Frater Barrabbas Author Literary Tour - Part 6 - Elemental Powers For Witches

 

My first book in the “For Witches” series was in print by 2017, but by then I had taken on a new job that readily took away all of the my free time. I stopped writing articles in my blog and I was traveling between Minneapolis and Richmond, staying there for three weeks and then going home for a long weekend. I was putting in 60 to 70 hours a week of work, and travel added to that time spent solely on work. I visited my wife and pet kitties for just 48 hours before having to travel back to work in Richmond. Needless to say, that whole project turned out badly for me on one hand, but having to leave it was a reward on the other.

I moved to Richmond to work on that project; but not only did I not get a dime from the company for making that move, I was also pulled off that project because those who had planned the time-line compressed what was two years of work into just eight months. I was punished for missing that time-line, even though it was completely unreasonable. Someone had to be blamed for the project going awry, so as the data manager, I was the one. Certainly, those who proposed such a truncated project time-line to the client couldn’t possibly be blamed for their mistakes, because they were upper management and immune to such accountability. Anyway, I was put on my old project and then had to prove myself for over a year later that I was worthy of keeping that job. It was a time of work and left me with little time for writing and even working magic. Getting booted off of that project was a blessing in disguise, and I went on to getting chosen for a new project where my skills and abilities were at least appreciated.

My work on the next book in this series didn’t start until the Covid-19 Pandemic began to manifest, but I had the concept and even a preliminary table of contents defined before the winter solstice of 2019. So, during the lock-down, I focused on writing my 6th book, and of course it took a lot less time than any of my previous writing endeavors.

This is how the book “Elemental Powers for Witches” was written and published, while the world labored with the first in a hundred years world pandemic. Tragically, many people died from that disease; but I had already begun something of a personal sequestering, so I just continued it and made certain that I had the preventive vaccinations when they became available. I was old, sedentary and suffered from allergies, so I figured that if I got Covid that it would likely greatly harm me, so I took all of the precautions, and luckily, I had been working from home since early 2019.

Here is the  advertising text for that book.

Energy magic uses the power of Elementals, Qualified Elementals and Uncrossing mechanisms to fully empower practitioners and make them materially successful. This book seeks to bring that knowledge to the Modern Witch, making it accessible and easily added to the lore she is already using.

Since the 5th Century BCE, a system of mysticism, religious philosophy and magic was delivered to the world by the philosopher Empedocles, who brought us the knowledge and wisdom of the four Elements of Fire, Air, Water and Earth, and the Aether as Spirit.

Across the ages that knowledge was developed to become the energy model of magic that is used today to fuel material-based rituals. Until now, this methodology was exclusive to ceremonial magicians. This book seeks to take that advanced energy work and place it into the hands of the Modern Witch. These rituals were derived and formulated to be easily accessible to the modern practitioner and to fit what is already a part of their lore.

Energy magic is used to empower individuals so that they can at least feel that they have a chance of dealing with difficulties and adversity. It also gives them methods to address specific deficiencies or to counter adverse circumstances with positive ones. Energy magic is used to build up the self and turn potentials into realized goals. It focuses on the material world because it is the basis for all that occurs in our life and colors our experiences. Because the world is not fair, we need something to help us turn the world slightly to our advantage.

What energy magic is used for is to solve problems within yourself and the circumstances of your life in the material world. It is not only a body of magical rituals and techniques; it is also the way to approach a problem in order to resolve it. There are several steps that are followed when approaching a solution to a given desire or need, and these can be used to also sort out and pin-point the one thing that will open up your possibilities and resolve whatever issue you are facing.

This book was written for Witches, Wiccans, and Pagans who wish to enhance and formalize their approach to the energy workings for self-empowerment and material based magical workings. This book assumes some degree of knowledge in basic practices so it isn’t exactly for beginners, but it does make this type of magic, and the use of the energy and information models of magic, accessible and easily realized. It is also a sequel and companion book to the published work “Spirit Conjuring for Witches” so, certainly the readers who liked that book would likely also enjoy the sequel. 

As I have pointed out previously, there are three gaps in the magical practices of modern traditional Witchcraft, and these are spirit conjuring, advanced energy workings and talismanic magic. I had just written a book that comprehensively dealt with spirit conjuring from a traditional Witchcraft perspective, so I urged myself to write a book to fill the second gap.

Advanced energy workings represent the basic foundation of magical practices where I significantly extended the repertoire given to me in my initiatory tradition. I did that back in the 1970's not long after being initiated into Witchcraft. I had been working on the cone of power variations for a few years after being introduced to the concept when a version of the Gardnerian Book of Shadows was published by Lady Sheba, and when I had acquired the book “Mastering Witchcraft” by Paul Huson. I also had a copy of “King of the Witches”, which introduced me to Alex Sanders. With these books in hand I was able to put together my own system of Witchcraft based magic. By the time I was initiated on Candlemas Eve, 1973, I already had a system of magic, and I was starting to develop new rituals working with the energy model of magic.

Using an inverse perspective, I deduced that the opposite energy to the obvious masculine cone of power, and that was the feminine vortex. A vortex has a widdershins circuit, and instead of being polarized on the periphery like the cone of power, it uses a cross-roads to join the polarities into the center. The widdershins spiral around the circle performed by the operator is used to concentrate the energy and then push it down into a singularity, making a kind of stable magical black-hole. The vortex was the first variation of the cone of power that I had invented, and it was to be followed by other structures and rituals. Experiencing a vortex generated in a magical circle was a total game-changing stroke of genius, but actually, it was just an obvious step that no one had thought about so far.

While energy workings in traditional Witchcraft magic were a basic staple for the modern practitioner, it was based on a concept that was alien to medieval witchcraft and to ceremonial magic in general. The basic belief about magic was that it was the medium used by and propagated by spirits. Humans were basically powerless, although that was contrary to what the philosophers taught in antiquity. Yet their practices had been mostly lost and what remained was subsumed by the monastic orders of the Catholic Church. Where this idea about human energy came from was the East, and it became part of our western cultural heritage when the teachings of the Indian Yogis became available to the west, around the late 19th to early 20th century.

Studying Yoga became an important part of mastering the art of ceremonial and ritual magic, and many of the early practitioners of the 20th century sought out that knowledge of the East. With Hatha Yoga came prana-yama, yantra, trantra and Kundalini Yoga, and the concept of bodily energy fields that could be harnessed and projected through the breath (prana) became available to the West. It completely changed the way that magicians saw their magic, as evidenced in the writings of Crowley, Bardon, and many others.

Modern Witchcraft was a recipient in that chain of knowledge and it was used in the concepts of energy raising and projecting magical powers. Gardner pretended that this had always been a part of witchcraft from antiquity, except that there was no evidence of this claim and the witches of antiquity typically worked their art in solitary exclusion. It was only in the fever dreams of a handful of scholars who spread the myth of witches meeting in large groups to celebrate their sabbats and worship the devil in the mid 15th century. Gardner’s story about witches gathering together to work magic to prevent Hitler from invading England during the second world war, where even a few older members expired in the frenzied process, was very likely an urban myth.

All evidence seems to support the idea that most witches had practiced their art either completely alone or within small and discrete family traditions. Yet the witchcraft inquisition imagined large groups of witches flying on their brooms and drugged and hallucinating on their toxic ointments, so to them and much of the culture there were indeed large hidden covens working their evil deeds. Gardner took that fantasy and made it into a cultural phenomenon, and the eastern ideas of bodies raising and projecting yogic energy was quietly integrated into that body of practice. By the time that I and others in the early 1970's had joined the Witchcraft tradition, the idea of raising and projecting energy had been a standard part of the practice since Doreen Valiente had reformed it in the 1950's.

However, as a practice, the energy model of magic in modern Witchcraft was simplistic and undeveloped. There was the cone of power and that was about it. I was very much intrigued by the whole concept and set to work to expand and develop how this magical model was used in Witchcraft magic. This is how I came to develop the vortex, then the magical pylon, and then by extension, the pyramid of power, which is a much more sophisticated and nuanced version of the cone of power. Once I started on this path, I continued to work and develop more sophisticated rituals that made use of complex combinations of ritual structures to push the energy model of magic far beyond what I was given as a newly initiated Witch.

The first step that I took was to qualify the undistinguished magical energy into specific qualities. The four elements seemed to be the qualities that I was looking for when it came to describing the magical energies that I sought to use. This pairing of magical energy with the four elements has a long history, and that the elements and the breathing cycle seemed to also be linked. This of course was the Indian concept of prana being merged with the western occult perspective of the four elements. Other practitioners had also made this connection, so that the four elements could be visualized as qualities associated with a certain kind of energy, color and quality and absorbed and projected out through the breath. The four elements could also be qualified with each other to produce sixteen combinations, which I called elementals. Each of these combined elementals also consisted of four pure emanations where an element was combined with itself. At the earliest time in my magical workings I worked with these qualities, but it required a more advanced set of ritual structures to generate them within the magic circle.

To generate an element one can use the invoking pentagram in an efficient manner, which was made public to many practicing magicians through the Golden Dawn writings published by Israel Regardie. Thus, there was the superior pentagram ritual, which I sought to emulate in a fashion. However, to invoke an elemental energy required a more complex ritual structure. The elemental octagon was the key to generating an elemental energy within a magic circle, and liking the shape and quality of that star polygon, I sought to deploy as my ritual pattern for energy workings. I used the four watchtowers and the four angles or in-between points to define the base (watchtowers) and qualifier (angles) of the elemental. To each of these eight points I set the invoking pentagram of the base element (watchtowers) and the invoking pentagram of the qualifying element (angles).

In the center of the circle I set the invoking pentagram to the nadir or infra-point for the base, and to the zenith or ultra-point, I set the invoking pentagram of the qualifier. I also joined the four watchtowers together to form a square, and the four angles to form another square, and then joined the watchtowers to the infra-point and the angles to the ultra-point. Then I stood in the center of the circle with my staff and drew the two elements together through my body and the staff. All that was required to project the elemental energy out into the world was to circumambulate the magic circle with spiral arc, starting in the center of the circle and arcing out to the periphery of the circle, circling three times past the northern watchtower and then projecting the energy with the staff outside of the northern watchtower, thereby exteriorizing it.

I also used a form of sigil magic to symbolize my objective or desire, and I used this to imprint the energy field when it was fully generated. I could have just imprinted it with my mind, but I found that a sigil was more effective. I started out just making a designed but automatic scribble on a piece of parchment while projecting my intention into it. I later adopted a more formal methodology for designing sigils when I was exposed to writings and artwork of that famed magician and pagan witch, Austin Spare. This was how I developed a ritual system to work with elemental energies, but I was not yet completed with this development process.

One approach that I developed was to make use of specific named elemental spirits and integrate them into my magical energy rituals. I used them as intelligent energy fields of empowerment and focused, projected beams of force to influence or even bend the laws of causality. I also incorporated this approach in my magic, making use of the 16 Enochian god-head pairs as derived from the four watchtower tablets and the Enochian calls. I then later matched up the sixteen elemental qualities with the 16 Grand Dukes from the grimoire Theurgia-Goetia and found that they were even more potent than the Enochian elemental spirits. The pairing of a spirit with an elemental quality produced a more powerful combination and helped to animate the elemental magical energy so that it had both power and sentience.

Another approach that I developed, and this was unique to my workings, was to pair an element with one of the ten sephiroth of the Qabalah to generate what I called the 40 qualified powers. Later on, I refined this working by using the Pythagorean definitions of the numbers 1 through 9 and 10, which I felt was more appropriate for a Witchcraft magical approach. When I used the Qabalah, I also qualified the four elements with the four Qabalistic worlds, making a very potent magical combination that existed fully within a Qabalistic domain. If you weren’t into the Qabalah, though, this methodology wouldn’t be as appealing. For this reason I adopted another more simplistic methodology that removed the Qabalistic qualifiers and just used the four elements and the ten Pythagorean mystical numbers. The forty qualified powers also matched up with the Tarot cards ace to ten of the four suites.

To match spiritual qualifications or specific entities to each of the 40 qualified powers became more difficult. I had a matrix of the four elements and the ten spiritual attributes, but assigning them to spirits became more difficult. My first approach was to give the element of Fire abstract qualities, Deities to the element of Water, Angelic groups to the element of Air, and terrestrial animals to the element of Earth, emulating the attributes of the four Qabalistic worlds. I later assigned the ruling angels of the 36 decans to the attributes and elements covering the first through the ninth for the four elements, and then assigned one of the four elemental Kings to the final four. That assignment appeared to work out quite well, since the energy component of the qualified power was dominant over the spirit attribute, so there was no need to actually conjure the associated spirit. I just had to acknowledge and call the spirit as part of the process of generating this kind of elemental power.

The ritual structure for the qualified power used a simple pyramid structure where the four watchtowers (or angles) were set with the base element via the invoking pentagram, and the watchtowers were connected to each other with lines of force, and also connected to the zenith where an invoking pentagram of spirit masculine or feminine was also set. The energy was intensified and fused into the center when the practitioner walked an invoking spiral from the periphery of the magic circle to the center. This pyramid energy field then was charged with the projected invocation of the spiritual quality and it signs or symbols, and then resultant energy was exteriorized through a banishing spiral walked by the practitioner from the center of the magic circle to the outer periphery, where the energy was projected and released.

Since this was a rather simple ritual structure, I had introduced it in my first book, Pyramid of Powers, as a way to learn how to ultimately work elemental magic. As I experimented with this ritual working I found that it had its own sophistication and generated a very potent energy field. Joined with a vortex, it was just as useful and powerful as elemental magical workings, since it joined an element with a godhead attribute to produce a very spiritualized energy. I have kept this working along with elemental ritual workings as the basic work-horses for my magical practice.

Of course, there is much more that I developed using the energy model of magic, and these workings that I have discussed here (and in my book) were really just the beginning of a very fundamental and important process in developing magical workings that had both a spiritual and a material impact. I would find later on that using energy fields and even geometric prismatic energy structures in my rituals would give them a more materialized impact, both on me as the operator, and on the overall magical objective. It certainly allowed me and others who shared in this technique of magic to feel this kind of unleashed power in a tangible manner.

Getting back to my book, I have taken these basic elements of working energy magic and expounded on them, presenting a number of ritual examples for the student to borrow and develop. I not only showed the components of these rituals and explained how they work, but I also demonstrated how there was a continuity with the Pythagorean practices and the philosophy and magic of that Greek master, Empedocles. I also put my version of an uncrossing ritual in the book, which I felt was an important addition because it helped the practitioner to overcome internal and external blockages when elemental magic failed to produce the desired results.

The energy system of magic has a long history, going back to ancient Greece and probably beyond that. Some of these methodologies were probably developed by shamans in prehistoric times, and continued to be practiced by various individuals. The philosophers of antiquity knew and practiced these methods of energy generation and projection, but this knowledge was lost during the dark ages. They were likely never written down, or if they were, they were kept secret and disappeared when Christianity began to dominate the western world. They only reappeared when the west discovered the teachings and practices of the Indian sages.

Yet it was the Golden Dawn that took that arcane knowledge from the east and brought it back into western magic. It then spread from there to occupy a place of importance in many different traditions of magic in the west. Some traditions, like Bardon’s system of magic, borrowed the techniques straight from Indian practices mixed with a bit of western perspectives. We must be indebted to all of these different traditions that have given us the system of energy magic that we now possess.

What I have done in my book is present to my reader an expansion of the energy system of magic as it applies to Witchcraft and Pagan practices. I believe that it is an excellent starting point for anyone who seeks to add a high level of materialization, sensations and probability bending energy into their magical practices.

Frater Barrabbas

Secret Key to Invocation and Evocation in Ritual Magick - Part 3

This is part 3 of a three part series on the art and practice of invocation and evocation as taught within the Order of the Gnostic Star. This final part is about the Archetypal Gate series of rituals developed as a replacement for the more cumbersome methodologies initially developed in the Order.

Archetypal Gate Ritual and Variations

One of the more interesting derivations to the rite of invocation was when I developed and refined the ritual pattern that I called the Archetypal Gate ritual. This is a pretty complex and condensed pattern, but it allowed me to incorporate all of the important structures for an invocation into a single and brief ritual. It allowed me to discard the Gate of Revealing rite and thus make the working far more simple and less cumbersome to perform. Where the typical invocation would take around three hours to perform, this one would take less than an hour, making it idea for a working that had a limited time span.

The whole premise for developing this ritual working was to invoke the Archangels of the four elements, which was an important rite used in the first series of Enochian workings that I performed back in the early 1990's. I have since altered these rituals when I determined that the Archangels of the four elements as a hierarchy didn’t really didn’t work very well, and instead chose to use this same ritual structure to invoke the Elemental Godhead and the Seraphim and Cherubim. I have further elaborated on this ritual structure to include the Godheads, archangels and angels of the Sephiroth and the archangels of the 12 zodiacal signs. My assumption was that I didn’t need so much ritual technology to invoke these spirits, since they were as a whole, benign and powerfully aligned to the One.

So how did I determine the pattern for this working? At it turned out, it was a natural evolution from the invoking through a matrix mechanism and the Enochian Planetary vortex. The uniquely new technique that I employed for this working was a cross-roads vortex with a central pylon structure and an eastern aligned tetrahedral gateway that used the trapezoidal cross device, producing a prismatic trapezohedron. I called this new ritual structure the archetypal gateway, and it functioned as a combination entry point and domain for the spirit as well as a place to describe the imago and characteristics of the angelic spirit. Let’s examine the overall ritual pattern for this working and see how this rite was able to do so much with such a compact set of ritual actions.

Rituals using this pattern are based on the quality of the four elements as expressed through the four Qabalistic worlds. Thus, the foundation of this working would set one of the four Qabalistic Worlds as the target for the working. The obvious ritual mechanism to set the Qabalistic World was the ritual called the Qabalistic Pyramid of Power, so like other ritual workings, the first level or layer would be the specific Qabalistic World. For these workings, the first three Worlds of Atziluth, Briah and Yetzirah would established, depending on the hierarchical level of the target spirit. 

Another quality that would influence the working would be a specific device that would be used to qualify the tetrahedral gateway (in this case, an invoking pentagram), and then intoning the detailed invocation used to describe the image or imago of the spirit. Only these three qualities would determine the specific attributes of any given spirit, whether Godhead, Seraphim, Cherubim, Archangel or Angel. Other attributes would be the 10 Sephiroth (using the eneagram) and the 12 zodiacal signs (gateway set to spirit, and central pylon set with element and astrological quality). So, the four overall attributes used in this rite were the Qabalistic Worlds, Elements, Sephiroth (Planets) and Zodiacal Signs. I also employed a consecrated sigil that was drawn on a piece of parchment to further help identify the spirit in those workings.

Qabalistic Pyramid of Power consists of four pylons set to the four Watchtowers, where the base of the pylon is charged with an invoking pentagram of a specific element, and the apex, with a specific invoking pentagram of spirit. Another invoking pentagram is drawn in the ultra-point, and these become the five points of the pyramid. The element quality and gender of the spirit is associated with the Qabalistic World, where Atziluth and Yetzirah are considered masculine, and Briah and Assiah are deemed to be feminine. The Qabalistic World is defined by the combination of the five points (circle squared and pylons drawn to the ultra-point) and the final formula exegesis, where it is expressed through the artifice of a tetragramaton.

Overlaying the Qabalistic Pyramid of Power is the Archetypal Gateway. The foundation of this structure is anchored in the infra-point (an unoccupied point in the circle) with an inverted pentagram of feminine spirit, representing the materialization of spirit through the descent of the feminine Godhead. Laid upon this empowered device are the cross-roads set with the hexagram of union. The celebrant begins at the southeastern angle, draws a hexagram, and then turns to walk directly to the northwestern angle, and draws therein a hexagram of union. He then proceeds deosil to the northeastern angle and draws a hexagram, and finally, he turns and walks to the southwestern angle and draws a hexagram of union. 

After setting these four points and the cross-roads, the celebrant then projects a line of force to formulate an inner widershins circle. As an aside, the hexagram of union is a device that is drawn as two conjoined triangles with no consideration for the planetary attributes, since it represents a point of fusion or unity. Finally, the celebrant proceeds to the center of the circle and draws another hexagram of union into the ultra-point, and then using an invoking spiral, joins the central hexagram at the zenith with the inverted pentagram in the nadir. The combined structures produce a powerful invoking vortex used to summon a spirit associated with one of the three Qabalistic worlds.

At this point, the celebrant intones the first general Enochian invocation for the spirit, spending some time internally calling and summoning it. This general invocation will be intoned a total of three times within this working, and to do this the celebrant inserts the spirit’s name and its associated hierarchy into the blank lines located in the invocation verbiage.

Upon the layers of the Qabalistic pyramid of power and the cross-roads vortex is erected the tetrahedral archetypal gateway, being therefore, the third layer. This gateway is aligned to the East, so it includes the Southwest, Northwest and Eastern circle points, as well as the ultra-point. At each of the three gate points is set a trapezoidal cross device, and these three points are joined to form a tetrahedral structure (angles and watchtower joined to form a triangle, then each point drawn to the ultra-point and joined in a deosil circle). In the meso-point is set a device to qualify the gateway, then the celebrant exits the gate and charges the whole structure with an invoking spiral. What is needed at this point is to set a charge to the whole structure, and this where the staff is used to perform that task and to assume the focus of the invocation rite itself.

Taking the staff in her hands, the celebrant re-enters the gate and faces the East, holding the staff parallel to the ground. She begins to slowly turn in place in a counter clockwise direction, while ever increasing the velocity of the turning until she strongly feels the generated power. Then the Celebrant stops spinning and places the staff into the center node of the circle. She draws the infra-point up through the staff into the ultra-point with her right hand while the left is holding the staff.  Then the Celebrant intones the general Enochian invocation for the second time, chanting the name of the spirit repeatedly afterwards. The staff has now become the physical pylon through which the spirit will manifest. (I actually use a central altar in these kinds of workings and carefully place the staff tight up against the altar, and then I can remove my hand and the staff remains standing by itself for the rest of the working.)

The final stage of this working is what is known as the preparation for the invocation proper, and the focus points for this activity are the infra-point, meso-point and ultra-point depicted by the base, middle and apex of the staff-pylon. At each point, the celebrant performs a specific invocation of the spirit and its associated hierarchy. At the base of the staff-pylon, the celebrant invokes the spirit of the qualified gateway, and at the apex, he invokes the unified spirit of Atziluth. At the meso-point or middle of the staff-pylon, a special device is set to further characterize the spirit (sometimes this is the spirit’s sigil). All three points are unified through the artifice of an invoking spiral, and this is where the invocation is to be performed.

First, the celebrant performs a direct calling or summoning of the spirit by the power of its name, and then he progresses to a descriptive calling that describes the qualities and attributes of that entity. Finally, he intones the general Enochian invocation for the third and final time, ending the it with a period of repeating the name of the spirit, over and over, until the spirit is sensed and answers the calling. While performing this repetitive calling, the celebrant should draw the power down with his hand from the apex of the staff-pylon to the base, and bow before it (as if it were the spirit itself), entering into a kind of meditative trance state sitting before the pylon for the duration of the working.

         

Once the working is completed, then the celebrant closes and seals the gate portal and seals all of the circle points. However, the sigil that was used to perform this rite can be reused as an access point for future meditative trance states to contact the spirit.

I have modified this ritual working and added to it other mechanisms for invoking other kinds of angelic spirits. In order to invoke the Godheads, archangels and angels of the 10 Sephiroth, there is a modified version of the Archetypal Gate ritual that uses part of the Eneagram ritual to define the specific Sephirah, and within that expanded matrix, the celebrant is able to invoke the entities associated with that Qabalistic quality. This rite uses both the Qabalistic Pyramid of Power and Eneagram to set the proper invoking matrix. To employ the Zodiac as an expanded matrix for this rite, the celebrant sets the tetrahedral gateway to the Element of Spirit. She erects a mini-pylon in the meso-point consisting of an invoking pentagram for the zodiacal element at the base and one of the three lesser hexagrams at the apex, and this device determines the specific zodiacal quality. The Qabalistic world is always set to Briah and the invocation and imago of the spirit is unique to the array of zodiacal archangels.

Yet another variation is used to invoke either one of the 72 ha-Shem angels or one of the 72 Goetic demons. First, the Qabalistic world is set to Yetzirah, then the cross-roads are set with pylons instead of the hexagram of union. The base of the pylon is qualified with an invoking pentagram of the zodiacal element, and the apex is set with one of the three lesser hexagrams, determining the zodiacal quality. Through this cross-road vortex the celebrant summons the zodiacal archangelic ruler. Then, the tetrahedral gateway is erected, with the variables of an inverted and western aligned gateway for demons, and obverse and eastern aligned gateway for angels of the ha-Shem. An additional qualification is where the celebrant sets the tetrahedral gateway with either an obverse triangle (angel/demon by day) or inverted triangle (angel/demon by night). I have only recently written this new ritual and I have not yet tested it, but I hope to test and fully vet it before the coming spring.

As you can see, I have managed to develop a number of variations to invoke angelic and even demonic spirits throughout the basic hierarchy of Element, Sephirah and sign of the Zodiac. It would seem that this new method, called the Archetypal Gateway, is very adaptable and quite capable of replacing all of the previous systems. Although I tend to use it mostly for angelic spirits, it’s obvious that I could use it more extensively by employing even more variations of this simple but condensed technique.  

Conclusion

After a period of nearly 30 years, I have successfully developed and deployed the various techniques and methodologies described in the three sections of this article. Each methodology has its own particular use and importance within the Order. So there will be no need to retire any of them or replace one for the other. I may add additional rituals using different techniques, but I believe that the foundation already established should suffice to perform all of the invocations necessary to function as an adept magician within the Order.

One lesson that can be derived from this over-long historical narrative is that occult discoveries tend to be serendipitous. It also demonstrates that finding a solution to a problem often heralds a completely new and better way of doing something. Through a process of active experimentation, I was able to advance the methodologies that I used to perform an invocation. I seemed never to be completely satisfied with whatever technique I had derived, and I was always experimenting with some new structure or method, and this is still true even today. Nothing that I have developed is ever the final word or the final form, and there is always a new and more efficient way of doing something than what is currently being used.

Where all of this experimentation and development will ultimately lead me is uncertain. I would suspect that becoming a master or high adept would change everything, including the methodologies that I currently employ to work magick. I have conjectured from time to time that a high adept might not need to perform any ritual magick whatsoever, and that rituals would be replaced by total immersion within the world of spirit. If one were to remain steadfastly engaged within that world, then merely by an act of willing something, as long as it had even a tiny probability of occurring, would make it so.

The trick, I suppose, would be to sustain a state of ecstatic trance, which is used to enter into the spiritual domain. If not actively experiencing ecstasy, then its potent after effects would have to be great enough to maintain a permanent connection to the spirit world. I would imagine that such a high adept would not be very functional in the mundane world, but would have to live in something like a magical monastery, where the day to day necessities would be taken care of by lesser adepts. The lesser work would be handled by the initiates, and the great work would be accomplished by the master; a wonderful position to be in if one could even find it.

To have this kind of power is to be able to make thoughts become reality, and reality is reduced to the level of thoughts - there would be no difference. Of course to wield such power, one would also need a great deal of wisdom, prescient intuition and most importantly, prudence. There are many hilarious stories about individuals being allowed one or more unbounded wishes, and how such a power generally causes far more calamity than a satisfying outcome. To such an ability must be added the sobering thought: “Be careful what you wish for.”

Until I can realize this kind of true magical power (if that is even possible within a mortal life-span), I will be content to experiment and seek better and more efficient ways to achieve the same results using the more cumbersome artifacts of rituals and magical tools.

Frater Barrabbas