Holidays and Calends 2015

Here we are, nearly at the end of the year and I have posted very few blog articles this autumn. You might be wondering why that is so, since I have been quite prolific in the past. In fact there are quite a few articles already in this blog covering a wide variety of subjects, which is probably what folks are avidly reading. I know this is true because the number of pages-read counter is still moderately high even when I haven’t posted for a while.

Winter is here, although it doesn’t either feel like a full blown Minnesota winter just yet. There is just a dusting of snow on the ground and the weather has been too warm for most of the month. We have gotten rain and a bit of sleet instead of a foot or two of snow. I don’t mind the mild weather, but it certainly puts a damper on the festive spirit that usually accompanies a white Winter Solstice. Parties are starting up this weekend and I have most of next week off from work. I have been working too many hours and not spending enough time on other stuff, unfortunately. There is too much to do in the coming days, both domestically and also magically. Because of my busy schedule much of this work has been left until now to complete.

[Of course, nature loves irony, since before I could post this article the snow has come and winter is now snow-bound, icy and normal.]

What I have been doing with my time outside of my job is writing another book. I submitted the manuscript to Llewellyn on the first day of this month so I wouldn’t have to work on it during the holidays. The irony is that I have to begin the revisions to this manuscript and produce a new version with corrections by February. No good deed goes unpunished, right? The book project is tentatively entitled “Spirit Conjuring For Witches” and my premise for writing it is that Witches and Pagans need to embrace the Spirit Model of magic and become formally engaged with the art of summoning spirits in order to really function like the legendary witches of the past.

Perhaps the most startling proposition that I am promoting is that I believe it is best to have some kind of supernatural intermediary to perform this work. Unlike the popular belief in familiar spirits as animal pets or merely as servitors that perform the will of the witch or magician like some automata, it is my opinion that the spiritual intermediary is actually the self as deity, or the inner deity. Some might call this the higher self. Others might compare or equate this entity with the Holy Guardian angel. However, I see it as the equivalent of the Hindu Atman, the godhead that resides in each and every person. Not everyone will agree with this interpretation, and there are as many opinions as individuals, with only some in solid agreement. This is a counter intuitive perspective, since most practitioners of western magic believe that the lone individual or the small group has the innate power to completely change their destiny - there is no real need for any kind of supernatural assistant, or is there?

What has propelled the art of magic for the last couple of hundred years is the optimistic belief that human nature alone, either by some kind of greater reservoir of psychic power or the undaunted human will, can be the source of miracles and the magical bending of reality to suit one’s interests. However, the existential curse of post-modernism has shown that modern humanity has little or no power, and that the individual can no more change the flux and flow of human destiny than he or she can change the weather. We see our modern history as the product of individual achievement, even though that achievement was more due to fortune and probability than actual individual genius. The world has always been blind and deaf to the anger, heartbreak or entreaties of the individual, but it is the masses either randomly or orchestrated by a cacophony of unforeseen events that moves mountains.

While I tentatively agree with the existential perspective concerning the powerlessness of the individual, I also possess the optimistic viewpoint that each of us contains within us a deity, and that godhead, connected and indivisible as it is with the One, gives everyone the potential to transform themselves and therefore, change the world. Of course this assumes that one can become fully aware of that divinity residing within one. In my opinion it is through that internal divinity that we have the ability to know God in an intimate manner, and to see the world through the “eyes of spirit.” It is through this frame of reference that I wrote my book, and it is what I am promoting as a way for witches and pagans to adopt a more spirit-based model of magic.

As I continue working on this book and pushing it to the more perfected version that will be published, I find that all my assumptions about the components of this process of summoning spirits are thoroughly tested. Writing a book is probably even more of a mechanism for fully learning a subject than just practicing and performing it as a regular discipline. There is nothing that forces a greater degree of objectivity from a teacher or author than attempting to either teach or publish a book about a given topic, since the feedback from such efforts are more valuable than the end-product itself.

Frater Barrabbas

Toward Self-Mastery - Future Path of Witchcraft

Recently, I wrote an article entitled “Of Shadows and Darkness - Future Path of Witchcraft” and it got quite a bit of attention. In case you missed the article, you can find it here. Despite the length and detail of that article, I was just warming up to my subject. This is because the next part of this article has to discuss where this path leads and what are its goals and purpose. So, in this article I will attempt to briefly talk about the revelation of this path, what it means, why it is important, and where it ultimately will lead those who follow it.


To begin this article, let us review what one of my readers said regarding what I had stated in my article. She goes by the moniker of “Anna Munda at Enchanted Body” and she asked what I consider to be the most crucial question of all, which I am quoting here.

“A question: what does all of this get a person, in the end? When you've consorted with all the goetic spirits and the dark, chthonic spirits of the Underworld, and mined those mysteries, and conjured all the conjurations ... where does it leave one? I'd say, material riches and [longevity], but I'm not seeing a lot of long-living, rich shamans or witches of any stripe. (In fact, often the opposite.) Worldly power? Illuminati rumors notwithstanding, worldly power deals seem driven more by the boardroom and the backroom than the underworld.

Peace of mind? Feeling at one with all creation? Certainty of one's place in the scheme of things? The ability to have deeper, sweeter and more meaningful relationships?

I mean, it all sounds very sexy, but what's the point?”

The another reader, whose moniker is “YowYow” posted another question, which I feel is equally valid. I will also quote it in full.

“Having read Marlowe's version of Dr. Fautus, what would having access to all this knowledge do for others? As you remember, all Dr. Fautus did with his knowledge and power was conjure grapes for a princess.

At the same time, do I want to interfere with the world? As I travel my little path, I often wonder if I should butt in. I see the necessity of the slowness of change in society. The in-fighting and compromises made on a short-term and long-term basis enables a stronger foundation to be built through the development of alliances rather than tyranny.

And what of my attitude. I'm more of a dilettante rather than devotee. I've spent many decades at this stage. But the unicorns and wizards costumes have become trite and childish. Where were I fit in this new cosmic world?”

My friend Jack Von Faust responded to these questions in his own way, and you can look over the article and the comments and read them all if you wish. I want to focus on a few things that can quickly answer these questions and allow my readers to more concisely understand what I was getting at when I wrote that article.

First of all, the supposition that I stated in my article is that all true transformative initiations occur in the underworld. That means that any spiritual change or evolution that an individual might achieve is done so through a dark process of doubt, fear, dissolution and then, reconstitution and psychic rebirth. For the mystic, this is the dark night of the soul, and for the magician, it is the challenge of dealing and integrating with the dark image of the self. Without this process of total and complete transformation, there can be no deep kinds of changes needed to truly grow in a spiritual manner. Without transformation, then only translation occurs, which is just a surface change. If we are not truly challenged to the core of our being, then we remain in a kind of stasis where mediocrity prevails.

Secondly, there is always the feature of self-discovery that occurs during transformation, and that can assist us in knowing the God/dess Within, also known as the Higher Self or the Atman. The reason why such a discovery is important is because it reveals the path of ascension. This is because the underworld contains and also hides the gateway to ascension, and specifically, the portal whereby we might realize ourselves as gods. Yet without the powerful challenge of having to periodically re-invent ourselves, such a gateway will remain unknown and unknowable. It would seem that we cannot obtain ascension towards union with the One without first undergoing a profound series of internal transformations. I might also add that the place of transformation is the underworld - our collective psychic place of death and darkness, but also light and rebirth.

Thirdly, while the potential for material gain resides in the underworld, so does the potential for any kind of achievement whatsoever. In the material world proper we are faced with an immediate inertia, and then due to entropy, all things succumb to dissolution, death, and a return to their basic elements. Great civilizations fall into decay, buildings and statues crumble into dust, and inexorable powers of the wind, rain and sunlight, erase all traces that anything ever existed. What does remain, however, are the fragments of that psychic life process and the core spirit that sheathed them. Yet only that core spirit actually lasts forever, since it is immortal and immutable - that is where we should focus our efforts.

The cycles of fortune occur regardless of what we do or how we act in our short lives, and afterwards, our achievements fade away. We might be able to bend the probabilities of our lives to affect a slightly different outcome, but that is the best that can be done on the material plane. Those who are dedicated to gaining the greater share of the world’s material fortune have little time for anything else in their lives, and certainly, a serious undertaking such as sorcery would not likely be one of them. Those who take up the challenge of pagan magic and sorcery must precariously balance between these two worlds, with an emphasis on the domain of spirit to ensure a more profitable outcome in the arena of magick. Such individuals will half-heartedly seek out their material fortunes, while eagerly pursuing their magical muses into the nether realms of magic and mystery. Therefore, those who are proficient in magic are likely to be only moderately successful in the material world.

Even as the underworld contains the potential for any possible change, those who are able to travel into that world seldom take the path to acquire great wealth and power. This is because to change themselves into a wealthy and powerful man or woman would also have the effect of short-circuiting the entire process of the path of sorcery, and nullify one’s ability to gain entrance into the domain of the underworld. These two pursuits are diametrically opposed because one focuses on the inward and unseen world, and the other is focused exclusively on the material world. In my life experience so far I haven’t met anyone who is both a highly successful businessman who has built up a wealthy estate with his or her own hands and who is also a great magician.

How this typically works out in life is that someone who is born into wealth (and who doesn’t have any desire to acquire more) applies themselves to the exclusive study of the occult and magick. Some would classify this as a decadent path of slow dissolution itself. I have met and known individuals who fit this model, and Aleister Crowley, as a supreme example, comes to mind, as well as others. Still, it would seem that being an empire builder and a competent magician might actually be mutually exclusive. Thus the riches and wealth to be found in the underworld only allows the successful sorcerer to live a materially modest and comfortable middle-class existence, often with little influence or social power.

What then is the whole purpose for engaging in the forces and spiritual entities that reside in the underworld if it is not to materially enrich oneself? The purpose is to gain a special kind of spiritual knowledge, called “gnosis,” and this knowledge helps the magician to discover the path of ascension, and therein, to ultimately become a god. This is not a material process. It is a mental and spiritual process whose outward manifestation is enlightenment and at-one-ment with the Absolute Spirit. Enlightenment and union with the One is the ultimate purpose of both magick and mysticism; but they each take a completely different path to achieve that end. What I am saying is that without the powerful transformations that occur exclusively in the dark domain of the underworld, both the mystic and magician will fail to achieve this goal.

The state of enlightenment does one thing besides giving those who achieve it an inner core of imperturbability, insight into the problems of life, compassion for all, joy, bliss and an overall powerfully attuned psychic sensibility. It allows one the ability to understand the meaning of their life. It gives purpose, direction and certainty to the process that one is following. It also gives one knowledge of what comes after that final transition of death, since to be enlightened means that one is connected to that imperishable spiritual source residing in the core of one’s being. We all live and die regardless of our allotment of material wealth and power in this world or our achievements, but to have that kind of knowledge and awareness eliminates the fear of death and also the fear of not knowing what comes after when our life is finally extinguished. This is, in word, a form of psychic and spiritual immortality that one can acquire and realize in this life, living in the ever changing material world. I can’t think of a more powerful and eminent place to reside than to live in this state, and it is therefore, my ultimate objective.

Therefore, I say to Anna and YowYow, to gain a form of psychic and spiritual immortality and to be conscious of it is a profound and great achievement. I don’t believe that such a state is guaranteed to everyone simply because they are born with a mind, body and a spirit. To engage that spiritual essence that resides within us is a very difficult and nearly impossible feat, but to achieve that state is to pass through death and into a greater conscious life alive within the spirit that is a seamless facet of the One. It is, in a word, to complete the archetypal process of involution and evolution, and that is the nature of the Great Work, in my opinion. For those who believe in reincarnation, it is where the constant cycle of rebirth is nullified, and where the self and the spirit finally become one with the One.

After reading this article, my readers will no doubt understand that this is very much a monistic perspective of magic, paganism and witchcraft, and that some (if not many) will not share my perspective. I will attempt to write about how a monistic perspective is not only essential, but it is a natural evolution of the belief in a pantheon and a plethora of Gods and Goddesses. Still, I will write about this and other topics in future articles that will appear in this blog.

Frater Barrabbas

Purpose of Working Magick - IMO

Over the course of several weeks, perhaps even months, various writers in the blogosphere have been opining about using magick to cause shifts in probability, bending reality or producing outright miracles, either through the “Black Swan” paradigm or by just expecting magick to produce what it has been advertised to produce since earliest times. It would seem that magick is perceived as just a mechanism for causing change to occur according to the magician’s will, in some form or another. However, as the ever dissenting voice that is raised in contrast to the present ululations of how magick should work (miracles vs. probability shifts), I wonder aloud if the real purpose of magick has somehow been lost or just omitted.

This brings to mind a question that I have probably answered more than once over the course of the last year and a half, which I have written in articles posted to this blog, and that question is “why do we work magick?” Do we work magick to just make our lives more advantageous, blessed with material success and personal power? Is that the purpose for magick? Or do we work magick to cause godlike miracles to occur, showing ourselves to be godlike and almighty. Does magick, properly coordinated and worked, make the magician operator into a guaranteed winner?

Of course, for every winner there are a lot of losers, this is true in sports as well as life. For every miracle sought, very, very few ever manifest.  Still, a more simplistic judgement is that the only success in life is survival, and that everything else is merely superfluous. That would translate into the rule of thumb that if you have survived your ordeals in life, no matter what they are, then you are a success. The downside to that logic is that eventually everyone dies, so at some point in life, everyone is a loser.

Success, just like any condition of good fortune is, unfortunately, very ephemeral, whatever ruler you use to judge it. In the greater scheme of things, a person is born, lives, and then later dies, regardless of how great, successful, humble or inadequate - death is great equalizer, as always. This is why the Tarot Trump, “Wheel of Fortune” is such a compelling study for those who seek to master their lives, or at least, it should be. Next to that card in importance is Death and the Hanged Man, but that is another topic altogether.

Yet we still haven’t answered the most essential question as to why we work magick. If life is full of chance occurrences, opportunities, disasters, and a lot of boring same-ness, then applying magick to life situations may improve them, perhaps slightly or even better, but more often it doesn’t make a real lot of difference in the long run. The real purpose to working magick, in my humble opinion, is to cause just one great but essential miracle to occur, and that is the miracle of total godhead assumption and all that proceeds from that achievement.

Other names for this achievement are enlightenment, achievement of Atman (God/dess Within), conscious illumination, cosmic consciousness, Godhead realization, the immortality of individual consciousness and the ability to accept the role of divine mediator, to do whatever is required, however great or small. To be a functional spiritual avatar doesn’t mean that you are suddenly a great person endowed with godlike powers, it means that you understand your purpose and role in life, and seek to unthinkingly and selflessly perform it.

What that means is that the petty ego and it’s needs for status, power, wealth, love and happiness are completely subsumed to the point where they are no longer even relevant. It requires the greatest sacrifice that one can offer. That sacrifice is the willing abrogation and elimination of the outer external self, which is shown to be an illusion and an obstacle to perfectly channeling the Godhead. That, in my opinion, is the purpose of working magick. Wealth, career success, fame, glory, the adoration of the crowd, sexual gratification, these are the many illusions and delusions that confront both mystic and magician alike, and seek to upend and thwart the simple and pure aspiration for union with the One.  

If you think for a moment of what it must be like attaining union with whatever you perceive as the Godhead, and then trying to imagine how that would personally affect you if it did indeed occur, it would suddenly seem kind of odd to think about all of the small things that beset you in your current life situation. They would have receded far into the background of what would be a completely new and redefined existence. It would also make the endless pursuit after the various material accouterments of a comfortable and successful life seem sort of small and petty, and indeed, in the larger scheme of things, they would be.

Does that mean that striving to better ourselves in the material world is a fruitless pursuit, a folly that will cause us to be distracted at best, suborned in our spiritual search at worst? No it doesn’t somehow mean that all material pursuits are wrong or misguided. We do what we have to do to maximize our potential, but we do it both within a material and spiritual dimension. All the while we are living and struggling with our material existence, we should never loose our focus on that ultimate achievement, which is union with the Godhead. Everything that we do should selflessly and relentlessly promote our ultimate spiritual apotheosis, anything else is a distraction. Our True Will should be to achieve that perfect union with the One, and all that we engage in and encounter should merely aid in that process.

In my first published book, “Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick,” I wrote some pretty compelling things in regards to the seeker and what he or she is seeking, and also what can cause that search to fail or come to grinding halt. I would like to quote from that section of the book (chapter 3.6, pages 83 - 85), using the more raw pre-published text because it manages to express these ideas in a more direct manner. I’ll let you be the judge, and see if this section doesn’t succinctly answer the question as to why we should work magick and what our ultimate goal should be. To achieve at-one-ment with the Godhead is to take a profound journey through the strata of higher consciousness, but the goal is never to glorify in the achievement or the outward effects, but to unswervingly seek the goal itself.

“Ken Wilber, in his book, ‘The Atman Project’ (chapter 13, p. 183 - 185) outlines the difficulties and the challenges that one must face in order to truly gain, in a permanent fashion, these higher states of consciousness. Whether one is aware of it or not, we’re all seeking enlightenment. It’s the fundamental drive that pushes all of us through the vicissitudes of life. However, there are forces within us that disguise our motives or lock us in a static mental state of development where complacency and comfort are far more important than gaining any kind of new vista or spiritual perspective in life. We all begin our paths with the same objective, union with the All, but very early we are thwarted by the necessities of life, and we must at some point return to the fundamental quest of all being-ness, if we are to find true fulfillment and completion. We should make certain we always question our motives and the nature of our quest in life, so that we have not substituted our goal of perfect at-one-ment of Atman for some kind of imperfect and shallow surrogate, an ‘Atman Project.’

The ultimate nature of reality, according to Wilber, is an emptiness or voidness, but one that is not a true emptiness that is void of all forms or features. It is also a unified field of holism, where all space and time, and even consciousness itself is part of one seamless whole. The ultimate reality and the ultimate state of consciousness are one and the same, a kind of ‘super conscious All’ (p. 184). This unity is the only true reality, and all else is an illusion, particularly anything that is egoically or independently real. Even in the nature of Deity itself, there is only the timeless, transcendent one-ness, and so there is no difference between anything, even between man and God. What this entails is that we’re all part of a greater whole, and that magick is a process that has validity and power because of this wholeness, and cannot be comprehended outside of this unity of being and its various conscious derivatives, since it operates on and through that wholeness.

To be an individual, even an individual god, is to exist in an illusion, since everything is truly one and indivisible. We exist as separate entities glorifying in our uniqueness and our individuality, but we are also seemingly always seeking for something apart from ourselves, and that quest is also an illusion, since everything is whole and subsumed into the oneness. Therefore, living beings, in order to function and survive, have learned to suppress this perception of one-ness, since at the level of the undeveloped or Typhonic state it would lead to a disintegration of the self. At the trans-personal or Centauric level, the boundaries between the oneness and our individuality must be breached, and done so in a manner that does not destroy that individual, but illuminates one instead. Therefore, we live through the illusion of individual entities existing in space and time in order to function, but the irony is that we must transcend this state because it is a barrier to attaining the highest levels of consciousness. What this means is that whether or not we are aware of it, our ultimate quest is for oneness and unity, the ‘rediscovery of this infinite and eternal wholeness’ (p. 184).

Before the emanation of spiritual creation, where Spirit was imbedded in matter, there was the wholeness that is oneness, and we seek that wholeness that is [a] oneness within ourselves. That is the nature of the spiritual quest that the seeker seeks - to be one within the wholeness of the All, our perception of Atman, or God/dess Within.

However, the means to obtaining this sublime state necessitates the death or dissolution of the ego. This perception of ego death is frightening to the individual, especially at the Centauric level, since the ego has become invested with autonomy, and seemingly drunk on its own empowerment and uniqueness. The irony is that to die, the seeker learns to truly live and perceive reality as it actually is, without the limitations of time and space. But getting past that boundary is the most difficult task that seekers can face, and usually they become trapped into accepting their own ego as a surrogate god, thus denying their ability or willingness to evolve to the next higher level. Many occultists have failed this greatest test. Yet the desire for attaining those higher states, and the union of All-Being continues its alluring and seductive siren call, and we as seekers always seem to hear and are drawn to it. It is the ultimate approach-avoidance conflict.

It’s for this reason, because we greatly desire this ultimate achievement and we also greatly fear it, that we end up choosing surrogates instead of actual transcendence. Substitutes range greatly in terms of their variety, and they are usually huge distractions that take the seeker far away from true attainment, such as the usual sensual additions of food and drink, drugs, sex, fame, money, power, and knowledge, but also hidden addictions, such as hubris, self-righteousness, prejudice, misplaced or false piety, cynicism, apathy, and a loss of soul. All seekers truly seek for is the attainment of oneness, but what they actually get if they fail the test is a substitute gratification that makes them think that they have achieved the great quest. Therefore, we must always carefully examine our motives, and ask ourselves the fatal question - are we truly seeking Atman, or are we engaging in a diversion? That question can’t be quickly or easily answered, but we must be aware of what is motivating us, and at what level of our being. At some point in the career of magicians, they must step outside themselves and transcend all of these prior limitations, or be faced with living out their lives with those same limitations forever haunting them. They must [instead] cease working magick, and instead become the magick.”

I hope that this helps to convince my readers that the true purpose of magick is union with the One, and that all else is a potential diversion, an “Atman project” instead of true Atman.

Frater Barrabbas