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

Wintering of Frater Barrabbas

 It has been a while since I performed a magical ordeal, and in fact, it has been quite a while. Recently, I created a time line to examine when I had undergone my most intense and powerful ordeals, and based on my calculations, the last major workings that I had performed were on the Summer Solstice of 2017. That’s almost seven years ago this coming summer. Since that time, however, I have written and published seven books, and each book was not an easy task to complete, especially the one dedicated to talismanic magic. So, it would seem that I have not been complacent and that my efforts have been focused on getting my ideas and practices into print for the sake of my Witchcraft and Pagan community and my readers of all stripes.

However, I have not been working magic during that interval, and so I would label the last seven years as a period of magical dormancy, or what Taylor Elwood has called “Wintering.” My Wintering period is more like a long period of hibernation that was coupled with a relocation and diminished resources. Whereas before May 2018, I had a large house with a permanent temple and an outdoor grove on three acres of land, I now have a smaller house with a very small backyard. The kind of magic that I work really requires a permanent temple, and I don’t have room for such an area in my current home. It is also the first time that I have not had a temple to work my magic since I lived with my parents. That was a long time ago. In fact I have lived by myself for probably around 17 years, and I have had a partner for another 17 years. This the first time that I am without a temple, and I not sure how long that will last.

Still, I have practiced magic regularly for decades before the wintering, and concluded many ordeals and major workings. I have started and built up four covens, helped to establish a regional pagan festival that is still occurring (Heartland Pagan Festival), and assisted in founding a magical order, all during that time. I have been quite busy with magical work, sharing and teaching others for many years until recently. It is also true that today I am an elder and sometimes elders retire from their work, although I have no plans to go that route. There is still much that I have to do and want to accomplish from a magical perspective, but only at present do I lack a place to perform this work. I have space to meditate, and it is possible that with so much experience I could actually perform magic while in a meditative trance, and I may seek that out as a possibility when time becomes a little more convenient for me.

When I look at what I accomplished over the preceding decades, the fact that I am not working magic regularly at this time becomes less critical or important. This is a temporary situation, because when the need arises, I am certain that a place to work my art will become available to me in some fashion. When one door closes, another opens, and that has been my experience in all areas of the my life over time.

Here is a time-line of what I have accomplished over the decades from the 1990's to the present. You will notice that starting in 2018, I no longer was working any substantive ordeals or major magical workings. That was beginning of my wintering phase.

Work during the 1990's - Continuous Magical Development and Ordeal Performance
There was a lot of magical work going on during this decade. The entire corpus of magical workings from the third degree and higher being developed for use by my brothers and sisters in the Order of the Gnostic Star. Some of this work had started in the 1970's and the 1980's, but it was finalized during the decade of the 1990's. This was a very busy time for me.

Enochian Ordeals - evocation of the Nephilim chiefs and seven of the 49 Bonarum
Archaeomancy of the 40 Qabalistic Worlds and the 18 Qabalistic Dimensions
Tessarenoi - Four Temple workings
Seven-Rayed Stellar Gnosis workings
Wrote the book Pyramid of Powers in 1992 - 1996

Work during the 2000's - this was also a busy period up to 2017.

Rediscovery of Witchcraft Roots and Old Craft Traditional Witchcraft
Continued working with the 18 Qabalistic Dimensions
Founded two new covens
Developed Grove Witchcraft
Published “Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick” in 2007
Published MARM in three volumes, then in one volume - 2008 - 2009, 2013
Abramelin Lunar ordeal - 2009 to 2011
Portae Lucis ordeal and building seven talismanic magical machine - 2012
Published Beginner’s Guide to the Magical Qabalah - 2013
Handing fasting in grove - 2014
Published Spirit Conjuring for Witches - 2016
Performed Portae Lucis 5-year anniversary, developed and performed Talismanic Septagramic Vortex Gate Ritual using the talismanic magical machine, developed and performed Egyptian Underworld Ascension rite (uncrossing). Focused workings on selling house and relocating to Richmond. Spring 2017. These workings were very successful and helped to make my relocation smoother than it might have been.

Hiatus from working magical ordeals due to the increasing demands of my work and relocation to a home without a temple. This is the beginning of my wintering period - 2017 through 2019. My father died in the autumn of that year (2019).

Covid19 Pandemic - 2020 - 2022. Work from home and sequestration. Wintering intensified.

Published Elemental Powers for Witches - 2021
Published Talismanic Magic for Witches - 2022
Wrote Sacramental Theurgy for Witches and Transformative Initiation for Witches in 2022
Attended Paganicon in March 2023 - first time to meet and greet in public.
Wrote Mastering the Art of Witchcraft, Liber Nephilim and Abramelin Lunar Ordeal in 2023
Published Sacramental Theurgy for Witches - 2024

What you can see is that I had switched over from working a lot of rituals and ordeals to writing up and publishing my revised and refined ritual technology in seven books. While one might consider that the writing of a book is something of an ordeal, and indeed it is, it does not help me to devise, develop and experiment with new ritual technologies and methodologies. It also doesn’t help me to retain a certain ritual fitness that is required to perform rituals and practices for protracted periods of time. I would spend as much as four to five hours solidly working a series of rituals in a single evening to complete a part of an ordeal for that period. I wonder if I even have the stamina to do that kind of focused work now that I am many years older than when I performed this kind of ritual work.

I do not know what the future holds, although I have done Tarot card readings and used other forms of divination to peek at the future potentials. What I see as the possible future for me is that the greatest work lies ahead of me. I have established a good foundation of lore that is mature and consistent, and I am sharing that lore with the magical and occult community, this will give a certain longevity. There are a number of areas where further development might add considerably to this lore, and I would like to pursue those directions in the future. However, I will need a temple to do that, although I can develop the lore and save it for when I can perform it in a temple environment. I will explore these other areas where I would like to develop new ordeals and ritual workings and methodologies in my blog over the coming year.

The one factor that could interfere with my plans is my health. I am no longer young, and after dealing with a bout of pneumonia, I realize that I need to do something to build up my strength, stamina and over-all health. The time for being sedentary due to a pandemic is past, and I need to get more active and physically engaged with life if I am to live through my seventies in good health. I look to the year of 2024 for a new beginning and to see what opportunities might fall my way.

Frater Barrabbas

Calends Meditations and Insights

The year 2023 is coming to an end, and there is much to be thankful for and to acknowledge successes and also some failures. However, there is a great deal of potential awaiting me in the coming year, and I also suspect that significant outcomes will occur deciding the fate of our nation. I won’t talk about politics in this article, since I have already discussed that topic in a previous article. What I will focus on are the personal struggles that I have waged over the course of the year, and the outcomes that can be realized as specifically magical, spiritual, and metaphysical. I am also aware of the fact that I am getting older and more prone to illness as the years progress, and that I am in the autumn period of my life. I will have good days of brilliant sunshine and amazing clarity, and other times will be dark, gloomy, confusing and sad as I contemplate what I have failed to accomplish or what still evades me after years of effort.

Therefore, let me celebrate and commiserate the highs and lows of my life in the calends of the year 2023, and seek to see clearly into the coming year 2024 and beyond. As I have said, the coming year will be an important mile-stone for me, and one that I can celebrate as an amazing accomplishment by itself. My dream to make much if not all of my magical lore available for anyone who would seek to perform it is becoming fully realized. This was one of my spiritual and magical objectives set upon me by my personal Goddess and the agency of my Higher Self, one that I struggled for years to achieve. I lacked the writing skills to make this happen when first the mandate was delivered to me, and I had to spend more than a decade of writing to finally get to the point where I could actually write up this lore into books that were intelligible to the occult reading public. Few would guess that I was a poor writer, barely able to put my ideas down on paper unless it was a ritual. I couldn’t spell very well and my writing skills were awkward and clumsy. Over time, that changed, but I had a long way to go before I managed to achieve the level of writing that I now possess. It was a hard earned skill, that’s for certain.

So, I have six books coming out in 2024, and I should be thrilled by that fact, but in some ways I am not as excited as I should be. The reason for this blunting of my enthusiasm is simple. I have been sick off and on again since late September. It’s hard to get too excited when your health really is n poor shape. Some of this is because I have become more sedentary than I should be, but writing books and functioning as a data warehouse architect requires me to sit at my desk for long periods of time. However, that is just an excuse I should try to overcome if I expect to live through my 70's without any serious illness because I am doing so little to manage my health. What will ultimately happen is based on genetics, of course, but these potential diseases can be mitigated through exercise and getting out more often into nature, and traveling around this marvelous state where I currently reside. I have made promises to myself that I have not fulfilled, so now I realize all too well what will be my fate if I continue to procrastinate regarding getting more physically active. I caught a lower tract flu in late September, then got a really bad cold in October which mutated into bronchitis, and then pneumonia. Right now, I am recovering from pneumonia, and it is a hard slog to get back to having a reasonable healthy body. That series of illnesses are a warning to me that I better change my basic habits if I want to avoid more of the same, or even worse occurrences.

One thing that saddens me somewhat is that I don’t have a temple to work my magic and to celebrate my connection with the Deities and the mysteries of light and darkness, life and death. All I can do is meditate in a quiet space in my office. This is the first time in decades that I don’t have a temple, and it means that there is a lot of new lore that I could be developing, experimenting with new approaches to working magic, and engaging in new ordeals that have presented themselves to me as I have been writing up my lore. The last set of major workings that I performed was in 2017, prior to the change in my career that had me working and traveling to Richmond, VA, where I now live. The house that we bought in Richmond was new and well-built, but it lacked the space for a real temple, and the extra bedroom became an office for my wife so she could seek to expand her career and become the main contributor to our household.

My job status has stabilized and I can continue in my current role beyond 2026. I won’t have to deal with getting laid off or terminated anytime in the future, so at least that part of my life is in a good state. Still, I miss my old home where I had a large temple and an outdoor grove. That place is where I performed some of most significant magical workings of my life as a ritual magician, and that is saying a lot. What I realize is that my current home is likely a temporary location, and that in time I will find a new home that can accommodate my need for a temple.

The pandemic made my relocation to Richmond quite complicated, since it forced me to be sequestered for two years. Since I have allergies and I am elderly, I felt that it was prudent not to expose myself too much to the public except where necessary, such as going to stores and buying groceries or other needed items. Due to the demands of my job, I had not started to reach out to the community and get acquainted with the Witches, Pagans and Occultists living in my community when the pandemic occurred. I did attempt to work with a local OTO body, but the body master was a control freak and unable to allow the members of the group to share their knowledge and experiences, and this turned out to be something that I decided not to invest any further time. I did meet a few interesting people, and I have continued to be connected with them, but overall, I have failed to make any important impact on my community.

I am living in the same location as other many other folks, many of whom are beginners, but I am unknown to them, and that is wholly my fault. I was slow to get out from the pandemic sequestration, and I have not yet become a known personality in my community. You would think that with as much knowledge and experience that I have to give to others that I would have, by now, made inroads into my community and made myself available to teach and share with others what I know. That hasn’t happened yet, and it is one of my failures.

What I can at least take consolation from are my book writing projects and the fact that I have a new publisher who treats me like a Rock Star. I am hoping that sentiment continues into the next year, and there is no reason to think that it will change. Blake and Wycke Malliway, and their publishing company, Crossed Crow Books, understand that I am at a point in my writing career where I can produce new books quickly and efficiently, particularly because I have three decades of material to assemble, edit and pull together into publishable books. While Llewellyn trained me for a decade on how to write occult books, the CCB publishers are the one’s that are reaping what I learned during that period of indenture. It seems sad to me that a year ago I was still solidly a Llewellyn author, and although they still have four of my books in print, I cannot rely on them to publish any of my new manuscripts because they are so outside of what they typically publish. So, CCB will acquire the benefits of my mastery of the art of writing occult books and it is my hope that they prosper accordingly. The books that I write in the coming years will contain the magical workings and techniques that I am most excited about, since I have now established a foundation of work for all to use in order to make this newly available lore accessible and useful.

For the coming year, I am planning on making an appearance at Convocation in Ann Arbor, MI, which is happening on February 22, 2024. I am going because my publishers are paying for my travel and accommodation for this event. They have also taken care of my registration and set me up to teach two classes there. I will write another article to give more information about this event as we get closer to the time when it will be held. I am quite amazed that my publishers have afforded me this privilege, and it only shows that they have a great deal of reguard for my work and what I am seeking to share with my reading public. Llewellyn would never have spent that kind of money on me, even though they are a much larger company. In fact, I found that Llewellyn treats their authors rather cheaply, and this has been a factor for decades. Maybe it makes some business sense to be this way, but it is much more a corporatist mind-set that is all too common in our post modern world. So, I am glad that I am considered a valuable author and treated well by my current publishers.

Other travels for the coming year would likely include a return to New Orleans with an emphasis on marketing my books. I would like to travel there sometime in October or November after my book “Liber Nephilim” has been released, and make that a focus of my trip. I was enthralled with NOLA, and it seemed like such a very Witchy friendly place. I have some friends who have occult contacts in that town with Witches, healers and the local chapter of the OTO. I intend on making the most of being there and meeting with as many people as possible. I will seek to do some book signings and maybe even a couple of classes. I have discussed this possibility with my publishers and seems likely that they will also be interested in traveling there at the same time and see if the witchcraft oriented stores would stock more CCB books on their shelves. I think that event would be quite amazing, and I look forward to exploring it for the coming year.

Another amazing event that has occurred to me is that I have met the owner of a local occult bookstore who is interested in working with me and also getting trained and initiated as a Witch. It was something that I had not been looking for and it just dropped into my hands. I won’t name any names or identify the store, but all I can say is that this person is strikingly knowledgeable and mature in her work as a Witch and a Pagan. Being the owner of an occult bookstore has the option of meeting nearly everyone in the community who is following this path, so it would be likely that through this person, I might be able to finally connect with my community. There is a great deal of potential that might happen through this chance meeting, but until my health improves, I cannot spend the time to determine how it will work out, so I must wait until the coming year and the holidays are over. Then, if I have healed up sufficiently from my bout of pneumonia, I should be able to move forward with developing this relationship and helping this person gain whatever I have that can aid the process of self-validation and enrichening the path of Witchcraft with advanced forms of ritual magic.

Thus, there is a lot of potential on my horizon for the coming year. A lot of good change is coming my way, and I am looking forward to meeting it with all of the positive energy that I can muster. I am an optimist by nature, so feeling down or depressed is always a temporary state for me. There is much to be thankful for in the closing of this year, but also very much to look forward to in the coming year. Thinking about it all energizes me and makes me feel a lot more happy, just in time for this festive season.

Bright Blessings to One and All this Winter Solstice Season 2023.

Frater Barrabbas

Banner Year 2024 for Frater Barrabbas

The Winter Solstice is here, and as we celebrate the various holidays associated with this time of year, I often pause to reflect on what I have accomplished over the year and what I can look forward to in the coming year. Yet this coming year is very different for me than any previous year in the last decade or so. I have been working very hard with my new publisher, Cross Crow Books, since I was let go by Llewellyn, and by the end of year in 2024, I will have ten books in print with another one forthcoming early in the following year. That is, in my opinion, quite an accomplishment.

I am quite pleased with my work so far, and I am also pleased with the response that I have gotten from my publisher. It is quite a contrast from where I was with Llewellyn a year ago. Then, I had signed a contract for “Sacramental Theurgy for Witches,” but there was no sign of when or how that book project would get to the first stage, which was the ‘vision’ marketing meaning. It was then, in March that I received notice that Llewellyn had rejected my book and broke their contract with me. I was able to get another contract from Crossed Crow Books in a matter of days, and I have decided to work with them on my book projects. They treated me in an exceptional and courteous manner, which included face to face Zoom meetings to discuss strategies and approaches to marketing and promoting my books. They signed on to complete the five volume “For Witches” series, to republish my first two books, “Disciple’s Guide” and “Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick” after some revitalizing editing, a beginner’s book on Witchcraft named “Mastering the Art of Witchcraft” and two new books, “Liber Nephilim” and “Abramelin Lunar Ordeal.” I have signed contracts for all of these book projects, and I am about to get the first of these books in the next couple of weeks.

Additionally, the eight projects that I discussed in a recent blog and possibly whatever else I come up in the years ahead will likely be published by them. I have a home for my books, or at least as long as CCB continues to be in the publishing business. My publisher also have a contract with Weiser to distribute their entire catalog of books along with their own, so I will get the same distribution or more if I had continued being a Llewellyn author. That’s great news for me to enjoy and be thankful for in the coming year. Never even in my imagination would I have thought that I would get to see eleven of my books in print. What this means is that my long ambition to get my ritual tech out there in the English reading public’s hands has now come to fruition, and there will be more of these book in the next five years, if my health can continue to be as sturdy as it has been so far.

So, what is coming out into print and what are the dates that these books will be released in 2024? Let me look at the calendar and mark those dates when these six book projects will be available for purchase. As I said, it will be a banner year for the author Frater Barrabbas.

Here is the schedule, although it may be subject to minor changes. Rest assured that the books will out in print, although there could always be slight delays depending on the stages of type-setting, page layout, printing and binding.

“Sacramental Theurgy for Witches” - scheduled release date is February 6, 2025. I should be getting pre-release copies in the next week or two. This book is the one that I felt was the most important of the five books in the “For Witches” series. It was the book rejected by Llewellyn as unmarketable, so we shall see if their assumption was correct through the next couple of years. I seriously doubt that this book will do poorly in the occult book marketplace, especially since it is distributed by Weiser and it has three other books in the series to bolster it. I am probably biased about this book, yet only time will tell.

“Mastering the Art of Witchcraft” - scheduled release date is July 16, 2024. I had said often enough that I would never write a beginner’s book on Witchcraft, and here it is. There must be some irony here, as in you should never say “never” when considering some project. However, this book is radically different than any previous or near future book written on the subject, and it does honor to Paul Huson and his book, “Mastering Witchcraft” published in the early 1970's. That was an important book for me when it came out, and I am hoping that my book will be as influential as that book has been.

“Transformative Initiation for Witches” - scheduled release date is August 20, 2024. This is the last book in the “For Witches” series, and it adds additional initiatory lore to the practicing Witch and the Witchcraft community. The full set of five books covers the spectrum of ritual magic, liturgical and initiatory rites that are above and beyond the traditional Book of Shadows. I believe that armed with these five books and the base-line Witchcraft tradition that a Witch or Pagan will be able to master the art of ritual magic in a manner that I believe would make ceremonial magicians envious. Once that set of magical and liturgical lore is mastered, a Witch would be able to stand eye to eye with any person trained in a ceremonial magical tradition in the Western Mystery Tradition. I am also hoping to convince the Malliway Brother’s store to produce a slip case for all five books in the series, with some nice promotional eye-candy graphically printed on it for their store.

Summer ends and blends into autumn, and there will be three more books released during that period for the year 2024. At this point in the year, I will have published everything that I sought to publish on the art of ritual magic as practiced in Witchcraft. However, that perspective was not how I started out as an author, and additionally there is an accumulation of 30 years of lore that I have only just begun to write up and get published into books. The magical order that I helped to found back in the 1980's was the mechanism where I was able to funnel what I had ordinally developed in the 1970's, and since those strategic years, I had continued my work and developed ever more advanced and sophisticated ritual magical lore. Only this year have I started to assemble manuscripts that will contain the more advanced lore that I developed in the 1990's, 2000's and 2010's. As I said, I have been busy over the last 30 years, and the books that I will produce will contain the bulk of that lore.

“Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick” - scheduled release date is September, 2024. This is the first book that I wrote back in 2006, and it represents my attempt to distill in a simplistic manner the kind of ritual tech that I was performing at that time. I have talked about my very first book that I wrote, named “Pyramid of Powers” that was never actually published. This book was a simplified and condensed version of that work, and it had the benefit of offering to the student a set of basic rituals to be used, based on a kind of paganized Christian Grail mythos. While I had moved on from this work and the second one in that series, other occultists have told me that it was a valuable book and should be kept available. It is a beginner’s book for magical practitioners, so I felt that it would be useful to republish it after some extensive editing, and my publisher happily agreed with me. So, in September, this book will become available again in a newly revised edition with a new cover. Like my other books, it will be distributed much more widely and likely gain a greater share of readers.

“Liber Nephilim” - scheduled to be released in October, 2024. This is the first book in a new series of books that I will be publishing that contains the more advanced lore that I had developed previously but had never made available to my reading public. I had proposed that the source of the Enochian system of magic was originally from the fallen angels known variously as the Watchers, Sons of God or the Nephilim. I have had a long and fruitful relationship with these angelic spirits, and they had urged me to write up their lore and their revelations for the occult reading public to examine. It is a task that I had put on the back-burner for decades, but finally I had the time and opportunity to pull together all of the materials and rituals that I had and to produce a manuscript that could be published. I think that this book will be quite controversial, but it will help to promote the lore and reveal the identities of the Nephilim to the occult community. This book, unlike any of my previous books, will be sold in soft and hard cover editions. There will also be a custom hand bound collector’s edition produced in the following year.

“Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick” - scheduled to be released in December, 2024. This was my second book published, and it was a repackaging, revising and rewriting of my original book “Pyramid of Powers.” When it was originally released, it consisted of three separate books, and then a few years later, it was pulled together into a single volume, which turned out to be the most satisfactory approach to publishing it. It became known as the omnibus edition, and unknown to me, it had quite a small and loyal following. I have, over the recent past, received some praise and accolades for publishing this book, although like the first book, I had passed it by to publish a book on the Qabalah and then a book on conjuring spirits using a familiar spirit for the Witchcraft community. That was the first book in the “For Witches” series. This book will be edited and printed with a new cover in December and then more heavily distributed. Hopefully, more readers will be able to acquire this book and perhaps build their own base-line magical and religious tradition, since that is the stated purpose of this book.

I am already working on the book “Abramelin Lunar Ordeal” and I should have that book edited, with citations, graphic insertions, bibliography and an index list in the next three weeks. I have already talked about that book recently in my blog, so I don’t need to say anything more about it here. While I cannot know for certain when this book will be released, I suspect that it will likely be released either February or March, 2025. I will have celebrated my 70th birthday by then, but I will still have at least six or seven book projects that I will be working on. This book will be my eleventh book published since the first one appeared in print in 2007. It will be the second of my high ritual magic series of books, and it, too, will be available in soft and hard cover editions as well as a hand bound collector’s edition. I am looking forward to when it is finally in print.

This schedule of events represents for me the release of six books, seven if you count the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, to occur over the course of a single year. That is quite an accomplishment, and one that I am happy to report to you. My hope is that I will be able to hear from my readers over the next few years, letting me know how they have used this material that I have written and published, and what kind of experiences they got when employing it. That could almost be enough folks some day to have a one time convention of interested parties to discuss and present this lore as one of the viable paths for Witches and Pagans practicing ritual magic.

Frater Barrabbas

My Life with the Gods

 

Klee - Diana in the Autumn Wind

I can say with little doubt that I was born a Witch, but it took me until my mid teens to actually realize what that was. What kind of child I was could be summed up with the words, overly imaginative, romantic, creative, dreamy, a loner, disconnected from reality, and somewhat hyper active. I was obviously suffering from some degree of ADHD, and that was exacerbated by living under a father who was temperamental and physically and abusive. When other kids in my class thought about who would be successful in life, I would likely have been considered nearly at the bottom of the list. What I lacked was the ability to be focused and disciplined, and I lived in my father’s fearful shadow, since getting any attention from him had highly negative consequences, both physically and mentally. I grew up believing that I was not particularly smart, but was gifted with some creative abilities, even though I took them for granted and really didn’t develop them as I should have.

As a youth, I didn’t fit in with any group and felt too different and apart from my peers. I had lucid dreams that powerfully moved me, and a yearning to find some kind of spiritual meaning to my life. I felt that religion was an internal experience that was personal and deeply significant, but I seemed to lack the ability to find out what that experience was or how to develop it. I dreamed about having unique powers, like the ability to fly, read minds or heal the sick, and I met with strange individuals who I thought were angels without wings, and skulked around locations that seemed so real to me that I felt heartbroken when I woke up to face reality. My waking world, at that time, was devoid of color, lasting happiness or joy, and growing up was so difficult, because adults seemed to live in world where dreams died and reality imposed itself in harsh and limiting ways. I didn’t seem to feel attracted to their world, but then, suddenly, the mod era dawned, to be followed by hippies and the raging counter culture. It is in that tumult that I finally saw my place in the world, or at least the direction I needed to follow. The counter culture brought wonder, joy and vibrant color into my life.

Rock music, psychedelic artwork, drugs, free love and open sexuality were highly attractive to me and my peers, not to mention a kind of renaissance culture that allowed for the exploration of nearly anything, especially old fashioned beliefs, superstitions and debunked ideas of the supernatural, which were resurrected and wrapped up with modern science, science fiction, and fantasy and made available to a spiritually starving middle class youth culture. I was part of that movement, and I was able to find an identity and develop a belief system based on whatever I was able to find that was in print and useful. I did not choose an institution or an organized religious or spiritual group. I chose some kind of imaginative Witchcraft before I really had any kind of material to help me develop my beliefs. In my dreams, I met remarkable people and what I later determined, were actually Deities. They talked to me, and I had lengthy conversations with them, although the content of those conversations were difficult to recall not long after waking, and being functionally illiterate, I didn’t write any of it down.

Revelations came to me in the form of books that helped me define what it was that I had discovered within myself. Earlier, I had scoured the public libraries and aside from historical accounts of the infamous Witch Trials and Scott’s book “Discoverie of Witchcraft” I found very little of use. That also includes the pulp books by Louise Huebner, which according to her, I couldn’t be a Witch because I was a young man. I read Gardner’s book “Witchcraft Today”, but there was very little in the book that I found useful on a practical level. It was when I acquired Lady Sheba’s “Book of Shadows” and Paul Huson’s “Mastering Witchcraft” books that I found what I was looking for, and on top of that, I was given a copy of June Johns book “King of the Witches” that helped to define myself as a Witch, and to understand what that entailed. I also collected the book “You Forever” by T. Lobsang Rampa, that was a text book for gaining psychic abilities. These books became the backbone of my nascent spiritual and magical practice.

Another thing that happened around this time was that I took a large dose of LSD-25 that literally opened the doors of the world of the psychic and visions to me in way that nothing else had previously. I also started to smoke pot and that also helped bring me into the domain of dreams and make that world fully available to me while conscious and fully awake. In the background was the music of the Beatles, Beethoven  and the Moody Blues, and an overworked and overly romantic imagination that gave birth to my magical undertakings and gave names and identities to the Deities that I had been dreaming about and talking with since I was quite young.

Because I had such a powerful imagination (and I still do to this day), I never had any issues about talking to entities and individuals that appeared in my dreams or seemed at the edge of conscious awareness. It was a gift that I later found that few others actually have, but it was born out of an extended childhood, where I retreated into my fantasies to escape the harshness and the fear produced by living in the same house as my abusive father. My father could, and often did, transform a joyous occasion into one of fear, darkness and hurt. I saw my father as a dangerous force in my life that was unpredictable and often even mentally cruel when kindly disposed towards me. In his eyes, I was a disappointing idiot, not to be given much consideration except as a subject of ridicule or a target for the threat of violence. (He did change and mellow over time, but my feelings toward never really changed, and he was hard to be around for any length of time.)

Because my father was a steadfast atheist, and made his opinions about religion quite well known, he persecuted me for my beliefs, and took pleasure in ridiculing them. That only made me more of a steadfast adherent and a rebel against what I saw as his callous and insensitive nature. I did feel deeply, and emotions were my bedrock, and I also sensed other spiritual beings than myself, and I felt the “energies” of churches, people of faith and their congregations, and I knew that my father was dead wrong. Religion was a real and living experience; I knew this because I had experienced it directly. However, to fulfill my rebelliousness and to keep in synch with nature of the times, I chose the religion and faith of Witchcraft, which I believed was the oldest surviving religion in the Western world.

So, when I was sixteen, I unwittingly began my true path within Witchcraft. As I pointed out, I had been talking to dream-based beings who were spirits and Deities for many years prior, but I took it all for granted, and because I was on an ego trip (as all young people are until the beginning of adulthood and its responsibilities), I felt that I only needed to be true to myself. I wanted god-like magical powers, but I felt that they were my due, and I was overly shy about getting religious and bowing down to any of those dream-based Deities, because I had been talking with them for years without having to assume any obligations. I knew that as a true Witch, I would need to bond with one or more of these Deities in my imaginative mind, but I put it off. Developing my psychic powers and experimenting with magic was too much fun to be spoiled by the supposed limitations imposed by some God.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that the one factor in my life that made dealing with my abusive father possible was the unconditional love that I received from my mother. My father mentally abused her, and ridiculed her, but she was a real power that kept the family together and tried to heal the damage that my father had wrought on his children. I saw her as weak because she didn’t stand up to my father unless he threatened to do more than abuse us. I had dismissed her in my mind, because my father had shown her to be weak and ineffectual. However, my mother had more of an impact on me than I realized, and when it came time to directly face one of the Deities of Witchcraft in a kind of spiritual reckoning, I chose the Goddess of Witchcraft in her guise a moon godhead and mistress of magic.

I atoned for my unwillingness to subscribe to any Deity through her, and ever after, I was powerfully bonded to her in body and soul. I would enter into a simple meditative state, bow down with my head to the floor, and call her to come to me, and she always would. I felt a creeping coldness, then a warmth, and she would talk in my mind and her voice had a whispering quality that I compared to the sound of the wind blowing leaves in the street. She taught the basic framework for working a simple kind of magic, and guided me for a few years until I found a coven of Alexandrian Witches who I begged to initiate me into their practice, and they happily obliged me.

What started out as many dream-based personages and identities became a single Goddess, but from there I rediscovered a plethora of spirits, angels, demons, Gods, Goddesses, Demigods and various imaginative entities. They were always there, but I had to learn to recognize them from my dreams as a child. Once in a while I would meet something that was quite frightening in my dreams, but mostly, the conscious reality of living with my father was more than enough fearful, painful and humiliating. My dreams seemed to offer a refuge from that harsh reality, so I never really had any encounter with entities that were terrorizing or frightening. Some of them were odd, and others quite strange and even alien to me, but I always felt at home and protected in my inner world, and it is likely that my internalized impressions of my mother had something to do with this experience.

So, how do I help others to directly experience spirits and deities? First by letting them know that such experiences are not the mark of someone suffering from mental illness. That it is a real phenomenon and not one that should stigmatize someone. Then helping and guiding them to learn and then master the arts of meditation and trance. Entering into that controlled and peaceful mental world is the first step to engaging spiritual entities. Learning to sense and see magical energies (what are called etheric energy fields), and fine tune one’s sensitivity is a never ending process, which can produce astonishing results in some but not all people. I used to promote the ingesting or smoking hallucinogens, and I would still be in favor of this approach so long as it is the means to an end and not the end in itself. Opening the doors of perception can require a sledge hammer approach for some people, but others are sensitive enough not to need such an approach.

Additionally, working within sacred space and adopting a liturgical practice to one of more Deities is also important, and these beings can be engaged with divination tools so they can, in a fashion, communicate with humans. Thus, Tarot cards, I-Ching coins, runes, Geomancy sticks, pendulum, and dice or knucklebones work quite well, and ultimately, godhead assumption and communion will bring the targeted Deity into the framework of one’s conscious mind, making direct communication possible. Once that direct communication occurs, it makes it quite easy to hear and talk with other entities, as if a veil has been lifted, and so it has.

I have worked with many individuals, and they all, through persistent effort, find a way to visualize and communicate with Gods, Goddesses, Demigods, angels, demons and earth-based spirits, faeries, elementals and any other kind of bodiless entities. The key is to be open minded, and open hearted, and the rest will naturally follow.

Frater Barrabbas

Getting Back Into the Game

One of the problems about getting old is that sickness and infirmity can intervene and completely disrupt one’s magical plans and ambitions. When I was in my 20's, I had the stamina to work magic all weekend long with minimal sleep and not feel the physical effects. Even 10 years ago, I was still able to work magic for long periods of time without feeling too tired or lacking in energy to complete what I started. The years of 2009 and 2010 were filled with many magical accomplishments. Just five years ago I had completed my own talismanic version of the Portae Lucis and was looking forward to working on some other projects that were on my list of important magical ordeals to accomplish in the coming year. However, my health problems intervened and I wasn’t able to continue any further major workings until the present time. The year 2013 was something of a lost year for me, considering all of the problems that I faced, and the next two years were also filled with health issues that I had to somehow resolve. The latest event was some needed eye surgery that took place a few months ago, but now that event has made it important to get further medical help for my eyes.

Of course, all the while I was dealing with these issues, I was also having to put in a lot of extra time into my job, thus ensuring that I had even less time to devote to my magical work and practices. Now, some five years later, I want to pick up where I left off and continue with my magical work. It’s a good thing that I wrote down what my objectives were in some of my blog articles, so all I have to do is to examine and ponder over them because they are already written up. I have found that a particular blog article that I wrote around 4 years ago has all of the occult issues that I wanted to address and tasks that I wanted to work, unfortunately none of which saw any activity since they were written. I haven’t been completely neglectful, particularly in the area of my studies and writings, but I also have been unable to begin any new magical work since that time. You can find that blog article here, written at the start of the New Year for 2013. Little did I realize then that I was about to undergo some really difficult times regarding my health and my career.

“My temple area has seen the greatest extent of neglect, since I haven’t worked any magick since completing the seventh and final planetary talisman. Things have been just too busy for me to even contemplate another magical project. I have made offerings of incense to the Gods and my ancestors, but not much beyond that. However, I have decided that the time is right to start picking up the threads of my magical practice and start engaging in some of the projects that I had to postpone. I also need to reconnect and align myself to my personal Deities and my pagan spirituality on a deeper and more profound level than what I have been doing in the last several months.”

I have added an occasional Mass rite and periodic meditation sessions to what I have been doing in my temple as of late - at least until this latest working.

“As usual, I begin each year by putting together a list of things that I would like to accomplish. I might not succeed in completing all of the tasks, but if I can manage a few of them, then I consider that year to be successful. That list starts out containing the things that I didn’t get around to doing the previous year, if I consider them to be important and relevant. High on that list is my desire to complete the workings associated with what I have called the Portae Tenebris working, which is the opposite of the Portae Lucis. I have placed my seven talismans on my central altar protected by a veil with the intention of doing these sets of rituals, and I found no time to actually perform them. The talismans are still sitting there where I last left them, waiting for me to engage with this magic. I have decided that even though the Winter Solstice has come and gone, we are still in the great period of winter darkness. I am planning on picking up the threads of this working in the next week or so, and thereby bring it to completion.”

This rite, the Portae Tenebris, will require some work on my part. Today, I have no idea how this ritual will look except for a vague sense about the broad outlines. I am not even sure that it is necessary, although it does seem interesting to speculate about it.

“Another pair of magical challenges are for me to invoke at least four of the spirits of the Theurgia-Goetia using the new ritual lore that I developed and wrote some time ago. I would also like to perform some invocations of the ha-Shem angels and some Goetic demons. I am hoping to achieve these workings between now and the end of April, when winter begins to recede from the northern Midwest. If I get to perform some of these workings, then I will have quite a bit to report about my experiences, and I will be able to say that the new ritual lore has been thoroughly vetted.”

This was some important magical work that I also had to put on hold, but I hope to re-engage with it this coming autumn. The list of things that I need to do has become quite large, as I peruse my plans from over four years ago.

So, that was what I was writing back in early 2013, but what I didn’t know is that a series of health issues hit me, one after another, that pretty much put all of plans in limbo. I had accomplished quite a bit up to that point in time, but now it was time to deal with the fact that I was aging and dealing with age related illnesses. I caught a really vicious flu in May of that year, and I was so debilitated that it took me a couple of months to fully recover from it.

Then as the year progressed, I discovered that I had a serious sleeping disorder, called sleep apnea. I got hooked on a prescription drug called Ambien, a sleeping aid, and had to wean myself off of it. Towards the end of the year, I started using a C-PAP breathing machine to assist my breathing and avoid succumbing to apnea related sleeping issues. I had to adjust to this contracption, learn all about sleep hygiene and I am continuing to monitor my sleep to ensure that I get enough rest each day. I also had a cataract removed from my left eye and now need the one on the right removed as well. I got Lyme’s disease from a tick bite in my yard in August 2015 and managed to recover from that bout of illness. I had surgery to correct the tracking of my eyes this last January, and I lost a molar, soon to be replaced with an implant crown. Yeah, I seem to be slowly falling apart, perhaps more so in the last few years.

These are just symptoms of old age catching up with me. I have had a great run of good health with little pain, sickness or difficulties my whole life, and now I have to be careful what I eat, how much I eat, what I drink, that I get more exercise, be more active, and ensure that I get to bed early enough to get enough sleep each night. This is a strange world to suddenly have to accommodate myself, but it is typical of a person who is getting older and undergoing the slow decrepitude of advanced age. My health issues are minor inconveniences when compared to the debilitating and painful medical conditions that some who are my age are experiencing. I am, so far, lucky that what I have undergone has had some ready medical solutions. Someday, I will likely start to really experience some of the more unpleasant and unhappy occurrences that happen to all mortal men and women as they undergo their final decade or so of life. Hopefully, I can keep that from happening for another twenty years or so.

Anyway, once a series of distractions occur, it can be difficult to break the ice and get back into the game of working complex and involved magical ordeals. I decided that I would do something this late spring to accomplish that goal, so I set about trying to picking up the thread of where I left off in the late autumn of 2012. Since I had completed my own talismanic version of the Portae Lucis for the Summer Solstice of 2012, I decided that I had to do something for the Solstice of 2017, which was the fifth year anniversary. I set out to, in some way, repeat what I had done back then, and I began to plan out my working.

One thing I want to make clear to my readers is that a magical ordeal is not the same as just working some magical rituals to achieve a very specific and short-term end. An ordeal, as I define it, is a transformative initiation. It operates using the power of ecstasy and also exaltation. It is highly empowering, very deep and it can be dreadfully painfully, because it changes one’s mind and being at the very deepest level. Transformation can be something that causes the magician to feel momentarily transcendent, but it also unleashes the realization of truths and insights that are humbling and even humiliating, especially if they are resisted. Transformation, when it occurs within a magical field, forces the magician who is undergoing it to see the truth about themselves and their place in the world at that moment, and this can be quite sobering and even traumatically distressful.

Transformation cuts through personal bias, hubris, self-delusion, and personal fantasies like a hot knife through butter. A self that is defined mostly by self-deceit and delusion will not withstand this potent realization of truth. Therefore, transformation can also be dis-empowering and even self-destructive to a magician undergoing a profound ordeal, particularly if he or she has a proclivity for delusion and falsehood. The most important rule that any magician can follow when undergoing such a massive and potent change is to be flexible, completely open and willing to change and adjust all of his or her ideals and beliefs when the truth is realized. Failure to change when presented with the truth is the painful moment when a magician catastrophically fails to grow or evolve. Personal momentum and the magical process itself are halted and short-circuited. The issues thereby uncovered remain unresolved, and they stay that way until the magician is finally able to see and act on the truth so revealed. Such a refusal to apply truth to self belief will stunt a magician’s growth, and over time, cause his or her being to regress.

Because transformative ordeals cannot be forced or deliberately manufactured, it would seem that a deliberate magical working targeting an ordeal process wouldn’t be able to cause such an ordeal to occur. However, if the internal state of the magician is ripe for such an occurrence then performing an ordeal based magical working will certainly trigger one to happen. I believe that was the case for me when I performed the talismanic version of the Portae Lucis. I experienced a great deal of emotional disruption and even health issues in the years following the performance of this ordeal. It was more powerful and far reaching than anything I had previously undergone, and aside from the momentary glory I achieved, I also realized the truth of the diminishment of my vitality associated with aging. I also learned that I couldn’t take my health or material privileges for granted.

Anyway, since I had finally made it through this long period of five years and I had restored, to some extent, my health and vitality, I decided to get back in the game. I determined that I would revisit my Portae Lucis working, which I performed five years ago, and do some kind of working that would pull the threads left off then and bring them into the present. I began to meditate on this task and try to figure out exactly what I would do. As I said, I had completed that ordeal back in June of 2012, but then continued to produce the semi-precious metalic talismans for the three planets not covered in that working so that I would have the complete set of seven. The talismanic Portae Lucis working only focused on the planets of the Moon, Sun and Saturn, with Mercury being the place-marker for the magician, and this was also how the original Portae Lucis was constructed. Therefore, to celebrate this accomplishment, which was my last major working, I had decided to perform the last part of it once again. You can find the blog articles where I have posted my magical diaries from that time here and here.

Additionally, I wanted to attempt some other magical workings during this time frame to experiment with the efficacy of two new rituals that I had recently written. I recently wrote the Egyptian Underworld Ascension rite, which eliminates any kind of obstruction or “crossing,” and the Talismanic Septagramic Vortex Gate ritual, which employs the seven metalic planetary-talismanic devices as a magical machine. Both of these new rituals were envisioned by me a few years ago, but I didn’t have the inspiration or insight to write them up. That changed over the Winter Solstice, and in performing these rites as part of the Portae Lucis commemoration I would be bringing my continuing magical working regimen into this current renewed period of my life. This new working would forge a bridge from 2012 to 2017, and hopefully, it will help me to forge ahead with additional and new workings.

As a sign of these times, I have already managed to put together a mechanism that will allow me to build up a grimoire based on the fallen angels of the Nephilim. In the next couple of months I hope to have contacted all 20 of the chiefs of the Nephilim instead of just the principal 4. Having evoked and established a bond with the four principals of this group, I will seek to contact the other 16, and entreat them to give me pertinent information about them and also their missing magical seals. To assemble all of this information together into a grimoire will make these spirits fully accessible to the magical public, something that they have been urging me to do for quite sometime now. I had started the book of the Nephilim decades ago, but I have only managed to produce two volumes, but nothing that would actually assist someone in being to follow in my magical footsteps. That will change, hopefully this year. It is one of the legacy items that I want to leave to the occult magical posterity.

I assembled a plan or sequence of magical workings that I would perform in order to complete the five year commemoration and bring my magical process into the present. Here are the sequence of dates that I planned on doing these workings. Of course, what actually happened was quite different, which is not too unusual for a planned series of magical workings.

April 22 - Saturday: Egyptian Underworld Ascension rite. First time shakedown performance of this rite. Started at around 9 pm after dark. This rite is used for ritual magical uncrossing and internal/external issue resolution. My intention was to eliminate obstructions that have kept me from performing magical ordeal workings and break the ice of over 4 years of dormancy - if such obstructions exist. New Moon was on April 26, so this working would be performed as the moon is waning towards the new phase. This timing seemed to be auspicious.

[Notes: The ritual was performed, but the magical working was awkward because of a lack of practice and problems with focusing. However it did indeed work and produced some immediately amazing experiential results. I felt like a burden was removed from me and that I experienced a greater free flowing influx of spiritual and magical insights and communication than previously. Like the beginning of a work-out regimen, I started out weakly and had problems with the ritual. The directions were not easy to understand and I had not actually studied the ritual before the working, having assumed that I wouldn’t need to do this kind of preparation. I was wrong, but despite these problems, the imagery that the ritual produced was quite amazing. I have gone over the ritual and modified the directions so that it is more clear. I also feel that I should perform this rite again in the near future so see if it can be performed more smoothly and therefore have a greater impact. My lady attended this rite and she also found the imagery to be quite fascinating. We went over some of it together after the rite was completed.]

Unfortunately, I didn’t follow the rest of this well planned out schedule, since other things intervened and forced me to change my plans. Here is the rest of the plan as I had intended to execute it.

May 13  - Saturday: Talismanic Septagramic Vortex Gate ritual. This ritual will set in motion the magical machine consisting of the seven metallic planetary-elemental talismans. This is a working that I had planned to do sometime in 2013, but I didn’t get around to doing it. While I have felt the impact of all seven of these metallic talismans in my temple, and I believe that I have benefitted because of them, this working will forge them into a proper magical machine. I will use the inauguration of this rite to set in motion some Mercury based aspirations, such as success in my IT business endeavors and further insights in the area of magic and occultism. I also want to charm my future writing projects, most notably, my new book proposal “Magical Power for Witches” that I will assemble this summer and submit to for publication in the autumn. Full Moon is on May 10, so this working will be within the orb of full to the gibbous waning moon.

May 27 - Saturday: Invocation of Hermes Thoth Trismagistos - using the Enochian Planetary Vortex rite, I will reconnect with Hermes Thoth as a precursor to the Talismanic Portae Lucis. The moon is New on May 25, so this just past the dark of the moon as it begins to wax towards full. Because this is a Memorial Day weekend, I could also attempt to perform the Egyptian Underworld Ascension rite on Friday or Sunday evening.

June 10 - Saturday: No Working Planned - this is the night immediately following the Full Moon, and as such, it is the last full moon before the Summer Solstice. It might be a good time to perform some kind of working, perhaps even another attempt at the Talismanic Septagramic Vortex Gate working.

June 20 - 21 - Tuesday and Wednesday: Talismanic Portae Lucis fifth anniversary re-enactment. Perform the last steps of the Talismanic Portae Lucis working. Summer Solstice for CDT at 11:24 pm Tuesday. On June 17 - 18, preparation work for the ordeal: Eneagram rite for Sephiroth, and Double Tetrahedral Gate for pathworking. Take Tuesday and Wednesday as vacation days, perform the Portae Lucis rite on Tuesday evening. Morning salutation of the Sun’s rising on both Tuesday and Wednesday. Target rite is the Triple Tetrahedral Gate ritual, to be performed on or near the evening time of the advent of the Summer Solstice.

I had planned on performing the Talismanic Septagramic Vortex Gate ritual as a preparation working to the actual re-doing of the Portae Lucis ordeal. However, when the date came due, I had other things to occupy my time and I stopped following my well structured plan. I felt that something wasn’t quite right and that what I had planned on doing wouldn’t accomplish what I wanted it to. It was frustrating and I felt like I was losing the magical grove that I had attempted to established by building up a time-table and a planned sequence of events. I did perform a short-hand invocation of Hermes Thoth, but that was at the request of my wife, even though it did fit one of the items that I had on my check list. That working was performed in an ad hoc manner on Sunday evening on May 14. Still, I felt indecisive and incapable of moving forward. It seemed that my plans were going to end in failure. The days for the individual workings passed with nothing being accomplished and I felt no inspiration to do any of things that I had planned, as the Summer Solstice grew ever closer.

One evening, a week or so before the Summer Solstice, as I was falling asleep I felt a presence and heard a voice say in my mind, “You have performed this ordeal previously, so it isn’t important to redo or revisit it. What you need to do is to perform the Talismanic Septagramic Vortex Gate ritual as the final piece of this working.” When I heard this voice and sensed this presence, it was like a light went off in my head. This was the answer that I was looking for! I felt a potent affirmation, but I also felt silly for not realizing that this was the missing piece that I had been searching for all along. A few days later, while exploring this possibility, I realized that not only could I just perform this ritual, but that I should also perform section 4 - Erecting the Ascension Gate as found in the Triple Tetrahedral Gate ritual. I would perform that section once the magical machine had been fully activated and I had placed within it the sigil that I would craft and consecrate. I planned on taking Tuesday afternoon off from work and all of Wednesday, so I would be free to begin the working Tuesday evening just after sunset.

In the afternoon of June 20, I performed all of the preparatory work and drew a set of three sigils on a piece parchment that represented what I wanted to accomplish in the next couple of years. I set up the temple so that I could perform a Mass and charge the sigil parchment with the consecrated wine from the Mass. Then I ate a light meal and did some miscellaneous and mindless tasks until the appointed time. I felt really excited and also very calm at the same time.

At just before 9 pm, I performed the final set up preparations and I was ready to begin the working. I erected and consecrated the magic circle at 9 pm when the sun had just set, and then I proceeded to perform the Mass of the Goddess. While I was performing this rite I briefly wondered if I would have the stamina to get through all of the work that was planned for that evening, thinking of what I had experienced back in April. However, I was very focused, energized and felt very good, so what doubts I may have had were quickly dispelled. I got through the Mass, charged the sigil and then set things up for the next rite. Even though I have never performed the Talismanic Septagramic Vortex Gate ritual before that evening, I went through it without any difficulties - my execution of that rite was smooth and efficient. When I got to the ritual climax and set the charged talisman into the septagramic trigon and drew the angles for the Sun, Jupiter and Mercury, I felt or sensed a distinct resonance, as if the etheric “gears, cogs and wheels” of a magical machine were set into motion.

I then performed the Ascension Gate ritual part from the  Triple Tetrahedral Gate ritual and I saw the same strange prismatic equilateral triangle gateway energy field, reflecting and refracting light as if it were a piece of glass as previously. I saw ghostly visual images appear and disappear on the surface of that mirror gate and I felt it resonate as if it were giving off deep tones that were below my threshold of hearing. I sensed them more than heard them. Then I sat down and meditated in this amazing energy field, realizing that I had indeed tapped into the ordeal working that I had performed nearly five years ago. It was as fresh and alive as if I had just performed the entire ordeal from scratch. I was amazed at this revelation, and I exulted in it for a while. I also heard or sensed a voice speaking to me, and this is what I heard. “The Portae Lucis, once opened, is never closed. It is always there, within your heart, mind and soul. While you were distracted for years, it continued to be active and it only required you to focus on it for this anniversary in order for you to be reawakened to its power and majesty.” The words were repeated several times and I felt them reverberate within my deepest and innermost self. I was truly grateful that I had so successfully reconnected to this magical process.

As I sat in deep meditation, I felt a deep level of fulfillment and clarity. I knew that whatever happened to me, I would always have this connection within me. Perhaps all I needed to regain what I had achieved was to become deeply aware that all of the magic that I have performed is concentrated within my very soul, and it is that source to which I must turn as age and the diminishment of mortality takes its toll on my body and mind. Perhaps this is why I have ardently studied Zen Buddhism for the last nine months, because I needed the triple wisdom of Samadhi, Sila and Prajna to help get me to that wondrous state of imperturbability, and then achieving that state on a periodic basis has allowed me to listen and be mindful of what I have already achieved throughout my magical practice.

After meditating in that state for a while, I came to normal consciousness and decided to bring the working to a close, so I sealed up the gateways and performed the final Eastern gateway passage into the waking world of light. As I finished up, I noticed the time was right around 11:30 pm, which was exact moment of the Summer Solstice. I had completed this working in the exact timing necessary and had accomplished all that I set out to do. I was highly energized and felt exalted. I stayed up for while and then prepared for bed, which I entered and fell deeply asleep, dreaming of the dawning of the longest day of the year.

Just before I retired for the night, I went outside for a bit and watched the stars twinkling distantly over my head. I noticed that the constellations of summer were now apparent, and that the evening was buzzing with a specialness and importance that seemed to augur a new beginning for me and my occult work. Time will tell whether this was just a fluke or the beginning of something big, but I did feel that the biggest and greatest discoveries were yet in the future instead of being the relics of past glory dimly remembered in my past.

A few days later and I am still feeling very blissful and happy about this latest working. I am amazed at how it proceeded, and how it took a very circuitous but creative detour. I never really lost faith that I would somehow find a way to complete this work and pick up the threads. Now what I need to do is to work with what I have started and perform other workings as the year progresses. It would seem that 2017 is for the dawning of a new cycle, and it is my hope that there will be more interesting events to report to you, my readers.

Frater Barrabbas

How Have I Offended Thee, Let Me Count the Ways

When I was a young man there wasn’t the plethora of books on magic and the occult and there wasn’t the internet to search for topics or contact other like-minded individuals like there is today. There were libraries that had little or no books or information about the topics that I wanted to know about. Some of the more popular occult books in the library were stolen or lost and seldom replaced. The few occult bookstores that existed were stocked with either prohibitively expensive books or cheap or almost useless paperbacks. As a youth with limited resources, I was left for the most part to the ministrations of my limitless imagination, and in the early years it functioned in an almost unbounded manner.

What I had to do in order to practice the art of magic was cobble together the various bits and pieces that I found in the sparse book sources available to me and fill in the gaps with a great deal of imagination. In those beginning years my magical system was more imagination than actual magical facts, and its effectiveness suffered accordingly. Over time, as I acquired more information, most notably from the Golden Dawn and Crowley’s writings, I was able to assemble together a very workable system of magic that was quite effective and worked for me. It was very individualistic and personalized, but it did allow me to begin to explore the magical world as I understood it.

I had very few teachers at that time, and except for a four-year stint in the coven from hell, I didn’t belong to any traditional groups or orders. I was, for the most part, self-taught and self-directed. By the mid 1980's I had developed a system of magic that was capable of achieving a full invocation or evocation of a demigod or spirit, although the mechanisms were cumbersome and laborious. I had managed to bring together the energy and spirit models of magic, adding some elements of the psychological and informational models as well, to produce a magical system that I considered unique at the time.

A few years later I was asked by some friends to write up the operant rituals for a magical order based off of the personal magical system that I had already developed. This new magical system was like the old one except all of the personalized and idiosyncratic elements were replaced with the elements and themes that the group as a whole had agreed to. I continued to work on this new depersonalized system of magic and pushed it to a number of directions that I though prudent, although I did receive the affirmation and buy-in from the members of my group. When the magical temple group dissolved I continued to develop this system of magic and it’s what I use today.

Because I had started my magical avocation in a time of limited resources, I had gotten into the habit a long time ago of appropriating lore and techniques from other magical traditions to build up my own magical system. Of course, if someone asked me where I got this or that particular technique or lore I would tell them instead of pretending that I had invented it myself. There were plenty of elements of this magical system that I had invented, but I never tried to take credit for something that I didn’t invent myself. I was happy to appropriate techniques and lore from other traditions, but I didn’t feel the need to lie about it. I just naively assumed that what I was doing was natural for anyone who practiced magic. I believed that we were all, more or less, thieving magpies when it came to the cool stuff that we encountered in our studies. 

My course work and study path was also motivated by what I might be able to appropriate and make usable in my own system of magic. What I didn’t know at the time is that there were quite a number of people who were devoted to their external traditions of occultism and magic, and who would take a very dim view of anyone who appropriated their lore to pad their own personal system of magic. I was truly innocent and I felt that most of this lore was antique, part of the common domain (if it was published or publicly posted), and available for me to use or not as I wished. Since I was generous with my knowledge, to a point, I felt that everyone else would be as well. I gave copies of my ritual lore to friends and associates and never thought that this material was my exclusive property nor part of some traditional edifice that I had to protect.

Extracting lore and magical techniques and ritual structures from the Golden Dawn didn’t earn me any criticism or demerits from the members of that tradition because back in the 1970's there wasn’t really any official Golden Dawn order that was functioning. Regardie had published the rituals and initiations of the Golden Dawn decades ago and I happily pillaged that lore to figure out how magic really worked and how I could develop and produce my own rituals. Later on, what I developed was far enough removed from the Golden Dawn that there were only some remote similarities to that lore and my own. I certainly deviated from that tradition when I adopted the septagram as my emblem for planetary magic. I was also developing a system of magic that had as its foundation the magical practices and methodologies of witchcraft, so I was following a path that was contrary to the one of ceremonial magick and unique to my own situation.

During my early years I had been exposed to the Protestant Christian church in the Midwest, and I recall that it was a church devoid of magic and supernatural emanations. The liturgy was dull, monotonous, and had little or no artistry. It had wonderful music, but it was only the gigantic pipe organ and the trained choir that elicited any kind of artistic appreciation from me. The congregation sang hymns together (some loudly out of tune) and the pastor monotonously preached his meaningless and banal sermon. The whole religious travesty lasted around an hour or two, grinding through a predictable schedule of events, depending on if there was a special religious holiday (and there were few of those) or if it was just another boring Sunday like all the others. Because I was a kid with a very over-active imagination, my church experience was as bland, dismal and forgettable as any other enforced activity. It is no wonder that I abandoned the church as soon as I was old enough to do so. I sought out other forms of religious experience later on when I realized that I had a powerful sensory ability to “feel” and “sense” spiritual occurrences, unlike many of my friends and acquaintances. I was drawn to the gothic media displays of supernatural fantasy at a young age, and when I entered my mid-teens I discovered Witchcraft, much to my joy.

Since I was raised a Protestant, I had always been curious about the Catholics who went to other churches that appeared more exotic and seemingly magical than what I had experienced. They even had their own schools to teach their children all about their religion and other obscure topics. I always sort of envied my Catholic friends, and for the same reason I had envied my Jewish friends, even considering at one point to convert to Judaism. However, once I got into Witchcraft, I had spurned all things Christian and particularly the Christian youth movement that I called “Jesus Freaks” or “Hippies for Jesus,” which had left me cold. I verbally sparred with them and acted the antagonist because I found that their aggressive attempts to convert me were both insulting and demeaning. I had left Christianity behind me, or so I thought. Still, it was hard to be deaf to Christianity when you lived in a society that was so Christian in its bias and perspective.

Later on, when I was in the coven from hell, my teacher and mentor, Christopher Synn (Bill Schnoebelen), pursued a religious and magical path that coopted Catholic liturgy for its magical practices. When I was exposed to Michael Bertiaux at the same time, he too used Catholic and Orthodox liturgy as part of his magical workings. Christopher took the Tridentine Mass and rewrote it for his own purposes and the resultant ritual working was very impressive, so I followed his example. He also bestowed on me an Old Catholic ordination, and later on, one of his woman students who had received a consecration from him, conferred upon me the consecration of a bishop. Christopher had been consecrated by Michael Bertiaux, so I now had that lineage as my own. I developed my own set of Mass rites and used them to establish a sacramental system of magic. I used this magic to charge and empower my temple for the greater ordeals that I sought to perform within that sacralized space.

Over time I had mixed selected and rewritten Catholic liturgy into my magical system and had made it friendly to my Wiccan, Pagan and Gnostic sensibilities. I considered myself to be a gnostic pagan bishop with a heavy slant towards the magical use of sacraments to empower my tools and working space, and also to declare my higher spiritual perspectives and insights. I was using the Mass rite and the benediction rite for specific magical purposes, and my overall magical perspective was quite medieval in its use of sacraments, reliquaries and sacramental tools. I even blessed my parchment sigils used for invocation and evocation with the sacramental wine produced in the Mass rite, and I offered to my personal deities and tutelary spirits the consecrated host and wine.

My first experience at outrage against what I was naively doing was when I met one of the foremost gnostic bishops operating in the country at that time. I won’t reveal his name, but he was also an author and was involved with the Theosophical Society. We met and seemed to get along quite well, but when we were alone in my car while I was driving him to our order’s temple, he asked me if I followed the horrific practices of Michael Bertiaux, using semen and blood to charge and bless talismans. I assured him that I didn’t engage in that kind of practice, and he seemed quite relieved and happy. Then I told him that I had written my own Mass and benediction rites and used the sacramental host and wine to do the things that Bertiaux had been doing. He turned white as a sheet and gave me a look of complete horror. We didn’t talk about it for the rest of that evening and he seemed to have gotten over what I had shared with him. Later on, long after he had left to go back to his home, he wrote a missive against anyone who either wrote their own unsanctioned Mass rites or who used the sacraments for anything other than what they were intended, to communicate the congregation. I had outraged him with my heterodoxic  practices and my allegiance to (what he had called) magical superstition. He was only the first of many people that I had outraged with my magical system, but he would not be the last.

I have always approached my magical study and work with an idea of expanding what my magical system was capable of achieving. I was following a system and a regimen that was quite plain to me, and also to those few who had been part of the temple work done years ago. I have always approached a problem with the knack of trying to resolve it with what I already had, and to use my well developed techniques and lore to build a working or a series of rituals that would accomplish what I needed them to do.

In this way I had decided to apply this expertise that I had developed for many years to achieving the Knowledge and Conservation of my Holy Guardian Angel, or what I had conveniently perceived as my Atman or Higher Self. Since the Bornless or Headless Rite had been appropriated to work this kind of ordeal, and the Abramelin ordeal had been promoted as a more arduous alternative, I decided to combine them together. However, what I was going to produce was not only a hybrid, but it would likely produce a different effect and impact than the original workings. I understood this, yet I believed that I could achieve the same outcome, which was the vaunted K and C. I didn’t want to approach this ordeal in a passive manner and spend 3 months unemployed to successfully completed the Abramelin working. So, I chose instead to use the cycles of the moon, since the Abramelin working called for at most (in the German edition) 1.5 solar cycles, or 18 months. I would instead formulate my working using lunar cycles, and 1.5 lunar cycles is 90 days. I also would seek to invoke the four Cherubim and Seraphim consecutively as part of the ordeal and crown it with an elaborate Bornless Rite. It worked quite amazingly well and it did powerfully transform me. It gave me the ability to establish a connection with my HGA, Atman or Higher Self, and as far as I am concerned, that was the objective.

However, my joy was short-lived, because there were a cadre of individuals who had performed the Abramelin ordeal exactly as it was written in the grimoire, and who spent enormous amounts of time and resources to accomplish it. The fact that I was saying that I did it in 90 days without having to retire from the world for a few months was quite galling to them. I had written up all my experiences and techniques into a series of blog articles and I had maintained that what I did was indeed different, but I knew that it had at least achieved for me the same overall goal. Their opinion was that I couldn’t have accomplished anything other than self-delusion, and I was an obvious fraud for suggesting that anyone could come up with a replacement methodology on their own. I had violated a tried and true tradition, and I was something of a upstart or worse. That was the second group that had I offended, and I am sure that even today when one of these stalwarts discovers my blog articles on this subject that they will continue to be offended. (I do get emails from time to time to let me know how wrong or evil I am for crafting this alternative proposal.)

The next outrage was when I put together my own version of the Portae Lucis working, as formulated and written by Jean Dubuis. I had found some of his translated material on the internet and I was greatly intrigued by what he had written. I also bought one of his translated books and I steeped myself for months in his writings. Based on my studies, I determined that the Portae Lucis was a powerful and very valid working. However, there were a number of elements in it that either didn’t interest me or I felt was incompatible with my own system of magic. I understood what needed to be done and how Mr. Dubuis had done it, so I took that working and translated it into a specific talismanic working with strong Qabalistic overtones. 

I understood the objective of the rite, but I found that I had other resources that would get me there. What I left out were the Spagyric alchemical operations producing specific magical medicines that would aid in the physical component of the working. I also used an active method of charging the talismans, and expanded the working to include all 28 of the lunar mansions deployed into charging seven metallic talismans, four of which would be used in the operation. Because I was using planets and elements, I felt that the combination would be magically potent enough to replace the alchemical medicines. In my opinion, the revised method worked, even though I couldn’t (and didn’t) declare that they were the same. What I achieved was different than the traditional method, and the effect was different as well. But I believed that the objective achieved was similar, and the results of the magic that I experienced are still being felt and processed by me to this day, four years later.

However, when a group leader of a Yahoo group dedicated to the Portae Lucis working asked me to join his group, I happily agreed. He had wanted me to join because he felt that my different approach might be valuable to the group. I thought that this kind of openness to other techniques and alternative approaches was very broad minded, and I foolishly believed that I would be welcomed and treated as an equal. 

When I joined the Yahoo group, introduced myself and then posted links to my blog articles where I described what I had done to accomplish this ordeal, I was astonished at the outrage that I experienced from its members. I was verbally savaged by a few members of this group! They declared that I had no right to take this material and adapt it to my own needs. They thought that I was audacious and delusional to think that something that I had developed could even be considered as an alternate to what the great occultist Jean Dubuis had laid down for his followers. Who the hell did I think I was to even consider modifying this great traditional working? I quickly left the group, with apologies to the group leader, and I didn’t look back. (I felt the door slam on my butt as well - poor innocent fool that I was.)

Now I understand that not everything I do or say is right and perfect, nor do I have any kind of monopoly on truth when it comes to magic. I am first and foremost a student of the occult and magic, and also religiously, a Witch and a Pagan. I have written things in the past on my blog that are either wrong or based on incomplete information. Over time my opinions have evolved and changed, and I have left a record of these changes over the last several years in my various writings. I am not ashamed to be either schooled by others or shown to have made erroneous or incorrect statements. It is in my nature to acquire lore and information from any and all applicable sources, so I have no problem being shown something new or given a more accurate perspective on something. I have, if nothing else, developed a certain resilience and adaptability in the many years that I have matriculated my own way of working magic and worked on my particular system of ritual magic.

However, the fact that I am able to perform the same kind of magical evocations as others who are vested in the nascent tradition of grimoire magic seems to have annoyed some people. Add to that my propensity for appropriating materials from these same grimoires to serve my personal magical system seems to them cavalier, unsanctioned and disrespectful. That I have stated my opinion that many magicians (having no other recourse) seek to pull together their own system of magic because the various grimoire sources are incomplete, incompatible to current religious perspectives or no longer part of the social-cultural context has also gained me some rather intense condemnation and even personal attacks. From my perspective of having spent decades building up my own magical system from very sparse occult and magical resources (until recently), such a pathway seems intuitively obvious to me, but seemingly highly untraditional and unorthodox to them. According to some, I appear to lack the requisite qualifications to have any opinions on the grimoire tradition, so it would seem that there is another group that I have offended with my magical workings and associated opinions.

Perhaps the only group that I haven’t offended yet are the chaos magicians. I have picked up a number of useful techniques from that group, most notably the methodology of sigil magick, and I continue to find their perspectives and insights both refreshing, baffling and intriguing. I am not crazy about some of their operating philosophies and I would never mix and match deities and demigods from disparate religious traditions. I would also never bother to invoke Cthulhu or Yog Sothoth, since I consider them fictitious entities produced by the neurotic nightmares and racist insinuations of the author H.P. Lovecraft. I have a strong and intimate connection with the entities that I work through and with, and I would never approach them in a cavalier and dismissive manner. However, I understand that the anti-tradition of Chaos Magick consists of a series of working ideas and suggestions, and that each chaos magician pursues their own path and develops their own magical system replete with paradigms based on personal experience. I probably have more in common with them than any other group, including the hosts of the BTW and Wiccan groups that I have met and know.

What can I deduce from all of this outrage and anger that I appear to have caused in some folks in the various occult and magical traditions? I have steadfastly proceeded on my path without any malice, greed or egotism. I am nothing more or less than a student, and my knowledge, even based on years of experience, is decidedly imperfect. Do I insist that I am always right in whatever I do or say - absolutely not! Do I listen to others even when they shower me with disdain and disapproval, of course, how can I not?

Regardless of what others may think, I am still working with the system of magic that I have matriculated and built up over the decades, and I am loath to drop or discard it for the next new shiny thing that others are infatuated about, however compelling. Instead, I will look it over, and if it looks useful or fills a need that is lacking in my own system, I will shamelessly appropriate, modify and mutate it so that it fits seamlessly with my existing magical system. Some may think that I am just being a pirate or a magpie, but because I do spend time altering the lore to fit into what I am already doing then I think that I am more than just an occult or magical-lore thief. I am an artist, but more like a spray-paint graffiti artist, perhaps. However, it still angers and outrages those who consider themselves the arbiters of a sacred tradition and the defenders against revisionism. I just think that nothing really is sacred or forbidden for me to purloin if I find it needful unless it is oath-bound material, and if it is published by someone then it is no longer oath-bound.

To all of those magician magpies out there who see some merit in what I am doing, if nothing else than justifying their own eclectic approach, I make common cause and solidarity. For those who are outraged by my activities and who condemn my unorthodox approaches I can only wonder at their emotional insecurity and baseless complaints, and they are quite baseless as far as I am concerned.

You could say that I am naive and stupidly innocent in my piratical approach to occult and magical lore because I don’t understand how my actions are a cause for outrage and dismay among the proper adherents of these traditions. Crossing these boundaries is just asking for trouble, you would probably declare, but still I am steadily proceeding with the activity of building up my magical system and will continue this work until the day I die. If you have a problem with what I am doing then you can either seek to school me, guide me with additional and important insights or just get out of my way. Otherwise, I am pursuing what I deeply and passionately believe I need to pursue, and I will not be stopped by what I see as puffed up posers who think that they are proper representatives and information marshals of an imperious and perfected tradition. To them, I will make my braying donkey call and scornfully but inexorably move on.

Frater Barrabbas - the Lone Donkey, braying in the wilderness.