I am NOT a Ceremonial Magician

It still keeps happening. People refer to my writings as “ceremonial magic” and to me as a ceremonial magician. In some cases, it is used as a pejorative, as if being a ceremonial magician means that I am not really a Witch, Pagan, or a self-made magical user. Of course, I clearly am all of those, but I am not a ceremonial magician, and what I promote as a system of magic is not ceremonial magic. I have written about this issue before, but because it still occurs, even innocently by people who either don’t know much about magic, or by those who should actually know better, I feel the need to restate it here in this article.

Ironically, ceremonial magicians have unequivocally stated that the magic I promote is not ceremonial magic, and that makes me not one of them. If ceremonial magicians don’t think that I am a ceremonial magician, then I must not be a ceremonial magician. That is quite logical. After all, they should know their own kind. In fact, one Thelemite ceremonial magician years ago said that my magic “stinks of Witchcraft,” which is an impolite way of saying that there are strong and obvious traces of my Witchcraft roots in the magic that I perform and promote in my books. There are also some traces of the magical ritual system of the Golden Dawn, but the base and foundation of the magic that I work is completely founded on the rituals of Gardnerian-Alexandrian Witchcraft. I use a consecrated magic circle to start all of my ritual workings, and I don’t use the LBRP or the LIRP (lesser pentagram banishing and invoking rituals) to begin my workings. That fact, right away, should distinguish me from a ceremonial magician. I also don’t rely on the writings of any grimoires, modern or ancient, so overall, that would make my rituals to not be a part of the corpus of ceremonial magic, and thus, I am not a ceremonial magician.

So what exactly is ceremonial magic? Some have said that it is specifically Golden Dawn magic, but that would only cover elemental and talismanic magical workings. To invoke angels or demons, a magician would have to employ other magical tech, and this is where the old grimoires of the previous age have their value. The author Joseph Liziewski promoted a grimoire only and spirit model only methodology of magic that appeared to give precedence to the grimoires from the Renaissance over any modern system of magic. While his methodologies have been seriously questioned, the movement that he created established a theme and definition for ceremonial magic. It became associated with a combination of Golden Dawn magic along with the older grimoires, and the four books of Occult Philosophy variously written by Agrippa that also became available to the reading public. Throw in the writings of Paracelsus and the Hermetic corpus and you have the defined discipline of ceremonial magic. It is a hybrid of old and new tech, but it relies on the themes and methodologies established in the previous age and reinterpreted to fit into the practices and beliefs of the post-modern world. While Liziewski promoted regaining a kind of orthodox religious approach, such as Catholicism or Calvinistic Protestant Christianity, others have either approached this kind of magical working with either a Thelemic, archaic Christian, or even a kind of religious agnosticism. There was an important reason that Liziewski promoted regaining an orthodox faith, as we shall see.

The big question is where do I fit in within this collection of old and new magical methodologies? And the answer is, I don’t fit in. While it is true that I have purloined and appropriated various lore, barbarous words of evocation, sigils, seals and notae into my magical practice, the entire methodology of how I work magic and my perspective on magical tech is quite different than what ceremonial magicians are using in their work. We are both engaging in a practice that is part of the occulture of the post modern age, and our activities are performed in a modern world ruled by science.

Ceremonial magic is a hybrid of new and old practices, particularly since the religious and spiritual perspectives of the 16th and 17th century are no longer either relevant or even in evidence today. That mind-set has to be recreated within a modern intellectual context, and with the social and cultural influences of academia and science, it is all too obviously contrived and fantasized, becoming part of the “As If” function of the psychological model of magic. This fact doesn’t either diminish nor falsify the practice of ceremonial magic. It is an component that all practitioners use to break out of the imposed rationality of the scientific and secular social perspective in which we live. It’s just that where I have no problem admitting this fact, other practitioners, especially ceremonial magicians, seem to deny that it is a critical factor in their magical work. It would also nullify the belief that ceremonial magicians use only the spirit model in their magic, but that is a topic for another article.

Principally, what distinguishes the magic that I work is that every magical working that I perform begins with a godhead assumption and has, therefore, a component of liturgical obligations and practices that are an integral part of my magic. This methodology was developed in the Golden Dawn, but it became a central liturgical event in modern Witchcraft and Paganism. It was not used as a mask to empower the magician, as it was used in the Golden Dawn, but more as a means to directly contact, engage and embody Pagan Deities for an intimate communion. Since modern Witchcraft and Paganism does not make a distinction between religion and magic, liturgical practices are also considered magical practices, and this makes the kind of magic performed by these adherents more like a form of theurgy than a form of ceremonial magic. The fact that a Witch or Pagan is performing magic in the guise and impersonation of a godhead makes that magic quite different than what a ceremonial magician would perform.

While a religious engagement is not specifically required in the modern practice of ceremonial magic, it still has a part to play in the invocation/evocation of angels and demons. The first stage in summoning a spirit is purification, and that might include a more rigorous alignment of the magician to either an orthodox religious practice or one that is aligned to modern faiths, such as Thelema. The old grimoires are filled with prayers and exhortations to a monotheistic Godhead, so one would think that the magician would have to have some kind of psychological alignment to that Deity in order to make such words of power effective and potent. There is also an element of self-abasement and expiation that goes with the purification process. While a magician could lightly skip through this first step for evocation, it would make the overall magical approach weakened and less significantly meaningful. This is the reason why Lisiewski proposed that ceremonial magicians adopt some kind of orthodox religious engagement so that the context of the prayers, invocations and exhortations in the old grimoires would be more personally meaningful and psychologically potent.

Additionally, a ceremonial magician would rely on the themes, structures, guidelines, and translated verbiage of the grimoire text, treating it as the final authority. They must adhere faithfully to the testaments of the old grimoire and only make substitutions where otherwise absolutely required to complete the working. What that means is that the grimoire is the primary ruling guide for the working, and mistakes, deviations, and unwarranted substitutions could cause the working to fail. Because our minds are shaped by our culture and the prevalence of science and secular government, a ceremonial magician must spend a great deal of time erasing that mind-set and imbuing it with a spiritual perspective that would allow for the practice of invocative magic. That process, then, becomes the focus and principal foundation for learning to master the magic of the old grimoires, which means that a faithful adherence to the rites and practices, and the archaic religious immersion, becomes the ruling methodology for a successful ceremonial magician. A mistake in performing a ritual could require the magician to banish and later have to redo it since some degree of perfection is required. As you can see, the whole discipline of ceremonial magic, especially when using the old grimoires, is a rigorous and strict methodology, which is similar to what Lisiewski was originally promoting in his books. One has to replace the missing cultural and religious key-stone that was a part of the practice of magic in the previous age to effectively use the old grimoires in the current age.

Working magic through a Pagan or Witchcraft religious praxis, even with the rites of spirit conjuring, is completely different than what is done in ceremonial magic. This is why I refer to the kind of magic performed by Pagans and Witches as ritual magic as opposed to ceremonial magic. I would include some Thelemites in this group, and I believe that most of them perform magic using the pagan model established by Crowley. Thelema has similarities to modern Witchcraft and Paganism. In many cases, Thelemic religious practices are more like their Witchcraft and Pagan cousins, and it some ways, they are almost identical. This is because Thelema was the first and earliest magical practice to depart from the monotheistic faiths that have dominated the practice of ceremonial magic in the West. As long as one engages in the core rite of godhead assumption and connects that to a Pagan liturgical practice, then a Thelemite would be considered a ritual magician instead of a ceremonial magician, although I have met many who prefer to be considered ceremonial magicians.

One very important factor in the practice of ritual magic as opposed to ceremonial magic is the use of the godhead assumption rite, and that core liturgy trumps any other external religious or magical process. What that means is that the ritual magician is free to incorporate whatever materials that they find are useful, esthetically pleasing or empowering from a myriad of modern occult or antique sources, and thereby build up their own personal magical practice. The Godhead that they worship, embody and personify, gives them the authority to do whatever is required to make their magic effective and empowering. That means that performing a ritual can allow for a greater degree of flexibility, allowing the ritual magician to make inspired changes to the ritual working as it is being performed. I have experienced this kind of phenomenon myself, and it always leads to a more interesting and empowering outcome. The will of the practitioner is aligned with the will of the chosen godhead, and invariably, as ritual magicians become more accomplished and linked to that godhead, the more the magic that they perform becomes a form of theurgy, or god-based work. I have found that Theurgy is the most effective form of magic, outside of talismanic magic, and it is baked into the practices of ritual magic,

Another significant factor in the magic that I work is that the magic circle that I employ is a boundary between the sacred and the profane worlds, representing a demarcation that divides the world into a sacred precinct enclosed within the circle, and the profane, mundane world external to it. The circle is not a protection from spiritual contagion, since everything that a Witch or Pagan would conjure, summon, invoke or generate occurs within the circle. Unlike the circle used in a ceremonial magical rite, there is no external gateway or magic triangle where the conjured spirit might appear, constrained and controlled. A ceremonial magician uses an empowered magic circle to protect them from the spirits that they invoke. A Witch or Pagan performs all of their magic within their magic circle, and the spirit appears within that domain, so the operator must have assumed a powerful godhead to protect and authorize them to command spirits and to diplomatically treat with them as allies, with agreements and offerings. In a Witchcraft circle, one does not peer into the spirit world with a magic mirror or shew stone since the spirit world is all around those who are within the magic circle. While a scrying device can be used to receive portents, prophecies and visions, within the sacred space of a magic circle, any form of divination becomes a sacred rite of revelation. Thus, a Witch or Pagan performs ritual magic and experiences a full immersion into the domain of the summoned or conjured spirit.

As you can see, the practice of ceremonial magic and ritual magic are fundamentally different, and a ritual magician requires a very different approach to their magic than what a ceremonial magician would require. Gaining a strong alignment with a personal aspect of their chosen Deity is of paramount importance to the practicing ritual magician, and they begin this work as a Witch or a Pagan learning to perform their basic liturgical exercises, gradually becoming more experienced, aligned and then linked to that Deity over time. When they have matured in this liturgical work then they are ready to begin to practice more advanced forms of magic, functioning as a ritual magician within their Witchcraft or Pagan praxis.

This represents the path that I have followed since the early 1970's, and I have grown and matured following it, inventing a complete system and methodology of magic during my journey. I consider myself a self-made ritual magician through and through. While I may distinguish myself and what I do regarding my practice of magic, I also respect all other methods and techniques of magic, both modern and antique. My respect, however, doesn’t stop me from appropriating lore from the magic of the previous age, but then I am merely following the guidance and precepts as inspired by my Deities, so I don’t incur any blame or fault for taking this kind of cavalier approach. I believe that magicians in previous ages followed this practice, acquiring religious and ritual lore from numerous source and using that to build up their lore and repertoire of spells and rites.

Therefore, now that I have spent some time writing this article to explain why I do not practice ceremonial magic and that I am not a ceremonial magician, it is my hope that folks will fully realize that I am quite serious when I make this distinction. What I am is a Witch and a ritual magician, and I am proud to make that claim.

Frater Barrabbas

Why the Energy Model of Magic is Important

 

Since the grimoire-only crowd and their ritual tech has become quite popular, they have espoused a spirit-only model of magic. That approach has given short shrift to a perfectly acceptable, and I might add, useful model of magic, which is a major part of a number of different, albeit, modern systems of magic. While it is true that the learned and literate of the previous age believed that humanity lacked any kind of personal power to effect the world around them, we now know that this is no longer the case. Human beings have a greater potential to effect the world around them, and they also have an innate magical power or energy to be able to do so. These ideas about human energy have come from Eastern metaphysical traditions, but there is evidence that the philosophers of antiquity believed in the potential for humans to generate and project power or energy if suitably trained.

You might consider that whether one follows the spirit-only model or the energy model, the psychology model, or the stochastic chaos model, or the information model that it doesn’t really make much difference in the magic that is deployed. Additionally, most modern systems of magic employ more than one model simultaneously than only electing to use one model in isolation. Yet the question remains about why the energy model of magic is so important in the kinds of ritual tech that I employ? What do these techniques give to the magic that I perform?

First of all, the energy model of magic is tied to the breath and movement of the operator. The regulation of breath appears to alter the states of consciousness that one assumes, and movement brings to the ritual bodily projected energy, both thermal and bio-electric. These physical energy types are very minute, although the thermal energy of a crowd of people can be significant in an enclosed space. However, it is the altered state of consciousness combined with physical movement that makes magical energies perceptible to the magical operator. Add to that mixture of altered conscious mental state and bodily exertions the various occult symbology and tight ritual structures and you will get a potent output of energy that is tangible and perceptible. By itself, the energy model can promote an empowered will-base magical working that can and does have some limited success in bending the probabilities for an expected outcome. Combined with other models of magic and this methodology becomes a very potent and successful tool in adding magical power to working and making spirit workings assume a more tangible manifestation.

For instance, my ritual tech for projecting an elemental power toward a given objective uses the energy model to create a pentagram-based octagonal elemental vortex, along with invoking an elemental based spirit, sealed with a sigil symbolizing my objective. That combination of energy, spirit and information models of magic, with an implied psychology model (developing specific mind-states along with the spiritual intelligence of the Elemental Spirit) produces a ritual tech that can bend probabilities much readily than the energy model alone.

I also perform my workings under a godhead assumption and in alignment to my personal deity, thereby making the working into a form of theurgy. The octagon structure gives a structure to the generated energies, and the inward and outward spirals compress and release the imprinted energy field that is imprinted by the sigil and guided by the Elemental Spirit. This represents succinctly and all-model approach to performing a simple magical effect on an outward material condition. The more elaborate ritual tech that I employ uses even more complex ritual structures and layers them within the same working area of the eight-node magic circle. The greater energy concentration will produce materializations, especially if more exalted spirits are involved, such as Angels or Demons. In fact, combining these models into a single working makes it more effective and the objectives, whether material or spiritual,  more likely to be achieved.

As you can see, a multi-model magical approach that uses an advanced energy model of magic is much more effective and produces a greater range phenomena than if a magician were to adhere to just one single model, such as the spirit-only model used in traditional grimoire magic. I think that this single model approach to magic is very limited and far less effective. For the spirit-only model it relies on a mind-set and belief system that is more relevant to the 16th century than our post-modern times. This is particularly true for European and American systems of magic and the underlying modern metaphysics that is used in its foundation. The energy, psychological and informational models of magic are more modern by far, but they also have a historical provenance that spans other cultures and times.

What I have found is using the advanced energy model of magic in all of my ritual workings and ordeal makes these processes more intense, tangible and objective to co-workers. They manifest energies that can be felt and experienced even by those who have little experience with magic. A vortex used in a temple space, even when sealed, will continue to resonate on some level and be felt by others who might enter the temple where such magic has been performed. It gives greater emphasis to all magical operations and makes visual apprehension of the magic possible. I have trained myself to see the lines of force when they are drawn, including magical devices, gateways, pylons, vortices and energy compression spirals and energy exteriorization spirals. This allows me to perceive and experience the magical phenomena as it is being generated. I cannot conceive of a better way to gauge a magical operation than to have this ability to sense and perceive it, and the advanced energy model makes this all possible.

Want to know more about the advanced energy model in magic and how to employ it in your own magical workings? My book “Elemental Powers for Witches” is an excellent book that explains the energy model, its historical precedence, but more importantly, how to work this kind of magic and produce tangible results. It even discusses how to learn to see and sense this kind of magical power, and how it can be integrated into an evocation to make the spirit more perceptible and objective. I cannot recommend this book more emphatically then to state that the advanced energy ritual tech is what I have used in all of my advanced ritual workings. If you want to make such future books of mine such as “Liber Nephilim” and “Abramelin Lunar Ordeal” (available in 2024) accessible, then the book “Elemental Powers for Witches” is a critically important source to read and study.

Frater Barrabbas

My Problem With Grimoire Purists and Strict Traditionalists

"My wand is better than your wand!"

There seems to be a never ending argument between those who espouse the literal adaptation of Grimoires as they currently exist and those who follow a path of eclecticism, experimentation and creative adaptation. Neither point of view has any kind of absolute correctness or truth about it, because in many ways both approaches have their own virtues and failings. What bothers me about those who are strict followers of tradition and who declare that the old grimoires are the only pure source of magical lore is their smug certainty and absolutism. If someone wants to use the methodologies and tools as they are depicted in one or several of the old grimoires then that is wholly their own choice and personal obligation. If they honor a particular traditional path through their unstinting adherence to every detail and nuance then that is clearly their chosen path, and I say more power to them. However, the moment someone says that their path is the only legitimate way to practice ceremonial or ritual magick then they have completely lost me.

I have written about this issue in previous articles where I have discussed what I consider to be the actual issues facing anyone who wants to use one of the old grimoires. I have also talked about the obvious fracture in the community between those who are engaging in a creative adaptation against those who advocate a strict adherence to the old traditions. You can find those articles here and here.

The real issue here is whether the magic that one practices actually makes a difference in the life the magician. The core question is whether the magician is competent at working magic and that he or she can produce tangible and verifiable results through their magic. In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter if one is using a grimoire in an exacting and precise manner. It doesn’t matter that his or her magical tools are perfectly fashioned according to the dictates of the tradition or that the rites and liturgy employed are accurate and valid. What is important is whether the methods and tools employed by the magician are executed with the magician’s full intention, realization, and personal empowerment; that they ultimately produce the intended results.

What I have found in over 40 years of working magic and sharing lore with many magicians is that magic is a very individualized phenomenon. That magicians can employ many tools and techniques whether from traditional sources or modern inventions and still get the same comparable results. Whether the wand was made out of alchemical gold engraved with rare arcane symbols and glyphs or it was just an unusual stick found in the woods, the magic generated doesn’t seem to vary much. Esthetics are a good mechanism for refining tools and techniques, but still, a competent magician makes do with whatever he or she can afford to buy or make themselves. Just to make certain that my point is completely understood by everyone, esthetics, by itself, doesn’t produce better magic. There is no point in arguing how much better your wand is than someone else's, not to mention that it sounds a bit like grotesque posturing.

One of the more popular tropes going around these days is the grimoire-only purist or traditionalist approach to performing forms of spirit invocation and evocation. The argument goes something like that the magicians of the previous age knew what they were doing and the grimoires that they wrote represent a true tradition of magic, and that now, after centuries of neglect and omission, we should pick up what they unwittingly passed down to us and use that above all other methodologies or techniques to work magic. In fact, it has been implied that we would be better served if we tossed out all of the current magical lore collected over the last hundred years or so and started fresh with one of the more older grimoires.

It is believed by these pundits that the older grimoires represented a purer time when magic wasn’t so encumbered by the corruption and fallacies of our modern times. In fact, I have heard it said that the better magician is one who didn’t bother to learn any of the modern systems of magic. They say, start with one of the old grimoires and master it over time, and only then you will be guaranteed to be competent, powerful and masterful in all things. Well, that is the ideal, but in my humble opinion it falls quite short of producing the awesome results that some have said it would. Why is that? Is there something more to mastering magic than just mastering one of the old grimoires?

That is an important question, in my opinion. If you follow the supposed traditional lore, how could you possibly go wrong? Well, I believe that you would be missing quite a bit, since the culture and mind-set that produced that grimoire has long since vanished from our world. We can attempt to approximate that culture and mind-set, but then we are entering into the debatable world of reconstructionism instead of actually attempting to learn how to work magic in this current time and age. That is a problem, but it is only one of many problems.

The grimoires available to us today are translations from original manuscripts or in some cases, rare published documents. The manuscripts can include additional or appropriated materials not part of the archetypal original, and some of early published books are sometimes distillations of several manuscripts. The fact is that there wasn’t one definitive version of a grimoire. There were hundreds of variations of a specific titled grimoire, and many of these variations didn’t survive to the current age. What we have today is only a small fraction of the actual grimoires that were available to savants in the 16th and 17th centuries. We know this is true because the notables who collected books and had their own libraries often employed someone to compile lists of the books that they possessed, and these lists varied over time. From these lists of books library historians today have been able to determine that over one third of the books owned by notables in that time had something to do with the occult. (A smaller number were hard-core grimoires.)

So today, we have only a small portion of that written expertise, and from that small fraction of lore we are supposedly capable of reconstructing a culture and world-view that has been gone for over five centuries? It is hard enough to derive meaning and significance from occult books written in the 19th century. Attempting to do this with books written in academic Latin from the 16th century would be a daunting challenge. I know that I am not skilled enough to do this, and I doubt that most magical practitioners are either. A few of us might have this skill, but in the end, I think that it won’t make up for all of the missing cultural beliefs and the mind-set of the time. That, I believe, is lost to us forever, and it is one of the more important keys to being able to reconstruct the grimoire tradition from the previous age.

If reconstruction to that degree of viability isn’t possible then what is? It doesn’t matter what you do to learn how to practice magic nor does it matter what tradition or technique you use; you will have to spend a considerable amount of time developing, practicing and experimenting. It doesn’t matter how much material, knowledge, expertise you or your mentors might possess. In the end it is simply and clearly necessary for you to practice and experiment, and to do this intensively and consistently for a period of several years. Over time you will discover what works for you and what doesn’t work. You will discard things that are unworkable or clearly wrong and you will pick up ideas from your own experimentation or from books or other magicians. Your early years will be frustrating and you will likely experience many more failures than successes. Clearly, whatever intentions or ideals that you brought into this enterprise will change over time, and it is more likely that they will change quite a lot. When you finally build up a competent practice of magic, you might not even recognize the lore that you started out with.

What I am saying is that in order to master any system of magic you have to first learn how to practice it. Another important point is that each magician is tasked with developing a magical system that works for them, and this is, as I have said, an evolving process. I believe that we, as magicians, are tasked with making our magic relevant, workable and effective in this post-modern world that we live. We learn, we adapt and we evolve our own system of magic, even if we are engaged in a traditional path, or we are learning experientially by the seat of our pants. This is a process that has been a part of the regimen of learning and mastering the art of magic for a long time, and it has probably been that way since the very beginning or origin of magic itself.  

Therefore, with these important points in mind, it does seem foolish for someone to claim that all magicians must practice their magic using a specific approach or by adopting a methodology that was used in the previous age. What is important is engaging in a system of magic that works and is relevant to our current epoch. We can’t go back in time to try to determine how people thought, believed and practiced their magic back in the 16th century, so we might as well admit that our modern approach is to adapt, evolve and develop something that is actually new and different than what has been practiced in the past. I think that admitting this common approach to all forms of magical mastery is not only important, but it is also honest and inclusive. There are no absolute rules associated with a competent practice of magic and I think that chaos magicians have shown this to be abundantly clear.

That being said, if someone seeks to use one of the old grimoires then there will be some substitutions and adaptations that one will need to make in order to successfully perform the operations listed in it. Of course, this is where one’s own particular spiritual perspective comes into play. If you are a Christian then you will can take the prayers and the spiritual hierarchy found in the grimoires at face value. I do think that Christians who evoke demons and deal directly with the various Infernal Princes and Chiefs is likely compromising their faith, but that’s just my opinion. I am not a Christian nor a monotheist. Thus I wouldn’t approach any of these entities in the same supposedly hostile manner that adherents of the Abrahamic faith would have to in order to maintain their religious integrity. Giving offerings and making deals with various spirits is a necessary part of the magic that I do when fully engaged with the Spirit Model of magic.

However, I don’t have much spiritual affinity with Satan, the Devil, or any of the other many names that this entity has been labeled over the millennia. My religion doesn’t have an dualistic archenemy who must ultimately be vanquished, so I don’t believe in the Devil. I also don’t think that the name Lucifer signifies what either present day Christians and/or grimoire traditionalists believe that it signifies. As a Witch, I have reserved the name Lucifer to be understood using the actual Latin translation of “Light Bearer” and therefore would consider it to be an alternative name for the Sun God. When I encounter the name Lucifer or Lucifuge Rofocal in a grimoire, I am not convinced that the entity's name is synonymous with Satan. I also think that the name Beelzebub sounds kind of silly and I would have a hard time trying to summon that entity without laughing out loud, but I digress from my topic.

When it comes down to the names of the Infernal Princes, I find that these entities are more silly and childishly bugaboo than dark, evil, scary and awesome spiritual intelligences. Many would disagree with me on that particular point, and it is after all, just my opinion. Still, if these entities represent the kind of spirits that you want to engage then that is your business and it is none of my business. Just don’t tell me that what I am doing is not being true to the magic of the grimoires, or spirit magic writ large, if I happen to pass up dealing with those entities. If that is the basis to your magic then so be it. You can treat them like demigods or as hostile and evil intelligences, but it will not affect me nor what I do. We can just agree to not agree and move on with our collective work.  

One point that I will make about engaging with these entities as they were depicted and perceived in the 16th and 17th centuries and written about in the various contemporary black magic grimoires is that they seem to perpetuate and glorify what I believe to be the ignorance and superstitions of those times. To push this theme forward and to lionize it as an important part of the work with old grimoires is, in my opinion, perpetuating the vices and blindness of the previous age. I believe that what we should be doing is basing our work on a foundation of modern thinking and scholarship. We should not promote the superstitions and absurd notions of a previous age, however legitimate they might contextually seem to be. I think that those who have taken this approach would be better served if they instead questioned what is authentic and real in these books regarding our present post-modern world.

Once you have to actually work magic and engage with the spirits found in the old grimoires then you end up being schooled on what is real vs. what is legitimate. This is one of the many ongoing battles between pragmatic and creative practitioners of the magic and those who seem to have a more scholarly and reconstructive bent, but I think that there really isn’t any battle since both methods appear to produce useful and workable systems of magic. The difference is that no system of magic performed today by magicians is like what was practiced in the previous age.

Thus I feel that the snobbery of traditionalist, grimoire-only practitioners and purists is completely unwarranted and exaggerated. Their swagger and smugness is only a pretentious and shallow act hiding their obvious insecurity and likely incompetence. Let us not give them any more credence than what they actually deserve, which is none.

Frater Barrabbas

To Change or Not to Change?

Continuing in the same vein as my previous article (where I defended making a talismanic variation of the Portae Lucis working), I would like to further explore the issue about changing (or not) traditional magical lore. I think that this is a complicated issue, and it is one that seems to have produced a polarizing disagreement amongst members of the ritual and ceremonial magical communities. So I would like to look at all sides and see if there is a responsible and ethical way of resolving this issue.

One of the most complicated and difficult considerations for anyone who follows a specific spiritual and magical path is to be able to determine when certain rituals or methodologies need to be changed, revised or augmented. I think that except for the purist (who would be loath to change anything for any reason), the rest of us realize that lore can age and degrade over time, or even become ineffective or irrelevant. Change is a constant and relentless process, and in the material world, nothing ever stays the same. People and cultures are constantly changing too, so it would seem that rituals and magical methods or techniques would also need to be changed and updated as well. What is relevant today might not be relevant tomorrow, and I believe that it’s important for ritual lore to reflect the times in which it was developed so that it’s current and can thereby represent the cutting edge in magical thought.

Even my own magical lore, which was first developed and written by me in the 1980's, requires a periodic reworking or rewriting to make it more relevant and efficient. If I just left it where it was back when I first developed it, then the rituals would not be as elegant or esthetically pleasing as they are today. However, since I wrote most of this lore in the first place, then I can assuredly make changes without having to consult anyone. I am free to take this perspective to its ultimate conclusion, where I can seek to perfect what I have been developing over the last three decades.

So if you own the lore that you are using, then there is no argument that it’s yours to conserve or change as you see fit. But what about occultists who have been given ritual lore as part of their initiation into an established tradition? Do they have the same right to change, revise, augment or adapt their magical lore? Answering this question is much more difficult because there are a number of important considerations to make before individuals should seek to change an existing tradition. Was the lore given to you without any restrictions on its use? Did the initiating authority give you the right and privilege to make changes? Is the lore owned by an organization and therefore, it would require anyone who would change it to go through proper channels?

These are a few of the questions that must be asked when the lore that you hold is not owned by you. It’s important to know the answers to these questions when anyone agrees to accept an initiation into a tradition and receive specific teachings, rites and liturgy. If the initiating authority doesn’t explicitly tell their initiates when, how or with whom they might share this knowledge, or whether or not they might change, revise or adapt it for any reason, then it is the responsibility of the initiate to get that information officially documented. It’s important to understand that a strict adherence to a tradition is just that; it is strict and undeviating. Such a regimen, once imposed, will automatically require the body of initiates to preserve the lore exactly as it has been handed down, including all of the obvious mistakes, errors and omissions. If the tradition that you have been initiated into imposes this regimen, then you will have to obey it or violate the very principles of your own initiation. Because of this, it’s important to know what you are getting yourself into before accepting an initiation. You might find that such rigorous requirements are more trouble than they’re worth, and often it represents the fact that a given tradition has become dogmatic and its lore, ossified.

Additionally, we should also consider who might be capable or privileged to make changes to the existing lore of an established tradition. Often, those who are allowed to even consider changing ritual lore are individuals who have many years of experience and a great depth of knowledge. Such individuals have either been entrusted with this privilege, or it might be wholly vested in the approval of a committee or a group of adepts. In other words, changes might be accepted on any given lore for the tradition if a majority of the group agrees to them. Obviously, a new initiate or unproven member wouldn’t be given that privilege, since such work would have to be entrusted to someone who actually knew what he or she was doing. Someone who would seek to change or revise lore within a tradition should also be someone who is competent at doing so, and enforcing this regimen ensures that the lore would have a certain continuity between individuals and groups. Making changes for their own sake in the lore of an established tradition could be deemed either unacceptable or unwarranted. A person who would change traditional lore is someone who is authorised to do so. Of course, we are talking about officially changing the lore, which includes passing it down to others in its changed format.

Still, if you want to tailor a working or to experiment with a new technique, even a conservative occult tradition should allow its students the creative flexibility to do this, so long as they don’t try to pass on these changes or augmentations to others as the original lore. All of the original rituals and liturgy should be kept apart from the magician’s work to make certain that none of it is permanently changed. The original lore is also there in its pristine state so that the initiate will have them to compare and examine at any point in his or her evolution. Also, it is this original lore that should be passed to a new candidates when they are initiated. If warranted, the initiating celebrant can pass down any augmented lore to the candidate, as long as it is documented as having been changed (including when and by whom), but this might require authorization from the tradition’s lore keepers.

In my opinion, the most important factor for any initiate who is making use of ritual lore is that the lore must be made a part of his or her personal magick. What that means is that the rituals should be completely understood in regards to how they work, when they should be used, and what other ancillary practices should be employed to make the working fully functional. The magical and spiritual disciplines practiced by a ritual magician are always tailored to the magician’s specifications and personal tastes - there is no way around this fact. You can’t take a body of ritual lore and just adopt it without giving it a personal context.

One of the most important questions that occultists can ask about their ritual lore is to question themselves with this insight: “What do the symbols and philosophic verbiage contained in these rituals actually mean to me?” If they are meaningful and individually relevant, then the ritual will have a powerful effect when it’s performed, otherwise it will hardly function as it should. In order to grasp the symbols and verbiage of ritual lore, the practitioners must study and also work to make them meaningful and important. They must use the technique of contemplation to focus and powerfully activate that symbology within them. This operation is best accomplished by focusing on each key symbol independently, one at a time. Through a concentrated effort, the symbology of a tradition must become the active symbology within the mind of the practitioner. If an initiate fails to internally incorporate the symbology of a tradition, then it will make the adopted ritual lore empty and meaningless. Most traditions will teach this key technique to their initiates, but sometimes, due to omission or neglect, this important operation will not be passed on. That omission would represent a critical handicap to anyone who is seeking to practice ritual lore that they haven’t themselves written.

In order to be proficient at working ritual magick, magicians must own, in some manner, the rituals that they are using. You could say that ritual magicians are not fully functioning practitioners unless, or until, they own the rituals, and they are owned by being wholly internalized. If in order to achieve that end, ritual magicians must add, amend, revise or create the rituals contained in their personal grimoire, then such modifications become part of the overall process of magical mastery. In other words, ultimately, every ritual magician will create their own ritual lore, either based loosely or tightly on that tradition which they have acquired through initiation and revelation. Every magician has their own way and sense of style about how they work magick, and this individual praxis is the magician’s personal lore. Magicians can’t easily pass on their idiosyncratic methodologies to their students, and in fact, for various reasons, they shouldn’t. Instead, they should instruct them in the basic lore that represents the common foundation for their own work.

When I decided to teach others how I worked magick back in the eighties, my system of magick was too personal and idiosyncratic. I had to rewrite my personal magical system into a more generalized lore so that my students could more ably adapt this lore to their own personal style. If I had been initiated into a magical tradition, then the original lore that I would have been given would have been passed to my students. Whether fortunately or unfortunately, I did not have any traditional ritual lore to pass on, so what I gave them instead was a generalized distillation of what I was then using as my personal magical lore.

In fact, when the members of my first proto-temple came together, they insisted that the lore that I possessed be rewritten so that it would thematically fit into the overall scheme of the lodge and order that we formed. I happily complied with their request, and the results became the burgeoning ritual lore for the Order of the Gnostic Star. However, unlike traditions that require strict adherence, I allow anyone who joins the Order to modify the rites and liturgy according to the desires and consensus of their group. However, I do ask that the original material be kept, and that changes to the lore for that temple be documented. Otherwise, I have absolutely no problem with anyone adapting the lore that I originally developed. In fact, I not only expect it, but I also urge it as part of an initiate’s training.

I may be a proponent for allowing individuals to modify, change, revise or even create their own magical lore, but I also believe that they should be completely transparent and ethical in how they go about this task. Magicians tend to borrow, copy or even steal whatever they like for the ongoing purpose of building up their ritual and occult lore. I don’t have any problems with this activity, since even if I did, it wouldn’t stop it from happening. Ideas are like easy money, and they quickly pass from one magician to another, often without their sources being citing or credit being given to fellow magicians. I believe that imitation is the highest form of flattery, so I wouldn’t be bothered if someone borrowed a few of my techniques and added them to their own lore. That is how ritual magick evolves over time, and if a bunch of ritual magicians were to copy my ideas and incorporate them into their magick, I would actually be quite pleased. Perhaps this is the only way that any magician can acquire a kind of immortality.

Those who promote the idea of a strict adherence to any tradition or body of lore, be it archaic grimoires or even recently developed lore, are likely to find my opinions about this matter to be quite problematic. You see, because I believe that magicians are required to own their own magical lore, it becomes nearly impossible to do that while at the same time preserving the written lore as if it were holy writ. I don’t agree with what I call “cook-book” sorcery, and I am steadfastly against the popular movement of “grimoire-only” praxis. These two methods are analogous since they both promote a strict adherence to the actual written formulas and texts.

Someone can swear that the grimoire that they are using is pristine and perfect, as it was hundreds of years ago, and that the best results occur when the practitioner literally follows what is written in that book. First of all, nearly every grimoire has anywhere from a few to over a hundred different variations, some of which are completely unrelated except in their titles. Secondly, unless the magician has a facility for archaic languages and special access to either the original texts or good facsimiles of them, then the published book that he or she is using is based on a synthesis or amalgamation of those different texts. To be a real purist, then the would-be magician would have to read and use the grimoire in its original language. The belief system (as well as the culture) behind antique grimoires has long since passed out of this world, so in order to produce a reliable reconstruction, the magician would have to engage in imaginative speculation to fill in the unknown elements. Even so, if the purist is not an orthodox adherent of Christianity or Judaism, then much of what passes for the spiritual foundation of the grimoire would be missing, and such an omission would likely cause the working to fail, at least initially.

Since practicing with an incomplete reconstruction of a grimoire-based magical system would hardly give anyone an excuse to be an elitist, I find the whole reconstructionist creed to be no better than having to invent a magical system from scratch. In fact, unless the purist magician was able to completely “own” that reconstructed grimoire based system, then the invented system would be superior. In my opinion, there isn’t a person on this planet anywhere who has the Medieval mind set of an early renaissance magus, so adaption is the real rule of the path of ritual magick, whether one uses the old grimoires or not. So my opinion of the strict adherence “grimoire-only” crowd is that they are actually a bunch of pretentiously fake elitists who seem to know less about real magick than someone who is just a beginner. They have artfully created a series of myths about magick that make learning and mastering it far more difficult and complex than it ought to be. I am, of course, referring to Joseph Lisiewsky and his book “Ceremonial Magic and the Power of Evocation,” which has created a minor movement within the ritual and ceremonial magick communities. I have already commented extensively on this tome (and its author) and I have found it to be unconvincing and unrealistic.

Since that book came out, a number of magicians have jumped on the Lisiewsky band-wagon, and they have solidified into what I call the “Grimoire-only” purist movement. This is because Lisiewsky has promoted the idea that the only thing that magicians have to do is unerringly follow the written text of an antique grimoire, and “poof,” a real spiritual materialization will occur. Of course, one of the elements of that line of reasoning is that one must also faithfully engage in an orthodox religious faith, such as Catholicism, to gain the necessary spiritual foundation required to perform this kind of magick. Because I have no desire to become a Catholic, I think that I will completely pass on Lisiewsky’s methodologies. However, I have little patience for anyone who declares that the Grimoire-only methodology is the one, true and perfect methodology, and other systems are to be suspected as fraudulent. I don’t like being called a fake by anyone, so I think that I will let everyone know that this supposed “cutting edge” type of magic is, in my opinion, just hyperbole.  I wish anyone luck who seeks to get this methodology to work in a consistent and practical manner, since they will surely need a lot of luck and maybe some powerful hallucinogens as well.       

So I have covered the full spectrum of considerations for whether one should or shouldn’t change their lore in accordance with their own praxis. I have also demonstrated that magicians should have a certain flexibility in how they adapt their traditional lore to their own personal work. I am probably quite lenient in this regard, but it’s really up to the individual, and also, to the members of the tradition to which they belong. Ethical behavior in regards to passing on lore to students is very important, but so is allowing those students the latitude to adapt what they are using and thereby succeed in owning it. I have also recommended that the student use contemplation techniques to focus on the symbology and strategic verbiage of the ritual lore so that it might become internalized and fully active. I have also shown a certain degree of contempt for what I call a strict adherence to written lore, since I think that it’s impractical, dogmatic and too restrictive. Magicians are artists, so they need to have the flexibility for adaption, revision, modification and even creation when it comes to their adopted ritual lore. Restriction and inhibition are the killers of true creativity. Avoid them wherever possible.

Frater Barrabbas