Harvest Moon Musings

(Harvest Moon comes a week and a day after the Autumn Equinox.)

Autumn has come to the Minnesota tundra, perhaps a bit early because it got so dry up here in the late summer. Trees began to sporadically turn their leaves to autumn colors because of the lack of moisture, as if they gave up on trying to grow anymore this year. Now that the Autumn Equinox has passed, one can be certain that autumn is now officially here. Hard frosts are now occurring frequently, and the short growing season is now over. Autumn is probably one of my favorite times of the year, and represents, for me, the flowering of projects begun after the previous Winter Solstice. This year is no different for me, but it seemed like summer was all too short this time, and I had very little time to just step outside and enjoy the fruitfulness of nature.

My mundane job is still very busy, and with little chance of a letup until the end of the year. I doubt that I will have much time or freedom to escape the grind of work that has the typical feature now of flowing past the boundaries of the weekend, interfering with any plans that I might have had. I seldom seem to be able to get out of house and go into town for any kind of social activity or to see my friends. I suspect that my friends probably think that I have disappeared or perhaps grown cold with indifference - that, of course, is not true! Between my mundane job and my other few writing tasks, there is little time for doing anything else but just work. With the coming of autumn, I am finding myself growing restless, perhaps even experiencing a bit of stir-crazy need to get away from my pressing responsibilities for a little while. I guess that this intense work-a-thon should be considered, in part, a blessing. It is far better to be too engaged with work than having the insecurity of looking for a job and worrying about paying the bills.

I do have some news about the book that I wrote and is being published by Llewellyn Worldwide, “Magical Qabalah for Beginners.” I have just completed the first editing cycle and answered a number of questions posed to me from the production editor. I also had to answer some questions about capitalization, and tackle my habit of being inconsistent with that particular writing skill. There were a couple of minor issues with the diagrams, but otherwise, I got to see how the manuscript looks in regards to the type-face and layout. I am pleased with the results so far, and the book layout looks really professional. My only concern is that the size of the book and type-face of the text makes some of the paragraphs look longer than they actually are. A larger book size and a slightly smaller type-font size would probably make the paragraphs on the pages look smaller and more concise.

All in all, I have found the experience of dealing with Llewellyn to be very positive. I also managed to assemble around six book blurbs from other authors and occult leaders that will appear on the back of the book. I was pleased with their comments and very grateful for them to take the time to read over the unedited manuscript. Even though this book is one of the “for beginners” series, it has new and interesting information that even the advanced student will find useful. I wrote this book in such a manner so that I managed to cover some topics that haven’t really been covered in a basic book on the Qabalah. It is also one of the most accessible books that I have written, so I am learning to write more clearly and with far less assumptions about the knowledge and education of the reader. 

The book is scheduled to go to the printer on November 1, and I should probably get to see an actual printing of the book a few weeks after that. I may very well have the final printed book in my hands sometime in December. The book is scheduled to be unveiled to the public in January, so I should probably start scheduling and assembling a mini-workshop for book signings at the local book stores. I am starting to assemble material for a three day intensive workshop for a comprehensive introduction to the Qabalah. Having the book available for attendees was something that I felt would be quite important before I went ahead and put together all of the material that I would need for an intensive weekend course on the Qabalah.

Before I assemble this class and try to teach the techniques of the practical Qabalah, I would like to immerse myself in performing a complete set of path workings and intensive trance-based immersions into the structure and symbology of that system. It has been quite some time since I have done this work, and I need to re-acquaint myself with the Qabalah in a very intimate manner. I also want to work with the simple exercises that I devised for my book and fully vet them for myself. I think that it would be a requirement for me to have these exercises fully memorized and nearly automatic if I am going to teach a class and demonstrate them for a group of students. I also have learned some things about how an intensive path working can be used to investigate the Qabalistic dimensions that border the Sephiroth and Pathways. Since I am of the opinion that the angular vectors of the Pathways would represent the locus where the Enochian Aethyrs would be found, incorporating them into a more advanced kind of Enochian path working would be something interesting with which to experiment during the long cold winters.

As for my plans to work any magical ordeals during this period, that will have to be determined later this autumn. I am planning on completing the four-fold talismanic elemental planetary work that I began early this year. I had generated metallic talismans for the Sun, Moon, Saturn and Mercury for my own version of the Portae Lucis ordeal, but in August, I charged the additional planetary talismans for Venus and Jupiter. In October (specifically, October 25), I will be charging the last of the seven four-fold talismanic elementals for the planet Mars. I will then have all seven metallic talismans, one for each planet. fully charged and ready for use. I am planning on putting them into a septagramic array and see how they function together. It should be quite interesting, and I am looking forward to the experience.

I would like to fully test the ritual that I wrote to evoke and engage the spirits of the Theurgia-Goetia, and I would like to experiment with some invocations of the ha-Shem angels and the Goetic demons. I wrote rituals that can be used outside of the normal focus on the angelic ruler of the astrological decans, and I would like to fully test them, and also perform some invocations of these powerful spirits.

Winters in the tundra are quite long, and it does preclude much in the way of outdoor activity, unless of course one is into winter sports, such as snowmobiles, skiing and ice-skating. After December and the holidays, winter then becomes a long drawn out endurance contest, lasting another 14 weeks. Not only that, but the sun sets pretty early during that time, especially around the Winter solstice, when it becomes dark around 4:30 pm. There is an upside to the fact that I had to work a lot during the summer, and that is I will have quite a surplus of vacation time to take in December. I am planning on letting the year run down during the last three weeks of the year being mostly disengaged from my job.  

I am intending on being quite socially active, and as an added bonus my girlfriend will be off from school and she will have completed the last semester of actual class-work for her master’s degree. We will be able to spend some real quality time together, and that will make the oncoming winter much more bearable. I am hoping to be able to go out and eat, drink, be merry with friends, and also do some really cool magical experimentation. It will be a time of carefree joy, parties and happiness, even though the land will be dormant and likely covered with snow. As an added bonus, I will probably receive copies of my book, Magical Qabalah for Beginners, which I can sell or give away as presents to friends and those who helped me successfully complete this book project. It will be a very memorable time, at least that is my hope and anticipation for the callends time that is soon coming to us all.

Frater Barrabbas

Adventures at Paganicon 2012

All Snakes Day

Paganicon occurred over the weekend, and I fully attended and engaged in the various planned and unplanned activities. Overall, I would say that this pagan convention has turned out to be quite good. There were 50% more people attending this year than the previous year, and folks from as far away as Indiana and Winnipeg, Canada, attended. I also made some new friends, restored connections with some old friends, and basically had a good time. The weather over the weekend was quite warm for this time of year, and I am sure that some new record highs have been registered. Last year it was pretty cold outside with many traces of winter still visible, yet this year there was no indication that winter was even active. Gone was the snow and ice, and the temperatures were in the high 70's, which is very strange for the Twin Cities in mid March.

My two back to back classes on the Qabalah were initially fairly well attended. I expected a maximum of 15 attendees, and that’s how many showed up. However, after the first hour, all of those attendees except two departed to attend other classes, and most of them went to see Christopher Penczak’s class on Ascension Magick. I can’t blame them for departing, of course, and I quickly discovered that I had far more material to present than I had time to present it. Each section took longer to complete than I had anticipated, so what I was able to present to the attendees was a partial introduction instead of the whole thing. Also, considering that most of the people left after the first hour was up meant that there wasn’t enough ground covered to really segue into the next section. So the remaining two attendees and I engaged in conversations about some of the rest of the material, and I answered a number of questions.

This was the first time that I had attempted to present these two classes, and considering that they will be incorporated into an 18 hour three day intensive, I am not too worried about re-sizing them or scaling them down. Instead, I will seek to break them into sections and expand them so they will be fully vested with all of the information that I would want to present in a much larger format. So, I was satisfied with the overall results of the two presentations, and I did learn something about how much time I will need if and when I present the full weekend intensive. Some of my attendees gave me good feedback and told me that they are looking forward to the new book that I will be publishing via Llewellyn in March of 2013.

Christopher Penczak was the main speaker for Paganicon, and I must admit that I was completely unfamiliar with any of his writings. I’ve seen his books in the book stores, and it is fairly obvious that he is a prolific writer with many books in print. Christopher has put together a complete system of witchcraft, publishing his books in series of instruction manuals regarding his Temple of Witchcraft system. I attended his Friday night class on the Three Rays of Witchcraft, and I found his class to be quite engaging and interesting. What became apparent to me is that Christopher has managed to successfully pull together some pretty amazing and radically different philosophies into the revised foundation of witchcraft. I have always maintained that modern witchcraft is fairly incomplete, and that in order to make it a more comprehensive system of spirituality and magick, one would need to fill in the holes using other sources.

What Christopher has done was to pull in sources of occult and spiritual lore that I wouldn’t have chosen, being either unfamiliar with them or at least felt that they wouldn’t work together. These disparate sources include Reiki, Theosophy, the Alice A. Bailey teachings, other various New Age sources (Ascension), as well as pagan Druidism, ceremonial magick and the Qabalah. At first glance, these very difficult occult systems might seem to be contradictory and incapable of being blended or merged together, but Christopher has managed to artfully merge them together as if they were meant to be worked as one overall system. I found his way of moving seamlessly from one system to another without any jarring contradictions to be quire remarkable. Still, from my own experienced standpoint, I wouldn’t employ very many New Age systems in my own revised and developed tradition simply because I would find such a syncretism to be inelegant and esthetically unappealing. That’s just my personal opinion and tastes in occultism, and they in no way negate what Christopher has accomplished. In his thoroughness, he has given birth to a comprehensive system of spirituality and magick, and all of it is based on a foundation of witchcraft. I found that to be both attractive and compelling, and I saw that others who were attending his lectures and rituals found it attractive as well.

The Three Rays of Witchcraft are, of course, based on the first three Rays of the Seven Ray system of Theosophy and the Bailey teachings (being the Red, Blue and Yellow Rays). Christopher merged the concept of these three rays with the traditional witchcraft (Clan of Tubal Cain) concepts of the three paths of the straight, the bent and the crooked, which he had perceived through a three-fold ray vision, where the three rays emerge from a common point or source. This theme is well established in Christopher’s book, Three Rays of Witchcraft, which you can find here. However, one point that he made in his talk that I found very illuminating is where he discussed the origins of his vision, and that it represented how many seekers have approached a more comprehensive practice of witchcraft - or for that manner, any system of occultism.

According the Christopher, most practitioners are inveterate eclectic collectors of many diverse and often different and divergent techniques, philosophies and ritual lore. He compared it to a totemic magpie collecting shiny bits that it steals while it browses around for food and novelty items. These attractive baubles end up in the magpie’s nest, and after a time, the nest is full of completely unrelated, shiny and colorful junk. Occult eclecticism is the disease of the inveterate collector, and often times what is collected might seem important, but ultimately, in order to become an integral part of one’s personal spiritual or magickal discipline, it must have both relevance and some degree of relativity to the rest of one’s regimen.

Often this process of making a unified system out of a lot of disparate parts is to first begin to order them in some manner, perhaps to extend the analogy of the magpie, this act of creating order would be to formulate a collage or a mosaic out of these various seemingly unrelated elements. This effort at finding unity in diversity is very important, because the mere fact that one is manipulating powerful spiritual symbols and philosophies will trigger a visionary event where the structure and image of a meta-system will be revealed to the seeker. For me, this meta-system was the Tree of Life, for Christopher, it was the Seven Rays. Later on, he was able to find a synthesis between the Seven Rays and the Tree of Life, and all this could be accomplished due to the unifying vision that he had of the Three Rays.

I found this obvious biographical trope about how Christopher himself was able to merge several unrelated occult systems together into a unified system (the Temple of Witchcraft) useful in my own discussion of the importance of using a kind of meta-system to order and organize the various collected systems and methodologies of the practicing occultist, and that this action of ordering will have a profound effect on the seeker. It was true with me, and it was also true for Christopher Penczak, so in a sense, our approach to crafting a unified system are very similar. In some ways, his story corroborates my own, and it lends greater power to the idea that working with the symbols of the Qabalah as if they were dynamically alive is the key to making it truly a powerful system of occultism. Without this approach, the Qabalah is nothing more than a glyph and a bunch of tabular lists, along with some very arcane lore about creation, cosmology and the final dissolution. Making it come alive is the whole key to empowering oneself and being able to use the Qabalah as a metaphysical system in the study and practice of magick.

Saturday night was the “All Snakes Day Ball,” which was a costumed ball. Since I had too little sleep the night before, and I had to help out with the security for an hour, I missed some of this soiree, but what I did see was quite amazing. The cash bar was a bit steep in price and the selection of available drinks limited, but overall, the ball room was well decorated and well attended. I ducked out a bit after 10 pm and went back to my room to crash, but the dance continued until midnight.

Sunday is when I took part in a panel that discussed the organization and presentation of the four public Sabbat events that had been held in 2011 under the aegis of NordCog, a local pagan organization (Northern Dawn and Covenant of the Goddess). On the panel were three of the presenters, the artistic director (Paul) and the presiding leader (Steve). The panel turned out quite excellent, and that was the end of my involvement in the Paganicon pageantry. I did attend a really good class on Helenic Polytheism put on by Cara Schultz, which was scheduled before my panel. Cara focused on the rites and practices that would have been performed in the home during a typical lunar month, and how those beliefs and practices are deployed in the modern Greek pagan household. The class was short, succinct and highly informative. I thought that Cara did an excellent job of presenting her beliefs and practices.

So I gathering my things, made some final shopping transactions, and drove home from the convention, quite satisfied with the whole event. The temperature was almost 80 degrees outside, so I had the window down while I was driving. I got home tired and sweaty, and was amazed at the very weird weather that we were having for a mid March day. If there were any doubts about the impact of climate change, then perhaps how this winter has turned out should allay any doubts whatsoever.

Needless to say, I think that Paganicon was a tremendous success, and it will be interesting to see if it is sustainable. I am already thinking about next year’s convention, when I will have a new book out in print, and be focusing on marketing myself as a knowledgeable Qabalist.

Frater Barrabbas

Further Thoughts Regarding the Qabalah

I have completed assembling the lecture notes for my two lectures at the upcoming Paganicon lectures on Saturday, March 17 (at 9 am). That work also includes the handouts, since I always believe that the attendee should have something that’s printed up to take from the lecture. These tasks took a lot more labor than I thought they would, but the results have been, in my opinion, quite extraordinary. I am very happy with what I have put together for the two lectures, and I think that those who attend will get quite a lot out of them. They aren’t comprehensive, of course, but they will at least give the attendee enough information to be able to kick start their own studies.

Sometimes, the best way to figure out how to present something is to first assume that you know nothing about the subject matter, and then assemble the discussion in order to succinctly define what the topic is and how it can be used. In order to do this, you have to distance yourself from what you know, and then try to explain the problem from a fresh perspective. Detaching and then re-engaging in a completely new way can really help you to assemble a lecture that’s fresh and exciting. It forces you to look at the subject matter with new eyes, and that can really help you come up with a better way to describe the major points of your lecture.

What this operation did for me was to boil down the Qabalah, in terms of its theories and its practical applications, to the absolute essentials. So I think that I will be able to present my information in a manner that makes little or no assumptions, and manages to cover all of the important concepts. In each lecture, I have identified one very important key concept that helps to define the contents of the entire lecture. I am so excited by these key concepts that I wanted to share them with my reading public, since many of you probably won’t be able to attend my lecture in person.

First thing I discovered as I was assembling these two lectures was that the first one, which will be an introduction to the Qabalah, has too much material to be covered in just under 1 hour. So I decided to expand the Intro lecture to be 90 minutes, with a ten minute break after just an hour into it. I then shortened the Practical Qabalah lecture to be around 45 minutes, so both lectures should fit into the combined 150 minute slot. I thought that doing the two lectures in this manner would most efficiently use the time that was allotted.

Here is the Key point for the Introduction to Qabalah Lecture:

Qabalah encapsulates Symbols - these symbols are either religious or occultic, or both. Symbols are not signs. Signs represent something else - they are place holders.

Symbols are conscious markers for deep level psychic processes that are transcendental and transpersonal, and usually mysterious to most people. Focusing on symbols can give one access to deeper layers of meaning and collective significance. Sources of symbols are numinous, archaic and inexplicable. With these concepts in mind, we can say something about the collective symbology of the Qabalah, which contains the symbology of all the religions of the world.

Accessing these symbols is done through meditation, contemplation, path working and various forms of theurgy - Practical Qabalah. Organizing symbols into groups or structures also has an unintended affect.

Tables of correspondences are various arrangements of the living Symbols of the 32 elements of the Tree of Life. To learn everything that one could learn about the Qabalah, accessing the Symbols represents a greater quest than reading and studying a large body of books. The important task is to make the Qabalah come alive for the practitioner.

Correspondingly, here is the key point for the Practical Qabalah lecture:

The First Power of the Practical Qabalah is ANALOGY. The Power of Analogy is able to group, configure and compare various disassociated religious symbology to create a unified field where everything is connected to everything else. Creating connections in this manner causes symbols to become triggered, activating them so that the reveal their importance and meaning.  (In magick, causality is believed to be absolute, therefore, by creating connections, one is working a form of magick.)

The Power of Analogy is the foundation of Qabalistic speculation, and it was used to create new connections and extend the meanings of religious symbology. (‘As if’ approach.)

So as you can see, these two key points dove-tail, and the first key point is repeated from the Intro lecture in the Practical lecture. Also, note that because of the nature of symbols, how the power of analogy really shapes and profoundly impacts one’s study and practice of the Qabalah.

This leads me to a rather humorous story. Years ago, I was experimenting with putting together different variations on the Tree of Life, attempting to see if I could discover a new way of encoding the 32 elements of the Qabalah. I was talking to a friend of mine about what I was doing while we were both visiting the local occult book store, when some old man with a white beard overheard what I was saying. He turned to look at me and gave me one of those disapproving looks, mixed with a certain amount of shock and disbelief. Then he came over and interrupted my conversation, sternly rebuking me while shaking a gnarled finger in my face, saying emphatically that manipulating the Tree of Life was not only very impious, but downright dangerous. I could screw up the whole universe by mucking around as I was supposedly doing. (Who in the hell did I think I was, after all!)

Of course, my friend and I smiled at this rude interruption, and we just nodded to the old codger, as if to acknowledge that we heard him, but offering no comment. He then turned around and stormed away, and we both shook our heads, collectively sighed, and continued with our discussion as if nothing had happened. I can’t remember the guy’s name or even exactly when and where this scene occurred, but I remembered it as being quite silly. “Yeah man, somebody actually believes that changing the Tree of Life will wreck the whole freakin’ universe! Right!)

However, now that I have come up with this very fascinating and even startling perspective on the nature of occult symbols and how they function in the Qabalah, I not only remembered this conversation, but it doesn’t seem so absurd as it did many years ago. If organizing and shaping the structure of the tables of correspondence or formulating a glyph that contains them will have some kind of impact on the one doing it, then that old codger wasn’t really too far off.

Will the world end if I turn the Tree of Life upside down? No, of course not. But it might have some impact on how I see and perceive things within my own magickal and spiritual perspective. The impact is individual and very subtle, but it does exist - the very nature of magick makes it so. So that old guy was right, but perhaps if only he had really explained himself instead of acting like a cranky old fart, maybe I might have learned something then that I only recently discovered now. Then again, maybe he was really as clueless as I had thought he was back then.

How odd is the world, so filled with irony! Yet it often takes advancing age to remember and appreciate it.

Frater Barrabbas

Is the Qabbalah Superfluous?

Some occultists and magicians have been making the point that the Qabbalah, which they see as having been derived from an exclusive form of Jewish mysticism, has been over-rated and that its influences and beliefs are not required for working ritual or ceremonial magick. This is not a new argument, but since it has been a popular topic as of late, it’s one that I feel obligated to examine in greater detail.

The real question that all magickal practitioners of the Western Mystery tradition should consider is this: Is the Qabbalah superfluous to practical magick? Can a magician work a system of magick that is completely expunged of all qabbalistic influences? The answer is, yes, of course! If we consider that the Qabbalah is merely a meta-system and a source of meta-knowledge, then choosing a different meta-system and meta-knowledge will readily replace the functionality occupied by the Qabbalah.

We should also understand that the Qabbalah was not derived exclusively from Jewish mysticism, that its historical source was a hybrid that had pagan philosophy and gnosticism blended into it. Also, the system of Qabbalah that most magicians use today is a product of the Golden Dawn and it’s various derivations, especially the Fraternity of Light and Servants of the Light. The Qabbalah of Dion Fortune and her occult progeny (such as Gareth Knight and Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki) has had the greatest impact on the Qabbalah that many of us study and use today, and they infused it with some theosophical elements as well. Thus, the Qabbalah of today is the product of a hybrid that has been mutating for centuries, and it is likely still mutating today. This is not the Lurian Qabbalah of the Hasidic European communities of the 17th century, and in fact, it is not the Qabbalah of the late 19th century, either.

My focus for ths article is really about the nature of a meta-system and meta-knowledge as they are used in occultism, how the Qabbalah is able to function as such, and what any other replacement system must contain in order to be effective. Since I don’t believe that the Qabbalah is either absolutely necessary or critical to the performing of either ritual or ceremonial magick, then I will need to explain why I still continue to use it and find it very capable in my own occult work. This only means that I am unwilling to replace the Qabbalah with another system, but I am able to define the parameters of that replacement. Still, the basic foundation for the Qabbalah is language, particularly, the mysticism of letters, numbers and their interchange in strategic words and phrases.

The Jewish Qabbalah has as its foundation the Hebrew language, specifically, Classical or Biblical Hebrew. Yet Aleister Crowley had shown in his writings (“777”) that the Hebrew language of the Qabbalah could be replaced with any other (sacred) language, but it should be one that has a certain mystique and occult affiliation. The numbers ten and twenty-two are still important, but alphabets that have more elements than twenty-two can be accommodated. Therefore, we can add Greek, Egyptian (Coptic), Arabic, and even Latin, Sanscrit and English to the range of possible foundational languages used to build a qabbalah. However, once we depart from the dual structures of the ten Sephiroth and twenty-two pathways to facilitate building a system with a completely different numbering system, then we will irreparably change the structure of the Tree of Life, and even the number of Trumps in the Tarot. It would seem that there are built in limitations if the purpose of building a variant qabbalah is to use the innate structures of the Tree of Life, the Pathways and their interaction as noted in the processes of spiritual evolution (for the individual seeker), and the emanations of the Godhead.

Other elements of the Qabbalah are its cosmology, cosmogony, occult metaphysics and the various practices and techniques of the practical Qabbalah, such as building tables of correspondences, establishing various spiritual hierarchies, determining the interrelationships of a word-based numerology, and the creation of acronyms, ciphers and sigils. Some of these practical techniques are not critically important, such as the crafting of acronyms and ciphers, which depends on the utility that the occultist or magician finds with such techniques. However, I have found them all to be useful and important in my studies, so I would have to completely replace them if I chose a radical meta-system and meta-knowledge to be the foundation of my magickal practice. I will cover these in greater detail a little bit later in this article, but for now, I want to focus on the nature of a meta-system and meta-knowledge.

What is a meta-system and what is meta-knowledge? I must admit that I am neither a computer scientist nor a mathematician, so my definitions will not be as precise as they might be. I will use imprecise verbiage to define these terms as they would be used in defining the nature of the Qabbalah.

A meta-system is a system that is described by attributes that are themselves abstract objects with their own properties and attributes. The interrelationships between these attributes would form what is loosely defined as a meta-system. It is, therefore, a system describing a system. This definition, as it applies to the Qabbalah, provides the basis for the tables of correspondences and the ordering of the various attributes around the associated qualities of the ten Sephiroth and the twenty-two Pathways (making a series of tables with at most 32 rows). It could also be applied to the various hierarchies and lists of spirits and gods, which could also be included as a subset of the tables of correspondences. The tables can also be reduced to focus on just the ten Sephiroth, or attributes of the four elements, seven planets or twelve signs of the zodiac.

Meta-knowledge is defined roughly as information about information, including the qualities that it has a structural organization (modeling and organizing) and a way of defining specific attributes (tags). This definition would specifically relate to the model of the Tree of Life, and how the various attributes of the Sephiroth and Pathways would be organized into relationships and attribute qualifiers, which could also be reflected in the various tables of correspondence. It should be noted that information implicitly associated with the glyph of the Tree of Life establishes a hierarchy of creative emanations and their interrelationships (through the 22 paths) as well as a holistic and symbolic expression of those formulations.   

As you can see, the two essential qualities of the Qabbalah (definition by attributes, information expressed through a model and specific tagging) could be associated with the concepts of a meta-system and meta-knowledge. These two qualities are the most important aspects in determining the value of the Qabbalah, and they would also function as important qualities for any system that would be used to replace it. A replacement system would have to have the following six elements:

1. Stages or phases of emanation (analogous to the Sephiroth) based on pure number,
2. Alphabetic system of interrelationships (analogous to the Pathways),
3. Glyph or symbolic model depicting the structure of the emanations and pathways along with an implied hierarchy and interrelationships,
4. Foundational language - typically a sacred tongue of some kind,
5. Spiritual hierarchy,
6. Various Tables of Correspondences - important occult attributes and their associated tags.

In addition to the above list of elements, the meta-system and meta-knowledge would be used to determine a cosmology and cosmogony, a structure of the inner spiritual planes, as well as the ability to define a kind of occult epistemology (nature and scope of knowledge) and ontology (nature of reality). It would also define the relationship between the ultimate Godhead as the One, and individual human beings as the Many. Emanation and evolution are both implied by this hierarchy as well as the definition of the macrocosm and the microcosm. This structure is also recursive, since the glyph of the Tree of Life applies to the cosmic emanations of the Godhead as well as to the psycho-spiritual structure of an individual human being (Adam Kadmon). I would also include the four Qabbalistic Worlds as representing a more direct model of the groupings or structures of the inner planes, and also the theorem that mind existed before matter. Therefore, if one were to omit using the Qabbalah, then some of these qualities would have to be determined using some other kind of philosophical mechanism.

Yet suppose that a magician decided that most of the above qualities were unnecessary to the actual practical work of magick. Suppose that he or she only wanted to borrow or rework those practical techniques that were absolutely necessary, and then discard the rest. What, then, is absolutely necessary to the practice of ritual or ceremonial magick.

The first thing that is most important, in my opinion, is for the magician to develop a methodology for crafting the sigils of the various spirits, particularly if such sigils didn’t already exist. The second thing is to be able to somehow conceptualize the nature and structure of the inner planes. Spirits don’t exist in a vacuum, suddenly appearing when properly summoned. They exist in a hierarchy of domains. Thus, the use of spirit lists and an associated hierarchical structure would also be quite important for the practicing magician.

One could have a number of disparate tables to use for spirit lists, or one could attempt to link all of those lists into a meta-hierarchy. Extending these spirit lists into a meta-hierarchy would develop the inter-relationships between the various spirits, and it would produce a structure that would be a lot like a qabbalah. A meta-hierarchy is useful to the ritual or ceremonial magician because it helps to uniquely define each spirit, making them more easy to invoke or evoke. Developing a qabbalah out of these spirit lists would make their over-all structure (or meta-hierarchy) even more refined, thereby showing why adopting some kind of qabbalah would be useful and natural to the practice of magick.  

The other practical uses of the Qabbalah could be omitted, but they are also very useful and important tools. I have found that a strict and intensive use of Gematria (as the transformation of the letters of words and phrases into numbers) is not really very useful. Kenneth Grant has shown this behavior in his books, giving us an example of what an abuse of Gematria can produce - a lot of tenuous occult proofs and dubious connections. Yet a moderate use of Gematria (as shown by Aleister Crowley in his writings) is useful and illuminating. So, too, with Notariqon and Temurah, since the usefulness of acronyms and ciphers varies amongst occultists. Still, being able to pull together many lists into a holistic structure of tables of correspondences is very useful to the magician who is either invoking through a symbolic matrix, or finds the use of ancillary attributes and symbols to be magically effective and conducive. Such additional attributes would consist of the following elements:

• Colors,
• Incense,
• Perfumes,
• Ethnic Godheads,
• Planets, Elements, Zodiacal Signs,
• Metals,
• Minerals,
• Herbs,
• Magickal formulas or words of power,
• Spiritual or theological concepts,
• Various spirits (angelic, demonic, neutral) associated with various hierarchies,
• Symbols or geometric shapes,
• Magickal weapons or tools,
• Alphabets,
• Tarot cards,
• Alchemical concepts,
• inner plane domains,
• etc. ad infinitum.

   
The ability to link all of these attributes together into a single structure would allow all of them to be related to specific occult concepts, representing a greater domain with many sub-domains operating within it. Such a methodology would allow for the creation of powerful associations as well as the ability to build an operant link for any specific spirit or godhead.

Personally, I can’t think of a more useful and important function than being able to build an operant link. This capability, not to mention everything else covered above, would show that the Qabbalah is a very important meta-system for the accomplished ritual or ceremonial magician. One would either have to use what is already available or invent a replacement in order to retain that degree or level of functionality. For myself, I would choose to use and extend what is already available instead of having to create a replacement, since that would be a lot like reinventing the wheel. Others may have their reasons for crafting a replacement (or not), but I would rather focus my efforts on other areas.

If someone elects not to use the Qabbalah, then that’s their choice, of course. But to also omit any of the above functionality is to wield, in my opinion, an inferior magickal methodology.

Frater Barrabbas  

Qabbalah For Pagans and Witches - Part 2

Practical Qabbalah

We have examined the ten sephirah and the structure of the Tree of Life, and we have seen how the thirty-two categories of the sephiroth and paths can be used as a powerful table of correspondences. What are the other practical uses for the Qabbalah that might be used by a ritual magician?

There are three techniques of practical Qabbalah that are very important for magickal work. The first method is a form of numerology that ascribes numeric values for the letters of the Hebrew Alphabet and tabulates them - it is called Gematria.

The concept that letters are also numbers may seem a bit foreign to us, with our present distinct set of numbers used apart from letters. Yet the numbering system that we use today, which is of Arabic and Hindu origin, was also derived originally from letters, except, of course, the brilliant addition of the number zero. This Arabic/Hindu numbering system has completely supplanted earlier and more primitive systems of numeration based on letters or tallies (Roman numerals). A vestige of the Arabic source of our numbering system is that numbers are tabulated from right to left, which is the direction that Semetic letters have been written using the Syrian or Arabic alphabet.

Still, the Greeks and Hebrews utilized their alphabets as both systems of numeration and writing. It’s possible that this relationship was only deliberately manipulated later on, but a form of numerology was developed by the occult literati of the time. They did this by using only certain examples of an obscure relationship between numbers, letters and words, since only certain examples were meaningful, while the rest were merely arbitrary.

To find the occult number associated with a word, the Qabbalist would total up the numbers associated with each letter. This operation could also be done to phrases, as well as proper names. A Qabbalist could then make some judgements based upon the number associated with words, phrases or proper names. Thus it was believed that words which had the same numeric value also had the same corresponding meaning. For instance, the Hebrew word AHBH (beloved), which has the individual letter values of 1, 5, 2, and 5, when added together, is associated with the occult number 13.

Additionally, the Hebrew word AChD (unity), which has the values 1, 8, and 4, when added together also produces the occult number of 13. A Qabbalist would then contemplate upon the subtle interconnection between the words “beloved” and “unity,” noting their analogy, and that they could be interchanged as formula key-words in a ritual.

The number 13 is then given the significance of the two words (beloved, unity) whose numeric value are equivalent, so the number 13 now has these additional attributes other than just being a number. Using this numerologic methodology, the Qabbalist would produce a book of numbers and their associated words (Sepher Sephiroth). This book of numbers would show the numeric values of all of the important words, such as phrases from the holy books as well as the various names of the Godhead, Angels, Demons and other spirits.  Looking into such a book, a Qabbalist would also find other words associated with the number 13, such as Hated - AYB, Emptiness - BHV, and a Locust - ChGB, and many others.

All of These words would be used together to build up a set of attributes for each number, although it would be quite difficult to determine a specific unified meaning amongst so many diverse words, phrases and names. Noting the above collection of words associated with the value of 13, I myself would find it impossible to think up a single semantic meaning that would fit all of these words. Still, in theory, that is how one would complete a Sepher Sephiroth, by creating a semantic structure for a full range of numbers and words. Generally, a Qabbalist will choose the words associated with a specific number that has the most significance, and then ignore the rest. An example of this kind of selectivity is to choose the two words “beloved” and “unity” and ignore the other words that have nothing in common with these two. Basically, Gematria is used to find connections between different words, but only where those connections would have some kind of significance or importance.

Gematria is a word derived from the Greek Grammateia, meaning tabulation (denoting an account book or domestic listing). That was the first methodology that we just examined. The two other systems of numerology are called Notariqan and Temura. Notariqan is from the word Notarius; it’s an ancient method of shorthand writing which the Qabbalist used to create or define acronyms. Temura is a method of permutation that substitutes letters so as to encrypt or decode words or phrases. There are supposedly 22 different methods of substitution, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Temura is also used to create signatures and sigils from formula words or important names, such as Angelic or Demonic names. These are used particularly in the rituals of invocation and evocation.

I use Notariqan to build and craft magickal acronym formulas, or to determine acronyms from a given sentence or phrase. Temura is useful for crafting sigils or signatures from the names of spirits, using magickal squares or the system of Aiq Bkr to create them. Using ciphers or decoding messages is less useful to me, particularly since I am not prone to using archaic grimoires or books that might employ them. I have also found only limited use for Gemtria, since it seems kind of contrived to me, but other occultists have used it extensively to prove obscure or subtle connections, such as the writings and books authored by Kenneth Grant.  

To recap - I use the Qabbalah extensively in the follow ways:

• Tree of Life as a model of the Inner planes,
• Sephiroth and paths are used in a massive set of tables of correspondence,
• Gematria can be used to determine connections between words, names and phrases,
• Notariqan is used to create or explode magickal acronyms,
• Temura is used to craft sigils or signatures from the names of various spirits.

       
As you can see, the Qabbalah is very useful and important, even if you are a pagan or a witch. If you practicing ritual magick, the Qabbalah is a critically important tool for determining analogies and connections between different symbologies. We will get deeper into these techniques and methodologies in future articles.


Neoplatonic Elements Found in the Qabbalah

You might be wondering by now where all of the ideas and insights came from that were used to build up the discipline and knowledge base of the Qabbalah. I previously stated that a lot of the ideas for the Qabbalah came from Neoplatonism, and that is why the product is more like a heterodoxy than representative of a purely monotheistic religion. This why some orthodox jews reject the Qabbalah, and many Christians are suspicious of its tenets, and rightly so. To follow the philosophical beliefs of the Qabbalah is to admit to the possibility of multiple aspects or attributes of the Deity. The Qabbalah is a monist based philosophy, but that does not give it any purchase with a strict monotheistic definition of Deity - they are in fact, incompatible. If Jews or Christians are also Qabbalists, then their concept of Deity would have to be very mutable, which would make them occultists who would espouse a very esoteric definition of their religious faith.

The reason that the Qabbalah is incompatible with a strict monotheistic definition of Deity is because its roots are in Neoplatonism, which was a system of philosophy that was inherently pagan and polytheistic, even though it had developed a decided monist perspective. Most of the concepts that I have already explained as central to the Qabbalah were first described and elucidated by the Neoplatonists of the third and fourth century C.E., most notably, Plotinus and Iamblichus. Iamblichus is important because he postulated a system of Theurgy that later became the impetus for the birth of modern ritual and ceremonial magick.

Neoplatonism taught that there was a greater godhead or source of all of the gods, which was called the One, and also the Good. The One was thought to be pre-existent, self-begotten and fully self-determined. That One also existed as the greater union of all of the gods, goddesses, daimons, demigods, spirits and souls in existence. The One, which was also called the Good, was the cause and source of all things, thus nature itself was good. Not only was nature inherently good, but all things in the natural world ultimately led back to the One.

The material world was created by a nested process called emanation, through which the One proceeded to generate three levels extending out from itself. These four levels were called the Hypostasis of the One, Intelligence, Soul and Body. The Hypostasis of Intelligence represented the Universal Mind which contained the Platonic forms or ideas. The Hypostasis of Soul was the producer and organizer of the sensible. There was the group or collective Soul of the World, known as the Anima Mundi, and there was the souls of individual people. The Body, of course, was the natural world, animated and ensouled by an interpenetrating of the essence of the One.

The process of creation involved what was called procession, where the higher level would automatically and without intention or will, generate the level below itself, which in turn, led the next level, creating the level below it. There was a natural tendency to “process” from the highest One to the many, and there was a corresponding pull attracting the many back to the One, which was called the return. The act of creation in no way diminished or diluted the source, since there was no dissipation of power from higher to lower. The higher was unaffected by the act of creating the lower, since it created without movement, inclination or will. It retained its integrity and wholeness, and did not need to engage with what it created, since the created lower level automatically inherited the structure and order of the higher. The full cycle of creation always involved a procession and a return, with a later stage called Abiding added in, which represented the state of immanence preceding creation. The Neoplatonists also consider the process of emanation to be continuous, infinite and outside of space and time, which is pretty much the same as what the Qabbalists thought about creation via the Tree of Life.

Iamblichus himself added an important rule, which he called the Law of Mean Terms. This law stated that in order for there to be any kind of communication or linkage between two things, that a third thing that acts as a mediator between the two must exist. This concept of intermediation is applied to all levels, which produces a seamless bonding between all levels of creation. Thus the concept of levels and divisions completely disappears, making the universe dynamic and continuous. This is an important concept when thinking about the divisions in the Tree of Life, because of the Law of Mean Terms, there really isn’t any actual boundaries or divisions between the levels.

Another important point is that Neoplatonism freely mixed with another related discipline, and that was Neopythagoreanism. Iamblichus used Pythagorean concepts in his philosophy, and even wrote a biography on the life of Pythagorus. Many of the great philosophers of the first and second century subscribed to pythagorean beliefs and practices, including some of the Stoic precursors to Neoplatonism. If we substitute Plato’s ideal forms with pure numbers, and apply that to all of the rest of Neoplatonic philosophy, then something of the Neopythagorean perspective is derived. Because the Qabbalah uses numbers and letters in the structure of the Tree of Life, and in the creative emanation of the material universe, one could also see a Neopythagorean influence at work in the fashioning of the first major book on the Qabbalah, the Sepher Yetzirah. 

Now that we have gone over some of the more elementary components of Neoplatonism, it should be pretty obvious that the concept of emanation, the levels of hypostasis, the manner of creation, procession and return - all of these concepts are used in describing and explaining the Qabbalah. I could, of course, bring up even more concepts and ideas from Neoplatonism, but that would over emphasize the points that I have already made. While there were indeed original beliefs and perspectives that have a Jewish origin in the philosophical underpinnings of the Qabbalah, the more important concepts were taken and adapted from Neoplatonism. I think it’s sufficient to say that great ideas don’t need to be constantly reinvented, and that the Neoplatonic sources of the Qabbalah are neither problematic nor do they devalue the overall quality of what has been adaptively created.

If you want to read up and study Neoplatonism, and perhaps find the sources of my above statements, I would recommend the book “Neoplatonism” by R. T. Wallis (Bristoll Classical Press - 2002).

Frater Barrabbas