I have a system of magic which I developed back in the 1980's and worked on through the 1990's that I called “Archaeomancy.” I was not the first person to use this obscure term, since it was bandied about by Michael Bertiaux when I knew him back in the late 1970's. He never actually defined it, and as far as I know never developed a system of magic out of his word-play. It left quite an impression on me, and led me later on to develop my own system of magic based on that single but fascinating word. Bertiaux was something of a creative genius when it came to dreaming up new systems of magic, and some of these ended up being quite detailed, amazing, and imaginative; others were just ideas that he spawned in the moment and never did anything with them. As far as I know, this was one of them.
The word Archaeomancy, as a contrived word, seems to borrow the first part of archaeology, the study of early human history, with the Latin/Greek ending “mancy” (Greek manteia) which means prophecy or magic. The part of the word “archaeo” is from the Greek “arkhaios”, which means ancient or primeval, and the source of that word is “arkhe”, which means beginning. I would translate the word “arkhaiomanteia” as the primordial magic, or the magic of the source.
As I puzzled over this word for some time after I had heard Bertiaux mention it in passing, a few years later, I managed to come up with an operational definition of this word and how it could be applied to the study and practice of magic. I guess you could say that the term fascinated me and stuck in my mind. My realization was one of those peculiar moments when I felt that the divine had passed to me a vision of new magical lore, a state that I have successfully cultivated in myself. It seemed, as I defined it, that Archaeomancy would concern itself with the original magic of creation, the very process of emanation that fashioned the mysterious interlocking worlds that we consciously engage with today. It is the totality of our reality, the One, but it is also that which is beyond our reality, i.e., the source of everything itself.
Emanation, as defined by the Neoplatonists, is the process that fostered the original creation, but it also represents our thread-like connection to the One. Emanations travel from the source and return to the source, and we are revitalized by it from microsecond to microsecond, and the whole universe of consciousness is also revitalized in that same instantaneous moment. It is like a divine heartbeat that reverberates through the web of conscious being that connects everything. We are mostly unaware of it, just as we are unaware of our connection to everything else, except at rare peak moments when our conscious mind momentarily transcends our individuality.
This constant cycle from the singular source to infinite diversity, and then returning from infinite diversity again to the source, passes through a series of gateways or striated planes of being, or like spheres or rings of the ascending and descending granularity of consciousness. This gradation of being, from the monadic source to various levels of conscious being, from the highest to the lowest, has been depicted in models since the beginning of human thought. It represents our human condition of attempting to intellectually grasp what cannot be grasped with the mind, and that is the dimension of higher consciousness that is beyond definition and individuation. When we experience this transcendental reality, it produces in us a paranormal perception. We see a world where everything is united into a single beingness. It causes us to feel connected with everyone and everything, and its essence is a transcendental feeling of love, wholeness and completeness.
However, that path, which leads to such a brief vista of enlightenment, holds within it the veil of darkness and horrors produced by fear, hatred, rejection, despair, aloneness and meaninglessness. That veil of darkness must be pierced to behold the shining unity beyond it. Yet even beyond that domain of conscious unity is the apprehension of an ultimate essence, which is emptiness, but a state that has no fear nor awareness of separation. It is the ultimate state of conscious reality, and it lies beyond the subtle and the causal levels of being. It consists of overlapping veils of subtle light within a stygian realm of empty darkness. Yet those overlapping veils lead to a final gateway that opens up to the infinite nothingness beyond. That is how we could perceive the limitless source, the point where everything as one becomes an infinite expanse of emptiness. We can find this kind of model or descriptions in the writings on Buddhist psychology, Neoplatonism, and the Qabalah (the model of the Ain Soph Aur).
Human beings have traveled through these planes and explored these worlds, and the most profound scriptures and fundamental religious and spiritual beliefs are based on a translation of them. Whether it is Enoch’s voyage through the stages of the heavens, or Dante’s visionary tour of heaven and hell, the voyage beyond the world as we know it has captured the mind of humanity. It is a fundamental process that likely began with the journey of the Shaman into and out of the World of Spirit. The Shamanic journey represents the earliest known ascent and descent from the ultimate source, which was characterized as the domain of the honored dead ancestors, messengers, deities, and spirits, and that it was the earliest archetypal representation for the magical system of Archaeomancy. The symbolic representation of this journey was the ascent up and down the world-tree, the place or location where everything converges - the midpoint gateway to the planes of the universe of consciousness.
This central converging locus or gateway has been represented as a great primordial tree in many traditions, but it could also be depicted as a singular great mountain, the heavenly worlds with a pearly gate, a ladder of lights, an elevator, a spiral stairway, or even a giant beanstalk or a great enchanted rope. The means of conveyance could be a magic horse (hobby horse), broom stick, winged boots or helm, a magical boat (the Argo) or a canoe, a magic carpet, a giant bird, or any flying wondrous creature. There would also need to be a guide or many guides, particularly an emissary who knows all and has been to all the places, high and low, which could be achieved through this method of egress. The shamanic magician who ascends and descends these planes would be a specific kind of spiritual traveler, and one who would converse and acquire wisdom in the form of tribal mythology and ancestral messages through the various emissaries that they might meet. They are a peerless group of individuals who have the ability to enter into the realm of dreams and the spirits of the dead and then return to the world of the living.
Many shamanic traditions hold the belief that the origin of the physical world and all it contains came from this shadowy world that exists in dream time. Likewise, occultists call this world the Inner Planes, and speculate that all spirituality and materiality has its origin and continued existence through it. To the ritual magician, the world of dreams is the source of all consciousness and meaning, whereas the physical world is the source of life and material existence. These two worlds merge to fortify each other, giving meaning to existence. Yet in our high-tech Western culture we have devalued and then forgotten this important world, and we have correspondingly abandoned the key to revivifying our cultural symbols and institutions. Through the distractions of the media we lose our myths and beliefs by their incessant trivial repetition, although some would maintain that media actually elaborates and keeps alive these tribal myths.
Ritual magicians seek to enter into the world of visions and dreams just as the primitive shaman to find the source of their spiritual being and to gain from it a profound spiritual renewal. When magicians accomplish this task, they harnesses a boundless creative resource and experience transcendent visions and inspirations. This causes a flood of creative images, emerging into their mind as new insights, mythic symbols, prophetic meanings and a renewed life significance. Ritual magicians are the unwitting pioneers who have re-opened the world of dreams purely for personal reasons, even so our modern world may be saved from its shedding of meaningfulness.
When magicians are exposed through ritual magic to this mental deep-structure, subtle body or collective consciousness, they experience an exalted form of personal transformation, revealing the very super symbolic level of conscious being. The methodology of Archaeomancy is revealed as the highest form of ritual magick that a magician can hope to experience, and the most effective in terms of transforming the reality of the magician. Ye it is also the most basic, fundamental, and simplistic mind state in regards to the essential formulations of individual being. Through this practice of Archaeomancy, our high-tech Western world can have an opportunity to be transformed and reborn into a new renaissance, if the techniques of Archaeomancy as practiced by ritual magicians become spiritually vogue.
The world of dreams and visions, also called the Inner Planes by occultists, is divided up into different domains, each autonomous but also joined together to form a powerful collective. For the purpose of ritual practice, the magician perceives two sets of domains or worlds within this collective, and these are based upon Qabalistic and Tarot symbolic structures. In whatever fashion the world of dreams is sliced and diced, it is still a collective and functions seemingly as a holistic entity, a unified sentient being, individually responding to each person’s beliefs and perspectives. The magician realizes through these workings that this immanent feature of the Deity is a mystery little known in today’s world.
The system of Archaeomancy that I had envisioned uses as its foundation the Qabalah, and so the world tree or ladder of lights would be the Tree of Life itself, and the mechanism of travel would be the trance states, the various magical tools, relics, and artifacts, advanced ritual structures, and the holy and sacralized temple of the magician traveler; the emissaries would be the various angelic beings associated with the emanating planes of consciousness. Since a consecrated magic circle denotes a sacred boundary, then the world that it defines is the bridge and gateway that opens up into the Inner Planes.
I have determined that there are two perspectives and processes that function together in the art of Archaeomancy as I have developed it. The first is the Qabalah of the four worlds and the ten Sephiroth producing forty worlds, and the second would be the Qabalah of the eighteen spiritual dimensions. This first perspective is based on the traditional Qabalistic speculation that the ten Sephiroth are filtered through the Four Worlds of Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah and Assiah, producing the emanations of the forty worlds that formulate the Inner Planes. The second perspective is based on the teachings that I had received from the chiefs of the Nephilim, formulating a Tree of life that consists of the triangular shapes, which the paths produce when the Sephiroth are removed the diagram. The skeleton lattice structure of the Tree of Life reveals the eighteen dimensions that represent the mysterious essence and hidden source of the Qabalah, where all of its individuated powers, intelligences and directives converge to produce a single ultimate spiritual body of light and darkness.
The forty emanations correspond to the forty Pip cards of the Tarot and represent the structure of the Sephiroth within the four Archetypal Worlds. This is the quaternary structure of the Inner Planes, and is represented by the concept of forty worlds that are like topical places inhabited by various Gods, Angles, Daemons, spirits and symbolic beings. Each world is an enactment of the symbolic progression of spiritual transformation and physical manifestation. This means that each world imparts a separate mystery that tells the story (myth) of humanity's quest for spiritual realization and of the simultaneously occurring incarnation of Deity. Some of these myths are well represented by the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck, where the Pip cards have pictures of archetypal scenes or vignettes as if from some mystery play.
The forty worlds represent the main concourse of the Inner Planes and so contain most of the correspondences associated with ceremonial magic. The root of this symbolic matrix consists of the four Worlds, and these are analogous to the four Elements, representing the whole of the symbolism of the Tetramorph. The Tetramorph is the Qabalistic God-name (YHVH) and is the essence of all four-fold symbolism. The Tetramorph can also represent four element attributes of the Deity, which emanate from the One, demonstrating the multiplying effect of the emanation process. While the forty worlds represent the multiplicity of manifested being, they are resolved into a singular expression of Deity; and this is the relationship that naturally occurs between the Qabalah of the Four Worlds, and the ultimate source, the Unity of Being.
The Archaeomancy of the Forty Elemental Worlds is principally concerned with the invocation and evocation of the Angelic Rulers of the Thirty-six decans, as performed through the domain of the astrological decan. The decan, which is represented as a ten degree segment of the Zodiac, is the base for the definition of the Qabalistic World. There are thirty-six decans, and these correspond to a specific Qabalistic World as well as one of the thirty-six Pip cards of the Lesser Arcana of the Tarot. There are numerous other correspondences to these thirty-six decans, including the hosts of the Shemhemphorash and the daemons of the Goetia. The four element archetypes represent the highest and the most material expression of the forty worlds, which are the Element Godhead and the Elemental Kings. These four added to the thirty-six make for the complete domain of archaeomantic magic.
Through the mythic and symbolic representation of the astrological decans, the map of the Inner Planes, as associated with the elemental correspondences of the Qabalah, are defined and made accessible to the ritual magician. The decans represent the personal destiny of the magician, who is born in a place and a time, and therefore, is subject to their influences. When a magician accesses any of the thirty-six decans, it becomes a principal factor in the magician’s unfolding psychological transformation, and it promotes their ultimate spiritual evolution. It is the objective of the Archaeomancy of the forty Elemental Worlds to assist magicians in their release from the restrictions of a material existence, so that they shall be truly free and become the author of their own personal destiny.
In the discipline of Spiritual Archaeomancy, there are sixteen triangular shapes and two trapezoidal geometric shapes, which reside just above the greater abyss between the supernal triad, and these are the eighteen dimensions. They are defined by the Sephiroth and the pathways that surround them, and also by the angular vectors of two paths proceeding out from a Sephirah. These are the powers, intelligences and directives that define each of the dimensions of the Tree of Life. What is required is for the magician as traveler or “psychonaut” to penetrate the membrane that covers this lattice for a specific dimension and to gain access to it, thereby achieving the revelation of the unified source that resides at the core of the Tree of Life.
Where did I learn about this different approach and perspective on the Tree of Life? I was shown this lore when I conjured the chiefs of the Nephilim in the early 1990's. They revealed the naked skeleton of the Tree in a vision. Examining this lattice structure of the Tree of Life, I was taught by the Nephilim that where two paths cross each other is defined a Sephirah, and also when two pathways cross, they break up into separate pathways. Thus, there are fifteen Sephiroth and 32 pathways in this new Qabalistic Tree, and the 56 angular vectors are called the Aethyrs of the Enochian system of magic, which surpasses the 30 Aethyrs that John Dee designated in his Enochian magic. The Aethyrs are the guardians of the gateway that leads into the egress of the dimension. Once within the dimension, the magician is exposed to all eighteen dimensions at once, although entering into the left-hand and then the right-hand dimensions, and then pulling them together produces an even greater empowered manifestation of deity-based consciousness to be experienced by the magician.
The Archaeomancy of the 18 Qabalistic Dimensions is the method of contacting, entering and assimilating the very facets of the teleological processes of the Deity, and so awakening the greater destiny of its associated individual sentient souls, i.e., magicians themselves. As a system of magic, it is used to assist magicians in determining their place in the greater destiny of the world, and by extension, within the cosmos of consciousness itself. While I had been developing the methods of Archaeomancy of the 40 Worlds during the 1980's, I did not add the second component, the Archaeomancy of the 18 Dimensions until the early 1990's, since it was taught to me through my dialogues with the four Chiefs of the Nephilim. I spent the whole of that period, from the early 1990's into the early 2000's working with this system of magic, seeking to enlarge and perfect it.
The profound transforming forces of the magical art of Archaeomancy affects two different yet vital areas in the development of the ritual magician. These are reflected in the personal destiny of the magician and their place in the scheme or design of the evolutionary pattern of the consciousness of the entire species. These two processes of Archaeomancy represent the microcosm and macrocosm of the ultimate effect and goal of ritual magic, that is, union with the Absolute Spirit in its form as the planetary Egregore. Archaeomancy is the ultimate discipline and practice of the high adept, particularly those who have conquered the lesser mysteries of the soul and have established the base of stability for the greater mysteries, which is the revelation of the Spirit of the Deity and its evolutionary process.
Thus, these two systems of magic, the Qabalah of the 40 Worlds and the Qabalah of the 18 Spiritual Dimensions represent the lore of Archaeomancy that I had developed and then used to work some truly profound ritual magical workings. Using the Qabalah of 40 Worlds, I was able to build a key of correspondences, which I called the Concourse of Powers and Intelligences that linked a host of angelic and demonic spirits together, and I was able to both conjure spirits, petition them for their wisdom, and enter into their domains to gain a powerful spiritual visionary kind of experience. Using the Qabalah of the 18 Spiritual Dimensions, I was able to enter into the domains that are at the core or the very source of spiritual emanations, and traveled freely, guided by angelic emissaries, between the planes, like the heroes of old, and like Enoch, and later, Dante.
Since the magical system that I employ utilizes a form of energized immersion, where the gateways and the geometric prismatic energy structures are all internal to the magic circle, the magician is fully exposed to all that manifests and is realized in that symbolic domain. They are not outside looking in, as a person scrying would experience, but are actually inside looking deeper within. When an angel or demon is invoked, the magician is transported into their domain through the artifice of the magical ritual structures employed in this system of magic. Their only protection is their assumed godhead and spiritual alignment, because they are there, in that same archetypal spiritual world as the entity that they have summoned and invoked or evoked.
Because this system of magic uses an advanced energy system of magic to define and empower the ritual structures within the magic circle, what is conjured is also made fully manifest and tangible to the senses. This hybrid system of magic produces an experience of full immersion into the worlds or inner planes of both heaven and hell, the over planes and the underworld. Therefore, a series of magical structures layered one upon the other, to emulate the attribute of the lattice of a Qabalistic dimension, will actually expose the magician to the very essence of that domain once the rite has achieved its objective. Either technique of ritual magic will build energy structures and pass through gateways to enter into the world where resides either the spirit conjured or the dimension fully realized. Thus, these two magical systems are considerably more potent and profound in their operation and successful achievement than most other forms of magic.
Both of these systems of magic are quite amazing, and the impact that they have on the magician traveler is to open up the domain of the spiritual source, and its associated states of enlightenment and perfect inspiration. Since I am a flawed mortal human, I could neither contain this heightened state of enlightenment permanently, nor translate its pristine wisdom into an accessible sacred writ. All I can do is to expound on the philosophical and metaphysical background to these systems of magic, and then reproduce the rituals that I used to achieve those results. I would then rely on others to perform these workings and to witness if they indeed produce the results that I claim they that they do. However, I am quite confident that these two systems of Archaeomancy will produce the results that I have stated, since I have exposed others to these workings and gained from their experience a high degree of objectivity.
This coming autumn, I will be writing up another book, and the subject matter is to be the two systems of Archaeomancy where I will compose a comprehensive background of information that helps to operationally define them, and then the ritual lore that is used to perform these two methodologies of magic. Most importantly, I will include a key of correspondences that will assist you in defining and categorizing the occult symbols and spirit lists needed to fully invest these systems of magic. Since this is a system that I still use today, I will present the latest versions of these rituals, thereby making them more relevant and up-to-date than they would be if I just used the lore that I had developed decades ago.
I will call this book “Liber Artis Archaeomancy” and I am really looking forward to writing this book in the autumn. When it is completed and finally in print, I think that you will find great use for this kind of magic in your collection of lore.
Frater Barrabbas
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