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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Frater Barrabbas

My Problem With Grimoire Purists and Strict Traditionalists

"My wand is better than your wand!"

There seems to be a never ending argument between those who espouse the literal adaptation of Grimoires as they currently exist and those who follow a path of eclecticism, experimentation and creative adaptation. Neither point of view has any kind of absolute correctness or truth about it, because in many ways both approaches have their own virtues and failings. What bothers me about those who are strict followers of tradition and who declare that the old grimoires are the only pure source of magical lore is their smug certainty and absolutism. If someone wants to use the methodologies and tools as they are depicted in one or several of the old grimoires then that is wholly their own choice and personal obligation. If they honor a particular traditional path through their unstinting adherence to every detail and nuance then that is clearly their chosen path, and I say more power to them. However, the moment someone says that their path is the only legitimate way to practice ceremonial or ritual magick then they have completely lost me.

I have written about this issue in previous articles where I have discussed what I consider to be the actual issues facing anyone who wants to use one of the old grimoires. I have also talked about the obvious fracture in the community between those who are engaging in a creative adaptation against those who advocate a strict adherence to the old traditions. You can find those articles here and here.

The real issue here is whether the magic that one practices actually makes a difference in the life the magician. The core question is whether the magician is competent at working magic and that he or she can produce tangible and verifiable results through their magic. In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter if one is using a grimoire in an exacting and precise manner. It doesn’t matter that his or her magical tools are perfectly fashioned according to the dictates of the tradition or that the rites and liturgy employed are accurate and valid. What is important is whether the methods and tools employed by the magician are executed with the magician’s full intention, realization, and personal empowerment; that they ultimately produce the intended results.

What I have found in over 40 years of working magic and sharing lore with many magicians is that magic is a very individualized phenomenon. That magicians can employ many tools and techniques whether from traditional sources or modern inventions and still get the same comparable results. Whether the wand was made out of alchemical gold engraved with rare arcane symbols and glyphs or it was just an unusual stick found in the woods, the magic generated doesn’t seem to vary much. Esthetics are a good mechanism for refining tools and techniques, but still, a competent magician makes do with whatever he or she can afford to buy or make themselves. Just to make certain that my point is completely understood by everyone, esthetics, by itself, doesn’t produce better magic. There is no point in arguing how much better your wand is than someone else's, not to mention that it sounds a bit like grotesque posturing.

One of the more popular tropes going around these days is the grimoire-only purist or traditionalist approach to performing forms of spirit invocation and evocation. The argument goes something like that the magicians of the previous age knew what they were doing and the grimoires that they wrote represent a true tradition of magic, and that now, after centuries of neglect and omission, we should pick up what they unwittingly passed down to us and use that above all other methodologies or techniques to work magic. In fact, it has been implied that we would be better served if we tossed out all of the current magical lore collected over the last hundred years or so and started fresh with one of the more older grimoires.

It is believed by these pundits that the older grimoires represented a purer time when magic wasn’t so encumbered by the corruption and fallacies of our modern times. In fact, I have heard it said that the better magician is one who didn’t bother to learn any of the modern systems of magic. They say, start with one of the old grimoires and master it over time, and only then you will be guaranteed to be competent, powerful and masterful in all things. Well, that is the ideal, but in my humble opinion it falls quite short of producing the awesome results that some have said it would. Why is that? Is there something more to mastering magic than just mastering one of the old grimoires?

That is an important question, in my opinion. If you follow the supposed traditional lore, how could you possibly go wrong? Well, I believe that you would be missing quite a bit, since the culture and mind-set that produced that grimoire has long since vanished from our world. We can attempt to approximate that culture and mind-set, but then we are entering into the debatable world of reconstructionism instead of actually attempting to learn how to work magic in this current time and age. That is a problem, but it is only one of many problems.

The grimoires available to us today are translations from original manuscripts or in some cases, rare published documents. The manuscripts can include additional or appropriated materials not part of the archetypal original, and some of early published books are sometimes distillations of several manuscripts. The fact is that there wasn’t one definitive version of a grimoire. There were hundreds of variations of a specific titled grimoire, and many of these variations didn’t survive to the current age. What we have today is only a small fraction of the actual grimoires that were available to savants in the 16th and 17th centuries. We know this is true because the notables who collected books and had their own libraries often employed someone to compile lists of the books that they possessed, and these lists varied over time. From these lists of books library historians today have been able to determine that over one third of the books owned by notables in that time had something to do with the occult. (A smaller number were hard-core grimoires.)

So today, we have only a small portion of that written expertise, and from that small fraction of lore we are supposedly capable of reconstructing a culture and world-view that has been gone for over five centuries? It is hard enough to derive meaning and significance from occult books written in the 19th century. Attempting to do this with books written in academic Latin from the 16th century would be a daunting challenge. I know that I am not skilled enough to do this, and I doubt that most magical practitioners are either. A few of us might have this skill, but in the end, I think that it won’t make up for all of the missing cultural beliefs and the mind-set of the time. That, I believe, is lost to us forever, and it is one of the more important keys to being able to reconstruct the grimoire tradition from the previous age.

If reconstruction to that degree of viability isn’t possible then what is? It doesn’t matter what you do to learn how to practice magic nor does it matter what tradition or technique you use; you will have to spend a considerable amount of time developing, practicing and experimenting. It doesn’t matter how much material, knowledge, expertise you or your mentors might possess. In the end it is simply and clearly necessary for you to practice and experiment, and to do this intensively and consistently for a period of several years. Over time you will discover what works for you and what doesn’t work. You will discard things that are unworkable or clearly wrong and you will pick up ideas from your own experimentation or from books or other magicians. Your early years will be frustrating and you will likely experience many more failures than successes. Clearly, whatever intentions or ideals that you brought into this enterprise will change over time, and it is more likely that they will change quite a lot. When you finally build up a competent practice of magic, you might not even recognize the lore that you started out with.

What I am saying is that in order to master any system of magic you have to first learn how to practice it. Another important point is that each magician is tasked with developing a magical system that works for them, and this is, as I have said, an evolving process. I believe that we, as magicians, are tasked with making our magic relevant, workable and effective in this post-modern world that we live. We learn, we adapt and we evolve our own system of magic, even if we are engaged in a traditional path, or we are learning experientially by the seat of our pants. This is a process that has been a part of the regimen of learning and mastering the art of magic for a long time, and it has probably been that way since the very beginning or origin of magic itself.  

Therefore, with these important points in mind, it does seem foolish for someone to claim that all magicians must practice their magic using a specific approach or by adopting a methodology that was used in the previous age. What is important is engaging in a system of magic that works and is relevant to our current epoch. We can’t go back in time to try to determine how people thought, believed and practiced their magic back in the 16th century, so we might as well admit that our modern approach is to adapt, evolve and develop something that is actually new and different than what has been practiced in the past. I think that admitting this common approach to all forms of magical mastery is not only important, but it is also honest and inclusive. There are no absolute rules associated with a competent practice of magic and I think that chaos magicians have shown this to be abundantly clear.

That being said, if someone seeks to use one of the old grimoires then there will be some substitutions and adaptations that one will need to make in order to successfully perform the operations listed in it. Of course, this is where one’s own particular spiritual perspective comes into play. If you are a Christian then you will can take the prayers and the spiritual hierarchy found in the grimoires at face value. I do think that Christians who evoke demons and deal directly with the various Infernal Princes and Chiefs is likely compromising their faith, but that’s just my opinion. I am not a Christian nor a monotheist. Thus I wouldn’t approach any of these entities in the same supposedly hostile manner that adherents of the Abrahamic faith would have to in order to maintain their religious integrity. Giving offerings and making deals with various spirits is a necessary part of the magic that I do when fully engaged with the Spirit Model of magic.

However, I don’t have much spiritual affinity with Satan, the Devil, or any of the other many names that this entity has been labeled over the millennia. My religion doesn’t have an dualistic archenemy who must ultimately be vanquished, so I don’t believe in the Devil. I also don’t think that the name Lucifer signifies what either present day Christians and/or grimoire traditionalists believe that it signifies. As a Witch, I have reserved the name Lucifer to be understood using the actual Latin translation of “Light Bearer” and therefore would consider it to be an alternative name for the Sun God. When I encounter the name Lucifer or Lucifuge Rofocal in a grimoire, I am not convinced that the entity's name is synonymous with Satan. I also think that the name Beelzebub sounds kind of silly and I would have a hard time trying to summon that entity without laughing out loud, but I digress from my topic.

When it comes down to the names of the Infernal Princes, I find that these entities are more silly and childishly bugaboo than dark, evil, scary and awesome spiritual intelligences. Many would disagree with me on that particular point, and it is after all, just my opinion. Still, if these entities represent the kind of spirits that you want to engage then that is your business and it is none of my business. Just don’t tell me that what I am doing is not being true to the magic of the grimoires, or spirit magic writ large, if I happen to pass up dealing with those entities. If that is the basis to your magic then so be it. You can treat them like demigods or as hostile and evil intelligences, but it will not affect me nor what I do. We can just agree to not agree and move on with our collective work.  

One point that I will make about engaging with these entities as they were depicted and perceived in the 16th and 17th centuries and written about in the various contemporary black magic grimoires is that they seem to perpetuate and glorify what I believe to be the ignorance and superstitions of those times. To push this theme forward and to lionize it as an important part of the work with old grimoires is, in my opinion, perpetuating the vices and blindness of the previous age. I believe that what we should be doing is basing our work on a foundation of modern thinking and scholarship. We should not promote the superstitions and absurd notions of a previous age, however legitimate they might contextually seem to be. I think that those who have taken this approach would be better served if they instead questioned what is authentic and real in these books regarding our present post-modern world.

Once you have to actually work magic and engage with the spirits found in the old grimoires then you end up being schooled on what is real vs. what is legitimate. This is one of the many ongoing battles between pragmatic and creative practitioners of the magic and those who seem to have a more scholarly and reconstructive bent, but I think that there really isn’t any battle since both methods appear to produce useful and workable systems of magic. The difference is that no system of magic performed today by magicians is like what was practiced in the previous age.

Thus I feel that the snobbery of traditionalist, grimoire-only practitioners and purists is completely unwarranted and exaggerated. Their swagger and smugness is only a pretentious and shallow act hiding their obvious insecurity and likely incompetence. Let us not give them any more credence than what they actually deserve, which is none.

Frater Barrabbas

Some Issues Regarding Grimoire Magick

Persecution of Heresy - Beginning of the Great Divide Between the Old and Modern World

Every day there seems to be another grimoire manuscript that is being published by some high quality book publisher, and it would seem that the volume of published and available material hasn't in any way diminished the demand. It would appear that an important factor for the popularity of the old grimoires is vested in the magical idea that somehow we should emulate the magical practitioners of the late middle ages and early renaissance. In fact, there is a movement within the practice of ceremonial magick that stipulates that all anyone really has to do is to choose an appropriately antique grimoire and practice it exactly as it was written, with no substitutions or revisions.

There is also the mind-set that such works were written by masters of their craft, and that they should therefore be wholly adopted without any changes or revisions. Thus, in the discipline of high magick, we seem to be overrun these days with individuals who are purists and nearly fundamentalistic in their approach to working with the old grimoires. Happily, I can state that I am not one of them, and I think that such an attitude is problematic at best and an insufferable arrogance at worst. Let me explain what I mean by this loaded and opinionated statement.

It’s my opinion that these purists are the occult absolutists in our field of magick. They are the ones who vow a strict adherence to their sources and who condemn others who are not so strict, in other words, those terrible gadfly revisionists - of which I am a proud member. I believe that flexibility and mutability are the hallmarks of true creativity, and their opposite are often the sign of a complete lack of imagination and creative insight. This is quite an unusual state of affairs in the annals of magick because I believe that each magician must create his or her own magical practice from whatever material and lore is available. Certainly, we have an abundance of materials available now that weren’t available just a few decades ago, yet to be hidebound to any one single source is to be, in my opinion, quite self-limiting.

I suspect that the magicians of the previous epoch had no problem borrowing their lore from multiple sources, and the diversity of antique grimoires even with the same title is a remarkable testament that this was so. With ever greater resources at our disposal, we live in a time when we can craft our own system and technique of magick from many different and diverse sources. Doing so is nothing more than following an age old technique of borrowing and appropriating the occult lore and practices of a previous age. I suspect that the magicians of the past age, both great and obscure, borrowed and appropriated their lore from whatever sources they had available to them. Should we be so different? (Of course, this presupposes that one knows enough about magick to be able cobble together a magical system, but that is another topic altogether.)

There are at least three different approaches that one take to utilizing the material found in the old grimoires, and four, if we count the approach of not using them at all. These approaches can be labeled traditionalism, reconstructionism and revisionism. I have talked about these three different approaches several times before, but I want to discuss them in context of the old grimoires. Of these three, the traditional path is the most problematic, since only if one has access to an initiatory lineage that incorporates this lore would it be possible to call oneself a traditional grimoire magician. Nearly all of us must rely, one way or another, on the public materials available. We can attempt to develop a magical practice based on the best historical information available and through that method, we can approach the full employment of one or more of the antique grimoires. There are a lot of problems with this approach, but it should be noted that grimoire reconstructionism is based on an assumption that whatever is unknown or omitted in that lore can be developed using modern sources or one’s creative imagination.

One other key point is that the further we go back in time, the less details that we know about the culture, people’s basic beliefs, basic language used, assumed religious practices and a myriad of other minutiae. Reconstructing a magical system must also include reconstructing the cultural matrix from that specific time period in order to be really effective, and even with the most painstaking research, only fragments exist for cultures that existed merely half a millennia ago. Therefore, reconstructionism, by definition, must always be incomplete and filled out with suppositions and even one’s creative imagination. Thus they become more like an “as if” proposition rather than a perfect reflection of what once existed.

This is why I consider revisionism to be a much better and simpler prospect than attempting to reconstruct an antique practice. You can even start out with a tradition, like for instance, the Golden Dawn, and upon that foundation, build and add appropriate various materials, techniques, themes, tropes and practices from the old grimoires.  A magician needs to know and understand what is needed to build out a new magical functionality, and armed with this knowledge, then choose the appropriate grimoire and harvest from it whatever is needed. In this manner, material is extracted and placed into a proper occult discipline where it will become more or less redefined and used appropriately within of the context of an already established magical practice.

The reason why I am much more inclined to taking a revisionist perspective to all magical lore from the middle ages and the renaissance is that I believe that there is a massive gulf that lies between us, who are living in the post-modern age, and those who lived in the previous epoch. That gap has made a powerful difference between not only how one works magic today versus those previous times, but it also makes a great difference between the post-modern magician and the magician of middle ages and early renaissance. Our beliefs, expectations, approach to religion and spirituality, and our cultural determinants are all completely and radically different. Thus, a modern magician is not at all like his or her peer from the earlier epoch, nor is the world that we live in and our cultural matrix in any manner similar.

If we were to go back in time to the period of the late middle ages or early renaissance when the grimoire system of western magick was being formulated, we would find ourselves in a much different world. Roman Catholicism would be the dominant and primary faith, and all its beliefs and practices would be commonly known and engaged in by nearly everyone, from serf to the highest aristocracy. The whole notion of a secular approach to governing or to a knowledge of the world would not yet exist. So, too, would the notion of an existential individuality and self-determination. The Pope would be the absolute spiritual authority throughout most of Europe, and it some cases, he would also be a temporal authority. The aristocracy would be just beginning to exercise their independent authority, but no one would be foolish enough to directly countermand episcopal dictates. The lords who ruled the various kingdoms and principalities owed their temporal authority to the church, who sanctioned their rule through the artifice of their various offices. This was not too surprising, since these lords were from the same dynastic families that also held positions of power in the church. It was often prudent for the aristocracy to promote their offspring into positions of temporal power as well as within the church hierarchy.

The world of the greater Catholic domain was a complete, seamless and total world view, encompassed by an annual festive calendar and dominated by a monolithic religious belief system promoted by continuous and periodic religious practices. Nearly everyone participated in it, and it would be mostly inconceivable for anyone to exclude themselves from participating. It was considered a universal faith and practice, which is what the word “Catholic” literally means.

So, what would the typical literate magician of the late middle ages or early renaissance be like? First off, he would be a devout Catholic and fairly conservative in his religious beliefs. He would see visions of angels, demons and experience the powers of the saints first hand and it is also likely that his piety and zeal would have pushed him into the study and practice of ceremonial magick. Since he was literate (and often in more than one language), then he was either a member of the upper class or a trained cleric, since literacy had a certain power, mystery and prestige all by itself, especially to the greater masses of the population who were illiterate. He would have had access to enough resources to be able to equip himself and to acquire the privacy to be able to work his rites alone and unobserved. A poor man would have neither had the time nor resources to practice magic, and certainly, being alone and unsupervised would have been something of a great privilege. To outsiders, the ceremonial magician would have appeared to be no different than anyone else, he would have been the very model of religious piety and class privilege, and therefore typically beyond suspicion in regards to impious or heretical behavior.

A magician from that period would have been proficient in the inherent disciplines of discursive meditation, contemplation, the Holy Office with its eight daily periods of prayer and meditation, and the use of special mass rites to charge and empower his regalia and fortify his work. He could do all of these things, including ceremonial magick and likely get away with it because he was a member of a protected and privileged elite. Even Agrippa was a member of the (petty) nobility and no commoner. He had certain privileges and responsibilities associated with his station. His life, with its service to liege lords, training and social expectations associated with his class (from social etiquette to military training), his religious education and continuous engagements with a pious religious practice, all of this, would be quite foreign to us today.

It is also my opinion that an educated man living in that time would have been easily able to attribute to his life and its various occurrences as being the outer manifestation of the grace or doom of God and his saints, angels or even, the Devil and his minions. A magician would have made use of the Catholic liturgy (including the techniques of reversed exorcism used for invocation) and the monastic discipline to be able gain the proper mind-state necessary to see and thereby command the spirits to be found nearly everywhere in the world. The domain of Spirit was not difficult to access for the average person and in fact, it wasn't seen as a separate world at all. So the methods used to fulfill the need for the first stage of an evocation (spiritual purification) were simply a variation of what was already practiced in the typical monastic discipline.  

My point is that the world that the magician of the previous epoch lived in was one where magick flourished, and the many varieties of grimoire magick had their origin in those times. According to the sparse historical data available, everyone seemed to practice some kind of religious based magic, which later would be considered to be steeped in religious superstition, but at the time, religious faith was a very powerful element in the world. Science and religion were interwoven in a manner that would be strange to us today. A magician in the previous epoch could easily employ one of the many grimoires secretly available and he would also know how to activate the spiritual practice behind the book, since he could merely perform the religious rites and practices already available to him, and it would be sufficient. However, this is no longer true, and there are some compelling reasons why that is so.

The first thing that happened that began to radically change the European culture was the reformation. Over a period of fifty years, beginning early in the 16th century, the entire religious perspective permanently changed with the advent of Protestant Christianity. Catholics, faced with such a challenge, zealously promoted what became known as the counter-reformation, and the periodic but constant warfare between Protestant and Catholic ideologies indelibly changed both religious traditions. Suddenly, Catholics and Protestants alike became highly intolerant of any kind of spiritual deviance, heresy or assumed apostasy. It became a dangerous time for anyone to practice ceremonial magick, still the books were still clandestinely produced, circulated and elaborated upon despite the risk. However, piety and conservative opinion, which would have tolerated a certain amount of magical practice, now had no tolerance whatsoever and this resulted in the persecution and execution of many who once were a part of the protected elite. What this ultimately did was to purge from both traditions of Christianity many of the techniques and tropes that were used in ceremonial magick, transforming the typical magical practitioner into anything but a pious and conservative religious adherent. It also had the effect of removing all magic from the practiced liturgy, a process that continues today. 

Still, we can assume that ceremonial magick was likely practiced by some individuals, even though there is scant proof of that. However, from a more realistic perspective, it would seem that the literature itself had a certain sensational vogue amongst savants and affluent collectors who helped to spread it all over Europe. Over time, the social calamity of the reformation began to lose its passion on both sides, and the power of the Catholic church began to diminish while the power of temporal authority slowly became greater. By the end of the 17th and through the middle of the 18th century, it is likely that ceremonial magick was being practiced by a greater population of select individuals, most of whom would be considered more like occultists (or eccentric antiquarians) as found in our modern age than pious exponents of the religious status quo.

Even so, while ceremonial magick was having its own kind of renewal during this period, two more events occurred that made the gap between the previous epoch even wider, and these were the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century, to be quickly followed by the Age of Science in the 19th century. By the end of the 19th century, only occultists had an interest in the magical writings and practices of the previous age, and the materials that they studied became ever more rare and difficult to acquire. The rest of the European world had become secularized, literate, educated and indoctrinated into science and socially empowered by democracy, and in the process, the late medieval mind-set of ceremonial magick and its cultural context were irreparably lost. It became the provenance of individuals like Mathers, Westcott, Crowley, and Fortune to resurrect the art and practice of magick, but what they derived from their studies and experimental practices was something that was quite new and infused with modern sensibilities.

While the times have profoundly changed from the previous age, magick has once again become relevant. However, the mechanisms and techniques of performing evocation now require a considerably greater effort to achieve the proper initial mind-state. Thus, we modern practitioners are forced to adopt a regimen of mind control that is considerably more elaborate, deeper and engaging that what the practitioner of the past age would have employed. In fact, to engage the Spirit world, we are forced to adopt ecstatic methodologies more reminiscent of shamanism than the merely pious practices required of the magicians of the previous epoch. Times have changed, and so has the discipline and practices of the ritual or ceremonial magician. So it would seem logical that in order to appropriate the lore of the old grimoires, we must first have developed and mastered a modern tradition of magick. It would also seem to be folly to expect that the old grimoires can be effectively practiced as they once were, given all that has happened in the last five hundred years.

Frater Barrabbas

Strict Adherence VS. Creative Adaptation

Very recently I have been criticized and even somewhat disparaged for comparing my revised and re-adapted version of the Talismanic Portae Lucis working to the original formula. I believe that I have all along made the point (hopefully quite clear) that I didn’t perform the original Portae Lucis working that was developed by Jean Dubuis. I want to make absolutely certain that all my readers understand that I have used the ideas and concepts laid down by Mr. Dubuis, particularly in his book “The Experience of Eternity” as well as the online document on the Portae Lucis working, and then developed my own variation of this working. I had many reasons for doing this, and it has now become a critical part of my own magical system.

Also, why I bothered to go and post my ideas on a group devoted to the Portae Lucis working was that a month ago the owner of that group asked if he could publish links to my blog articles, and I agreed. Just a few days ago, I happened to track down that group and so I joined it. Not finding any mention of my work, I naively published the links to my various blog articles and innocently announced that I had performed a variation of this working. I guess I should have expected this kind of response, but I was looking for some peer group critique of my work. What I got was far more than I bargained for, but still, it was mostly constructive and important to my process. I was tested and found myself more or less on the side of truth. I do need to make certain, though, that I am perfectly clear in my intentions.

Obviously, the only way that I could possibly state that what I did was absolutely the same as the original formula would be if I had performed both my variation and the original formula, and then compared them. Of course, I had not done this, but I have now definitely considered it as a future task. That being said, I want to be certain that no one can claim that I am conflating these two operations, which are different and will undoubtably produce different results. What I can state is that I have studied the Portae Lucis formula for quite some time and to a great depth. I believe that I have captured all of the elements of that formula and put them into a different magical context, operating on them through a different magical system. Thus I would wager that the intentions of the original formula and my method are likely analogous. However, that’s my opinion, and it is yet to be proven as a fact. Right now, it is only a hypothesis, but one that I believe has some merit.

My critic has made the following observation, and since it was made on a public forum, I feel entitled to quote it here for my readers to examine.

“Now, when a Teacher like Jean Dubuis outlines a method for experiencing a contact with Eternity, I have little doubt that it will do just that. It is a treasure being handed down to me. I trust his wisdom as he is a recognized Adept with considerable years--decades of experience. His writings are some of the most profound and clear that I have ever read on esoteric subjects. So to modify his Teaching without trying it first according to his instructions, is tantamount to spitting in in his face and devaluing the contributions he has made to western esotericism. Sure, perhaps there are some genuine adepts out there who understand well enough what they are doing in these areas to modify the work in some way--kindly point me to someone writing on Qabalah, Spagyrics, Mineral Alchemy and the Experience of Eternity currently or even within in the past 30 years who even comes close to providing the kind of information Jean Dubuis has made his life's work. I have seen no evidence that you can make such a claim. I can think of at least one,namely Mark Stavish and what has he said about the Experience of Eternity? As I recall, he said that it may be the single most important esoteric document of the 21st Century. There are many others whom I respect who say much the same thing and it is also important to note that neither he, nor the others felt the need to modify the work. Thus, for all your supposed expertise, compared to others beyond your stature, you look like an utter fool.”

Of course, I can also quote Jean Dubuis from his book “The Experience of Eternity,” particularly in the beginning under the rubric of “Attitudes” (found on page 8) where he appears to completely contradict the dogmatic and rigid attitude of my critic. He says the following about how to approach this work.

“The student should be mindful that the experience discussed in this [treatise] should not be considered as recipes in a cookbook but instead should be approached as processes that honor the rules and underlying laws of the universe and incorporate them after personal reflection. He is invited to forge his own opinion through experience. He should not go forward with knowledge that he has not personally verified. Step by step knowledge frees the individual.”

Reading the above paragraph has given me the impression that Jean Dubuis was steadfast against treating the formulas that he taught as some kind of sacred writ. He made his teachings public because he felt that one should be able to achieve the highest level possible for a human being without having a guru or a constraining tradition. In other words, Jean Dubuis was against any form of dogma or the cult of personality, which sometimes becomes the standard for many kinds of occult teachings. He wanted his students to form their own opinion about this operation, and to approach it on their own terms, basing it on what they already knew and could personally verify. So it would seem that Jean Dubuis would have strongly disagreed with my critic, and would have likely approved of someone who would have examined his ideas, and if they were so moved or inspired, to approach this working with what they knew and could accomplish. I can solemnly attest that I have done just that, so while I may have deviated from the traditional formula, I believe that I have been true to the spirit of the teaching. After all, imitation is the highest form of flattery, and it should not be construed as being disrespectful.

I agree that the Portae Lucis working, as put forward by Jean Dubuis, is one of the most important esoteric documents in the 20th century. When I first encountered this working nearly a year ago, I was profoundly affected by it. It lit up my imagination and powerfully inspired me, like nothing else that I had encountered before. I had every intention of performing the working exactly as it was written. However, as I got into the details of this formula, I began to have all sorts of realizations and insights. What I saw was that the symbology of this working was hauntingly similar to the various ritual magical workings that I had produced and worked on over the years. I had vivid dreams and even some visions that seemed to push me into making a comparison of this formula with my own system of magick. It certainly wasn’t my ego or personal glorification that compelled me to look at this method in a completely different manner. If anything, it was likely my own Inner Plane connections and my HGA that were active in moving me in this particular direction.

Once I set aside all my prohibitions from viewing the formula from a different light, then amazingly, all of the pieces fell into place. I realized that the Portae Lucis working had analogous lore in my own system as yet undeveloped, and I assembled that lore to perform a completely different variation of this working. It became for me a methodology based on talismanic magick instead of spagyric and mineral alchemy. As long as I can make the case that I was inwardly compelled to make this change, and that what I developed and performed was not the same (but maybe analogous), then I believe that I am on safe ground for stating that I performed a completely revised working.

You can examine my first article on this subject, which I posted in October of last year at this link. I didn’t discuss how I discovered this new variation since that represented a personal and internal struggle that lasted for a few months. By the time I wrote that article, it had already become a given fact within my regimen of ordeals. Now that I am being harshly criticized for having the gall to change something that was put forth by a master and to be supposedly glib about making that change, I felt that I needed to discuss the context of how and why I decided to do something somewhat analogous but very different than what was laid down.

I didn’t plan on doing something different, it’s just that my own inner process compelled me to consider that possibility, and when I did, I saw that synchronicity was at work in the way everything turned out. Even so, I am not someone who refuses to revise or rework something so that it more aptly fits a specific need in my own spiritual and magickal process. I don’t believe that the lore that I am given can’t be changed or modified, since most of the lore that I possess was written by me at some point anyway. I believe that I must be open to my own inner process and be flexible enough to change, modify or even create something entirely new. So you see, I am not in agreement with those who believe that rituals and formulas are sacrosanct, and that you must follow the directions whether from a grimoire or a traditional ritual, exactly as they are written. I can see where this logic should be applied to sacred texts or even some forms of traditional religious liturgy, but not to magical operations or experiments. Therefore, I am against what I perceive to be the “grimoire only” crowd who believes that you should follow the texts exactly as they are written, and change not a jot or a tiddle.

One question that should be asked of me is that have I experienced any dramatic changes since I performed this working over a week ago? Even though it has only been several days, my answer is an affirmative yes. Others have witnessed this change in me as a kind of grounding, solidification, an intuitive connectivity to others, a powerful sense of compassion and a wholeness of being. I feel wholly and completely changed in a manner that even performing my own version of the Lunar Abramelin Ordeal did not reach. Is this the Experience of Eternity? Perhaps, but I will only fully understand this process that I have already passed through when I can compare notes with other occultists, or perhaps next year, perform the original formula for the Portae Lucis. What I can say is that I was compelled to perform this alternative working now and at this time, and I obeyed the urging of my own process.

I think that my critic has been overly harsh and highly rude. He has said that he eschews polite discussion as mere political correctness, and instead feels the need to bully or brow-beat others with whom he disagrees, perhaps a bit like the cartoon character Bluto. In behaving like a thug instead of a fellow practitioner, he has shown himself in deep need of some kind of transformation. Maybe after he has finally undergone the true Portae Lucis working, he will learn to be more compassionate and thoughtful in terms of how he deals with other occultists. 

However, his decree that I have no right to change anything, and that I am an utter fool for proposing a different variation on the Portae Lucis working is completely without merit or even relevancy. I feel sympathy for him, since what is probably driving him is a fear that I might be correct, which is that innovation, when properly harnessed, can spur spiritual evolution and even ascension. He is also correct, if I am indeed attempting to pawn off my variation of this working as the defacto original, since then I would be perpetrating a fraud. Yet I believe I have said all along that my version is different, and I have even called it the Talismanic Portae Lucis ordeal to ensure that everyone is aware of that difference. Maybe I should change the name altogether to something like the Talismanic Gateway of Saturn; but even so, I don’t believe that my readers have been mislead by what I have previously written.

If someone were to ask me whether they should work the original Portae Lucis formula or acquire and work my variation instead, I would likely tell them not to follow my path, but instead to perform the original formula in whatever manner they can. Only someone initiated into my Order and who is well versed in its lore could actually make that kind of decision, and it would have to be based on his or her own internal experiences and workings. I would urge them at some point to perform both the original and the new variation, and then judge for themselves. What I had to do was completely in accord with my own spiritual and magical process, and it would likely have little relevance to anyone else. I leave that judgment to anyone who would seek to realize this ordeal for themselves.

Frater Barrabbas