Strange Phenomena of Magick

Many of the books and articles that I have read about magic presuppose that magic functions in a linear fashion. It starts with the preparations, culminates with a ritual performance of some kind, and ends (hopefully) with the desired effect. Magic would seem to be about influencing the natural cause and effect mechanisms that appear to operate in the world. A magically influenced event must therefore be triggered by a magical action. It seems so simple, but actually it’s this definition that is overly simplistic and not the process of magic itself. In fact, anyone who has experienced magic over a long period of time would likely tell you that magical processes are highly complex despite the mechanism employed by the magician.

There doesn’t appear to be a clean and simple representation of magic. It is never an associative process of “do these things and this desired event will occur,” since if magic was that simple it would be used as such by everyone and be a part of everyone’s repertoire of life-based actions. Being successful in life, however that might be defined, often involves many factors that are not tangible to the one who is striving. There is such a thing as “good luck” and “bad luck” when dealing with chance occurrences and probabilities, with which even the most hard headed and practical individual must cope.

As a beginning magician or sorcerer often discovers, magical effects and predicting the results of magical actions is slightly better (or worse) than chance. Perhaps that slight advantage can make all the difference, but the whole cause and effect perspective about magical performance might be too simplistic to deal with the actual reality of how magic works and what it really does. It is also possible that our collective sense and perspective on causality might not be particularly well informed or nuanced to notice that when magic is involved in a given situation, many strange and bizarre things can occur.

In the many years that I have performed magical workings and operations, I have found that the phenomena associated with magic is peculiar, quixotic and even downright strange at times. For many years I have adopted the opinion, or should I say that it has been forced on me by circumstances, that magical effects, operations and workings seem to represent a view of reality that is anything but straightforward, linear, sequential, or predictive in a cause and effect manner. I know that my opinion in this matter is not very popular because it argues that the generalization and modeling of magical practices and effects is misleading and probably far too restrictive.

If one were to classify the kind of magic that I work using the available models then I could be said to be using a highly extended and expanded energy model. I also incorporate the spirit model, or spirit plus, because the foundation of this magic is based on my use of a projected godhead as my higher self intermediary. I also use the information model, since I make complex declarations in my ritual workings as a part of my overall magical exegesis, not to mention the complex sigil systems that I employ to construct magical links. 

The psychology model is also well represented in my work since the rites that I employ are written in such a fashion that they can be used by nearly anyone. I also extensively employ the “As If” magical tool to build my own personal mythology with deep psychological imprints to push the envelope in my own self-definition and expand the world that I live in. Perhaps because I am intensely using all of these models of magic, particularly the energy model (by employing vortices, pyramids, spirals, pylons, and geometric prismatic energy structures), I have found that the phenomena of magic is startlingly peculiar. Allow me to explain what I mean by this declaration.

Over the years I have experienced some very odd phenomena when performing magical operations and focusing magical effects into my life process. While these are particularly subjective experiences they are not limited to what I have experienced. I have performed these kinds of rites with other people on a number of occasions and everyone who participated had similar experiences. So, I have eliminated the possibility that I have just hallucinated these strange occurrences. Here is my list of weird happenings.

• Magical results for a particular working begin to happen before the rite is even performed. I refer to this phenomenon as a causality collapse, and I have experienced other situations where the perception of time has been slowed down or startlingly increased. Time dilation and causality distortion seem to be a part of the typically overlooked attributes of magical phenomenon.

• Magical effects can occur without any ritual being performed, or any intention of a ritual to be performed at a future date. It would seem that just being immersed in magic and its regular practice can cause phenomena to occur unbidden.

• Performing the same ritual over time can produce wildly differing results for the same person or different persons. Sometimes the experiences are analogous, but other times they are completely and radically different. The opposite can also happen, where a single ritual can produce very similar results when performed by different people at different times. It would seem that the effect of a magical operation cannot be cleanly or clearly predicted with any accuracy.

• Sometimes magical effects operate as if they are somehow “sentient” and able to either subtly interact with the operator or even anticipate his or her objective. I don’t know how many times I have either said or heard someone say that when working magic you don’t always get what you want, but more often, you get what you need (or deserve).

• Performing magical operations often produce far more effects than are intended by the operator. Sometimes these additional effects are more engaging, interesting and desirable than the original objective. Magical effects can appear to permeate one’s conscious perspective of reality itself and can reveal things in dreams, fantasy, and even in mundane occurrences. The impact of synchronicity has often been downplayed or omitted when talking about the effects of a magical operation, but I have found that it often occurs. Magical operations can have residual effects, and these can be experienced days, months or even years later.

• Magical operations that are performed in a given space (temple) or focused in specific area (shrine or temporary working area) seem to accumulate a kind of residual field that has the capability to produce magical effects without any directive from the operator. (I have found that this is particularly true when working with a vortex in a temple environment. Even after it is sealed, the vortex continues to operate as a latent field because it cannot be banished.)

Perhaps the most interesting question that any magician could ask is whether or not magic as a phenomena can exist distinctly and separately from the magician who is generating it. Does magic begin and stop with the magician who is utilizing it, or is magic a kind of sentient and energized field that somehow resides in consciousness? If spirits can be said to exist distinctly (as psychic objects) and outside of our focused awareness or personalized perspectives then perhaps magic can also be said to be a very subtle and distinct unified field pervading consciousness. Maybe magicians only tap into something that is already there, and cause it to be consciously realized and activated for a specific objective. Perhaps magic is itself an egregore.

My experiences with magic are such that it seems to be a sentient process with which we interact for various reasons. Everyone and anyone can interact with it, but the mechanism might be prayer, pious offerings or personal sacrifice, grief and despair momentarily acquitted by hope, joy and insight instead of magical rituals. Magic might be a lot more common than we think, but far more complex, mysterious and subtle. This is because it has an inherent “beingness” that interacts with people on many different levels, but never functions as a mindless phenomenon prodded into action through the use of tools and occult artifices.

Those who work magic consistently for over a period of years develop an odd kind of magical aura around them that I call the “Process.” While I believe that magic itself is a sentient being that interacts with magicians, I have also observed what seems to be an aspect or attribute of the self functioning as the personal magical field of a magician. Sometime I can sense this emanating from another magician, and sometimes I have even visually perceived it as an entity that is bound to them and operates through them, but also acts like a localized field of magic. What I am attempting to describe is a kind of sentient energy field or egregore that appears to be attached to a magician. It not only produces minor magical phenomena, but it also seems to interact with the magician in order to guide and protect them.

I have declared that the magical Process can guide the magician to his or her ultimate goal (assisted with the Higher Self as personal godhead), but only if he or she will listen and be attentive to what is being communicated. The Process doesn’t talk to the magician because it operates on a very deep and subtle level of his or her being, so the art of listening to one’s Process is neither easy nor direct. Of course, my conjectures here could be readily dismissed as subjective nonsense, but what I trying to communicate is that magical processes are more complex, sentient and interactive than we understand them to be. There seems to be much more going on than what is typically written in books and articles about magic, and that magic is an odd, quixotic and sometimes, even chaotic phenomenon.

I have written other articles about the weird and strange phenomena regarding magical operations and magical effect, and you can find them here, and here. Many magicians find my ideas to be distasteful and troubling because I am proposing that magic is not straightforward nor is it something that will ever be able to be measured or described by science. It is one of the many mysterious elements of the overall phenomena of consciousness itself, and I am doubtful that science will ever successfully define what consciousness is due to the fact that human awareness, from the perspective of science, must be materially determined as a function of neurology. If that were so then spirits (or gods) couldn’t have an objective existence and magical energy would only be the product of a curious neurological phenomenon. We haven’t even gotten into a discussion of the meaningfulness of magical processes from a visual and linguistic perspective, and that would indeed seem to contradict, for now, the edits of science regarding neurology.

For this reason I am completely happy and content to observe magical occurrences from a subjective standpoint and to discuss what I and others have experienced. We will try to make sense of it all and attempt to teach and share methodologies that are less idiosyncratic and more overall objective, neat, orderly and seemingly factual. However, magic itself is actually very difficult (if not impossible) to quantify, measure and predict in a rational and scientific manner. What we long-time practitioners end up doing is sharing our own methodologies and experiences and allow others to help us determine what is real from a subjective perspective and what is our own personal, hubristic fantasy.

Frater Barrabbas

Nature of the Egregore in Ritual Magick

In a recent previous article I mentioned the term “egregore”, which I defined as a group-mind or group spirit of an assembly of individuals. Specifically, the egregore is properly defined as “an autonomous psychic entity made up of, and influencing, the thoughts of a group of people.” The word is derived from the Greek “egregoroi,” which means “watchers.” Scientific aspects of this phenomenon are found in the psychological studies of “group think” and the phenomenon of “risky shift”, where a group of people are more prone to take risks when addressing them collectively than they would individually. From the perspective of scientific psychology, a group appears to influence the functioning of individuals who are a part of it, even if they are unaware of that influence. So there appears to be a scientific basis to the concept of the egregore.

The term egregore is in general usage amongst occultists to describe the essential nature of groups or organizations, but has a very specific application in the practices of ritual magick. An egregore is related to a thought form, since they are basically derived from the same  psychic material that forms the foundation of conscious sentience. Egregores differ from thought forms because they are generated from the dynamic and intense interactions of groups of people, and they are usually not deliberately created. Magicians sometimes confuse the two, thinking that one can conjure up an egregore in a similar manner that a thought form can be generated. Making contact with an egregore is a tricky and difficult task, especially if one is outside or not a member of the group. Yet there are tall tales of certain magicians conjuring corporate egregores and attempting to contact and manipulate them in order to manipulate the corporation itself in an indirect manner.

Whether one can actually manipulate a corporate egregore indirectly and from the outside is subject to debate. I am of the mind that while one may be able to contact such an entity, attempting to manipulate it without directly engaging the principle decision makers may accomplish nothing. From my perspective, one would be better served performing a spell against the CEO of some company rather attempting to control it through it’s egregore. Of course, putting a spell on the head of a corporation, especially if that person is a complete stranger, is probably futile as well as absurd.

Still, a corporate egregore would be identified by the corporate logo, motto, advertising slogans and other identifying qualities. Certainly, if one were going to attempt to psychically access a corporate egregore, all of the materials needed would be easily available, since corporate branding does unwittingly establish a kind of collective identity that a magician may access. Establishing magickal access to a corporate egregore would probably produce information of a questionable value and usefulness. I will leave the question of how useful such information would be to others. Though I can well imagine that secret manipulations, acquiring confidential information and determining future stock prices might be something that an enterprising magician with a business knack might consider doing once access to the egregore was established. However, I am deeply skeptical that anyone could obtain accurate and useful information by performing this kind of magick unless they were one of the principle decision makers already inside the company. Perhaps if this ever becomes a viable magickal methodology, there may yet be born a kind of corporate sorcery.

As absurd as the notion of accessing the corporate egregore seems to be, the idea itself is quite sound when used on occult organizations and groups practicing magick. One would assume that an occult organization, which collectively performs ceremonies and engages in meditation or magickal practices, would produce a powerful egregore that one could tap into and engage in a manner similar to performing an invocation. Whether this methodology could be used to steal the secret teachings and knowledge of an organization or manipulate that organization is debatable, probably for the same reasons sited above about corporate egregores.

However, it’s quite possible to obtain and acquire useful personal information or even full immersion by connecting to the egregore of an occult organization or group. This can be accomplished even if the group or organization is no longer active or functioning, and even if the one performing the magick is neither initiated nor affiliated with that group. Of course, the knowledge gained is very subjective and personal, which means that its over-all usefulness is determined by the effectiveness, intuition and insightfulness of the practitioner. It also helps if one extensively researches the target occult organization, building up a foundation of historical and practical information about that group.

As stated previously, a practitioner must possess a body of information to work with, such as the logo, motto, doctrines, beliefs, teachings, principle members and whatever else one might be able to find. Of course, the more knowledge that one has about a given group, the greater the clarity and accuracy of the derived egregore, once it’s invoked. Having less knowledge and information about a group will produce a very nebulous and insubstantial access to the egregore, so it’s important to do as much research and information gathering as possible before attempting to contact an egregore. This is perhaps why it would be quite difficult to obtain a substantive egregore access to an ancient organization, particularly if there is little information about that group and all practicing members are long dead. The Templars come to mind, as well as many of the mystery cults of antiquity, like Orphism, Pythagorianism, Rites of Eleusis or Mithraicism.

It’s also possible to reverse the process and generate an egregore of a fictitious organization. What is required is for the magician to produce the lore and other materials necessary, which would done exactly as if what was being researched was a real organization. With all of this fake lore being instilled with a serious “As If” approach by the magician, the fictional group would become “real” when he or she summoned and invoked the egregore of that group. In such a magickal process, reality becomes something that the magician subjectively experiences, even if the masters and secret chiefs are fictional (and they usually are).

A magician needs to use discretion and a certain amount of objectivity to retain a balanced perspective when performing any kind of egregore invocation, whether the organization is real, legendary or completely fictitious. This is because it is all too easy to become obsessed and paranoid with the notion of secret societies plotting against the world and oneself. 

How does one contact an egregore? The mechanism that I use is the same one used to perform a simple invocation exercise. The key components consist of the following list.

• Determining the symbolic logo,
• Find a possible spirit name,
• Draw a sigil and consecrate it,
• Build up a descriptive imago,
• Perform a simple invocation ritual with the above elements.

   
The simple invocation rite consists of the following steps:

1. Determine the quality of the base (an element, planet, zodiacal sign, sephirah, etc.) - set this to the four watchtowers. Derive a four letter formula that describes the base. Use this formula to qualify the four watchtowers. A description of that formula part may also be developed and used.

2. Draw the four watchtowers together into the center of the circle. Generate a vortex with a widdershins circuit of the circle - three times. Standing in the center of the circle, define the base formula as a word of power, and summon and invoke the egregore for the first time.

3. Establish a Western oriented gateway. Use Tarot trumps to qualify the three gate nodes. Charge the gate nodes with a trapezoidal cross and invoking spiral. Draw the three nodes together through the ultra-point, forming a tetrahedral gate structure. Perform the opening portal gesture facing the West and then intone the invocation of the egregore and summon it a second time.

4. Draw an internal circle and step into it, expanding it to the periphery of the magick circle. Place a charged sigil of the egregore in the center of the circle, draw an invoking spiral around it. Sit before the sigil and light an offering of incense. (An offering of consecrated bread and wine can also be given.) Intone the descriptive imago of the egregore, and then intone the third and final invocation. Call and summon the egregore to you again and again, then meditate deeply, assume a trance state and contact the egregore, note everything that is seen and heard.

5. Once the working is ended, perform the closing portal gesture to the West, and then a sealing spiral to the three gate nodes and the four watchtowers - the rite is ended.

If a magician uses the above simple rite of summoning to contact an egregore, and all of the required components are thoroughly developed, then I am certain that some kind of contact will be made. However, this is not a single action that is done just once (perhaps to test the hypothesis), it is done repeatedly over time, so that the contact is built up and matured until it is a tangible and reliable source of occult teachings and extended lore. Remember, the more information that one possesses about a given organization, the more detailed and defined the contact with the egregore will be. This is a critical point that the magician must carefully understand.

The kinds of occult organizations or egregores that the magician may tap is endless, yet I would be remiss if I didn’t identify a few for the sake of making some recommendations.

Possible Occult Egregores to Access:

The Secret and Invisible Rosicrucian Order of High Adepts

The Original Golden Dawn, circa 1890's.

Inner Esoteric Order of the Theosophical Society (including the Mahatmas), circa 1880's

Pre-Crowley German Ordo Templi Orientis

Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, circa 1870's

Grand Lodge of Egyptian Masonry, circa 1780's

Bavarian Brotherhood of Illuminati

Knights of the Holy Grail (Modern Adaption of the Templars)

Sacred High Order of Druid Masters

Elders of the Secret Society of Stregheria

Ascended Masters of the Western Mystery Tradition

Guild Masters of Goetic Magick

etc.

The list is only as infinite as the imagination.

Frater Barrabbas