Writing of Ordeal XV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Frater Barrabbas

Thoughts About Good and Evil

As a Witch, I see the world infused with the ever-changing power and wisdom of light and darkness, where the changing seasons are represented as the cyclic balance of these qualities that is ever changing. They take turns being dominant, ascending and then diminishing. Through impermanence, resilience, fulfillment and interdependence, nature teaches us its greatest mysteries. It is a perfectly harmonious blending of natural phenomenon that is always tending towards balance. I use that idealistic perception to examine and judge the world around me, noting to myself that this balance has a powerful effect on the various elements of the natural world as well as the spirit world. 

Being out of balance is characterized as sickness and the diminishment of life for individual living creatures and the totality of life in the world, including and especially for humans. When the natural world itself is out of balance in a given geographic domain, then that situation produces an extinction event purging such a place of unadaptable life forms. Nature can change drastically by itself, such as the occurrence of ice ages and warming or cooling trends or by cataclysmic collisions with comets and asteroids. It can also be changed by the activities of human beings, such as the careless introduction of toxic pollution or greenhouse gas emissions. Ecological balance is the key to a living in a sustainable and habitable world.

“The balance of nature is not a static state; it is a dynamic equilibrium.” - John Muir

I have equated the occurrence of the transcendental cycle of light and darkness with the cycle of life and death, but where I stop short is to equate light and darkness to the qualities of good and evil. This is because they do not seem to be attributes associated with terrestrial life in general, and they are more concerned with the moral beliefs and values of both individual and collective human beings. There is no good and evil in nature, so these attributes are concerned with the sentience and the spirituality of human beings living in the world. Good and evil cannot, therefore, be considered transcendental attributes. By taking this naturalistic perspective about good and evil and making it a part of my religious practice, I have declared myself as a moral relativist. That, by itself, introduces the whole topic of the nature of good and evil, and whether or not it transcends human religious moral tenets and socially based laws. Certainly, there are rules against certain practices, and some of them are obvious and completely agreeable, and others are debatable. The human arbitrated laws of the land are the final determiner of what is legal and lawful in our socialized world, but bending or even abrogating those laws is the unfortunate practice of criminals, ruthless politicians and oligarchs.

Followers of moral relativism or cultural constructivism, as it is called, declare that all laws and moral values are simply relative to the cultures to which they apply, thereby making them more like social constructs. I believe that this perspective ignores that there are indeed some universal moral laws despite the different cultures in different geographic locations and times. The distinction of good from evil may be just an evolutionary adaptation to assist human survival and social cohesion, but there are boundaries that define civilized behavior. It is only when these human-determined moral values are grounded in transcendent precepts that they are taken out of the human sphere. 

Many philosophers have argued about the issue of whether these laws are based on transcendental precepts, such as how religion typically sees them, or whether they are merely human values determined by politics and established for the benefit of the elite and then cloaked in religious theology to give them a more absolute quality. This certainly seems to be the case for the mundane idiosyncrasies of religious laws and practices. Avoiding pork may have been an expedient law to protect individuals from harmful diseases, but coercing women to wear head scarves to protect them from inciting lustful thoughts in men seem to be more about controlling and sequestering women from the body politic than maintaining the purity of intent between genders. 

Outside of religious law and moral prescriptions, there is a body of thought that good and evil transcend human values, and these would be those philosophers influenced by the teachings and dialogs of Plato. Plato believed that good was an archetype and had a transcendent form, which he proposed was part of the highest reality, and that human beings perceived this archetypal ideation with intuitive approximations, since humanity cannot see the ultimate reality. Plato believed that if the Deity decreed the nature of good without good being a universal value, then it would be arbitrary and not truly good. From this perspective, Aristotle declared that good and evil are grounded in the nature of being itself, and defined it as that which either fulfills or damages the essential nature of a person, thus,  making it above and beyond the basis for determining cultural laws and moral sentiments. 

Good and evil, therefore, were archetypal qualities that were a natural part of the world as perceived by humanity. Christian theology, through Thomas Aquinas, incorporated Aristotle’s ideals into its natural theology, making good and evil a core essence of the manifestation of the world through the power and wisdom of the Deity. Of course, raising the idea of good and evil to the level of a godhead brought all sorts of difficulties to a monotheistic creed, such as the nature and origin of evil, and whether God was the source of both good and evil, which this certainly implied. 

Making good and evil transcendent also introduced into the framework of religions and mystical speculation the idea of duality, since if God is good, merciful, compassionate and loving, then evil has its origins in either an opposing supernatural being, such as the devil and various demons, or it becomes a mistake or aberration in the formulation of the world itself. Early adherents to Judaism had no problem in seeing a Deity that did both good and evil to individuals and nations, and to a lesser extent, Islam held this view as well. Seeing the Deity as the source of both good and evil had an ancient precedent, which was believed by most early pagan civilizations. Yet Mesopotamian religious adherents had long developed the idea of demons, and this was picked up by other religions in the Middle East, especially the Persians. However, Judaism and Islam both adopted the concept of demons and devils later on in their development, likely due to the influence of Persian Zoroastrianism, which was a true dualistic religious creed. 

Abrahamic faiths declared that their Deity was singular and had no competition, so theologians attributed the incidence of evil and the phenomenon of demons to the fact that human beings had the power of choice, to choose to do either good or evil, and they were tempted to do evil by demons. Followers of Luriannic Kabbalah believed that evil was the result of the shattering of the first emanation of the Sephiroth because they could not hold the absolute glory of the supernal Godhead, and therefore allowed the sparks of divine glory to fall into the underworld of non-being, which became the Qliphoth. This event allowed a contrary force to manifest that opposed the will-to-create that drove the Deity. Only within the Ain Soph was there the absence of good or evil, but from the emanations proceeding from Kether, there were tensions between a duality of severity and compassion resolved in the middle pillar, yet ultimately formulating in the distinction of good and evil in Malkuth. The Gnostic bishop, Valentinus, also promoted the idea that evil was introduced as an error of material creation, and not the fault or flaw of human nature.

Christianity developed the idea of the devil, or Satan, and legions of demons and their overlords as the principal source of evil, and that God gave them the kingdom of Hell from which to tempt humanity into committing sins. The rationale was that those who were destined to be bad and had led sinful lives were culled from the collected and departed souls from those who were good. 

While the authors of Christian theology proposed that their religion was nominally a monotheistic creed (as inherited from Judaism), they also pushed it to deviate from that base over time so that they could  more powerfully build up the role of devils and demons. They declared that those who were not forgiven for their sins or had not atoned for them in some pious manner, their immortal souls would be delivered to the powers of evil once they died, to be tortured forever in the underworld of Hell. It was a simple binary approach and explained why evil was allowed to exist, but only active in the material world. This belief functioned as a means of testing the faithful, who were given the dispensation of choice and wherever it might lead them. Thus, Christianity, while pretending to be a monotheistic religion of the Abrahamic faiths, was actually a dualistic religion that sequestered good and evil and made them morally transcendent. This Christian sentiment about good and evil, has, over time, influenced popular Islamic beliefs, but not so much Judaism.

More modern philosophers, like Emmanuel Kant taught that moral law, regarding good and evil, is considered a categorical imperative that is derived from pure reason and is independent of cultural determinants. That means good and evil are universal tenets which are binding whether individuals or societies adhere to them or not. Another perspective is the modern philosophical idea of moral horror that stipulates certain actions, such as mass murder or genocide,  are genuinely wrong, and it is referred to by scholars as Moral Realism. Either of these approaches specifies that certain actions can be considered universally evil, and by inversion other actions could be considered universally good, and neither of these categories can be reasonably refuted. 

Thus, Nazi officials who assisted in the killing of millions of Jews, or Japanese military officers who murdered prisoners of war, raped, injured or executed innocent civilians cannot hide behind the excuse that they were not responsible for their crimes. It is because the crimes they committed were against humanity as a whole, and judged independently of any national laws or directives, which  allowed or compelled  such actions. The excuse of just following orders was not enough to mitigate adjudicated war criminals from being sentenced to death. I, for one. would not want to argue against or disagree with such agreed upon international laws, and I would expect the politicians and combatants of any branch of the military in my country to adhere to these conventions as if they were sacred writ.

It would seem, then, that some laws that humanity has determined as a whole could be considered universal and applicable to everyone, such as crimes against humanity. Other laws and moral tenets could be considered to be relative to the place and time. Some of them approach universal laws and others would be socially or culturally determined. While universally accepted laws ordained by the conventions of nations could be considered candidates for transcendental qualifiers for the definition of evil, qualifying good is not as direct. 

I think that on the transcendental level there is something more like what I originally discussed in the beginning of this article as the archetypes of harmony and disintegration, life and death, creation and dissolution, or expansion and contraction as symbolic qualities of light and darkness. These attributes are above the domain of the human mind and the social milieu of the human race, and so they are only dimly recognized in the human definitions of good and evil. From this perspective, good and evil are mostly relatively defined, but there are conventions and definitions of evil, and laws adjudicating them, that amount to universal tenets in the human domain.

In the occult and spiritual sciences, one can deduce a concept of good and evil as the overall polarity of creation and dissolution as found in the concept of balance and its product, harmony, or imbalance and its product, disintegration. I would propose that love produces harmony, and hatred, disintegration, and that these could qualify as representations of good and evil in our world of consciousness and unconsciousness. These qualities are the light and darkness within our minds. We all have the ability to love and hate within us regardless of whether our personal affectation is to identify with good or evil. 

We have the freedom and power to chose good over evil, evil over good, or to even avoid making a choice. Externally featured is our outer persona and its associated values, and within us, hidden from view, is our shadow, which contains those things suppressed or deemed valueless. Therefore, the duality of good and evil reside in our very being and they may be in a constant state of conflict if our internal balance leans too far to one pole or the other. Our goal in becoming spiritually evolved and enlightened is where we can unite the light and the darkness within us, so that the polarity of good and evil are neutralized, and thus become whole and complete in emulation of the One.

A person who has mastered the light and the darkness within their own soul and has become completely unified so that there is no internal conflict, only unity, has finally become a whole person. You might ask me what a person who has gained this state would be like, and I would reply: “Harmony, love, compassion, mindfulness, imperturbability, and total submission to the One and the ever present Now; this is their ultimate state.” This does not mean that they are blind to the suffering of others, nor are they immune to the vicissitudes of human existence and its fragile mortality. They are, in fact, more human than what is typical of humanity. This is the goal that we should seek, but there are any number of different ways to achieve it. For a ritual magician, magical shadow work is the key to achieving wholeness and completeness, such as what I have proposed in the workings of Ordeal XV.

Frater Barrabbas

Meeting the Devil and Ordeal XV

 

This is part 3 of a three part article that is the introduction to Magical Shadow Work and Ordeal XV. I will be writing a book about this ordeal in the future. Here is the basic understanding to this masterful challenge that all adepts must face in their magical and spiritual career. 

I have proposed that the Devil is the master behind the process of transformative initiation, representing the role of the Dark Father to whom the initiate must find resolution in order for the initiation process to be completed. The Devil is also likely to be found as a sentinel at the cross-roads gateway into the underworld and also the gate-keeper for the return threshold. This should not be surprising to any traditionally initiated Witch, who engages with the Horned God and his agent, the Man in Black, during the dark rites of the underworld initiation. Therefore, in order for ritual magicians to achieve a greater transformative experience, they must ultimately open the gateway at their own cross-roads moment and face their own Devil as both the archetypal nemesis and their own personal shadow. Without achieving the transformation and individuation associated with this greater ordeal, a ritual magician cannot claim to have achieved self-mastery, which is the precursor for gaining a more permanent state of enlightenment. 

Therefore, I have developed an ordeal to achieve and master this encounter with the Devil, and I have called it Ordeal XV. My use of the Roman numerals XV is to connect this ordeal with the Tarot trump card the Devil XV. What is depicted in that card is very much what I believe is a necessary part of the initiate adept’s pathway. It is similar, in a lesser fashion, to crossing the Greater Abyss, and it is very much required before the magician would seek that greater transition from initiate adept to master adept, and the revelation of the first rung of the supernal triad of the Tree of Life. So, after all the lesser ordeals have been mastered and the initiate adept has gained total confidence in all things magical, they must then evoke the Devil himself, and gain self-mastery and through it achieve individuation.

I am proposing this ordeal not because I believe that it is important, which it is, but because I myself have walked this path and intimately know its importance first hand. I have summoned versions of these devils and I have endured this kind of ordeal many years ago. When I performed it, it was not a complete and structured ritual process. It was multiple workings performed at different times, evoking multiple devils, and I performed them in segments all during the early to middle 1980's when I was in a kind of emotional and spiritual turmoil. What I am proposing now is the completed formulation of this ordeal, which is something that I did not possess all those years ago. 

I believe that even the purest white-light magician must at some point deal with their darker attributes before they can gain a mastery of magic and self-mastery. It takes a lot of fortitude and courage to perform these evocations, particularly if one is too biased and aligned to the light. Yet for those who periodically dip their wings into the shadows, such as myself, it becomes an obvious stage in the road to enlightenment and illumination. Yet there is a reason for evoking the Devil, and in fact, the Ordeal calls for evoking no less than four of them.

Some writers have proposed in their books on Shadow Work that the shadow has two parts, one constructive and the other malignant. I would like to think of the shadow as being a single entity. Yet because even people with their outer persona and internal ego represent an illusory concept of unity, it could be said that the shadow is a loosely unified body that consists of many parts and faces, similar to our own unconscious psyche. When examining the beingness of the Devil we discover that this entity actually consists of many parts or fragments, and they are the reason for the concept of the legions of demons. There are many orders or denominations of demons, and their number is practically infinite, similar to the number of orders and members of angels. Thus, when encountering a devil or a demon it is important to get its name and association, which is actually appropriate when dealing with any kind of spirits.

Since there are many ways to organize or group demons or to select individuals to function as some kind of group or hierarchical structure, I have decided to use the classical methodology of the four elements. Thus, to select four devils or arch-demons in a group and present them in a specific magical ordeal as four preeminent challenges for adepts to meet and through them, achieve a greater personal resolution. 

My choice of four arch-demons has a precedence in the archaic grouping of demons as being ruled by four demon kings; but other hierarchies of three or seven are more common. I have also departed from the traditional orientation and naming of my elected demons for these four elements. This is because I believe the most important grouping of four attributes are the four Gnostic Churches of the Tetrasacramentary. Since these four Gnostic churches represent the foundation for all my liturgical and magical workings starting at the point of adepthood (5th degree), then the four demon princes that I would choose to evoke in succession would be grouped according to these four churches.

I would group these four arch-demons within my four Gnostic churches in the following manner, using both ancient demon names and even one very modern one. I refer to these four arch-demons as the Involution Avatars, since the role that they play is to impact the initiate with the inverted gnostic attributes of the church or ecclesia with which they are associated, and this negative power and vision would trigger their shadow in a very profound manner. I would propose that the initiate perform the evocations of these four Involution Avatars every dark or new moon for four consecutive months, beginning in the month of October, and on the fifth month, they would bring them together and fuse their spiritual intelligences into a unified being. By doing that they would receive full psychic and spiritual restitution for all of the ills, pain, hardship and life’s ordeals that they have experienced, and elevate their shadow so that it becomes like a shining guide, or the Atman or Bornless One. These evocations rites, when performed successfully five months in a row without any lapse will ultimately heal the duality of an individual’s persona and the shadow so that they will be one; but the ordeal itself would be excruciatingly difficult.

Here are how I would characterize these four Involution Avatars who stand in the underworld for each of the four Gnostic Ecclesia of Thelema, Thanatos, Agape, and Eros. And these powerful arch-demons are the masters of the underworld initiation associated with each church. Where I have placed more than one selection, the initiate adept can choose one whom they wish to evoke in their ordeal, or they can choose more than one. I would recommend a thorough and deep research on each chosen demon before beginning this work.

Thelema - Element of Air - Involution Avatar Aiwas/Aiwaz and also Ashtoreth. Aiwas is the reputed the author of Liber Vel Legis or the Thelemic “Book of the Law,” the sacred scriptures of Crowley’s version of Thelema. He was also the voice of the Eighth Aethyr in the Vision and the Voice. While some have said that Aiwas was Crowley’s Holy Guardian Angel, I believe that he truly functions as the demi-god of the OTO and is the spiritual intelligence behind the modern creed of Thelema. Ashtoreth is a demon Grand Duke who was originally the Goddess Astarte, but was demonized in the Jewish religious tradition. He is depicted as a black faced and heavily bearded man riding a black dragon brandishing a large venomous snake in his left hand. He is attributed to the Qliphoth of Jupiter (Fortune Reversed by Rebellion) and is the prince of accusers and prosecutors. Both Aiwas and Ashtoreth seem to fit the arbiters of rebellion and the overturning of the old order. Since Thelema is associated with the Will, it would seem that the its shadow image would be chaos instead of order, and the fomenting of an internalized insurrection, which is like a person engaged in fighting against themself.

Entering into the underworld of the Gnostic current of Thelema would be to experience the complete shattering of the self and the relentless interrogation of one’s purpose or “will” in life. Since we all have weak moments where our ambitions are either thwarted or momentarily lost in the struggle of life, these lapses are amplified and used to question and persecute us as to whether we have any direction or basic meaning to our lives whatsoever. When anyone is measured and judged by the laws and powers of Thelema in its negative and dark attribution, we are always found weak, purposeless, and without direction. It becomes a great challenge to overcome this persecution and to persevere through adversity. That we take our idealized ambition and directive and defend it against all rational logic and the limitations, obstructions and the inherent self-sabotage that are powerfully arrayed against us. To persevere against all odds, and to continue to steadfastly move forward while enduring misfortune, limitations, persecution, and social denigration, will resolve itself into a peaceful coexistence with the chaotic changes of life. It is where the Sword of the Will has been tested and found true.

Thanatos - Element of Water- Involution Avatar Azrael, Samael, and Satan. Azrael is the definitive Angel of Death, who rides a pale white horse and is readily depicted in the Tarot trump Death XIII. Samael is the poison or venom of God (El), and Satan is the rebellious angel who leads the angelic revolt, and who is characterized as the singular depiction of the Christian Devil. These various entities represent the inverse or underworld of the Gnostic current of Thanatos, who transform death into a fearful and malevolent being who mercilessly takes life by guile or by violent force. There is no peace associated with this transition, and there is no mitigation or forgiveness. There is only regret, unforgiven malefactions great and small, guilt and despair. This is wholly contrary to the ideals of Thanatos which seeks to prepare us for death while still alive, thereby giving us solace and hope. 

What the initiate adept must do is confront their own mortality with the idea that there are no second chances, forgiveness, or peace without facing and resolving the impermanence of all living things, and in fact, all material things. These arch-demons can be resolved into allies if the initiate adept can break their ties to ambition, desire and privilege, to be truly free from the unwarranted ties that bind us. Of the four chosen Involution Avatars, the one representing Thanatos challenges us at the very root of our existence and our purpose in life, and therefore, is the most severe and difficult to resolve.

The underworld of the Gnostic current of Thanatos is the unremitting grief, loss and oblivion of an untimely death. It is the hell of guilt, remorse, self-inflicted torments and endless pain, all dutifully unleashed upon one’s own being. Dante’s lurid depictions of the underworld describing his literary descent into Hell is the archetype of the dark underworld of Thanatos. There is no hope for forgiveness, salvation, justice, restitution, nor redemption from even the most minor wrongs committed; but only the utter and total stygian darkness of complete soul-less obliteration. Yet in this dark opressive world, the initiate adept must find a way to light a small candle of hope, which is that our own inner divinity, the God/dess Within, our Atman or Holy Guardian Angel will find a way to rekindle the light of life, even when the soul is oppressed with its ultimate termination. The ego and persona must die, but there is more to an individual human being than just their insular beingness and their narrow ego-tunnel. Through the power of surrender, of letting go, and embracing the light of the One, which is the non-dual source of all consciousness, the initiate adept can find their way through death to an awakening beyond light and life. To successfully overcome this challenge while still alive, through the relentless ordeal of the demon of death, the initiate adept learns to treasure life but to be always aware of the powers of darkness and death. It is a very sobering equilibrium.

Agape - Element of Fire - Involution Avatar Lucifer, Asmodeus or Prometheus. These entities are all associated with fire, so they are appropriate selections for the Involution Avatar of Agape, which is associated with the element of Fire. While the Gnostic current of Agape represents human sodality, the foundation of human culture, and the consent of the unified purpose of human life (the overall social contract), the underworld vision of Agape focuses on individual ambition and the unlawful exercise of selfish and ego-based activities. While these activities are performed by individuals who act against the status-quo, their unwitting gifts to humanity are both a boon and a curse. Lucifer, as the light bearer, falls from grace when he seeks to rebel against the tyranny of God, setting in motion the later human practice of defying the Gods, and also defying human convention and the basic expectations of a peaceful life. 

Social revolution often runs counter to the good of humanity in the short run, and it is typically resisted by those in authority. Asmodeus is the fire demon representing the desire to break conventions, seek retribution and vengeance or to engage in liaisons that are unlawful and unwanted. He is depicted as a physically beautiful man who uses guile and charisma to seduce men and women into actions that are against their basic interests. Leaders who act contrary to the social benefit of everyone can cause upheavals, destruction, social enmity and civil war. Vigilantes seek social justice, but they are just unwitting pawns of unsanctioned vengeance, yet they are lionized in stories, media, and myths as heroes. These kinds of social revolutions might be important, but they have a staggering cost. 

Likewise, Prometheus gave humanity the gift of fire and paid a steep price for that action, which went against the will of the Gods. However, while the gift may have promoted constructive uses of fire, but it also unleashed the negative uses of fire to harm others, whether by accident or by design. This event ultimately led to triggering the dark side of civilization, which is state sponsored warfare, the persecution of minorities, ethnic cleansing, and the unprovoked conquest of other peoples. These evils are still afflicting the postmodern world, but they could be identified as the backlash to the discovery of fire.

The underworld of Agape is the temptation of individuals to act against the will and the needs of the many for their own personal ambition. They are attacking the social contract that binds humanity together. This is somewhat like an Ayn Rand fictional plot, where the rugged and gifted individual disastrously rebels against the collective social status-quo and the prevailing sentiment of moral relativism and self-sacrifice. While the heroes of this theme are fighting for freedom and rational self-interest, they also cause destruction, injuries and fatalities, and social chaos. When individuals employ their will to overthrow the society in which they reside, then their actions must be accountable and measured against the common good. While Ayn Rand identified such individuals as revolutionary heroes, our complex society sees them rightfully as terrorists.

In this underworld scenario the initiate adept is tested to determine if their personal will and directive helps and promotes the social good in the short and long term, or whether their selfish interests will lead to harming others with no actual gain or social progression. This, then, is the nature of the test of individual human ambition, and anyone who seeks to make any changes to the world in which they live should be given this test in its most severe form, ensuring that they realize the cost of their actions and are made consciously accountable. Achieving clarity, selflessness, and affirmation about one’s personal directives and ambitions represents the process of passing through this important test.

Eros - Element of Earth - Involution Avatar Beelzebub, Belphegor or Pan Priapus. The Gnostic current of Eros is the ideal of Epithumia, the thirst for life, and the joyful realization of desire. While this current has a very progressive, constructive, and delightful representation of life’s essential experiences of procreation, birth, growth, and the blissful happiness and rejoicing of ecstatic release, it’s opposite is the perversion of desire, dissolution and extreme excess. It is debauchery without purpose, unbridled drunkenness, addled additions, and excesses towards the destruction and denial of life. It is the dark attribute of selfish desire and the cruel denial of consensuality, where power over others and their victimization is the principal ideation. 

The demons Beelzebub and Belphegor exemplify the qualities of gluttony, envy, and slothfulness, intemperance and orgiastic excess. Without a guiding principle of balance, simplicity and ethical engagement, Epithumia becomes the road to dissolution and death. For those who love life and engage in the pure expression of love, the pleasurable banquet of exquisite food, drink and exotic drugs enjoyed in the company of dear friends and lovers amid the esthetic panoply of nature, they must possess self-discipline and a strong sense of ethical behavior.  Sybarites of all persuasions must be self-disciplined and ethical otherwise they will fall into the cruel clutches of profligacy that will cause their ultimate death and leave the scarred victims of their perverse practices forever psychically damaged. Pan Priapus, as the personification of the mindless erect phallus is the god that exemplifies the complete lack of discipline and ethics that must be the regimen and rules of the true sybarite. 

Entering into the underworld of Eros is to enter a chaotic world of drunkenness and delirium that challenges anyone who would dare follow the path of life and its pleasures. Only the complete ascetic is immune, and few if any of us would meet that requirement. The initiate adept is fully assaulted with the darkest expression and definitions of their periods of vulnerability, when they succumbed to drink, drugs, or nonconsensual sexual aggression, or were sexually dominated themselves by another. These fearful memories are given a powerful life as the initiate adept must deal with their own guilty conscience in personal acts that were dissolute and dishonorable. Here everyone is a victim, and everyone is condemned to the darkness of the unredeemed human animal. Even so, there is always a spark of light and life that is good, and only through empowering life and affirming its goodness even through darkness and adversity is the way found to overcome the fear and alluring seduction of the dark gnosis of Eros. Of all of the underworld gnostic currents, Eros is the most challenging to overcome and resolve because we all love life and its pleasures.

Resolution as the Marriage of the Shadow and Persona

Having passed through all four of these underworld depictions of Hell, and having resolved their imposing challenges, the initiate adept is then free to face them together as one since overall challenge. This is because they have become truly purged of the darkness and are fully clear and knowing of themselves through the contrast of light and darkness, life and death. The ultimate task for the initiate adept is to not only resolve these trials in a single cycle of four consecutive dark new moon nights, but to keep them alive within them as a means to measure and realize the truth about themselves. When the fifth new moon occurs in the sequence of months, then the final act in the Ordeal is consummated. 
 

In that moment, the final and fifth stage, the initiate adept fuses all four arch-demons into a single being of darkness and light, the true nameless Godhead of Ordeals. It is also where the wedding ceremony or the union between the individual shadow and the persona is enacted, and the greater gateway of Light and Darkness, Shadow and Persona, might be established. It is an event where the doorway of the soul is always left open so that there might be a cyclic communion between light and dark. 

 

This wedding ceremony is the Hieros Gamos of the shadow and the ego-based persona, made possible through the intervention of the magician’s God/dess Within, their Atman or individual godhead. This is because the ultimate resolution of the trump card The Devil XV is resolved through the trump card The Lovers VI. A magical jeweled ring, which is used to symbolize their union, is consecrated, charged, given and received (worn by the initiate adept), and a special underworld gateway rite is periodically performed as part of the magician’s magical discipline every new moon. It opens one up to the place where the shadow and persona go to merge and become one. This is an ongoing and never-ending process, since the internal psychic unity tied to the godhead is something that must be periodically consummated. It becomes part of the magician’s regular liturgical practice, unfailingly performed until that day when they emerge on the other side of the Greater Abyss, as a being that is whole, enlightened, illuminated and conscious of their singular godhead.  

Whatever other ordeal that I might seek to promote to my readers, this is the one that must be undertaken at some point by anyone who would gain the final stages of non-dual consciousness in their lifetime as practicing magicians. Yet it is the Devil, in his various forms, who is the archetypal Shadow of all beings, that is arbiter of this ordeal, and it is through him that the master adept might gain their full mastery of the powers of light and darkness, and their mastery of life in all its vicissitudes. 

Frater Barrabbas

World Shadow as the Devil

 

This is part 2 of a three part article that is the introduction to Magical Shadow Work and Ordeal XV. I will be writing a book about this ordeal in the future. Here is the basic understanding to this masterful challenge that all adepts must face in their magical and spiritual career. 

While our personal shadow typically remains nameless and undefinable, the archetypal embodiment of this shadowy and mysterious individual does have many names and qualities as defined in our culture and our social world. In the west, including the middle east, that personage is the Devil or Satan, the ultimate antagonist and representative of all that is rejected in our societies. He is seen as too prideful or too despicable to be suffered as having any kind of important role or even to be acknowledged except as the repository of the sins of humankind. The social polarization of good and evil has created an archetypal personage that holds all the evil that has ever been committed by humans in the world, whether minor infractions and deviations from the expected norms or massive crimes against humanity and nature. Yet he is also the polar opposite of the Deity in monotheistic religious traditions, taking on the attributes of punisher, stern judge, and wrathful avenger as the dark side of the cultural Godhead. Since God is above and beyond the evil that afflicts the world, then it is up to God’s Shadow as the Devil to meet out justice and retribution.

As we learn by painful experiences, so too do we gain insight and wisdom through the struggles and critical ordeals that life presents us. Knowledge is often gained by bitter disappointments, and a life without struggle, resistance or pain is one that is devoid of constructive self-knowledge and self-improvement. Behind such lessons of life is our shadow, who seems to guide us as a primary instigator into and through life’s travails and difficulties. The shadow is both a guardian barring our way and a guide who instructs us in how to proceed, overcoming obstacles. Our greater lesson is to learn to be aware of the shadow’s psychic intuition and to listen to its teachings. As practitioners of magic, this is a crucial lesson to master.

The same holds for the cultural or world shadow as the archetype of the Devil, who shows us the darkness that we refuse to see, and instigates disruptive chaos against the seemingly mindless and the unwitting people who fail to hear and realize his warnings. Thus, Satan is both the punisher and also the teacher, indirectly overseeing the paths of the mage and the sage. Since the true aspect of the Deity is its unity, then the Devil, who is God’s shadow, represents that polar opposite which is necessary for the union of light and darkness to be fully realized. It is the joining of God and Satan into a single supremely paradoxical being that opens the doorway to true enlightenment and the realization of the One. 

Yet to only acknowledge the good Deity and to ignore or disparage its shadow is to create an even greater paradox, which is splitting the Deity and fostering a destructive duality that cannot be logically supported or resolved, since it denies the inherent unity of all things, material, mental and spiritual. We can see the damage that Christianity has unleashed on the world by passionately adhering to a dualistic spiritual perspective that divides the world into the faithful good and the unfaithful evil. Such divisions are always a precursor to religious oppression and then followed by violent persecution. Religious wars are the most destructive kind of civil violence humanity has ever unleashed or experienced. The balanced path between the archetypal agencies of light and darkness is the only path to peace and constructive interaction. In order for that state of peace to occur we must all accept the fact that there are unresolved paradoxes and mysteries within the soul of humanity and the Soul of the World. It is imperative that we accept them as they exist and not to try to resolve them through religious interdiction.

As magicians we travel the path of transformative initiation, ever mindful that such a milestone is achieved when we encounter our shadow self in a land of shadows, our psychic underworld. At the zenith of this powerful psychic process, we meet two personages: our shadow opposite with whom we must unite, and our image of paternal authority with whom we must gain approbation. This stage where we meet our shadow occurs as a kind of wedding or Hieros Gamos where opposites are ceremonially united, to be followed by a new dynamic of empowerment. The next stage in the hero’s journey is known as “Atonement with the Father,” which represents the realignment that must occur once the self is made whole again. This is the stage where the hero must take on the laws and judgements of their culture and social position. It is only when there is a new balance established between the light and darkness of the self, mitigated by the laws, ethics and social graces of the archetypal image of the hero’s home, that he is released from bondage to become the apotheosis of humankind.

 

 

Yet the father figure that demands atonement is characterized, in my opinion, by the Tarot trump the Devil XV. I have made this analogy in previous writings, and it is based on my comparative mapping between the hero’s stages and the trumps of the Tarot. It is the Devil who has a central role to play in this cyclic process of psychological death and rebirth. While the shadow represents to us the individual that tests and challenges us so that we might gain a unified psychic wholeness, it is the Devil who orchestrates this process and who rules the underworld. 

If we examine the Tarot trump the Devil, we see depicted on it two horned individuals with pointed tails, a naked man and woman, loosely (voluntarily) chained by their necks to a rock-like altar pedestal, jointly worshiping their diabolical master. In the center of the card stands the archetypal image of Satan in all his terrible glory. Upon this pedestal, he demonstrates in his pose the ultimate mystery in the words “solve et coagula” tattooed on his arms, one raised above pointing to the heavens and the other pointing to the ground. These words mean to dissolve and conjoin, which is the very process that the hero undergoes to achieve transformation. This Tarot trump is the mirror image of trump VI, the Lovers, representing a different kind of union of opposites. The Lovers VI is where the hero and his shadow join in the fusion of light and darkness as directed and sanctioned by a god, and the Devil XVI is where that union is tested, rectified and made whole. So, it would seem the entire mystery of our shadow work leads us to psychic union and transformation, where we receive the “devil’s mark” as a sign of our achievement. The two Tarot trumps are the key to this mystery, but first we must meet the Devil to determine our fate in this greater transformation.

 

Frater Barrabbas 

Path of Future Literary Works

 

This year, 2023, has been a banner year for me regarding writing and publishing books. By next August all five books of the “For Witches” series will be in print, and I will also have a beginner’s book published as well (“Mastering the Art of Witchcraft”). Additionally, my publisher has signed contracts with me to republish my first two books, “Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magic” and “Mastering the Art of Ritual Magic” and these will be back in print sometime next year. I also submitted the manuscript for my first grimoire, entitled “Liber Nephilim” and that book will begin the editing process next month. I expect that book to be in print before the year is out for 2024. In the list of these books is also one my crowning achievements, the Llewellyn title “Magical Qabalah for Beginners” - a book that is not really for beginners. By the time of the Winter Solstice, I will have ten books in print, four with Llewellyn, and six with Crossed Crows Books. That is an accomplishment that I thought would never occur, but it will soon be a reality. I also realize that what I have accomplished took a lot of time, research, writing, editing, revisions, and a lot of effort. I started writing my books in 2006, so that is an investment of 17 years.

Meanwhile, those who have been reading my blog for the last several years know that I have a lot more ritual lore and material than what I have written to date, and it will be at last time to begin to assemble that material into manuscripts, and from there, hopefully, into published books. I suspect that my current publisher will want to publish some of these ideas, but others I may have to self-publish, and I will do that so that all of this lore is made available to my reading public.

Since I have covered all of the lore, rituals and ceremonies associated with the basic and intermediate stages of the development of a pagan or witch who also is a practicing ritual magician that part of my work is completed. All of these books, except Liber Nephilim, represent what I believe someone needs to know in order to function as an intermediate to advanced ritual magician. Liber Nephilim is the first step of what I consider to be my more advanced ritual and magical lore. It is the first of its kind from my hand, but it represents only the first of nine additional books that I can assemble and write into publishable manuscripts. I have been practicing magic since I was a teenager, and the period of the 1980's through 2012, a period of over thirty years, was spent developing several advanced systems of ritual magic. Now that I am getting old and in the autumn years of my life, it becomes important for me to be able to publish the rest of this material so that others can possess and make use of it. It will be my legacy to the Wiccan and Pagan ritual magicians of my day, and perhaps it might find utility with others over the decades past the time when I am just an obscure footnote in history.

What I would like to do is to outline these future books so that you might apprise them and perhaps even make your opinion known to me through a message or an email. I haven’t actually decided on the order of the book projects, so you could also tell me your preference, and if enough people want a certain book project to be published sooner than later, I will take that under advisement.

Here is my list of eight projects that I would like to develop and publish as books for my magical colleagues to ponder and consider. I will seek to get them into manuscript form in the next three years or so and seek to have them published. I am hoping that by 2027, all of these books will be in print and available to whoever wants them. I am also hoping that this ambition on my part will at least get my ritual magician colleagues to examine and perhaps even attempt to adapt and perform some of these more advanced ordeals. That is my hope, but just helping to advance the ritual technology of western magic would be most satisfying.  

Abramelin Lunar Ordeal - I have always admired the Abramelin Ordeal, which is a severe meditative and liturgical based working that lasts from either one year or 18 months, depending on the version followed. It requires complete sequestration for a period of either one to three months, and that means that the adherent must retire from the world for that period of time. The ordeal consists of long periods of prayer and meditation, and requires a prepared room with a sand floor, casement windows, and other strict practices. All of these practices are performed with the singular purpose to invoke and manifest one’s Holy Guardian Angel. While I was intrigued with the outcome, the process seemed nearly impossible for me to consider because I had to work a regular job and couldn’t take the time off to properly perform it.

However, as a Witch and one who is more oriented to the moon, I was able to develop a lunar-based ordeal that lasted only 1.5 lunar cycles or around 40 days. Because the period was so abbreviated, I had determined that the time allotment needed to be filled with intense magical activity. So, the first four weekends were spent fully invoking the four Seraphim and the four Cherubim combined, which I considered to be super-archangels. Then, merging these eight powerful angels into a matrix, I summoned their godhead equivalents for each of the four elements, and fused them together into a powerful vortex with a triple tetrahedral gate structure. Upon this magical edifice, I performed the Bornless or Headless rite, revised with the four Qabalistic Worlds arranged as a step pyramid, where a revised invocation of my personal godhead was performed.

I had gone back to the PGM and extracted additional magical workings to go with the Bornless or Headless invocation rite, and added a magical ring consecration rite, assumption of great powers and an envisioning rite. The final working was the Alchemical Hierogamy Rite of Union, a magical rite based on the Rosicrucian alchemical wedding of Christian Rosencruetz.  All of these rituals were assembled to be part of what I have named the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, and I performed them in 2009. It was an amazing ordeal, and it unlocked for me the mysterious magic squares found in the Book of Abramelin the Mage. While this ordeal can be worked in place of the traditional ordeal, it will undoubtedly produce different results, although the overall purpose and outcome are similar. I have articles, diary entries and the rituals already assembled into a folder. All I need to do is to pull it together into a manuscript with revisions, annotations and explanations. I believe that I could put together a manuscript in a couple of months, since most of the work is already done.

Liber Nephilim Additum - I have already submitted the manuscript for Liber Nephilim, but in writing this book, I left a lot of ritual lore out of this edition because it would have made the book too large and unwieldy. What was left out was the Enochian Ordeal of the 49 Bonarum, where I invoked seven of the Bonarum and pulled them together into a vortex to invoke the 8th, which was Camara, in a ritual named the Septagramic Vortex Gate ritual. That whole part of the Enochian ordeal was not included in the first book. Then there is the Enochian Mystery Vortex, mentioned several times but excluded from the first book. Additionally, there were the invocations of Seth and Enoch, the evocations of Ramat’el, Turiel, and Samael as Shaitan, and their associated diaries. This book would provide all of the material that was developed, used, and explored in the overall Nephilim working. I believe that providing this additional set of ritual lore and discussions about the Bonarum as the binary planetary intelligences, and how to invoke them and their overall psychological impact. Assembling and writing this manuscript would take only around three months, so it would also represent a task of refining and revising the ritual lore omitted from the first book. Both books together would supply the complete set of ritual lore to perform and replicate the Nephilim working.

These two books would represent my submissions for 2024, although there a more possibilities sitting around on my hard drive from workings that I have done previously.  

Talismanic Portae Lucis working: After developing and performing the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, I became acquainted with a magical ordeal and process that quite intrigued me. I am referring, of course, to the writings and teaching of the late Jean Dubuis, who was a French occultist, alchemist and magician. His system of magic combined spagyric forms of alchemy with astrological magic and the Qabalah. A central magical operation within Mr. Dubuis’ occult system was a process whereby a person could achieve a direct connection and report with powers and intelligences of the Supernal Triad. He called this the Experience of Eternity, and it was a necessary step for a magician to achieve the proper connection and linkage with his or her higher self. It seemed like a logical step from gaining the knowledge and conversation with one’s Holy Guardian Angel.

I studied his ordeal named “Portae Lucis” and discovered that I could replicate this ordeal using revised lore for working talismanic magic that I already possessed. His various practices and the use of spagyric alchemy seemed of lesser importance when compared to the crafting of powerful talismans that would represent the charged empowered representations of the Qabalistic Sephiroth of Yesod (Moon), Tiphareth (Sun) and Binah (Saturn) representing the pathway of the gateway of light to the supernal triad. What I proposed to do instead of the passive talismanic workings and the various ancillary practices, including the creation of spygyric alchemical medicines, was to forge these talismans with each of the four element configurations of a specific planetary talismanic elemental spirit, using a metallic talisman associated with the planet. Each planetary talisman would thus contain each of the four elements of four specific talismanic elementals, thereby supercharging them as tools in building the gateway of light. In addition, I also generated a fourth talisman of Mercury to represent myself and the magical (Hermetic) process that I was seeking to manifest.

After generating these four super-charged talismans, according to the rites and time-line of the lunar mansions, I was prepared to perform the final working on the auspicious hour of the sun on the day of the Summer Solstice, when the light had achieved its maximum power. The working produced extraordinary results, and it was very successful, showing that a magical idea or ordeal concept can be developed in a number of different ways. It was an amazing ordeal, and one that I documented in my magical diaries. While some in the occult community were surprised and pleased with my approach, the traditionalists fiercely condemned and discounted the working. Later on, I managed to generate the three remaining super-charged metallic talismans and then built a magical machine that could produce any amount of material manifestations for me, and it has served me quite well during the years since I produced them.

All of the ritual lore, documentation and diaries for this working, and the extended workings covering the three additional talismans, and the creation of a magical machine would be part of this book. It would require me to assemble this material, revising and editing it, and produce a manuscript, but I believe that it would take only four months to complete this book project. I think that the occult community would find my approach to this working to be clear, modern and succinct. I would stipulate that it would not produced the exact results that the original ordeal would produce, but it would still be representative because it seeks to achieve the same results overall.

Other book projects that I am contemplating would represent workings that I developed and performed decades ago. They are still quite relevant today, and they represent the advanced workings and lore of the magical order that I helped to found. The advanced workings were completely my invention, and they were brought into the workings of the order because they had been developed in the 1980's and 1990's, and into the early 2000's.

Ordeal XV - the workings of the Gnostic Tetrasacramentary, consisting of the liturgical and magical workings of Thelema, Agape, Eros and Thanatos. These rites would include the specific Gnostic Mass with Benediction exerps, a Gnostic seasonal calendar, evocation rites of the specific Gnostic Avatar, and then the set of four rites of the Tabernacle of Sothis and the associated Black Rite. Other rites of sacramentation would include baptism, marriage, requiem, confirmation and holy orders. These rites would represent the complete set of workings associated with the four different Gnostic systems of religious magic.  This Ordeal is thus named because of the joining of the octagram and the septagram to generate a spiritual being able to represent a system of Gnosis, thereby becoming its avatar. It is also the number of the tarot card The Devil, which represents the powers associated with initiation. A performance all four of these sets of workings would fully activate their own gnostic magical powers to manifest these philosophies and their visionary impact into the material world. These are the liturgical and magical workings of a true Gnostic Priest or Priestess.

Art and Practice of Archaeomancy - this is a system that I developed over twenty years ago, but it represents the very cutting edge of magical workings.

The word Archaeomancy is one that I coined in the obscure magickal fellowship of the Order of the Gnostic Star and means the “magick of the source” (ἀρχή - arche - principle, origin; and - μαντεία - manteia - prophetic power). The art of Archeomancy is defined as the magical ritual method of exploring the Qabalist Inner Planes. These Inner Planes have many various definitions. Because of this difference, there are two methodologies that I developed. The first is the Archaeomancy of the 40 Qabalistic Worlds, where the inner planes are defined as the ten Sephiroth of the Qabalah, as superimposed through the four Qabalistic worlds. The combination of the Qabalistic Pyramid of Power and Enneagram Invocation rite combined with a double gateway would allow one to freely pass into the Qabalistic Inner Plane domain to gain visions, insights and to accrue and manifest its powers into the material world.

The second is the Archaeomancy of the eighteen Qabalistic Dimensions. The dimensions are the triangular shapes that exist in the Tree of Life structure that are outlined by the Sephiroth and the pathways. In addition, the Enochian ordeal workings defined the angular vectors of the paths and Sephirah as being the locations where the Aethyrs resided, where instead of 30, there were 56. These triangular dimensions were interior spaces in the Tree of Life that held profound transformative powers. I managed to develop the ritual lore to enter into two of the lowest of these dimensions, and my experiences were extremely profound. The inner and most secret teachings of the spiritual Qabalah are to be found in the dimensions, and entering one of them allows the wisdom of them all to be revealed. What I experienced so inexplicable that I can hardly describe them here, but for a Qabalistic magician, these workings represent the very height of what might be realized.

Both systems of magic were described and developed from the Enochian ordeals that I performed in the early 1990's associated with my Nephilim workings. I have diary notes and details to back up the event of these workings. All of this lore, documentation and some diary entries would be included in the manuscript that I would pull together.

Two other ordeals that I developed and performed during the late 1980's and then the late 1990's were the Ordeal of the Four Gnostic Temples, and the Ordeal of the Stellar Seven-Rayed Gnosis. These ordeals represent the ritualized challenges of self-initiation by ordeal of the Sixth and Seventh Degrees, respectively.

The Four Temples, or Tessarenoi, were performed to generate a living particle from the four-fold vortex spinning black-hole gateway opening into four different universes based on the tetrasacramentary in Ordeal XV. Each of these particles represented a living sacramental attribute of the godhead of a Gnostic sacramental system or universe, and could be used to powerfully sacralize material objects, and to act as a manifested source of godhead in the material world. I experienced them as alchemical stones that produce intense transmutations.

The Stellar Seven-Rayed Ordeal is the means to establishing a conduit of the fifth Gnostic sacramental system, which is symbolized by the Star, or more specifically, the Gnostic Septagram of the Seven Qabalistic Rays. Performing this rite would give the operator the ability to channel the seven sacramental virtues into the material world, transforming that individual into a fully empowered hierophant, a master of the spiritual and material worlds. These two ordeals, Four Temples and Seven-Rayed Star could also be assembled and made into manuscript books, to be published, depending on the need and desires of my reading public.

Rites and Ceremonies of the Order of the Gnostic Star - If I actually managed to get into print all of the above books, which would be a total of seven books, then I should also assemble all of the rest of the lore of the magical Order of the Gnostic Star, and publish it as well. What that would do is place into the hands of any knowledgeable and experienced occultist the ability to form their own magical lodge based on the rites and Gnostic liturgies of my magical order, without having to consult with me or anyone else. The material would be out there for anyone to use, and if someone really wanted to formally assemble a group then they could write me and get my imprimatur and recognition. Otherwise, they would be free to use this material in whatever manner they might wish, forming a group or working solitary. This lore would contain the initiations, the seasonal and lodge based ceremonies, the workings of elemental and talismanic magic, the Grail mysteries and their associated rites and ceremonies, and the overall philosophical perspective of a pagan-based Gnosis that is world affirming and nature oriented, instead of the antinomian tendencies of Gnosis in antiquity and in some circles in the present times.

A final literary endeavor would be to write up my biography. I have been writing this text for some time, but I am behind and need to catch up to the present. I am not done with my magical research and practices, so there would be more to add to it before it would be printed (I hope). I also have a biographical piece about my experiences with the Coven from Hell, or my four formative years with the Schnoebelens, who abandoned Wicca and the practice of high magic to become fundamentalist preachers. My four years in that group is an eye opener, for certain, and it was written as a response to Bill’s book “Wicca: Satan’s Little White Lie”, which I found to be full of falsehoods and misrepresentations, although also revealing things about Wicca that made it seem diabolical. I posted this work in five parts on my blog, but I would like to eventually publish it.

So, that is the full set of writing and publishing that I would like to do in the next few years. I am not certain if my current publisher would be on board with all of these projects, so I might have to self-publish some of them. I feel that this work is important and should be shared with the greater occult community, so I will work towards getting it in print in some manner for the sake of posterity, and to ensure that this lore is not lost when I finally depart this world forever.

Frater Barrabbas