Magic 101 Revisited Again

My previous article stirred up some interesting comments and produced some really engaging points of view. I am, of course, referring to the article “Beware Tilting Against Windmills” where I discuss how performing a binding ritual against a major world organization is probably the wrong kind of magic to use in such an endeavor. A binding ritual is an intimate type of magical working, and performing magic on a global level is much too broad for an intimate rite to have much effect. I also questioned whether one could establish an effective or reliable magical link to such a large and nebulous group of people. I never said it was impossible, but that it would be difficult to define a credible target when the group in question consists of an aggregate of individuals loosely organized under an idealized state apparatus. It would be better to identify specific key individuals, but still, a binding spell would require something intimate to make the connection to any targeted individuals. (Possessing Al-Baghdadi’s head scarf would probably be a good object upon which to base an intimate link.)

Additionally, these individuals are extreme religious fanatics who believe that they are functioning as the instrument of God as they perform various acts of barbarism and militarized terrorism. How any magician could think that their magic could intervene and topple such an organization is the height of hubris and specious thinking. Religious extremists would be protected by their zealous faith from any negative thought-forms or magical attacks, and thankfully, bullets and bombs do have an immediate impact. However, even a counter military force cannot eliminate the ideals upon which they are grounded. This is an implacable war of ideas, and as such, it can only be won when the hearts and minds of enough of the populace on both sides who support it are transformed.(Think Lebanon in the 1980's.)

Some of the comments that I received indicated that perhaps other forms of magic might be more credible; such as astrological based magic, directing one of the invoked Cherubim or Seraphim to intervene, summoning and directing one of the Enochian Governors of that locale to execute a curse or some other kind of working that would allow a remote target to be accessed without an intimate magical link. Another person seemed to think that I had suggested that such magic was technically impossible, and of course, that is not the case. I have previously stated that performing a combined binding and mirror spell would probably produce no discernible results. It could also produce a personal backlash. Another individual stated that based on the premises of Chaos magic that performing any kind of rite and then taking credit for any positive result was an appropriate response because it would affirm the magic and empower those who performed it. I found this kind of reasoning to be questionable, but only in the context of this magic. I think that when the scale of a working is global one must establish and state specific objectives for a specific period of time and then determine afterwards if it indeed actually obtained the results. Because of the numerous parties engaged in this conflict in both Syria and Iraq it is impossible to isolate anything that could be objectively given as proof showing that the magic was successful, especially when the objective is so general and not grounded in time.

Here’s an example of this kind of specious reasoning. Let’s say I perform a magical working in the next month or two, and my objective is to ensure that Hillary Clinton is elected president next November. I don’t do anything else to make certain that my magical objective is successful. I just perform the magic and then quietly wait for the outcome. If Hillary Clinton wins the election then I can claim that it was my magic that gave her the victory. Had I not worked my magic, she would have lost the election, so I am the defacto “king maker” who has changed the history of the U.S. and the world. Of course this is quite silly, and it would be difficult to prove that I was wrong in making such a claim, but it would also be equally difficult (if not impossible) for me to prove that my claim was true. From a scientific standpoint, I would be required to objectively prove that my claim was true, and failing that, my claim would be considered inconclusive at best, or nominally false. A real test would be if I worked my magic and then predicted that Hillary Clinton would win by 10% of the vote, and additionally, 80% of the down-ballot Democratic tickets would also win. If these conditions were met, my claim would be certainly more credible; but even then, I would have to objectively define the mechanism that linked my magical action to the expected results. There could also be other explanations for making such a successful claim, such as clairvoyance or possible insider information.

Don’t misread what I am saying. I do believe that magic can influence outcomes on a global level, but there is a mechanism for how such a thing could be done - it is not the same as working magic on yourself. I have always advised my students, and I have taken this advice into my own magical work, that material change of any kind always requires mundane steps to be simultaneously executed. If you need to find a job, you don’t work magic to find one and then sit on your ass waiting for it to materialize. You perform your magic and you also look for work, with the caveat that the magic will help bend the laws of probability so that you will be successful.

However, making something happen for yourself or a client, and making something happen in your community or even on a global level requires a very different approach. It still requires mundane steps, but they are orchestrated so that many hands join together for a worthy cause. The greater the scale of the magical objective then the greater the population of those assisting in making it happen. Witches and pagans who are connected with the ecological or progressive political movements (in the East and West coast areas) have demonstrated that combining magic with public activism is an excellent way of making things happen in both local and national levels. Let me give you a hypothetical example.

Suppose there is wilderness area not far from where you live that has been a source of pleasure and wonderful recreation for you and your friends for many years. Let’s say that a large multi-national logging and mining company has managed to secure the rights to logging and also fracking that area for natural gas. It is not a national or state park, but it has been public land for a long time. This corporation, along with state and local politicians, have cut a deal, and the press has reported that the company will extract these resources supposedly without causing much harm to the natural pristine area. This sounds a bit too good to be true, so a bit of research reveals that this company has a history of destroying the land that it logs and mines and has never had to clean up the environment after they were done. They have paid fines and quietly dealt with public claims, but they also have a number of politicians in their pockets to mitigate the consequences. This has allowed them to lucratively engage in their business without much in the way of consequences.

Of course, you are opposed to this company mining and logging in an area that you have personally enjoyed for years, and you decide to do something about it. You also happen to be quite good at magic and you are a practicing pagan. You decide to work magic against this corporation to stop it from proceeding with its proposed mining and logging project. If you perform a binding spell on the company’s logo (and do nothing else), do you think that anything will change? However, there is a way to tackle this objective using both magic and public activism. This is the basic magic 101 way to get something done on the material plane - do the magic and also the mundane steps.

The first thing that you do is to arouse your friends and neighbors to oppose this project. Maybe you write some letters to the newspaper, post some articles on social media, form some public protest events, hand out fliers decrying what the company intends to do to a pristine wilderness that everyone in the area has hunted, fished, camped, swam in the creeks, picnicked, and enjoyed for generations. You advertise and organize meetings and basically spread the word, getting the whole area talking about it. You also publicly disclose what the company has done in the past when they have operated in an area, and you might even post pictures that show how callous and corrupt this company really is. You have started a movement, and once started, it takes off and has a mind of its own. You continue to work magic, but you don’t just target the company. Instead you target key individuals in that company and the corrupt politicians who have supported them for campaign contributions and other perks. You could even host protest events at the residences of these targeted individuals immediately following such a magical targeting. You can also stage events at local and state offices, engaging in peaceful civil disobedience.

Of course the corporation won’t take this kind of assault lying down. They will look for dirt to publish about you and the members of your movement to try and discredit the whole thing. Their PR team will go into overdrive to try and change the direction of the public discussion and destroy the movement. Newspapers, the internet and TV will blare their message to everyone. They will also organize their own counter public campaign and create a fake grass-roots movement of their own. There might even be some investigations into the movement, false allegations made, lawsuits declared, and maybe even some underhanded blackmail or thuggery. It will be quite a nasty and vicious local war, but it will completely change everything from the way it was when everyone was quietly minding their own business. Whether you win or lose, the changes have been made and it is likely that the community will have a whole new perspective. Anyway, that is one way of taking on an organization and successfully defeating it (or not) using a combination of magic and public activism. Which technique, in your opinion, has a chance of success? Doing a binding spell or simultaneously executing a magical and public campaign?

As you can see, using the right kind of magic to effectively achieve an objective is a fundamental part of magic 101. You develop a tool box of different kinds of magic, and you determine, from a practical perspective, the correct magic to apply to a given issue or situation. That toolbox is developed over time, so an inexperienced magician will tend to use the same tool in all situations, and the resultant failures will teach him or her to expand and develop other techniques to deal with differences in focus, scale and scope. This logic applies to not only dealing with a corporation in a local community, but also effectively making changes on a global level.

If it is your objective to engage with the world and help to bring about peace to the middle east in whatever way you can then there are some obvious things that you could do. Since there is already a lot of warring factions engaging in battles and killing people, adding more negative energy, even in a partisan manner, would only make things worse if it did anything at all. Obviously, seeking peace is much more constructive, but a lot more difficult. Remember, this is a war of ideas, so promoting peace must start at a fundamental level.

The most obvious thing that one could do is to help the refugees. The second most obvious thing to do would be to support a cease fire and work within the UN to help make that happen. Another thing one could do is to promote a peaceful exposition of Islam that is completely counter to what IS-Daesh is promoting. In other words, help and assist the Muslims around the world to show that their religion is one of peace and religious tolerance. Try to eliminate public discrimination, misunderstanding and hatred towards Muslims in your local area as well as on the national level. Promote interfaith organizations that seek to help the public view Islam and other religions in a positive manner, and also show that religious extremism is a problem that affects all religions practiced in the world. While engaging in these activities, you could also work magic, alone and in groups, to help promote this idea worldwide.

Certainly, there is a constructive way of dealing with the problems of religious extremism that exists locally as well as globally. I would recommend that anyone who is serious about changing the way the world exists today by using magic would see that as an opportunity and a goal. Love is a greater power than hate, but often hatred seems to have the upper hand. It is far more difficult to look for positive and constructive ways to fix a problem that is threatening to engulf the world in an ideological war, but it is probably the only way that such problems can be permanently resolved.

To make large scale changes in the local and global arena, I recall an excellent slogan that I think works from a political activist perspective and a magical one, too. “Think globally, but act locally.”

Frater Barrabbas

Basic Elements of Ritual Magick

Recently, there has been some discussion on the blogosphere regarding the importance of intention and will, or perhaps more accurately, the inflation of the importance of these elements. While will-power (initiative) and intention do play important parts in the performance of basic rites within the discipline of ritual magick, they are (of course) not exclusively important. These two elements are part of an overall package, and unless the whole package is known and understood, then all sorts of silly ideas about ritual magick can be entertained by the beginner.

In my previous two books, “Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick” and Mastering the “Art of Ritual Magick,” I believe that I have defined these elements but not in a concise manner. Going over what I wrote years ago has prompted me to revisit these basic concepts and attempt to write about them in a much clearer manner than I had previously in these books. I guess you could say that my thoughts, perceptions and my ability to write has improved to the point where I believe that I can now write a better and clearer set of definitions about the basic elements of ritual magick.

How I define intention and will-power regarding ritual magick is to understand them as important parts of the very beginning foundation of any kind of rite to make a change occur in material reality. Intention is important because it represents the plan for making something happen (although it is not yet implemented) and the will, as will-power, representing the desire and discipline to make something happen. Yet these two elements don’t trump the others and are seldom useful or constructive by themselves. In other words, I have never believed that intention alone can cause something to happen, and that will-power by itself can’t accomplish any kind of important achievement. There has to be a coordination between several elements and it’s important to know what they are and how to define them.

The key-stone to functioning as a successful ritual magician is to be empowered, and what I am referring to here is “self-empowerment.” So you might ask what is self-empowerment? It’s certainly a phrase that gets used a lot if you read books on magic, pop psychology and self-help. It is the opposite of helplessness, which is the usual state of being that most humans encounter at some point in their lives (often, but not always, at the moment of their death), and some people never seem to get beyond this state once their desires are thwarted. If we examine the definition of empowerment then I believe we will find the clues to understanding self-empowerment and how it relates to the practices of the ritual magician.

Looking up the word “empowerment” in the dictionary reveals to us that it has the meaning “to enable, to make able, give power, means, competence, ability, to authorize.” Power itself (in this context) means to do something, to act, to accomplish or achieve. In the context of ritual magick, empowerment cannot be given to someone. It must be earned by experience and personal achievement over time, and that’s why it’s called self-empowerment. A teacher can teach someone how to perform ritual magick, but the student must master the art by themselves and learn to be competent and have the assurance to succeed at gaining their magical goals. That can only be accomplished over time (usually years) and through many experiences (including failures as well as successes). Yet it is only the successes that build up personal magical empowerment, and that’s why a magician will focus on them rather than the failures; since the successes are what have given him the empowerment and certainty to continue the quest, and ultimately, to complete the great work itself.

Where self-empowerment is the key-stone, then discipline is the foundation. In order to be competent at something, one must practice in a periodic and regular manner. A ritual magician uses the cycles of the moon and the sun to partition her world and to fill a practical discipline with daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal rites and exercises. An old saying amply reflects this kind of activity - “Live by the Sun, love by the Moon.” What a discipline should contain varies from magician to magician, but it should have regular meditation sessions and periodic rites of spiritual alignment, including and particularly, godhead assumption. Based on the Lunation cycle, the magician should also regularly practice magical workings. The more experience that a magician has, then (hopefully) the greater will be her self-empowerment. These two elements work together, of course.

Within the foundation of the repertoire of practices of the ritual magician is the ability to achieve a form of ultra-conscious ecstasy. There are a number of different methods for achieving this state, and these can be facilitated singularly or in combination using breath control, trance, dance, mantra chanting, sacramental drug usage, sacred sexuality, bondage and discipline, or any other mechanism that achieves ecstasy. It is said that in magick, ecstasy is the key, and that is quite true; but ecstasy is used to push one’s self into the highest states of consciousness as well as exeriorizing or projecting magical power into the mundane sphere. The thing that all of these forms have in common is that they are achieved through the process of resonance. I define resonance as an iterative process that increases in frequency and amplitude until a climax is achieved. Even if a magician uses sacramental drugs, she must engage in some kind of iterative process to push the altered state into its highest expression.

All spell work begins in the same place, which is a desire or a need for something fueled by the imagination. From this the magician puts together an intention, which is a kind of plan of action. A wise plan for a specific end always has a greater overall plan behind it, so that is how the intention and purpose work together to forge a magical working. The intention is a kind of rationale for the desire and fantasy based result, which I call the objective, and it can be established by affirmations and self-promotion that engage one’s self-empowerment. However, if the intention does nothing more than this and there are no corresponding actions, then the intention will likely produce nothing. What makes the intention a truly powerful magical element is the joining of desire, affirmation, imagination, self-promotion, with actions, both magical and mundane. The most important thing that I stated about an intention is that it is a plan, and a plan should have magical actions and also mundane actions. It is also important to schedule your working for an auspicious time (phases of the moon) and determine deadlines for the results to appear, since this defines the proposed working within the boundaries of limits and forces one to take the initiative.

One further step in building up the intention is to translate the objective into a symbolic formulation. The easiest way to do this is to craft a sigil, but there are other attributes that one can use as well. For instance, often it is good to classify the objective in regards to an element or one of the seven planets, and then to find other attributes to identify the objective, such as color, perfume, incense, associated godhead, angelic or goetic spirit, etc. A sigil can additionally represent any of these attributes, such as the color of the ink or paint, the medium upon which it is inscribed (stone, parchment, wood, metallic disk, gemstone, etc.), and then blessed and charged with an incense, perfume and in the name of some aspect of Deity. I believe that translating an objective into a sigil is a very important stage in any kind of ritual magical working. Even if you are using a sigil or a character to help summon a spirit, adding a sigil for the objective to that the sigil of the spirit can further help to determine that goal in a symbolic manner. Minus a sigil, a magician then has to create a construct consisting of the attributes associated with the working, and often these are collected together and placed in a cache or medicine bag. I prefer to use a sigil to translate an objective into a symbolic form. You can find a whole article dedicated to sigil magic here.

Why is this item so important, you ask? Why must we symbolize the objective of a spell in some manner? There are two reasons. The first is to make it into the physical link for the spell, and the second is that it can be more easily acted upon during the symbolic manipulation phase of the spell. A physical link is a handy and succinct representation of the spell’s objective, and it becomes the magical carrier for the spell itself. A physical link is the bridge between the world of spirit and the mundane sphere, so it has an important task of representing the objective within the spirit world itself. 

Once these elements have been defined, we can move on to discussing the magical actions, or what would be called a working or an overall spell. A ritual magical working consists of two parts, which is the focusing of emotional forces and symbolic manipulation. It doesn’t mater if the magician is using the energy model or the spirit model; both models use these two elements equally. These actions are performed within sacred space and through a proper altered state of consciousness as established by a meditation session. As part of the self-empowerment, the magician may also employ a personalized attribute of deity within the working, such as that which is acquired through a godhead assumption. The more that a magician can do to bolster his own sense of self through a magically induced spiritual alignment then the outcome will be more potent. It is good to have the Gods on your side when performing a magical operation to acquire something.

So, the elements that have already been determined for a working before the working is actually commenced are those that involve the self and space (various preparations), alignment (god head attribution and/or assumption), defining and building the physical link, and establishing the intention and clarifying the objective. Additionally, the magician should have performed divination on the objective to determine its probability and explore the various associated mundane steps. Ethical considerations should also be weighed (during the divination process), and the magician should feel fully justified in performing the working. The timing of the working and choosing an auspicious date to perform the working is also determined well before the working is to be performed. 

Preparations regarding the self are forms of purification and meditation used to transition the mind from the mundane to the spirit world. Also, the space where the working is to be performed is also purified and made sacred, thereby taking it out of the mundane context. A circle can be used to establish a boundary line, and the area within the circle is sacralized with incense, soft illumination, conducive music, and aspurged with either lustral water (salt water) or florida water (water and perfume). Drawing the circle and establishing the cardinal directions are performed by the magician to establish a complete world within the domain of spirit. All of these preparations are performed in a thorough and methodical manner, leading the magician up to that moment where the magical operation will be performed.

As I stated previously, the actual magical working consists of the focusing of emotional forces and symbolic manipulation, in that order. The first step is to harness the passion and emotions that are the driver of the magical and mundane intention. If a magician feels ambiguous or lacks passion about a proposed magical objective, then whatever is done will be weak and likely ineffective. Conversely, the greater the passion that a magician feels about an objective, then the potential for success is greater. Passion is an emotional energy, and establishing a base of this kind of energy will help charge and empower the working. While it is not singularly important that the energy be given any kind of definition (some still think energy is just energy), I believe that defining and articulating the energy makes it more precise and capable of driving the process. The easiest way to define the energy is to use an invoking pentagram of a specific element, and to set these to the four cardinal points and then draw them to the center of the circle through a spiraling circumambulation (from the outer periphery to the center of the circle - a deosil spiral) .

   

Symbolic manipulation is where the magician uses tools and symbols to express a symbolic meaning or ideation within sacred space. Of course, setting or consecrating a magic circle and performing various other rites with tools, drawn devices (lines of force, circles, spirals, triangles, pentagrams, hexagrams, etc.), intoning incantations and words of power, and using various visualization techniques are all a form of symbolic manipulation. Aside from assisting in defining the base energy of the working, the operation of symbolic manipulation that is critical to a simple spell is joining the physical link to the raised energy (called empowering the link), and thus when the energy is so imprinted, to perform an exteriorization rite (thereby projecting the power to the actual objective outside of the circle).

Empowering the link is where the charged and consecrated sigil is brought into the center of the circle at that point where the power is fixed, and then an association is made between the sigil and the latent energy. At this phase of the spell the magician can visualize the objective and also the intention, including all of the mundane actions, and focus that into the power using his hands or tools. The accumulated magical power, which is the emotional passion associated with the desire for the objective, has now been imprinted with a clear intention and objective, and it is ready for exteriorization.

An exteriorization is achieved through resonance, and this can be accomplished through several different mechanisms. This could also be when the magician employs some form of ecstasy as a method of exteriorizing the collected and imprinted energy. I often use a widdershins spiral and a simple chant, and as I proceed from the center to the out periphery of the circle, I can feel the intensity and the stress of pushing the power increase with every step. Even the chant speeds up and increases in volume as I get ever closer to the outer circle. I plan this spiral so that I will only transcribe the circle three times, and at the end, I will project the power out of the circle with every bit of energy that I have. Sometimes the exteriorization is so potent that it causes me to fall to my knees in exhaustion.

As you can see in the example above, I have used the energy model to describe a simple spell. A magician could also use the evocation of a spirit (typically an elemental, planetary or goetic spirit) to achieve a material goal. In that situation the whole working would be orientated to performing the evocation, and then the intention of the working would be presented to the spirit to achieve, often with some kind of exchange. To perform this kind of working, the magician would have to be proficient with evocation, and that would represent a kind of working that would be somewhat more complex than what I have presented here. However, the use of a sigil that would symbolize the intention and the objective would still be fashioned, and this would presented or imprinted on the character, tool or sigil used to evoke the spirit.

The various stages that I presented above is called the master pattern of ritual magick, and there are seven of these stages. The master pattern consists of the elements of self, space, power, alignment, empowering the link, exteriorization and divination. You can find an article in my repertoire that amply covers each of these elements. As for divination, I am a firm believer that divination should be performed both before and after a working to ensure that the magician is fully informed at all points during the working. You can find an article outlining the master pattern of ritual magick here. I have also discussed these concepts more thoroughly in the article about sacred geometry in the energy theory of ritual magick, and you can find that article here.      

To recap what has been discussed in this article, I have proposed the following nine elements as important attributes that are found in a simple energy based working or spell as practiced in ritual magick. These nine elements are:

• Self-empowerment and discipline - the competence to perform the working
• Intention - plan, including magical and mundane actions
• Initiative or will-power - desire to take action
• Emotions, desires, imagination, passion - the basic magical power
• Objective - goal
• Physical Link - symbolized translation of intention and objective
• Symbolic manipulation - magical and symbolic actions (performed in sacred space)
• Altered states of consciousness and sacred space
• Timing - an auspicious time for the working

As you can see, it takes a number of elements, an overall structure and emotional passion to achieve a goal through the art of ritual magick. Not one of these elements is exclusively important, although some of the elements might be either omitted or glossed over without destroying the effectiveness of the overall working. However, I believe that part of the discipline of ritual magick is to thoroughly develop and work each of these elements, since the more that is put into a magical working the better will be its potential outcome.

Frater Barrabbas