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.       

Thoughts About the Qliphoth

“It is futile and false to imagine a coin with one side only.”
  Kenneth Grant - “Nightside of Eden,” p. 2.

A number of occultists have over the last few decades written about the Qliphoth, or Qliphah (singular), and some have stipulated that there is a Tree of Evil or Death in addition to the Tree of Life, acting as its reverse or negative image. This seems to be a theme expressed by some adherents of the left hand path, and some have proposed a Tree of Evil, and through it to assign a quasi hierarchy for the various lists of evil spirits and devils that supposedly populate the material world. Having two such trees allows one the duality of choosing one or the other, or perhaps, going to one then the other. According to Genesis it is true that there were two sacred trees in the Garden of Eden, one was indeed the Tree of Life; but the other wasn’t its opposite. The other tree was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Since humankind ate from the later and not the former, we have the power and potential of knowing truth on all levels of being, but we are not immortal. Yet the scriptures never mention a Tree of Evil, so one would have to assume that it is apocryphal or even a recent urban myth. However, there is another way of interpreting the Qliphoth and determining how it fits into the overall schema of the Qabbalah without having to propose two opposing trees.

The word Qliphoth or Qliphah comes from the Hebrew root QLPh, which means “to peel off,” and the noun means “husk, shell or rind.” Qliphah, therefore, means in Hebrew, a shell or the outer covering of some kind of fruit or nut. When applied to the Qabbalah it has been variously interpreted as a kind of afterbirth or discarded element. It could even be defined as a previously failed attempt at creation (an abortion), but only if one doubted the perfection of the Godhead. Yet there is another meaning to the word that would allow it to merge into the Tree of Life, but only if we can overcome the basic prejudice built up by the previous definitions. The Qliphoth could simply be the outer shell or husk of the corresponding Sephiroth, and in actuality, it would function more like a socket or the bottom foundation of a specific Sephirah. In other words, the Qliphoth are the backside or unconscious dimensions of the Sephirotic Tree of Life. I believe that Kenneth Grant was the first to propose this interpretation in print, even though Michael Bertiaux has insisted that he first proposed it as a part of the deep esoteric qabbalistic descriptions in his traditional lore (Monastery of the Seven Rays). A few friends of mine have said that such lore would likely have been part of the infamous Choronzon Club workings, and there is, at least, a little bit of evidence to support that belief. (Which I intend to show at the end of this article.) 

Using this revelation, suddenly the Qliphoth are neither evil nor the negative partners to the Sephiroth in the Tree of Life. The troubling Tree of Evil or Death disappears, and in its place is just the night and light sides of the one Holy Tree. Just as we have a light and darkside, so, too,  does the Tree of Life; but that darkside represents neither a duality nor a split between good and evil. As the glyph of the Tree of Life is outwardly defined, all of the elements contained within it are seen as a unified whole, and that includes the Sephiroth, the Pathways, and even the Qliphoth.

I have found it most productive to see the Qliphoth as the arising potential for each Sephiroth - they are, in a word, the unmanifest potential first laid down by the emanations of the negative veils. The fusion of Sephirah and Qliphah is seamless, but each represents a different kind of spiritual quality and hierarchy. One can’t enter into the corresponding qliphah from the sephirah, since through the sephirah, they are both perfectly united. The backside of the Tree of Life can only be accessed through the portal of the gateway of Da’ath, which is also the gateway of the Greater Abyss. Therefore, the individual qliphah can be acquired and realized only through the gateway of Da’ath, otherwise their influences are nearly invisible, except through the periodic subtle dark emanations coming from the abysmal gateway. (Some have called these dark emanations the heartbeat of darkness itself.)

It is my belief that the Qliphoth contains all of the unknown and invisible chthonic proto-elements of our spiritual, mental and physical worlds. Atavism, archaism and dark inner pathways connect the backside of the Tree of Life, like the endless tunnels of the catacombs in Paris. The light side of the Tree of Life has only twenty-two pathways, but the backside has as many possible permutations for pathways as there are sephiroth. Thus all of the sephiroth are interconnected below the surface at the level of the qliphoth with what is nominally called “Typhonian wormholes.” The underworld domain of the backside of the Tree of Life is populated with the dead ancestors, gods and goddesses of the underworld, and the various demonic and sub-elemental spirits and powers.

Aleister Crowley and other occultists (like Grant) have taken some incomplete information from Jewish qabbalistic sources and have given names, qualities and rulers to the ten anti-sephiroth of the Qliphoth. Grant has attempted to extrapolate on this incomplete information and attempted to build up a system of anti-correspondences. I have found this work to be quite weak and incomplete, and based upon a decided Jewish monotheistic mystical bias, which I think is contrary to any practical magickal workings with these forces. I would recommend that the forces and spirits of the qliphoth and their wormhole pathways be examined as merely the negative source potentials for the obverse sephiroth and glyph determined pathways. If they have any names or qualities, it would not be just a mirror image of the surface structures of the Tree. They would be the veritable archaic sources for those structures. The backside of the Tree of Life is without morals and spiritual values, and is therefore, beyond good and evil.

High adepts are supposedly those individuals who have crossed the Greater Abyss, having left their old lives, motivations and aspirations (like lifeless shells) behind them. That crossing is not so much a leap across a chasm as it is the voluntary leap down into the abysmal gateway, and therein fully engaging and resolving the various powers and spirits of the Qliphoth before one is allowed to emerge on the other side, profoundly transformed and completely remade. A high adept has supposedly completed the process of conquering his or her internal issues and complexes before ever attempting this greater passage, and thereby seeking to resolve the sins and inequalities of the world as opposed to the self.

This underworld passage and ordeal has always been the theme of the exalted apotheosis, but it has reflections in the underworld transformative journey of the proto-shaman. Even Jesus descended into hell and underwent its harrowing before ascending into heaven to sit at the right hand of the throne of his father. The oldest written variation of this theme is the Egyptian underworld ordeal known as the Book of Gates (Am Duad), where the sun god, ensconced in his solar boat, had to fight the forces of darkness to achieve passage to the eastern horizon every night. As an initiation theme, it is the most important and the greatest of all ordeals, since few emerge as victors from that terrible descent. Likewise is the theme of a mock burial and resurrection, particularly if it is enacted within a temple, vault or sacred grove. Such a theme emulates the famous initiatory burial and ascent that took place in the pyramid tombs of ancient Egypt. All of these themes characterize that the spiritual, mental and physical changes to the one undergoing such an initiation are massive, radical and quite permanent. Madness and death instead of illumination and rebirth could easily be the end result for such an ill prepared undertaking. (One does not take the Oath of the Abyss either lightly or presumptuously.)

In the system of ritual magick that I use, there are some prismatic shaped energy fields that can emulate these kinds of structures and aid one in opening the abysmal gateway, allowing the magician to gain passage within. Such an act must only be undertaken by someone who is supremely knowledgeable and capable of dealing with the consequences. Although I have the knowledge of how to accomplish this kind of working, I have yet to attempt it, for obvious reasons. Still, such an undertaking is definitely on my list of things to do in the next five years or so. Here are the steps that one would need to perform in order to open up this kind of gateway.

1. Establish a highly polarized cross-roads using the four Angles.
2. Build a double concentric spiral vortex, each with a common midpoint. This is done by generating a basic vortex, then establishing a central circle, and finally erecting a vortex within that central circle. Thus generating a vortex within a vortex with a common central point. Both of vortices would have a negative spin (widdershins), so they would produce a kind of black hole singularity with gateways extending into four different universes (what Bertiaux calls his universe A, B, C and D).
3. Establish an inverted Tetrahedral gateway - this would be the entrance into and out of the abyss.
4. Once within the abysmal gateway, Qliphotic path workings would commence. Supposedly, there are thirty-three separate and distinct path working encounters, grouped into three sections of eleven encounters.

(That means that this rite would have to be repeatedly performed at least thirty-three times to satisfy all of the possible variations.)

The Order of the Gnostic Star has a ritual working already written (but not yet attempted) that makes use of the above ritual elements, but there are other attributes to this rite as well. It is a ritual working that has been carefully constructed and refined over the years, but it is still untried. Hopefully, someday, if my progress in self purification and perfection has been sufficiently adequate, I will attempt this working. However, there is no hurry and I am under no obligation to begin this rite at any future date or time. For now there is only the need to continue to learn, grow and work out my internal issues, following a progressive path towards spiritual illumination.

One final thing that I would like to discuss is the practice of Qliphotic path working that is used in this kind of ordeal, and how that supposedly relates to the Choronzon Club workings. As you may or may not know, the Choronzon Club and its lore has become the exclusive property of Michael Bertiuax. This lore, along with other inducements, was offered to me many years ago if I made myself accessible to Bertiaux. Of course, I refused, so I never got to see any of that lore. The one exception was derived from what Michael penned on the back inner cover of my copy of Nightside of Eden, which I had bought from him. The few lessons found at the back of the Voudoun Gnostic Workbook are almost comically useless and meaningless, so all I have is what’s written in the back cover of Kenneth Grant’s book. Still, let us digress a little and discuss the history of the Choronzon Club.

First of all, Choronzon was a powerful evil spirit mentioned by John Dee in his diaries and then elaborated upon by Mathers and Crowley, and later, Grant and Bertiaux, among others. Choronzon is considered the lord of the domains of the Qliphoth and is its guardian and chief initiator. Grant has determined that the gematric value for Choronzon is 333, making its name half the value (and therefore, functioning as the consort and opposite) of the Great Beast, whose number is 666. Choronzon was vividly encountered when Aleister Crowley began to invoke and gain visions through the higher level of the Aethyrs of the Enochian system of magick. This entity was perceived by Crowley as being highly aggressive and quite negative, requiring the magician to engage and defeat it in order to gain access to the more exalted states revealed by the Aethyrs.

For some reason, one of Crowley’s favored American students, whose name was Cecil Frederick Russel, became enamored of this entity and used it to name his personal magickal organization. Thus was born the Choronzon Club, which he assembled first in Chicago, and then later in California. Russel had received certain teachings and initiations from Crowley at the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Sicily. Supposedly, he was taught and initiated into the mysteries of the IX and X and XI degress of the O.T.O., and used these teachings to propose a shortcut to becoming an initiated higher adept. Of course, very little of this lore was Russel’s own invention, so he had been plagiarizing and misrepresenting the teachings of the A. A. and the O.T.O. Once exposed, his organization fragmented into two parts and mostly died out.

One of these fragments was the Order of the G.B.G (Great Brotherhood of God), whose lore and practices were published in the late sixties and early seventies by Louis T. Culling, the last chief of that organization. Another fragment of that group had retained the name Choronzon Club and the location, Chicago, but practiced a form of exclusive homosexual trantric magick. By the 1960's this group was dying out when it was discovered by Michael Bertiaux, who merged its teachings with his own. It’s hard to see how such a direct tantric system of magick would have had anything to do with obscure forms of qliphotic qabbalah, but according to Bertiaux (if we are to believe him), the Choronzon Club did indeed teach this kind of lore. Since no one has come forthpresenting the Choronzon Club teachings as they existed before Bertiaux acquired them, we will never know what that lore looked like. Supposedly, it became the basis of the O.T.O.A. (Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua), but since I am outside of that organization and not privy to the exact nature of its teachings, I can only guess and surmise this from rumors and internet related gossip. (I have recently found an interesting article on the web about this subject, and you can read it here.)

All of this would be the barest and meanest of speculation on my part if were not for the colored notes penned by Michael Bertiaux in the back inside cover of my copy of Nightside of Eden. It is labeled “Choronzon Club Pathworking”, and works with the symbolic numbers of eleven and three, which were supposedly very significant to both the higher degrees of the O.T.O. and the Choronzon Club, from which it was based. I am reproducing it here for your curiosity and amusement, perhaps you will find it useful as well. I have been studying these diagrams for many years, and they now make a lot of sense to me. These diagrams show the patterns of the qliphotic pathworkings and how they are to be deployed. There also appears to be alchemical and a sex magick attributes to them as well. I will leave the rest to your erudition and imagination.

Frater Barrabbas

Remembering Michael Bertiaux

 (Bertiaux and Allen Greenfield - 1980's)

It was back in the summer of 1977 on a sweltering Sunday afternoon in Chicago that I got to meet the notorious Michael Bertiaux. I had traveled with my teacher and High Priest, Christopher Syn (Bill Schnoebelen) and selected members of our group from Milwaukee (the infamous “coven from hell”) to attend one of Michael’s lectures. Michael was giving a lecture to a quasi theosophical group consisting mostly of elderly women (who seemed to adore him), and it was so philosophically banal and boring that I can’t remember today what it was about.

I do remember buying a copy of Kenneth Grant’s newest book “Nightside of Eden” from him, which had Michael Bertiaux’s signature and date on the front inside cover, and certain colored pencil tables and other writings in the back inside cover. Those tables and writings were from the supposed “Choronzon Club” lore, and represented the methodology of path working for the back side of the Tree of Life. (It took me nearly seven years later to figure out what it meant and how it worked.) This book was part of a collection of books, recorded cassette tapes and other paraphernalia that Bertiuax was selling to those who had attended his lecture. I talked briefly to Michael after purchasing the book, showing him the colored pencil notes in the back, and seeing that Michael really regretted parting with this book and offered to buy it back, which I smugly declined. Yet it was after we had left the lecture hall and went out to dinner that I got to hear more of the kind of strange and bazar occultism that was Bertiaux’s hallmark perspective, which he applied to nearly everything!

(As a side note, one of Bertiaux’s cassette tapes that Christopher had bought contained an impromptu lecture on the Chaldean Oracles, which is probably one of the more important writings from antiquity. I borrowed it from Christopher, and popped it my cassette player, expecting to hear a lot of amazing revelations. I was truly astonished at how superficial it was. I learned nothing from it, and it would seem that when Michael recorded it, he was also quite ill, and had to stop the tape whenever a coughing fit overcame him. That was an important lesson - not everything that Bertiaux did was worthy or valuable.)

I found Michael to be highly creative, intellectually facile, extremely imaginative, charming, in an old world sort of way, and full of outlandish occult tales of power, horror and secret lefthand path societies. From his perspective, the world had a definitive Lovecraftian taint, mixed with the musty scent of long dead corpses and the exciting thrill of true evil. But who was Michael Bertiaux and what was he really like? I can answer these questions, although what I learned about him happened so many years ago. Yet it made such an impression on me that I have not forgotten any of it. Meeting and interacting with Michael Bertiaux was certainly not something that anyone would ever forget. (I do believe that people change and no one stays the same, but after my experiences with him, I never had any desire to see if Michael himself had actually changed.) 

Why am I writing about this weird occultist and what happened between us over thirty years ago? Why indeed!

Lately, there has been a lot of discussion about a supposed classic work written by Bertiaux, entitled “The Gnostic Voudoun Workbook,” a creepy favorite tome for collectors and afficionados of the ultra-obscure. This book is as famous now as its notorious author, a white Midwestern American who blended the traditions of Haitian Voudoun and various systems of Western occultism long before others in the U.S. had ever thought of doing it. Yet Michael Bertiaux crawled out of complete obscurity into the black light of occult notoriety not by his own skill or enterprise, but by the efforts and gratuitous attentions to the dark side of occultism propagated by Kenneth Grant in his numerous books.

Kenneth Grant made Michael Bertiaux famous within a small community of ceremonial magicians and occultists. If it wasn’t for Kenneth Grant, I doubt that Michael Bertiaux would have been known outside of his Chicago community, and even within that locale, Michael was very, very obscure. His fame was wholly spread by the books written by Kenneth Grant, and since then, some have believed the hype and stories spread about him. Michael himself has helped to spread a lot of rumors and tall tales about himself, and delighted in the effect that it had on others. Scandal and controversy were always a part of what Michael did and said, so I suppose his greatest curse would have been to be ignored or dismissed. 

While it is true that I have a copy of his book in my occult library, and I have attempted to read it through a few times (only to give up), having known Michael Bertiux in the late 70's (which would have been considered his “hay days”), I can truly say that I don’t take him, his book or his methodologies very seriously. I would also advise others not to seek any nuggets of wisdom from Bertiaux’s writings, because honestly, I truly believe that there aren’t any. I also believe that there are a lot of better sources for all of the topics that his book attempts to cover. Michael’s writings are tainted by his disguised brutal sense of humor and by his own astonishing imagination, which he tended to liberally use to fill in the blanks or make something far more interesting or sinister than it might have been. Michael is, therefore, something akin to a pulp fiction writer and a tabloid publisher. It’s probably an impossible task to distill his writings to determine the actual traditions and practices from which they are derived, so I have given up attempting to do so.

Additionally, to have a serious conversation about the book “The Gnostic Voudoun Workbook” is to give far greater credence to Bertiaux than what he really deserves. I will maintain that he was a capable occultist and could work fairly malefic magick if he so desired, but he never represented any kind of traditional teaching or initiation. Bertiaux was a creative huckster who had very little respect for any tradition. He used magickal and occult lore to paper his world much like a child would use the beautiful photographs in a slurry of magazines to create amusing collages.

Therefore, when I read about occultists giving Michael Bertiaux’s writings a serious critique, I found it quite ridiculous. I am almost certain that Michael would find such discussions to be very amusing, too. Like Aleister Crowley, Michael believed that any PR was good PR, and after all, it only helps to sell more books. I have even heard through the grapevine that Michael is planning on publishing more books (“Cosmic Meditation” and “Vudu Cartography”), and why not? His first book is a classic that has sold for hundreds of dollars on the internet, but most would find it to be a confused mishmash of hoodoo, Haitian voudoun, Thelema, Shintoism (?) and every other obscure religious or occult system pasted together in a curious but delirious manner. To me, this book is a sinister joke, but you would have had to know Michael Bertiaux to appreciate the punch line.

I knew Michael Bertiuax from around the summer of 1977 through the summer of 1979. I have recounted in a previous article the story about the last time I visited him in his Chicago lair, where he demonstrated to me the art of Megapolisomancy. You can find that article here, just in case you missed it. I also visited Michael with my teacher, Bill Schnoebelen, and was off-handedly initiated into the cult of Baron Samedi as a fully vested priest or houngan, you can find an article describing that event here. Do I feel different because of this event? Does this mean that I have a valid Haitian initiatory lineage included with everything else that I am working and doing with my occultism? The answer to these questions is a very solid “no.” This initiation was done as a way of attempting to gain access to me, and since I never let Michael in, either physically or magickally, I would have to say that nothing significant happened to me, luckily. I was forced to quickly drink a large goblet of Jack Daniels Wild Turkey, but for some odd reason I remained stone cold sober, probably because I didn’t trust Michael and was very much on my guard.

This sounds like a juicy tale and a bit of gossip, so I will satisfy the curiosity of my readers and briefly relate it. As an object lesson, it says everything that anyone needs to know about Michael Bertiaux. I found him to be cruel, manipulative, ruthless, and completely without any human compassion whatsoever. This is not the kind of person that you could trust, believe in, nor would you place yourself into his hands for any reason. I would rather offer my head to the gaping jaws of a crocodile than give myself into the hands of this man. Anyway, I am digressing here, so let us get back to the story.

Back in the summer of 1977, I was quite taken with Michael Bertiaux. Having read and reread the book “Cults of the Shadow” written by Kenneth Grant, I was eager to meet him. Michael was a big deal for our coven, so we all began to study and engage with various African Traditional Regions, particularly with the Haitian diaspora variations. We weren’t really interested in the outer court religious beliefs and practices of the common man, and we had little respect or understanding for the Haitian culture. We were, in a word, occult pirates who were trawling for new thrills and supposedly forgotten dark practices, and Michael served us up a bounty of these beliefs and practices, being a pirate himself. We sought out the practices of the bokor or black magician, and the various obscure occult orders where such individuals met and congregated. It’s likely that these traditions and occult systems were mostly invented by Bertiaux, or based on some facts mixed with rumors and legends, and he also filled them out with his own concoctions. It’s hard to say what was authentic and real, and since we were steeped in our fantasy associated with those beliefs and practices, we really didn’t care. Besides, who had the time and money to travel to Haiti and actually perform the proper kind of research to verify what Michael was telling us?

At first, only two members of our extended coven periodically went down to Chicago to work with Michael. Those two members were Christopher and a senior member named John, yet after the first trip, only Christopher went down to see Bertiaux. It seemed that John’s first experience was too traumatic to be repeated. I thought this strange, but John regaled us with his frightful experiences with Bertiuax. It would seem that Michael used a form of sexual terrorism to get his students into the right frame of mind for his various occult and magickal operations. He would select an approach that was guaranteed to frighten and unbalance his subject, acting as either a homosexual or a heterosexual lover, as it suited him. His unwanted advances would be rationalized as being the only manner that such occult knowledge and initiatory mysteries could be communicated. It was an excuse to sexually abuse and exploit individuals who came seeking knowledge and special teachings, and Bertiaux had no problem obliging those foolish enough to accede to his desires.

Michael was around middle height, portly, with a dark Mediterranean complexion and features. He was bald, bearded and hirsute, having hairy knuckles and even hairy toes. His back and shoulders had a pelt of coarse hair, so he had a kind of beast-like quality when naked, except for the top of his head. He wore glasses, except when working magick and not needing to read. How do I know such intimate details about this man? I am sure you can guess - I saw him nude on more than one occasion during my short two adventures working magick with him.

Michael often performed his Voudoun ceremonies completely nude, or sometimes he would wear a mask. This was quite a departure from Michael the wandering bishop, who would wear beautiful handmade silk and satin vestments and perform private masses using the Greek Orthodox rite (of St. Basil). In his mundane habits, Michael would wear rather drab and even ill fitting clothes - he looked a bit like a slob. He was much more comfortable wearing exotic outfits than fitting in with the urban masses. Since he worked for the State of Illinois in the capacity of a bureaucrat in the government aid services, he probably wore a nice suit and easily fit in with the grey masses of fellow bureau workers. I never saw him wear a suit, since the few times I visited were during weekends.

My initiation consisted of first being completely naked, presented to the various spirits and lwa of the dead, then being forced to drink a third of a bottle of Wild Turkey, and finally, being sexually accosted by this man. I remember distinctly lying naked on the floor of his temple, with this rather flabby fury man laying on top of me, pinning me down while attempting to french kiss me (as I gritted my teeth) and thereby arouse me. Yet all it did was bring out in me a sense of complete revulsion and a stubborn willpower to keep myself from being violated in any manner. I succeeded in that, but then probably didn’t receive the full blessing of being magickally affected or transformed by Michael’s operation. I was given a title and an accolade later, but I actually felt little changed, and I was just relieved that I had avoided any spiritual contamination. My teacher just accepted all of this without a single complaint, and didn’t intercede for me when it was obvious that I was resisting Bertiaux with all my efforts. I was also restrained out of courtesy and some degree of openness to Michael, since otherwise, I would have become violent towards him.

I now know why Christopher didn’t interfere with Michael when he was assaulting me, and that is, he had hopes to receive the many blessings of Bertiaux’s initiations. Indeed, he underwent many initiations, got his bishop’s consecration and other titles, and much of this is actually documented in his books. Christopher, or Bill Schnoebelen, which was his real name, completely cooperated with Michael Bertiaux for a couple of years. He probably had to endure quite a bit of sexual abuse at his hands. I have heard that others who have sought out initiations from Michael Bertiaux received far more than they bargained for, having to forbear him with the favor of anal sex as a certification of the transmission of legitimate occult initiations. Although I had been offered such enticements myself, after just one episode, I tactfully demurred any further accolades. I found Michael’s admission price for initiation into his dubious mysteries much too high to pay, and I knew that I could get the same lore and initiations (if I really wanted them) from other less exploitative sources.

Michael’s history, or how he came to acquire all of this knowledge, was not really a secret. Michael freely told the story about how in the early sixties (1963), he was sent to Haiti as a Christian missionary (in the Anglican church), and I believe that he was, at the time, not a Catholic, but with Catholic sympathies. However, after spending a short time in Haiti, and meeting the man who would become his teacher and mentor (Dr. Jean-Maine), Michael supposedly aborted his missionary job and stayed in Haiti for a number of years. It was there that Michael became an old Catholic bishop (although there is some question about his actual lineage) and acquired a lot of his Voudoun initiations, including learning to be a bokor and gaining access to some of the more obscure and secret occult organizations. 

Keep in mind that this was during the time when Duvalier Sr. was running the country. It’s even rumored that his teacher had to leave Haiti in the last years of his life during Baby Doc’s reign. How much of this was factual is subject to debate. I did see pictures of Michael’s teacher, from older black and white photos to more recent color pictures. Michael also appeared to know a lot of people, including French and European occultists, and others from South America as well as the Carribean. He talked on the phone to some of these individuals during my visits, sometimes in French, and he also talked with his mother at least twice, which made Michael seem more human. I can say that he loved his mother fiercely, and acted as the dutiful son when talking to her on the phone. (I found this to be quite comical, because while talking to his mother, he was sitting in an apartment full of things that she would probably find abhorrent.)

While I stayed with Michael for that one full weekend (and there was another brief weekend some months later), I had to fend him off constantly - he saw it his duty to keep me on the defensive the entire time. However, I also had time to look over Michael’s voluminous papers, notebooks and other materials. Some of what was published in Michael’s book consisted of loose type-written papers back then. I even got to play around with a device that Michael had crafted which he used to travel back and forth in time. It was an old metal lamp cover for a reading light tree which had wires attached to it, connecting it to a flat piece of wood, brightly painted with silver and gold paint on a black background. It was voudoun magickal micro-circuitry (according to Michael), and the lamp shade part, which was shaped like a cone, fit over the head. I never got to try it out to see if it actually worked.

Other devices that Bertiaux had was a black box with a black light in it, which he used for a kind of Voudoun seance, and various African fetishes, some of them authentic. He also had an electrostatic massage wand, which he threatened to use on my privates. Michael’s furniture was ornately painted and decorated with bright colors depicting snakes, scorpions, centipedes, spiders, vevers, sigils and anything else that was spooky or ooky. His walls were covered with hundreds of paintings, depicting either Voudoun or even Lovecraftian horror themes (some of these are shown in Kenneth Grant’s books). At night, these variously primitive horrific paintings and garish furniture seemed to come alive and move and quiver of their own volition, since they were often painted in Acrylics using pure electric or complimentary colors. In a sense, Michael’s home was like sorcerer’s toy box, full of papers, notebooks, magickal implements of various kinds, strange books, paintings, luxurious Persian carpets, Greek Orthodox icons and the images and regalia of black magick - it was a highly cluttered large apartment full of beauty, strange wonder and horror. This is what attracted poor souls to Michael, all of them somehow hoping to gain some of this knowledge. He took from them whatever he could get, mostly in the way of sexual favors, psychic access and various forms of vicious manipulation.

 

During my two visits to see this man, Michael Bertiaux had moved his residence from one location to another on the east side of Chicago. He had at first lived in a large basement flat that had little light to illuminate it during the day. It was a gloomy and tenebrous place, with walls painted a dingy green pastel that seemed to fit Michael quite well. Some months later, he moved to a lofty penthouse apartment overlooking Lake Michigan. This apartment was well lit and actually bright and luminous during the day, with bright white walls and many colorful carpets, yet at night it became the same shadowy place full of nameless things skulking around that his old apartment had been. Spending the night in Michael’s home, although considered an honor, was neither peaceful nor pleasant, at least for me.

Michael was a heavy drinker when I knew him, although alcohol never seemed to have much of an effect on him. He told us that the alcohol served to feed the spirits who drained it from his body, thus freeing him of its influences. I believe that I had experienced the same thing while working with him. He was a gracious host, always serving various exotic mixed drinks to his guests, but I always supposed that he did it to get his guests inebriated so as to make them more amendable to his manipulations. Michael once joked that he wanted to take the various bottles of liquor in his liquor cabinet and remove their labels, replacing them with planetary, Qabbalistic and zodiacal symbols. Then he could mix together various liquors to create what he called Qabbalistic cocktails. To this day I wonder if he actually did that - it seemed like a very creative and amusing idea. While sharing drinks with his guests, Michael would engage in his most favorite pastime; he would gossip about other famous occultists that he knew. Michael also expected his guests to supply him with gossip and dirt on the occultists that they knew. I often wondered if Michael was in the business of blackmailing other occultists, or at the very least, helping to spread rumors and reveal the improprieties of others.   

I found all of Michael’s fetishes, magickal toys and volumes of occult lore to be fascinating and highly alluring - but the price was too high, so I passed on obtaining any of it. I knew that I could be nearly as creative as Bertiaux. I would prefer to know the various sources that I had gathered information from as well as freely admitting to others that I had created or invented something. Michael never admitted to creating or inventing anything. It was all from his various teachers and contacts, and even spirits or lwa, and all of it, according to him, was from traditional sources; but those sources were never cited nor indicated anywhere. After my last harrowing visit, I decided that I would cease having any further contact with him.

Since those times I have met other occultists, Thelemic magicians of various stripes (like Allen Greenfield) who have fully engaged Michael Bertiaux to gain his knowledge, acquire some of his voluminous papers and receive initiations. I also know that they paid a very high price for that knowledge or those initiations. Being made a bishop by Bertiaux was something of an inside joke for me and others who had personally known him, since we knew that the recipient of such an honor had to give himself or herself to Michael in a very intimate way. Yet I never had any regrets about disconnecting myself from Bertiuax, and never sought to reconnect with him.

As an object lesson, I believe in sharing my occult knowledge with others and in engaging with groups in a completely egalitarian manner.  I would never exploit a student or take advantage of them. In short, my brief adventure with Michael Bertiaux and Bill Schnoebelen taught me to respect and honor anyone who came to me for knowledge or experience. I learned a priceless lesson from these two men about how not to teach and engage with other people.

Frater Barrabbas

Our Lady of Darkness & Megapolisomancy

One of the most interesting and amazing science fiction tales that I gobbled up when I was a young man was written by Fritz Leiber, entitled “Our Lady of Darkness.” It was a rare genre from that time, an occult fantasy novel written in the same vein as the tales of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derelith, although Fritz Leiber was a much better writer than Lovecraft (and occultist), in my humble opinion.

The tale takes place in San Francisco in the contemporaneous post Hippy age of the late seventies, when the novel was actually written. The main character, a writer named Franz Westen, has an perilous encounter with a long dead mad magician named Thibaut de Castries, who had written an obscure book with the strange title “Megapolisomancy: A New Science of Cities” and had formed some sinister occult group. That group had oddly consisted of some of the more affluent and outrageous members of the artistic intelligentsia in turn of the century San Francisco, just before the great earthquake of 1906. I will not spoil a good ripping story for the sake of my article, so I will refrain from giving away any further elements of the plot.

Still, I would like to expound a little on the occult premise of the book, and on the art of megapolisomancy, in greater detail. Based on the name, megapolisomancy is the art of predicting and manipulating the present and future using the massive building structures, roads, railways, electric lines, water, sewage and gas lines, underground tunnels and cisterns as a kind of magickal topology, which can be seeded with sigils, talismans and other occult artifacts and thereby, harnessed to whatever ends the magician would desire. As de Castries himself says in his book, as quoted in the story:

“The electro-mephitic city-stuff whereof I speak has potencies for achieving vast effects at distant times and localities, even in the far future and on other orbs, but of the manipulations required for the production and control of such I do not intend to discourse in these pages.”

My reasons for discussing this very obscure topic and giving it some serious consideration is that I met my own version of de Castries in the person of Michael Bertiaux, and he also used a system of magick that was very similar to what was revealed in this fictional tale. First of all, I doubt that Bertiaux had ever read Fritz Leiber’s novel, so the fact that one of his systems of magick corresponded exactly with the book’s is probably a coincidence. The irony is that the book was published in 1977, exactly when I was first introduced to Michael Bertiaux and his strange occult systems. I read this book during the same period that I would occasionally travel to Chicago to visit with Michael and personally experience his magickal rites and ceremonies. Not only that, but Michael attempted to use his own version of megapolisomancy to prevent me from leaving his apartment on the very last time that I visited him. Sounds kind of strange and weird, I know, but it really happened.

In order to unravel this mystery and make sense out of it, let’s first examine the nature of megapolisomancy and look at it from a purely occult perspective. To do this we will have to rely on Fritz Leiber’s story, using various quotes from his fictional historical character, the sinister Thibaut de Castries, to make some sense out of this idiosyncratic occult system. I believe that I can do so in a thorough manner without giving away the plot and the shocking end of the story. I leave you, my readers, to the pleasure of seeking out this book and reading it for yourself, or not.

Megapolisomancy is based on both the energy and spirit model of magick, however, it would seem that the spiritual entities (called paramentals by de Castries) are very likely generated rather than existing forever as part of the domain of Spirit. The energy of this system of magick is based on the collection and disbursement of various substances, like electricity, natural gas, fresh water, sewage (and in the modern age we could include telephone, television and broadband cable and data lines). In addition there is the collection, accumulation and removal of various kinds of trash, both recyclable and non-recyclable substances, as well as the transportation of various goods to be sold and consumed. Streets made of concrete and asphalt provide a surface level grid formulation, but underground pipes, cables and subterranean tunnels for subways and sewers produce a multi-layer grid structure as well.

Buildings and skyscrapers are the most obvious formulations that impact the city-scape, since they produce a vertical grid structure and add loci of extreme mass and weight at strategic points, producing a nexus of horizontal and vertical forces. Thus megapolisomancy uses a kind of complex occult topology to map the confluence of forces and nexus points of what de Castries called “paramentality.” Knowledge of this occult topology allows one the ability to manipulate, prognosticate and alter reality - to create something from nothing, as well as to control or destroy individuals, structures or whole city-scapes.    

De Castries’ main declaration is that cities were originally designed as necropolises, places where the honored dead were housed for eternity. However, in the present modern age, the same designs are used to build massive domiciles for the living. One of only a couple of actual quotes from de Castries’ book seems to describe his dread, loathing and deep insight into the collective gathering of human beings and their associated materials in large megapolises. 

“At any particular time of history there have always been one or two cities of the monstrous sort -- viz., Babel or Babylon, Ur-Lhassa, Nineve, Syracuse, Rome, Samarkand, Tenochtitlan, Peking -- but we live in the Megapolitan (or Necropolitan) Age, when such disastrous blights are manifold and threaten to conjoin and enshroud the world with funebral yet multipotent city-stuff. We need a Black Pythagoras to spy out the evil lay of our monstrous cities and their foul shrieking songs, even as the White Pythagoras spied out the lay of the heavenly spheres and their crystalline symphonies, two and a half millennia ago.” - de Castries (from “Megapolisomancy”)

It is assumed that de Castries himself took the role of the “Black Pythagoras” in producing his system of occultism and magick, which he called the “new science” of the modern age, and through a system of mathematics known only to him (and never divulged) he was able to perceive and control the inherent, unknowable and unperceived powers and spirits that course through the grid structures that permeate a typical city. So instead of feeling alienated and repulsed by the obvious innate evil associated with large cities, de Castries was instead powerfully attracted to them. Where others might have used their knowledge to avoid the dangers of megapolises, de Castries sought to master these inherent forces through an application of his own occult system, making him a kind of puppet master or dark high priest of these negative manifestations. A further quote from de Castries’ book pretty much sums up his particular motives for ensconcing himself in a large city, in this case, San Francisco of 1900. 

“Since we modern city-men already dwell in tombs, inured after a fashion to mortality, the possibility arises of the indefinite prolongation of this life-in-death. Yet, although quite practicable, it would be a most morbid and dejected existence, without vitality or even thought, but only paramentation, our chief companions paramental entities of azoic origin more vicious than spiders or weasels.” - de Castries (from “Megapolisomancy”)

What de Castries is saying about the “azoic origin” of the paramental entities is that they were formed from substances and in conditions where no life had previously existed. Of course, a city is teaming with life besides the obvious human occupants and their deliberate pets and stock animals. There are numerous insect and rodent forms of life, as well as a veritable massive volume of microbes of an almost infinite variety. However, within the pure streams of electricity, natural gas, high pressure steam, not to mention the cables carrying streams of data and condensed video signals, a certain proto elemental life form could be conceived as living, reproducing and thriving, yet all but completely undetected by living creatures - a veritable “ghost in the machine.” These elemental entities are what de Castries has called “paramentals” and their actions and effects are called “paramental phenomena.” De Castries’ system of magick is particularly concerned with these entities and their effects on the artificial world of the city-scape.  Through a system of “neopythagorean metageometrics”, the location and effects of the paramentals can not only be deduced, but they can be revealed as well, allowing the operator a rare vision into the spirit dimension of a large city-scape and seeing what is transpiring on that super-symbolic level.

The method for tapping into and also controlling the behavior and effects of paramentals is through the use of sigils and talismans strategically placed at the various points of a city where the greatest impact of mass, weight and energy flow would occur, verifiable nexus points where streams join and form collective pools of various substances. The most obvious points would be where massive skyscrapers have been built. These points were considered by de Castries as a kind of fulcrum, and the planted talisman acted as a kind of lever that could manipulate the massive powers of the fulcrum and tap into the concentration of paramentals that would collect at these points.

A total of fifty of these sigils were required, all placed throughout the city at strategic nexus points, and a copy of each of the sigils would be placed in a book, called by de Castries, the Grand Cipher, or Fifty-Book. The number 50 was highly significant, since it was the total number of faces associated with all five of the Pythagorean solids. The relationship between the planted sigil or talisman and the Grand Cipher was analogous to a lattice structure or web, which would allow the magician to expand his senses as well as compel the paramentals to perform specific operations. Whatever happens in the city, and how it develops in the future, from the most minute to the most macro level in the various grids would be sensible and perceptible to the megapolisomantic magician.

Paramentals were believed to be controlled or temporarily deflected by certain instruments or substances. These are items (tools) made of pure silver, abstract designs and star forms, such as the pentagram. One could also assume that pure gold or copper might have the same effect as silver (as conductors), and that abstract designs and star forms would do nothing more than channel the powers of a paramental. Considering that they are generated, it would be impossible to completely destroy them without completely destroying the city structure and various substances that generate them. Needless to say, because paramentals are not living or sentient as we would understand, they function without any compassion or sentiment towards other living beings. They can be enslaved and made to perform tasks or they can behave in a fashion that is completely inimical and hostile to all life forms when made aware of them. You almost get the idea that being able to see and interact with paramentals would be a very dangerous preoccupation, and one that could ultimately go awry with disastrous results. 

One of the most important occult components in the system of megapolisomancy would have to be astrology, since it would be necessary to know the impact of various cosmic forces on the large geographic structures of city-scapes. The Fifty-Book appeared to be full of astrological symbology, so one could assume it to be an important feature. A megapolisomantic magician would use astrology to assist him to predict future events and to understand the astrological aspects that precipitated the events of the past. The megapolisomantic magician would likely have to create a natal chart of the city, based upon the date of its legal founding, and this chart would be progressed and compared to transit aspects for the present times as well as the future.

That natal chart and its progressions and transits would have a considerable bearing on certain conditions that would make specific strategic nexus points more volatile than at other times. The factor of timing, and when and where to exert certain manipulations could only be determined by some kind of astrological methodology. It’s also likely that astrology would play a part in the charging and generation of the talismans that would be used to produce the network of 50 planted talisman-sigils. This factor was only obliquely hinted at in the story, but it would make sense based on the description of the Grand Cipher at the end of the story.

De Castries gathered around himself some rather famous and eccentric writers who lived in San Francisco at the turn of the century, such as Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, and poet George Sterling. Other individuals, actors and actresses, artists and free thinkers, the host of the bohemian crowd, gathered around de Castries and became, for a year or so, acolytes of a kind of dark magickal lodge. De Castries called this coterie, the Hermetic Order of the Onyx Dusk, and as the master adept, he wore a specially made black onyx ring whose stone was shaped like a black bird of prey which he wore at all times.

However, after a surprisingly short while, all of the members of this organization became bored and lost interest, since de Castries was loath to reveal the true nature of his occult system, and these sophisticated folks had never really taken him seriously. Individual members were expected to perform random and mindless actions at certain places and times in the city, and were never really told what they were doing or why. After a little while, they got tired of de Castries demands, his short temper, tyrannical and obstreperous mannerisms and his paranoid inability to trust anyone. They all left at around the same time, and the short lived cult of the Onyx Dusk quickly collapsed. Needless to say, de Castries was furious, referring to all of his former associates as traitors and defamers of the mysteries, vowing to get revenge on one and all. A few died within a few years of leaving his group, and others, who were probably terrified of him, likely paid de Castries blackmail money to keep matters quiet and peaceable. Some believed that de Castries had killed some of his former followers by sending paramentals after them, and the fear that was generated by this speculation allowed him to continue to live a comfortable but somewhat meager existence.

Then the great earthquake of 1906 occurred, which almost completely destroyed the city of San Francisco. While most would see it as a natural catastrophe, those former members of de Castries’ group fearfully and quietly blamed him for causing the cataclysm. Afterward, the remaining members of the former group all met terrible and tragic deaths, one by one, until none were left. De Castries had only a couple of devoted friends left who looked after his needs, but his decline slowly continued. They witnessed de Castries’ obsession with reacquiring all of his published books by whatever means, including threats and intimidation, only to burn and destroy them when he got them back. In a sense, de Castries was attempting to erase completely whatever information about this occult system that he had put forward in his books, as if to ensure that only he would have any knowledge of it.

By the 1920's de Castries was an aged and cantankerous old man whose paranoia had grown to the point that it made him a borderline psychotic. Clark Ashton Smith, a science fiction, fantasy and horror writer of some fame was one of the last of de Castries followers. Yet even he could only stand so such much of de Castries’ raving madness and moments of terrible clarity. Some quotes from his diary that he kept at the time give quite an impression of what it was like to spend afternoons in de Castries’ parlor, at the inexpensive hotel Rhodes. So terrifying were these sessions, that Smith couldn’t even commit to his own diary the name of Thibaut de Castries, instead calling him Tybalt or Tiberias. Here are few excerpts from Smith’s diary, as presented in the story.
 
“Three hours today at 607 Rhodes with the furious Tybalt. All I could take. Half the time railing at this fallen-off acolytes, the other half contemptuously tossing me scraps of paranatural truth. But what scraps! How that old devil sees into cities and their invisible sicknesses - a new Pasteur, but of the dead-alive.

He says his book is kindergarten stuff, but the new thing - the core and why of it and how to work it - he keeps only in his mind and in the Grand Cipher he’s so sly about. He sometimes calls it (the Cipher) his Fifty-Book, that is, if I’m right and they are the same. Why fifty?” - C. A. Smith’s diary

One of the last entries in Smith’s diary shows both the fascination and the horror of being exposed to de Castries’ theories and ideas, and we can only assume, experimental proofs.

“I should get out myself - I’ve all that I can use and there are stories crying to be written. But can I give up the ultimate ecstasy of knowing each day I’ll hear from the very lips of Black Pythagorus some new paranatural truth? It’s like a drug I have to have. Who can give up such fantasy? - especially when - the fantasy is the truth.

The paranatural, only a word - but what it signifies! The supernatural - a dream of grandmothers and priest and horror writers. But the paranatural! Yet how much can I take? Could I stand full contact with a paramental entity and not crack up?

Coming back today, I felt that my senses were metamorphosing. San Francisco was a meganecropolis vibrant with paramentals on the verge of vision and audition, each block a surreal cenotaph that would bury Dali, and I one of the living dead aware of everything with cold delight. But now I am afraid of this room’s walls!” - C. A. Smith’s diary

In this final entry, we can see that Smith has finally deduced that he himself is getting into trouble with de Castries, and he also learned the fate first hand of those other followers who met tragic ends.

“Hated what gloating Tiberius hinted today about the disappearance of Bierce and the deaths of Sterling and Jack London. Not only that they were suicides (which I categorically deny, particularly in the case of Sterling!) but that there were other elements in their deaths - elements for which the old devil appears to take credit.

He positively sniggered as he said, ‘You can be sure of one thing, my dear boy, that all of them had a very rough time paramentally before they were snuffed out, or shuffled off to their grey paranatural hells. Very distressing, but it’s the common fate of Judases - and little busybodies.’ he added, glaring at me from under his tangled white eyebrows.

Could he be hypnotizing me? Why do I linger one, now that the menaces outweigh the revelations? That disjointed stuff about techniques of giving paramental entities the scent - clearly a threat.” - C. A. Smith’s diary

Not long after writing that diary entry, Smith quickly abandoned his hotel room and left San Francisco without leaving any note of explanation or apology, never to return. De Castries saw it as yet another betrayal and vowed to have revenge on Smith. However, Clark Ashton Smith lived to a very advanced age, but even so, he became a recluse and avoided traveling to any large cities or metropolitan areas for reason we can only speculate about.

De Castries died in 1929, ironically just a few months shy of the great stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression. His body was cremated and then later, the ashes were secretly buried at the top of a wild promontory called Corona Heights. There, his urn of ashes and his magick ring, lay hidden through the decades that followed, enduring all of the major building projects that followed his death. However, the magickal currents and powers that de Castries had tapped and controlled were still active, and the Grand Cipher, hidden away in a secret place, acted as the lever for the fulcrum of the Trans-America building and the massive twin TV tower, positioned obliquely to the secret burial on Corona Heights and the place where the Grand Cipher was hidden. These magickally strategic points were all fully alive and waiting for the moment when someone or something would activate them, manifesting de Castries’ final curse on humanity.

Anyway, that’s how the book promotes this system of magick, and I felt it prudent to go over the details so that my own personal experience back in the late seventies with Michael Bertiaux would make more sense. You see, Michael had somehow intuited this entire system of magick, and had placed a number of talismans at various locations in the great city of Chicago. Michael lived at that time in the downtown area right near the shore line of Lake Michigan. He called these talismans the strategic points of his spider’s web, and through it, he could draw power, cause things to happen, and even project into the past and the future. He might have been lying, or even exaggerating, and I might have written it all off as some eccentric gag, except that he demonstrated to me personally how it worked.

I was visiting Michael one weekend day when we also happened to meet an acquaintance of his who had flown in from Europe. I was with my teacher, Christopher Syn (Bill Schnoebelen), and somehow, we invited Michael’s friend to accompany us back to Milwaukee and stay there as our guest for a week. This fellow was very polite and charismatic (unlike Michael), and he knew a lot about the occult and had traveled a lot, too. He had many fascinating and entertaining stories to tell us. Why he was visiting Michael at that particular time wasn’t revealed to me, but then Michael had a lot of visitors back in those days. Anyway, he stayed with me and with Christopher for a week, and then needed to get back to Chicago to catch his flight back home. I volunteered to drive this fellow back to Chicago, so we both climbed into my Red Gremlin and drove down the turnpike to that great megapolis.

After I got there, I stayed with Michael for a few hours to wait for the traffic to die down and also to be sociable. Michael had plans for me, however, and wanted me to spend the night at his place to work magick with him and my new friend. I demurred, since I had to get back to Milwaukee so I could go to work at my evening job. I couldn’t stay because at that time I needed every penny that I earned to survive. Michael insisted that I stay, and began to threaten me magickally, even though he made it out to be a joke. He told me about his magickal system where he was able to tap the powers and spirits of the actual structure of the city, and could use it to force me to stay. He told me that my automobile wouldn’t get me safely back home, which was a rather frightening thing to say.

I was adamant, and despite the protests and the various bribes and offers that were made, I effusively apologized and then left. When I got to my car, I discovered that it wouldn’t start. I used my will and desperate desire to get home, and somehow managed to get the car started, but it was running very roughly, with gouts of black smoke coming out of the tail pipe. Even though this car was six years old and had a fair amount of mileage on it, it had never acted this way as long as I had owned it. Running on what seemed like four out of six cylinders, I jerkily and weakly drove away, wondering if I was even going to make it home, but unwilling to return to Michael’s apartment. I used my will and my innate connection with the car to proceed back down the city street to where the freeway was located. I noticed that the further I got away from Michael’s apartment, the car began to run better and smoother, until by the time I entered the freeway and proceeded north on my way to Milwaukee, my car acted as it had always acted. As I crossed the state line into Wisconsin, my car was functioning normally. I arrived back in Milwaukee without an incident, but it seemed that a dark power had locked onto my car, but then allowed me to continue. Had Michael been more forceful, the car would have either failed to run, or I might have had an accident when the car broke down on the freeway somewhere. Such an incident would have put me in mortal danger. I got home because my will was so strong, and because Michael let me go, but not until showing me that his magickal spider web was both potent and long reaching.

So, it would seem that I had a personal experience with a variation of megapolisomancy, and that Michael Bertiaux was my own real version of de Castries. I have no doubts that such a system of magick is not only plausible, but in fact it is also completely practical. If I lived in an urban area, I would likely experiment with this system of magick, but I live in the country and happily so. However, I have expounded on this system of magick just in case anyone has any interest in experimenting with it and seeing if they can get it to work. I am certain that a lot of details have been left out. Yet a crafty and creative magickal practitioner would probably be able to discover how to make this system work, if not by insight, then by trial and error. I guess that such an eccentric system of magick would be very attractive to a Chaos Magician, except for the necessary use of astrology.

Anyway, I have presented this system from an experienced occult perspective, which was missing from Fritz Leiber’s novel. Yet he had uncannily included more than enough components to make my work fairly simple and straightforward. I kind of wonder how much Fritz Leiber really knew about the occult, but since he is now dead for some years, we will never know.

As a final note, I believe that the paramentals are out there. They can be found and then enslaved to the will of a true Black Pythagorus, yet it is doubtful that such a person would ever come forth and reveal himself. I suspect that Michael Bertiaux would have qualified, but my evidence is unfortunately anecdotal and over thirty years old. Still, Megapolisomancy is a very credible system of magick for the urban magus. Here’s to the old paramentality!

Frater Barrabbas