Frater Barrabbas Author Literary Tour - Part 7 - Talismanic Magic For Witches

Even while I was editing and revising my book “Elemental Powers for Witches” I had already started writing my third book in that series. We were still in the grips of the pandemic, so I had a lot of time on my hands, and I had already decided to write a book on the topic of talismanic magic, incorporating my own specific brand of planetary magic. Two things happened while I was writing this book. The first is that I needed to deepen my astrological research, since I had determined to bring into this work more astrological information and to write up an historical perspective that included the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher, Pherecydes and the mystical ideas of the Zurvan sect of Zoroastrianism. This is because I intended to bring into my book a detailed discussion about the temporal model of magic, which I felt was strategically important to understanding why working planetary magic on a certain day and time was important, while also being able to examine an elective astrological chart.

I was ambitious to the point of craziness when I included so much material in this book that it threatened to make it monstrously huge and as it turned out, I had to scale this book down in order to make it fit with the objectives of presenting talismanic magic and the associated rituals, much as I had done in the previous two books. This work had ballooned to around 140K words, but the final manuscript had around 94K, so there was a lot of material that was excised, and the final product, I believe, warranted cutting it down to a more essential size.

Recently, I posted an article in my blog that presented my perspective on the temporal model of magic, so I don’t need to present that idea in this article. You can find it here. I have also talked about planetary magic using the septagram, the psychological model of magic, planetary and astrological magic, and zodiacal magic. I also wrote an article that is a brief but comprehensive approach to practicing magic, where talismanic magic is a part of the overall approach. There is a great wealth of articles to be read in my blog, since there are nearly 500 articles, and many of them are quite substantive. A lot of the content of this material was used in my book, but my manuscript presents the actual ritual structures and methodologies for working this kind of magic, which the blog articles have purposely omitted. These linked articles should keep you busy for a while if you choose to read them, but if you really want the details then my books in the “For Witches” series is what you will want to explore.

Here is the advertising text that appears with the book.

Talismanic magic is the art of creating perpetually active spells that can help you create a charmed life. Once the provenance of ceremonial magicians, this book, for the first time, brings planetary and zodiacal magic based on a concise and simplified methodology to the Witchcraft community.

Talismanic Magic for Witches is the third installment of the ‘For Witches’ series, and it is the most comprehensive book on the topic of celestial magic written expressly for the Pagan and Witchcraft community. The product of celestial magic is the creation of a talisman. Talismanic magic is the art of making for yourself and others a charmed life. It is a life where reality seems to consistently bend to the will of the talisman’s owner at all times and places, lessoning the possibility of misfortune and empowering great good fortune. A talisman is nothing more than encapsulating a wish or desire and continually setting upon it the powers of the elements, celestial spirits and archetypes of the Gods.

A talisman is a materialized spell that is continually and perpetually operating for the benefit of the owner. A talisman makes a charmed life possible, and building up a battery of them to act on several fronts simultaneously is the final magical mechanism that makes this kind of overall effect possible. There is no magical artifact that I am aware of that has these qualities except a talisman. Learning to produce a talisman would be the best of all possible magical methodologies that a Witch or Pagan could master.

Talismans are a magical treasure, and a good practitioner of celestial magic will create a series of them to act on every aspect of his or her life, tapping them for a specific purpose when the need arises. This capability alone represents the quantitative wealth or richness of talismanic magic. Who would pass up a chance to acquire this wealth to make a charmed life for themselves? This is also why I refer to talismanic magic, and to celestial magic as its organizing principal, as the veritable crown jewel of Witchcraft magic.

As you can see by the advertising text, this book is promising a lot to the one who will undertake this kind of magic. I am quite serious when I say that mastering the art of talismanic magic will help you to acquire a charmed existence because talismans are continuously working 24/7 to help you to gain your objective, or the object that you set the talisman to work on your behalf. If you were to gather together several of these talismans and set them to work on the various areas of your life then you would have a powerful array of magical charms that would aid and bolster every area of your life. You could forge talismans to enhance employment opportunities, gain long term wealth, achieve a good love life, friendship, and excellent relations with business partners, or protection from physical and emotional harm, and any other area covered by planetary magic joined with an element or a zodiacal sign and performed at the optimal and auspicious time. Such an array of continuously working magical artifacts would over time help you achieve everything that you might desire.

Why are talismans so powerful compared to all other forms of magic? What makes them so capable of assisting their owner to achieve his or her objectives? The reason why is because of the nature of the talismanic charge, consisting of both an energy and an active planetary intelligence. It is focused and fused into a metallic artifact, where it becomes a perpetually functioning source of magical power set to a specific material end. A talismanic field lasts practically forever, or at least as long as the artifact into which that field has been infused remains intact. A talisman can be transferred to another person, and it will continue to work as long as the owner continues to maintain a mental connection with it. A talisman can become dormant if it is neglected for several months or a year, but it can be easily awakened and revitalized simply by being held by the owner and communed with in a deep meditative state. As long as the artifact is intact the talisman will continue to function.

An evocation working or an elemental working are used to bring about a specific intent over a short period of time. The timing for an evocation to produce its objective results is usually stated in the bond or pact between the spirit and the practitioner. The timing for an elemental working is within a lunar cycle. Such a working will target a specific objective, and once that timing cycle has reached its end, the magical working will end with either fulfillment, partial gratification or failure for various reasons. It represents a single event with a single objective, whether that event is using an elemental field or a spiritual being to fulfill the intent of the working.

However, a celestial magical working sets in motion a powerful talismanic field, which continues to operate long after the magical working has been completed. While the magical working is used to charge and infuse a talismanic artifact, what follows over the days, weeks and months, or even years, is part of the continuing magical effect of that working. What that means is that a talismanic field can be a bit more generalized and thereby serve multiple purposes simultaneously. In my many years of magical experience, I have found that there is no other kind of magic that can be used in this manner. It is for this reason that I have stated that talismanic magic is the crown jewel of all magical workings, and certainly it should be one of the tools in the magical toolbox for the experienced and knowledgeable Witch.

Talismanic magic, along with advanced energy workings and spirit conjuration are the trifecta of the magical arts missing from the standard Book of Shadows. I have returned this lore to the various traditions of modern Witchcraft and Paganism where it can act as a kind of completed system of magical workings, making the Witch who masters these three systems of magic something of a Wiccan or Pagan Magus. I felt that it was very important for Witches to be able to work solitary forms of high ritual magic within a methodology that would be comfortable to those who have some experience in the magical arts. These additional kinds of magic are for the experienced student who has mastered the basic magical practices of Witchcraft and its essential liturgical praxis and who now seek to expand their abilities in the areas of evocation, energy workings and talismanic magic.

Learning the art of planetary and zodiacal magic is challenging, and it requires a greater degree of discipline and a deeper understanding of the nature of the human condition from the standpoint of astrology and psychology. This art requires one to learn astrology, astronomy, psychology, and to develop a methodology of engaging and working through the planetary deities. Astrology, as it is used in the art of magic, is not a science as much as it is a religion, a system of divination, and a means of harnessing the potent psychological powers of the archetypes that underpin our cultural world. It is working and manipulating the very stuff of consciousness itself, and these forces and intelligences represent the building blocks of our own psyches and the foundation of our culture and language. Knowing how to wield and manipulate these forces and intelligences is the key to mastering one’s life and overcoming adversity.

Writing this book was something of an ordeal for me, since it forced me to completely reevaluate everything that I had long established regarding this kind of magic. I had the lore and the tech, which I had developed back in the early 1980's, but it was written in a manner that would not make it easy to incorporate into an efficient Witchcraft praxis. Additionally, I have learned a great deal about astrology, the lunar mansions and the decans that I had not known back when this lore was first developed. I had to rewrite and rework all of that lore so that it would be accessible and presentable to the experienced Witchcraft practitioner. This also included building an understanding of the history of astrology, which was a topic that I had neglected to seriously study in order to realize the importance of the historical evolution of astrology, and what it gained and lost by becoming an exoteric and philosophic discipline in antiquity. I studied a two volume book on the history of astrology and took extensive notes in order to recognize the contextual phases of the development of astrology through the various epochs and empires of the east and west.

One of the real treasures that I discovered in my research was the book written by Geoffrey Cornelius entitled “The Moment of Astrology” that helped me understand the magic and the art of astrology, and the historical precedence of such practices as horary and elective astrology and how they contradicted the causal and scientific perspective of modern astrology. I was able to more fully realize that the moment an astrological chart is cast and delineated is as important to the genius of astrological interpretation as the supposed belief in the predestination of the moment of birth. It made me understand that the interpretation of the astrological symbols is the real magic of astrology and its value, bringing it into the context of a system of divination instead of an objective science.

The same perspective can be applied to the moment of other forms of divination, such as the casting of tarot cards, the throwing of rune stones, Geomancy sticks or I-Ching coins. The action of divination sets in motion the activation of insights and the birth of guided action. There is also the moment of magic, when a magical working is started and thereby activating the celestial auspices that come into play at that moment. Becoming sensitive to the occurrence and timing of events makes a practitioner more aware that aligning one’s actions with powerful planetary and celestial auspices can maximize an operation.

However, working talismanic magic can not only use the celestial auspices, but lock them into the talismanic artifact, making them resonate and sending out their energy guided by the invoked intelligences established therein perpetually. This is why understanding the moment that something is started is the precipitating action that will make what is divined as an accessible potential possibility to be materially realized. There is no greater magic unleashed by the ritual magician to impact the material plane then these kinds of operations.

I have stated why I think that this book is so important, not only to Witches and Pagans, but likely to others as well. The methodologies and ritual patterns in the book can be adapted to any magical tradition or spiritual practice. It is why I feel that this book is one of the very best that I have written, and the fact that it took me over a year to see it completed is a statement to how much research, effort and care that I put into its writing. I cannot recommend this book more than what I have already presented here, but you should acquire and read it yourself to make your own judgement.

This book will be available in February, 2023, but you can pre-order it now.

Frater Barrabbas

Frater Barrabbas Author Literary Tour - Part 6 - Elemental Powers For Witches

 

My first book in the “For Witches” series was in print by 2017, but by then I had taken on a new job that readily took away all of the my free time. I stopped writing articles in my blog and I was traveling between Minneapolis and Richmond, staying there for three weeks and then going home for a long weekend. I was putting in 60 to 70 hours a week of work, and travel added to that time spent solely on work. I visited my wife and pet kitties for just 48 hours before having to travel back to work in Richmond. Needless to say, that whole project turned out badly for me on one hand, but having to leave it was a reward on the other.

I moved to Richmond to work on that project; but not only did I not get a dime from the company for making that move, I was also pulled off that project because those who had planned the time-line compressed what was two years of work into just eight months. I was punished for missing that time-line, even though it was completely unreasonable. Someone had to be blamed for the project going awry, so as the data manager, I was the one. Certainly, those who proposed such a truncated project time-line to the client couldn’t possibly be blamed for their mistakes, because they were upper management and immune to such accountability. Anyway, I was put on my old project and then had to prove myself for over a year later that I was worthy of keeping that job. It was a time of work and left me with little time for writing and even working magic. Getting booted off of that project was a blessing in disguise, and I went on to getting chosen for a new project where my skills and abilities were at least appreciated.

My work on the next book in this series didn’t start until the Covid-19 Pandemic began to manifest, but I had the concept and even a preliminary table of contents defined before the winter solstice of 2019. So, during the lock-down, I focused on writing my 6th book, and of course it took a lot less time than any of my previous writing endeavors.

This is how the book “Elemental Powers for Witches” was written and published, while the world labored with the first in a hundred years world pandemic. Tragically, many people died from that disease; but I had already begun something of a personal sequestering, so I just continued it and made certain that I had the preventive vaccinations when they became available. I was old, sedentary and suffered from allergies, so I figured that if I got Covid that it would likely greatly harm me, so I took all of the precautions, and luckily, I had been working from home since early 2019.

Here is the  advertising text for that book.

Energy magic uses the power of Elementals, Qualified Elementals and Uncrossing mechanisms to fully empower practitioners and make them materially successful. This book seeks to bring that knowledge to the Modern Witch, making it accessible and easily added to the lore she is already using.

Since the 5th Century BCE, a system of mysticism, religious philosophy and magic was delivered to the world by the philosopher Empedocles, who brought us the knowledge and wisdom of the four Elements of Fire, Air, Water and Earth, and the Aether as Spirit.

Across the ages that knowledge was developed to become the energy model of magic that is used today to fuel material-based rituals. Until now, this methodology was exclusive to ceremonial magicians. This book seeks to take that advanced energy work and place it into the hands of the Modern Witch. These rituals were derived and formulated to be easily accessible to the modern practitioner and to fit what is already a part of their lore.

Energy magic is used to empower individuals so that they can at least feel that they have a chance of dealing with difficulties and adversity. It also gives them methods to address specific deficiencies or to counter adverse circumstances with positive ones. Energy magic is used to build up the self and turn potentials into realized goals. It focuses on the material world because it is the basis for all that occurs in our life and colors our experiences. Because the world is not fair, we need something to help us turn the world slightly to our advantage.

What energy magic is used for is to solve problems within yourself and the circumstances of your life in the material world. It is not only a body of magical rituals and techniques; it is also the way to approach a problem in order to resolve it. There are several steps that are followed when approaching a solution to a given desire or need, and these can be used to also sort out and pin-point the one thing that will open up your possibilities and resolve whatever issue you are facing.

This book was written for Witches, Wiccans, and Pagans who wish to enhance and formalize their approach to the energy workings for self-empowerment and material based magical workings. This book assumes some degree of knowledge in basic practices so it isn’t exactly for beginners, but it does make this type of magic, and the use of the energy and information models of magic, accessible and easily realized. It is also a sequel and companion book to the published work “Spirit Conjuring for Witches” so, certainly the readers who liked that book would likely also enjoy the sequel. 

As I have pointed out previously, there are three gaps in the magical practices of modern traditional Witchcraft, and these are spirit conjuring, advanced energy workings and talismanic magic. I had just written a book that comprehensively dealt with spirit conjuring from a traditional Witchcraft perspective, so I urged myself to write a book to fill the second gap.

Advanced energy workings represent the basic foundation of magical practices where I significantly extended the repertoire given to me in my initiatory tradition. I did that back in the 1970's not long after being initiated into Witchcraft. I had been working on the cone of power variations for a few years after being introduced to the concept when a version of the Gardnerian Book of Shadows was published by Lady Sheba, and when I had acquired the book “Mastering Witchcraft” by Paul Huson. I also had a copy of “King of the Witches”, which introduced me to Alex Sanders. With these books in hand I was able to put together my own system of Witchcraft based magic. By the time I was initiated on Candlemas Eve, 1973, I already had a system of magic, and I was starting to develop new rituals working with the energy model of magic.

Using an inverse perspective, I deduced that the opposite energy to the obvious masculine cone of power, and that was the feminine vortex. A vortex has a widdershins circuit, and instead of being polarized on the periphery like the cone of power, it uses a cross-roads to join the polarities into the center. The widdershins spiral around the circle performed by the operator is used to concentrate the energy and then push it down into a singularity, making a kind of stable magical black-hole. The vortex was the first variation of the cone of power that I had invented, and it was to be followed by other structures and rituals. Experiencing a vortex generated in a magical circle was a total game-changing stroke of genius, but actually, it was just an obvious step that no one had thought about so far.

While energy workings in traditional Witchcraft magic were a basic staple for the modern practitioner, it was based on a concept that was alien to medieval witchcraft and to ceremonial magic in general. The basic belief about magic was that it was the medium used by and propagated by spirits. Humans were basically powerless, although that was contrary to what the philosophers taught in antiquity. Yet their practices had been mostly lost and what remained was subsumed by the monastic orders of the Catholic Church. Where this idea about human energy came from was the East, and it became part of our western cultural heritage when the teachings of the Indian Yogis became available to the west, around the late 19th to early 20th century.

Studying Yoga became an important part of mastering the art of ceremonial and ritual magic, and many of the early practitioners of the 20th century sought out that knowledge of the East. With Hatha Yoga came prana-yama, yantra, trantra and Kundalini Yoga, and the concept of bodily energy fields that could be harnessed and projected through the breath (prana) became available to the West. It completely changed the way that magicians saw their magic, as evidenced in the writings of Crowley, Bardon, and many others.

Modern Witchcraft was a recipient in that chain of knowledge and it was used in the concepts of energy raising and projecting magical powers. Gardner pretended that this had always been a part of witchcraft from antiquity, except that there was no evidence of this claim and the witches of antiquity typically worked their art in solitary exclusion. It was only in the fever dreams of a handful of scholars who spread the myth of witches meeting in large groups to celebrate their sabbats and worship the devil in the mid 15th century. Gardner’s story about witches gathering together to work magic to prevent Hitler from invading England during the second world war, where even a few older members expired in the frenzied process, was very likely an urban myth.

All evidence seems to support the idea that most witches had practiced their art either completely alone or within small and discrete family traditions. Yet the witchcraft inquisition imagined large groups of witches flying on their brooms and drugged and hallucinating on their toxic ointments, so to them and much of the culture there were indeed large hidden covens working their evil deeds. Gardner took that fantasy and made it into a cultural phenomenon, and the eastern ideas of bodies raising and projecting yogic energy was quietly integrated into that body of practice. By the time that I and others in the early 1970's had joined the Witchcraft tradition, the idea of raising and projecting energy had been a standard part of the practice since Doreen Valiente had reformed it in the 1950's.

However, as a practice, the energy model of magic in modern Witchcraft was simplistic and undeveloped. There was the cone of power and that was about it. I was very much intrigued by the whole concept and set to work to expand and develop how this magical model was used in Witchcraft magic. This is how I came to develop the vortex, then the magical pylon, and then by extension, the pyramid of power, which is a much more sophisticated and nuanced version of the cone of power. Once I started on this path, I continued to work and develop more sophisticated rituals that made use of complex combinations of ritual structures to push the energy model of magic far beyond what I was given as a newly initiated Witch.

The first step that I took was to qualify the undistinguished magical energy into specific qualities. The four elements seemed to be the qualities that I was looking for when it came to describing the magical energies that I sought to use. This pairing of magical energy with the four elements has a long history, and that the elements and the breathing cycle seemed to also be linked. This of course was the Indian concept of prana being merged with the western occult perspective of the four elements. Other practitioners had also made this connection, so that the four elements could be visualized as qualities associated with a certain kind of energy, color and quality and absorbed and projected out through the breath. The four elements could also be qualified with each other to produce sixteen combinations, which I called elementals. Each of these combined elementals also consisted of four pure emanations where an element was combined with itself. At the earliest time in my magical workings I worked with these qualities, but it required a more advanced set of ritual structures to generate them within the magic circle.

To generate an element one can use the invoking pentagram in an efficient manner, which was made public to many practicing magicians through the Golden Dawn writings published by Israel Regardie. Thus, there was the superior pentagram ritual, which I sought to emulate in a fashion. However, to invoke an elemental energy required a more complex ritual structure. The elemental octagon was the key to generating an elemental energy within a magic circle, and liking the shape and quality of that star polygon, I sought to deploy as my ritual pattern for energy workings. I used the four watchtowers and the four angles or in-between points to define the base (watchtowers) and qualifier (angles) of the elemental. To each of these eight points I set the invoking pentagram of the base element (watchtowers) and the invoking pentagram of the qualifying element (angles).

In the center of the circle I set the invoking pentagram to the nadir or infra-point for the base, and to the zenith or ultra-point, I set the invoking pentagram of the qualifier. I also joined the four watchtowers together to form a square, and the four angles to form another square, and then joined the watchtowers to the infra-point and the angles to the ultra-point. Then I stood in the center of the circle with my staff and drew the two elements together through my body and the staff. All that was required to project the elemental energy out into the world was to circumambulate the magic circle with spiral arc, starting in the center of the circle and arcing out to the periphery of the circle, circling three times past the northern watchtower and then projecting the energy with the staff outside of the northern watchtower, thereby exteriorizing it.

I also used a form of sigil magic to symbolize my objective or desire, and I used this to imprint the energy field when it was fully generated. I could have just imprinted it with my mind, but I found that a sigil was more effective. I started out just making a designed but automatic scribble on a piece of parchment while projecting my intention into it. I later adopted a more formal methodology for designing sigils when I was exposed to writings and artwork of that famed magician and pagan witch, Austin Spare. This was how I developed a ritual system to work with elemental energies, but I was not yet completed with this development process.

One approach that I developed was to make use of specific named elemental spirits and integrate them into my magical energy rituals. I used them as intelligent energy fields of empowerment and focused, projected beams of force to influence or even bend the laws of causality. I also incorporated this approach in my magic, making use of the 16 Enochian god-head pairs as derived from the four watchtower tablets and the Enochian calls. I then later matched up the sixteen elemental qualities with the 16 Grand Dukes from the grimoire Theurgia-Goetia and found that they were even more potent than the Enochian elemental spirits. The pairing of a spirit with an elemental quality produced a more powerful combination and helped to animate the elemental magical energy so that it had both power and sentience.

Another approach that I developed, and this was unique to my workings, was to pair an element with one of the ten sephiroth of the Qabalah to generate what I called the 40 qualified powers. Later on, I refined this working by using the Pythagorean definitions of the numbers 1 through 9 and 10, which I felt was more appropriate for a Witchcraft magical approach. When I used the Qabalah, I also qualified the four elements with the four Qabalistic worlds, making a very potent magical combination that existed fully within a Qabalistic domain. If you weren’t into the Qabalah, though, this methodology wouldn’t be as appealing. For this reason I adopted another more simplistic methodology that removed the Qabalistic qualifiers and just used the four elements and the ten Pythagorean mystical numbers. The forty qualified powers also matched up with the Tarot cards ace to ten of the four suites.

To match spiritual qualifications or specific entities to each of the 40 qualified powers became more difficult. I had a matrix of the four elements and the ten spiritual attributes, but assigning them to spirits became more difficult. My first approach was to give the element of Fire abstract qualities, Deities to the element of Water, Angelic groups to the element of Air, and terrestrial animals to the element of Earth, emulating the attributes of the four Qabalistic worlds. I later assigned the ruling angels of the 36 decans to the attributes and elements covering the first through the ninth for the four elements, and then assigned one of the four elemental Kings to the final four. That assignment appeared to work out quite well, since the energy component of the qualified power was dominant over the spirit attribute, so there was no need to actually conjure the associated spirit. I just had to acknowledge and call the spirit as part of the process of generating this kind of elemental power.

The ritual structure for the qualified power used a simple pyramid structure where the four watchtowers (or angles) were set with the base element via the invoking pentagram, and the watchtowers were connected to each other with lines of force, and also connected to the zenith where an invoking pentagram of spirit masculine or feminine was also set. The energy was intensified and fused into the center when the practitioner walked an invoking spiral from the periphery of the magic circle to the center. This pyramid energy field then was charged with the projected invocation of the spiritual quality and it signs or symbols, and then resultant energy was exteriorized through a banishing spiral walked by the practitioner from the center of the magic circle to the outer periphery, where the energy was projected and released.

Since this was a rather simple ritual structure, I had introduced it in my first book, Pyramid of Powers, as a way to learn how to ultimately work elemental magic. As I experimented with this ritual working I found that it had its own sophistication and generated a very potent energy field. Joined with a vortex, it was just as useful and powerful as elemental magical workings, since it joined an element with a godhead attribute to produce a very spiritualized energy. I have kept this working along with elemental ritual workings as the basic work-horses for my magical practice.

Of course, there is much more that I developed using the energy model of magic, and these workings that I have discussed here (and in my book) were really just the beginning of a very fundamental and important process in developing magical workings that had both a spiritual and a material impact. I would find later on that using energy fields and even geometric prismatic energy structures in my rituals would give them a more materialized impact, both on me as the operator, and on the overall magical objective. It certainly allowed me and others who shared in this technique of magic to feel this kind of unleashed power in a tangible manner.

Getting back to my book, I have taken these basic elements of working energy magic and expounded on them, presenting a number of ritual examples for the student to borrow and develop. I not only showed the components of these rituals and explained how they work, but I also demonstrated how there was a continuity with the Pythagorean practices and the philosophy and magic of that Greek master, Empedocles. I also put my version of an uncrossing ritual in the book, which I felt was an important addition because it helped the practitioner to overcome internal and external blockages when elemental magic failed to produce the desired results.

The energy system of magic has a long history, going back to ancient Greece and probably beyond that. Some of these methodologies were probably developed by shamans in prehistoric times, and continued to be practiced by various individuals. The philosophers of antiquity knew and practiced these methods of energy generation and projection, but this knowledge was lost during the dark ages. They were likely never written down, or if they were, they were kept secret and disappeared when Christianity began to dominate the western world. They only reappeared when the west discovered the teachings and practices of the Indian sages.

Yet it was the Golden Dawn that took that arcane knowledge from the east and brought it back into western magic. It then spread from there to occupy a place of importance in many different traditions of magic in the west. Some traditions, like Bardon’s system of magic, borrowed the techniques straight from Indian practices mixed with a bit of western perspectives. We must be indebted to all of these different traditions that have given us the system of energy magic that we now possess.

What I have done in my book is present to my reader an expansion of the energy system of magic as it applies to Witchcraft and Pagan practices. I believe that it is an excellent starting point for anyone who seeks to add a high level of materialization, sensations and probability bending energy into their magical practices.

Frater Barrabbas

Frater Barrabbas Author Literary Tour - Part 5 - Spirit Conjuring For Witches

 

After getting my book on the Qabalah published there was a bit of a lull in my literary activities. It was a time for writing a lot of articles on my blog, a media boon shown to me by my mentor Taylor Elwood, developing some new magical approaches and attending pagan conventions. A new convention started in Minneapolis called Paganicon that I attended, and I also attended Pantheacon one last time. It was a busy period for me, overall, and I hadn’t had the opportunity of trying to figure out what I wanted to work on for a new manuscript. I had some ideas that I was kicking around, but nothing really firm or focused.

It was during this interlude that I got more involved with my Witchcraft community, and I was examining my own history and path as a Witch and a ritual magician. One topic that was all the rage at the time was medieval and Renaissance grimoires. Quite a number of newly translated grimoires became available to the public, many appearing for the first time in print. While this area of magical practice had become something of a major focus for ceremonial magicians, I had already developed several different ways of performing this kind of magic back in the 1980's in conjunction with my particular methodology for working planetary and elemental magic. I felt a certain disdain for the emphasis on Christianity or Jewish monotheism that seemed to be the core spiritual perspective for these newly published grimoires. I felt that the cultures of the 16th and 17th centuries that had produced these grimoires was so far removed from us today as to make their approach to magic and religion to be antiquated at best, and somewhat superstitious and ridiculous at worst.

While the baseline for magic and western occultism was established by the writings of Agrippa and Paracelsus in the 15th to 16th century, and followed by a number of others, it was the occultists of the 19th and early 20th century who had brought these ideas and practices into the modern age. The older teachings had their relevance in the continuity of ideas from that period to the present. Just as I would find the writings of Blavatsky or Dion Fortune to be dated and even a bit anachronistic, the writings of Agrippa, Paracelsus, Dee, Ficino, and Pico Mirandola were even more dated and immersed in a cultural context that no longer existed. To take any grimoire as originally written and to practice it would require the individual to also reconstruct the cultural beliefs and practices of that time, which by now is nearly impossible. Even the grimoire purists had to pull together various practices, both antique and modern, along with a very modern perspective on magic in order to make these books useful and viable, although they would downplay or even deny that activity.

Since I was a very modern practitioner of ritual magic and had developed my magical technology out of modern practices and extended by my own experimentation, I felt that this approach was the best one for modern Pagans and Witches. So, after banging around some ideas in my head for a while, I came upon the idea of writing a book for Witches and Pagans on how to use the magical tech that they already had, with a few extensions and additions, to practice a form of classical evocation that would fit within the practices of modern Witchcraft. I asked the acquisitions editor for Llewellyn what she thought of such an idea for a book, and she was quite interested and said to send her a table of contents, a pitch for the book and a sample and she would give it some serious consideration. So, that was how the book “Spirit Conjuring for Witches” was born. I wanted to give to my community something very valuable and missing from their current practices. I set to work on this project in the spring of 2015, sent in my author questionnaire with the pitch, table of contents and a couple of sample chapters and I proceeded to work on this latest book project. I completed this work and presented to the publishers in early 2016, and it came out in print in early 2017.

This book, like the previous one, required me to do some extensive research. My research project was to examine the history of witchcraft and determine the reports and nature of the familiar spirit in both antiquity and the middle ages. My main thrust in the book was to equate the familiar spirit with the modern concept of the higher-self or inner deity. It is my belief that there is an inner deity in all humankind, existing in various stages of conscious awareness. When it is recognized and actively celebrated, it acts as a liaison between the domain of spirit and the host’s human consciousness. I proposed that it was an important component for performing evocations within a Witchcraft context, representing an integral connection with the Witchcraft practices of antiquity. Once that tool was defined and developed, along with the correct attitude and mind-set necessary to enter the spirit world, then the Witch followed the five classical steps for conjuring a spirit. Those steps are purification, invocation, constraining, binding and releasing. These steps are likely the same as those practiced by the great Witches of antiquity, although the cultural context and proper mind-set are completely modern.

None of these practices are explained in any Book of Shadows that I have ever seen, either private or public. The base-line practices of Witchcraft today typically are rites that are performed by a coven or small group. A single Witch practicing her craft and engaging with the Deities and the Spirit World seemed to be something that the witches of legend or fairy tales would have been able to do. My book placed the practice of Witchcraft magic back into the context of the individual practicing alone and without the need or desire for a coven or group. It is a powerful method of magic for the solitary Witch, which I believe is much more like the Witchcraft of tomorrow than what might be found today.    

The book included a few bon mots, mostly because I wanted some feedback and support from the community for what I was about to place into the hands of the Witchcraft community. Yet here is the advertisement found on the back of the book helping folks to figure out if they would want to buy this book.

The greatest witches of legend and folklore practiced their craft through spirit conjuration and by employing a familiar spirit. Now, centuries later, these arts can be acquired
and mastered by modern witches. Join witch and ritual magician Frater Barrabbas as he shares a system of witchcraft-based magic developed to safely perform invocations and evocations; travel in the spirit world; create a spirit pact; and construct your own rituals for spirit conjuring. Exploring history, folktales, myths, and personal experiences, Spirit Conjuring for Witches shows how to magically develop human-to-spirit relationships and ultimately master both the spirit and material worlds.

It is brief but to the point. This book provides the first of the missing lore that is not found in the Book of Shadows, and it represents a complete methodology that requires practice and a disciplined approach to make it work optimally well for the practitioner. There is so much packed into this tome that I cannot but fully recommend this book to my fellow Witches, Pagans and ritual magicians. If you haven’t read any of my books then this should be the one that you should read to start your own version of my literary journey. You will be skipping three books to get to this point, but the magical technology that it will bequeath to you will be extremely beneficial. There have been over 6,000 copies currently sold, so it must be pertinent in order to be so popular.

Some of the topics, aside from the spirit guide or familiar, that I present in this book gives the reader everything that she or he would need to engage in performing spirit conjuring. I have written extensively in this book about the godhead assumption rite and developing your own personal godhead votive cult, which is central to the spiritual activities of evocation. If you don’t develop a relationship with the deity within then there is little possibility of optimizing your experience with other spirits. I also discuss the classification of spirits, how to see into their world, and how to communicate with spirits. These techniques border on the paranormal abilities typical of those who are sensitive to such phenomena; but for those who do not have this capability I also discuss the use of dice or knucklebones, which is a tried and true mechanism for communicating with spirits or even deities. I also introduce to those who have not read any of my previous books the rituals of the rose-ankh vortex, the double gateway of the west (underworld) and east (ascension), and the methods for developing a spirit shrine and offering table and how and when to use them.

In the appendices I have produced lists of angels, demons and other spirits, and a guide for engaging with the grimoires within a Witchcraft context. Everything that a Witch needs to know regarding spirit conjuration is in this book. To my knowledge, I have omitted nothing and it is a good example of a comprehensive exposition of this kind of craft, which is something that I have built into all of my books. I don’t want people to accept what I am writing based on either trust or faith. Instead, I am inviting my readers to take the rituals and concepts and use them to find out for themselves whether these practices that I have outlined actually work. The proof in the pudding is in the eating, an old adage that is quite appropriate for my writings. If you want to know something then assemble the necessary components, practice the forms and then plan and execute magical workings. While I can only write about these topics and how I have engaged with them in the magic circle, it is up to my readers to go out and try them and see for themselves if what I have written is true.

My whole approach to writing books is to inspire others to experiment, develop, invent and create their own personal magic. Every magician, witch or goetes from the beginning of human consciousness has had to build their own methodology to work magic. If you can’t get beyond the stage of using rituals and spells written in books then you will never be able to develop yourself as a magical practitioner. You have to own your magic, and you can only do that when you learn to write your own rituals and develop your abilities through repetition and continued practice. There is an element of discipline involved in developing an expertise in the practice of ritual magic. There is also a need for openness, curiosity, inspired imagination, creativity and experimentation. It is part of the practical necessity for being able to own the magic that you are working.

The modern Book of Shadows for Witches has many areas that are lacking, much of it would be associated with a complete cultural immersion that a folk tradition would already possess. However, in the area of the practice of magic, there are three areas that are typically omitted in the traditional practices of Witchcraft magic. The first is spirit conjuring using a familiar spirit, which this book covers quite well. The second missing practice are the rites of using magical energies, such as elementals, and the advanced techniques associated with them, such as the vortex, pylon, invoking pentagram, and the techniques of resonance. The third missing practice are the rites of celestial magic, which is the making of talismans and working planetary magic. There is also a fourth missing practice, although it is implied and loosely covered in some of the rites of modern Witchcraft and the Book of Shadows, but these techniques, based on sacramental theurgy, need to be expanded and fully documented in order for the rites of a fully magical and pagan-engaged Witchcraft to be developed. These have been, and are, for the most part, my objectives in writing the “For Witches” series of book.

My purpose in writing the “For Witches” series is to fill in the missing lore for the magical practices allotted to modern traditional Witchcraft so that it can fully engage with all of the more advanced attributes of that magical faith. To be a fully realized Witch is to also be a fully capable ritual magician. These two roles are one and the same, since Witchcraft in terms of how I define it, is a magical religion. The two systems, religion and magic, are joined together and practiced as one tradition.

Frater Barrabbas