Another Look at the Purpose of Magic

[I took a sabbatical from writing over the last couple of months, and then I thought that I should at least write something on a semi regular basis so that folks don’t forget who I am or what I have to offer the erstwhile student of ritual magick. So, I decided that short articles are better than no articles, and I will try to write short articles on a more frequent basis. We’ll see how that plays out in the weeks and months to come.]

I have written on this topic previously, but it is something that I should discuss again because I often hear someone saying that they have achieved everything that they need from their magical system and there is no need to pursue anything further. This, of course, is referring to magical-based material acquisition or at the very least, control over (most) occurrences of one’s destiny. It is a form of self-empowerment that can deceptively put someone into a comfortable niche and then keep them from aspiring or gaining any new perspectives.

Whether magicians use forms of simple or complex elemental magic, planetary and zodiacal magic, invoking and evoking spirits or performing various forms of thaumaturgy (or a combination of all of these forms), he or she ultimately comes to that great stumbling block of complacency and inertia called comfortable self-empowerment. The logic behind this complacency is that when something works well and consistently then why change it?

When magicians strive to become proficient and they have the tenacity and endurance to over-come failure through a period of years, to research and analyze that failure and to start over, and do this cyclic process many times over, they will eventually develop a magical system and methodology that will gain for them some modicum of success. Ah, there’s nothing more dangerous and problematic as becoming a successful magician. Let me explain why I think that this is so.

After all, life is something of a gamble, and the only thing that one can say about it for certain is that good fortune and bad fortune are part of the process. Like death itself, the joys, sorrows, and yes, even the boredom, are all a part of life whether one works magic or not. If you are experiencing a long period of material and psychic stability, and you feel like you are in control of the various capricious elements of fate, then you are likely due for some challenges or even some misfortune. Thinking this way is not pessimism, it is just a matter of odds, of course. Yet truly, if you live in a stable and dull part of the world then it will be more likely that you will lead a stable (and dull) life. Living in an unstable part of world can increase the odds for adventure and excitement, but also misfortune for nearly everyone, even those practicing magick. Instability can be caused by natural phenomena or the hazards of man-made conflicts and destruction. Nowhere on the planet is there a place that is indefinitely immune to either human or natural causes of instability.

So, if you have achieved magical competence and you feel empowered and it seems like you are in control of your life then you might also be succumbing to hubris, complacency, inertia and even a bit of self-delusion. Why stop progressing when you have finally become competent, since that should be the opportune place and time when one’s spiritual process could accelerate and thereby bring one to greater ascendency? I guess the real issue is more general and even foundational in regards to the art and practice of magic.   

This brings me to ask the most important question that one could ask regarding magical techniques and systems, and that is, what is the purpose of magic? Why do we work magic, and what do we do after we achieve enough material gain to consider ourselves competent and perhaps, even content with our lot? This question had eluded me for decades because until the last decade or so, magic was often hit or miss. It wasn’t until I had practiced magic for nearly thirty years that I finally felt that I could accomplish whatever I needed to accomplish. My career was in great shape, I had money, the means to acquiring a successful relationship, and I was able to develop and practice any kind of magic that my mind sought to experience. I even wrote up my own versions of the Abramelin ordeal, the Portae Lucis ordeal and numerous others.

I was quite successful at performing invocations and evocations, and I had a system of magic that could be developed to accomplish nearly any goal I could imagine. It just took time and effort to research, develop and to practice, but nothing seemed outside of my ability or scope. However, all during this time, I understood that magic should cause psychic transformations and push the ritual magician into ever greater states of conscious being. My ultimate destination was to experience full union with the One, although it took me many years to understand that concept as clearly as I do today. That was the goal, but the foundation that I spent so much time on was developing one’s internal and personal godhead. Without that most important component, one would attempt to realize the One in vain, or even worse, in complete delusion.

Therefore, over many years, I had determined that the purpose of magic was to achieve union with the One, and that it required me to realize the most intimate aspect of godhead within myself. I was a God, fully and completely (as are everyone else), and I was a seeker attempting to realize that Godhead within myself, and to ultimately understand that it was one and the same with the Union of All Being, which I call the One. I implicitly and intuitively knew this from my earliest days, but I was unable to articulate this truth for many years. That is what I have come to believe, and it becomes an important consideration for me when I have reached and achieved that point of magical and material competence, since that is the starting point for achieving the highest level of spiritual and magical being. The object is there within grasp, if only we can extract ourselves from that most comfortable of ruts, which is magical and material success. 

Despite the comfortable place that I find myself in these days, I force myself to action and to not cease in my magical work. I must continue seeking to undergo magical ordeals that challenge me to the very fiber of my being from time to time, or else I will the lose the path that I have spent so much effort to build. My life’s work really doesn’t end until the very day that I die, but until then I must seek to realize the holy God/dess Within. Full realization of this internal Atman is the key to realizing full cosmic consciousness and complete at-one-ment with the All. I believe that it is the key to full enlightenment and also to a form of conscious immortality.

I believe that each and every one of us can attain this pinnacle of accomplishment in a single life-time. It is, in fact, our destiny, and it is one that we are all programmed to achieve, but only if we remove all of the obstacles in our path, especially the ones that we have placed there ourselves. As the old saying goes, we are our own worst enemies, and this is especially true when considering the highest forms of magical and spiritual attainment.

So next time you find yourself thinking how much you have accomplished or that you have all that you need as a practicing ritual magician, I would hope that you begin to ponder about your own complacency and hubris. Thinking this way just seems to invite adversity and calamity, as if the point of earned stability is just a calm period before another storm blows through. It is as if the Gods have an evil and pernicious sense of humor, and they don’t take lightly to anyone who thinks that they have it made.

I have previously written on articles on this subject, and I would urge you to examine them if you haven’t read them previously. The first is about the five archetypal trials found in the path of the ritual magician. What I have discussed in this article would cover trial number 3, which is Indolence. Trial number 5 might also apply, which is Hubris. You can find that article here. Also, I wrote an article some years ago where I discussed the relevance for working ritual magic in the post-modern world. It could also shed some interesting light on why we work magic and what we expect to gain from it. You can find that article here.

Frater Barrabbas

Power of Inertia - Curse of the Ritual Magician

[::sound of crickets::]

Arrrgh! OK - I nearly succumbed to inertia in attempting to write this article, so luckily my muse came by and yelled in my ear. (Ouch!) Perhaps the easiest activity for most folks is just plain doing nothing. You know, sitting around, watching Cable Video, playing video games, goofing around with the computer, reading extraneous stuff that has nothing to do with anything important, like comic books or cheap graphic novels - or just looking at online porn. We all have our various vices, bad habits and excuses for not being productive, yet the worst disease that can plague and haunt a ritual magician is inertia - the vice of doing nothing!

Shadow says: “Dude, chill! Stop tweaking out! Do Nothing~ ‘cause it’s the ‘Do Nothin’ Club!’ Pull up a log and veg’ with the best of us!”

There is a lot of lore written about fear and conquering it, including the famous saying of all - “Fear is the mind slayer..” But I think that the greatest enemy and most potent foe is inertia, and hardly nothing is written about it. One could assume that being lazy and lethargic lacks any kind of drama, and it’s such a reprehensible state that it doesn’t require a lot of comments. All it requires is just some motivation to get off one’s backside and do something constructive. Where there are so many words of wisdom to deal with fear and sympathetic admonitions to be courageous, the only pretty words that being lazy receive are stern lectures, condemnations and derision. Still, human inertia has its own special category of vice, that of the sin of slothfulness, which, I might add, is, after all, one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

“Slothfulness is the mind killer, and also the killer of any progressive enterprise!”

How does inertia affect the work of the ritual magician and how can it be defeated? First you need to know that inertia seductively creeps into everything that even the most industrious person does, producing stultifying states of complacency, self-satisfaction and generally, resting on one’s laurels. This is particularly true of anyone who at least managed to establish a foundation of occult practices and a discipline. The more you accomplish, the less you have to do, at least on a collective level. Right? Absolutely wrong! It is at this point of accomplishment that the real tests and work begin, and failing to take up those tests and master them will cause an internal and endemic failure, making it hard to override habits and inhibitions to continue the work.

Most everyone is guilty of this failure - and here, I must raise my hand up high like a beanstalk and say that I am just as guilty as anyone else. Inertia is a deadly and pernicious creeping flaw in the work of an initiate, and it’s even worse and more profound for an adept, or a high adept. Whenever anyone has achieved a major accomplishment in any area of life, it just seems so natural to take it easy , to repose, smell the roses and enjoy what has been achieved. That’s all well and good, but if that state of repose lasts for any length of time, then those very same accomplishments are being jeopardized by inertia. It means that one will continue to bask in the glow of being successful, until that glow disappears and the gnawing demons of insecurity and ineffectiveness will return with greater force.

The most important thing that a ritual magician can do is to plan out their ordeals and their magickal workings. Purposefully set aside the time and the days to do the work, and then make certain that nothing short of an emergency will thwart it. Make a commitment that you will stubbornly keep no matter what happens, because trust me, something will happen to interfere with this constructive process. It constantly amazes me that I will feel this power of inertia creep into my will and desire to do something, seducing me into finding an excuse not to do it - to postpone it for some reason or another. I hear the thoughts in my head and emotions in my heart that indicate that I am tired, I don’t feel like working magick, I no longer believe that what I was about to do was really all that important.

What I do when I hear these thoughts and sense these feelings is to make damn certain that my commitment to do the work is followed by action regardless of how I feel. I will only postpone a working if there is a really good reason, such as being very ill or an emergency situation crops up. Still, being unprepared isn’t a worthy excuse for not keeping a commitment. Therefore, one should do the work however prepared one is, and damn the consequences. If the work is marred or screwed up because of a lack of preparation, then that will certainly motivate one to properly prepare for the next working. Taking this attitude forces one to prepare for the work irregardless of how one feels. Inertia is deadly and can kill internal spiritual progress; that’s why we need to make iron clad commitments to do the work.

Don’t think that commitment and intention will save the day every time a working is planned. It doesn’t - the road to hell is paved with all sorts of good intentions and commitments. Even preparations don’t guarantee that the work will be done when it’s planned to be done.  You may take a lot of time painstakingly consecrating your tools, organizing and cleaning your magickal temple, writing the rituals or even planing on taking certain days off. However, unless you do the work, it was all just a form of prevarication - putting things off by focusing too much on the details. You can take days fumigating your beautiful sword and dagger in costly incense, anointing them with balm and holy water, too, but unless you also make a commitment to do the ritual work, all this is just window dressing. Intentions and commitments must be followed with real work, or else it’s just a dodge or excuse for screwing off.

When I write about planning ritual workings and ordeals, what exactly am I saying? How do you determine what to do? The Order of the Gnostic Star has a graduated list of ordeals and major workings that all initiates receive when they join, which helps them to determine the steps required for their elevation and their transformative spiritual and magickal evolution. We call it the “Plan,” but it’s really only a suggestion of what ideally one should do. The real plan is nearly always determined by the practicing ritual magician, based on what he or she already knows, and what needs to be learned and mastered. The Tree of Life itself can supply an excellent graduated set of accomplishments that practitioners can examine and compare against themselves. Looking over this list, anyone should be able to put together their own list of ordeals and magickal workings. (You can find this list in the Order’s Bylaws, located here.)

Keep in mind that if you lack the background to perform a specific working, then you will have to get that background through study and research. Thus, reading books, writing notes and building up your personal lore is all part of the work. Preparation establishes the intention of the work, but it must always be followed with a specific commitment to do it. Then on the elected evening, the magician must actually perform the work. Anyway, here’s the list, from steps one through four, as I see it. Further considerations will doubtlessly produce additional tasks or completely new ones.

1. Earth Magick - know how to work practical magick to make things happen on the material plane. This would include protection magick, healing, self-control, grounding, focusing, generating and projecting magickal powers, use and art of self-made sigil magick, basic thaumaturgy, craft magick, trance workings, all forms of divination, and most importantly, Elemental Magick. One could also consider grove workings, godhead alignment rites and exercises, centering, and all forms of meditation and contemplation should be included in this category as well. Earth magick represents the basic foundation for the practice of magick, which is a requirement for any work. I would also add that the magician should also have undergone some kind of initiatory ordeal as well.

2. Talismanic Magick - planetary magick, including astrological magick, will train a practitioner to create charms and focus points of magickal energy backed up by spiritual intelligences. The next step up from working earth magick is learning how to generate talismans and work with planetary and zodiacal intelligences. This is an important prequel to the work of invocation and evocation, theurgy and goetic workings. Learning to work and master the planetary and zodiacal intelligences will assist the magician in learning how to invoke or evoke spirits. Not only that, but mastering the art of talismanic magick has its own benefits, such as bending and warping the natural direction of the material world so that it bestows upon the magician a windfall or some other larger benefit. Earth magick helps magicians establish themselves and maintain their material world, but talismanic magick assists them in making breakthroughs that would otherwise not be possible. The spirits associated with this level are the seven planetary intelligences, the tweleve zodiacal intelligences, and the twenty-eight talismanic elements associated with the lunar mansions.

3. Theurgy and Evocation - Spirit magick, which opens the magician up to the whole hierarchy of angels and daimons. I would have to include in this section the art of priestcraft, where the magician would also function as mediator of sacramental powers, since I believe that this ability goes hand in hand with theurgy. Tackling ritual invocation and evocation is the real test that separates the arm-chair magicians from those who have an actual living practice. While the Order has a regimen of rituals and workings for the magician to learn and master, someone outside of the Order will have to take a different approach. This outside approach will require magicians to acquire, study and master one or more old grimoires as well as study all of the available material in the Golden Dawn and Crowley’s Equinox to ferret out everything relevant. I would also include all four books of Agrippa’s “Occult Philosophy” as well as anything else in print that might help the magician to forge their own system of invocation and evocation. I have already talked about the five classic steps of evocation, which are consecratio, invocatio, conscriptio, legatio and licentia. A perusal of the Solomonic grimoires, including the Greater and Lesser Key, will help one to determine some of the spirits to target. I would also examine the Qabbalah thoroughly, and extract from it a complete list of various angels, demons, and other spirits associated with the complete occult spiritual hierarchy. A true magician develops the capability to invoke or evoke any and all of the relevant spirits in his or her adopted spiritual hierarchy.

4. Greater Ordeals - This category of workings represents the higher end of what a magician can accomplish, so unless you are an experienced theurgist, attempting some of these workings would probably be a waste of time, or even a bit hazardous to your mental health. The first ordeal that comes to mind is the Abramelin working, whether the magician chooses the six month or eighteen month version, or decides to work the version established by Aleister Crowley, which is found in Liber Samakh. The Bornless One invocation rite comes to mind, and so does the entire corpus of the Enochian tradition of magick. It would be really helpful if one could completely master the art of being a priest and prelate for some aspect of Deity, perhaps following some variation of Crowley’s book, Liber CLXXV - Astarte vel Berylli, or maybe the Beatification rite from the Sworn Book of Honorius. Building your own complete system of magick could also occupy this level, or reconstituting some long unused or dead grimoire or body of work, like the Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. Anyway, I am sure you get the idea for this step.

In addition to above progressive list of steps, the erstwhile ritual magician can also independently work on mastering at least two forms of Yoga, some form of Tantra, elective and horary astrology, theoretical alchemy, a couple of foreign languages, take on a few apprentices and help them to master ritual magick, maybe even write a few books and start a magickal lodge. All of this can be done, even as the candidate master magician builds up a satisfying career or business, raises a family, manages friendships and family relationships, and maybe does some world traveling, too. All of this takes time, and after all, isn’t that what we have to work with in the here and now? Time is ticking away at this moment - what are your magickal plans?

So that’s it, from steps one through four. Of course there are more steps, and in fact, in the Order the steps are a little more gradual and use ritual lore for each stage, which I admit the outsider doesn’t have access to. However, this is as good an approximation of the stages that initiates of the Order of the Gnostic Star go through. I must confess that the fourth step is a mixture of the fourth and fifth steps in the Order, but that shouldn’t present any problems.

As you can see, there’s a lot to do - enough to keep anyone busy for decades, or even a lifetime. If you approach this list incrementally, one step at a time, then after some years of work, you will have achieved quite a degree of magickal mastery. Yet whatever you do, don’t succumb to fatigue, boredom or hubris. Just keep on working through your entire life, from the moment you start to the moment you take your last dying breath. Remember, there will be plenty of time to rest, when you’re dead and buried.

Sweet dreams, oh my brothers and sisters;

Frater Barrabbas