Year 2024 In Review

Wow, it has been amazing year for me. So much has happened to me, both as a writer and a Witch and Magician that is seems difficult to unravel it all. Yet the year started off with a bang, and had many exciting developments. It also had one powerful disappointment, and that, of course, was the election results. I will briefly say a few words about that event, but mostly, I want to outline the amazing things that happened in the course of the year. Life has been good to me, and there is much to be grateful about, and people to be thankful for helping make this an amazing year for me.

I have been writing all year long, and what I have produced has been truly prodigious. During the year I wrote three books and submitted them to my publisher. These books will be coming out in the next two years. Titles for these books are Abramelin Lunar Ordeal (02/2025), The Magical Notary Art (04/2025), and Liber Artis Archaeomancy (Winter 2026). The manuscript for Liber Artis Archaeomancy turned out to have 217K words, so it will be a large and comprehensive work. Additionally, I have edited and revised Disciples Guide to Ritual Magick (08/2024), Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick (12/2024), and Practical Qabalah for Occultists (previously, Magical Qabalah for Beginners), which is likely to appear in print some time in Spring, 2026. I have completed six literary projects for the year.

However, during the year, I have seen six books printed and released, and these were in the following consecutive order, Sacramental Theurgy for Witches, Transformative Initiation for Witches, Mastering the Art of Witchcraft, Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick, Liber Nephilim, and Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick. My total output for the year 2024 has been ten books, written and edited both last year and this year. That is quite an amazing output. I am thankful that at present, there are no outstanding book projects awaiting me. I have completely cleared my occult book work-desk of all projects, so for the Yule period, I have been writing blog articles and working on the planing stages for next set of books. I have three books projects for 2025, although I will take my time planning, assembling, writing and producing these manuscripts, and then getting contracts and readying the documents for submission. Here is a list of three projects that I have planned for next year - they won’t be released until late 2026 and 2027.

The Gnostic Tetra-Sacramentary: Liturgies and Sacred Rites of the Magician Priestcraft

Since the system of magic that I espouse uses the Mass rite, Benediction, and other sacramental rites, I believe that producing a ritual workbook of the entire collection of rituals that I have used or planned to write should be developed as a manuscript and then published. The four Gnostic theurgical systems in the Order of the Gnostic Star, consisting of Thelema, Agape, Thanatos and Eros, each has a Mass rite, a Benediction rite variation, and other sacramental rites, such as the Rite of Naming, Gnostic Wedding, Exorcism, Excommunication, Requiem and the Holy Orders of Deacon and Pontifex ordination would be a part of this liturgical lore. Other ancillary rites would be included, such as the Gnostic Book of Seasons, Mass of the Great Goddess (full version), and the Rite of Beatification, and a Benediction rite to Santa Muerta. A full background to this Gnostic Sacramentary, and the use and obligations of rites of Priestcraft would be fully covered. This manuscript would likely be the first task that I would undertake for 2025 and would likely not be completed until autumn.

Ordeal XV: Rites of Luciferian Ascension

My previous book, Liber Artis Archaeomancy, focused mainly on the Angelic hierarchy and the magic associated with their invocation. However, a ritual magician must also traverse the paths of darkness and undergo the ordeals, and the challenges associated with the Devil in order to be truly and wholly spiritually evolved. One cannot avoid the darkness, especially the darkness of one’s own soul and being. Those who espouse the ways of light and who have not undergone and achieved victory and accommodation with their dark side can never be trusted not to unconsciously exhibit their negative ethos in a subtle and opaque manner. A true initiate must master both the Light and the Darkness to know and master themselves. Ordeal XV divides the darkness into the Gnostic Tetra-Sacramentary of Thelema, Agape, Thanatos and Eros, to develop the ordeals associated with the Involution Avatars Aiwaz/Astoreth, Lucifer/Promethius, Azrael/Samael, and Baalzebul/Pan Priappus. The fifth in this series is Sothis-Set, who are joined together with the four Involution Avatars to produce a tabernacle of darkness where the soul meets its ultimate challenges. This book contains all of the evocation rites and the Five-Fold Inverted Vortex, which is the heart of the chamber of trials. Included are the mystery rites of the Tabernacle of Sothis-Set and the associated Black Rites of expiation, purification, and release. The ordeals are introduced with a full set of background articles and analyses that explain in detail the nature of this ordeal, its purpose and ultimate conclusion. I will be assembling the material and writing this book from late 2025 to Spring of 2026.

Liber Nephilim Additum: Additional Rites of the Enochian Ordeal

While the book Liber Nephilim covered the basic rites needed to evoke the first two chiefs of the Nephilim angels, and also included the evocation of Lilith and other ancillary rites, other components of that working were excluded due to the limitations of the book size and length. There were quite a number of rituals and lore left behind. This book seeks to gather together all of the additional material that was not included in the original book. This book is broken into three parts, representing the topical areas that contained important but excluded ritual workings. The first part will contain the rituals for invoking the Enochian Bonarum, which I called the Binary Planetary Intelligences. I invoked seven consecutively to form a powerful planetary ordeal, with the eight workings invoking the ruling spirit Camara. Included would be diary entries of that ordeal. The second part would be the instructions and rites involved in the Enneagrammic Goddess Gateway working, representing the gate structure used in the Enochian Ordeals. The third part of the book would contain the additional rituals for the evocation of Turiel, Ramat’el, and Samael, the invocations of Seth and Enoch, the Enochian Mystery Vortex Rite, and the Convocation rites of Lilith and Enoch. The diaries for some of the workings would also be included. I may also consider including evocation rites for Lilith’s sisters and demonic queens, although there would not be associated diaries for those spirits. I would not begin to assemble, edit and write this manuscript until after Spring 2026.

***

So, those three project will take me into the middle of 2026, not including the final editing passes and other pre-production tasks. Much of this lore is already written, but other parts will need to written and everything will have to be revised and edited before it is ready for submission. We are looking at a lot of work that will need to be accomplished, and that will also depend on how things are going with me in terms of my health, day-job demands, and the likely relocation that will happen sometime in late 2025 or early 2026.

As for traveling and teaching this year, I attended the ConVocation convention last February and taught two classes. I taught a six-week series at Mama Luna’s occult book store in Richmond, based on the book Mastering the Art of Witchcraft beginning in April and extending into May. I attended and was the headliner at the Swamp Mystics mini convention in Tallahassee, FL. I also had a book tour in New Orleans in early November that was modestly successful, and I got to meet some exceptional folks who live there. I had wanted to revisit NOLA when I had first went down there in November 2023, and coincidentally, I was able to visit again almost a year later. I had promised myself to return, and that happened, thanks to the folks at Cross Crow Books.

For the coming year, I may teach my six-week class again, and visit a few more local occult book stores, I will certainly be returning to ConVocation this coming February, but I don’t have much plans beyond those events. The coming year will be one where I focus on the home front, since my wife is working out of town during the week days, and only is able to come home on the weekends. Because we have six cats and a dog, and my wife is absent during the week, it makes things more difficult for me to be away from home. That will change after we relocate, of course.

I will be relocating to a new home, and a priority for me will be getting a room for a permanent temple, and having a private outdoor location to host a grove would be a nice touch. I have been living in a small house since May 2018, and I have not been able to establish a place to work ordeal magic. I am planning on changing that situation, but the details of how that will happen, when and where, will have to be determined. There is a lot of magical work that I have left unfinished, so I would like to have the opportunity to finish these magical projects and formulate some a new ordeals. While I still have my health, I want to explore and experiment with new magical lore and additional magical ordeals. Of course, all of this work will feed into additional books, so that work will likely keep going until I can no longer write or have anything to write about.

All of these writing projects, relocating, getting temple space to work ritual magic, are quite exciting and makes me very happy and optimistic about my future. I have a great paying job, my wife is fully employed, and the future is looking to be very exciting. There is also the possibility of travel to Europe and Asia, and maybe even turning my literary talents to writing fiction once I finally retire. I hope to live many years yet to come, and there are still many adventures awaiting me. In January 2025, I will turn 70 years old, but I still feel pretty good for my age, and there may be many possibilities if I can manage to keep my health.

I am not happy or optimistic about the fate of our nation, since the election appeared to be about overcoming the status quo and exercising anger at the state of economy and at the sequestering that occurred due to the Covid19 pandemic at the ballot box. Since Democrats were nominally in charge during that period, especially the POTUS, people foolishly decided to punish them in the election. Over the last four years we have had a very competent presidential administration and until the mid-term elections, we have had reasonably good government. Now that a majority of the American people have voted to elect Donald J. Trump to another four year term, that period of seemingly good governance will evaporate. I am beside myself with concern and worry because despite all of the facts known about Trump, people still voted for him, somehow thinking that he will make things better, particularly with the state of the economy. As it will likely turn out, they will be proven wrong with a vengeance. Trump doesn’t represent either the middle class nor the down-trodden people who feel that the nation is no longer concerned with their difficulties, whether economic or social. Trump is a transactional politician who truly represents the oligarchic class, and it is they who impacted the election and ensured that he would be re-elected POTUS.   

While some will blame the Democratic Party for completely misunderstanding and misrepresenting the will of the people, there were many who did vote against Trump and the Republican Party. There was also a significant group of people who could have voted but didn’t vote for various reasons. Would they have made a difference? Possibly, but we will never really know. People were angry about inflation, which was caused by a post-pandemic economic recovery and also corporate greed. People were also angry about being forced to wear masks and about the confusion associated with the nature of Covid19, that it was a new kind of virus and not enough was initially known about it. Of course, when Trump was president, he allowed, through his inactivity and lack of planning, over one million to die, and also helped to spread misinformation about various cures and that masks were ineffective. Biden’s administration pushed forward the actual plan that not only helped to reduce the effect of Covid19, but also ensured that the economy was able to recover with less troubles than other countries in the world. The fact of the matter is that president Biden got little positive press for cleaning up the mess that Trump left behind, and spent two years undoing what Trump had done in his four years as president.

Our main stream press is owned and operated by the donor class, and after just a few months, they had basically written off Biden and his presidency, and proceeded to ignore all of the good that he was doing in favor of pointless criticisms and blame for whatever was not immediately fixed and made efficient once again. They created a hostile environment that helped to tank Biden’s favorability while white-washing and sane-washing Donald Trump. The press is mostly responsible for Biden’s poor popularity, since they focused on what was not working or wrong and seldom mentioned all of the things that he and his administration had accomplished, which was probably more than what any recent president had achieved.

Whatever troubles happened domestically, Biden and the Democrats had mostly fixed. International crises, such as the invasion of Ukraine and the war in Gaza and Lebanon, were more difficult to manage, as foreign policy typically is to any administration. The crisis in the Middle East showed that the government of Israel was not interested in working with the Biden administration, even though they had the complete support of the U.S. I abhor Hamas, Hezbolah, and the Houthis for their terrorist activities and starting and intensifying the conflict with Israel, but I also abhor the government of Israel, who have become terrorists in their own way. It is a no win scenario, and I cannot blame Biden too much for supporting Israel, since not to support them would have been political suicide during an election year.

However, as it turned out, the donor class and the oligarches did not want either Biden or any Democratic candidate to win in 2024, since they believed that a more friendly and transactional Trump would be a better replacement. I believe that the only thing that I am critical of regarding Biden is that he shouldn’t have sought a second term and thereby allowed a younger and more energized political group of Democrats to be weeded out and ultimately selected through the primary process. Having a democratic process occur during the year 2023 and 2024 for the Democratic Party might have eclipsed the effect that Trump was having on the electorate with help from the media moguls. Whether that would have been sufficient to defeat Trump at the polls is debatable, yet considering that Harris came close to defeating Trump with only 100 days to campaign indicates that it could have happened that way. Still, thinking about the possibilities doesn’t change the reality that in January we will be getting a second dose of Trump and his MAGA miscreants.

For some reason people have written off the dangers of having someone like Trump in charge of our nation for another four years. I am thankful that he can’t run again, and that many who came out to vote for him this time might not have voted at all if it was someone else running without his celebrity status. However, I believe that he will cause a lot of damage to our nation and the world at large based on his various statements about domestic and foreign policy. Additionally, it seems that Trump’s choices for cabinet members and close advisors represent a wealthy group of oligarches whose role in government will represent a massive conflict of interest. Trump is very transactional, and for his wealthy supporters, the pay-off will be their ability to grift the nation and make it all legal and acceptable. We, the people, are in for a rough four years, all because of a large number of ill-informed and misguided individual voters.

A Canadian journalist has pretty much defined our moment with the following quotation.

“There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.” Written by Andrew Coyne

While I have a certain amount of excitement for my own personal future, I am quite aware that many others will not be doing so well. It is my hope that the incoming administration and the trifecta of their control of the government shows them as over-reaching, overly ambitious, incompetent and overall, a failure to make any significant changes. That is my hope for my nation in the coming years. I also hope that a lot of people think about what they have done to vote for Trump and the Republican Party, knowing that these people care nothing for those who aren’t wealthy or members of the oligarchy. Maybe having some painful experiences will be a good lesson in how to use their vote to help their own interests instead of listening to pundits and politicians who lie, cheat, steal and who pretend to be compassionate to the powerless and the advocate of the under-represented. Republicans, as a rule, represent a status quo that is all about the donor class, and no one else.

Frater Barrabbas

 

 

 

 

 

 

Traditional Witchcraft Covens - Still A Good Idea?

 

My path in Witchcraft has been a decidedly crooked one, and it has been one that would seem to paint traditional initiations and traditional covens as a questionable source for one’s engagement and advancement in its practice. I had a four year tenure in the archetypal “Coven from Hell” back in the late 1970's, where I witnessed my High Priestess and High Priest go over the deep end and assume tyrannical powers over their coven members. I saw two large and well attended covens get whittled down to just a small single coven, and from there, a complete collapse. My former HP and HPs left Witchcraft and became fundamentalist Protestant Christians, and my former HP wrote an infamous book titled “Wicca: Satan’s Little White Lie,” which I have fully debunked in previous blog postings. If anything, my first coven experience was a lesson in occult despotism and the fallacy of self-elected leadership in BTW covens. You can find the first in the series of threads about my experiences here.

My negative experiences with hierarchical coven structures continued when I became a High Priest and elder of an Alexandrian coven in Minneapolis. While I had no interest in functioning as a tyrant in any way imaginable, my partner, Thea, had other ideas in mind. She ran the coven in a despotic manner and made my allegiance and deference to her as a means to bind me while she ran roughshod over the members of our coven. Finally, when the coven had enough of this kind of childish and tyrannical behavior, they had the audacity to confront her about it, with my support. That made her resign her position as leader and to break up with me for not supporting her, even though she was completely in the wrong about how she was treating people. She left the home that I had provided her and officially resigned as High Priestess, while heaping scorn and recriminations on us all. Within a week we had replaced both her and myself with new leaders, but even then, having the power to make unequivocal decisions with little or no input from the coven members, made the new order only slightly better than the old one. Within two years, the coven had disbanded and was no longer functioning.

What these experiences have taught me is that there are problems with the type of leadership that a traditional coven employs, and that it takes very mature and accessible leaders to successfully run a coven that is durable and self-sustaining over time. While such a coven structure can work and be maintained, it is too susceptible to abuse and forms of ego-driven despotism. There are no checks and balances in a hierarchical coven structure, and the High Priestess and her partner, the High Priest, are the sole authority figures in the group. The only recourse that a member has is to leave the coven and either practice alone or form another group. I have found that individuals who have had to leave a coven because of a clash with the leadership often form a new coven that has inherited the same problems as the old coven. They just seem to exchange the old tyrants for new ones, and little is actually learned.

Don’t get me wrong, because there are good covens out there in the various communities that have lasted a long time, but these, unfortunately, are the exception rather than the rule. A good and well functioning coven is hard to find, but they do exist, and I have met a number of fortunate individuals who were members of such groups. It would seem that human nature is such that there is a tendency of individuals who lack personal confidence and who have little power over their lives to seek out positions of power within a coven group and then to rule the members in a tyrannical manner. It is, unfortunately, a problem of structure and human social dynamics that make a traditional Witchcraft coven hierarchy into a microcosm study of human despotism. Wherever you have two unelected leaders assuming power and authority over a group of novices mixed in with very few initiates with no checks or balances on their rule, then the temptation to take advantage of this social situation will be great. If the leaders are emotionally mature and know themselves and their limitations, and have humility and compassion as their ruling principals, then the coven will be managed and guided with wisdom and equality, instead of deceit and delusion. That, of course, is the ideal, but considering human nature, it will fall short of the ideal, or completely miss it.

Democracy is the missing ingredient for coven management, at least in my opinion. It is what has made Blue Lodge Masonry build and maintain lodge organizations that have lasted for generations. Leadership is rotated and decisions for the lodge are made through the artifice of voting. There are, therefore, checks and balances built into the organization. Within a small group like a coven, democracy is established by group consensus, and leaders are rotated or even elected to assume temporary roles within the group. However, an elected leader assumes a role that has certain responsibilities, but the group is ruled by consensus. Leadership roles then have all of the responsibility and none of the power associated with traditional coven leadership roles.

While there are many definitions of consensus, I have found that the best approach for any group decision is that it has a majority of the members in favor with none opposed. That means the group will decide to undertake certain directives and employ individuals to help make them realized, whether formally or informally. A major directive requires a formal vote, and simple decisions can be implemented with an informal vote. Any disagreement would need to be resolved before the group could move forward, regardless of whether the decision was determined by a formal vote or just an informal agreement.

What I am describing here is what I have called a “Star Group,” and I feel that it is the only kind of organizational structure that a small group or coven could assume to ensure that everyone is treated equally and fairly, regardless of individual experience or level of achievement. Each member represents the facet of a group star, and that they come together to forge a unified group with a combined purpose and direction. No one is has any greater authority, value or role significance than anyone else in the group, even despite the differences in knowledge, experience, initiatory achievements or community status - all are equal in the eyes of the Gods. Leaders are chosen to manage and direct certain events and activities, but authority is vested in the group. Leadership roles can be designated and rotated annually, or they can be chosen for specific activities. Everyone participates and there are no divisions or barriers placed between individuals within the group. All decisions are determined by consensus, and everyone has a single equal vote.

Star Groups are the optimal group structures for any small organization that seeks to engage in specific activities in a completely fair, equal and democratic manner. They are not prone to despotic rulership or the exploitation of lesser experienced members by more senior members. They typically have a high rate of individual satisfaction, and they guarantee equal engagement privileges amongst the members of the group. Additionally, they have the ability to resolve differences, or if that becomes impossible, then to formulate new smaller groups out of the old group. A Star Group allows for separations and mergers without having to damage the group or make it ungovernable. It allows for the possibilities of a group to have amicable separations and for groups to continue to grow and evolve over time, something that a traditional coven is not likely to experience. I have found that a Star Group is the only kind of organization that I would join and happily participate in, and that I would avoid, at all costs, either joining or running a traditional coven. That is my predilection based on my personal experiences, and it shouldn’t keep anyone from joining a coven if they so wish.

An initiation into a coven or group is little more than an acknowledgment that the individual who undergoes it is able to assume the obligations and responsibilities that the initiation grade entails. Traditional Witchcraft initiations are typically inner court ceremonies that empower and constrain an individual with oaths, allegiances and the assumption of a role and an identity within the group. Internal transformations can also occur simultaneously, but they are not guaranteed. It is only through an individual practice and discipline that a practitioner can achieve personal transformation and spiritual evolution. A coven cannot provide a member with this kind of achievement, but it can help one to develop a personal discipline and practice, and to guide and show by example what can be achieved through magic rituals and ceremonies. Transformative initiation is guided by both suffering and by ecstatic release, which are symbolized by the scourge and the kiss. Both scripted initiations and transformative initiations are an intimate encounter with the Deities and the individual, where the ordeal of psychic death and rebirth are fully enacted.

Since initiations are so profoundly personal and subjective, and they require a level of trust and intimacy that is beyond mere friendship, it must happen in an environment that is free of fear, coercion, and that can allow for the full empowerment and temporary ascendancy of the initiate. A badly run coven will likely be unable to provide this kind of environment to its members who undergo initiation, making the possibility for a true transformation impossible. Initiation ceremonies in such a group are performed not for the benefit of the member, but for the edification of the leaders, to enable them to assume greater power over the candidate. Therefore, real growth and transformation requires an equable social arrangement in the coven for it to occur, and lacking that will certainly make such an achievement much more difficult. If it happens at all it will be through the individual practice and discipline, and if that activity is prohibited by the coven leaders, then there would be little reason to persevere in such a group. 

I discuss scripted and transformative initiation in my book on the subject, and it goes into much greater detail. If you wish to investigate deeper into this subject, then I would recommend my book, "Transformative Initiation for Witches," and you can find it here.

My advice to anyone who wants to form a coven or who is seeking to join one is to always to get to know the individuals in the group before making a commitment to join. If someone wants to start a coven, then I would advise them to ensure that there is some kind of consensus and rotating leadership positions installed in the group instead of assuming the role of authority figures regardless of one’s level of maturity or motivations. I believe that a traditional coven structure is too easily abused, and it readily leads to tyranny, coercion, and the exploitation of its members. Not all traditional covens are so corrupt, but the only way to find out is to cautiously get to know the leaders and engage socially with the members. Beware of coven leaders who seek potential members to quickly decide on whether to join or not, or who have sequestered the members from engaging socially with a prospective entrant. There are no NDA legalities binding members from speaking to outsiders, and if such a rule is in place, then you would be well advised not to join that group.  

We all need to protect ourselves from exploitation and the social tyranny of bad groups and organizations. The only solution is group consensus and rotating leadership roles. Our path in the art of Witchcraft magic is difficult and arduous enough without having to deal with unelected authority figures and social exploitation within a magical or Witchcraft group. A badly run coven could potentially thwart a true seeker and push them back into a mainstream religious faction, or make them into cynical critic of all things pagan and magical. Those of us who are knowledgeable and are initiates have a responsibility to those who are just starting out to give them whatever aid and assistance we can and to also respect them as human beings with an equal right to be a seeker as anyone else. We should be open, accessible and willing to share with others who might find a great value in following the path of magic and paganism. Starting out on such a socially divergent path is a very difficult decision to make, so we who already know should do what we can to help make that decision both rewarding and fulfilling.

Magical and pagan seekers are rare, especially those who try to make it their life’s path, so the least we can do is to be encouraging, respectful and friendly to them.

Frater Barrabbas

 

 

 

 

Qabalah and Magic - When Combining them is Good

I have completed making edits and modifications to my book project, “Practical Qabalah for Occultists” and I have signed a contract with Crossed Crow Books and submitted the manuscript as part of the contractual obligation. This book is a republishing of the Llewellyn book “Magical Qabalah for Beginners,” which they decided not to republish and thus, returned the rights to me. I had the last manuscript version of the book in MS Word and also the galley PDF, and went through the manuscript and made updates to it so that it would more closely conform to the galley version, and also to make some additional changes, such as gender pronouns and other minor tasks, like capitalization consistency, etc.

What I found was that after all these years since 2012, I didn’t need to add or revise any of the content. Additionally, the text of the manuscript was written incredibly well, and in fact, it was probably some of the best writing that I have used in any of my books since that time. I guess it was a combination of passion and inspiration that made the writing of that book turn out so well. In some cases, I found the text to be almost lyrical, especially when describing the twenty-two paths. Going over the book with a fine eye for editing, I found that it was an excellently written book, and I was surprised that Llewellyn had made the decision to cease its publication. I am certain that CCB will be happy to take the revised edition and add it to their catalogue, perhaps sometime in late 2025 or early 2026.

Needless to say, this book represents a comprehensive background and practice of an occult version of the Qabalah, made relevant to Pagans and Witches and anyone else who is not of the Abrahamic religious faiths. What that means is that the book promotes a practice and methodology that doesn’t require anything additional. It is a complete and whole spiritual and mystical discipline by itself. There are magical aspects in the practices shown in this book, but they are more like theurgy than ceremonial magic. In fact, there really isn’t any ceremonial magical components in the book. The significance of this statement is that the Qabalah stands by itself, without any other practices or metaphysical attributes needed to make it a complete discipline.

Here is a quotation from my book, taken from the last chapter.

In the Book of Abramelin, the author, Abraham the Jew, tells his youngest son that he is giving him the wisdom of his knowledge of magic (in the book that he has written) because he must give the knowledge of the Qabalah to his eldest son. So it would seem that he has deemed to divide his wealth and wisdom between his two sons and the eldest receives, of course, the greater share. When I first read this passage, I was quite astounded, since it seemed to say that the knowledge of the Qabalah, in and of itself, was superior to the knowledge of magic. Here is the passage, found in the first book, chapter 9 (p. 34), where Abraham tells his son Lamech:

“The art of wisdom has its foundation in the secrets of the highest and in the holy Kabbalah, which belongs to your eldest brother Joseph, and not to you.”

 It would seem, then, that knowledge of the Qabalah is not only greater than the knowledge of magic, but that through it, one could gain everything that magic would give and more. According to the Book of Abramelin, a mastery of the Qabalah is superior to the knowledge and practice of magic, and between the two, it is the greater prize by far. This concept becomes even more amazing to us when we consider that the purpose of the Book of Abramelin was to successfully invoke and manifest one’s Holy Guardian Angel.

To complete a practice of the esoteric Qabalah, one only needs to engage deeply with one’s religious faith, whether that be Wicca or some form of modern Paganism, and to use the practices in my book to build a complete religious, mystical and theurgic discipline. Ostensibly, an occultist can use my book and not have to perform any other magical rites to project their theurgic magic into the world.

So, if this is true then how do we employ the Qabalah into our ritual or magical ceremonial practices. The actual truth of the matter is that high forms of magic typically rely on an intrusion of the Qabalah to be merged with it so that it might have a greater impact in both the material and spiritual worlds. These forms of magic need the Qabalah, but the Qabalah doesn’t need any forms of ritual or ceremonial magic to achieve its objectives. Additionally, I have written five books on advanced ritual magical practices that can used by Witches or Pagans that doesn’t incorporate the Qabalah. That means that a Witch or Pagan could perform rituals of invocation, evocation, elemental magic, talismanic magic and sacramental theurgy without having recourse to the Qabalah. What that demonstrates is that the Qabalah is a distinct discipline, and that a magician can employ the Qabalah into their magic, but that choice is completely optional - there is no requirement to do so.

If employing the Qabalah into the practice of ritual or ceremonial magic is completely optional, then when would it be useful or optimal to combine it with the practice of magic? One of my complaints, and the reason why I wrote the “For Witches” series of books without any recourse to the Qabalah, is that I find that it has been overused. Not every ritual has to include Qabalistic attributes. Even the Golden Dawn did not always flavor their rituals with the Qabalah, although they did more often than was necessary, in my opinion. Yet I find that the Qabalah is used in a lot of rituals these days, as if to give them the authenticity that they might lack without it. My approach is to use the Qabalah when it is appropriate to do so, and then only when the function of the Qabalah is critically important to the working. Overuse, in my opinion, makes the Qabalah redundant, and diminishes its importance and its potency. Let me define where using the Qabalah is appropriate, then we can focus on where it would be redundant.

Tree of Life and the Four Worlds as a Map

The Inner Planes, as the domain of the World of Spirit, is actually formless and cannot be mapped or understood by any kind of model or structure. Since everything is related to the One in that domain, when truly apprehended, it appears as a unity without any differentiation. It is beyond conscious apprehension, and it defies the rational logic of language or the structures of the mind. It is like a mirror, and it reflects back to us our beliefs, religious signs, symbols, and metaphors, and the logical structures that we use to help define what it is. Yet none of these artifices approximate the true nature that it expresses. It is the great singularity, and beyond it, is the greater emptiness. Even the Qabalah, with its ideas of Ain Soph Aur can only dimly approximate the true nature of this phenomenon. This is true with all of the various religious, esoteric or occultic approaches to understanding the One that is the source and the ultimate object of all conscious beings. However, the protean flexibility of the One allows us to use models and language to stimulate and engage with this Unity, and we can therefore use the models, symbols, constructs and various glyphs to emulate our experience of it. But, we must never fail to understand that the models and linguistic artifices that we might use will always fall short of truly defining it.

The Qabalistic Tree of Life represents a model of the emanations that generated the many lights of consciousness from the One through a mathematical sequence of the numbers 1 through 10. This model uses the Pythagorean base-10 approach to describing the waves of emanations, but certainly other systems of numeration could be used. While numbers represent the emanations that flowed from the One to the Many, there is also a circuitous pathway for the Many to return to the One, and that is represented by the 22 Pathways that connect the 10 numbered spheres or containers of the light of the One. These Pathways are given the attributes of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, symbolizing that the means to regaining the apprehension and absorption of the One is through the holy literature of the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Bible.

Numbers, letters and words, waves of emanation and paths to unity, are the attributes of the Tree of Life. Yet there is also the finite structure of the Tree, and its placements of the ten emanations, and the relationships between them via the paths, that show its remarkable utility. These components can represent the structure of the Inner Planes, approached from the manifestation of individual consciousness and the ensouling of material beings from the unified and mysterious source. They are given various symbolic attributes, consisting of the four elements, the seven planets, the twelve signs of the zodiac, the thirty-six decans, the seventy-two quinians, the trumps of the Tarot, various Deities and metaphysical concepts of all religions throughout the world, and colors, perfumes, incense, gem stones, metals, minerals, herbal medicines, and every conceivable mental attribute and material element in the world of humanity. The Qabalah unites everything within its structure of emanations and paths.

Additionally, the Four Qabalistic Worlds also represent a map of the Inner Planes, since it is a four-fold definition of the Emanations and Pathways of the Tree of Life, collecting the myriad of attributes within the four worlds of the Absolute, Creation, Formation, and Manifestation, where the One became the consciousness of the Many. Organized within these four Worlds are the various residents, both of spirit and mind, which would represent the Godhead attributes, Super Archangels, Archangels, Angels and Demons, and the spirits of the Earth and the Underworld. These domains of consciousness are populated by various entities, as the emanations and paths are refracted through the Four Worlds, producing a more comprehensive spiritual map of what is largely a domain that is wholly and completely unified into a single expression of Being residing within infinite emptiness. The importance of the Qabalah is that is gives a structure and order to something that has no order or structure, but through the Tree and Worlds, we can apprehend in a small part of the truth, and thereby gain a significant spiritual perspective of the whole.

Another important factor is that the many different attributes of the 10 Sephiroth, 22 Pathways and the Four Worlds can be placed into tables of correspondence, thereby giving intrinsic meaning and comparative commonality to very different associated elements. Each Sephirah and Path has other attributes that help to give it meaning, such as the planets or signs of the zodiac, and to these are associated colors, gem stones, metals, plants and herbs, various Deities from other pantheons, and a host of other attributes. Singularly, they are not as meaningful except when combined and grouped together where they gain their greater importance.

For instance, a simple list of spirits in any order by itself is not as meaningful as when it is placed within a matrix associated with attributes of the Tree of Life, and fixed within one of the Four Worlds. Then each spirit in the list inherits a whole catalogue of attributes and a spiritual hierarchy to help qualify it, including a sigil to specifically identify it. When performing an invocation of a spirit and using this kind of table or matrix to characterize and qualify it, then that operation is what I call invoking through a grid or matrix, and it produces the best results because the spirit is fully defined before being summoned.

Therefore, the Tree of Life, the Four Worlds, and the tables of correspondences represent a significant methodology for defining the Inner Planes, characterizing various hierarchies of spirits and giving individual entities an identity, function and purpose. Defining the Inner Planes in this manner makes them accessible to the practicing magician, and gives a disciplined methodology to the mystic who seeks to regain that once state of One that is the source of all. The Qabalah functions as a universal repository of all religious and spiritual symbols, and embodies a spiritual discipline for both the mystic and the magician. It provides a roadmap through a world that has no distinctive geographic features, habitations, roads or pathways, milestones showing the distance traveled, nor does it contain any idea of a destination, since to enter that domain is to unwittingly and immediately arrive at one’s objective.

Arithmology - Number and Letter/Word Manipulation

Determining and defining the domain of the Inner Planes is one of the features of the Qabalah, however, it is not the only important and valuable technique. Since the Emanations are numbers and the Pathways are letters, then it would be obvious that mathematics and literature would be the products of these attributes. Although the Qabalah is limited regarding mathematics, it would be conceivable that any mystical system of numeration would be readily expandable to include geometry, algebra, trigonometry, differential and integral calculus, linear algebra, and beyond. However, the numbers are not only quantities, but they have an intrinsic esoteric value, so that working with them, and with alphabetic letters, which have their own intrinsic meanings, to form equations can be understood as having an occult value as well as a mathematical value. Still, this is beyond our consideration here, since we must limit our discussion to the traditional Qabalah and my profound lack of mathematical expertise.

Systems of arithmology in occult studies within the Qabalah include the practices of Geomancy, Notariqon and Temurah. Additionally, there are the tools of magic squares equating letters and numbers, the inherent numeric values associated with the letters of the alphabet, and the use of alphabet wheels that allow for the production of linear vectors representing the sigil of a name or phrase. Branching off of that methodology is the modern mechanism of generating sigil or glyphs from lettered names or phrases. Each of these techniques serve a magical and occult purpose, and they are used to expand the power of numbers, letters and words.

Gematria is a system of number substitution for letters, where the numeric values of the letters in a word are added together to get a total value. The value for specific words and phrases is then compared in a compilation called a Sepher Sephiroth, a book of numbers. The basic premise in Gematria is that words and phrases that have the same numeric value must be strongly related. This technique is most useful when the occultist has a body of written lore or holy scriptures upon which to apply, extracting occultic relationships between different words and phrases. It is less useful for someone who doesn’t have sacred writings, because then the words subjected to this kind of scrutiny do not have the context of holy writ to build meaning. I have found Gematria to be interesting, but I have found that some occultists overuse it, such as the manner that Kenneth Grant has employed it to announce as fact the most tenuous connections through Gematria. Without any critical alternative proof or corroboration, Gematria alone does not satisfy the need for deriving solid occult knowledge. This is, of course, my opinion.

Notariqon is the art of building and exploding acronyms. I have found this technique to be very useful, since I have used it to construct magical formulas where letters, words and declarations are expressed at certain ritual point intervals (like the four watchtowers or angles, or any combination), and then a combined formula word is derived when the letters and words are joined, causing the circle nodes that they represent to be unified. These formula words can be words unto themselves or they can have no meaning other than representing the holistic expression of the letters set to the circle points. All my advanced ritual workings use this mechanism so that the layers within a series of rituals are sealed and expressed in a unified manner, and the final expression of the working is where the first letters of each formula would be used to build a formula that would define the working as a unified structure.

While I use Notariqon to fashion and build acronyms and explode them as words that represent meaningful phrases, it is likely that a Qabalistic practice uses sacred writings would focus that methodology on deriving and building deeper meanings within the text of the scriptures. Since I don’t have that feature in my religion, I can use this technique in a more creative and free-flying manner. I still generate deeper meanings and themes when I employ it in my rituals, but it doesn’t tie back to any scriptures, which would give such constructs even more depth and meaning.

Temurah is a system of letter substitution, function primarily as a set of ciphers where the Hebrew alphabet is broken into two columns of 11 letters, and the association of one letter to its pair is the how letters are substituted. There are a total of 24 different ciphers that can be developed from this mechanism, where the alphabet is split in two and realigned to produce letter pairs. This technique can be used to uncover occult aspects of words or phrases, or it can be used to either disguise writings or to discover coded messages that used this technique to hide their true meaning from the profane.

Another technique of Temurah is used to substitute letters for numbers so they might be used to draw sigils and seals on magically numbered squares. This technique is called the Aiq Bkr or Qabalah of Nine Chambers, since it is a table of nine cells that contain like numbers distinguished by their factor of ten. Thus the first cell would contain the numbers 1,10,100, for the letters Aleph, Yod and Qoph, and if a Qabalist had to fit the letter Qoph into a magic square for Jupiter, whose max number is 16, then they would have to exchange it for a Yod to use the number 10 in the square.    

Aiq Bkr requires the use of what is known as magic squares, and these squares are associated with the seven planets, from Saturn (3), Jupiter (4), Mars (5), Sun (6), Venus (7), Mercury (8) and the Moon (9). Magic squares are used to create sigils and seals for spirit names that fit within the category of one of the planets. Magic squares, however, is a system unto itself, and represents both a Qabalistic discipline and a system of magic.

Since Temurah employs a system to derive sigils and seals for spirit names using magic squares, then any other methodology used to produce the same product could be loosely associated with this discipline. Thus, the use of alphabet wheels to draw sigils, and the system that Spare developed to produce sigils and glyphs would also be a part of this occult technology.

The systems of arithmology are important to the practice, research and determination of meaning in the study of the Qabalah, but they are also very important in the writing and development of magical rituals and ceremonies. Since I have applied this methodology to most of the magical rituals that I have devised, especially the advanced rites, then this is a technique that is most useful and universal to my approach to ritual magic. I don’t use Gematria, but forms of Notariqon and Temurah are ubiquitous in the magical technology that I employ.

When to Use the Qabalah

This brings us to our final considerations about when it is appropriate to employ the Qabalah in ritual magic. First of all, I use forms of Notariqon and Temurah in nearly all of the my magical rites. If we consider the use of occult acronyms, both their expression and exposition, and the use of various types of sigils, then I make use of these techniques everywhere, but they just aren’t obvious or deliberately Qabalistic.

Where I employ the Tree of Life and the Four Worlds is wherever I need to work with a map of the Inner Planes. There might be other approaches to determining these kind of structures and their seemingly limitless tables of correspondences, but when I am performing any kind of invocation, evocation or in some manner, traversing the Inner Planes through my magic, then I will employ the Qabalah directly in my rituals, and add significant details and depth to my working that it would otherwise not possess.

If I am working simple of forms of magic, such as elemental, basic spirit conjurations, simple forms of talismanic magic, sacramental theurgy, or initiation ordeals, then I don’t have to use the Qabalah. This is why I was able to write the five books in the “For Witches” series without any recourse to the Qabalah. However, any complex magic that is being worked through a symbolic grid or that requires a spiritual hierarchy, or is traversing the Inner Planes will use the Qabalah, and my more advanced magic, which employs these methodologies, does indeed make extensive use of it.

This is the rule that anyone who would use the Qabalah in rituals and ceremonies should apply to their work. I would recommend using the Qabalah only when you need it, otherwise, I would recommend sticking with simpler methodologies so as not to overuse it. Overusing the Qabalah is to make it less meaningful and significant in one’s magical work, and I would advise you, my reader, to avoid that pitfall.

Frater Barrabbas 

Magic - Practicality, Speculation and Mysticism

 

A while back, Clifford Hartleigh Low published the following axiom on his Facebook page, which started up an interesting dialogue between various practitioners of ritual and ceremonial magic. I have a great deal of respect for Clifford and I have had the occasion of recently meeting and talking with him. He is a solid practitioner of magic, and I have no doubt about that, but he also loves to create controversies, and his statement on Facebook did instill quite a bit of back and forth discussions.

Here is what he said:

“Magic which has no practical aim is not actually mysticism, but performance art.”
Clifford Hartleigh Low - 8/27/2024

We should focus on the word “practical” since it is the key phrase that makes the whole sentence logical and sensible. I think examining the word in an online dictionary might be the place to start in attempting to carefully parse this statement. The reason I am recommending this approach is because there is a semantic trap placed into this sentence that makes it irrefutable.

Here is what the Merriam-Webster online diction has to say about the definition of the word “practical.” You can find it here.

Practical - of, relating to, or manifested in practice or action : not theoretical or ideal. Disposed to action as opposed to speculation or abstraction. Synonyms: useful - virtual - workable.

So the word “practical” is based on action that is useful, purposeful, and workable, as opposed to speculative, abstract or theoretical. We can assume that “practical aim” is anything that has a useful or workable purpose. Since any magic, even the most poorly contrived and badly performed, has some kind of aim or purpose, then it would fit the paradigm. By definition, any kind of magic or ceremony is performed with a purpose, focus, or aim in mind. So, is there such a thing as a magical ritual that has no practical aim? In order to understand this idea, we would need to find the antonym of practical and see how that would fit with the statement.

Antonyms of the word “practical” would be unrealistic, impractical, impracticable, useless, silly, idealistic, visionary, imprudent, and ridiculous. Looking at the antonyms gives us a better place to judge a magical working or ritual. If the aim is unrealistic, useless, silly, or even ridiculous, then it could be rejected as impractical. If someone were to perform magic whose aim was to be silly or even ridiculous then one could argue that it is not magic, but some kind of performance art that is being acted.

Somehow, I can’t imagine someone doing a parody of a magical rite, but then again, I have not seen everything that is being done out there in the world, and my public and online presence is rare these days. However, I have heard that YouTube and other online video shows contain some really idiotic and ridiculous performances that are supposedly being pawned off as legitimate magical workings. Yet I have so little time to go scouring the internet for false magic, and I would hope that a little bit of critical thinking can reveal when someone is selling something that is supposedly magical but actually is a delusion or a deceitful con.

This paradigm could be used as a weapon or tool to judge someone else’s magic as impractical, silly or even ridiculous. However, if the magic someone is performing actually works to any degree at all, then it meets the requirements of the paradigm. I have seen some of the most poorly done rituals and ceremonies, and somehow, they managed to work, although not always as advertised or planned. Magic is a peculiar phenomenon and it doesn’t function in a logical and linear fashion. So, someone can say that another magician’s magical rituals are just performance art and not real magic, but that doesn’t make it true. It is just another way of putting someone down at the expense of elevating oneself, and that kind of dick waving is just pathetic and boring.

The words “idealistic” and “visionary,” although impractical, might be something that we wouldn’t want to reject too quickly. However, the whole idea of the opposite of the word practical brings up the dichotomy of theory vs. practice, and this seems to be one of the conditions for the statement. Still, what we want to further examine are the concepts of ideation, vision, and theory as opposed to practice to fulfill the role of antithesis to the paradigm that Clifford said. I believe that we can dispense with discussing the parody of magic, even though sometimes it is important to laugh at ourselves and shake up our hubris and over-serious preoccupation with magic and the occult. Let us then examine the place that ideals, visions and theories pose in the working of magic, since I believe that this is the creative force that aids and directs what we develop and perform as a magical working.

I have often had dreams, visions or insights of the moment that lead to some really cutting edge breakthroughs in the development of my magical ritual lore. Additionally, I have done research, analyzing various topics in a purely speculative manner that has helped me to develop a new approach to ritual workings. Because I tend to work with themes in the rituals that I write, those characterizations of rituals are developed by doing research and examining hints and speculative insights that I might have at the time.

Categorizing ritual models, methodologies, and generalizing about certain classes of rituals can help me understand my direction, dimly illuminating the magical workings that I have performed in the past and how they impacted later workings, developing a kind of process time line. All of this is, of course, theory and speculation and it plays a critically important part in the building and developing magical systems. Is it part of the magic that I work? I believe that the answer has to be yes, it is a part of the magic that I work. However, this speculation and theorizing sometimes leads to dead-ends, but merely being able to analyze the magic that I develop and perform is important, even if it doesn’t directly lead to a new discovery or something of a practical value.

All of these activities are part of my initiatory process, and I would be narrow minded if I excluded them from my consideration about what is magic, and whether impractical or theoretical approaches are not also magical when in the context of my overall work. I can’t discriminate and judge some things to be inherently magical because they involve my practical work while other activity would be deemed either non-magical or perhaps even performance art? Am I doing this theoretical speculation just to amuse myself? This is where a practical application and a theoretical or speculative approach are both important to the practice of magic, and they cannot be separated. That would make Clifford’s paradigm to be more a kind of tautology than an accurate statement apprizing someone’s approach to magic as valid or invalid.

Mysticism, however, is another whole subject area unto itself, although magic and mysticism can merge in the areas of theurgy and the ultimate goal, which is union with the Godhead. Still, the methods and the approach are completely different. Qabalah in its purest form is a type of mysticism, but when merged with ritual or ceremonial magic, it becomes a very high form of theurgy, and in fact, that was likely the intent of the savants who developed the original Kabbalah in the middle ages. None of these methodologies lack purpose, direction, objectives or precise ritual steps; thus none of them would ever be considered performance art.

There is merit in Clifford’s paradigm, which is to separate the sublime from the ridiculous, and to filter out those who promote types of magic that are not magic at all but forms of entertainment. It is also rewarding to think about magic in different ways and to examine our work in a dialectic conversation. In our online media-saturated world, there are all kinds of posers and con artists, and some of them pretend to be Witches, Pagans, ceremonial or ritual magicians. However, anyone who is seriously seeking to discover the meaning and purpose of their lives in this world through the art and practice of magic, will likely perform rites and ceremonies that have a very sober purpose and an objective.

Frater Barrabbas

Sage vs Mage in Ritual Magic

In our imagination, we have two characters from our folklore, and these are the mage and the sage. A mage is, of course, a magician, with his tall cap, long white beard and staff, typically associated with Merlin or later, Gandalf. He is the great wizard who can summon angels, demons and demigods. A sage is more obscure, being a person who is wise, the counselor of great leaders and the author and exemplar of religious or philosophical movements. A sage can also be a holy man, or wise religious leader, representing the mystical side of the human experience. These two individuals as archetypes represent two different facets, one is the magician and the other is a religious leader. They would seem to represent diametrically opposed factions of magic and mysticism, and in medieval Christian Europe, this was a popular theme, although it was more complicated in reality than it was perceived in popular folklore. However, the sage and mage were seen as one and the same in the Greco-Roman world, since philosophers were often believed to have arcane powers and occult knowledge.

Magic and religion have always intertwined and intersected at various points, although it is religion, or in the guise of philosophy, that has appeared mostly dominant in that relationship. The archetypal magician that emerged in late middle ages seems to embody both a religious role and a strictly magical one. Grimoires from the past age contain ceremonies and tasks best performed by a cleric, or by a hired cleric for the use of a lay-person or secular ritualist. This is because the spirits that were the target of invocation or evocation were wrapped up in religious beliefs and liturgical lore, and Christianity blurred the boundary between what was supposedly secular philosophy and religious tenants, becoming what was considered then as the highest form of intellectual activity, which was theology. It was Christian theology that embodied both the religious ethos of the time and also, unwittingly, a magical ethos. Thus magic had to appear intermixed with religious rites to engage in a kind of sacred technology.

While European ceremonial magic in its early period (11th - 14th century) was nominally a system of angel magic, functioning as an adjunct practice of trained clerics or monks associated with their sacred duties and almost sacramental in their practice, all of this changed in the early Renaissance. It was at that point when religious practices and the practice of magic began to diverge, and also when the trafficking with demons began to take prominence in the various grimoires and manuscripts on magic at that time. While the Christian Church divorced itself from the practice of even positive and constructive forms of magic, the emerging lay population of academics and their student followers began to engage in these discarded methodologies, and sought to capitalize on the powers and abilities associated with goetic demons despite the proscriptions of the Church.

The practice of engaging with negative or hostile spirits was not new to the traditions of magic, since it had its sources in antiquity with the practices of the goetic shamans who intervened in ghostly hauntings and served chthonic deities, it was redefined as demonology by a Christianized culture. Still, from the 16th to through the 17th century, which was the golden age of grimoires, the magician was required to curry the favor of God and to assume a level of spiritual purification before being granted the authority and power over neutral or demonic spirits. Magic still had a very religious foundation, and those who wished to evoke and coerce demons to satisfy their material-based ambitions had to assume a level of spiritual superiority over the spirits that they commanded. One can see this everywhere in the grimoires of the previous age, as the invocations to the Deity, the prayers, the assumed piety, the expiation and a strict requirement for a degree of spiritual purity still was considered essential to the practice of sorcery. This is because it was believed that only by the mercy and power of God could a magician be warded and escape the wily onslaughts, deceit and cunning of demons.

After the 16th century, magic started to become religiously agnostic and morally ambivalent, as it was practiced by individuals who had little relationship to religious practices other than being a lay person attendant at religious observances. They did not need to engage in an authoritative manner with the Deity, since vesting themselves in the superficial accouterments of their faith seemed adequate to deal with wayward demons. The church had lost its precedence over the practice of magic, and even the presumption of holiness was replaced by a nominal faith and belief in the process, but with the self-serving aim of personal enrichment, or the enrichment of clients who were willing to pay dearly for this service.

Parallel to the practice of ceremonial magic in the 17th century were the practices of alchemy and astrology. Additionally, there began to be an interest in hidden or occultic knowledge, and the fraternal organizations that began to be seen in Europe were first associated with the Rosicrucian movement begun in the early part of century, and then through the decades became a real underground movement that involved the study of the Jewish Kabbalah, alchemy, astrology, and also, to a lesser extent, ceremonial magic. In the 18th century, these secret societies were popularized by Masonry and various Masonic offshoots. The Illuminati had their origin at this time, and there were also the practices of Egyptian Masonry, and many other similar secret organizations. Still, it would seem that the Masonic movement, the Protestant Reformation, and the various secret brotherhoods had pushed the practice of ceremonial magic into a more secular and non-religious environment, where the individual through their piety and personal fortitude, could command spirits and demons to do their will. However, magic had already seen its popularity begin to fade, and the social myth of the magician was seen as an erroneous or fraudulent path to wisdom and power.

By the time of the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, ceremonial magic became the proclivity of the eccentric, the occultist, the madman or the charlatan. The magician seemed like the antithesis to the religious leader, or sage, both great and small; but was also at odds with the ascending scientism of the academics. Magic was an unsanctioned, underground practice of dubious individuals, since it had been drained of most of its religiosity, and infused with a materialistic and cynical ambition to manipulate the world against the rational prejudice and derision of science. As magic became degraded, the image of the magician appeared to be consigned to the ash heap of history, and the mythic image and folklore seemed to show that any attempt to acquire power, material gain, and unsanctioned wisdom by making a pact with Satan always ended badly. This was when the myth of Faustus seemed to cast magic in a dark light, even though the myth of Faust had ironically started an occult magical movement in Germany. Thus, magic became the interesting topic of the collectors and copyists of obscure manuscripts of the previous age, but serious engagement seemed lacking. The Magus was published around this time, but it was likely the last gasp of a dying tradition. Some occultists continued to examine and study magic, such as Eliphas Levi, who sought to revitalize the practice, but who actually was never a practitioner himself. It remained the proclivity of the few, and was fading into complete obscurity as the 19th century and its emphasis on the material sciences gained precedence.

In the late nineteenth century, with the advent of the Theosophical Society and various occult groups such as the Golden Dawn, ceremonial magic was rehabilitated. Yet its more religious attributes were no longer represented in the 19th century Victorian culture. Therefore, it continued to be treated and engaged with in a more secular manner than what would have been considered a proper mental condition for working these rites in the previous age. The Golden Dawn brought to its members and later the world, a whole new style of working magic that merged occult concepts, various Qabalistic tables of correspondences and rituals to engage with various kinds of spirits into the purview of the magical practitioner. The pentagram became the tool for engaging with the elementals, and the hexagram, the tool of planetary and talismanic magic. Angels were incorporated into rites of warding and protection, but a ritual used to invoke an angel or evoke a demon into manifestation was not part of this corpus.

However, the basic ritual practices, such as the watchtower rituals, the banishing and invoking rites of the pentagram and hexagram, gave the adept practitioner the basic lore needed to engage with the old grimoires. Without the archaic religious praxis, the old grimoires were likely not very accessible to the modern public, so the Golden Dawn provided a body of rituals that would establish a surrogate or replacement methodology that made these magical books accessible. Grimoires from the previous age were starting to become available, first in manuscript form in the GD, and then in published books. Those individuals who had mastered the basic ritual workings of the Golden Dawn could then apply this knowledge to unlocking the grimoires, and this what they did. It began a kind of accelerated process that is still going on today, with more and more of these magic books being published and made available.

With all of the new magical tech that the Golden Dawn invented and disseminated to its membership, probably the most important practice was godhead assumption. There was also a kind of sympathy for the polytheism of antiquity, that was taken to a greater level of engagement by Mathers, Brodie, Crowley, Fortune, and others. The early twentieth century saw the beginnings of a pagan religious movement, which was an alternative to Christianity. Margarete Murray published books on the Witchcraft cult of the previous age, and this was the beginning of a movement of popular and romantic thought that would culminate in the birth of modern Witchcraft. These new fledgling religions saw themselves as the repository of both a modern polytheistic religious practice and the engagement and practice of modern occultism. Nearly all of the founders for the various pagan and wiccan groups were also practicing occultists, and so much of that lore found its way into these groups, along with both modern religious perspectives (post-Christian) as well as fragments of ancient lore, but also, the practice of magic. Murray had made magic central to the Witch cult of the previous age, and this notion was fully captured in these new groups.

While Crowley was instrumental in bringing the practice of magic into the 20th century, his invention of a new religion seemed to be a requirement for participation in this system of magic that he brought to his Thelemic followers. Crowley’s religion, Thelema, was actually the first of the polytheistic pagan traditions that would be come abundant in the later part of the 20th century. Crowley also made magic the central tenant of his religion, and this was also a model for the other and later organizations. Despite the fact that Thelema was such a new and compelling religious perspective, along with the required practice of magic, his organization of the Ordo Templi Orientis nearly ceased to exist after his death. The post world-war period of the 1950's was more about reconstruction and finding balance in the Cold War era than engaging in various forms of occultism. Still, this profound phenomenon of religious, occultic, and magical development went into a kind of stasis after the Second World War. It was only in the 1960's that this modern engagement with magic returned along with many other alternative spiritual and occultic perspectives that were part of the counter cultural youth movement.

During the late 1960's and into the decades following, the modern Pagan and Witchcraft movements, along with the OTO, and many other newly founded traditions, proposed a religious system that combined the practice of religion and magic as a single praxis. In the Pagan and Witchcraft traditions, the central liturgical rite was a form of godhead assumption that had been taken and modified from the Golden Dawn tradition, and this brought a dimension of immanent spirituality into the group practices that had no precedence in Western European religions since antiquity. It allowed for individuals to impersonate and assume the characteristics and qualities of the pagan Deities that they were worshiping to the intimate contact and communion with their group. This is a clear case of channeling the Deity, and this would have a profound effect on the one personifying the Deity and the group who functioned as the witnesses and benefactors of that spiritual outpouring.

Since magic was considered a central tenant of this new religious movement, then godhead assumption would therefore become a part of the magic that was also performed. The liturgical rites would blend into the magical, since there was nothing to really distinguish them. It is this very consideration that I followed in developing my own system of magic based on the central liturgical practices of modern Witchcraft, but I am certain that I am not alone in this practice. However, what I was not aware of at the time was that this approach of merging religious liturgy and magic together had a truly ancient precedence that echoed from the Greco-Roman world of the philosophers and their practices, to the monks and clerics practicing angel magic, to Witches and Pagans practicing both religious rites and magic together. This is where the Sage and the Mage become fully united once again in the practice of Western religion and magic. While Catholicism had stripped itself of all ceremonial magic associated with the rites of the Mass and its ancillary practices especially in Vatican II, modern Paganism and Witchcraft had restored them, and in fact, made them even greater. Magic practiced in the guise of religion has also another provenance, which is theurgy, the methods of magic used by the philosophers of antiquity.

As a Witch Elder and Ritual Magician of the post modern age, I see myself as both a sage and a mage, embodying both perspectives as a single system of magical practice and religious engagement with the inner and outer worlds of spirit, mind and body. I see these two practices of religion and magic in perfect balance with each other, and I am engaging in developing a magical practice that can elevate the operator to the highest states of enlightened being, merging also magic and mysticism together. If there is a unitary function in the modern Pagan and Witchcraft religions, then this holistic practice represents the both the foundation and the zenith of our aspirations.

Frater Barrabbas

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

A Tale of Two Nations or One Nation Divided

Election day has passed, and the results are as fearful and ignominious as the political pundits predicted it would be if Trump were reelected. While I was surprised at the results, I wasn’t really shocked. I had already written an article recently about how we live in a world of stupid people. My opinion was corroborated by an interesting exit poll that was performed during the election. The results are quite easy to understand.

“According to the final NBC News poll of the 2024 race, 76% of registered voters said they follow public affairs and politics closely. The poll showed Harris winning among that group by 5 points over Donald Trump, 52%-47%.

But among the remaining quarter of voters who said they don’t follow politics closely, Trump was ahead by a much greater margin — 14 points, 54%-40%.”

What this exit poll indicates is that those who were engaged and followed public affairs voted to elect Harris as president, and not Donald Trump. While this an aggregate poll, it is likely to have helped Harris to win the battle-ground states and to be the president-elect. The other group couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to what was happening, and they didn’t seem to be disturbed by Trump and the fact that he was a convicted felon, attributed rapist, twice impeached, and attempted to overthrow the last election, as well as held and misused classified documents, jeopardizing our national security. This is a candidate who declared that he would order to set up detention camps for illegal aliens, sneered at the idea of upholding the constitution, and promised to function as a dictator on the first day of his presidency if elected. All of these items would have killed anyone else’s candidacy, and even the factor that he will soon be 80 years old and is obviously suffering from the beginnings of dementia did nothing to deter these low information voters from voting for him. The fact that Biden was pressured to drop out because of his age demonstrates how Trump always gets a pass for his speeches and weird behavior.

I am not questioning the intelligence of those who voted for him, but I am calling to attention their obvious lack of civic responsibility. Some of them ardently belong to the Trump cult of personality, and some of them are hardened right-wing aficionados or Christian Nationalists, but that would be only be around 30% of the electorate, so the rest are just plain too busy living their lives to really engage with their civic duty to be informed. Yes, in a word, these people are ignorant, and they are selfishly motivated to be this way. I can only hope that they rue the day they voted for Trump as president, and then, maybe if it's not too late, get more involved in knowing what is really happening to their country.

We are all going to be victimized by an angry, aggrieved Trump and his cadre of lick-spittle lackeys, but as for those who unwittingly voted for Trump, they bought it and they now own it. Hopefully, they will actually realize their folly so that things can be rectified in the next two election cycles. I won’t hold my breath expecting that to happen anytime soon, but I can at least hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

As you can no doubt see, I belong to the first group of people who are engaged and follow public affairs and politics closely. I live in a media world where I get my information from a number of different news sources including ones from Europe. Yet it seems that I live in a different country and hold ideas and beliefs that represent a stark contrast to what the average American believes.

My fellow Americans have always lionized the country hick, the urban troglodyte, and the hosts of average although stupid people as the “common man” over the intellectual, the academic, or the expert. In American culture, common sense was always considered to be of greater value than what was believed or expressed by scientists, academics, and experts, who have been classified as elitists. Uneducated folks were seen to possess common sense in greater amounts than those who were highly educated, and that being average and ill informed was a badge of honor. I believe that it is now revealed as our Achilles heel, and being ill informed in the advent of the cyber age is likely suicidal.

Americans seem to mistrust mainstream news outlets, and although they are all biased to some degree, using critical thinking skills can extract the truth from the bias. News that is based on conspiracy theories, deliberate misinformation, inexpert opinions, hearsay or propaganda is not so easily parsed, especially if one possesses a woefully inadequate base of knowledge. In fact, it appears that most Americans are getting their news these days from news influencers instead of accredited news sources. Here is an interesting study of that phenomenon by Pew Research.

“A unique Pew Research Center study provides a deeper understanding of both the makeup of the news influencer universe and its audience. The project includes an in-depth examination of a sample of 500 popular news influencers and the content they produce, derived from a review of more than 28,000 social media accounts. We also conducted a nationally representative survey of Americans to better understand who regularly gets news from news influencers.

Key findings about news influencers

•    About one-in-five Americans – including a much higher share of adults under 30 (37%) – say they regularly get news from influencers on social media.
•    News influencers are most likely to be found on the social media site X, where 85% have a presence. But many also are on other social media sites, such as Instagram (where 50% have an account) and YouTube (44%).
•    Slightly more news influencers explicitly identify as Republican, conservative or pro-Donald Trump (27% of news influencers) than Democratic, liberal or pro-Kamala Harris (21%).
•    A clear majority of news influencers are men (63%).
•    Most (77%) have no affiliation or background with a news organization.”

I can tell you with all sincerity that I don’t trust news influencers, and in fact I use a factual and skeptical approach to viewing the news. Still, a large percentage of Americans get their news from You Tube, X, Instagram, Google News, Tiktok, or various other obviously tainted right-wing sources too numerous to list here. It has been suggested that reading and listening to news sources that are misleading or completely spurious can dumb-down a population. People who watch Fox News are so less informed than others who watch other networks and that they seem to be less intelligent over time. This kind of misinformation noise will make a national public less able to perform their civic duty, such as voting as a properly informed public, if one bothers to vote at all.

This is a calamity that is happening right now for all to see. And the biggest victims are young, single men, who are showing themselves as being the most gullible for hard right-wing propaganda. These are a group of people who over-all are less educated and underemployed, but who consume the internet media at a greater level than anyone else. They are also more likely to be single without much chance of finding a partner, and also having the means to buying their own home. What they have going for them is that they are W.A.S.P.s, and so there is a desperate need to maintain and expand their entitlement and white privilege, and Neo Nazi groups are happy to oblige and make them feel valued and important. They also get a nod from Donald Trump who they assume is like them. He has become a role model for what the underemployed white males see as the definition of a rich, entitled, and powerful man. Elon Musk is the same kind of role model for them, even though the very wealthy did not start out as poor folk. They had the benefits of being born into a position and were given financial help that greatly aided their pursuit of wealth and power.

All of these factors played a role in helping to elect Trump to a second term. Biden was poorly represented in the news, and his accomplishments and competent governance were fully ignored. Biden probably should have declared himself a one term president and then allowed the Democrats to vote for his replacement, instead of bowing out after undue pressure and giving his running mate only a hundred days to run for office. So some of the blame goes to Biden for making some poor choices and not promoting his accomplishments. The Democratic Party was also to blame for not promoting all of the things that they did during the last two terms to help the American people.

Exit polls showed that people had made up their mind much earlier about who they were going to vote for in the election, and that the electorate was angry about Covid19, the post pandemic inflation hike, the border crisis caused mostly by the instability in Venezuela and Haiti, and of course, the war in Gaza and Lebanon. It created a perfect storm of bad press for Biden, and dropped his approval levels to the high 30's. While Harris sought to overcome that headwind, she was not successful, largely due to a press that devalued her abilities and contributions. However, the greatest amount of blame goes to the low information and disengaged idiots who voted for Trump. Despite everything that went against Biden, and later Harris, Trump represented a far, far worse choice. And my stupid American brothers and sisters went ahead and voted for him because of various, unsupported and spurious reasons. They were angry, afraid, and blamed the incumbents, especially Democrats, and spitefully voted them out of office in sufficient numbers to give the Republicans a ruling trifecta. What awaits our nation will only truly benefit the oligarchy, the rest of us are going to be screwed royally.  

So why am I writing yet another politically inspired diatribe about the latest election that so dismayed me? Does it make any difference to the practice of magic, occultism, and being a Witch and a religiously polytheistic person? As a well-paid IT professional, will I feel the effects of four more years of the nihilistic wing of the Republican Party? The answer to all of those questions is a definitive yes! I am writing because I am concerned about our future nation, one which I love and respect, but also acknowledge as flawed and a work-in-progress. I believe that four years of Trump will be an even greater disaster than the first four years. My only hope is that his inherent incompetence and laziness, and the feckless stupidity of his minions, will attempt a grand scheme to make this country into a one party state, but who will fail in the end. I fervently hope that the incoming regime has only two years to do its worst before the midterms shut them down.

Those are my hopes, but my “hopium” has been severely challenged over the last ten years in a way that I never imagined it would. It is based on my optimistic belief in humanity and my fellow Americans. It is with this in mind that I face a future that is potentially darker and more desperate than I believed it would be, just because of one man and his sick, vindictive, and delusional pursuits, all in the name of making the world a better place just for him.

Still, millions of people voted for Trump and the Republican party, and the will of the people is now known. Many think that Trump is the lesser evil in our political civil war between the two parties. They see the Democrats as elitists and out of touch with the common folk, even though there are many of us, such as myself, who are not at all elitist who voted for them as the obvious choice. Trump has made his dystopian world view quite plain, and his plans for rectifying the ills of an imaginary failing country that doesn’t even exist will be far worse than the world we have at present. Many think that nothing really bad will happen, and that the Democrats have painted Trump as some kind of vicious and vile autocrat, when he is just an entertaining politician who likes to say crazy shit to shock the liberals. I disagree, it will be as bad or worse for the next two years, and maybe slightly better in the next two years, and maybe we will recover after the Trump presidency has finally ended. Democrats are always having to clean up the mess that Republicans make when attempting to govern. I hope that there is still be some semblance of a representational democracy in this nation when the Democrats get back into power.

So, just in case you still don’t believe that a Trump presidency will impact you and your family very much and you might be thinking that I am being too pessimistic about the future of our nation in the hands of Trump and his minions. Here is something to think about, and it’s coming to us all starting early next year.

“Trump has named three deportation hardliners to key positions in his administration, including Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy, Kristi Noem for secretary of Homeland Security and Tom Homan as ‘border czar.’  

Miller is likely to be especially influential and especially brutal. [...]

...even ‘documented’ immigrants will not be safe, because Miller has declared that he will pursue the seldom-used process of ‘denaturalization’ to go after people who have been citizens for years or decades, based on suspicions about purported fraud on their naturalization applications. Individuals stripped of citizenship will then be subject to deportation along with Miller’s other targets.”

Everyone knows that immigrants and illegal aliens who work in this country take the jobs that nobody either wants or can manage on the very low wages that they are paid. Agriculture, construction, food processing, cleaning, janitorial and low-level maintenance, and many other jobs are performed by these people who faithfully perform these low paying jobs and don’t represent a threat to anyone. Take them out of the economy and you have some pretty steep inflation, when commodities, construction, cleaning and maintenance become too expensive or non-existent. Add tariffs into this toxic brew and you have a recipe for a very heavily impacted economy, certainly a recession, but maybe even a depression. Angry because of previous inflationary prices? A Trump economy might actually make prices drop after they go sky high, but by then no one will be able to afford the basics except for the rich.

This is just a preview of what is in store for us next year. Trump will have two years of unlimited power before the body politic realizes their mistake and punishes the Republican incumbents and possibly, changes the balance of power in Washington. A blue wave for the mid-terms would likely become a tsunami at the end of Trump’s final term in office. It is doubtful that anyone can replace him, and it is likely that the worst elements of our population will crawl back into the woodwork where they came. I can at least hope that is the outcome we will experience. Yet living with such stupid fellow Americans has taught me that the best possible outcome will likely be diluted or nonexistent as the siege of online disinformation continues without any kind of mitigation, and people become less curious and more ignorant.

Until that time of reckoning, I will live in one world, founded on facts, critical thinking, skepticism, and rational reasoning. It is a world of inclusion, love, unity, diversity, tolerance, and freedom; where my freedoms are guarded and guaranteed by government institutions and the fourth estate. My other fellow Americans will live in world founded on lies, epistemic closure, conspiracy beliefs, fear, loathing the “other,” exclusion, White Supremacy, bigotry, racism, misogyny, and unfounded hatred. It is a tale of two countries, divided by the ideals of light and darkness, compassion and anger. I believe that my concept of America will win over the other, darker and dystopian version; but what is left after four years of Trump, and how readily the damage will be fixed, is the great undecided question.

If this evil that “we the people” have evoked onto ourselves continues after Trump is gone, then those who are not white Christian Nationalists or their religious allies will find themselves in grave jeopardy and may have to either leave this once great country, or suffer unwarranted persecution, imprisonment and even execution. You’ve been warned, the outcome of our future is in the hands of stupid people, so let’s help them to understand that the future could be bright if we unite and give up fear and darkness and embrace the greater good.

Frater Barrabbas