Am I a Dinosaur?

And now for one of those terrible introspective articles that every reader dreads (and every writer periodically indulges in), where I ask that inexplicable question “am I relevant?”

Yes - this is one of those self-pitying write-ups that poses such existential questions as: Do I matter? Does what I am doing as a writer, teacher and practitioner of occultism, paganism and ritual magick really matter at all? Would anyone in the world have noticed if by some chance I had never existed? If I suddenly vanished from the face of the earth, would anyone even care? Are my ideas so redundant and unoriginal that someone else could have easily stepped into my spiritual foot print and done pretty much the same thing, except maybe quite a lot better? Or perhaps, someone has already done so innumerable times in the past, but it’s just that I hadn’t noticed? I know what you’re thinking, it’s just me feeling the futility of my efforts, and it will pass in a few minutes. (Taking a deep breath, I will endeavor to continue..)

I admit that there is a bit of hubris and self-loathing associated with such musings, and they usually represent the kind of maudlin sentiment and self-absorption that I find quite boring and pathetic in others. So why would I engage in this kind of disgusting feeling-so-sorry-for-myself public lament if I also found it so silly and distasteful? That’s a damned good question, and before I answer it with a “yeah, this too shall pass and be an embarrassment to me later” kind of statement, I think that I could at least explain why I occasionally feel this way. Besides, there are some interesting reasons associated with why I am sensing this angst at this particular time.

Perhaps the times have changed to a degree where I am altogether out of step, or maybe what is changing in the pagan and magical world is not for the best. Allow me to explain what I am thinking here and leave behind the emotional feelings that must accompany such an insight. At the end of this article I may attempt to answer the questions posed in the first paragraph, and perhaps have a better understanding of what is really going on in my world.

We all sometimes feel that are best effort isn’t good enough, or that what we feel is important and strategic in our lives seems to have little value to others. The sting of cognitive dissonance can be quite irritating and even distressing, but it is also (sometimes) considered the price that one must pay for any kind of social or technical precociousness. It’s all too easy for anyone to say to themselves that trite little by-line: “I am a genius and nobody understands me.” Often the opposite is more true: “I am a dinosaur and everybody has passed me by.”

Ideas do become extinct over time, and their purveyors usually die an obscure and ignominious death by a thousand yawns. The irony is that sometimes extinct or forgotten ideas are much later resurrected, and their long-gone spokespersons gain a kind of posthumous cult status. I have no desire to go through that kind of cyclic return, which would occur long after the worms and vultures have eliminated my mortal remains (including the various books and other materials that I have created), but I might also have no choice in the matter. Popularity is fickle and constantly changing, and often the mediocre and trendy are lionized at the expense of the true path-cutter or innovator.

So the question right now is in the world of paganism, witchcraft, ritual magick and western occultism, what is really vogue and exciting right now - in my opinion? Let me list them here and now for us to consider.

Pagan and witchcraft reconstructionism. Antique, classical paganism and the supposed “Old Craft” (anti-Gardinarian craft proponents) are the “in-thing” these days. If one doesn’t have a truly historically derived pagan or witchcraft tradition (or one produced by the properly vetted and agreed upon historical data), a tradition can be created through the use of trance, channeling or the imagination. Pagan reconstructionism is probably more aligned to the historical data, however, Old Craft is probably a lot less so, since the last documented cunning folk were nominally Christians. I would also include “Hedgecraft” and forms of “Bushcraft” in this list, which should be considered, in my opinion, synthesized or new approaches to an old perspective, instead of promoting them as some kind of antique version of pagan witchcraft.

Paganism and Wicca are becoming more like church establishments. Another phenomenon that is occurring and is quite popular is that the modern practices of Paganism and Wicca are becoming more like organized religions and less like systems of magic or the occult. What this entails is the systematic removal or elimination of actual practical magic from the liturgical and religious foundation of a given tradition. I have seen this happen to Gardnerian versions of Witchcraft (including my own), and also to other traditions as well. Also, the emphasis has changed from experimentation to the conservative preservation of the core practices and beliefs. That change in emphasis also seems to be behind an emerging fundamentalism that is slowly and insidiously invading traditions that are really only several decades old or less. When lineages, pedigrees, lineage vouches and staunch, mindless preservation of the lore become far more important than modification, revision and experimentation, then I think that religious conservatism has become the preeminent force in that tradition. This is a situation where legitimacy trumps authenticity, indicating that transformation and direct experiences of Deity and Spirit are no longer either wanted or needed.

Reconstructionism in Renaissance and Mediaeval Magick and Occultism. What is really popular in the practice of ritual and ceremonial magick these days relies on a kind of reconstructionism and strict adherence to source materials. While I have no problem with digging into the past for valuable and aesthetically pleasing magical lore, I do have an issue with the strict adherence part, because in my opinion, magick is something that is derived and recreated within each individual, thus actually making it a new and fresh construct. Since it is impossible to recreate a cultural context that is long passed, attempting to reconstruct the culture behind a collection of grimoires seems to be a fruitless task. Even so, with the publishing of ever more antique grimoires and other related tomes, the passion for reconstruction and strict adherence has become quite popular.

Shamanism, Ethnic and Native Spirituality. I have always believed that ethnic religious traditions belong to the ethnic groups who practice them. Outsiders are just that - they are outside the tradition and really don’t possess the keys to it. If someone wants to engage with teachers and spiritual sponsors of ethnic religious traditions then that is their business; but at least they are going through the same steps that everyone else who was born into that ethnic group must travel. However, it seems to be a popular thing these days to just read and research books on a given ethnic religious tradition, and then adopt some of those practices and beliefs that appeal to one’s tastes. This kind of selective approach produces modern or urban Shamanism, Neo-Tantraism, New Age Native American practitioners, uninitiated Voundoun or Palo practitioners, and quite a number of book-read experts and self-initiated masters. 

These days it seems that the self-taught and self-initiated are part of the greater outlier of ethnic religious traditions, and it remains a very popular approach for many people; although it is likely a source of confusion and consternation to those who have been properly vetted into one of these traditions. Book knowledge, derived practices, and independent development seems to be more important than actually finding a qualified teacher and becoming fully immersed in that ethnic tradition for many years. It would seem that the driving force for such a path has more to do with immediate gratification and personal edification than actually mastering a living and breathing tradition in an authentic manner.

This revelation brings me to my last point, which is the general trend of eschewing all traditional occult teachings, practices, and other elements of what I consider to be hard-core occultism. This would include mastering such obscure subjects as Tarot, Qabalah, Astrology, Alchemy, meditation, concentration and contemplation, Golden Dawn magic, classical ceremonial magic, classical mythology, world religions, basic philosophy, theosophy and theology, logic, systems of divination such as Geomancy, Runes, crystal scrying, pendulum work, and much, much more. I may not be a master of all of these occult beliefs, practices and techniques, but sometimes I feel like a cranky giant amongst a lot of narrowly focused Lilliputians.

It seems like I am meeting more and more witches and pagans who don’t know the basic magical operations of invoking or evoking spirits, using sigils or derived characters to imprint magical energy, generating Elemental energies, summoning Planetary intelligences or even fashioning talismans. These are basic magical practices that any witch or pagan should know, but they seem to be omitted or just plain considered irrelevant to the now established religious creed. At the same time Hoodoo is quite vogue and in many cases it is replacing hard-core basic magical practices (and associated transformative experiences) with a kind of derivative cookbook approach to acquiring magical phenomenon. (You don’t need to understand how it works or the cultural context behind it, just gather these items, do these procedures and mix them together in this manner.)

So, these are the hot topics and pursuits in paganism and witchcraft that are the cutting edge, in my opinion, and unfortunately I am on the counter point with almost all of them. I have been pursuing my own path for nearly four decades, and the basic foundation of my knowledge comes from being involved in a tradition, and then heavily revising and adding to it over the years. I prefer revisionism, creating new systems of magical practices that fit with my overall occult perspective than pursuing some new-fangled fad. I am deeply engaged in classical occultism, and have been so since the very beginning days of my spiritual and magical path.

I believe in and I am engaged in a practice of magic as theurgy, consisting of progressive and incremental transformative ordeals. Ecstasy is the key to what I do, but a deeply held occult discipline and practice is the locking mechanism that I use to open myself to wholly new and wondrous experiences. Because I represent such a strong counter movement to the above list of modern trends in paganism and witchcraft, one could say that I am an adherent of an antique perspective - that I am, in a word, a dinosaur awaiting an immanent extinction. I hope that my outlier practices and beliefs just represent a temporary contrary trend, and that in time, what I am doing and what I know will be valuable some day in the future. 

However, I have watched this change happen over a long time, and if and when it changes yet again, I will likely be gone from this world. Maybe my writings will be valuable to someone someday, but whoever they are, they will be missing that most important of teaching mechanisms, direct and hands-on training and peer review. What I am saying is that because it will take many decades for this trend to reverse itself, by that time I will be in my dotage or more likely dead and buried.

Only time will tell how all of this works out, and particularly, what the new generations make of my writings and my work. Will they see me as a quaint practitioner of something that should have been discarded back in the 90's, or will they see me as some kind of novel founder of a new perspective? I can’t effectively answer this question at the present time; but I can at least be true to my own beliefs and practices, knowing that what I am doing is important to me and the few associates, spirits and deities that are daily part of my life. Everything else is just “sauce for the goose.”

Frater Barrabbas

Enochian Magick and the Two Paths

Everyone who attempts to work a tradition or system of magick begins their process with some simple and basic assumptions. Which assumptions the magician accepts will determine how he or she will undertake the practice of that system. For instance, if a magician believes that in order to master the elected system or grimoire of a particular type of magick that he must fully adopt it without making any changes or substitutions, this will cause him to behave as if the grimoire were the sole source of his magical work. We might call him a traditionalist or a strict-adherence kind of magician. Yet, if another magician takes the opposite view and sees the same grimoire or system of magick as being just one among many, and that the only complete and “whole” system of magick is the one that she has developed for herself, then she will examine that grimoire or system of magick as one of many possible sources that she can use to build up her own system of magick.

These two attitudes, as you can see, will foster two completely and diametrically opposed perspectives. It’s also likely that both magicians won’t see eye to eye about what they are doing, and in fact, the traditionalist might even be insulted by the other magician’s disrespectful purloining of source material and using it to build what is obviously a revisionist system of magick. As occultists, we are acutely aware of fads, poorly researched or contrived New Age hybrids or occult ripoffs, but the steadfast work of a magician who artfully draws from multiple sources shouldn’t be included in the usual judgements and disdain for such amalgamated bastardizations. A magician who is a revisionist carefully selects her materials and then tests them repeatedly within the matrix of her own system. If they work effectively, then they are kept, if not, they are put aside or discarded.

Also, we should be aware of the fact that it’s not always an “either or” type of choice. Sometimes it is an inclusion of both approaches, since most everyone starts out with some kind of tradition or system of magick as their base. Taking a strict stand one way or the other might be too limiting, since sometimes magicians are given a tradition to work with well after they have already developed their own system of magick. It’s important to keep an open mind and to be flexible, to adopt an attitude of inclusion instead of exclusion. I have found this mind-set useful in approaching my study and practice of ritual magick as well as examining what other magicians do. So, it would seem that extremism in the pursuit of truth is a major stumbling block or petty vice rather than any kind of virtue.

However, in regards to Enochian magick, the beginning assumption about this system profoundly shapes the direction that one will proceed from that point. It would appear that this system of magick has a pivot point that determines exactly how one will tackle the Enochian material, and I have found myself on the side of the extreme minority, but perhaps others have also taken up my approach and just not written any blogs or books on the subject. Allow me to clarify what exactly I am referring to when I make such a loaded statement.

There are two basic assumptions (or opinions) when one ponders all of the diaries and materials published (and unpublished) about the system of magic that John Dee and Edward Kelly channeled from their scrying sessions over four centuries ago.

1. The Enochian system magick is complete and whole, and Dee’s diaries are the definitive source of all materials on Enochian magick.

2. The Enochian system of magick is incomplete and missing many strategic parts, and that the various Angels that Dee and Kelly summoned into their shewstone are the definitive sources of that system of magick.

There could possibly be a third perspective, and that is that Enochian magick is part of the Renaissance tradition of ceremonial magick, and that whatever missing parts it has can be found in the historical records of that overall tradition. This would seem to be the perspective of the historian, and often occultists who espouse a predilection for reconstructionism find the work of such historians to be invaluable and subject to incorporation into their reconstructed system. However, this perspective would fit hand in glove with the first opinion, and it demonstrates that the second is the real outlier. Although I would state my belief here that the second opinion is the true occultic perspective.

If magical practitioners use the first opinion as their basic operating assumption for Enochian magick, then all that is needed for assembling this system is to be found in the diaries. That would mean that any extraneous or ancillary material or phenomena associated with Enochian magick would be judged against that foundational work, whether it was determined by the active discourse with spirits or through some other insight. If the new insights appear to be corroborated by some analogous materials in the Dee diaries, then it can be (cautiously) accepted, otherwise it must be either rejected or put aside as an unqualified deviation. This is the practical and rational approach to a conservative traditional engagement with the Enochian system of magick.

Yet what if the Dee material is incomplete, and it requires the operator to contact the spirits anew in order to get further instructions, revelations and devices to optimize the extent materials from Dee’s diaries? If we make this assumption then how do we proceed? Do we throw away everything that Dee established and start with a completely fresh approach? Of course, if we did that, then would we be able to call the resultant developed magical system “Enochian?” I think that instead of throwing everything away we can accept various elements of the Enochian system of magick as established by Dee, and upon that, extend the system with new revelations and insights provided by the same spirits that Dee and Kelly conversed with centuries ago. I believe that such an approach would validate Dee’s methodologies and would also fill in the blanks and assist in building up a more comprehensive magical system. Could such new material be reasonably called “Enochian” if the spirits who communicated it were the same spirits that Dee and Kelly contacted? I believe that the answer to that question is yes - it would still be Enochian magick. In fact it would become a living, creative and dynamic system of magick, something that assiduously following the diaries wouldn’t be.

When we examine the materials of Dee’s diaries that have survived the passage of ages, what we possess seems to represent a complete system of magick. However, anecdotal historical information has shown that the diaries were broken into two sections; one was buried on Dee’s property at Mortlake and the other was secreted into a hidden panel drawer in a chest. The buried diaries were discovered in 1620's and became part of the Cotton collection, and the other was rescued from the chest during the great fire of London (1666) and became part of the Ashmolean collection. The Cotton collection had been somewhat degraded (although still legible) because it had been buried, and the Ashmolean collection consisted of only half of the documents that were originally stored in the chest (the rest supposedly became liners for pie plates or were destroyed before their value was determined). Dee himself hid these documents to ensure that they were never found or viewed by an undiscriminating public as he was preparing for another one of his long journeys. Sadly, the prophesied long journey announced by the angels was his death.

The fact that any of these documents managed to survive the passage of time is nothing short of a minor miracle. Yet the diaries weren’t the only materials that were part of Dee’s personal magical collection. According to Benjamin Woolley (“Queen’s Conjurer”), Dee used the diaries (and other materials) to fashion finished books of magic. The crown jewels of his collection were books that contained the wisdom and science revealed by Enoch (Book of Enoch, promised to Dee by the angels) and the reputed Mystery of Mysteries, and Holy of Holies.

It would seem that the best part of the collection was never found, so the final products that Dee had labored so many years to produce are likely lost to time. Supposedly, the angels directed Dee to burn all of his books at one time, and at a subsequent later date they were miraculously recovered, but perhaps not all of them. This might explain why Dee continued to perform scrying sessions with lesser individuals acting as seers years after he and Kelly had broken their relationship. Maybe Dee was trying to regain his lost treasures or he was trying to continue the unfinished work that he had started. All of the valuable information that forms the foundation of the Enochian system of magick was the product of the collaboration between John Dee and Edward Kelly, and once that collaboration ended, the valuable spiritual link was lost as well.

Therefore, we can safely deduce that the Enochian system of magick is far from being complete or whole. What we have today are some of the source diaries, perhaps containing the most important elements of the magical system but not all of them. It was very likely, in the mind of Dee, a work in progress and it would hardly seem to be sensible to “close the book” on any new developments or insights simply because Dee himself is no longer alive and writing about his magical experiments. Yet that is the argument which is used to strictly define the Enochian system of magick, either from a traditionist perspective or the contrary minority view of the revisionist.

While I would never compare myself to John Dee, nor could I emulate in any manner the level of brilliance that he demonstrated, I do consider myself a competent occultist. The elephant in the room of this argument are the spirits themselves who are the real key holders and the source of this wisdom. What is required of any occultist who would seek to summon and hold discourse with these spirits is the knowledge of the invocation process and a well grounded spiritual and magical discipline. That source knowledge is still out there possessed by the Enochian spirits residing in the Spirit World. It is waiting for some gifted and creative soul who has the temerity and audacity to contact them, and the ability to channel the great gift of their knowledge into a recognizable and intelligible system of magick.

This is exactly what I did back in the very early 1990's, and following that series of workings led me down the veritable rabbit hole into a world of wonder and amazement. It seemed to me that the spirits of the Enochian system of magick were not only still quite active, but eager to share their wisdom with others. Even so, I seem to be one of a very small minority of individuals who actually took this path. I have written down these experiences and analyzed the communications that I received in a series of unpublished books known as the Sepher ha-Nephilim. Some might see it as an attempt to re-invent the wheel, others have said that the results of that work doesn’t conform to the Enochian material as it is currently understood or practiced (perhaps making it useless).

What I have said in response to many of my critics is to invite them to take the second opinion as their founding assumption, therefore proceeding in the footsteps of Dee and Kelly and then, with an open mind, see what develops. I believe that anyone who actually attempts to follow this path is continuing the Enochian tradition as it was originally conceived, and perhaps taking such an experimental trip would validate what I have done. Until then I am unfortunately like a lone voice in the wilderness, unheard and unheeded.

Frater Barrabbas

Some Issues Regarding Grimoire Magick

Persecution of Heresy - Beginning of the Great Divide Between the Old and Modern World

Every day there seems to be another grimoire manuscript that is being published by some high quality book publisher, and it would seem that the volume of published and available material hasn't in any way diminished the demand. It would appear that an important factor for the popularity of the old grimoires is vested in the magical idea that somehow we should emulate the magical practitioners of the late middle ages and early renaissance. In fact, there is a movement within the practice of ceremonial magick that stipulates that all anyone really has to do is to choose an appropriately antique grimoire and practice it exactly as it was written, with no substitutions or revisions.

There is also the mind-set that such works were written by masters of their craft, and that they should therefore be wholly adopted without any changes or revisions. Thus, in the discipline of high magick, we seem to be overrun these days with individuals who are purists and nearly fundamentalistic in their approach to working with the old grimoires. Happily, I can state that I am not one of them, and I think that such an attitude is problematic at best and an insufferable arrogance at worst. Let me explain what I mean by this loaded and opinionated statement.

It’s my opinion that these purists are the occult absolutists in our field of magick. They are the ones who vow a strict adherence to their sources and who condemn others who are not so strict, in other words, those terrible gadfly revisionists - of which I am a proud member. I believe that flexibility and mutability are the hallmarks of true creativity, and their opposite are often the sign of a complete lack of imagination and creative insight. This is quite an unusual state of affairs in the annals of magick because I believe that each magician must create his or her own magical practice from whatever material and lore is available. Certainly, we have an abundance of materials available now that weren’t available just a few decades ago, yet to be hidebound to any one single source is to be, in my opinion, quite self-limiting.

I suspect that the magicians of the previous epoch had no problem borrowing their lore from multiple sources, and the diversity of antique grimoires even with the same title is a remarkable testament that this was so. With ever greater resources at our disposal, we live in a time when we can craft our own system and technique of magick from many different and diverse sources. Doing so is nothing more than following an age old technique of borrowing and appropriating the occult lore and practices of a previous age. I suspect that the magicians of the past age, both great and obscure, borrowed and appropriated their lore from whatever sources they had available to them. Should we be so different? (Of course, this presupposes that one knows enough about magick to be able cobble together a magical system, but that is another topic altogether.)

There are at least three different approaches that one take to utilizing the material found in the old grimoires, and four, if we count the approach of not using them at all. These approaches can be labeled traditionalism, reconstructionism and revisionism. I have talked about these three different approaches several times before, but I want to discuss them in context of the old grimoires. Of these three, the traditional path is the most problematic, since only if one has access to an initiatory lineage that incorporates this lore would it be possible to call oneself a traditional grimoire magician. Nearly all of us must rely, one way or another, on the public materials available. We can attempt to develop a magical practice based on the best historical information available and through that method, we can approach the full employment of one or more of the antique grimoires. There are a lot of problems with this approach, but it should be noted that grimoire reconstructionism is based on an assumption that whatever is unknown or omitted in that lore can be developed using modern sources or one’s creative imagination.

One other key point is that the further we go back in time, the less details that we know about the culture, people’s basic beliefs, basic language used, assumed religious practices and a myriad of other minutiae. Reconstructing a magical system must also include reconstructing the cultural matrix from that specific time period in order to be really effective, and even with the most painstaking research, only fragments exist for cultures that existed merely half a millennia ago. Therefore, reconstructionism, by definition, must always be incomplete and filled out with suppositions and even one’s creative imagination. Thus they become more like an “as if” proposition rather than a perfect reflection of what once existed.

This is why I consider revisionism to be a much better and simpler prospect than attempting to reconstruct an antique practice. You can even start out with a tradition, like for instance, the Golden Dawn, and upon that foundation, build and add appropriate various materials, techniques, themes, tropes and practices from the old grimoires.  A magician needs to know and understand what is needed to build out a new magical functionality, and armed with this knowledge, then choose the appropriate grimoire and harvest from it whatever is needed. In this manner, material is extracted and placed into a proper occult discipline where it will become more or less redefined and used appropriately within of the context of an already established magical practice.

The reason why I am much more inclined to taking a revisionist perspective to all magical lore from the middle ages and the renaissance is that I believe that there is a massive gulf that lies between us, who are living in the post-modern age, and those who lived in the previous epoch. That gap has made a powerful difference between not only how one works magic today versus those previous times, but it also makes a great difference between the post-modern magician and the magician of middle ages and early renaissance. Our beliefs, expectations, approach to religion and spirituality, and our cultural determinants are all completely and radically different. Thus, a modern magician is not at all like his or her peer from the earlier epoch, nor is the world that we live in and our cultural matrix in any manner similar.

If we were to go back in time to the period of the late middle ages or early renaissance when the grimoire system of western magick was being formulated, we would find ourselves in a much different world. Roman Catholicism would be the dominant and primary faith, and all its beliefs and practices would be commonly known and engaged in by nearly everyone, from serf to the highest aristocracy. The whole notion of a secular approach to governing or to a knowledge of the world would not yet exist. So, too, would the notion of an existential individuality and self-determination. The Pope would be the absolute spiritual authority throughout most of Europe, and it some cases, he would also be a temporal authority. The aristocracy would be just beginning to exercise their independent authority, but no one would be foolish enough to directly countermand episcopal dictates. The lords who ruled the various kingdoms and principalities owed their temporal authority to the church, who sanctioned their rule through the artifice of their various offices. This was not too surprising, since these lords were from the same dynastic families that also held positions of power in the church. It was often prudent for the aristocracy to promote their offspring into positions of temporal power as well as within the church hierarchy.

The world of the greater Catholic domain was a complete, seamless and total world view, encompassed by an annual festive calendar and dominated by a monolithic religious belief system promoted by continuous and periodic religious practices. Nearly everyone participated in it, and it would be mostly inconceivable for anyone to exclude themselves from participating. It was considered a universal faith and practice, which is what the word “Catholic” literally means.

So, what would the typical literate magician of the late middle ages or early renaissance be like? First off, he would be a devout Catholic and fairly conservative in his religious beliefs. He would see visions of angels, demons and experience the powers of the saints first hand and it is also likely that his piety and zeal would have pushed him into the study and practice of ceremonial magick. Since he was literate (and often in more than one language), then he was either a member of the upper class or a trained cleric, since literacy had a certain power, mystery and prestige all by itself, especially to the greater masses of the population who were illiterate. He would have had access to enough resources to be able to equip himself and to acquire the privacy to be able to work his rites alone and unobserved. A poor man would have neither had the time nor resources to practice magic, and certainly, being alone and unsupervised would have been something of a great privilege. To outsiders, the ceremonial magician would have appeared to be no different than anyone else, he would have been the very model of religious piety and class privilege, and therefore typically beyond suspicion in regards to impious or heretical behavior.

A magician from that period would have been proficient in the inherent disciplines of discursive meditation, contemplation, the Holy Office with its eight daily periods of prayer and meditation, and the use of special mass rites to charge and empower his regalia and fortify his work. He could do all of these things, including ceremonial magick and likely get away with it because he was a member of a protected and privileged elite. Even Agrippa was a member of the (petty) nobility and no commoner. He had certain privileges and responsibilities associated with his station. His life, with its service to liege lords, training and social expectations associated with his class (from social etiquette to military training), his religious education and continuous engagements with a pious religious practice, all of this, would be quite foreign to us today.

It is also my opinion that an educated man living in that time would have been easily able to attribute to his life and its various occurrences as being the outer manifestation of the grace or doom of God and his saints, angels or even, the Devil and his minions. A magician would have made use of the Catholic liturgy (including the techniques of reversed exorcism used for invocation) and the monastic discipline to be able gain the proper mind-state necessary to see and thereby command the spirits to be found nearly everywhere in the world. The domain of Spirit was not difficult to access for the average person and in fact, it wasn't seen as a separate world at all. So the methods used to fulfill the need for the first stage of an evocation (spiritual purification) were simply a variation of what was already practiced in the typical monastic discipline.  

My point is that the world that the magician of the previous epoch lived in was one where magick flourished, and the many varieties of grimoire magick had their origin in those times. According to the sparse historical data available, everyone seemed to practice some kind of religious based magic, which later would be considered to be steeped in religious superstition, but at the time, religious faith was a very powerful element in the world. Science and religion were interwoven in a manner that would be strange to us today. A magician in the previous epoch could easily employ one of the many grimoires secretly available and he would also know how to activate the spiritual practice behind the book, since he could merely perform the religious rites and practices already available to him, and it would be sufficient. However, this is no longer true, and there are some compelling reasons why that is so.

The first thing that happened that began to radically change the European culture was the reformation. Over a period of fifty years, beginning early in the 16th century, the entire religious perspective permanently changed with the advent of Protestant Christianity. Catholics, faced with such a challenge, zealously promoted what became known as the counter-reformation, and the periodic but constant warfare between Protestant and Catholic ideologies indelibly changed both religious traditions. Suddenly, Catholics and Protestants alike became highly intolerant of any kind of spiritual deviance, heresy or assumed apostasy. It became a dangerous time for anyone to practice ceremonial magick, still the books were still clandestinely produced, circulated and elaborated upon despite the risk. However, piety and conservative opinion, which would have tolerated a certain amount of magical practice, now had no tolerance whatsoever and this resulted in the persecution and execution of many who once were a part of the protected elite. What this ultimately did was to purge from both traditions of Christianity many of the techniques and tropes that were used in ceremonial magick, transforming the typical magical practitioner into anything but a pious and conservative religious adherent. It also had the effect of removing all magic from the practiced liturgy, a process that continues today. 

Still, we can assume that ceremonial magick was likely practiced by some individuals, even though there is scant proof of that. However, from a more realistic perspective, it would seem that the literature itself had a certain sensational vogue amongst savants and affluent collectors who helped to spread it all over Europe. Over time, the social calamity of the reformation began to lose its passion on both sides, and the power of the Catholic church began to diminish while the power of temporal authority slowly became greater. By the end of the 17th and through the middle of the 18th century, it is likely that ceremonial magick was being practiced by a greater population of select individuals, most of whom would be considered more like occultists (or eccentric antiquarians) as found in our modern age than pious exponents of the religious status quo.

Even so, while ceremonial magick was having its own kind of renewal during this period, two more events occurred that made the gap between the previous epoch even wider, and these were the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century, to be quickly followed by the Age of Science in the 19th century. By the end of the 19th century, only occultists had an interest in the magical writings and practices of the previous age, and the materials that they studied became ever more rare and difficult to acquire. The rest of the European world had become secularized, literate, educated and indoctrinated into science and socially empowered by democracy, and in the process, the late medieval mind-set of ceremonial magick and its cultural context were irreparably lost. It became the provenance of individuals like Mathers, Westcott, Crowley, and Fortune to resurrect the art and practice of magick, but what they derived from their studies and experimental practices was something that was quite new and infused with modern sensibilities.

While the times have profoundly changed from the previous age, magick has once again become relevant. However, the mechanisms and techniques of performing evocation now require a considerably greater effort to achieve the proper initial mind-state. Thus, we modern practitioners are forced to adopt a regimen of mind control that is considerably more elaborate, deeper and engaging that what the practitioner of the past age would have employed. In fact, to engage the Spirit world, we are forced to adopt ecstatic methodologies more reminiscent of shamanism than the merely pious practices required of the magicians of the previous epoch. Times have changed, and so has the discipline and practices of the ritual or ceremonial magician. So it would seem logical that in order to appropriate the lore of the old grimoires, we must first have developed and mastered a modern tradition of magick. It would also seem to be folly to expect that the old grimoires can be effectively practiced as they once were, given all that has happened in the last five hundred years.

Frater Barrabbas