Faustus seemed to cast magic in a dark light, even though the myth of Faust had ironically started an occult magical movement in Germany. Thus, magic became the interesting topic of the collectors and copyists of obscure manuscripts of the previous age, but serious engagement seemed lacking. The Magus was published around this time, but it was likely the last gasp of a dying tradition. Some occultists continued to examine and study magic, such as Eliphas Levi, who sought to revitalize the practice, but who actually was never a practitioner himself. It remained the proclivity of the few, and was fading into complete obscurity as the 19th century and its emphasis on the material sciences gained precedence.

In the late nineteenth century, with the advent of the Theosophical Society and various occult groups such as the Golden Dawn, ceremonial magic was rehabilitated. Yet its more religious attributes were no longer represented in the 19th century Victorian culture. Therefore, it continued to be treated and engaged with in a more secular manner than what would have been considered a proper mental condition for working these rites in the previous age. The Golden Dawn brought to its members and later the world, a whole new style of working magic that merged occult concepts, various Qabalistic tables of correspondences and rituals to engage with various kinds of spirits into the purview of the magical practitioner. The pentagram became the tool for engaging with the elementals, and the hexagram, the tool of planetary and talismanic magic. Angels were incorporated into rites of warding and protection, but a ritual used to invoke an angel or evoke a demon into manifestation was not part of this corpus.

However, the basic ritual practices, such as the watchtower rituals, the banishing and invoking rites of the pentagram and hexagram, gave the adept practitioner the basic lore needed to engage with the old grimoires. Without the archaic religious praxis, the old grimoires were likely not very accessible to the modern public, so the Golden Dawn provided a body of rituals that would establish a surrogate or replacement methodology that made these magical books accessible. Grimoires from the previous age were starting to become available, first in manuscript form in the GD, and then in published books. Those individuals who had mastered the basic ritual workings of the Golden Dawn could then apply this knowledge to unlocking the grimoires, and this what they did. It began a kind of accelerated process that is still going on today, with more and more of these magic books being published and made available.

With all of the new magical tech that the Golden Dawn invented and disseminated to its membership, probably the most important practice was godhead assumption. There was also a kind of sympathy for the polytheism of antiquity, that was taken to a greater level of engagement by Mathers, Brodie, Crowley, Fortune, and others. The early twentieth century saw the beginnings of a pagan religious movement, which was an alternative to Christianity. Margarete Murray published books on the Witchcraft cult of the previous age, and this was the beginning of a movement of popular and romantic thought that would culminate in the birth of modern Witchcraft. These new fledgling religions saw themselves as the repository of both a modern polytheistic religious practice and the engagement and practice of modern occultism. Nearly all of the founders for the various pagan and wiccan groups were also practicing occultists, and so much of that lore found its way into these groups, along with both modern religious perspectives (post-Christian) as well as fragments of ancient lore, but also, the practice of magic. Murray had made magic central to the Witch cult of the previous age, and this notion was fully captured in these new groups.

While Crowley was instrumental in bringing the practice of magic into the 20th century, his invention of a new religion seemed to be a requirement for participation in this system of magic that he brought to his Thelemic followers. Crowley’s religion, Thelema, was actually the first of the polytheistic pagan traditions that would be come abundant in the later part of the 20th century. Crowley also made magic the central tenant of his religion, and this was also a model for the other and later organizations. Despite the fact that Thelema was such a new and compelling religious perspective, along with the required practice of magic, his organization of the Ordo Templi Orientis nearly ceased to exist after his death. The post world-war period of the 1950's was more about reconstruction and finding balance in the Cold War era than engaging in various forms of occultism. Still, this profound phenomenon of religious, occultic, and magical development went into a kind of stasis after the Second World War. It was only in the 1960's that this modern engagement with magic returned along with many other alternative spiritual and occultic perspectives that were part of the counter cultural youth movement.

During the late 1960's and into the decades following, the modern Pagan and Witchcraft movements, along with the OTO, and many other newly founded traditions, proposed a religious system that combined the practice of religion and magic as a single praxis. In the Pagan and Witchcraft traditions, the central liturgical rite was a form of godhead assumption that had been taken and modified from the Golden Dawn tradition, and this brought a dimension of immanent spirituality into the group practices that had no precedence in Western European religions since antiquity. It allowed for individuals to impersonate and assume the characteristics and qualities of the pagan Deities that they were worshiping to the intimate contact and communion with their group. This is a clear case of channeling the Deity, and this would have a profound effect on the one personifying the Deity and the group who functioned as the witnesses and benefactors of that spiritual outpouring.

Since magic was considered a central tenant of this new religious movement, then godhead assumption would therefore become a part of the magic that was also performed. The liturgical rites would blend into the magical, since there was nothing to really distinguish them. It is this very consideration that I followed in developing my own system of magic based on the central liturgical practices of modern Witchcraft, but I am certain that I am not alone in this practice. However, what I was not aware of at the time was that this approach of merging religious liturgy and magic together had a truly ancient precedence that echoed from the Greco-Roman world of the philosophers and their practices, to the monks and clerics practicing angel magic, to Witches and Pagans practicing both religious rites and magic together. This is where the Sage and the Mage become fully united once again in the practice of Western religion and magic. While Catholicism had stripped itself of all ceremonial magic associated with the rites of the Mass and its ancillary practices especially in Vatican II, modern Paganism and Witchcraft had restored them, and in fact, made them even greater. Magic practiced in the guise of religion has also another provenance, which is theurgy, the methods of magic used by the philosophers of antiquity.

As a Witch Elder and Ritual Magician of the post modern age, I see myself as both a sage and a mage, embodying both perspectives as a single system of magical practice and religious engagement with the inner and outer worlds of spirit, mind and body. I see these two practices of religion and magic in perfect balance with each other, and I am engaging in developing a magical practice that can elevate the operator to the highest states of enlightened being, merging also magic and mysticism together. If there is a unitary function in the modern Pagan and Witchcraft religions, then this holistic practice represents the both the foundation and the zenith of our aspirations.

Frater Barrabbas

I am NOT a Ceremonial Magician

It still keeps happening. People refer to my writings as “ceremonial magic” and to me as a ceremonial magician. In some cases, it is used as a pejorative, as if being a ceremonial magician means that I am not really a Witch, Pagan, or a self-made magical user. Of course, I clearly am all of those, but I am not a ceremonial magician, and what I promote as a system of magic is not ceremonial magic. I have written about this issue before, but because it still occurs, even innocently by people who either don’t know much about magic, or by those who should actually know better, I feel the need to restate it here in this article.

Ironically, ceremonial magicians have unequivocally stated that the magic I promote is not ceremonial magic, and that makes me not one of them. If ceremonial magicians don’t think that I am a ceremonial magician, then I must not be a ceremonial magician. That is quite logical. After all, they should know their own kind. In fact, one Thelemite ceremonial magician years ago said that my magic “stinks of Witchcraft,” which is an impolite way of saying that there are strong and obvious traces of my Witchcraft roots in the magic that I perform and promote in my books. There are also some traces of the magical ritual system of the Golden Dawn, but the base and foundation of the magic that I work is completely founded on the rituals of Gardnerian-Alexandrian Witchcraft. I use a consecrated magic circle to start all of my ritual workings, and I don’t use the LBRP or the LIRP (lesser pentagram banishing and invoking rituals) to begin my workings. That fact, right away, should distinguish me from a ceremonial magician. I also don’t rely on the writings of any grimoires, modern or ancient, so overall, that would make my rituals to not be a part of the corpus of ceremonial magic, and thus, I am not a ceremonial magician.

So what exactly is ceremonial magic? Some have said that it is specifically Golden Dawn magic, but that would only cover elemental and talismanic magical workings. To invoke angels or demons, a magician would have to employ other magical tech, and this is where the old grimoires of the previous age have their value. The author Joseph Liziewski promoted a grimoire only and spirit model only methodology of magic that appeared to give precedence to the grimoires from the Renaissance over any modern system of magic. While his methodologies have been seriously questioned, the movement that he created established a theme and definition for ceremonial magic. It became associated with a combination of Golden Dawn magic along with the older grimoires, and the four books of Occult Philosophy variously written by Agrippa that also became available to the reading public. Throw in the writings of Paracelsus and the Hermetic corpus and you have the defined discipline of ceremonial magic. It is a hybrid of old and new tech, but it relies on the themes and methodologies established in the previous age and reinterpreted to fit into the practices and beliefs of the post-modern world. While Liziewski promoted regaining a kind of orthodox religious approach, such as Catholicism or Calvinistic Protestant Christianity, others have either approached this kind of magical working with either a Thelemic, archaic Christian, or even a kind of religious agnosticism. There was an important reason that Liziewski promoted regaining an orthodox faith, as we shall see.

The big question is where do I fit in within this collection of old and new magical methodologies? And the answer is, I don’t fit in. While it is true that I have purloined and appropriated various lore, barbarous words of evocation, sigils, seals and notae into my magical practice, the entire methodology of how I work magic and my perspective on magical tech is quite different than what ceremonial magicians are using in their work. We are both engaging in a practice that is part of the occulture of the post modern age, and our activities are performed in a modern world ruled by science.

Ceremonial magic is a hybrid of new and old practices, particularly since the religious and spiritual perspectives of the 16th and 17th century are no longer either relevant or even in evidence today. That mind-set has to be recreated within a modern intellectual context, and with the social and cultural influences of academia and science, it is all too obviously contrived and fantasized, becoming part of the “As If” function of the psychological model of magic. This fact doesn’t either diminish nor falsify the practice of ceremonial magic. It is an component that all practitioners use to break out of the imposed rationality of the scientific and secular social perspective in which we live. It’s just that where I have no problem admitting this fact, other practitioners, especially ceremonial magicians, seem to deny that it is a critical factor in their magical work. It would also nullify the belief that ceremonial magicians use only the spirit model in their magic, but that is a topic for another article.

Principally, what distinguishes the magic that I work is that every magical working that I perform begins with a godhead assumption and has, therefore, a component of liturgical obligations and practices that are an integral part of my magic. This methodology was developed in the Golden Dawn, but it became a central liturgical event in modern Witchcraft and Paganism. It was not used as a mask to empower the magician, as it was used in the Golden Dawn, but more as a means to directly contact, engage and embody Pagan Deities for an intimate communion. Since modern Witchcraft and Paganism does not make a distinction between religion and magic, liturgical practices are also considered magical practices, and this makes the kind of magic performed by these adherents more like a form of theurgy than a form of ceremonial magic. The fact that a Witch or Pagan is performing magic in the guise and impersonation of a godhead makes that magic quite different than what a ceremonial magician would perform.

While a religious engagement is not specifically required in the modern practice of ceremonial magic, it still has a part to play in the invocation/evocation of angels and demons. The first stage in summoning a spirit is purification, and that might include a more rigorous alignment of the magician to either an orthodox religious practice or one that is aligned to modern faiths, such as Thelema. The old grimoires are filled with prayers and exhortations to a monotheistic Godhead, so one would think that the magician would have to have some kind of psychological alignment to that Deity in order to make such words of power effective and potent. There is also an element of self-abasement and expiation that goes with the purification process. While a magician could lightly skip through this first step for evocation, it would make the overall magical approach weakened and less significantly meaningful. This is the reason why Lisiewski proposed that ceremonial magicians adopt some kind of orthodox religious engagement so that the context of the prayers, invocations and exhortations in the old grimoires would be more personally meaningful and psychologically potent.

Additionally, a ceremonial magician would rely on the themes, structures, guidelines, and translated verbiage of the grimoire text, treating it as the final authority. They must adhere faithfully to the testaments of the old grimoire and only make substitutions where otherwise absolutely required to complete the working. What that means is that the grimoire is the primary ruling guide for the working, and mistakes, deviations, and unwarranted substitutions could cause the working to fail. Because our minds are shaped by our culture and the prevalence of science and secular government, a ceremonial magician must spend a great deal of time erasing that mind-set and imbuing it with a spiritual perspective that would allow for the practice of invocative magic. That process, then, becomes the focus and principal foundation for learning to master the magic of the old grimoires, which means that a faithful adherence to the rites and practices, and the archaic religious immersion, becomes the ruling methodology for a successful ceremonial magician. A mistake in performing a ritual could require the magician to banish and later have to redo it since some degree of perfection is required. As you can see, the whole discipline of ceremonial magic, especially when using the old grimoires, is a rigorous and strict methodology, which is similar to what Lisiewski was originally promoting in his books. One has to replace the missing cultural and religious key-stone that was a part of the practice of magic in the previous age to effectively use the old grimoires in the current age.

Working magic through a Pagan or Witchcraft religious praxis, even with the rites of spirit conjuring, is completely different than what is done in ceremonial magic. This is why I refer to the kind of magic performed by Pagans and Witches as ritual magic as opposed to ceremonial magic. I would include some Thelemites in this group, and I believe that most of them perform magic using the pagan model established by Crowley. Thelema has similarities to modern Witchcraft and Paganism. In many cases, Thelemic religious practices are more like their Witchcraft and Pagan cousins, and it some ways, they are almost identical. This is because Thelema was the first and earliest magical practice to depart from the monotheistic faiths that have dominated the practice of ceremonial magic in the West. As long as one engages in the core rite of godhead assumption and connects that to a Pagan liturgical practice, then a Thelemite would be considered a ritual magician instead of a ceremonial magician, although I have met many who prefer to be considered ceremonial magicians.

One very important factor in the practice of ritual magic as opposed to ceremonial magic is the use of the godhead assumption rite, and that core liturgy trumps any other external religious or magical process. What that means is that the ritual magician is free to incorporate whatever materials that they find are useful, esthetically pleasing or empowering from a myriad of modern occult or antique sources, and thereby build up their own personal magical practice. The Godhead that they worship, embody and personify, gives them the authority to do whatever is required to make their magic effective and empowering. That means that performing a ritual can allow for a greater degree of flexibility, allowing the ritual magician to make inspired changes to the ritual working as it is being performed. I have experienced this kind of phenomenon myself, and it always leads to a more interesting and empowering outcome. The will of the practitioner is aligned with the will of the chosen godhead, and invariably, as ritual magicians become more accomplished and linked to that godhead, the more the magic that they perform becomes a form of theurgy, or god-based work. I have found that Theurgy is the most effective form of magic, outside of talismanic magic, and it is baked into the practices of ritual magic,

Another significant factor in the magic that I work is that the magic circle that I employ is a boundary between the sacred and the profane worlds, representing a demarcation that divides the world into a sacred precinct enclosed within the circle, and the profane, mundane world external to it. The circle is not a protection from spiritual contagion, since everything that a Witch or Pagan would conjure, summon, invoke or generate occurs within the circle. Unlike the circle used in a ceremonial magical rite, there is no external gateway or magic triangle where the conjured spirit might appear, constrained and controlled. A ceremonial magician uses an empowered magic circle to protect them from the spirits that they invoke. A Witch or Pagan performs all of their magic within their magic circle, and the spirit appears within that domain, so the operator must have assumed a powerful godhead to protect and authorize them to command spirits and to diplomatically treat with them as allies, with agreements and offerings. In a Witchcraft circle, one does not peer into the spirit world with a magic mirror or shew stone since the spirit world is all around those who are within the magic circle. While a scrying device can be used to receive portents, prophecies and visions, within the sacred space of a magic circle, any form of divination becomes a sacred rite of revelation. Thus, a Witch or Pagan performs ritual magic and experiences a full immersion into the domain of the summoned or conjured spirit.

As you can see, the practice of ceremonial magic and ritual magic are fundamentally different, and a ritual magician requires a very different approach to their magic than what a ceremonial magician would require. Gaining a strong alignment with a personal aspect of their chosen Deity is of paramount importance to the practicing ritual magician, and they begin this work as a Witch or a Pagan learning to perform their basic liturgical exercises, gradually becoming more experienced, aligned and then linked to that Deity over time. When they have matured in this liturgical work then they are ready to begin to practice more advanced forms of magic, functioning as a ritual magician within their Witchcraft or Pagan praxis.

This represents the path that I have followed since the early 1970's, and I have grown and matured following it, inventing a complete system and methodology of magic during my journey. I consider myself a self-made ritual magician through and through. While I may distinguish myself and what I do regarding my practice of magic, I also respect all other methods and techniques of magic, both modern and antique. My respect, however, doesn’t stop me from appropriating lore from the magic of the previous age, but then I am merely following the guidance and precepts as inspired by my Deities, so I don’t incur any blame or fault for taking this kind of cavalier approach. I believe that magicians in previous ages followed this practice, acquiring religious and ritual lore from numerous source and using that to build up their lore and repertoire of spells and rites.

Therefore, now that I have spent some time writing this article to explain why I do not practice ceremonial magic and that I am not a ceremonial magician, it is my hope that folks will fully realize that I am quite serious when I make this distinction. What I am is a Witch and a ritual magician, and I am proud to make that claim.

Frater Barrabbas

A Tale of Two Nations or One Nation Divided

Election day has passed, and the results are as fearful and ignominious as the political pundits predicted it would be if Trump were reelected. While I was surprised at the results, I wasn’t really shocked. I had already written an article recently about how we live in a world of stupid people. My opinion was corroborated by an interesting exit poll that was performed during the election. The results are quite easy to understand.

“According to the final NBC News poll of the 2024 race, 76% of registered voters said they follow public affairs and politics closely. The poll showed Harris winning among that group by 5 points over Donald Trump, 52%-47%.

But among the remaining quarter of voters who said they don’t follow politics closely, Trump was ahead by a much greater margin — 14 points, 54%-40%.”

What this exit poll indicates is that those who were engaged and followed public affairs voted to elect Harris as president, and not Donald Trump. While this an aggregate poll, it is likely to have helped Harris to win the battle-ground states and to be the president-elect. The other group couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to what was happening, and they didn’t seem to be disturbed by Trump and the fact that he was a convicted felon, attributed rapist, twice impeached, and attempted to overthrow the last election, as well as held and misused classified documents, jeopardizing our national security. This is a candidate who declared that he would order to set up detention camps for illegal aliens, sneered at the idea of upholding the constitution, and promised to function as a dictator on the first day of his presidency if elected. All of these items would have killed anyone else’s candidacy, and even the factor that he will soon be 80 years old and is obviously suffering from the beginnings of dementia did nothing to deter these low information voters from voting for him. The fact that Biden was pressured to drop out because of his age demonstrates how Trump always gets a pass for his speeches and weird behavior.

I am not questioning the intelligence of those who voted for him, but I am calling to attention their obvious lack of civic responsibility. Some of them ardently belong to the Trump cult of personality, and some of them are hardened right-wing aficionados or Christian Nationalists, but that would be only be around 30% of the electorate, so the rest are just plain too busy living their lives to really engage with their civic duty to be informed. Yes, in a word, these people are ignorant, and they are selfishly motivated to be this way. I can only hope that they rue the day they voted for Trump as president, and then, maybe if it's not too late, get more involved in knowing what is really happening to their country.

We are all going to be victimized by an angry, aggrieved Trump and his cadre of lick-spittle lackeys, but as for those who unwittingly voted for Trump, they bought it and they now own it. Hopefully, they will actually realize their folly so that things can be rectified in the next two election cycles. I won’t hold my breath expecting that to happen anytime soon, but I can at least hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

As you can no doubt see, I belong to the first group of people who are engaged and follow public affairs and politics closely. I live in a media world where I get my information from a number of different news sources including ones from Europe. Yet it seems that I live in a different country and hold ideas and beliefs that represent a stark contrast to what the average American believes.

My fellow Americans have always lionized the country hick, the urban troglodyte, and the hosts of average although stupid people as the “common man” over the intellectual, the academic, or the expert. In American culture, common sense was always considered to be of greater value than what was believed or expressed by scientists, academics, and experts, who have been classified as elitists. Uneducated folks were seen to possess common sense in greater amounts than those who were highly educated, and that being average and ill informed was a badge of honor. I believe that it is now revealed as our Achilles heel, and being ill informed in the advent of the cyber age is likely suicidal.

Americans seem to mistrust mainstream news outlets, and although they are all biased to some degree, using critical thinking skills can extract the truth from the bias. News that is based on conspiracy theories, deliberate misinformation, inexpert opinions, hearsay or propaganda is not so easily parsed, especially if one possesses a woefully inadequate base of knowledge. In fact, it appears that most Americans are getting their news these days from news influencers instead of accredited news sources. Here is an interesting study of that phenomenon by Pew Research.

“A unique Pew Research Center study provides a deeper understanding of both the makeup of the news influencer universe and its audience. The project includes an in-depth examination of a sample of 500 popular news influencers and the content they produce, derived from a review of more than 28,000 social media accounts. We also conducted a nationally representative survey of Americans to better understand who regularly gets news from news influencers.

Key findings about news influencers

•    About one-in-five Americans – including a much higher share of adults under 30 (37%) – say they regularly get news from influencers on social media.
•    News influencers are most likely to be found on the social media site X, where 85% have a presence. But many also are on other social media sites, such as Instagram (where 50% have an account) and YouTube (44%).
•    Slightly more news influencers explicitly identify as Republican, conservative or pro-Donald Trump (27% of news influencers) than Democratic, liberal or pro-Kamala Harris (21%).
•    A clear majority of news influencers are men (63%).
•    Most (77%) have no affiliation or background with a news organization.”

I can tell you with all sincerity that I don’t trust news influencers, and in fact I use a factual and skeptical approach to viewing the news. Still, a large percentage of Americans get their news from You Tube, X, Instagram, Google News, Tiktok, or various other obviously tainted right-wing sources too numerous to list here. It has been suggested that reading and listening to news sources that are misleading or completely spurious can dumb-down a population. People who watch Fox News are so less informed than others who watch other networks and that they seem to be less intelligent over time. This kind of misinformation noise will make a national public less able to perform their civic duty, such as voting as a properly informed public, if one bothers to vote at all.

This is a calamity that is happening right now for all to see. And the biggest victims are young, single men, who are showing themselves as being the most gullible for hard right-wing propaganda. These are a group of people who over-all are less educated and underemployed, but who consume the internet media at a greater level than anyone else. They are also more likely to be single without much chance of finding a partner, and also having the means to buying their own home. What they have going for them is that they are W.A.S.P.s, and so there is a desperate need to maintain and expand their entitlement and white privilege, and Neo Nazi groups are happy to oblige and make them feel valued and important. They also get a nod from Donald Trump who they assume is like them. He has become a role model for what the underemployed white males see as the definition of a rich, entitled, and powerful man. Elon Musk is the same kind of role model for them, even though the very wealthy did not start out as poor folk. They had the benefits of being born into a position and were given financial help that greatly aided their pursuit of wealth and power.

All of these factors played a role in helping to elect Trump to a second term. Biden was poorly represented in the news, and his accomplishments and competent governance were fully ignored. Biden probably should have declared himself a one term president and then allowed the Democrats to vote for his replacement, instead of bowing out after undue pressure and giving his running mate only a hundred days to run for office. So some of the blame goes to Biden for making some poor choices and not promoting his accomplishments. The Democratic Party was also to blame for not promoting all of the things that they did during the last two terms to help the American people.

Exit polls showed that people had made up their mind much earlier about who they were going to vote for in the election, and that the electorate was angry about Covid19, the post pandemic inflation hike, the border crisis caused mostly by the instability in Venezuela and Haiti, and of course, the war in Gaza and Lebanon. It created a perfect storm of bad press for Biden, and dropped his approval levels to the high 30's. While Harris sought to overcome that headwind, she was not successful, largely due to a press that devalued her abilities and contributions. However, the greatest amount of blame goes to the low information and disengaged idiots who voted for Trump. Despite everything that went against Biden, and later Harris, Trump represented a far, far worse choice. And my stupid American brothers and sisters went ahead and voted for him because of various, unsupported and spurious reasons. They were angry, afraid, and blamed the incumbents, especially Democrats, and spitefully voted them out of office in sufficient numbers to give the Republicans a ruling trifecta. What awaits our nation will only truly benefit the oligarchy, the rest of us are going to be screwed royally.  

So why am I writing yet another politically inspired diatribe about the latest election that so dismayed me? Does it make any difference to the practice of magic, occultism, and being a Witch and a religiously polytheistic person? As a well-paid IT professional, will I feel the effects of four more years of the nihilistic wing of the Republican Party? The answer to all of those questions is a definitive yes! I am writing because I am concerned about our future nation, one which I love and respect, but also acknowledge as flawed and a work-in-progress. I believe that four years of Trump will be an even greater disaster than the first four years. My only hope is that his inherent incompetence and laziness, and the feckless stupidity of his minions, will attempt a grand scheme to make this country into a one party state, but who will fail in the end. I fervently hope that the incoming regime has only two years to do its worst before the midterms shut them down.

Those are my hopes, but my “hopium” has been severely challenged over the last ten years in a way that I never imagined it would. It is based on my optimistic belief in humanity and my fellow Americans. It is with this in mind that I face a future that is potentially darker and more desperate than I believed it would be, just because of one man and his sick, vindictive, and delusional pursuits, all in the name of making the world a better place just for him.

Still, millions of people voted for Trump and the Republican party, and the will of the people is now known. Many think that Trump is the lesser evil in our political civil war between the two parties. They see the Democrats as elitists and out of touch with the common folk, even though there are many of us, such as myself, who are not at all elitist who voted for them as the obvious choice. Trump has made his dystopian world view quite plain, and his plans for rectifying the ills of an imaginary failing country that doesn’t even exist will be far worse than the world we have at present. Many think that nothing really bad will happen, and that the Democrats have painted Trump as some kind of vicious and vile autocrat, when he is just an entertaining politician who likes to say crazy shit to shock the liberals. I disagree, it will be as bad or worse for the next two years, and maybe slightly better in the next two years, and maybe we will recover after the Trump presidency has finally ended. Democrats are always having to clean up the mess that Republicans make when attempting to govern. I hope that there is still be some semblance of a representational democracy in this nation when the Democrats get back into power.

So, just in case you still don’t believe that a Trump presidency will impact you and your family very much and you might be thinking that I am being too pessimistic about the future of our nation in the hands of Trump and his minions. Here is something to think about, and it’s coming to us all starting early next year.

“Trump has named three deportation hardliners to key positions in his administration, including Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy, Kristi Noem for secretary of Homeland Security and Tom Homan as ‘border czar.’  

Miller is likely to be especially influential and especially brutal. [...]

...even ‘documented’ immigrants will not be safe, because Miller has declared that he will pursue the seldom-used process of ‘denaturalization’ to go after people who have been citizens for years or decades, based on suspicions about purported fraud on their naturalization applications. Individuals stripped of citizenship will then be subject to deportation along with Miller’s other targets.”

Everyone knows that immigrants and illegal aliens who work in this country take the jobs that nobody either wants or can manage on the very low wages that they are paid. Agriculture, construction, food processing, cleaning, janitorial and low-level maintenance, and many other jobs are performed by these people who faithfully perform these low paying jobs and don’t represent a threat to anyone. Take them out of the economy and you have some pretty steep inflation, when commodities, construction, cleaning and maintenance become too expensive or non-existent. Add tariffs into this toxic brew and you have a recipe for a very heavily impacted economy, certainly a recession, but maybe even a depression. Angry because of previous inflationary prices? A Trump economy might actually make prices drop after they go sky high, but by then no one will be able to afford the basics except for the rich.

This is just a preview of what is in store for us next year. Trump will have two years of unlimited power before the body politic realizes their mistake and punishes the Republican incumbents and possibly, changes the balance of power in Washington. A blue wave for the mid-terms would likely become a tsunami at the end of Trump’s final term in office. It is doubtful that anyone can replace him, and it is likely that the worst elements of our population will crawl back into the woodwork where they came. I can at least hope that is the outcome we will experience. Yet living with such stupid fellow Americans has taught me that the best possible outcome will likely be diluted or nonexistent as the siege of online disinformation continues without any kind of mitigation, and people become less curious and more ignorant.

Until that time of reckoning, I will live in one world, founded on facts, critical thinking, skepticism, and rational reasoning. It is a world of inclusion, love, unity, diversity, tolerance, and freedom; where my freedoms are guarded and guaranteed by government institutions and the fourth estate. My other fellow Americans will live in world founded on lies, epistemic closure, conspiracy beliefs, fear, loathing the “other,” exclusion, White Supremacy, bigotry, racism, misogyny, and unfounded hatred. It is a tale of two countries, divided by the ideals of light and darkness, compassion and anger. I believe that my concept of America will win over the other, darker and dystopian version; but what is left after four years of Trump, and how readily the damage will be fixed, is the great undecided question.

If this evil that “we the people” have evoked onto ourselves continues after Trump is gone, then those who are not white Christian Nationalists or their religious allies will find themselves in grave jeopardy and may have to either leave this once great country, or suffer unwarranted persecution, imprisonment and even execution. You’ve been warned, the outcome of our future is in the hands of stupid people, so let’s help them to understand that the future could be bright if we unite and give up fear and darkness and embrace the greater good.

Frater Barrabbas