Thoughts on the Definition of Magic

 

Recently, someone proposed that the specific definition that Aleister Crowley gave to magic in his work “Magic In Theory and Practice” did more harm than good regarding how magic is worked today. While I have attempted to define magic in my very first book, “Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick,” I saw that it lacked a certain clarity that I now possess. When I saw this statement on Face Book and the resultant conversation, my immediate thoughts were to agree and also disagree. Crowley wrote his thesis and defined magic in his book written in the late 1920's, and that was nearly 100 years ago. Is anything still absolutely relevant after that length of time? While I liked Crowley’s book “Magic In Theory and Practice”, I also found it to be very complex and not particularly easy to read.

My basic opinion is that Crowley was very much a part of the evolution of magic, and brought it from the 19th century to the 20th century. He further clarified and gave an elaborate but consistent definition to the word magic. He also used the spelling “magick” to differentiate it from the common magic of prestidigitation and causing illusion through trickery. I also adopted this spelling for a while, but found that it didn’t lend itself to referring to practitioners of magic as “magickians.” I have also come to believe that stage magic is just as much a form of magic, and that in the previous age that were considered part of the regimen of the art of magic.

Let’s look at what Crowley had to say about magic and how he defined it. This is the quote that has been proposed as the stumbling block for magicians today.

“Magick is the art and science of causing change in conformity with will.”

And also, the corollary definition, which is: 

“ANY required Change may be effected by application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner through the proper medium to the proper object.”

This sounds like a proper scientific theory, although it is so obviously a truth that it probably doesn’t need to be proven empirically. Of course such a set of definitions would not exclude any number of mundane activities and therefore, could not differentiate them from magic. For instance, if I have an objective, such as finding and getting a new job, or looking for a significant other, I could use magic to aid in this work, but I could use regular mundane actions to do it as well. In fact if I were to engage in either of these pursuits and used magic to aid me, I would also need to engage in the associated mundane activities to ensure success. The purpose of combining mundane steps with magical ones is to bend the laws of probability for something to happen. I doubt that such a pursuit of material objects could be achieved by working magic alone. 

That being said, it would seem that Crowley’s definition of magic is too general to be useful, but behind it are some very thoughtful clues as to how a successful magical operation could be pursued. This is the methodology of applying some kind of personal force through the correct medium or link to a given object to influence a probable outcome. That would seem to aptly define a basic operation using magic to achieve a material outcome, with the caveat that the proper medium is the all-important magical link. Crowley goes on to define what a magical link is, and I think that this was an important factor in defining magic. It just doesn’t explain all the other forms of magic that are practiced today. In that sense it might be seen as misleading, but I think that it is a useful but incomplete and overly generalized definition of magic.

If we look at the popular definition of magic as found in any dictionary, we come up with the following definitions. This, of course, is how magic is defined by popular consensus despite all of the years that it has been developed, refined and brought into the 21st century by practitioners and social scientists.

“The use of means (such as charms or spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces. An extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source. Incantations or enchantments. The art of producing illusions by sleight of hand.”

Popular consensus about magic requires a belief in the supernatural and that magical power is a supernatural force. Other popular definitions discuss engaging or conjuring of spirits and forcing them to produce supernatural effects and achieve material objectives through their intervention. In fact, in the previous age, before the European Enlightenment, human beings were thought to have no inherent powers and that it was only through the artifice of angels, demons or neutral spirits could a human being cause seemingly miraculous changes in the material world. Also, the public sees little difference between ritual or ceremonial magic and prestidigitation. They are all one thing, and if a person fails to believe in the supernatural, then the whole definition falls completely apart. It becomes, without this belief in the supernatural, a fraudulent activity, trickery and even criminal deceit. 

The 19th century produced two individuals who changed the perception of magic in the various occult communities, those who had adhered to various beliefs from the previous age and were backed by the philosophy of late antiquity, which was neoplatonism. This was also the century when much of the Eastern systems of religious philosophy and metaphysics became available, through the efforts of various intellectuals and organizations such as the Theosophical Society, Spiritism, and various quasy Masonic organizations, such as the Golden Dawn. One of the chief proponents of magic in the 19th century was Eliphas Levi, from whom the Golden Dawn got its definition of magic, and where MacGregor Mathers made it into an accessible practice. Levi proposed a down-to-earth definition of what magic was, and detached it from the belief in the supernatural and the theatrics of popular stage magic. Here is how Levi defined magic.

“The three chief components of Levi's magical thesis were: Astral Light, the Will and the Imagination. Levi defined the Astral Light as a blind, amoral, universal force that sweeps all before it in a perpetual and restless search for equilibrium.”

 Levi came up with this idea about the Astral Light from the writings of Carl Reichenbach, who conjectured that there was what he called an “odic” force in the universe, which was a hypothetical vital energy or life force believed to exist by many in the mid-19th century. Reichenbach himself was strongly influenced by the writings of Mesmer about animal magnetism. The idea of the existence of the Astral Light was picked up the Theosophical Society since it melded well with Eastern philosophies concerning the life-force or prana. 

While Levi and the Golden Dawn brought the practice of magic from out of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance into the 19th century, the definitions that they used still seemed very nebulous and not very factual. While eliminating the idea of the supernatural was a good step in the right direction, it seemed that adding forms of metaphysics made the definition more confusing. However, when Crowley wrote up his definitions of magic there had not yet been anything succinct or definitive to say about how magic was actually defined. Still, it was an evolving process that continues to this day, and Crowley’s definition was just a step in that process. It is easy to criticize his definition and also to remark that it could easily lead one astray as it could help define what magic is and how it functions. Still, it is also important to see Crowley’s definition from the perspective of the context of the time in which it was presented.

Anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists spent a great deal of time from the 19th century and well into the 20th century studying and remarking on the phenomenon of the practice of magic in so-called primitive societies. While they accepted the idea that magic was deficient and based on superstition, they attempted to explain how these less enlightened societies believed about themselves, their world and how magic fit into that world. Frazer was the first to write volumes on the topic, attempting to universalize the idea of magic and to define its different component beliefs, and many others followed suit, such as Malinowski , Freud, and then later Jung, Marcel Mauss, and  Daniel Lawrence O'Keefe. 

O’Keefe was interesting because he speculated that magic was the expropriation of religious rites and ceremonies from public and state religions for the selfish purpose of achieving personal gain. He flipped the narrative that Frazer had developed (and Crowley accepted) that magic was the precursor to science. I felt that O’Keefe was quite correct for certain forms of magic as practiced in Europe from antiquity through the Renaissance. However, he did not take into account primitive forms of magic and shamanism that were the bedrock of what early societies defined as magic and did not depend on the expropriation of religious practices.

All of these various academic perspectives about magic were from an etic or external perspective, and they were not emic, or from the standpoint of the magical practitioner. They also did not define either how magic worked or what was happening in nature to allow it to function. I believe that only practitioners can define magic from the inside as long as they don’t seek to postulate some kind of unknown electromagnetic force as its underlying physical basis.

Jung brought up the idea of synchronicity and the powers of cultural and religious symbolism as archetypes of psychic transformation, and Campbell and Eliade discussed the powers and impact of cultural myths and their language that underlie the psychology of the individual and the societies at large. Magic also seems to employ a combination of imagination and metaphor that is a lot like what children do when the play pretend. Eastern religious philosophy talks about a vital force called prana, and this force is integral to life, and especially conscious life. It also functions as a metaphor that proposes that everything is connected to everything else, and that through this web of union, one individual may effect many individuals.

All of these theories seem to saying that the consciousness of the individual and the collective consciousness of the societies that they live in have a great and powerful influence on the social environment and its material basis in the world. They also seem to imply that the imagination as unfettered creativity, combined with the power of symbols and myths can make a phenomenon like magic part of the conscious equation. It can also produce great literature, art, poetry, theater, music, and the various powerful sentiments of human existence. It is the driver for religion and its individual exponent, mysticism. Within this perspective is what we would define as Spirit, and all the collective attributes of the religious and mystical phenomena of Deities, devils, angels, demons, nature spirits, mythical creatures, legendary heros and heroines, ghosts of our ancestors, and the hosts of what had once been defined as supernatural, now defined as the products of the greater mind of humanity. While Carl Sagon despaired over the continued human proclivity for what he defined as superstition, I see it as an integral part of the phenomena of human consciousness.

Science allows us to be rational and empirical when approaching the physical phenomena of the material world, and it has created mathematics, technology, medicine, chemistry, astronomy, astrophysics, engineering and the overall standards for objectivity. Yet science cannot explain the phenomenon of consciousness itself, and it cannot abrogate the necessary human tendency to sentimentalize, imagine, feel through emotions, and express oneself through passion. There is still a place for the Arts in our world, and may the Gods save us if we ever lose that important aspect of being human.

So, based on all of these ideas and theories, how do we define magic from an emic perspective? I will attempt to define magic here, but of course, mine is not the last word.

There are seven basic models of magic, and each explains part of the phenomenon of magic. There is the spirit model, the energy model, the psychological model, the stocastic model, the temporal model, the information model, and the metaphysical or theurgic model. What all of these models have in common is the peculiarity of consciousness. They represent different definitions and viewpoints on the phenomenon of magic, but they also fail to define it from a unified perspective. We can merge them into a single perspective that is relevant to the modern world, since previous ages had very different cultural foundations through which magic typically defined.

Magic is a psychological process that occurs in the mind and has no actual physical representation in the material world, except, perhaps, from the perspective of neurology. It relies on rare altered states of consciousness as its foundation, and it utilizes transformative symbols, religious attributes and belief systems woven into rituals and ceremonies and directed by symbolic tools and artifacts. It can be employed in a singular manner with a single objective, whether material or conceptual. It can also be employed to enhance, instruct, inspire, illuminate, and ultimately, cause its practitioners to ascend into a state of permanent enlightenment and union with the monistic exemplar of consciousness itself. It proposes a form of rapid and contagious spiritual evolution that can be achieved in a single lifetime, although it typically attracts those who initially seek material power over their lives and circumstances. 

Magic is protean in its form and function because all models and perspectives can be shown to be correct in some manner, including that magic doesn’t even exist. It can be perceived differently by different people, and everyone who practices magic sustains their belief in it through their perception of its efficacy. There are very few rules that govern magic, and often what breaks the rules is more effective than what complies with them. It is also a phenomenon that seems to have a separate conscious volition and character, and it often behaves as if it were an entity instead of a phenomenon of individual human consciousness. 

Magic is also the process whereby individuals build meaning, significance and a sense of purpose or destiny onto their life’s path, pulling them out of the meaninglessness of their trivial secular society, the happenstance of the material world and the seemingly autonomous universe at large. Modern magic is as important to our post modern world as organized religion was to the pre-modern and modern ages. Yet it remains to be seen if this varied process can meet or exceed the objectives of a human system of conscious evolution as religion had functioned in the past.

Frater Barrabbas

What is Armadel - A Person or Process

 

This is another article on the Grimoire Armadel, which I have been fascinated with ever since I bought the hard cover edition back in the 1980's. I have already written a few articles in the past about this subject, and this article mirrors some items that I have already written in my first article on the subject, and you can find it here. There are some new concepts and refinements in this article compared to the previous one, but you can read that article to get a broader idea about my approach to this wondrous grimoire.

The name Armadel, used for a specific grimoire, is often confused with Almadel and Arbatel. The Almadel is a scrying table made up of beeswax candles and a small table inscribed with sigils and a shew stone in the center. Arbatel is the name of a Paracelsian system of planetary magic that uses the seven Olympian spirits and their associated seals. Both of these systems predate the Grimoire Armadel, which was likely composed in the mid 17th century. So, these three similar names represent very distinctly different systems of magic, although the Armadel system does borrow some attributes from both the Almadel and the Arbatel.

An obvious question is to figure out what Armadel means, if it has any meaning, or whether it is a proper name for an individual lost to time, or if it is a process or type of magic. I think it is a process or type of magic, but there is evidence for other perspectives. What we need is a definitive definition, and that might not be available to us, since whether a name or a process, it was an obscure word that had a limited use by occult practitioners well over four hundred years ago.

Some authors have speculated that the name Armadel refers to an individual, whether legendary or actual. Since there are no famous individuals named Armadel, but there obviously are for Solomon, Faust, Saint Cyprian, or Albertus Magnus, then if we consider it to be a name we might be making an erroneous assumption. A version of the Key of Solomon in the British Museum has the title “The True Keys of Solomon by Armadel,” which could infer that Armadel was the pseudo name of a legendary author, or the “by Armadel” could be interpreted as “by means of” instead of indicating the author. Still, the idea that there was someone named Armadel has persisted. There are a few other 17th century anonymous grimoires whose authorship is attributed to Armadel, which only confuses the matter to properly identify what or who Armadel actually is.

I have used my rudimentary linguistic skills and I cannot find any kind of definitive word combination in Hebrew, Latin or Greek. So, it is word that exists without an actual meaning, or one that can’t be easily derived. It is likely some kind of a name. I had proposed in my previous article that Armadel was from the Hebrew A’arum Mod EL ערום־מאד־אלָ, which loosely means “God’s Powerful Skill”, but that was a weak translation. What I have gotten from translating that Hebrew phrase is “Naked from God.” Another approach could be Armata El, where the ‘t’ in Aramata became a ‘d’ like the word ‘armada’, and in Latin it means army, so it would be the “Army of El,” but this is also weak. It might simply be Arma di El, or “weapon of God” in Italian. None of these pseudo translations help to define what Armadel is from a magical perspective.

According to William Keith, in his introduction to the 2001 edition of the Grimoire Armadel, he states that the earliest published use of Armadel is to be found in a work written by Gabriel Naude, in 1625. In that book, which was a thorough study of the occult works at that time, he wrote about an author who had summarized the art of magic into five distinct categories. These were outlined as the following:

• Art of Trithemius - for invention,
• Art of Theurgy - for elocution,
• Art of Armadel - for disposition,
• Art Pauline - for pronunciation, 
• Art Lullian - for memory.

According to Keith, all these categories had a body of work associated with them except for the Art of Armadel. These five different categories seem similar to the five disciplines used to teach students the basic skills needed to be considered educated, and these were grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic and geometry. Theurgy is a form of magic that is closely related to thaumaturgy, doing the work of the Deity on the material plan, and thereby causing miraculous changes. I don’t know how that would fit with elocution, and the Pauline Art is based on a grimoire that is part of the Lesser Key of Solomon, and works with the angels of the hours and days of the week using a table of practice, thereby sacralizing any calendric event with angelic magic. It doesn’t seem to involve any kind of the development of pronunciation. Invention, disposition and memory seem to adequately define the Trithemian, Armadel, and Lullian arts. There are examples of four of these methodologies, but according to Keith, there is nothing to be associated with the Art of Armadel. I believe that Keith is wrong about Armadel having no examples or body of practice.

I believe that we can determine what the author meant when describing the Art of Armadel as “for disposition” if we examine that word carefully, since it has at least three different meaning contexts. There is the disposition of the self, which is the mood that we are in at the moment or our habitual emotional state. There is also the business disposition of a product or service (how it is disposed), and the legal disposition of a case, or its status or ending. I think that the meaning of disposition in regards to the Art of Armadel fits the business disposition, which would make it a kind of transaction between spiritual entities and the magician. Disposition of the self could also be employed if we would stipulate that the Art of Armadel has a transformative impact on the individual working it. 

So, I think that what is transacted in this kind of magic is a form of knowledge or an inspiring insight or vision, or even to gain an intellectual skill. The later has representations in various grimoires and forms of magic, especially the Ars Notaria of Solomon, which is the perfect example of the Art of Armadel. However, the Ars Notaria has the accompanied verba ignota or words of power to go along with the prayers, the rigorous schedule of operation, and the powerful images; Liber Armadel only has the elaborately colored seals and a vague theological context without any kind of magical schedule for working them, nor any kind of magical language to empower them. These extra tools are omitted from the version of the grimoires that we presently possess. Despite the dissimilarities between the Ars Noteria and the Liber Armadel grimoire, I think that they are a part of the same kind of magical technology. The Ars Noteria is one of the earliest grimoires, and Liber Armadel is one of the latest grimoires. Yet there is a long line of these kinds of magical works from the 13th through the 17th centuries that infrequently appear. Thus, Armadel can be considered one of the disciplines of magic that has a provenance going back to medieval magic and even earlier. 

One of the most powerful and profound systems of magic espoused in the middle ages was called scholastic image magic. It is defined by scholars as a system of magic that focuses on a three dimensional object or a two dimensional icon, such as a talisman or an elaborate magical seal in order to invoke or evoke a heavenly body or a powerful spirit to imbue it with power. The empowered object then acts as an instrument to inspire the operator, who then channels its effect into the material plane, or internalizes it into their mind. This kind of magic typically worked with astrological imagery and correspondences, but could also include angels, whether classical or of unknown origin; but the result was to powerfully alter the mind of the operator, and to empower them to change the material world, either directly or indirectly. 

This type of magic emerged from Arabic and Jewish sources, and was utilized to build a body of magic in Europe, beginning in the 12th century. When we consider the Art of Armadel, we are examining this category of image magic where astrological symbols and correspondences or magical icons and seals of spirits in certain theological contexts were used to transform the operator and then through them, to alter their material or intellectual situation. Thus the Art of Armadel has a long history in the annals representing the various stages of image magic, and it is still important today. It is my belief that we can link the magical techniques of the notary art with image magic and correctly define what the Art Armadel is as a system and its importance and relevance today.

My most recent inspiration is that because the Grimoire Armadel lacks an invocative language or verba ignota to conjure and empower the various seals, I realized that because the Art Notaria of Solomon is closely related as a type of magic, and that it is focused on certain mastery of specific intellectual practices and disciplines, I might borrow the powerful verba ignota from that grimoire to use with the Armadel. It was like a significant piece of the puzzle dropped into my lap to combine some elements of the Ars Noteria with the Armadel. Since there are other purloined magical technics from other grimoires in the Armadel, why not add one more to fully empower it as a completed grimoire. I suspect that there is no precedence for doing this, but the idea seems inspired to me, so I will comb through the Ars Noteria and find those sections of powerful invocations that would match up with the theological based seals in the Armadel. I think that this is a fascinating approach, and I intend to follow through on it.

Overall, I believe that giving the title to a grimoire the name that represents an entire antique tradition of magic might be considered presumptuous or even hyperbolic; but examining the seals in this book reveals that it could be considered the final and powerful exemplar of that magical discipline. After the end of the 17th century, magic and even alchemy in the 18th century started to become labeled as fraudulent by the various legal systems of Europe and then by the intelligentsia, thereby being replaced by the empirical sciences. Thus, magicians lost the meaning of the discipline of Armadel and its associated magical arts. So, when this grimoire in two forms was found by Mathers in the Arsenal Library in the late 19th century, they were considered novel and mysterious. The colored seals certainly had an inspiring effect on Mathers when he perused these manuscripts, and he wisely saw them as very remarkable, which is why he translated and produced his English language version. 

Even though Keith, in his introduction to the 2001 edition of the Grimoire Armadel, wondered why Mathers would have wasted his time translating this work, I think that anyone who has worked with these seals or realizes their provenance would know why Mathers engaged in translating them. I have found the Grimoire Armadel to be one of the most mysterious but also the most powerful grimoires that I have ever worked with. Keith said that this grimoire was a late and unremarkable version, unoriginal and derivative because it borrowed from other systems of magic. However, all grimoires are, for the most part, derivative; but they stand as a part of an evolving discipline. Each grimoire has something unique and empowering to offer the operator. Whether it is the Grimoirum Verum, the Greater or Lesser Clavicles of Solomon, Liber Juratus, the Ars Notaria, the Heptameron, the Almadel, the Arbatel, the Grimoire of Pope Honorius, the Grand or Petite Albert, the Red or Black Dragons, or many others, the Grimoire Armadel is a remarkable part of that history of grimoires and stands equally with them throughout the medieval period to the modern.

Frater Barrabbas 

New Year 2026 - End of Stasis and Wintering

 

The New Year has started, and there were a few final items that need to be resolved so that I would be able to move forward with my magical life, and my wintering will finally be over. I wrote about my wintering a while back, and you can find the article here. It has been almost nine years since my last big magical working, and much has changed over that period. I moved first to Richmond in 2018, and then last year, I moved to Williamsburg. My house in Richmond was not able to accommodate a temple, so I went without a temple until I moved into my new home in 2025. Yet there were other blockages that prevented me from moving forward.

Since the first week of June, we put our old house up for sale, hoping for a quick sell. We had already moved into our new house by early May, and had effectively moved most of our belongings from the old home to the new. Still, after three months of not getting even a single offer, I decided to dedicate my new temple, recently assembled, to resolving that issue. Divination showed that there were larger economic issues occurring, mostly associated with the Trump administration and the tariffs that they had employed in a chaotic manner back in April. 

Prior to April, it had been a sellers’ market, and after the tariffs went into effect, the market changed within 30 days to become a buyers’ market. This happened because the money needed to purchase a house was tightened due to the economic instability fostered by Trump’s on again and off again tariffs, and the uncertainty of the overall economic future in the U.S. Suddenly, there were more houses for sale than places to rent, and the money needed for loans was harder to get. All this created an economic storm that blocked the selling of our old house. We were locked into a financial situation of having to pay mortgages and supporting expenses on two homes, and that burden, while not small, we could support. Yet it made things economically tighter for us and overall, our transition to our new home, more difficult to complete.

I decided to take some magical action and activate my talismanic machine that I had set up in my temple. I placed a consecrated sigil, which would help us sell the house, into the center of the septagramic icon with the charged metallic talismans arrayed around it and fully energized. It had not taken me long to develop a suitable sigil and I consecrated it when saying a special votive Mass rite. I then used the energy of the Mass to trigger and activate the talismanic array. While performing this magic, I had a vision of myself standing on a rocky plateau in a deadly desert storm with a mighty headwind blowing against me. It seemed to block my ability to move forward while blinding me and scouring my face and hands. I sensed that this was a symbolic analogy showing the difficulties arrayed against me when attempting to sell our old home. 

I heard a voice saying to me amidst the noise of the storm that these head winds are not of my making nor my fault. They are the results of powers beyond my control. Even despite the emotional impact that this vision produced in my mind, when I energetically invoked the talismanic field with its sigil imprint, the energy that I experienced inspired and powerfully motivated me to use my magic to aid our quest. I would endeavor to persevere despite the seemingly hopelessness of the situation. I knew, when I was releasing this talismanic field that I was fighting against the regime itself, which was seeking to thwart those of lesser economic means the ability to receive the material rewards of their hardworking efforts and their steadfast adherence to the laws of the land. It seemed that the storm was produced to afflict the little people and not aimed at the wealthy or the politically connected, who didn’t need to follow the laws or work hard to enrich themselves. I understood that it would take longer to achieve selling our old home, but I was set on this path regardless of the circumstances. Thus, in unleashing this magical field I was defying the regime, and I was going to war against the evils that were seeking to destroy the middle class.

Some days later, in the midst of this ordeal, I had Another vision that occurred when I was doing some divination on the progress of the magic that I had unleashed. On two consecutive Tarot card readings occurring over a few weeks, I was getting the Tarot trump Atu XVI, The Tower, at the end of the reading, and I naturally felt a certain dread about my future and the course that my magic was taking. When this occurred for a second time, much to my dismay, I felt my Deity reach out to me, and I heard a voice in my head instruct me to lower the price that I was asking for the house. We had already lowered it twice, but not significantly. It seemed that this new asking price would mitigate the possibility of financial ruin, which is how I interpreted the Tarot trump, the Tower. Because this card had quite unnerved me, I began to wonder if I was misinterpreting it. My wife and I were not in any kind of dire straights economically, but we were supporting two households and accumulating credit card debt. That could lead to difficulties if there was any kind of economic crisis that happened nationally, or if one of us lost our job.

Still, it was only after I had lowered the asking price of our house to the value I had been mysteriously shown that we began to get greater interest in the house, with several public showings sponsored by our realty partner. Our real-estate agent was also using whatever mechanisms she had to help us sell the house. The combination of magic, lowering the price at a strategic time and the efforts of our realtor helped to finally seal the deal. We got two offers during my Thanksgiving break, and chose the best and most secure one. That made the holiday quite exciting, and gave us something to be grateful for. Our wise choice in selecting a good real estate agency and the magic that I had deployed made all this possible. 

We signed a contract in early December, and the house was sold in mid January. The couple who bought it had been looking for a home for quite a while and saw in our old home a spacious and affordable new home for themselves. They had been living in a cramped apartment and wanted a real home, and our place was just the right size and price, and they fell in love with it. Hearing their story really warmed my heart, and I wished them a very happy and bountiful future.

It would seem that the classical interpretation of the Tower card in the Tarot deck has greater nuance and alternative meanings than I initially realized. While it does often symbolize drastic changes, unexpected crises, and the overturning and fall of an established house or order, that interpretation was not correct for the two readings that I had performed. What I sensed through my intuition is that it symbolized the final transition of a household, so it can also mean the ending of an old residence and station in one’s life. It represented for me that the house was going to sell if I persevered, using my intuitive sense of what should be done (lowering the asking price). It was the end of a home life, but the beginning of a new one, which is a transition finally completed. There was no disaster nor financial bankruptcy, and I and my family were not brought to economic destruction by our own hubris. It was an ending, and as far as our old home was concerned, we had departed and were detached from it to make room for new owners. I will have to remember that subtle interpretation, and also understand that magical work can and does make material change happen according to one’s will or desire.   

Because of all the economic turbulence created by the Trump regime, it took us over six months to sell the house. Yet I was grateful for that event when it happened, and I felt a powerful dispelling of my angst and economic worries. We also realized a large profit from the sale, and this would help us deal with any future blow-back coming from the Trump regime. We will sit tight, give money to the Democratic party (who else?), offer monetary help to the needy and the dispossessed, and vote for all elections, great and small. Hopefully, we can start off the next new year, 2027, with a profound shift in political power to the left, and the beginning of the deconstruction of the Trump administration. It will be a long and dreadful year starting today, but there is hope for the future.

What this also means is that I am now free to plan and perform new magical workings. My transition is complete, and my magical resources, so focused on selling the house, can now be used to perform other workings. Even though it is the middle of winter, I am realizing that the end of my long period of wintering is at hand, and that a new Spring and a rebirth to my magical practice is soon to follow.

Frater Barrabbas