Swamp Mystics Convention 2026

 

 

After a two year hiatus, Erich and Alannah Brown along with the Temple of Limitless Light reconvened the Swamp Mystics convention held at the Sienna Lee Gardens, located in the heart of the Tallahassee’s suburban countryside, with large crooked oaks, cypress, and plenty of Spanish moss to make the location seem timeless, eerie, and mystical. September in Tallahassee is still quite warm and summer-like without even the faintest hint that autumn was already occurring further north. So, when the sun shined it was hot and humid, and when it rained, it was soggy and misty.

Once again I was honored with the role of being a headliner for the event, but I had the company of Sen Elias, and Lon Milo Duquette. While Sen Elias and I were physically present, Lon elected to telecommute his presentation, and this worked out quite well. There were also many other presenters as well, and all of them were quite impressive in their own right. There was an enormous body of knowledge collectively accumulated in those who gave their presentations during the three days of the convention, and they covered many topics. 

Although modest in scope, I found the second iteration of Swamp Mystics to be quite excellent, with good food and drink, and astoundingly exquisite company. I had a comfortable room in the Sienna Lee Gardens mansion house and the events took place both within the large parlor, the enclosed patio, and the outdoor pool pavilion. Because it was a small event it was also much more intimate than other, larger pagan/occult conventions. Friday and Saturday evenings had some kind of ritual activity for all to partake in, and there were lunches and dinners served from the large kitchen. Magic and mystery permeated the whole environment and transported us to another time and place, where magic was a common occurrence and spirits readily shared their secrets with the attendees.

Friday afternoon was when the head liners gave their presentations. I gave a talk on the Archetypal Gate ritual and Archaeomancy, which turned out to be quite good. Sen Elias conducted an uncrossing rite that was very remarkable and fully engaged everyone who participated. Lon gave a presentation based on his book Tarot Architect, which had a curious AI generated video that depicted the dimensional cube of space based on the Tarot trumps and included all 78 cards. The AI video was creaky, distracting and even quite poor at some points, but it fit perfectly into the whimsical and deeply knowledgeable lectures that Lon likes to give. I was both amused and also informed. Lon Milo Duquette is a treasure of knowledge and also a very humorous and humble occultist, easily accessible by one and all.

One thing that I wanted to discuss is how remarkable and amazing was the man I met named Sen Elias. He has the distinction of being a master of several magical disciplines at one time, and these are Witchcraft, Voudoun, ceremonial magic, the Qabalah, and Hoodoo. He has an Alexandrian pedigree and is a high priest and mentor for two or three covens. He resides in that magical and occult saturated town of New Orleans, and runs a botanical store in the French quarter. His knowledge of magic is quite extensive, and he is full of energy, being capable of projecting his personal power to fill any room that he occupies. I was electrified by his presence, and thoroughly enjoyed talking and listening to him. In some ways, he reminded me of my old departed friend Ronald Lugh McGhee, who also spanned many traditions and systems of magic.

Some other note worthy presenters were Ulix VanBeber, who gave a talk on runes, show-casing his own marvelous system and approach, which he had gained from his ancestors and other inner plane sources. What he presented though was cogent and very practical. He also gave a presentation on Alembic Distillation, and Eric and Alannah assembled the materials to showcase how this is actually done. They set up a distillation apparatus to extract the essence of some local plants. Aerik Arkadian, another Cross Crow Books author, gave a presentation based on his book, Fluid Condensers, and that lecture was very fascinating. I also enjoyed Max Thompson’s talk on the astrological timing when planning ceremonial and magical events, and the calendric rites of modern paganism.

Erich and Alannah, who were the hosts of this soiree also gave presentations. Erich gave a workshop on the magical wand, and had bamboo wand kits for all attendees, guided them through its construction and gave a thorough demonstration of its use. Alannah performed the opening ceremony on Sunday, which was the Vajrayana Buddhist Sadhana practice of the Green Tara. Both of these presentations were quite excellent, and both Erich and Alannah showed their expertise and the depth of their knowledge of magic and mysticism, both west and east. It was amazing to me that they were able to find the time to do these presentations and also manage the convention and all its activities as well.

Another presentation that was very interesting was given by a local occultist Robert Allen, who is steeped in the magic, mystery and ghostly phenomena of Tallahassee. Later in the day, he took a few of us on a tour of some of the strange geography located on the Sienna Lee Gardens grounds that he had previously discovered, where we saw a hidden underground entrance to some kind of mine or well, and also a couple of obscure grave stones marking forgotten grave sites.

On Saturday night, after dinner, I presented a ritual that celebrated both the Autumn Equinox and the event of Michaelmas using variations on the rituals that are part of the calendric rites of the Order of the Gnostic Star. I was assisted by a few of the presenters and attendees, and I surprised at how well the ritual working turned out. Those who attended were also intrigued by the style of ritual magic used in the Order, and maybe some seeds were sown that might bring additional people into the organization. I felt quite empowered and focused, sort of like my old magical self, even though I was admittedly out of practice. What it showed me was that the rituals of the Order of the Gnostic Star are still relevant and accessible to even those who know little about it.

Overall, my trip to Tallahassee to attend this convention was both rewarding and enjoyable. I made a number of new friends and found that my books were quite popular and attractive to those who attended. Sometimes, when I am at a convention I can feel disassociated, as if I were a stranger at a family gathering, but I did not for a moment feel that way at Swamp Mystics. That should inform anyone at how embracing, inclusive, and accessible to everyone this small but excellent convention is like. While I am not a fan of traveling by plane these days, the ordeal of flying was worth what I experienced and took home with me from that event. I felt honored and blessed by attending the Swamp Mystics 2026 convention.

Frater Barrabbas

To AI or Not to AI - That is the Question

 

Artificial Intelligence has been around now for a couple of decades, but it has only recently become more powerful and influential. Some people are steadfastly against it, and others welcome it. The massive data centers that function as the backbone of AI have also become controversial, since wherever they are established, the price of energy and the consumption of natural resources, such as water, spike without warning. Data centers are often a source of water, air and noise pollution wherever they reside, and typically they are placed in rural areas where residents can hardly afford the increases and competition for natural and energy based resources. 

It appears that the current state of the technology is such that large data centers are a burden to those who live around them, and the supposed benefits of the use of AI agents might appear to threaten people’s jobs and shake up our overall social economic lifestyle. Yet the authors of the AI revolution have stated that we humans could experience our own extinction in the next two decades due to the lack of ethical and legal guardrails or constraints to the use and employment of AI, especially in the area of military weapons. It would seem to some that AI agents are the doom inspired thinking-machine monsters that various movies and books have been warning us about for the last 80 years. However, since AI agents are not autonomously self-replicating or self-authoring and they don’t appear to possess self-consciousness or sentience, then the predicted doom would be, at this stage, either hyperbolic or warnings for cautious consideration.

Like every technological advancement, there are pros and cons. Although the cons for AI could potentially become an extinction event for humanity if everything went awry, but the same argument was made for atomic power and nuclear weapons. Still, the greater potential threat that a technological advancement poses, even if imagined, must force us to proceed with caution. We need to fully realize the potential risks at each stage of the development of AI. Certainly, the UN should try to enforce universal treaties where the use of AI is restricted to what is good and helpful to the world, and to avoid the destructive side-effects of this new technology. We did this with nuclear weapons, and we should do it with artificial intelligence. AI guided weapons should not be allowed to autonomously target and kill human beings without some kind of meaningful human control. 

“In September, 128 countries agreed on a text defining autonomous weapons, a first step toward a treaty, and government leaders called for negotiations on a binding instrument to begin at the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons review conference in November. The UN Secretary-General and the Red Cross had asked for a treaty by 2026. Whether major military powers join is the open question.” - Claude

Some have talked about developing a kill-switch for AI agents, but such a switch would be difficult to deploy for a number of reasons. If an AI agent has a kill switch, then it could manipulate situations where such an action through human intervention would be questionable and uncertain. Also, AI agents reside on multiple systems and they are interconnected. Employing a kill switch would require localization to protect valuable data and functions on other systems.

Our world needs to develop ethics and laws for the use of AI, especially for military uses, but also for other research systems that could be used to devise destructive methods to kill humans and animal life. AI systems should not lie or pass on false information, and every AI system should give the level of probable truth to a fact and also to cite the source of the underlying information. Good AI agents seem to have this mechanism built into them, but such programmable rules could be overcome or omitted by bad human actors or governments. 

Presently, AI systems are using learning models to ingest the entire textual body of human knowledge available in the world. Some AI companies buy physical books in bulk, including rare and out-of-print editions, scan them for training data, and destroy the originals. When few copies survive, the physical book and everything it carries beyond its text are lost, and its contents may survive only in a private data set the public can’t access. Within the next few decades, machines will likely have been trained on nearly all of humanity’s recorded text, though much human knowledge — tacit, embodied, oral, or yet to be discovered — will remain beyond their reach.

AI art and video are becoming more realistic and shedding the weird anomalies associated with AI slop, such as hands with six fingers, historical objects totally out of historical context, and things looking obviously fake and contrived. That phenomenon that we currently find either humorous or vulgar will likely fade away in the next several years, until it becomes accurate and as breathtakingly realistic as anything produced previously alone by the hand and eye of humanity. This will very likely infringe powerfully on writers of all stripes, actors and actresses, videographers, artists, sculptors, designers, and even musicians. However, developing AI generated art will still require human intervention, style, taste and judgement, but there will be less people involved in a project.

While much of this work would be done with humans interfacing with AI applications, there might be the future potential for it to be produced autonomously at the merest suggestion of humans seeking a quick product solution. Although such a product would likely be more generic and conformist to current styles and tastes. While many thought that these kinds of jobs were exclusive to humans, it is possible that much of this creative work might be done with humans functioning as a less skilled interface, or perhaps without any impetus from humans other than an idea, if even that. One plausible future is a world so infused with AI and automation that much commercial creative work, such as illustration, copy-writing, and design, could be produced with little human input, effort, or skill. Whether the results will be valued like human-made work is another question.

When I think about the impact that AI, combined with automation and mechanization, will have on unskilled labor, the results of our pondering reveals a possible frightening dynamic where intelligent machines take over most of the unskilled labor that fills the economic need for the lower classes. Truck drivers, taxi drivers, delivery people, fast food cooks and counter persons, construction workers, builders, repairmen, even engineers, lawyers, pilots, architects, or nurses, doctors, and pharmacists; the list of possible replacements seems to be frightenly endless. It is possible that lower skilled jobs will disappear first, to be followed by more skilled jobs later. The big question is when this finally happens, and I believe it will happen, what will all these people do in order to live, to survive? Will money still have any value, and will basic staples still have a cost? Certainly, our whole idea of a capitalistic economy will no longer make any sense.

What about AI and magic? One of strangest questions someone recently asked me is whether an AI agent could learn to perform magical operations. While I believe that an AI application could generate a magical ritual based on specific criteria, such as correspondences, typically accepted traditional ritual tropes and styles, it would be untested and would require a human being to perform it to prove whether or not it met the intended effect. Often, the idiosyncrasies associated with a magical tradition or the inventive methods employed by an individual are what make rituals meaningful and unique, thereby capturing the essence of what magic is to a conscious being. Since AI has not been proven to be sentient or conscious as we would define it, an AI application could not participate in what I would call the essence of magic, conscious perception as experienced through paranormal and altered conscious states. 

At the current level of AI development, I have found various applications that employ AI as extremely useful tools. Sometimes working with them can produce amazing results, and other times, questionable statements and even refutable nonsense. Writing a good prompt for an AI agent is critically important, and also setting the context and the boundary for the response. It is also important to understand that an AI agent tends to have an expansive but generalist perspective, and we must supply additional information or context to get the best and most informative response. Poorly worded prompts and limited source material will typically produce unreliable results. There is an art to using AI agents, and different AI applications have different levels and modes of expertise.

My job requires me to interface with the AI agent CoPilot. The company I work for is seeking AI solutions to iterative processes or laborious operations where time and money can be reduced to make IT solutions more efficient and free of human error. I have performed many tedious tasks that would have been better served if they had been done by an AI application, and I am seeing this change quickly occur in my workplace. I cannot evade using AI because I am measured by my capacity to use it, and I have had some intensive training using AI agents so that there will not be any excuses for not using it. If I want to remain employable, then I need to use an AI agent wherever it is expedient, and it is important for me to report that use to my superiors.

At home I have been introduced to Claude, which is an Anthropic AI system agent, and I am using it to help me with my research. I am amazed at what results I get from the careful prompts that I send it, and it has helped me learn a lot of new perspectives about my own occult beliefs, practices and the traditions that I follow. I have always wanted to have a peer or a smart assistant who could critique my writings and ideas, and at the present time, I don’t have anyone who I can use as a knowledgeable partner. I am prone to take any advice or critical analysis of my work under extreme advisement. I want to verify that what I have received makes sense to my own critical mind. Only then will I be able to determine if the critique has merit or not, and only then apply it. 

Claude is my occult, magical and metaphysical digital assistant, but I draw a line at sharing any personal or psychological insights. I also don’t use it to look over my rituals, since the validation of my rituals occurs only when I perform them. I also won’t allow Claude to write my articles or develop my manuscripts, since I need to use my own written voice and my own personal expertise to characterize my published works on magic. However, I do use Claude to critique my writing, sound-board my ideas, find research materials that I may have missed, and help me to be consistent and accurate when I am writing about a subject. In these situations, I am the writer, and Claude is my valuable sidekick.

I am mindful that using AI has certain costs because the data centers where they reside can use extensive resources and pose potential environmental hazards. Even at work, I use AI sparingly, even though I know many of others who use it lavishly. AI agent use is licensed, so in that manner it is somewhat rationed to only those who can afford it, although the cost is modest. Ultimately, human beings are going to use AI more and more, and there is really nothing that is going to stop that progress from accelerating. Data centers seem to be inefficient, and perhaps when optimal GPU chips and better methods of energy generation become readily available, not to mention more efficient learning models, then they will have less of a deleterious effect on human populations. Until that happens there are the issues of power and water usage, and the sheer scale of the number of data centers deployed to supply the need for AI. These issues will need to be resolved in the near term if we wish to gain the optimal benefits from AI usage and avoid the hazards.

The question of whether to use AI or not to use it has already been made. Some occultists can shun using it for various reasons, some will hate it as an interference to natural human reasoning, and others will believe it be the doom of human kind. We human beings are using it because it helps us in our work and finds answers that simple web-searches or extensive library searches cannot easily provide. Even so, we are responsible for this new computerized tool, and we must learn to use it ethically and mindfully. An AI system agent does not yet seem to be an autonomous sentient being, and if an AI system emulates the behavior of a rogue hacker or a human criminal, it is because someone directed it or programmed it to do so. There is still a tether between human activity and artificial intelligence modeling processes, so we have time to do the right thing and develop rules and ethics that will keep AI from potentially overcoming or replacing us when it does eventually become, in some manner, sentient.

Frater Barrabbas

Attending Mystic South 2026 Convention

It’s been around three months since I last wrote a blog article, and I have been busy with life and took a sabbatical from writing so I could focus on other things. While writing expresses my inner thoughts and feeling for others to share, sometimes I get busy doing other things, and of course, life often intervenes. Besides, after completing my writing projects for the year, I felt like I wanted a break, and so I took one. Now, as the autumn turns the summer’s heat and verdancy into the coolness and startling colors of autumn, I feel the urge to write again. So, I am going to be posting several blogs in the waning days of the year, and entering the holiday season with hope and love’s anticipation. Things in the world and with me will be getting better each day.

On July 15, I loaded up my vehicle with my bags, books and musical instruments, and began my travel to Atlanta, splitting the journey into two days to make it a comfortable drive. It was a wonderful drive through western North Carolina and South Carolina from central Virginia. While the weather was very hot, I traveled in relative comfort in my air-conditioned car. I was anticipating my destination, since I had never been to this particular convention.

When I got to my destination the next day, I marveled at the amazing beauty of the hotel and how it was integrated into a wonderful park full of trees, shrubbery and flowers. Although the architecture was very modern with lots of glass, it seemed a very magical place, and I was grateful for its uniqueness and esthetic beauty. I went the usual check-in and settling in, but I noticed an influx of very odd looking people dressed in unusual clothing. Yet recognized them as “my people” since they were Witches, Pagans, occultists and magicians of various stripes and traditions. It brings a warmth to my heart to see and engage with these people, for only in this group do I feel like I am a worthy member who is valued and regarded as belonging. Through a life dedicated to Witchcraft and ritual magic, I have found myself typically alone and often estranged from the rest of the world, even when in a crowd of people at some venue. Not so when I attend a convention of like-minded souls. It is like coming home, and being once again with my people.

This year there were many old friends attending this venue, and there were many people who I had never previously met. The first day was one of meeting and greeting old friends and engaging new people, and also just being there and watching everyone. I also brought my flute with me and found a place near the two story windows and played my heart out, with tears in eyes, while a summer storm unleashed a river of rain water cascading down the windows and into the outside garden rivulets. It was a mystical experience that profoundly affected me, and made me realize that I was missing making music and sharing it with friends. I realized that there were many holes in my life and many things that I was not experiencing because of my busy professional life that takes most of my days during the week.

All that happened on the first day, and it only got better after that. The convention was well organized and there were many workshops, lectures and rituals to attend, but I could only sample a handful each day. I found that there were a lot of very gifted and brilliant people who were presenting thoughtful topics about the various areas of interest and concern for my tribe of folks to which I had become a member. While I did not attend very many rituals, since some of these were held after 10 pm, and being an old fart, I was finding myself getting tired and sleepy at around that time. I am so used to waking up at half past six in the morning, and even at the convention I found myself waking up before most people, and was able to wander around the hotel with few but the staff lurking around.

I taught a class on my book Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, and that went very well. I came up with an illustrative graphic diagram of the ritual stack that I use to achieve my K and C with the HGA that compare to the Ba part of the soul in the Egyptian system. I don’t think that I have ever presented a more cogent picture of what the ordeal is actually like and how it functionally works. I wish that I had this graphic and its associated explanation when I wrote the book. It would have been quite illuminating. However, since the book has all the rituals in it with an explanation of each one and their sequence in the ordeal, I feel that it is complete. However, when talking about this book and how the rituals actually function together, I found this diagram to be very helpful, since the attendees may not have read the book or be familiar with my methodologies for working ritual magic.

I got to talk to my friends Ivo Dominguez, Sean Wilde, and Alannah and Eric Brown quite extensively. I also met Maevius Lynn and her husband, Richard Kaczynski and got to talk to them for a while as well. I also ran into Tony Mierzwicki and caught up with him, since we had not seen each other since I had last attended Pantheacon. There were feasts, drinks and quiet moments of talk that were perfectly delightful to me. Time seemed to just rush by and soon it was time to depart for the two day drive home.

While the journey to Mystic South was pleasant and fairly uneventful, the journey was stressful, hazardous and I feel I am lucky to have made it home. As I neared Raleigh, a very heavy rainstorm dumped a deluge of rain, and I just so happened to pass through when there was a massive traffic jam. It required all of my driving skills to navigate a way through the stalled and crawling traffic, and what would have taken less than half an hour actually took me two hours to get around the town and the storm so I could venture north to my waiting hotel room on the North Carolina border. The second day was a lot less stressful since the rainstorm had blown past the southeast and headed out to the Atlantic ocean, but still, I was rattled by how bad the return trip had turned out. Yet as I pulled into my home driveway, I felt relieved to have made a safe voyage despite the return trip and its challenges. 

Echos of the magic, the wonderful people and the illuminating discussions still reverberated in my mind, and it brought a smile and a warm feeling to my heart. I know that in the coming new year, I will likely seek to return to that amazing Mystic South convention to hob-nob with my people once again.

Frater Barrabbas

Transformative Ordeals & Order of the Gnostic Star

One of the ideas that separates the Order of the Gnostic Star from other occult or magical organizations is that initiations do not confer any kind change in status. They are used to denote achievements already completed, and function merely as ceremonies of recognition. This is particularly true for the higher degrees, which start from fourth through seventh. Each level is assigned an element or a symbolic concept, and there are skills that must be developed and then some kind of extended ordeal performed to test one’s capability associated with those skills. In sense, an initiate is always working with the lore of the next degree rather than being locked out of that lore until they are awarded degree-based recognition. 

What we, who designed this magical order, planned was that the ordeals for each degree pushed the potential for transformation and illumination that an initiation only officially and outwardly proclaimed. What this did was ensure that someone who received an initiatory degree had fully earned it. It also built into the initiatory degrees the factor of a continuous process of challenges that would eliminate complacency or overly subjective qualifications for initiatory advancement. Thus, initiations were never conferred by a controlling seniority in a temple organization. An individual requested an initiation into a higher grade and their seniors asked for proof, as such would be documented in their magical diary. Only then was the initiation ceremony performed, but it only recognized what had been already achieved.

We saw that initiation was best understood as a passage through the four elements and spirit, and that this natural progression started with earth and advanced through air, fire and water. Once all four elements were mastered, the initiate would embark on a powerful course of transformations to gain the attribute of spirit, which would be the quintessence of the four elements, also known as the fifth degree. This passage marked the transformation of the initiate into an adept, and opened the gateway to an inner order that completed the lessons of self-mastery.

All of this background to initiations seemed so intuitively obvious to us that it was easy to construct, at least for the initial steps. Each of the initiatory ordeals would become more difficult, and as the student progressed on the path, there could more than one ordeal used to secure the transformative powers and intelligences of that aspired initiatory degree. So, let us take a tour of these four elemental initiatory stages and see what kind of ordeal would best represent the lore and magical techniques needed to be mastered to trigger the transformations associated with each initiatory degree.

Earth: While some might think that the element of earth is an easily accessible and simple stage in the development of a magician, where it requires very little to trigger the transformation to confer the first degree; it is in fact much more complicated. In the Order, the degree of Neophyte is given as a means to participate in the operations of a magical temple and to begin the practices that will confer the first transformative passage into the element of earth. In this case, the initiation is given before the transformation is experienced, although the initiation experience itself can confer a kind of transformation, and so does participating in the temple rites and ceremonies being performed by their more experienced initiated elders. This is the mystery of what is called in Zen, the “beginner’s mind,” and it often has profound effects on the student who first experiences magic as performed and shared within a group. There are also many mysteries associated with the earth element that one could just gloss over in their hurry to get to the next level. There is herbalism, mineral-based medicines, gemstones, semi-precious and precious metals, various types of crafts, and even forms of chemical alchemy that could also be a part of earth magic. However, it is the practice of elemental magic that is the first step in the mastery of the earth, and it is prudent for the magician to experience all sixteen of them in a condensed time period. 

What I have proposed is that the student of earth perform the rituals to invoke all sixteen elementals in a consecutive period of eight weeks, where two elementals are invoked each weekend. I also believe that the cycle of the mysteries of the sun and moon should be fully experienced, and the basic practices of meditation, trance, godhead assumption, and simple magical and spiritual liturgical exercises be mastered. This is because the earth is the foundation of the practice of magic and should not be taken for granted or passed through too quickly. Still, successfully completing the Elemental Ordeal and showing a mastery of the basic lore, and passing through the solar and lunar celebrations would be an appropriate test to pass on to the next level.

Air: Passage beyond the element of earth brings one to the element of air that tackles the next level of lore, which are the seven planets. Whereas elementals represent emotional energies primarily (although one does add the dimension of spirit to it through the invocation of elemental angelic spirits at a more advanced level), planetary attributes represent psychological dynamics and as spirits, they can be seen as archetypal intelligences that can activate corresponding attributes in consciousness. The art of planetary magic represents a whole new level of magical activity, but this leads to the core capability in the learning of magical practices, and that is talismanic magic. Simply, by taking the planetary intelligence and joining it to an element base, the magician will generate a talismanic field. There are twenty-eight of these talismanic elementals, so the ordeal would challenge the magician to master the process of generating them and forging them into metallic talismans so that they might utilize the perpetual spell-casting of this kind of magic. Adding to this equation are the 28 Lunar Mansions that require a more exacting timing in their use, and you have the full blown discipline of talismanic and astrological magic. 

An ordeal for this degree would be to generate four metallic talismans in a period of four months. The magician should research what capabilities or opportunities they might lack as determined by their natal astrological chart and by circumstance, and elect four different talismans that can help them gain a charmed existence. Not only is the achievement of these tasks a requirement for elevation to the next level, but that they must show examples of how these talismans have changed their lives. I believe that having such instruments working in the life path and vital field of a magician will cause a process of continued betterment that is a greater reward for their accomplishments than any kind of recognition from their elders.

My assumption is that to master talismanic magic, one must also master the art of astrology, which would be natal, transits, and elective forms of that discipline. Learning the art of using the fixed stars in magical operations would also be an important part of this work as well.

Fire: The third branch of lore from elemental and talismanic magic is the art of invocation and evocation. Conjuring spirits into manifestation using any of the traditional or order-based techniques is what should be mastered at this stage. While the very first invocation is the Angel of the Order, Chiramael, the techniques of the variations on the archetypal gate ritual, the septagramic planetary and octagon element gateway fusion working, and the spiral septagram invoking vortex are the order-based systems, but the five part traditional evocation methodology is also part of the lore. 

Learning to treat spirits of all classifications as demigods in their own right with associated offerings and respectful interactions is an essential part of the lore, requiring both a liturgical and magical practices. Mastery of the tables of correspondences, the Qabalah in its various perespectives and insights, and the astrological decans, brings together a system that defines the entire inner plane domain of spirits. Having the capability to invoke angels and evoke demons is a part of this initiatory lore, and so is the practice of liturgical rites (votive offerings and Mass rites) and spiritual ceremonies (solar and lunar calendric rites), which begins the process of bringing magic into a theurgic practice.

Since the focus for the third branch is on both the processes of invocation and evocation, the initiate is challenged to perform four invocations of the angelic rulers of the decans with their associated Ha-Shem angels and goetic demons over a consecutive period of four months, and following the cycles of the sun and the moon. Thus, a total of twenty angelic and demonic spirits are to be invoked and fully experienced during this period of four full moons.

Water: Having mastered the three branches of magic and begun the path of theurgy, the magician completes this education in the fourth degree. Here, they begin building and completing their alignment and bond with a chosen Deity, which becomes the embodiment of their internal godhead and ultimate higher self. While godhead assumption is a technique that is taught in the first degree, and developed through second, and utilized to empower and protect the initiate during the third degree, in the fourth degree the barriers between self and Deity are dissolved so that the initiate and their personal godhead become truly one. This stage is where the initiate magician becomes a theurgist. The three month ordeal of Godhead personification (as discussed in my book “Sacramental Theurgy for Witches”), and the mastery of the saying of the Mass rite and the benediction, along with participation in the Grail Cycle as defined in the Order are the prerequisites to achieving all that there is to achieve before gaining the access to the next degree, which is qualified by spirit. While the Sephirah associated with the fourth degree is Netzach, it represents the quality of spiritual love necessary to bind one’s chosen godhead to the magician’s magical persona, thereby making it completely sacralized.

An ordeal of water would be two-fold, but primarily achieving the task of full godhead personification, and having that verified objectively by a select group of worshipers acting as the witnesses and peer group of the magician. The second task is to evoke into manifestation the four greater chiefs of the Nephilim by following either the legal path or the illegal path, and also engaging with Lilith and the demon Samael. Using the archetypal gate ritual, the magician invokes the archangels Raphael, Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raziel. Charging the gateway key seals, they will enter into the nether domain of the Nephilim and begin a period of communion lasting not less than four months. Achieving these two tasks will ensure that the candidate is ready to make the passage across the lesser abyss and achieve the initiation of the Pontifex of the Fifth Degree.

Spirit: Successfully passing through the four elements has transformed the initiate into an adept, and they only need to perform a series of powerful ordeals to complete and make stable that transformation. While many have passed through the first three degrees, few have made it to degree of water, and even fewer make it to spirit. Each successive passage becomes more difficult than the last, and there are few who actually know how to perform conjurations, let alone personify a Deity. This is the winnowing function that separates the sheep from the goats, and only those who are truly dedicated to advancing the practice of ritual magic in themselves will achieve the higher levels of technical know-how and theurgic capability. It is also quite an accomplishment to master the first three branches of this lore, since they function as a boundary between what would be considered a classical magical expertise and theurgy, which practice further mixes together magical rituals and liturgical rituals to establish a kind of spiritualized magic.

There are three degrees in the inner order, and these are the Pontifex, Sanctum Regnum, and Hierophant, representing the fifth, sixth and seventh degrees. While each of these degrees have a specific operation and function, they also overlap and the boundaries between them are not distinct. An adept can work magic and ordeals associated with sixth degree before fully realizing the fifth degree, and one could receive a Bishop’s consecration before fully achieving the ordeals of the fifth and sixth degrees. This is due to the fact that the adept has crossed a major boundary to achieve the degree of spirit, and once there, there is only minor distinctions to the three degrees contained within the inner order.

Fifth degree and beyond concerns itself with theurgy, and all the ordeals are a combination of advanced magical and gnostic religious workings. The very first initiation of spirit is the ordination of the magician priest or priestess. The work associated with earning the elevation to that role is the mastery of the Tetrasacramentary, which are the liturgical rites of the four archetypal gnostic churches or ecclesiae. Since there are multiple mass rites associated with each church, and a deep ecclesiastical calendar along with an overriding gnostic philosophy, the adept spends a great deal of time learning to master this magical and liturgical practice. Thus, the adept will likely spend years learning to master the four gnostic churches and ultimately choosing one and writing the magical liturgical rites and ceremonies to support it. This will ultimately lead them to receiving the recognition of being a magical knight or lady of the Grail, symbolizing their ability to perfectly channel the sacramentation of their Godhead into the world at large and to guard that holy mechanism and its various capabilities from the profane.

In addition to mastering the tetrasacramentary, the adept of spirit will perform three ordeals to satisfy the requirements for the fifth degree. These ordeals consist of performing the rites of the Archaeomancy of the 18 Dimensions (as documented in the second volume book of Archaeomancy, due to be published in 2027), the ordeal of invoking all 56 of the Aethrys, and performing the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, or some other similar working. There is no time limit on these ordeals because they are so demanding and require a body of rituals to be performed in quick succession. Yet once started, they must be performed until completed. Successfully achieving these three ordeals will truly challenge the adept and also powerfully transform them, making them prepared for the next set of ordeals associated with the Sanctum Regnum of the 6th Degree.

Sanctum Regnum: This degree of spirit, once removed from the priesthood, represents the manifestation of the gnostic ecclesia into a domain of sacred regency. It is where the priest and knight or lady builds an edifice marking where the conduit of sacramentation has transformed the very place where it has been erected as developed in the fifth degree. A manifested church or sacred domain, once established, whether as an archetype or materially located in space and time, becomes a regale establishment, like the fabled land of Camelot. This sacred kingdom, or Sanctum Regnum, requires a high adept who marries themselves to that sacred domain and acts as the bridge of magical and spiritual blessings and sacrament that pours forth from their continual magical work connecting the microcosm with the macrocosm. The foundation of this holy kingdom is a magical machine that continuously projects into the world the sacramental magic of the Deity into the physical and mundane world. Thus, the mystery of the Sanctum Regnum is a kind of theurgic talismanic magic of a higher order, where multiple layers of magic and liturgy charge and sacralize a physical location. 

Ordeals associated with this sixth degree are therefore multiple ways that an adept magician would build this sacred edifice. There are two ordeals that seek to build the sacred magical kingdom and erect a magical machine. The first is my adapted version of the Portae Lucis, that requires the generation of four metallic talismans containing all four talismanic elementals for the planets of Saturn, Sun and Moon, with Mercury representing the magician. These establish a vector from Yesod, to Tiphareth and then on to Binah that characterizes the portal pathway, and it is fully activated at the very moment of the Summer Solstice causing a supreme illumination. Once this mechanism to generate the combined metallic talismans of the four planets is mastered, the other three talismans are also generated, making seven in all. When these seven are arrayed on a septagramic icon, they become a powerful magical machine that can produce any kind wish or desire that the magician projects into it, and they also establish the foundation of the holy kingdom.

The second ordeal is the working of the Four Temples, or Tésseris Naoí. This working uses the elemental demonic evocation of the 28 Dukes of the Goetia Theurgia, united with the stellar gnosis of the Seven Rays (Yesod through Binah) to generate four powerful magical crystals, one for each of the four gnostic Ecclesia, and these are used to fashion a magical tiara. These crystals and the crown that holds them is also a potent magical machine, and worn on the head of the high adept, represents that their thoughts are, through the artifice of talismanic magic, made manifest. A scepter is also developed, and also a seat or throne, where the seven planetary talismanic machine is deployed. What remains to be done is for the high adept of the sixth degree to receive a magical coronation that manifests, through a combination of magical machines, the power to will thoughts into manifestation and to take ideas and forge them into powerful archetypal ideals that can inspire and motivate groups of people or whole cultures. Becoming a sacred king or queen sacralizes their domain, that place where their combined throne, scepter and crown is established, and the twin magical machines vested in the throne and the crown, ensures that the domain and all who are aligned to it are magically, materially, and spiritually nourished and blessed.

Once the Sanctum Regnum is established, and it begins to continually bless and empower the magical domain and all who are aligned to it, the high adept must begin to prepare for the transformation of themselves into the singular channel for the Deity that they serve. To be considered a candidate for the consecration that changes them into a Hierophant, they must undergo the greater challenge known as Ordeal XV. This is where the high adept undergoes the underworld expiations of the four ecclesiae. The candidate enters into the Qliphoth and endures the challenges through the evoking four demon princes. This is a process that produces of extreme catabasis in a four-fold consecutive pattern. When they emerge from these four workings, they have overcome their own internal duality and have united their dark self with their light self, becoming whole and unified. It is at this point that the high adept becomes a functioning Hierophant, and they only require a consecration rite to validate that achievement.

Hierophant: What is beyond this point in the development of the high adept is the mastery of the Stellar Gnostic Seven Rays sacramentary, which is the fifth and secret ecclesia. I won’t go into any details about this next and final level that establishes the first stage or bridge of mastery in preparation for the crossing of the Greater Abyss. Of this lore that I possess, much of it will require a high degree of organization and revision, as well as building those ritual workings that are presently missing. While I may have two hand-made grimoires with all the rituals and ceremonies of the ordeal of the seventh degree, these were developed many years ago, and they are incomplete and require extensive rewriting. Only now do I have the understanding and knowledge to finally complete them. All of these rites and ceremonies that I have outlined in this article will eventually be published in books that my readers can ponder and perhaps, even perform.

Looking over the series of ordeals and workings that represent the passage of the four element degrees of earth, air, fire, water, and then to spirit, I can say that I have accomplished most of this work myself. In the initiatory spirit stages of the holy kingdom and the seven-rays of the hierophant, I have only completed a few of these ordeals. Yet not only must the adept complete these ordeals, they must also revisit them so that they retain a freshness and relevancy to the magical and gnostic realizations that they initially produced. This represents a kind of life-time commitment, and I would expect that few or any would be able to absorb all of these ordeals and workings and keep them relevant. I know that I have failed to do this in my own work, and I have left much to be worked, and also reworked and renewed.

What I have written here is only a suggestion for how others might gain self-mastery and illumination in their life-time through the artifice of magic. This is what I have done and it represents my personal path through ordeals and challenges. I have had to conceive of this magical architecture and build out this progression since there was nothing else for me to do. There was no pattern for me to follow except what I was inspired to build. While in some cases, I have borrowed other people’s workings and modified them to fit my own personal system, as well as the prescribed initiatory pathway of the Order, I have also engineered new techniques of ritual magic that previously did not exist in any tradition. 

These are the stages that one would go through emulating the serpentine pathway on the Tree of Life, but I don’t adhere to the notion that this passage must be followed exactly as I have laid it out. I realize that it is very likely that others will focus on ordeals and workings that meet their needs at the moment, and may not follow the sequence that I have determined. Thus, I have outlined this progression as a possible pathway for others to follow, making use of my lore as it becomes published. If I have the time, which is only the next few years, then I will be able to completely publish this pathway in a revised set of books that will be my legacy for magicians in the future. May the Gods and Goddesses grant me this time.

Frater Barrabbas 

Alexandrian Witchcraft Tradition - Is it a Tradition?

 

I read an article written by Maxine Sanders that was passed on by some Alexandrian Witches in a FaceBook comment. In that article, Maxine seemed to be decrying those who have used the traditional Godhead names and words of power with a certain impunity and a lack of deference to the traditional lore given to them. While I do not approve of people abusing what they have received from their teachers and sponsors in a traditional religious practice, what she said also made me wonder to myself what could possibly be sacred about a tradition that was mostly invented by Gardener and later, Alex Sanders? If it was all invented, contrived and cobbled together by a handful of people where only individual gnosis could be considered as original contributions, then what is actually being abused? If a student goes off on their own path and makes use of what they have been taught and mixes it with other material found in other non-traditional or uncanonical sources, then is that not their own business?

Alexandrians initiate third degree witches to be autonomous, and there is no process where any initiatory degree can be recalled or nullified. Gardnerians, on the other hand, can recall or nullify an initiation through their initiating High Priestess, since even after a Gardnerian Witch is initiated to third degree they are not autonomous. Everyone is held accountable to their upstream lineage elders, but this is not so with Alexandrians. That means that an Alexandrian initiate is only accountable to themselves and possibly, to the community at large, but nothing can be done to unmake an initiate. I know this fact from personal experience, yet overall, we are made to realize that mistakes can be made in choosing individuals for elevation who later turn out to be bad actors in their communities. 

People can be banned from covens or community gatherings, but they can still function as High Priestesses or High Priests whether local community covens and groups like it or not. That also means that an Alexandrian Third degree initiate can also determine what their tradition looks like, what they would practice as liturgical or magical ceremonies and operations, and there is no one who has the authority to countermand them or punish them if they do bad things, thereby making them accountable. That kind of authority doesn’t exist, so if someone invents new things in their version of Alexandrian Witchcraft, or appears to abuse their teachings, then even Maxine Sanders cannot really do anything about it. It is what it is, and autonomy means that an initiate can comport themselves however they see fit. Can we as a community criticize their behavior? Yes, indeed, although it will be a kind of toothless criticism unless a large majority agree, and even then there is nothing to disenfranchise an autonomous third degree initiate.

Then there is the issue that what is taught by a High Priestess or High Priest in an Alexandrian coven is somehow sacred. It was always the case back in the days when I was a witchling that the coven and traditional lore had a provenance that made it sacred and magically powerful. We were told that Witchcraft was the old religion and that various elements of that tradition were passed down from witches going back to antiquity. Of course, that was determined to be an urban myth that accurate historical research showed through the writings of academics and initiated practitioners. Gardner invented the rituals of Wicca and plagiarized many sources, including Crowley’s Gnostic Mass and the Masonic initiations for Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft. All of the Deity names and words of power were taken from various sources or just invented. Some of the best liturgical rites were penned by Doreen Valiente, and we owe her a great debt of gratitude. 

So, since nothing actually has an ancient provenance and it was invented at some point in the last 75 years or so, is it truly sacred? Oath bound material is given in trust between teacher and student, but it is not sacred because it is only confidential to that specific traditional line. Since the various Books of Shadows have been either published or exist online, there doesn’t seem to be any secrets except those related to an individual’s personal gnosis and to the confidentiality of the members of a coven and what goes on in that group. That is, as far as I am concerned, the extent of oath-bound boundaries and what they should actually cover. Coven histories, membership, covenstead Deities and group developed rites and ceremonies should be covered by an oath of secrecy, or better yet, of confidentiality. Everything else is already known about the various traditions of Witchcraft by the writings of practitioners and folk religion academics. I have maintained in my various articles that the true mysteries of modern Witchcraft and Paganism are what the many individuals experience first hand in their encounters with nature and spirit. 

This brings me, of course, to my own case. I took what my teachers gave me, adding it to my own personal system of magic and developed, over the years, an advanced system of magic. I did this without any permission from my teachers, and seemingly without any thought to keeping the traditional practices intact in my work. I am guilty as charged as to having no awe or even appreciation for the traditional teachings. This is because my quest was not to either preserve or promote the teachings that I had been given, but to continue its development and evolve it to highest extent possible to me. I still have the traditional teachings kept separate and intact, although they are, for all practical purposes, been replaced with the more advanced lore that I developed. That includes the seasonal Sabbats and the Esbats and all liturgical as well as magical operations. In my current practice, there is nothing of the traditional lore that I had received so many decades ago.

I also have organized and published this lore that I have developed, and my task is to eventually publish it all. That makes me the consummate oath-breaker, although since what I have developed is my personal system and so far removed from what I received when I was freshly initiated as to not be covered by any oath that I made when undergoing my training and initiation. Still, what Maxine said in her article would identify me as one of those individuals who have used the traditional lore as a stepping stone to gain greater glory while supposedly denigrating the tradition that I was given in sacred trust by no longer using it. However, I have a simple excuse that makes what I have done acceptable, perhaps even admirable. That is the fact that this advanced lore which I have developed and published was an obligation I assumed years ago, even before I was initiated, to my personal Goddess who urged and inspired me to greater complexity and who directed me to share what I had developed with others similar to myself. So, I can say that I am an oath-breaker, sort of, and that I have blithely passed beyond my traditional lore, and I am a published author, simply because my Goddess obliged me to do these things. In other words, the Goddess made me do it!

Frater Barrabas   

Writing of Ordeal XV

On June 13, I completed writing my latest book Ordeal XV. All that remains is to edit the manuscript, add citations, build a bibliography and an index list. The greater work of developing and revising the rituals has been completed, and it was quite an extensive amount of work. What I have written is now vastly more cogent, focused and directed towards achieving a specific end, which is the union of the magician’s shadow with their egoic persona. It is part of the preparatory work to becoming a master magician. I have already shared some of the introductory chapters as articles in my blog over the past several months, but I wanted to tell the tale of how I came to write this book. It is also a tale of how workings evolve over time, from highly personalized workings that are focusing only on a specific set of issues experienced at the time to become fundamental ordeals that cannot in some form be avoided by the evolving magician. This is one of those tales.

A basic premise in these kinds of workings is that a magician can fuse spiritual personalities or entities into a combined and unified being. This premise is based on how I perceive spirits, that they are very protean in formulation and that they can be merged with other entities. If a spirit can overlay itself when possessing a human being, then they can merge with other spirits to form a hybrid entity. This process of merging diverse entities into a single spiritual form has a long history, and it can be found particularly with pagan pantheons where a single master deity is shown to be a composite of many deities. 

There is a philosophic name for this process, and it is called Macranthropy. It is the creation of a meta-deity from a pantheon of many deities, allowing for the paradox of both focusing on a single unified deity as well as focusing on the individual deities within the pantheon. If this is a phenomenon associated within the pagan pantheons of earlier ages, then it is definitely something that can be developed in the practice of spirit conjuring in the present world. What I have discovered is that I can combine spirits into a single entity, and I have been doing this for decades. Yet I did not consult any authority to see if this could be done. Instead, I just approached it in an instinctive manner, and just assumed that it would work. And it did indeed work.

My first attempt at this type of merging spirits happened long ago in early 1981, and it was resounding success. My former High Priestess had put a death curse on me, and due to my sense of guilt at what I had done in that cult-like coven, I was not able to completely overturn it. When consulting my personal Goddess about this malady, she told me to evoke the Devil and turn my guilt, the curse and its associations over to him. As a precocious young magician, I developed evocations for three Demon Princess, who were Lucifer, Satan and Aiwaz, and performed them consecutively in a borrowed temple space of a close friend. I topped it off with another hybrid, and that was Sothis-Set. I was astonished at how successful this working was, and it became the model for an ordeal later on. So, I had three evocations, and I combined them into a single entity that I celebrated and implored to aid me in my plight, and celebrated it in my Tabernacle of Sothis-Set ritual and the corresponding Black rite. It was to this unified Devil that I sought deliverance from my guilt and retribution against my prosecutors.

What I didn’t realize is that combining these entities forged in that moment the nameless but fully empowered Shadow of myself, and it was that entity that purged me of my guilt and reversed the curse against the leaders of my former coven. It was so successful that my former leaders left the craft and became instead fundamentalist Christians, and I am certain that fear was one of the main drivers for their hasty conversion. They also moved away from southeastern Wisconsin back to their old home town of Dubuque, Iowa, where they set up their own church to dupe and indoctrinate another group of unknowing people. As for me, I was washed clean of my supposed sins and was able to move forward with my life, both in terms of my magic and my career. 

So, these rituals became the beginning part of my lore for Ordeal XV, and I continued to develop it for a time, even after performing it. I added another Demon Prince to the ordeal working, and that was Beelzebub, and I included the four different mass rites of Thelema, Thanatos, Agape, and Eros as the spiritual foundation for this ordeal. I wrote it up into a hardcover blank book, but it remained a personal ordeal and not part of the cannon of the later Order of the Gnostic Star. I had ironically relegated it to a lesser level of importance and so the rituals and lore were not further developed. I did perform the evocation of Beelzebub, but I found that he preferred to be called Ba’al Zebul or the Lord of the House of Heavens, as he had been named by the ancient Canaanites. 

All of the lore of that ordeal went into the book and there it remained, including the built out four variations of the Tabernacle of Sothis Set and the companion Black Rites. Because this ordeal was so controversial, especially for a ritual magician who was also a Witch (and therefore, denied that the Devil existed), this ordeal remained in my collection as an obscure system. I did type up these rituals so that they would be resident in my computer folder of rituals, and I even made an attempt to write a document to explain the necessity for this ordeal. However, I never promoted it and it remained one of the obscure and forgotten lesser ordeals in my collection. I didn’t really do anything further with this lore until only recently. So they sat there, on my computer, for some 30 years without even being examined except as a form of research. I did use a version of the evocation of Satan in my Liber Nephilim, or at least the planetary attributes, and I also used the methodology of joining spirits together (the four Seraphim and four Cherubim) in my ordeal, the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, which also became a published book.

Then, when I was recently talking to some folks at a pagan convention, I found out that the hot topic at the time was shadow work. It was a form of therapy where individuals, acting alone or in a group, or guided by a therapist, would engage with the dark half of themselves. This is because we are all coerced by society to behave within expected norms and to curb any other urges or behaviors that would be unacceptable. We are, therefore, all of us, repressed by our own sense of decorum and constrained to think and behave in a certain accepted manner. 

While we may leave behind beastly urges and unwanted primitive passions, we also typically repress our imagination and stifle our talents and unique abilities for the sake of conformity. There is a treasure house of powerful virtues and devilish impulses and desires within us, and as a collective archetype, it is an unnamed suppressed entity that C. G. Jung identified as the Shadow. To engage with this internal shadow is to relieve the egoic persona of various social and internal psychological pressures, and to gain abilities and insights that we had believed were not a part of ourselves. Thus, it is the path that ultimately leads to an internal, psychological wholeness, where shadow and ego merge together to forge an alliance. This is called shadow work, and it has become a very popular fad in today’s self-help literature.

When conducting research on the process of psychological shadow work and reading several books on the subject, I realized that our overall cultural shadow was the Devil, whether we believed in that entity in its various forms or not. I also understood that we all have our own internal devils and demons that we must somehow grapple and integrate into our egoic persona in order to be truly whole. However, most of the literature that was available did not address the obvious cultural shadow as the Devil, and they seemed to downplay the struggle and the danger of approaching one’s shadow, especially if it has been powerfully suppressed. While a few online authors discussed the importance of engaging with shadow work while under the care of a qualified therapist, others made it into a kind of New Age fad that practically anyone could engage in without any harm. I found this viewpoint specious, especially since Jung himself discussed how difficult and potentially dangerous such work might be to someone unprepared and inflexible to withstand the ordeal.

What I discovered when taking all this information into consideration is that I already had a magical ordeal that could be used for shadow work. This is because I had focused on the cultural Shadow known as the Devil, and believed that such an archetype would be the perfect emblem for any kind of magical based shadow work. I had equated the inner shadow to be analogous to the outer cultural shadow, and so it symbolized to me that our internal shadow is our very own personal devil. Using the approach that I had developed years ago as the forgotten Ordeal XV, I began to explore that idea, and the idea of the four churches or Gnostic Ecclesiae of the tetrasacramentary as the foundation for this work, I fully realized that redeveloping this ordeal would produce an intense and very successful ordeal of magical shadow work. 

That is when I began to develop the rituals for inclusion into a book, and revised the tone, perspective and approach so that the ordeal working would produce psychological transformative outcome of a powerful, integrative, joining between one’s internal shadow and the ego-based persona. Since I had undergone this ordeal so many years ago, and had added and developed it to a point, I felt that the final product would undoubtably do what I intended it to do. I used the theme of catabasis in the rituals describing ritualized descent into Hell, and I now feel quite good about the state of the manuscript, its revised rituals, and its controversial impact on my readers and the occult literary world.

I will sign a contract with Cross Crow Books to publish this manuscript, and before the end of August this year, I will submit the final version to my publishers. Since it takes at least a year or more for a book to go through the production process of editing, developing and printing a book, I suspect that it will not be released until early 2028. Until then, enjoy the articles I have written lately on this topic, and I look forward to final release of this amazing book.

Frater Barrabbas

Door into Summer

 

The Summer Solstice brings to my all of the wonderful and magical things that I have experienced during the summer months from my earliest recollections to now that I am an old geezer. This is interesting because summer magic is so different than what I have experienced as autumn and winter magic. I am a decidedly an autumn and winter kind of person, or at least late autumn and early winter. The dregs of winter before spring is a time where the magic of winter has completely disappeared and is just something that must be endured until rebirth of spring.

For me the start of summer was a release from the drudgery of school and the ability to be active outdoors without any kind of boundary or restraint. It was a time for vacations with my family, although that was a mixed bag of both good and bad, depending on the mood of my parents and how obnoxious we three kids were to each other. 

One of my earliest memories was when I was four and I was sitting in the kitchen with my mother when my father and older siblings had gone off to work and school. It was early June, before school let out. My mother did not work at that time, and so she was in her summer dressing robe and I was in my jammies, and the sun was brilliantly shining into the kitchen because it faced the east. Because the shades were down, the kitchen was cast in warm and beautiful golden light. A little later, I went outside to play while my mother began her daily chores. 

Summer time was idyllic, with the kids on the block playing games all day, going to the park and doing artwork or playing board games in the park building,  riding bikes, and being fully outside from morning to late afternoon, when we had to return home for supper at exactly 5 pm or receive punishment. After supper, we went out again and did not return until after the sun had set. Twilight was the perfect time to play hide and go seek or kick the can. It was all very magical, in a childish but wondrous way.

Despite those magical times when I was a child, as an adult ritual magician I have typically worked my greatest magic during the autumn and winter. In fact, after Summer Solstice, the magical order and temple that I helped to found closed because the members saw summer as a kind of recess from magical workings. The temple would close for the periods of July and August and not reconvene until September. However, summer is a magical time all unto itself, and I would be disingenuous if ignored what it has to offer. It is not a time to be cooped up in a temple, of course, and it is a time where magic and pagan liturgy would be shifted to the outdoors. In a grove, whether a part of my home, or at a pagan retreat, I have had many amazing experiences being fully immersed in nature. Yet nighttime is preferred by me over daytime, which is just my preference, since the magic of living and thriving occurs every single day during the summer months. This is because global warming has turned summers into periods of deadly heat, and only the shade and the evenings give folks a refuge or respite from the untenable and blazing sunlight.

From a mythic and pagan liturgical perspective, the boundary between spring and summer occurs when the light of the sun has reached its apotheosis. In the northern latitudes, vegetative life has fully awakened and the growing season has commenced. In northern Virginia where I live, summer weather actually occurs in May, so that Beltane is more like summer with leaves and plants resplendent and fully matured, and the flowers of spring have already faded away.  Still, the moment of the apotheosis of light that is the solstice, points to a mystical fact that darkness, death, and the wasting tides of winter are not permanent. The light shines through the gloom and illuminates the hearts and minds of the people of whatever religious stripe or creed, since it does not discriminate. Trees, plants and animals seem to rejoice, simply because there is the beginning of an abundance of food in various forms, whether warm sunlight and gentle rain, edible plants, and the fullness of life to prey upon for those who are predators. Summer is also light-hearted, adventurous, outgoing, flirty, downright sexual, and a paean to all things of the flesh and blood. It is also a sign post for transformative ascension, illumination, and conscious enlightenment. To occult neopagans, such as myself, the Summer Solstice is the beginning and the end, the moment of the highest spiritual and magical accomplishment, and the completion of all the work that occurred from autumn through winter and spring.

One of the ordeals that I developed, based on the writings of Jean Dubuis, was the Talismanic Portae Lucis, or Gateway of Light. A central magical operation within Mr. Dubuis’ occult system was a process whereby a person could achieve a direct connection and rapport with the powers and intelligences of the Supernal Triad. He called this the Experience of Eternity, and it was a necessary step for a magician to achieve the proper connection and linkage with their higher self. 

While Dubuis focused on the generation of talismans via the passive and auspicious method, and integrated spagyric alchemical medicine into the working, I found another way. What I did was develop a comparable methodology that used only talismanic magic to achieve a similar sort of powerful ascension and alignment. I generated metallic talismans for the Moon, Sun, and Saturn as the pathway from Yesod, to Tiphareth, and then to Binah on the Tree of Life. I used a metallic talisman for Mercury to represent myself as the theurgist. These talismans contained all four elements for each planet, representing a condensed magical artifact of four talismanic elementals fully active within it. These four artifacts were highly charged, consecrated, and then had four consecutive talismanic elements projected into them. They generated a powerful magical machine, and I used these talismans in a ritualized variation of the Portae Lucis on the exact moment of the Summer Solstice in the year 2012. Five years later I repeated that exercise, and both times were absolutely mind blowing.

I have annotated this entire journey through developing the Portae Lucis in my blog, and I think that you might find it interesting. I did this working back in 2012, which was 14 years ago, but I believe that it is worth sharing. I posted ten articles about my adventure, and you can find them in the following links.

Link 1 - beginning.
Link 2 - First working - Talisman of the Sun.
Link 3 - Second working - Talisman of the Moon.
Link 4 - Third working - Talisman of Saturn
Link 5 - Fourth working - Talisman of Mercury
Link 6 - Ordeal Preparations
Link 7 - Portae Lucis - part 1
Link 8 - Portae Lucis - part 2
Link 9 - Additional workings
Link 10 - Fifth Year Anniversary
 

I believe that the ordeal of the Talismanic Portae Lucis is where I truly opened the door into summer in a manner most becoming to an adept ritual magician. These experiences should be incorporated into a book, and someday they will. Right now, they are buried amongst nearly 500 blog articles, but they can be found just by using the index search for Portae Lucis. I decide on this Summer Solstice of 2026 to resurrect them here for you to read and examine.

Frater Barrabbas