Writing of Ordeal XV

On June 13, I completed writing my latest book Ordeal XV. All that remains is to edit the manuscript, add citations, build a bibliography and an index list. The greater work of developing and revising the rituals has been completed, and it was quite an extensive amount of work. What I have written is now vastly more cogent, focused and directed towards achieving a specific end, which is the union of the magician’s shadow with their egoic persona. It is part of the preparatory work to becoming a master magician. I have already shared some of the introductory chapters as articles in my blog over the past several months, but I wanted to tell the tale of how I came to write this book. It is also a tale of how workings evolve over time, from highly personalized workings that are focusing only on a specific set of issues experienced at the time to become fundamental ordeals that cannot in some form be avoided by the evolving magician. This is one of those tales.

A basic premise in these kinds of workings is that a magician can fuse spiritual personalities or entities into a combined and unified being. This premise is based on how I perceive spirits, that they are very protean in formulation and that they can be merged with other entities. If a spirit can overlay itself when possessing a human being, then they can merge with other spirits to form a hybrid entity. This process of merging diverse entities into a single spiritual form has a long history, and it can be found particularly with pagan pantheons where a single master deity is shown to be a composite of many deities. 

There is a philosophic name for this process, and it is called Macranthropy. It is the creation of a meta-deity from a pantheon of many deities, allowing for the paradox of both focusing on a single unified deity as well as focusing on the individual deities within the pantheon. If this is a phenomenon associated within the pagan pantheons of earlier ages, then it is definitely something that can be developed in the practice of spirit conjuring in the present world. What I have discovered is that I can combine spirits into a single entity, and I have been doing this for decades. Yet I did not consult any authority to see if this could be done. Instead, I just approached it in an instinctive manner, and just assumed that it would work. And it did indeed work.

My first attempt at this type of merging spirits happened long ago in early 1981, and it was resounding success. My former High Priestess had put a death curse on me, and due to my sense of guilt at what I had done in that cult-like coven, I was not able to completely overturn it. When consulting my personal Goddess about this malady, she told me to evoke the Devil and turn my guilt, the curse and its associations over to him. As a precocious young magician, I developed evocations for three Demon Princess, who were Lucifer, Satan and Aiwaz, and performed them consecutively in a borrowed temple space of a close friend. I topped it off with another hybrid, and that was Sothis-Set. I was astonished at how successful this working was, and it became the model for an ordeal later on. So, I had three evocations, and I combined them into a single entity that I celebrated and implored to aid me in my plight, and celebrated it in my Tabernacle of Sothis-Set ritual and the corresponding Black rite. It was to this unified Devil that I sought deliverance from my guilt and retribution against my prosecutors.

What I didn’t realize is that combining these entities forged in that moment the nameless but fully empowered Shadow of myself, and it was that entity that purged me of my guilt and reversed the curse against the leaders of my former coven. It was so successful that my former leaders left the craft and became instead fundamentalist Christians, and I am certain that fear was one of the main drivers for their hasty conversion. They also moved away from southeastern Wisconsin back to their old home town of Dubuque, Iowa, where they set up their own church to dupe and indoctrinate another group of unknowing people. As for me, I was washed clean of my supposed sins and was able to move forward with my life, both in terms of my magic and my career. 

So, these rituals became the beginning part of my lore for Ordeal XV, and I continued to develop it for a time, even after performing it. I added another Demon Prince to the ordeal working, and that was Beelzebub, and I included the four different mass rites of Thelema, Thanatos, Agape, and Eros as the spiritual foundation for this ordeal. I wrote it up into a hardcover blank book, but it remained a personal ordeal and not part of the cannon of the later Order of the Gnostic Star. I had ironically relegated it to a lesser level of importance and so the rituals and lore were not further developed. I did perform the evocation of Beelzebub, but I found that he preferred to be called Ba’al Zebul or the Lord of the House of Heavens, as he had been named by the ancient Canaanites. 

All of the lore of that ordeal went into the book and there it remained, including the built out four variations of the Tabernacle of Sothis Set and the companion Black Rites. Because this ordeal was so controversial, especially for a ritual magician who was also a Witch (and therefore, denied that the Devil existed), this ordeal remained in my collection as an obscure system. I did type up these rituals so that they would be resident in my computer folder of rituals, and I even made an attempt to write a document to explain the necessity for this ordeal. However, I never promoted it and it remained one of the obscure and forgotten lesser ordeals in my collection. I didn’t really do anything further with this lore until only recently. So they sat there, on my computer, for some 30 years without even being examined except as a form of research. I did use a version of the evocation of Satan in my Liber Nephilim, or at least the planetary attributes, and I also used the methodology of joining spirits together (the four Seraphim and four Cherubim) in my ordeal, the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, which also became a published book.

Then, when I was recently talking to some folks at a pagan convention, I found out that the hot topic at the time was shadow work. It was a form of therapy where individuals, acting alone or in a group, or guided by a therapist, would engage with the dark half of themselves. This is because we are all coerced by society to behave within expected norms and to curb any other urges or behaviors that would be unacceptable. We are, therefore, all of us, repressed by our own sense of decorum and constrained to think and behave in a certain accepted manner. 

While we may leave behind beastly urges and unwanted primitive passions, we also typically repress our imagination and stifle our talents and unique abilities for the sake of conformity. There is a treasure house of powerful virtues and devilish impulses and desires within us, and as a collective archetype, it is an unnamed suppressed entity that C. G. Jung identified as the Shadow. To engage with this internal shadow is to relieve the egoic persona of various social and internal psychological pressures, and to gain abilities and insights that we had believed were not a part of ourselves. Thus, it is the path that ultimately leads to an internal, psychological wholeness, where shadow and ego merge together to forge an alliance. This is called shadow work, and it has become a very popular fad in today’s self-help literature.

When conducting research on the process of psychological shadow work and reading several books on the subject, I realized that our overall cultural shadow was the Devil, whether we believed in that entity in its various forms or not. I also understood that we all have our own internal devils and demons that we must somehow grapple and integrate into our egoic persona in order to be truly whole. However, most of the literature that was available did not address the obvious cultural shadow as the Devil, and they seemed to downplay the struggle and the danger of approaching one’s shadow, especially if it has been powerfully suppressed. While a few online authors discussed the importance of engaging with shadow work while under the care of a qualified therapist, others made it into a kind of New Age fad that practically anyone could engage in without any harm. I found this viewpoint specious, especially since Jung himself discussed how difficult and potentially dangerous such work might be to someone unprepared and inflexible to withstand the ordeal.

What I discovered when taking all this information into consideration is that I already had a magical ordeal that could be used for shadow work. This is because I had focused on the cultural Shadow known as the Devil, and believed that such an archetype would be the perfect emblem for any kind of magical based shadow work. I had equated the inner shadow to be analogous to the outer cultural shadow, and so it symbolized to me that our internal shadow is our very own personal devil. Using the approach that I had developed years ago as the forgotten Ordeal XV, I began to explore that idea, and the idea of the four churches or Gnostic Ecclesiae of the tetrasacramentary as the foundation for this work, I fully realized that redeveloping this ordeal would produce an intense and very successful ordeal of magical shadow work. 

That is when I began to develop the rituals for inclusion into a book, and revised the tone, perspective and approach so that the ordeal working would produce psychological transformative outcome of a powerful, integrative, joining between one’s internal shadow and the ego-based persona. Since I had undergone this ordeal so many years ago, and had added and developed it to a point, I felt that the final product would undoubtably do what I intended it to do. I used the theme of catabasis in the rituals describing ritualized descent into Hell, and I now feel quite good about the state of the manuscript, its revised rituals, and its controversial impact on my readers and the occult literary world.

I will sign a contract with Cross Crow Books to publish this manuscript, and before the end of August this year, I will submit the final version to my publishers. Since it takes at least a year or more for a book to go through the production process of editing, developing and printing a book, I suspect that it will not be released until early 2028. Until then, enjoy the articles I have written lately on this topic, and I look forward to final release of this amazing book.

Frater Barrabbas

Meeting the Devil and Ordeal XV

 

This is part 3 of a three part article that is the introduction to Magical Shadow Work and Ordeal XV. I will be writing a book about this ordeal in the future. Here is the basic understanding to this masterful challenge that all adepts must face in their magical and spiritual career. 

I have proposed that the Devil is the master behind the process of transformative initiation, representing the role of the Dark Father to whom the initiate must find resolution in order for the initiation process to be completed. The Devil is also likely to be found as a sentinel at the cross-roads gateway into the underworld and also the gate-keeper for the return threshold. This should not be surprising to any traditionally initiated Witch, who engages with the Horned God and his agent, the Man in Black, during the dark rites of the underworld initiation. Therefore, in order for ritual magicians to achieve a greater transformative experience, they must ultimately open the gateway at their own cross-roads moment and face their own Devil as both the archetypal nemesis and their own personal shadow. Without achieving the transformation and individuation associated with this greater ordeal, a ritual magician cannot claim to have achieved self-mastery, which is the precursor for gaining a more permanent state of enlightenment. 

Therefore, I have developed an ordeal to achieve and master this encounter with the Devil, and I have called it Ordeal XV. My use of the Roman numerals XV is to connect this ordeal with the Tarot trump card the Devil XV. What is depicted in that card is very much what I believe is a necessary part of the initiate adept’s pathway. It is similar, in a lesser fashion, to crossing the Greater Abyss, and it is very much required before the magician would seek that greater transition from initiate adept to master adept, and the revelation of the first rung of the supernal triad of the Tree of Life. So, after all the lesser ordeals have been mastered and the initiate adept has gained total confidence in all things magical, they must then evoke the Devil himself, and gain self-mastery and through it achieve individuation.

I am proposing this ordeal not because I believe that it is important, which it is, but because I myself have walked this path and intimately know its importance first hand. I have summoned versions of these devils and I have endured this kind of ordeal many years ago. When I performed it, it was not a complete and structured ritual process. It was multiple workings performed at different times, evoking multiple devils, and I performed them in segments all during the early to middle 1980's when I was in a kind of emotional and spiritual turmoil. What I am proposing now is the completed formulation of this ordeal, which is something that I did not possess all those years ago. 

I believe that even the purest white-light magician must at some point deal with their darker attributes before they can gain a mastery of magic and self-mastery. It takes a lot of fortitude and courage to perform these evocations, particularly if one is too biased and aligned to the light. Yet for those who periodically dip their wings into the shadows, such as myself, it becomes an obvious stage in the road to enlightenment and illumination. Yet there is a reason for evoking the Devil, and in fact, the Ordeal calls for evoking no less than four of them.

Some writers have proposed in their books on Shadow Work that the shadow has two parts, one constructive and the other malignant. I would like to think of the shadow as being a single entity. Yet because even people with their outer persona and internal ego represent an illusory concept of unity, it could be said that the shadow is a loosely unified body that consists of many parts and faces, similar to our own unconscious psyche. When examining the beingness of the Devil we discover that this entity actually consists of many parts or fragments, and they are the reason for the concept of the legions of demons. There are many orders or denominations of demons, and their number is practically infinite, similar to the number of orders and members of angels. Thus, when encountering a devil or a demon it is important to get its name and association, which is actually appropriate when dealing with any kind of spirits.

Since there are many ways to organize or group demons or to select individuals to function as some kind of group or hierarchical structure, I have decided to use the classical methodology of the four elements. Thus, to select four devils or arch-demons in a group and present them in a specific magical ordeal as four preeminent challenges for adepts to meet and through them, achieve a greater personal resolution. 

My choice of four arch-demons has a precedence in the archaic grouping of demons as being ruled by four demon kings; but other hierarchies of three or seven are more common. I have also departed from the traditional orientation and naming of my elected demons for these four elements. This is because I believe the most important grouping of four attributes are the four Gnostic Churches of the Tetrasacramentary. Since these four Gnostic churches represent the foundation for all my liturgical and magical workings starting at the point of adepthood (5th degree), then the four demon princes that I would choose to evoke in succession would be grouped according to these four churches.

I would group these four arch-demons within my four Gnostic churches in the following manner, using both ancient demon names and even one very modern one. I refer to these four arch-demons as the Involution Avatars, since the role that they play is to impact the initiate with the inverted gnostic attributes of the church or ecclesia with which they are associated, and this negative power and vision would trigger their shadow in a very profound manner. I would propose that the initiate perform the evocations of these four Involution Avatars every dark or new moon for four consecutive months, beginning in the month of October, and on the fifth month, they would bring them together and fuse their spiritual intelligences into a unified being. By doing that they would receive full psychic and spiritual restitution for all of the ills, pain, hardship and life’s ordeals that they have experienced, and elevate their shadow so that it becomes like a shining guide, or the Atman or Bornless One. These evocations rites, when performed successfully five months in a row without any lapse will ultimately heal the duality of an individual’s persona and the shadow so that they will be one; but the ordeal itself would be excruciatingly difficult.

Here are how I would characterize these four Involution Avatars who stand in the underworld for each of the four Gnostic Ecclesia of Thelema, Thanatos, Agape, and Eros. And these powerful arch-demons are the masters of the underworld initiation associated with each church. Where I have placed more than one selection, the initiate adept can choose one whom they wish to evoke in their ordeal, or they can choose more than one. I would recommend a thorough and deep research on each chosen demon before beginning this work.

Thelema - Element of Air - Involution Avatar Aiwas/Aiwaz and also Ashtoreth. Aiwas is the reputed the author of Liber Vel Legis or the Thelemic “Book of the Law,” the sacred scriptures of Crowley’s version of Thelema. He was also the voice of the Eighth Aethyr in the Vision and the Voice. While some have said that Aiwas was Crowley’s Holy Guardian Angel, I believe that he truly functions as the demi-god of the OTO and is the spiritual intelligence behind the modern creed of Thelema. Ashtoreth is a demon Grand Duke who was originally the Goddess Astarte, but was demonized in the Jewish religious tradition. He is depicted as a black faced and heavily bearded man riding a black dragon brandishing a large venomous snake in his left hand. He is attributed to the Qliphoth of Jupiter (Fortune Reversed by Rebellion) and is the prince of accusers and prosecutors. Both Aiwas and Ashtoreth seem to fit the arbiters of rebellion and the overturning of the old order. Since Thelema is associated with the Will, it would seem that the its shadow image would be chaos instead of order, and the fomenting of an internalized insurrection, which is like a person engaged in fighting against themself.

Entering into the underworld of the Gnostic current of Thelema would be to experience the complete shattering of the self and the relentless interrogation of one’s purpose or “will” in life. Since we all have weak moments where our ambitions are either thwarted or momentarily lost in the struggle of life, these lapses are amplified and used to question and persecute us as to whether we have any direction or basic meaning to our lives whatsoever. When anyone is measured and judged by the laws and powers of Thelema in its negative and dark attribution, we are always found weak, purposeless, and without direction. It becomes a great challenge to overcome this persecution and to persevere through adversity. That we take our idealized ambition and directive and defend it against all rational logic and the limitations, obstructions and the inherent self-sabotage that are powerfully arrayed against us. To persevere against all odds, and to continue to steadfastly move forward while enduring misfortune, limitations, persecution, and social denigration, will resolve itself into a peaceful coexistence with the chaotic changes of life. It is where the Sword of the Will has been tested and found true.

Thanatos - Element of Water- Involution Avatar Azrael, Samael, and Satan. Azrael is the definitive Angel of Death, who rides a pale white horse and is readily depicted in the Tarot trump Death XIII. Samael is the poison or venom of God (El), and Satan is the rebellious angel who leads the angelic revolt, and who is characterized as the singular depiction of the Christian Devil. These various entities represent the inverse or underworld of the Gnostic current of Thanatos, who transform death into a fearful and malevolent being who mercilessly takes life by guile or by violent force. There is no peace associated with this transition, and there is no mitigation or forgiveness. There is only regret, unforgiven malefactions great and small, guilt and despair. This is wholly contrary to the ideals of Thanatos which seeks to prepare us for death while still alive, thereby giving us solace and hope. 

What the initiate adept must do is confront their own mortality with the idea that there are no second chances, forgiveness, or peace without facing and resolving the impermanence of all living things, and in fact, all material things. These arch-demons can be resolved into allies if the initiate adept can break their ties to ambition, desire and privilege, to be truly free from the unwarranted ties that bind us. Of the four chosen Involution Avatars, the one representing Thanatos challenges us at the very root of our existence and our purpose in life, and therefore, is the most severe and difficult to resolve.

The underworld of the Gnostic current of Thanatos is the unremitting grief, loss and oblivion of an untimely death. It is the hell of guilt, remorse, self-inflicted torments and endless pain, all dutifully unleashed upon one’s own being. Dante’s lurid depictions of the underworld describing his literary descent into Hell is the archetype of the dark underworld of Thanatos. There is no hope for forgiveness, salvation, justice, restitution, nor redemption from even the most minor wrongs committed; but only the utter and total stygian darkness of complete soul-less obliteration. Yet in this dark opressive world, the initiate adept must find a way to light a small candle of hope, which is that our own inner divinity, the God/dess Within, our Atman or Holy Guardian Angel will find a way to rekindle the light of life, even when the soul is oppressed with its ultimate termination. The ego and persona must die, but there is more to an individual human being than just their insular beingness and their narrow ego-tunnel. Through the power of surrender, of letting go, and embracing the light of the One, which is the non-dual source of all consciousness, the initiate adept can find their way through death to an awakening beyond light and life. To successfully overcome this challenge while still alive, through the relentless ordeal of the demon of death, the initiate adept learns to treasure life but to be always aware of the powers of darkness and death. It is a very sobering equilibrium.

Agape - Element of Fire - Involution Avatar Lucifer, Asmodeus or Prometheus. These entities are all associated with fire, so they are appropriate selections for the Involution Avatar of Agape, which is associated with the element of Fire. While the Gnostic current of Agape represents human sodality, the foundation of human culture, and the consent of the unified purpose of human life (the overall social contract), the underworld vision of Agape focuses on individual ambition and the unlawful exercise of selfish and ego-based activities. While these activities are performed by individuals who act against the status-quo, their unwitting gifts to humanity are both a boon and a curse. Lucifer, as the light bearer, falls from grace when he seeks to rebel against the tyranny of God, setting in motion the later human practice of defying the Gods, and also defying human convention and the basic expectations of a peaceful life. 

Social revolution often runs counter to the good of humanity in the short run, and it is typically resisted by those in authority. Asmodeus is the fire demon representing the desire to break conventions, seek retribution and vengeance or to engage in liaisons that are unlawful and unwanted. He is depicted as a physically beautiful man who uses guile and charisma to seduce men and women into actions that are against their basic interests. Leaders who act contrary to the social benefit of everyone can cause upheavals, destruction, social enmity and civil war. Vigilantes seek social justice, but they are just unwitting pawns of unsanctioned vengeance, yet they are lionized in stories, media, and myths as heroes. These kinds of social revolutions might be important, but they have a staggering cost. 

Likewise, Prometheus gave humanity the gift of fire and paid a steep price for that action, which went against the will of the Gods. However, while the gift may have promoted constructive uses of fire, but it also unleashed the negative uses of fire to harm others, whether by accident or by design. This event ultimately led to triggering the dark side of civilization, which is state sponsored warfare, the persecution of minorities, ethnic cleansing, and the unprovoked conquest of other peoples. These evils are still afflicting the postmodern world, but they could be identified as the backlash to the discovery of fire.

The underworld of Agape is the temptation of individuals to act against the will and the needs of the many for their own personal ambition. They are attacking the social contract that binds humanity together. This is somewhat like an Ayn Rand fictional plot, where the rugged and gifted individual disastrously rebels against the collective social status-quo and the prevailing sentiment of moral relativism and self-sacrifice. While the heroes of this theme are fighting for freedom and rational self-interest, they also cause destruction, injuries and fatalities, and social chaos. When individuals employ their will to overthrow the society in which they reside, then their actions must be accountable and measured against the common good. While Ayn Rand identified such individuals as revolutionary heroes, our complex society sees them rightfully as terrorists.

In this underworld scenario the initiate adept is tested to determine if their personal will and directive helps and promotes the social good in the short and long term, or whether their selfish interests will lead to harming others with no actual gain or social progression. This, then, is the nature of the test of individual human ambition, and anyone who seeks to make any changes to the world in which they live should be given this test in its most severe form, ensuring that they realize the cost of their actions and are made consciously accountable. Achieving clarity, selflessness, and affirmation about one’s personal directives and ambitions represents the process of passing through this important test.

Eros - Element of Earth - Involution Avatar Beelzebub, Belphegor or Pan Priapus. The Gnostic current of Eros is the ideal of Epithumia, the thirst for life, and the joyful realization of desire. While this current has a very progressive, constructive, and delightful representation of life’s essential experiences of procreation, birth, growth, and the blissful happiness and rejoicing of ecstatic release, it’s opposite is the perversion of desire, dissolution and extreme excess. It is debauchery without purpose, unbridled drunkenness, addled additions, and excesses towards the destruction and denial of life. It is the dark attribute of selfish desire and the cruel denial of consensuality, where power over others and their victimization is the principal ideation. 

The demons Beelzebub and Belphegor exemplify the qualities of gluttony, envy, and slothfulness, intemperance and orgiastic excess. Without a guiding principle of balance, simplicity and ethical engagement, Epithumia becomes the road to dissolution and death. For those who love life and engage in the pure expression of love, the pleasurable banquet of exquisite food, drink and exotic drugs enjoyed in the company of dear friends and lovers amid the esthetic panoply of nature, they must possess self-discipline and a strong sense of ethical behavior.  Sybarites of all persuasions must be self-disciplined and ethical otherwise they will fall into the cruel clutches of profligacy that will cause their ultimate death and leave the scarred victims of their perverse practices forever psychically damaged. Pan Priapus, as the personification of the mindless erect phallus is the god that exemplifies the complete lack of discipline and ethics that must be the regimen and rules of the true sybarite. 

Entering into the underworld of Eros is to enter a chaotic world of drunkenness and delirium that challenges anyone who would dare follow the path of life and its pleasures. Only the complete ascetic is immune, and few if any of us would meet that requirement. The initiate adept is fully assaulted with the darkest expression and definitions of their periods of vulnerability, when they succumbed to drink, drugs, or nonconsensual sexual aggression, or were sexually dominated themselves by another. These fearful memories are given a powerful life as the initiate adept must deal with their own guilty conscience in personal acts that were dissolute and dishonorable. Here everyone is a victim, and everyone is condemned to the darkness of the unredeemed human animal. Even so, there is always a spark of light and life that is good, and only through empowering life and affirming its goodness even through darkness and adversity is the way found to overcome the fear and alluring seduction of the dark gnosis of Eros. Of all of the underworld gnostic currents, Eros is the most challenging to overcome and resolve because we all love life and its pleasures.

Resolution as the Marriage of the Shadow and Persona

Having passed through all four of these underworld depictions of Hell, and having resolved their imposing challenges, the initiate adept is then free to face them together as one since overall challenge. This is because they have become truly purged of the darkness and are fully clear and knowing of themselves through the contrast of light and darkness, life and death. The ultimate task for the initiate adept is to not only resolve these trials in a single cycle of four consecutive dark new moon nights, but to keep them alive within them as a means to measure and realize the truth about themselves. When the fifth new moon occurs in the sequence of months, then the final act in the Ordeal is consummated. 
 

In that moment, the final and fifth stage, the initiate adept fuses all four arch-demons into a single being of darkness and light, the true nameless Godhead of Ordeals. It is also where the wedding ceremony or the union between the individual shadow and the persona is enacted, and the greater gateway of Light and Darkness, Shadow and Persona, might be established. It is an event where the doorway of the soul is always left open so that there might be a cyclic communion between light and dark. 

 

This wedding ceremony is the Hieros Gamos of the shadow and the ego-based persona, made possible through the intervention of the magician’s God/dess Within, their Atman or individual godhead. This is because the ultimate resolution of the trump card The Devil XV is resolved through the trump card The Lovers VI. A magical jeweled ring, which is used to symbolize their union, is consecrated, charged, given and received (worn by the initiate adept), and a special underworld gateway rite is periodically performed as part of the magician’s magical discipline every new moon. It opens one up to the place where the shadow and persona go to merge and become one. This is an ongoing and never-ending process, since the internal psychic unity tied to the godhead is something that must be periodically consummated. It becomes part of the magician’s regular liturgical practice, unfailingly performed until that day when they emerge on the other side of the Greater Abyss, as a being that is whole, enlightened, illuminated and conscious of their singular godhead.  

Whatever other ordeal that I might seek to promote to my readers, this is the one that must be undertaken at some point by anyone who would gain the final stages of non-dual consciousness in their lifetime as practicing magicians. Yet it is the Devil, in his various forms, who is the archetypal Shadow of all beings, that is arbiter of this ordeal, and it is through him that the master adept might gain their full mastery of the powers of light and darkness, and their mastery of life in all its vicissitudes. 

Frater Barrabbas

World Shadow as the Devil

 

This is part 2 of a three part article that is the introduction to Magical Shadow Work and Ordeal XV. I will be writing a book about this ordeal in the future. Here is the basic understanding to this masterful challenge that all adepts must face in their magical and spiritual career. 

While our personal shadow typically remains nameless and undefinable, the archetypal embodiment of this shadowy and mysterious individual does have many names and qualities as defined in our culture and our social world. In the west, including the middle east, that personage is the Devil or Satan, the ultimate antagonist and representative of all that is rejected in our societies. He is seen as too prideful or too despicable to be suffered as having any kind of important role or even to be acknowledged except as the repository of the sins of humankind. The social polarization of good and evil has created an archetypal personage that holds all the evil that has ever been committed by humans in the world, whether minor infractions and deviations from the expected norms or massive crimes against humanity and nature. Yet he is also the polar opposite of the Deity in monotheistic religious traditions, taking on the attributes of punisher, stern judge, and wrathful avenger as the dark side of the cultural Godhead. Since God is above and beyond the evil that afflicts the world, then it is up to God’s Shadow as the Devil to meet out justice and retribution.

As we learn by painful experiences, so too do we gain insight and wisdom through the struggles and critical ordeals that life presents us. Knowledge is often gained by bitter disappointments, and a life without struggle, resistance or pain is one that is devoid of constructive self-knowledge and self-improvement. Behind such lessons of life is our shadow, who seems to guide us as a primary instigator into and through life’s travails and difficulties. The shadow is both a guardian barring our way and a guide who instructs us in how to proceed, overcoming obstacles. Our greater lesson is to learn to be aware of the shadow’s psychic intuition and to listen to its teachings. As practitioners of magic, this is a crucial lesson to master.

The same holds for the cultural or world shadow as the archetype of the Devil, who shows us the darkness that we refuse to see, and instigates disruptive chaos against the seemingly mindless and the unwitting people who fail to hear and realize his warnings. Thus, Satan is both the punisher and also the teacher, indirectly overseeing the paths of the mage and the sage. Since the true aspect of the Deity is its unity, then the Devil, who is God’s shadow, represents that polar opposite which is necessary for the union of light and darkness to be fully realized. It is the joining of God and Satan into a single supremely paradoxical being that opens the doorway to true enlightenment and the realization of the One. 

Yet to only acknowledge the good Deity and to ignore or disparage its shadow is to create an even greater paradox, which is splitting the Deity and fostering a destructive duality that cannot be logically supported or resolved, since it denies the inherent unity of all things, material, mental and spiritual. We can see the damage that Christianity has unleashed on the world by passionately adhering to a dualistic spiritual perspective that divides the world into the faithful good and the unfaithful evil. Such divisions are always a precursor to religious oppression and then followed by violent persecution. Religious wars are the most destructive kind of civil violence humanity has ever unleashed or experienced. The balanced path between the archetypal agencies of light and darkness is the only path to peace and constructive interaction. In order for that state of peace to occur we must all accept the fact that there are unresolved paradoxes and mysteries within the soul of humanity and the Soul of the World. It is imperative that we accept them as they exist and not to try to resolve them through religious interdiction.

As magicians we travel the path of transformative initiation, ever mindful that such a milestone is achieved when we encounter our shadow self in a land of shadows, our psychic underworld. At the zenith of this powerful psychic process, we meet two personages: our shadow opposite with whom we must unite, and our image of paternal authority with whom we must gain approbation. This stage where we meet our shadow occurs as a kind of wedding or Hieros Gamos where opposites are ceremonially united, to be followed by a new dynamic of empowerment. The next stage in the hero’s journey is known as “Atonement with the Father,” which represents the realignment that must occur once the self is made whole again. This is the stage where the hero must take on the laws and judgements of their culture and social position. It is only when there is a new balance established between the light and darkness of the self, mitigated by the laws, ethics and social graces of the archetypal image of the hero’s home, that he is released from bondage to become the apotheosis of humankind.

 

 

Yet the father figure that demands atonement is characterized, in my opinion, by the Tarot trump the Devil XV. I have made this analogy in previous writings, and it is based on my comparative mapping between the hero’s stages and the trumps of the Tarot. It is the Devil who has a central role to play in this cyclic process of psychological death and rebirth. While the shadow represents to us the individual that tests and challenges us so that we might gain a unified psychic wholeness, it is the Devil who orchestrates this process and who rules the underworld. 

If we examine the Tarot trump the Devil, we see depicted on it two horned individuals with pointed tails, a naked man and woman, loosely (voluntarily) chained by their necks to a rock-like altar pedestal, jointly worshiping their diabolical master. In the center of the card stands the archetypal image of Satan in all his terrible glory. Upon this pedestal, he demonstrates in his pose the ultimate mystery in the words “solve et coagula” tattooed on his arms, one raised above pointing to the heavens and the other pointing to the ground. These words mean to dissolve and conjoin, which is the very process that the hero undergoes to achieve transformation. This Tarot trump is the mirror image of trump VI, the Lovers, representing a different kind of union of opposites. The Lovers VI is where the hero and his shadow join in the fusion of light and darkness as directed and sanctioned by a god, and the Devil XVI is where that union is tested, rectified and made whole. So, it would seem the entire mystery of our shadow work leads us to psychic union and transformation, where we receive the “devil’s mark” as a sign of our achievement. The two Tarot trumps are the key to this mystery, but first we must meet the Devil to determine our fate in this greater transformation.

 

Frater Barrabbas 

A World Polarized by Light and Darkness

As a magician I am often asked if we actually live in a world that is morally and spiritually dangerous. Certainly, the world at large can be a physically dangerous place and there is no lack of tragedy and calamity in the world. If you happen to have the misfortune of living in a dangerous part of the world, most of the tragedy consists of human perpetuated acts of malice and mayhem. There is also nature herself who visits catastrophes on the earth from time to time, and the frequencies of these phenomena will likely increase as a result of climate change and other factors. However, the real question is whether or not there is a supernatural force of evil that is behind all of these tragic occurrences. Is there a Devil who is the great mediator of the forces of evil that prey on human weaknesses and promotes the destruction of mankind? Or perhaps it is the actions of a morally ambiguous Deity that gives out mercy and severity in a seemingly quixotic mixture of good and evil?

Those who believe in an active mythic war between the forces of good arrayed against the forces of evil see the world and its populace as a kind of titanic battleground between benefic angels and hostile demons, and that even natural disasters are painted with this kind of dualistic gloom. In the Bible, the Deity itself has purportedly engaged in mass destruction and the wanton killing of sinners and innocents alike (although non-believers, however innocent, are shown to be justified killings), and all of this has been noted as the actions of a just and righteous godhead. Who are we to judge such actions, as the God of the Monotheists moves in such mysterious ways? Even so, as a pagan man, I find all of this speculation to be irrelevant, overly simplified and even troubling. It could even represent a kind of mental illness called global paranoia if it is allowed to achieve extreme levels of expression.

As a pagan, I reject that the world is polarized between the forces of good and evil and that there is a supernatural basis to evil operating in the world. I have been keenly observing the behavior of humanity for the duration of my adult life and I have steeped myself in a broad study of history. It would seem to me that the real evil in the world is perpetuated by individuals or groups of human beings and not some overarching force of evil. While I might believe in intermediaries called daemones, I don’t believe in the Devil and hostile demonic forces. Others might indulge in this Manichean belief system and to them it is a reality, but it is not a universal reality, and that is my whole point. I believe that there is a sane way to deal with both the secular world and the occult world of spiritual consciousness and disembodied beings without bringing into the equation the mental venom of perpetual duality. There are hazards aplenty to be found in the Spirit World, and I have experienced many of them at first hand. Yet hazards are not the same as a unified force of evil.

If there isn’t a universal reality consisting of the supernatural elements of good and evil warring against each other, then what about the concept of white magic and black magic? Is there such a thing? Having recently written about the basic elements of ritual magick, it would seem that what colors a magical working is the intention. If the intention is to hurt or coerce someone, then, depending on the context, the magic produced in such an effort could be considered ethically negative. Of course, then we get into the whole highly complicated discussion about ethics in the use of magic, and that is not the theme that I am following here in this article. It is a topic to be discussed (or avoided) in a future article. So, if there isn’t a universal evil being, and magic is neither black nor white, then what about black magicians and black lodges? This is a favorite topic of a number of authors, some deployed as fictional tropes, others as talking points about the ethical shape of the occult world. I suspect, based on my own  experiences, that it is best to keep these concepts within the domain of fiction where they belong.

This also brings us to the topic of magical or psychic attacks, often perpetuated by individuals who would be considered “black” magicians. Every now and again, I will get an email from someone who is claiming to be under attack, whether magically or via some superhuman psychic agency. Are there “black” lodges out there training individuals to be “black” magicians who excel at fomenting magical or psychic attacks on helpless individuals? While it might be a good fictional theme is it actually true or real? I have to admit that I am quite skeptical, so my answer is a qualified “no.” Anyone who has read a book on magical self-defense or personal protection might think that the world is filled with magical malefactors and lodges to support them, and that the moment someone begins to learn magic they have effectively placed a target on themselves for all the evil magicians to see. This is particularly true with Dion Fortune’s book “Psychic Self-Defense” where she talks about magical and psychic predators and even the existence of black lodges. An uncritical reading of her book could lead individuals to all sorts of erroneous ideas, and often when someone either sends me an email or talks to me about being magically attacked, this book is used as a reference and a tool for validating it.

As a magician who has practiced magick for nearly four decades and who, for the most part, has been around and met many magicians and other occultists, one thing that I can say for certain is that magical and psychic attacks can and do occur. However, they are more rare and isolated instances rather than common and often occurring ones. Of course, if you are talking about the Voudoun or Palo/Santeria communities, there are probably more actual occurrences of such phenomena; but if you are talking about the Wiccan and Pagan community, they are probably more rare. Why is this so? Because in order for a successful magical or psychic attack to occur, it has to be performed by someone who is competent and capable of doing such an act, and I might add, getting away with it. Believe it or not, this is a tall order, especially in the Wiccan and Pagan communities. Keep in mind that someone who would be competent in a fee-for-service kind of magical working would be able to be employed for many purposes, not just performing negative (retributive) magic. A dedicated black magician is likely more a myth than a reality, and even more so would be a collective of black magicians. Could you really imagine a group of egotistical evil magicians being able to function as a group, conducting their work in a civil manner and following specified by-laws? I can’t, and the thought is actually quite amusing if it wasn’t so completely ridiculous.

Many individuals in the Pagan and Wiccan community struggle to perform simple rituals and some eschew even a basic practice of magic altogether. There is also a lack of training materials or an effective collection of spells for malefic rites (but no small number of books on the subject), and not a lot of competence, either. Additionally, there are individuals who are capable of affecting or impacting someone in an indirect manner without having any knowledge of magic. Sales people, seducers and con artists use these skills every day, not to mention bullies, thugs, spouse abusers and even sovereign nations. The threat of doing something will often be just as effective as the actual act, so innuendo and implied actions could be considered a form of indirect coercion, even though they are not to be considered any kind of malefic magic.

Negative magic has a number of rules to be followed just as positive magic or magic in general. One of the most basic rules is that the targeted person must be informed in some manner that they are being attacked, and the magician often finds an ingenious way of leaving a subtle but unambiguous calling card. (I call that the “gloating gotcha.”) Also, the effects of being magically attacked are usually unambiguous. There are ways to determine if one is being attacked as there are ways of deflecting it. Any attempt at blocking or deflecting a curse or attack will at least have some success, showing that the source is indeed external. Still, sometimes instead of being attacked from without an individual can experience something like an attack from within, and that is where we leave the domain of magic entirely behind and enter into the domain of mental illness and/or internal process-based issues.

I can at least speak from experience about magical attacks because in the long course of my magical career I have been magically attacked. In all cases it was from someone with whom I was intimately familiar. There are usually implied threats or some kind of innuendo or calling card left behind, and it often manifests with a clear sense of where the attack has come from. Simple exercises can deflect it, even partially, or a recourse to one’s spiritual alignment can often completely silence it, at least momentarily. The most effective curse deployed uses a person’s sense of guilt or culpability as a means of establishing a pervasive link, so a curse sent against someone who is a sociopath or one who is totally devoid of conscience or empathy (or who believes that they are without blame) will obviously fail. It is also true that someone who has studiously made himself immune to psychic or magical attack will have little that can be targeted for such a purpose.

Truly, the most vulnerable type of person is one who feels guilty or is very empathically susceptible, or a combination of both.  Natural psychics often ward themselves when dealing with the general public during readings, and I have even met a few psychologists who have admitted to learning to be completely detached from their patients. (One psychologist friend of mine burned Epsom salts in her consulting room after each consultation.) Even so, the most susceptible person can block or deflect a magical attack, and they can therefore determine the nature of it and even its source.

A curse is always a two-way street, since it requires the link between target and source to be in effect as long as the curse is being used to subjugate the victim. Perhaps the smartest curse (and the least effective) is what I call the “hit and run exercise,” which amounts to putting a curse on someone and then quickly breaking the link. If such a vehicle finds a potent vulnerability then it could conceivably continue to work even after the link is broken. Yet finding this kind of severe vulnerability in a person that could either harm or even kill them would be quite a feat in itself. People are not without natural defenses and internal stabilizing mechanisms, so very few individuals are that fragile or liable for self-destruction. Therefore a hit and run exercise will more often cause some minor mischief, if it is, indeed, effective at all. A serious magical attack relies on retaining the link between the magician and victim, even if malefic spirits are conjured and used to carry it out.

How can a person tell if they are being attacked by an external agency? As I have stated earlier, because it can be deflected in some manner or form. Victims will sense an external “alien” source to themseves that will urge them to some kind of behavior that is against their desires or interests, but a simple warding rite will cause it to diminish somewhat or cease altogether. I call this a “curse flickering effect” and it indicates an outside source.

A sure sign that the attack is coming from within is when any protective action has no effect at all. After all, how can we protect ourselves from our own internal minds? An internal attack is a sign that some issue or internal process has been triggered and empowered, and now represents a potential internal threat or even an overall crisis. This is a sign that what is occurring represents some variety of mental illness, whether it is just annoying at the very least or life threatening at the very worst. Now it is important, in my opinion, for everyone to understand that mental illness is not a stigma nor a sign of some internal flaw. No one is perfect and no one is immune to the debilitating effects of mental illness - it can strike down anyone. Some of us are perhaps more susceptible to certain kinds of mental illness either due to genetics or bodily chemistry, but as many as one in three experience some degree and variety of mental illness in a lifetime. We should see it as a disease rather than some kind of personal defect, and it is, unfortunately, not uncommon.

The most important thing that you can do if you believe that you are under a magical attack is to try to be dispassionate and think about what is happening to you in an objective manner. You can also get a friend or a family member to act as an objective outsider and listen to you describe what you are going through. Finding an objective and rational base is an important first step to thwarting a curse. Once you have achieved that, then you can try some simple warding exercises, protection spells or get some basic spiritual help from a professional member of one’s clergy. If any of these actions gains you some relief from the experience, then what you are experiencing is undoubtably a magical attack. Doing more of these kinds of exercises will gain you more relief and perhaps even a solution.

Still, to stop the attack cold, you should identify the “alien” source in your head and its directives, and then locate that place of guilt or susceptibility within you that it is targeting. You can then either mask or eliminate it, thereby depriving the curse of an access point. Once this is done, then the curse will be automatically deactivated. You can also employ someone who is an expert at magical counter measures to do this operation for you, if such a person is available. However, an external attack can be deflected and the link broken, and once that happens, the curse is thwarted. Any residual energy typically goes back to the originator from whence it came, forcing the aggressor magician to hastily break the link or deal with the consequences of a malefic blow-back. Even so, when mental illness strikes there is little that can be done other than seek professional help. If you think that you have been magically attacked and you seem immune to any kind of counteraction then you are suffering from an internal attack. Hopefully, such a test will help you to objectify it and allow you to see the nature and source of your problem.

Most of the people that have either emailed me or talked to me about being magically attacked were actually experiencing some kind of internal attack. The source and cause of such attacks are numerous and since I am not a professional counselor, psychologist or psychiatrist, I am powerless to do anything but help the person objectify what is happening to them. If the source isn’t external nor magical, then I am helpless to do anything about it.

One last thing to consider is the nature of the attack and its power. If the attack seems to be perpetrated by someone who would have to be wielding the powers of a spiritual master, then it is more likely that the attack is actually internal. There are limits to what any practical magician can do to someone, just short of putting a powerful drug or poison into their food or drink. If what you are experiencing would seem to indicate someone who is able to live inside of your head (and know every thought that you have had, or any dream that you might have dreamed) as well as living his own head, then you are likely also experiencing an internal attack (and not a magical one).

I have been involved in magic for many years and I have yet to meet anyone who has that degree of psychic power. It might even be impossible for someone to consciously live in their own head and in the head of someone else. If it’s not impossible then I would assume that with such great powers would also be a towering spiritual love, an infinite compassion for all beings and the ethical desire to allow others to find their own way however faulty or fruitless. I just don’t believe that there is such a thing as a spiritual master who is completely evil, nor do I believe in a lodge of assembled magical malefactors. Myths have their purpose, but that purpose is not to hide or mask the true nature of everything.

The world as we know it is one that is morally and spiritually grey. There is no battle between good and evil spirits, and human nature is often corrupted with greed, avarice, mendacity, and driven by an egotistic lust for power. Human beings are flawed, and so, too, their endeavors will be flawed. Human nature can also display great transcendent virtues, so life in this material world is a mixed bag of virtue, talents, achievements, incompetence and moral failings. There is stark clarity, murky duplicity, and everything in between; but “sometimes, my dear, a cigar is just a cigar.”

Frater Barrabbas