Swamp Mystics Mini Con and Liber Nephilim

I was honored last week to attend the second annual Swamp Mystics mini convention in Tallahassee, FL. They asked me to be the headliner for the gathering, and I agreed. This was an event put on by my friends Erich and Alannah, who I have known for many years. I had initiated Erich into the Order of the Gnostic Star back in the early 1990's before I moved to Santa Fe, and I gave him the complete library of magical rituals and lore associated with that organization. I have periodically given him updates so that he has been one of the few individuals that has been privy to my work, both as a ritual magician and a founding member of the Order. Over the many years of our friendly exchange, Erich is one of the few individuals who has continued to develop his own techniques and methodologies based on the lore of the Order. In fact, of all the individuals who have been involved with the lore of the E.S.S.G., he is the only one who is currently active and using this lore in an adapted form.

While I had lived in Tallahassee from 1990 to 1994, I had performed nearly all of the workings associated with the conjuration of the Nephilim in my rented townhouse located on Keily Run, off of Old St. Augustine road on the southeast side of town. I met Eric during the last year of my residence in that town, and he was a most apt and precocious student. Since that time, Erich and his wife Alannah have formed the Temple of Limitless Light and brought the practice of ritual magic in vogue in the area of the panhandle of Florida. Swamp Mystics was an idea that they hatched a year previously, and it had been a very successful event, so they decided to promote a bigger venue this year. The event was located at a spacious Air B&B mansion that was generously sponsored by the owner, who was also deeply interested in magic and the occult. You can find the link for the event here, and see what was planned and the speakers who contributed to its success.

True to its theme and location, it rained off and on for the entire period of my visit to Tallahassee. My wife and I did not see the sun or blue skies until we were almost to the airport in Jacksonville on our return drive. We had opted to fly into Jacksonville and then rent a car to travel to Tallahassee, which was a lot cheaper than flying directly. The wet and the rain didn’t succeed in dampening the spirit of the occasion because there were several major speakers at the event, and we were buoyed by the exchange of ideas and by the demonstration of magic that occurred every day that we were there. We adapted to the rainy periods, and the beautiful mansion that where we stayed gave us refuge from the rain when it occurred.

This visit was kind of a home coming for me, although the folks that I met were not the same folks that I knew back when I lived in Tallahassee. Except for Erich and Alannah, everyone was someone new that I had not met before, but because of Eric, they knew about me. As the headliner with both a discussion/lecture and a ritual to perform, I was quite busily engaged and was only able to attend a few of the classes that were offered. However, on Friday night and Saturday night there were intense rituals performed, the first night by Erich, Alannah and the speakers, and the second night, I performed the Mass of the Great Goddess. On Friday night, a series of rituals were performed using the Archetypal Gate ritual to invoke the archangel Raziel, and this was performed outdoors in a covered stage that overlooked the pool in the gated back yard. The property was large, consisting of many acres that included a blue berry farm and many old oak trees covered in Spanish moss. In this beautiful and haunting space we shared our lore and performed magic to enrich the experience of the event.

When the invocation of Raziel was completed, I felt the presence of the archangel, who I had invoked many times in the past, particularly for the most powerful ordeals that I had performed in the previous years. He touched my mind and we shared some past experiences, and then he asked me in a kindly and humorous fashion, “What have you done, Barrabbas? What have you unleashed by publishing your works?” His question was not an interrogation, but a reminder that I had been challenged with the task years ago to present my methodologies and magical lore to the public, and I was now successfully completing that task. Liber Nephilim was now in print, and I had arranged for fifteen copies to be mailed to the event. In February, my book Abramelin Lunar Ordeal would be published, making that methodology available to my reading public for the first time. All of this lore was the most advanced magical techniques that I had developed, and much of it was developed in Tallahassee over 30 years ago. I was returning to the place where it all began, except that now I had revised the magical lore so that it could be performed by any experienced occultist or magician.

On Saturday evening I performed the Mass of the Great Goddess inside the mansion foyer and front room to a goodly sized crowd of attendees. I hadn’t said this Mass rite over seven years, and in fact, I was still in my wintering stage, so I had doubts about my ability to perform this ritual working. I even suggested that it be skipped to Alannah because the timing was running late and our bellies were full of good food. However, I was told that this ritual was a very important part of the event, so I had to persevere and perform it. By the time it started, I felt less full of food and able to perform this rite. Eric and Alannah, and the attendees performed the circle consecration and a Rose Ankh vortex rite, and then the focus shifted to me. I had set up a makeshift altar that was approximately the correct size, and I had variations on the standard mass kit to work with.

While I had doubted that I would have the stamina to perform this extended Mass rite, I surprised myself by performing it with more power and ability than I had assumed I possessed. I not only impressed my audience, but I impressed myself! The Mass was said with the greatest magical power and precision that I have ever performed it. I stumbled over a few of the barbarous words of evocation while saying the introit, but overall, it was a magnificent presentation, and I was in awe of what I had done. I had believed that due to age and lack of practice that I would perform this rite poorly, but as it turned out, I had so many years of magical practice in my past, and so much untapped energy that I was able to connect with the powers and inspiration that I had believed were long dormant. That event opened my eyes to the fact that I was not yet over the hill, and in time, I would have the opportunity to perform more workings and ordeals before the day when I would be truly retired, incapable or simply dead.

Swamp Mystics mini convention was only for one day, but I had another task on the following evening. I had discussed with Alannah the possibility of initiating her into the Alexandrian tradition of Witchcraft, giving her both first and second degree initiations in a hybrid of the traditional Lexie initiation that would allow her to assume the role of a priestess and be able to initiate men into the craft. When she would have elevated a male practitioner to the same degree as herself, she could perform the great rite and be a fully vested third-degree Witch. I left that task in her hands, but a second degree Witch priestess can be given full authority to initiate and run a coven. Additionally, I gave her the complete set of lineage documents for my Alexandrian line, which amounted to over 800 pages of written lore and history. I am handing my Witchcraft lineage off to women that I believe are worthy of this investiture so that it will continue on after I am no longer in this world. It is part of my task to distribute my legacy to worthy individuals, and I will continue to do this work while I still have the strength and stamina to do it.

Alannah’s initiation was performed in Eric’s small but efficient temple in the home they share, and we had the privilege to work this rite with two other people from New Orleans, Erich and my wife. The rite was performed effectively and even smoothly, and the end result produced a very charged and empowered Alannah. I had successfully passed my Witchcraft lineage to her, and now she can function as both a ritual magician of the Order of the Gnostic Star and also as an Alexandrian Witch Priestess. Giving this lineage to her was significant to me, because it was the one thing that I had not yet passed on to the town that I once called home, but now, all my magical and spiritual lore are fully grounded in the wonderful and mysterious location of Tallahassee. It is my hope that others in that community will be able to engage and share in the twin lineages that I have placed there. It is a legacy that will continue to bless and empower others as they further extend their magical and spiritual process.

Overall, I felt that the mini convention of Swamp Mystics was a great success. It was very magical, but the people were friendly and fun to be with. I also happened to sell a lot of my books, and Liber Nephilim was so successfully promoted that there was only one book left in that set of fifteen. I felt that the people in that location were ready to engage with my more advanced lore, and that the Temple of Limitless Light had done a lot of work to help folks get to that point of instruction. Returning to this place after so many years was an important stage in my own magical and spiritual process. I was reminded that after decades of magical work and study, I still have the capability to work powerful magical rituals and ceremonies, and that although I am no longer young or even middle aged, I remain a competent practitioner of the magical arts.

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

Writing of Liber Nephilim

 

Many years ago, back in 1990, I started on a magical journey that led me to evoke the four chiefs of a body of fallen angels named the Nephilim by some, but who were known as the Beni Elohim, or Sons of God. They were a part of the angelic host known as the Watchers. How did that journey start out? Where did I get the idea that these angels even existed and were an important part of the occult and magical lore from antiquity, through the Middle Ages, to the Renaissance, Dr. John Dee, Enochian magic and to the 20th century Golden Dawn, Thelema and to the present century. There was no documented evidence to even support such an imagined connection and lineage. Did I make all of this up, and perhaps this is why many magicians, occultists and the scholars of the Enochian system of magic found my claims to be unsupportable and possibly irrelevant?

How it started was when I was in college studying Classical Hebrew, and someone turned me on to Genesis, chapter 6. I had not been much of a Bible scholar prior to my studies of the Hebrew Tenach, so I was unfamiliar with this odd chapter and what it signified. This was also the time when I was a member of the Alexandrian coven from hell in Milwaukee, and what I was studying in college was both inspired and echoed in the coven. That’s because this coven was a particularly high-magic group, which was engaged in developing the Golden Dawn material and scant grimoire magic that was available at the time. I found in the college library a copy of “A Dictionary of Angels” by Gustav Davidson, and that book gave me a list of the Nephilim angelic chiefs and pointed me to the apocryphal “Book of Enoch” where I began to study whatever had been written about these fallen angels. At the time, I had not yet determined either how to access them or if that was possible or even desired. They were a curiosity because I did not find these fallen angelic spirits listed in any of the grimoires that I had access to.

Some years later, I was studying the Enochian system of magic and had gotten a copy of Meric Causabon’s book that reproduced a number of John Dee’s diaries. While I had studied all of what was available on Enochian Magic at the time, most notably the books by Crowley and Mather’s Golden Dawn, there was little else available except the raw diaries themselves, which I now was able to study. One item that caught my attention was when Dee stated that he was seeking the wisdom of Enoch when engaging with Edward Kelly in their famous scrying sessions. This is why the system of magic that they uncovered in these sessions was called the Enochian system of magic.

However, since the Book of Enoch that I had studied linked that patriarch with the Nephilim, and that Enoch had acted as an intercessor between Yahweh and the Nephilim, I felt that there must be a connection of some kind between the Enochian system of magic and these fallen angels. While Dee never made such a connection, I saw it as a striking possibility. I also found where the whole process of the revelation of the Enochian system of magic was begun. It started in the early scrying sessions where Dee and Kelly conferred with same the four Archangels who were reputed to have imprisoned and sealed away the angels of the Nephilim, according to the Book of Enoch. That was an odd coincidence, and I sensed that if I invoked and approached these same four Archangels who had sealed the mysteries and magic of the Nephilim that perhaps they would allow me to access them and begin to retrieve what I believed was additional Enochian magical material.

Now many of those occultists and ceremonial magicians who were working the Enochian system of magic believed that the cannon of lore began and ended with Dee’s diaries. While Dee did engage in additional scrying sessions after the defection of Kelly, these sessions were a pale imitation of what had previously been produced. Thus, the period when Dee and Kelly were engaged in these scrying sessions represents the whole universe of Enochian lore. What occultists and magicians were doing was refining and perfecting what was already developed and written down by Dee, but not inventing or producing anything new. This fact was surprising to me since one would think that getting back in touch with the spirits that Dee had communicated with centuries ago would be something that anyone who sought to work this system would have done once they knew the lore sufficiently to perform an invocation.

So, my supposition was to embark on a whole new trajectory and therefore identify the Nephilim as the source of the Enochian system of magic, if indeed there was a connection. For some reason, I emotionally felt that this was an undeniable fact, and acting on it, I began a series of magical workings and ordeals starting in 1990 to seek that link between the Enochian system of magic and the Nephilim. Instead of researching the materials that existed or any other that might be in some unknown collection, library or museum, I decided to perform rituals invocations to get the information that I sought straight from the source. It does surprise me that no else has thought of doing this kind of operation, at least none that I have heard about. Since Dee and Kelly got their information from the spirits, why not invoke those same spirits and get them to reveal yet more new lore? Anyway, I suspect that my approach was quite unorthodox, since we must assume that no one can replicate when Dee and Kelly accomplished, or can we?

If you ask the spirits a pointed question, in most case they will give you an answer. However, if you don’t ask them a question, such as who were the Nephilim and how can I get in touch with them today, then I believe that the spirits will not give out that information voluntarily. It is part of the multiple layered mysteries surrounding some spirits, particularly those angels who fell to earth because of their love of mortal women, and by extension, humanity. I had to pointedly ask the question, and when I did only then was the mythic-based truth revealed to me. I got the four seals (to access the Nephilim) and the blessings of the four archangels that I invoked. They informed me that the angels known as the Nephilim were sequestered by their own will, and that the archangels only assisted them. That was intriguing to me, so when I specifically went through a process of evoking four of the chiefs of the Nephilim what I discovered completely surprised me and also inundated me with new lore. They told me in their own words that not only were they the secret authors of the Enochian system of magic, but there was far more material available that hadn’t been revealed to Dee and Kelly.

That’s not all that was revealed to me during those workings. I also discovered that the supposed mortal women that they fell to earth to mate with were actually the daughters of Lilith, who had their own powers and magical lore, and became the witches and demon queens of infamous Jewish folklore renown. What I had inadvertently stumbled across was a massive store of various kinds of metaphysical, magical, occult and witchcraft lore that was, for all extent and purposes, completely untapped. It was waiting for someone or some group of people to explore, develop and disseminate it to the world. The volume of lore was too great for me to independently derive and develop, but because I was so isolated in my pursuit and what I was working with was outside of the boundaries of known and expected lore, there were few to none for me to share this lore and the connections that they implied. I was the only one who actually worked with these spirits over the following decades, even though I made this lore and the associated rituals available to my brothers and sisters in the Order of the Gnostic Star. The chiefs of the Nephilim begged me to publish this ritual lore and the background mythology to the public in a book, but I either did not have the time nor the skills required to effectively take on such a writing project.

Now, after have written and published nine other books, and having the time, I assembled the relevant material that I had collected over the years and selected what I thought would be best to include in a book that contained both an introduction to my ideas, the mythology, rituals and experiences based on my diaries from the time. This new book that I will be publishing and should be out in October 2024 will likely become a major contribution to the practice and development of the Enochian system, or it may produce a whole new tradition based wholly on new material. Will those who purchase it build the rituals and perform the working to experience what I experienced over 30 years ago? Only time will tell how this book is received, and what effect it will have. Can it be used to change the foundation for working with the Enochian system magic? Should this new lore even be called Enochian anymore? This might be the inauguration of a new magical tradition, to be named after the Nephilim instead of Enoch.

I encourage my readers to purchase this book when it is released and then read it over to discover what I experienced years ago, and then decide what to do with this ritual lore. How shall you proceed? Do you take the sanctioned path or the unsanctioned path? Should you evoke the chiefs of the Nephilim and find out what they know, see if it matches what I have said it does regarding potential new magical and occult lore. That, of course, is the way to test my hypothesis, and I wait for the time when there are other magicians out there who have experienced what I experienced and who want to talk about the future of this path. I look forward to that day.

Frater Barrabbas

Path of Future Literary Works

 

This year, 2023, has been a banner year for me regarding writing and publishing books. By next August all five books of the “For Witches” series will be in print, and I will also have a beginner’s book published as well (“Mastering the Art of Witchcraft”). Additionally, my publisher has signed contracts with me to republish my first two books, “Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magic” and “Mastering the Art of Ritual Magic” and these will be back in print sometime next year. I also submitted the manuscript for my first grimoire, entitled “Liber Nephilim” and that book will begin the editing process next month. I expect that book to be in print before the year is out for 2024. In the list of these books is also one my crowning achievements, the Llewellyn title “Magical Qabalah for Beginners” - a book that is not really for beginners. By the time of the Winter Solstice, I will have ten books in print, four with Llewellyn, and six with Crossed Crows Books. That is an accomplishment that I thought would never occur, but it will soon be a reality. I also realize that what I have accomplished took a lot of time, research, writing, editing, revisions, and a lot of effort. I started writing my books in 2006, so that is an investment of 17 years.

Meanwhile, those who have been reading my blog for the last several years know that I have a lot more ritual lore and material than what I have written to date, and it will be at last time to begin to assemble that material into manuscripts, and from there, hopefully, into published books. I suspect that my current publisher will want to publish some of these ideas, but others I may have to self-publish, and I will do that so that all of this lore is made available to my reading public.

Since I have covered all of the lore, rituals and ceremonies associated with the basic and intermediate stages of the development of a pagan or witch who also is a practicing ritual magician that part of my work is completed. All of these books, except Liber Nephilim, represent what I believe someone needs to know in order to function as an intermediate to advanced ritual magician. Liber Nephilim is the first step of what I consider to be my more advanced ritual and magical lore. It is the first of its kind from my hand, but it represents only the first of nine additional books that I can assemble and write into publishable manuscripts. I have been practicing magic since I was a teenager, and the period of the 1980's through 2012, a period of over thirty years, was spent developing several advanced systems of ritual magic. Now that I am getting old and in the autumn years of my life, it becomes important for me to be able to publish the rest of this material so that others can possess and make use of it. It will be my legacy to the Wiccan and Pagan ritual magicians of my day, and perhaps it might find utility with others over the decades past the time when I am just an obscure footnote in history.

What I would like to do is to outline these future books so that you might apprise them and perhaps even make your opinion known to me through a message or an email. I haven’t actually decided on the order of the book projects, so you could also tell me your preference, and if enough people want a certain book project to be published sooner than later, I will take that under advisement.

Here is my list of eight projects that I would like to develop and publish as books for my magical colleagues to ponder and consider. I will seek to get them into manuscript form in the next three years or so and seek to have them published. I am hoping that by 2027, all of these books will be in print and available to whoever wants them. I am also hoping that this ambition on my part will at least get my ritual magician colleagues to examine and perhaps even attempt to adapt and perform some of these more advanced ordeals. That is my hope, but just helping to advance the ritual technology of western magic would be most satisfying.  

Abramelin Lunar Ordeal - I have always admired the Abramelin Ordeal, which is a severe meditative and liturgical based working that lasts from either one year or 18 months, depending on the version followed. It requires complete sequestration for a period of either one to three months, and that means that the adherent must retire from the world for that period of time. The ordeal consists of long periods of prayer and meditation, and requires a prepared room with a sand floor, casement windows, and other strict practices. All of these practices are performed with the singular purpose to invoke and manifest one’s Holy Guardian Angel. While I was intrigued with the outcome, the process seemed nearly impossible for me to consider because I had to work a regular job and couldn’t take the time off to properly perform it.

However, as a Witch and one who is more oriented to the moon, I was able to develop a lunar-based ordeal that lasted only 1.5 lunar cycles or around 40 days. Because the period was so abbreviated, I had determined that the time allotment needed to be filled with intense magical activity. So, the first four weekends were spent fully invoking the four Seraphim and the four Cherubim combined, which I considered to be super-archangels. Then, merging these eight powerful angels into a matrix, I summoned their godhead equivalents for each of the four elements, and fused them together into a powerful vortex with a triple tetrahedral gate structure. Upon this magical edifice, I performed the Bornless or Headless rite, revised with the four Qabalistic Worlds arranged as a step pyramid, where a revised invocation of my personal godhead was performed.

I had gone back to the PGM and extracted additional magical workings to go with the Bornless or Headless invocation rite, and added a magical ring consecration rite, assumption of great powers and an envisioning rite. The final working was the Alchemical Hierogamy Rite of Union, a magical rite based on the Rosicrucian alchemical wedding of Christian Rosencruetz.  All of these rituals were assembled to be part of what I have named the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, and I performed them in 2009. It was an amazing ordeal, and it unlocked for me the mysterious magic squares found in the Book of Abramelin the Mage. While this ordeal can be worked in place of the traditional ordeal, it will undoubtedly produce different results, although the overall purpose and outcome are similar. I have articles, diary entries and the rituals already assembled into a folder. All I need to do is to pull it together into a manuscript with revisions, annotations and explanations. I believe that I could put together a manuscript in a couple of months, since most of the work is already done.

Liber Nephilim Additum - I have already submitted the manuscript for Liber Nephilim, but in writing this book, I left a lot of ritual lore out of this edition because it would have made the book too large and unwieldy. What was left out was the Enochian Ordeal of the 49 Bonarum, where I invoked seven of the Bonarum and pulled them together into a vortex to invoke the 8th, which was Camara, in a ritual named the Septagramic Vortex Gate ritual. That whole part of the Enochian ordeal was not included in the first book. Then there is the Enochian Mystery Vortex, mentioned several times but excluded from the first book. Additionally, there were the invocations of Seth and Enoch, the evocations of Ramat’el, Turiel, and Samael as Shaitan, and their associated diaries. This book would provide all of the material that was developed, used, and explored in the overall Nephilim working. I believe that providing this additional set of ritual lore and discussions about the Bonarum as the binary planetary intelligences, and how to invoke them and their overall psychological impact. Assembling and writing this manuscript would take only around three months, so it would also represent a task of refining and revising the ritual lore omitted from the first book. Both books together would supply the complete set of ritual lore to perform and replicate the Nephilim working.

These two books would represent my submissions for 2024, although there a more possibilities sitting around on my hard drive from workings that I have done previously.  

Talismanic Portae Lucis working: After developing and performing the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, I became acquainted with a magical ordeal and process that quite intrigued me. I am referring, of course, to the writings and teaching of the late Jean Dubuis, who was a French occultist, alchemist and magician. His system of magic combined spagyric forms of alchemy with astrological magic and the Qabalah. A central magical operation within Mr. Dubuis’ occult system was a process whereby a person could achieve a direct connection and report with powers and intelligences of the Supernal Triad. He called this the Experience of Eternity, and it was a necessary step for a magician to achieve the proper connection and linkage with his or her higher self. It seemed like a logical step from gaining the knowledge and conversation with one’s Holy Guardian Angel.

I studied his ordeal named “Portae Lucis” and discovered that I could replicate this ordeal using revised lore for working talismanic magic that I already possessed. His various practices and the use of spagyric alchemy seemed of lesser importance when compared to the crafting of powerful talismans that would represent the charged empowered representations of the Qabalistic Sephiroth of Yesod (Moon), Tiphareth (Sun) and Binah (Saturn) representing the pathway of the gateway of light to the supernal triad. What I proposed to do instead of the passive talismanic workings and the various ancillary practices, including the creation of spygyric alchemical medicines, was to forge these talismans with each of the four element configurations of a specific planetary talismanic elemental spirit, using a metallic talisman associated with the planet. Each planetary talisman would thus contain each of the four elements of four specific talismanic elementals, thereby supercharging them as tools in building the gateway of light. In addition, I also generated a fourth talisman of Mercury to represent myself and the magical (Hermetic) process that I was seeking to manifest.

After generating these four super-charged talismans, according to the rites and time-line of the lunar mansions, I was prepared to perform the final working on the auspicious hour of the sun on the day of the Summer Solstice, when the light had achieved its maximum power. The working produced extraordinary results, and it was very successful, showing that a magical idea or ordeal concept can be developed in a number of different ways. It was an amazing ordeal, and one that I documented in my magical diaries. While some in the occult community were surprised and pleased with my approach, the traditionalists fiercely condemned and discounted the working. Later on, I managed to generate the three remaining super-charged metallic talismans and then built a magical machine that could produce any amount of material manifestations for me, and it has served me quite well during the years since I produced them.

All of the ritual lore, documentation and diaries for this working, and the extended workings covering the three additional talismans, and the creation of a magical machine would be part of this book. It would require me to assemble this material, revising and editing it, and produce a manuscript, but I believe that it would take only four months to complete this book project. I think that the occult community would find my approach to this working to be clear, modern and succinct. I would stipulate that it would not produced the exact results that the original ordeal would produce, but it would still be representative because it seeks to achieve the same results overall.

Other book projects that I am contemplating would represent workings that I developed and performed decades ago. They are still quite relevant today, and they represent the advanced workings and lore of the magical order that I helped to found. The advanced workings were completely my invention, and they were brought into the workings of the order because they had been developed in the 1980's and 1990's, and into the early 2000's.

Ordeal XV - the workings of the Gnostic Tetrasacramentary, consisting of the liturgical and magical workings of Thelema, Agape, Eros and Thanatos. These rites would include the specific Gnostic Mass with Benediction exerps, a Gnostic seasonal calendar, evocation rites of the specific Gnostic Avatar, and then the set of four rites of the Tabernacle of Sothis and the associated Black Rite. Other rites of sacramentation would include baptism, marriage, requiem, confirmation and holy orders. These rites would represent the complete set of workings associated with the four different Gnostic systems of religious magic.  This Ordeal is thus named because of the joining of the octagram and the septagram to generate a spiritual being able to represent a system of Gnosis, thereby becoming its avatar. It is also the number of the tarot card The Devil, which represents the powers associated with initiation. A performance all four of these sets of workings would fully activate their own gnostic magical powers to manifest these philosophies and their visionary impact into the material world. These are the liturgical and magical workings of a true Gnostic Priest or Priestess.

Art and Practice of Archaeomancy - this is a system that I developed over twenty years ago, but it represents the very cutting edge of magical workings.

The word Archaeomancy is one that I coined in the obscure magickal fellowship of the Order of the Gnostic Star and means the “magick of the source” (ἀρχή - arche - principle, origin; and - μαντεία - manteia - prophetic power). The art of Archeomancy is defined as the magical ritual method of exploring the Qabalist Inner Planes. These Inner Planes have many various definitions. Because of this difference, there are two methodologies that I developed. The first is the Archaeomancy of the 40 Qabalistic Worlds, where the inner planes are defined as the ten Sephiroth of the Qabalah, as superimposed through the four Qabalistic worlds. The combination of the Qabalistic Pyramid of Power and Enneagram Invocation rite combined with a double gateway would allow one to freely pass into the Qabalistic Inner Plane domain to gain visions, insights and to accrue and manifest its powers into the material world.

The second is the Archaeomancy of the eighteen Qabalistic Dimensions. The dimensions are the triangular shapes that exist in the Tree of Life structure that are outlined by the Sephiroth and the pathways. In addition, the Enochian ordeal workings defined the angular vectors of the paths and Sephirah as being the locations where the Aethyrs resided, where instead of 30, there were 56. These triangular dimensions were interior spaces in the Tree of Life that held profound transformative powers. I managed to develop the ritual lore to enter into two of the lowest of these dimensions, and my experiences were extremely profound. The inner and most secret teachings of the spiritual Qabalah are to be found in the dimensions, and entering one of them allows the wisdom of them all to be revealed. What I experienced so inexplicable that I can hardly describe them here, but for a Qabalistic magician, these workings represent the very height of what might be realized.

Both systems of magic were described and developed from the Enochian ordeals that I performed in the early 1990's associated with my Nephilim workings. I have diary notes and details to back up the event of these workings. All of this lore, documentation and some diary entries would be included in the manuscript that I would pull together.

Two other ordeals that I developed and performed during the late 1980's and then the late 1990's were the Ordeal of the Four Gnostic Temples, and the Ordeal of the Stellar Seven-Rayed Gnosis. These ordeals represent the ritualized challenges of self-initiation by ordeal of the Sixth and Seventh Degrees, respectively.

The Four Temples, or Tessarenoi, were performed to generate a living particle from the four-fold vortex spinning black-hole gateway opening into four different universes based on the tetrasacramentary in Ordeal XV. Each of these particles represented a living sacramental attribute of the godhead of a Gnostic sacramental system or universe, and could be used to powerfully sacralize material objects, and to act as a manifested source of godhead in the material world. I experienced them as alchemical stones that produce intense transmutations.

The Stellar Seven-Rayed Ordeal is the means to establishing a conduit of the fifth Gnostic sacramental system, which is symbolized by the Star, or more specifically, the Gnostic Septagram of the Seven Qabalistic Rays. Performing this rite would give the operator the ability to channel the seven sacramental virtues into the material world, transforming that individual into a fully empowered hierophant, a master of the spiritual and material worlds. These two ordeals, Four Temples and Seven-Rayed Star could also be assembled and made into manuscript books, to be published, depending on the need and desires of my reading public.

Rites and Ceremonies of the Order of the Gnostic Star - If I actually managed to get into print all of the above books, which would be a total of seven books, then I should also assemble all of the rest of the lore of the magical Order of the Gnostic Star, and publish it as well. What that would do is place into the hands of any knowledgeable and experienced occultist the ability to form their own magical lodge based on the rites and Gnostic liturgies of my magical order, without having to consult with me or anyone else. The material would be out there for anyone to use, and if someone really wanted to formally assemble a group then they could write me and get my imprimatur and recognition. Otherwise, they would be free to use this material in whatever manner they might wish, forming a group or working solitary. This lore would contain the initiations, the seasonal and lodge based ceremonies, the workings of elemental and talismanic magic, the Grail mysteries and their associated rites and ceremonies, and the overall philosophical perspective of a pagan-based Gnosis that is world affirming and nature oriented, instead of the antinomian tendencies of Gnosis in antiquity and in some circles in the present times.

A final literary endeavor would be to write up my biography. I have been writing this text for some time, but I am behind and need to catch up to the present. I am not done with my magical research and practices, so there would be more to add to it before it would be printed (I hope). I also have a biographical piece about my experiences with the Coven from Hell, or my four formative years with the Schnoebelens, who abandoned Wicca and the practice of high magic to become fundamentalist preachers. My four years in that group is an eye opener, for certain, and it was written as a response to Bill’s book “Wicca: Satan’s Little White Lie”, which I found to be full of falsehoods and misrepresentations, although also revealing things about Wicca that made it seem diabolical. I posted this work in five parts on my blog, but I would like to eventually publish it.

So, that is the full set of writing and publishing that I would like to do in the next few years. I am not certain if my current publisher would be on board with all of these projects, so I might have to self-publish some of them. I feel that this work is important and should be shared with the greater occult community, so I will work towards getting it in print in some manner for the sake of posterity, and to ensure that this lore is not lost when I finally depart this world forever.

Frater Barrabbas