Ceremonial Magic and the Power of Evocation - A Critique

This is a three part critique and analysis of the book Ceremonial Magic and the Power of Evocation: A System of Personal Power, written by Joseph Lisiewski.

Recently, I made a comment that criticized the writings of Joseph Lisiewski and referred to anyone who proposed that ceremonial magick must produce verifiable material results in order to be considered successful. I decided to dust off and edit the critique of the book that started this whole movement. It is a rather long article, but I think that it’s important and represents my opinion in regards to the camp of materialistic forms of evocative magick. The problem that I have with Lisiewski’s book is that he states that a successful evocation must produce outstanding psychic phenomena, such as poltergeist activity, howlings, fire and brimstone, full physical manifestations or else the working has failed. Unfortunately, he has spawned quite a following, so now there are some other practitioners who taken up this argument. I believe that it is my duty as a magician to dispute this movement and point out its obvious flaws.

A while ago, when I read over Joseph Lisiewski’s book, Ceremonial Magic & The Power of Evocation: A System of Personal Power, the first thing that came to my mind is that he has decided to focus entirely and completely on the physical manifestation of evocative magick. He has stated that such physical manifestations are guaranteed if the magician chooses a suitably older grimoire (like the Heptameron) and faithfully performs all of preparations, practices and rites exactly as they are written, without substitutions or omissions. The determinant for success is that the old grimoires will operate as they did hundreds of years ago, and the magician need only look to them as the final authority in all of his operations. He has also proposed that evocative magick must produce verifiable and physically quantifiable results, such as a fully manifested physical entity and its associated psychic perturbations. He makes the distinction that his book and methodology alone fulfills the promise of gathering treasures in this world for the practitioner instead of in the spirit world. However, his methodology is simple and compelling - just use the grimoire as it was intended to be used and all will be well.

 I don’t really understand what Joseph is referring to when he seems to imply that other systems of evocation only gather together “spiritual” treasures for the practitioner. Certainly, goetic magick, like elemental and talismanic magick, are effective forms to obtain and acquire material results. Any experienced magician worth his salt would be able to affect the material plane in some degree, otherwise, what would be the point in working magick? However, in my estimation, the ultimate goal of working magick is enlightenment and at-one-ment with the Godhead, and through that exalted state, to aid in the manifestation of the world’s destiny. Throughout this process, whether working high or low magick, a magician engages the material plane. As a practicing magician, I find the accusation that I am somehow just interested in “spiritual” treasures to be absurd. I may have mystical pretensions, but I am not a mystic. 

During the renaissance, a classical magician would spent a great deal of time and effort engaged in the first stage of magickal evocation, which was “consecratio.” The magician would gather together all of the tools, materials and regalia that were to be used in the working and assemble them at the chosen place where the rites were to be performed. He would then spend time sequestered from the mundane world, obtaining through prayer, fasting, self-denial, abasement, atonement, purification ablutions and other pious activities, the correct degree of spiritual refinement necessary to perform the work. He would thus gain great spiritual treasures in order to have the power, authority and legitimacy to invoke and summon spirits, whose aid he would seek to enrich and empower himself in the material world. Perhaps that is what is meant by spiritual treasures. Since the world that the renaissance magician lived in was economically and socially restrictive, only magick or miracles could dramatically change someone’s lot in life, otherwise he was doomed to remain in his station of life and so were his children. The magician dared being discovered and persecuted as a heretic in order to gain advantage in the material world through supernatural means.

However, in today’s world, life in one of the developed societies is not ruled by a rigid class system or a tyrannical nobility interested in maintaining its status quo at all costs. The possibility of upward mobility is far greater today than it was during the renaissance or earlier. While material based magick is important, it no longer has to have miraculous capabilities in which to reward the magickal practitioner with tangible results (unless the magician is seeking a windfall). What is needed is persistence, intelligence, flexibility and a good work ethic. The old magick was used to make changes in the old world order, which by its nature was very difficult to change. A magician in that previous time would have sought to discover buried treasures or gained some kind of royal patronage as a sooth sayer. Goetic demons also performed many tasks that we take for granted today, such as fast and efficient transport, flying to and from a destination, sending picture, images, thoughts and ideas instantaneously over long distances. Much of that no longer seems relevant today. Would I like to be rich and famous? Of course, who wouldn’t want to be? Yet there are many mundane ways to achieve this goal, all of which don’t require a knowledge of theurgy. What it does require is a kind of singular ambition, a mono-mania, if you will. I have other interests and commitments besides money, so I opt instead to be comfortably well off in my career and station in life.

In his book, Joseph decries all of the current magickal methodologies in print, condemning them as inaccurate and unworkable as they are currently written. Although he does not name any names, we can be sure that he is taking aim at anyone who has written about magickal evocation and who offered their own methodology instead of deferring to the old grimoires. He has stated in his book that the current works on evocation propose systems that consist of someone else’s personal system of magick, which only works for them. He goes on to say that because of today’s inherent confusion between the physical and spiritual worlds and their rewards, these personalized systems are hopelessly muddled and incapable of producing any tangible results. What Joseph means by tangible results is a fully manifested physical entity and the product of that amazing appearance, which is the seemingly miraculous occurrence of material wealth.

I can deduce from this statement that what Joseph is saying is basically all of the existing and modern systems of evocation and theurgy fail to produce any tangible results. Practitioners may see things and sense things, but the working produces either very subtle manifestations or nothing at all. One gets the impression that the subtle phenomena is actually the delusions of the magician unable or unwilling to admit that what he or she is doing is fatally flawed. 

Joseph does seem to miss the irony of his statement accusing magicians of cobbling together their own personal idiosyncratic system of evocation, since what he is proposing is a personalized methodology that would accompany and aid in the use of one of the old grimoires. This is not so much different than what almost everyone else has determined in their own magickal research and practice. The only difference is that Joseph believes that exclusively employing one of the old grimoires (and ignoring all of the other more recent lore) is the only avenue available to the magician who is seeking a successful result to an evocation process.

Prior to this book being published, there were only a few books in print that proposed to reveal how to perform magickal evocation. What we have are basically two approaches; to base one’s magick on the Golden Dawn and its various ritual techniques, or to use the old grimoires as they exist in print. However, the Golden Dawn had rituals to perform most of the workings required for practical magick, but evocation appeared to defer to the old grimoires as well. Mathers passed around manuscripts and published a few of the old grimoires in English for the members of his order. Since that time, many have used both approaches, but anyone who has sought to master the art of magickal evocation has managed to put together a system of magick based on experimentation, research on the old grimoires and other published materials, and the ritual structures of the Golden Dawn. Whether a magician is a Thelemite, pagan, witch, member of the OTA (“Poke” Runyon’s organization), or some other occult persuasion, he or she will use these sources, since there are few if any other sources to examine.  What seems to happen is that anyone who masters evocation has to have first developed their own personal system. I honestly can’t figure out why this is such a bad thing. I, myself, have gone this route, and I produced a system that not only worked for me, but also worked for others as well.

Joseph also makes a great deal of noise about the inaccuracies that appear to plague the writings of the Golden Dawn, and that those errors came about from the misspellings and omissions found in the book, The Magus, by Francis Barett, which was the supposed source of occult lore for that organization. Of course, The Magus was a poor plagiarism of Henry Agrippa’s four books on Occult Philosophy, but for many individuals in the 19th century, it was their only source book for that material.  Joseph goes on to say that because of those errors, the entire body of lore belonging to the Golden Dawn is spurious and suspect, and so is all the other lore based on the Golden Dawn, including all of the writings of Aleister Crowley and his spiritual descendants. That would implicate Lon Milo DuQuette as well as yours truly. Joseph has determined that the reason why modern systems of evocation or theurgy don’t work is because of these errors.

To impugn all of the writings on practical and evocative magick, from the Golden Dawn to the present, because they contain the errors and omissions first presented in the Magus would assume that no one ever went back to Agrippa’s work to find a better source for their material. It would also assume that such errors, if they occur, are either relevant or even important. Occult publications and manuscripts are notorious for containing errors. I had to fix some of the squares that I wanted to use in the latest version of the Book of Abramelin because they had errors in them, and this book was produced from a supposedly purer source, a German version of the same genre that was superior to the original produced by Mathers.

While it is true that there are errors and omissions in a lot of the occult material in print, does it follow that whatever is based upon these writings, errors and all, are themselves egregiously in error? Joseph uses this logic to propose that we should all use the original occult sources, particularly the old grimoires, since they were used by generations of practicing magicians and were therefore, tried and true. Yet anyone who knows anything about the old grimoires will quickly realize how facetious and misleading this statement really is. First off, every manuscript of a given grimoire genre had differences, some had more and some had less - the variances could be quite startling. Secondly, most of the published works are from manuscripts that were much later than the originally proposed dates of origin. What has gotten into print is often from a poor surviving manuscript or redacted from multiple copies. Often, published grimoires are edited and produced by individuals who are historians and not practicing magicians, so errors and lacunae are reproduced so they can be examined from a historical perspective, not a magickal one.

So is Joseph saying that we should go back to the actual manuscript in its native tongue? How many occultists can speak archaic written forms of French, German or Italian, and then, have access to rare books that would be kept in special collections under strict environmental controls. Only certified academics would have access to such works, since few of these books have been electronically reproduced and disseminated. Most occultists and magicians are reliant on those works that are published and made available to the general public, so getting back to the source has its limitations. 

Another example of how erroneous this claim is can be found in the example of the grimoire Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin, which was translated and published by Mathers in the late 19th century. This book has been revered by occultists and practicing magicians. The book even has urban myths associated with it, that the magical squares contained in it are so potent, just having the book in one’s possessions can cause all sorts of phenomena to occur. However, recent scholarship has revealed that the original manuscript used by Mathers was incomplete and full of errors. A new version of this book, which was derived from an earlier and more complete German manuscript, shows, when compared to the older version, just how incomplete and flawed it was. There are more magick squares in the German version than the French version, all of the magick squares are complete (although some have errors) in the German version, and an entire chapter was omitted in the French version that is faithfully reproduced in the German. The ordeal in the German version is 18 months, while it is only 6 months in the French version - the list goes on and on.

Despite all of those numerous errors or differences in the French/Mathers version, many magickal practitioners have attested to the potency and efficacy of this grimoire, even though the version that they have used was published from a flawed and incomplete source manuscript. Were the magicians who used it delusional? Can we trust a published book version of one of the original grimoires without recourse to the spectrum of different original manuscripts used to produce it, ensuring that what we have is correct and authentic? Obviously, the answer to both questions above is “no”, so it can’t really make much difference. This example alone shows the fatal error in Joseph’s declaration, and we must acknowledge that all occult lore has errors, typos and omissions, but that doesn’t negate the potency of the magic produced.

Perhaps it might be just as easy to just fix the errors wherever they are discovered. Maybe that would alleviate the problem, although from the perspective of the purest it would make the magickal workings that relied on them doubtful, whether the errors were fixed or not. However, that being said, errors and omissions can’t seem to completely negate the efficacy of the grimoire. It comes down to the fact that nothing is perfect, not even the old grimoires had that distinction. Yet Joseph seems to believe that if a page is missing, a letter transposed or a name misspelled, then somehow the whole operation will produce nothing. 

I find his logic to be quite challenging even though I strongly disagree, and with, I might add, extreme prejudice. It would seem his opinion is well founded in the older practices of ceremonial magick, where even a minor mistake could nullify the whole operation. However, my experience with magick has shown that such attention to detail is superfluous and even irrelevant. There is an important reason why this is so, and it is simply stated that the domain of Spirit is neither described nor defined by occult symbols even in their most abstract or absolute form, so a variance in them will not alter the outcome. So it would seem that the intent has a greater relevance to the practice of magick than the perfection of ritual execution or the purity of the source of ritual lore.

If someone invokes a spirit named “Duke Imos”, and instead calls him “Duke Inos”, will that cause the rite to fail? One might expect that something as important as a spirit’s name would have to be correct in order for the invocation to succeed, but actually, it does succeed anyway. I have witnessed individuals invoking Welsh pagan deities, massacring their names in a manner that would set a Welshman’s teeth on edge, but it doesn’t seem to mar the ritual or keep those deities from appearing in some manner. Are such productive outcomes delusions? Are the individuals who made such glaring errors and the people who were also in attendance, mass hallucinating? Of course not! The question that this issue begs is this: Is it the form or the intent of the rite that is important? A medieval magician would say it was the form, but then if he made a mistake and didn’t know about it, the magickal operation would probably have worked anyway. I would say that the intent is far more important than the form and experience has shown this, time after time, to be true. Joseph decries minor discrepancies between variations in the lists of spirits and correspondences and deduces that only the use of correct versions will guarantee a successful outcome. This rule has been proven to be wrong, so either Joseph is being highly disingenuous or he is showing a decided ignorance about how magick really works. 

Joseph decries the “march to your own drumbeat” mentality of the New Age that has allowed some gross and vulgar practices when it comes to ritual writing and performance, and these include sloppy research, poor substitutions, a lack of practice and shoddy execution. I find that I must agree with his opinion to a certain point, since I often find poor ritual practices exacerbated by the mixing of different spiritual or occult systems with no regard to esthetics, simplicity, continuity or elegance of form. These rituals sometimes even work, although not as effectively as they would if they were written in a consistent manner. Yet this often occurs from a lack of expertise and practice, which can only be gained by experimentation and the evolving of one’s work over time.

There are a lot of people working at a beginner’s level of expertise in magick and when one examines their rituals, their lack of sophistication is glaringly obvious. However, for some reason their rituals can still work as long as the intent is clear and simply expressed. This is a paradox, but as I have stated, magick is not based on the existence of absolutely and verifiable truths, even in symbolic form. One can actually make a lot of erroneous substitutions and the magick will still work, if the intent is clear. So magick relies first and foremost on the intent of the magician, secondly on her will, thirdly on her imagination and passion, fourthly on her personal practices and mental disciplines, etc. Somewhere down the list of important criteria, one might find that the symbology should be consistent and that the magician should not mix systems, but that is not particularly important. I have seen individuals perform powerful rites using nothing more exotic in terms of magickal regalia than their own index finger and their mundane clothes, and the magick worked. Where Joseph lays down absolute rules about the practice of theurgy, I would make suggestions and establish guidelines for esthetically superior rituals. Unlike Joseph, I am not a snob nor am I a purist - and still, the magick works anyway!

Joseph then gives a rather gloomy analysis of the history of magick, which is interesting but proposes questionable ideas, such as that each age of magick laid the ground work for the next age, and that there is a continuous tradition practiced down through the ages, from the Hermetic Era in antiquity through the Gothic Revival of the 19th century. I don’t believe that at all, and there is little to verify any kind of actual unbroken historical lineage from antiquity to today. In my opinion, each age reinvents magick, certainly using ideas and material from previous ages, but in a way that makes it completely new.

For instance, anyone who has examined the Greek Magical Papyri of the Hermetic Era currently in vogue amongst modern practitioners of magick will find that the rites and spells are quite different than anything practiced today, since they represent a very different, if not, lost way of perceiving the world. Whatever is used from these archaic documents must be intensely reworked and rewritten in order to make them useful. Joseph seems to think that the process of rewriting such a ritual is an egregious sin, since the original ritual is lost amidst the rewriting. He gives as an example, the Bornless One rite, which was remade by the Golden Dawn members into one of the most beautiful and powerful rituals in our current arsenal of modern lore. The original ritual is inelegant, crude and was used as a means to perform a powerful exorcism. Yet the new version corrupted some of the words of power or omitted some of them altogether. A modern magician could extract a version of the “Headless One” rite from the original text and make it work, and the Golden Dawn version can be performed, and it works as well. Of course, the magician who uses the original rite isn’t actually reading and performing the rite in Koine Greek, but that doesn’t seem to matter at all.

This example supports my argument above, that the old rites are given new life by being rewritten and reformed into something new. It is a process that has been used for untold centuries and represents how new ritual lore is developed from the old lore of a previous age. But according to Joseph, we lost our way in the last two centuries, and the magick used today is groundless and ineffective. Of course, I don’t agree with him, and I find his statements rather strange. Has he ever tried to use any of the modern rites that he so caustically condemns? The fact that they work is proof enough for the modern practitioner, and if they didn’t work, they would have been discarded and replaced with something that did work many years ago.

Frater Barrabbas

Occult Teachers, Masters and Instructing Students in Ritual Magick

Since I have written an article about groups and their importance, I guess that I should also put in my two cents about teachers, masters and instructing students in the art of ritual magick. This is a pretty sensitive topic, since some have vested interests in their teachers and spiritual leaders, while others are interested in maintaining and actively pursuing their roles in the community. I must admit that ever since I left the Coven From Hell, I have not put myself in a position to call anyone my teacher. Instead, I have been inspired by some individuals, and I would assume that I have inspired others as well. I also consider myself a student, no matter how many years I have been researching, writing and practicing magick. I might have more experience and knowledge than some, but I am always encountering some new concept or topic in my interactions with other occultists, even if that other occultist is just a beginner.

So because I got really burned by being, for a while, the “chela” of Christopher Syn, also known as Bill Schnoebelen, I guess you could say that I have soured on the whole matter of assuming the role of master, chela, student or teacher. Because of my previous experiences, I have avoided looking for teachers, gurus or individuals to whom I might bond with so as to quicken my mastery of myself and my occult practices. I just don’t believe that anyone has any real answers to the questions I pose to myself in regards to my own internal spiritual truths and my quest for enlightenment. That also doesn’t mean that I don’t listen to what others are saying, read books written by other authors or attend their classes or workshops. I am as open to new ideas from many sources, and I have been highly inspired by the words and ideas of other people. I hope that I remain in such an open and accessible way for the duration of my life, so I won’t ever be closed off to new sources of ideas and information, no matter their source.

However, over the years I have steadfastly avoided the role of teacher, seeking to share what I know with like minded and open individuals. Why is this so? What have I got against being a teacher and the role of teachers, masters, chelas, students and the whole formal operation of occult pedagogy? Why do I resist taking on any kind of occult assistant or allowing individuals to satisfy themselves while basking in my aura? I have to admit that the whole idea of anyone engaging in a kind of hero worship of me is disturbing, mainly because I know all too well that I am unworthy of any adulation. I am just an occult student who is attempting to practice the art of ritual magick while also simultaneously trying to make a living and live my life in some degree of peace and harmony. I do admire some individuals that I have met, and I am certain that I have some admirers as well. As long as it doesn’t go too far, I am OK with all of that. So, the rest of the topic of teachers, masters, chelas and students has to do with what I would consider going too far with roles, expectations and all of the associated baggage.

I have already discussed what I think of the whole subject of ascended masters in a previous article that you can find here. While I realize that some occultists put a great deal of faith and belief in this topic, for myself, I have a much more down to earth sentiment. I respect that others do believe in ascended masters, yet in all of the years that I have practiced ritual magick, I have never once either met any masters or even found evidence that they exist. It might be that I am psychically tone deaf to the occurrence of ascended masters, yet I believe that there have been many human beings who have excelled in their spiritual search and quest for enlightenment throughout the ages. They lived their lives like anyone else, and they died after leading a consummately productive life. Rama Krishna is a good example of this kind of spiritual master, and there are many others. However, Rama Krishna died of throat cancer, and his passage was well documented by his followers. He was, more than anything else, a human being just like you and me, afflicted by frailties and gifted by exceptional virtues. However, my spiritual path has been pretty mundane in regards to meeting remarkable individuals, because there was not one who was a supernatural being as far as I could tell, yet all of them were remarkable in a very human sort of way. I think that I have made my point on this topic, so I can continue with the rest of the story, as it were. 

If we conclude that the world is not populated with ascended masters who are immortal, often invisible and beyond human frailties and flaws, what then of the many declared teachers and leaders who are in the world today. In order for me to make an informed judgment of any of these teachers, I would need to know them and be able to examine the contents of their teachings. However, based on what I have said above, which is that none of these teachers or spiritual leaders are likely to be immortal ascended masters, they are instead human beings, no different in that regard than you or I. They have virtues and failings, great gifts and personal flaws, so there isn’t really anything supernatural or godlike operating in any of them.

Putting a teacher or spiritual leader on a pedestal while they are still alive has inherent risks both for the teacher or leader and the ardent follower. That risk is powerfully defined by one word - “expectations.” If we revere a teacher or a spiritual leader, then we have put them in a place above the rest of humanity. All of their actions and words are judged in this context, giving them far more weight and importance than they would normally acquire. The teacher or leader is required to behave and speak as a conduit of the divine at all times, and when he or she shows any of the vices or weaknesses of mortality, then their fall from grace is just as precipitous as their rise. I have seen this rise and fall happen repeatedly in various groups and organizations that I have personally experienced or read about. To knowingly don the apparel and persona of the great teacher or leader is to engage not only in self deception, but to deceive and impugn the spiritual beliefs and integrity of others - this is an egregious sin in my estimation.

Pretending to be an emissary of the Godhead deliberately empowers the expectations of others, thus creating a false aura of glamor and fascination. Such a pretense will always lead to a terrible fall, since the teacher or leader ends up being seduced into believing their own PR, making the outer deception into one that is potentially pathological. There is such a thing as a Messiah complex, where both the leader and devotees engage in a complete disassociation with reality. It often leads to terrible abuses, personal tragedy and even a kind of social-spiritual collapse. The rest of the world looks upon the fall of a spiritual leader as yet another scandal that proves the folly of discipleship and the gullibility of trust vested in any spiritual leader. Such events makes the world a little bit more cynical and incapable of believing in anyone or anything.

For the reasons that I have stated above, I have carefully avoided developing my role as a spiritual or occult leader and teacher. I have also avoided becoming anyone’s devoted follower, thereby refusing to join any organization that is not democratic or ruled by consensus. I am not afflicted with cynicism, but I am affected greatly by prudence and an awareness of my own personal failings. Life has made me humble, whether or not I wanted it. The great equalizer and the reducer of time and circumstance has ensured that I have never been allowed to get too infatuated with my own supposed brilliance or ingenuity. Yet if I am so loath to adopt any kind of spiritual leader or teacher persona, then how do manage to teach anyone anything? I also appear to be writing books and articles, conducting workshops and discussions groups and communicating with various individuals who want to learn what I seem to know. Is this a kind of disingenuous hyperbole on my part? Well, not really, because I have decided on a much better role that eliminates all of the above pitfalls.

I seek to share my knowledge and experiences with others instead of force feeding them my methodologies and beliefs. Sharing means that I will also gain useful information and insights from those whom I am engaged in sharing. It also immediately establishes a relationship of mutual respect and equality, something that I idealize and is part of the governance of the Order to which I am a member. Another important concept is mentoring. If I become engaged in sharing my ideas and practices with another person, then I have become a mentor to that person. Being a mentor is a very temporary situation, it is also quite personal and intimate. A mentor guides, suggests, shares and demonstrates, but he or she doesn’t dictate, coerce or exploit the one who is being mentored. Also, a mentor relationship has a limited scope associated with it, which means that the student is taking on a specific task or tasks, and when they are completed, then the relationship is dissolved amicably. While a teacher takes on a role that often erects a barrier between themselves and the student, a mentor has no such barriers. A teacher often has a group of individuals to impart a set curriculum, so there is often little time for answering extensive questions by a single student. There is also little time for remedial assistance or one on one tutoring, since a teacher must assume a certain amount of required background knowledge. A mentor instructs at whatever level the student has previously achieved, and helps one master the curriculum at their own pace.

The whole object of training someone in the art of ritual magick is to allow them to perform all of the rituals and magickal workings for themselves. At some point, their own creative genius has to be triggered so that all of the practicing and study comes alive for them. The sole purpose of any spiritual or magickal teacher is to inspire and guide a student so they can become autonomous and self-directing. Any other kind of assistance is either unwanted or unneeded. When a teacher seeks to use a student to build themselves up or to create a permanent and co-dependent relationship, then that teacher is violating the whole spirit and purpose of teaching. The focus should be completely on students and their trials at learning and mastering the discipline and practice of ritual magick. It should not be on the teacher, who doesn’t need any attention and shouldn’t disrupt the student’s learning process. If a student ever finds himself being put into a situation where the teacher’s issues or needs are eclipsing the topics that were supposed to be taught, then my advice is to either respectfully remind the teacher of the objectives or quickly end that teacher student relationship. This can happen to any teacher who is overwhelmed by personal issues, but a teacher who is so afflicted can no longer teach. Often it is up to the student to judge these situations and to take corrective action, since the student is personally responsible for their own learning process.

It is has long been my opinion that the best magickal instruction is acquired by individual and personal instruction through mentorship. Ritual magick often has a very high bar in regards to getting started and learning to become an effective ritual magician. Books and workshops can help, so can video demonstrations and examples. However, mastery of ritual magick requires the student to assume all of the work, and most of that work is the practice of meditation, rituals and the performing of magickal workings. Ideally, a mentor can not only demonstrate how a working should be performed by sharing a magickal working with the student, he or she can also guide and observe the student taking the first step in operating independently. This is my preferred way to teach others how to work magick, through sharing and acting as a temporary mentor. It keeps the focus on the student and removes the glamor from the experienced teacher, which is how magick and occultism should be taught in the first place. I have never had anyone get any romantic notions about me and my magickal abilities when I have adopted this role, so it would seem that it’s a good object lesson used to maintain a balanced and humble outlook on one’s life and spirituality.

When people write emails and ask for me to become their teacher, I have often demurred. I am not being antisocial or dismissive of their interests or needs. I just believe that a true and faithful teaching of the actual practice of ritual magick should be done through a mentor type relationship. That would require a person to live in some proximity to where I live, or for them to be able to afford to personally visit me on a regular basis. Otherwise, there are my books, workshops, and the books, lectures and workshops of other teachers. I believe that there is no shortage of materials for students to acquire and master their pursuit of the art of ritual magick. However, I reserve my personal guidance and technical ritual methodologies to an intimate one on one kind of experience, even if that means that I will personally train and empower very few ritual magicians in my lifetime. That is the limitation and the virtues of such a regimen. So, if you don’t call me master, I won’t call you a chela or treat you like servant. That’s a promise!

Frater Barrabbas

Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick - Greater Key - Volume III

Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick - Greater Key - Volume 3

by Frater Barrabbas

Immanion Press / Megalithica Books, June 2010

It is finally in print, the long awaited third book in the trilogy, Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick. While only a few know that this work was originally written in 1996 and called “Pyramid of Powers,” a name that was changed along with a massive rewriting and editing project, it was a persistent and laborious act of will that finally saw this work fully printed. Although many hands had a role in helping to make this dream realized, it was also the ambitions of the author (myself) who continued to push for that realization.

There is some very important information found in this third volume of the MARM series, especially since it is the final part of a work that seeks to give the power of building a personal and unique ritual magickal system into the hands of the intermediate student. This work, in three parts, teaches the art of magickal system building, which is a very complex and difficult methodology to learn. It’s easy and simple to just use the rituals that are found in books or grimoires, but this work shows how more rewarding and empowering it is to write your own personal magickal system. There will be other books produced using this perspective, but this, as far as I know, is the first of such. Let’s take a brief look at what the third volume contains in regards to content, so you will know why I believe it to be the most important of the MARM trilogy.

Completing the work begun in Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick: Foundation and Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick: Grimoire, this book contains the detailed instructions on how to build a key of correspondences and apply it to the nine rituals of this series. There is also information that will aid the seeker in forming a sustainable magickal working group as well as an in-depth analysis of the ritual structures of the nine rituals used in this system.

Written for the intermediate student and practitioner, this Greater Key is the third volume in the Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick trilogy. This book is the final step in commanding the occult arts of ritual magick, and is recommended to anyone seeking to master the art of building a complete magickal system.

In this book you will learn:

• Components of a key of correspondences
• How to configure your own key of correspondences
• Neopagan, Qabbalistic and Gnostic example keys included
• How to customize the nine rituals of the MARM series
• Methods of forming a Star group and building a group key
• Determining and avoiding group pitfalls and crisis’s
• Instructions for joining the Order of the Gnostic Star
• Example of an actual New Moon working with journal entries
• Glossary of all terms used in the MARM series

About the Author

Frater Barrabbas Tiresius is a practicing ritual magician who has studied magick and the occult for over thirty-five years. He has emphasized pragmatism and structuralism in a discipline that he believes has lost its direction and become diluted by mediocrity and misunderstanding. He believes that ritual magick is a discipline whose mystery is unlocked by continual practice and by occult experiences and revelations.

The book Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick represents an entry level work written for the beginning student of ritual magick, but it’s one work existing within an orbit of many completed and planned literary projects; each of which shall attempt to modernize the practice of ritual magick, making it relevant in the new millennium.

The three volume set, Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick was written for the intermediate student of ritual magick, assisting that seeker in crafting his/her own system of magick. The first volume contains all of the documentation that an intermediate practitioner should know, the second contains the grimoire of ritual templates, which the student must modify to build a personal magickal system, and the final book contains the key and methodologies used to modify and personalize the rituals contained in the grimoire.

On the Importance of Organizing Magickal Groups

I have made this point often in past writings, in my books and in articles, but I haven’t addressed it as a separate issue until now. This is my opinion why magicians should practice their magick in small groups instead of being alone, aloof and isolated. I believe that the benefits far outweigh the problems, so this article is well placed for your consideration.

Our typical impression of the ritual or ceremonial magician is a lone individual who practices the art of magick in secret and in complete isolation. There is something heroic, courageous and even daring in practicing magick by oneself. The lone rugged individualist pits his wits and his will against the contagion of evil spirits and malefic powers in order to do good (we hope) in the community, and to fight against the darkness of ignorance and pernicious evil (or perhaps help spread it). This is actually a kind of comic book hero of sorts, a simulacrum of the anti-hero, such as Mandrake the Magician or Dr. Strange. I have always loved these characters and have collected comic books just for privilege of basking in their aura of arcane and secret heroism. I even possess a secret desire to pay someone to sew a costume for me so I could dress up and look like Dr. Strange. Of course, I have never done that and probably wouldn’t even if the opportunity presented itself to me. This is because I know that Dr. Strange, however cool, is just a fantasy - the real business of magick and sorcery is quite different.

Exemplifying this kind of occult hero, the lone magician performs his art in isolation from the distractions of other practitioners and the unknowing public, while never having to either explain or discuss all that is experienced or encountered. A magickal journal is thus a personal and secret diary, never to be shared with anyone. Magickal workings are performed in absolute seclusion and privacy, away from the prying eyes of nosey neighbors, family, friends or even other occultists. Magicians are responsible only to themselves for all their actions and workings - they never have to explain themselves or justify what they are doing to anyone. They can be just as antisocial, cranky and secluded as they desire, potentially turning their back on the entire community in which they live while they pursue their mono-mania.

Perhaps the only person who the magician has to accompany him is the assistant, apprentice or long suffering girlfriend. This is the person who does all of the dirty work for the magician and assists him in his occult workings. The assistant may be the magician’s understudy or apprentice, or just a hired servant who performs all of the menial tasks required to ensure that the magickal operations run smoothly and without interruptions. The assistant generally doesn’t know what the magician is actually doing and isn’t allowed to ask a lot of stupid questions, either. If he is an apprentice, then he also has allotted studies and practices in addition to the tasks that he does for his master. Of course, this is an ideal situation, more often than not, a magician doesn’t have any kind of apprentice or assistant. All of the menial work and the tasks associated with setting up a working are done by the magician alone. The basic premise is that if a person is smart enough to function as an assistant, he or she would probably be learning the ropes to become a ceremonial or ritual magician without any guidance, assistance or interference. After all, who wants to be somebody else’s servant in this day and age?

All of these descriptions of the lone magician may sound really romantic and heroic, but actually it’s a recipe for personal disaster and individual madness. Why do I say that when so many people who practice magick do so alone, and in fact, even appear to like it. As magicians, they are expected to be aloof and isolated from society. Magick would seem to require secrecy and stealth in order to function in an optimal manner. Then again, how many verifiable stories can be found where somebody was actually working magick, then after a while went crazy and had to be committed? How could I stand against what would seem to be normal and expected in regards to ritual or ceremonial magick? Not only that, but there are certain practicalities and logistics that might force an individual to practice alone.

Disaster and madness seem pretty dire and extreme judgments! So does this mean that every practitioner who works alone will succumb to these terrible outcomes? Of course not! What I am talking about is the potential for such things to happen, and of course, that depends on what kind of magick the magician is practicing, how often and intense, and whether one has recourse to any individual or group in which to appeal for assistance or guidance. If we are talking about low or earth-based magick that is performed from time to time, then obviously I am not proposing that such a one would go crazy if he or she lacks a working group. I would therefore exclude the witch, shaman, root conjuror, hoodoo practitioner, medicine man or woman, or anyone else who is working practical magick from this argument.

However, if magicians are performing any kind of magick where they may undergo a powerful transformative experience while performing the working and does this kind of magick on a regular basis, then that magician needs to have a group of peers or belong to an informal clique of magicians. The kind of magick that I work on a regular basis and what I teach and write about is exactly the kind of periodic workings that require a group. So that’s why I am proposing magickal practitioners find and assemble a magickal working group to perform their more intensive workings, or at the very least have a group of peers who can examine and judge their work. In fact, the Order that I am promoting requires having a group of at least five individuals to function as a group, and then to assemble and practice magick together for at least a year before being granted a charter and having free access to the basic lore.

There are some compelling reasons why this is important, so let’s look at the benefits and pitfalls of performing this kind of magick either alone or within a group. As already discussed, I will be using as a model a magician who performs intense and powerful transformative magick on a regular and periodic basis.

Practicing magick alone is easy and simple, so it might be much more attractive to the ritual magician to do so. You don’t have to find other individuals, build up a social network or bother with any of the events going on in your area. You can be aloof, cool, isolated and do whatever the hell you want to do, whenever you want to do it. You don’t even need to keep a diary or a journal, because who is going to read it other than yourself? An insular practice of occultism and magick is a simple regimen to follow, since it requires no commitment from anyone other than yourself. Decisions are easily made and the focus of the work can change quickly and efficiently as needed, without any endless discussions or negotiations. In fact, if one has any social handicaps or psychological issues dealing with other people, like a lack of trust, an inability to communicate one’s thoughts and feelings effectively or a fear of closeness or intimacy, then working alone is by far the easiest path that a practicing magician can take. Involving other people in one’s magickal practices is complicated, difficult and can be frustrating or even quite limiting. You have to have patience and tolerance, and be an effective communicator in order to engage successfully in group work. From the standpoint of the self absorbed magician, working with others is daunting and probably undesirable.

That’s the downside to working with others. It isn’t easy and not everything is translatable into group activities or shared workings. If a person has severe social handicaps, then such a proposition would seem to be asking for the impossible. Of course, such a person probably shouldn’t be working any kind of powerful transformative magick either, since it will obviously hit their issues and amplify their internal psychological weaknesses. Magick, especially transformative magick, has a tendency, when regularly and intensively used, to bring out all of the magician’s psychological issues and complexes whether the magician is seeking to address them or not. It would seem that if a magician has a lot of psychological issues and problems dealing with people and society in general, then he or she would be better served seeking out professional help for however long it takes to work out and resolve those issues, before electing to engage in intense forms of magick and speculative occultism. Magick amplifies peoples’ weaknesses and enlarges their delusions, so if a person is already psychologically impaired, then working magick will guarantee a complete mental breakdown. I have actually seen this phenomenon occur in the past when a couple of my friends quickly lost all touch with reality and had to be institutionalized. Yet it’s now obvious to me that they probably were on the way to having a nervous breakdown anyways.

So what are the benefits to assembling a group and working magick with other magicians? First of all, some occultists believe that the new age that we are living in requires individual magicians to practice in groups and establish a powerful occult community at large. I find myself agreeing with this premise, particularly since I have had the benefit of being in groups in the past, especially the very first temple of the Order of the Gnostic Star, called the Temple of Isis-Sophia #1, located in Kansas City. What was accomplished in that group had a profound effect on my abilities and launched my magickal career into the stratosphere, at least compared to where it had been when I was practicing alone. I had been convinced by some folks that my knowledge of magick wasn’t relevant to others, that mine was a system in which only I could find value. This was partially true, but it was the group and their belief in me that helped me to translate that extensive but personal knowledge into something that was useful to many instead of just me. What had been established during that time is still operating in me today, allowing me to write rituals that are both personal and objective enough to be valuable to others as well as myself.

During my sojourn in the Temple of Isis-Sophia I also discovered that group rituals were more powerful than doing them by myself. Why was this so? What was going on in the group dynamics that made rituals experienced by a group of magicians more powerful than what a single magician could experience alone? It would seem that one factor that made group ritual more powerful was the fact that there were more bodies in the temple performing magick, this had a kind of multiplier affect, but something else was also operating. Each of us individually were having a very subjective magickal experience, as is the case when a magician works alone. However, we were also collectively have a very objective experience as well, since we were all analogously experiencing and translating the same effects from the same rite, performed at the same time and place. This means that whatever magickal phenomena occurred to us was immediately and directly objectified. So the intensity and meaningfulness of what had occurred to all of us was amplified due to the multiplier effect and the impact of instantaneous objectivity. We didn’t have to wait for each of us to perform the rite alone and then confer later over our journals to discover what was objective and common to everyone who performed it. All of that discovery was happening in real time. That is why working magick in a group is so powerful and profound.

Not every ritual and ceremony that is performed by a group will be automatically super powered, since group performance requires cooperation and an integrated effort. This takes time to develop, but when it does, everyone can sense the difference. The intensity and meaningfulness is so much greater when all of the members who are performing a ritual are in synch with each other. The only thing that I can compare it to is either a theater production or a group of musicians playing together. There are times when a group of people seem to come together and formulate a single seamless expression of the play or the music, and the results are like magic! Musicians and actors can tell when everything is working together as it was intended to, and the audience picks up on it almost immediately, relishing in the perfection of the esthetic experience.

A well practiced and rehearsed magickal group has the same kind of effect. Something occurs where all of the various parts of the ritual fuse together into a whole that is profound and wondrous. Such activity also seems to quickly generate a kind of group mind or group soul, which magicians call the “egregore.” The more magick that is worked in this manner, the more powerful and seemingly independent the egregore appears to be, making things happen not only to the members of the group, but to the outlying community as well. I found that a powerful group of magicians was like a potent people magnet, once the core was established, many people wanted to either join or have the privilege of working with the group. Yet the hardest task was getting a core group to work together and function as a single being, this took a couple of years or more to establish.

A magickal group tends to require that its rituals and ceremonies be somewhat loquacious and have enough action to share amongst a small group. What this means is that group rituals can be redundant and less efficient than what would be written and performed by an individual magician, that is, if he or she even bothered to write much of anything down. When I had originally developed my methods for working magick, they contained far too much idiosyncracies and were hardly documented with much in the way of instructions. Verbalizations were kept to a minimum, and the whole working was tight and efficient. Other people could look at these rituals and have no clue as to how they were to be performed or even what they were supposed to do. Being a member of the Order and a teacher of this method of working magick forced me to write rituals that had directions, explanations of what was to be done, expected, and beyond that I had to write documents that explained in detail what the rituals did and how they were supposed to be used. I guess you could say that this was the beginning of my writing career, and it has not ceased in all of that time, but in fact, had to increase and become expanded to create whole books. Yet it all started with rituals and workings that were very condensed and pretty hard to understand by anyone but me.  

A magickal group has some very important qualities that assist the group and the individuals composing it to rapidly grow and advance through their spiritual and magickal studies. These qualities consist of the following group dynamics discussed below, and are critically important to group magickal work. One should also keep in mind that individuals are still required to perform individual workings, meditation sessions and other exercises as needed even though they belong to a magickal group.

Peer review and mutual support: It’s through the judgment of one’s peers that a magician can claim to have accomplished a given ordeal or a personal working. The peer group decides when a magician can be elevated to the next degree or level, so they are important for examining a magician’s claims and scrutinizing the product of his or her labors. Also, if a magician is going through a difficult time of personal transformation and translation, then the group can give its support and council, even assisting and applying the expertise of many hands to guide and help make such difficult changes bearable. Only through the judgment and support of other magicians, who are working on the same analogous tasks and ordeals as the individual magician, can anyone be certain that progress is being made and that delusions and self deception are kept in check. A lone magician doesn’t have either the ability to objectify magickal experiences or judge that a given path or direction is correct and free from illusion.

Collaboration and corroboration: Everyone has virtues and failings, strengths and weaknesses. Yet it is rare if not unlikely that a group will collectively have the same strengths and weaknesses, so the group as a whole will typically be diverse and balanced. One person’s point of weakness will be another person’s strength, and together they will produce a unified effort that will be of a higher quality than what might have been achieved alone. I am not talking about formulating something in a committee so that it offends and also satisfies no one. The expert ritual writer will work together with other members to formulate the best possible ritual or ceremony for the given group working. Those who have a poetic nature may write the dialogue, others may be better performers, have beautiful voices, be accomplished at producing music, know how to stage the ritual, sew robes or build a set, etc. Together they will put together a ritual working that will reflect all of their talents and strengths instead of the imbalanced effect of one person writing and performing the ritual alone. Also, what one person senses and perceives as important in the working, others will realize, and they, too, will share their perceptions. The resultant working will have many different perspectives, but also be a unified presentation.

Group sustainability requires maturity and personal responsibility: Magickal groups are ephemeral, since in order for them to last, all of the members have to engage respectfully with each other. For instance, a star group will be more lasting for a small group of magicians than a hierarchical one, since in a star group each individual is an important facet of the whole group. Because such a group is ruled by consensus, it can’t be ruled by the impulses and desires of just one tyrannical member. All members have their input and say in any decision, and whatever happens, each individual takes full responsibility for their part in it, ensuring that no one person is individually blamed for the faults of others. Disagreements are resolved equitably and honestly, and the group is sustained by trust and mutual affirmations. The requirements for a sustainable group is that each individual acts and is treated like an adult, and it is expected that the behavior of each member is at the highest level of cooperation, integrity and sensitivity to others. This is a lot to ask for from a group of magicians, whose basic impulse is to become sequestered and insulated from all others. However, if a group finds some degree of success in keeping themselves intact and relevant, then they will find it relatively easy to spiritual evolve and master themselves.

 Community Face: An established magickal group should not only determine itself internally, but it should also have a community presence and a public face. This is because a well run and competent magickal group has a value that is far greater to the occult community at large than to just its individual members. New members and affiliates for the group are drawn from the community, since the core group that first forms would consist of only four or five individuals, and there is a need to build on that number. So a magickal group needs to recruit new members and correspondingly, the community needs the expertise that the group is developing, so this provides for an equitable trade.

The maximum size of a group depends on where they meet and what kind of communal space they have to use. However, there is a limit to the size of a small group of magicians, based on the logistics associated with ritual choreography. My experience has taught me that anywhere from eight to twelve fully active members is the maximum number that even a large space can withstand without members tripping over or running into each other. Other individuals in the community can either share in the magick of the group through affiliation, or they can be guided to form a new affiliated group. I have found that most communities are hungry for new magickal lore and experienced guidance, and the established magickal group has a responsibility to the community to provide that guidance and teachings.

A group that seeks to be secretive and isolated from the community isn’t really that much better than a lone individual doing the same thing. A magickal group benefits from residing in a community, it uses the resources of occult stores, networks and public organizations, so it naturally owes that community a debt for providing the social organization that made the group possible in the first place. Therefore, it is just and fitting that a group of magicians who have established themselves as an efficient working group, and therefore, have an egregore, should choose amongst themselves individuals or perhaps the entire group to engage the public through that same occult community. It’s only fair and ethical that the group gives back something of value to the community that fostered their organization. The public face of the group is the media imago of its egregore, which becomes a conduit for the group’s magick and its beneficial effect on those who are outside of the group.

Order of the Gnostic Star: Finally, I would like to mention that an assembly of magicians who form a magickal group can represent an existing order, such as the O.T.O., the Golden Dawn, Aurum Solis, or any of the many available greater organizations. They could also petition such an organization for membership. The members of the group would have to become initiates of that greater organization (if they already weren’t), and this would include all of the features, expectations, philosophies and practices associated with that organization. These beliefs and expectations could take the members of the group far from the purpose that they had for forming a group in the first place. It would also require any members who were not initiates in that greater organization, to join and be initiated. They would have to abide by the rules and guidelines, even if it meant limitations in regards to the kind of magick that would be practiced or be available to individuals as well as the group.

However, there is an organization that would allow the members of a group of magicians to be fully autonomous and to work whatever magick they chose. They could assist each other with initiatory ordeals that would allow them to quickly pull together their own lore as well as use the lore from the greater organization. They would also have the right to change any or all of the rituals in their lore and not have to answer to anyone for any of their individual or collective actions. That organization is called the Egregore Sancta Stella Gnostica, or the Order of the Gnostic Star. It is an organization that is dedicated to the practice and propagation of ritual magick for its own sake, to the ultimate perfection of the individual and the group. There are no obligations, requirements or expectations tied to any greater authority than what has been established in the group or temple. However, there is a peer group of experienced magicians in this overall organization that could be tapped to give aid, guidance and help when or where needed, provided that the group collectively wants such aid or guidance, since nothing that is given is binding or required.

The downside to such an organization is that there is no hierarchy or grand chapter that individuals or groups can appeal to for arbitrating disputes, Each group or temple is completely autonomous, so that means that they must resolve their own conflicts as best they can. The group is given the lore, charter, and then they are on their own. They have the complete liberty to pursue their own paths and objectives, but then, they are also expected to be independent and mature enough to determine their own future. There isn’t any person or body to either question what they do or attempt to change their collective direction. So this type of organization is not for everyone, it is only for those whose independent nature would preclude them from belonging to any other kind of greater organization in the first place. For the independent experimenter and creative self-starter, this Order is the optimal organization in which to build, grow and evolve. For all others, there are plenty of other organizations to join.

To recap what we have covered here about the importance of magickal groups, such small organizations have the following benefits.

1. Group ritual, when effectively performed, is far more powerful than ritual performed by individuals.

2. Groups provide objectivity, peer review and mutual support.

3. Groups provide a level playing field for collaboration and corroboration between individuals, for group and individual work.

4. Groups require a higher degree socialization than what is typical for a lone magician, which would include maturity, personal responsibility, sensitivity to others (compassion), tolerance, patience and good communication skills.

5. Established groups need to have a public face and thereby give a greater return on the investment by the occult community. It is the duty of groups to teach, guide and share their lore with the community in an appropriate manner.

6. A group assists an individual member to translate spiritual and magickal experiences so that they can made intelligible to many, thus being a potential source for more magickal lore.

7. The Order of the Gnostic Star is a vehicle through which an assembly of magicians may form a working group to practice ritual magick for its own sake.

It is my hope that you will now realize how important magickal groups are in the overall practice of ritual and ceremonial magick. Our spiritual evolution as individual practitioners of magick may well hinge on whether we can find a way of establishing sustainable groups to propagate the art of magick within the greater occult spiritual community. In my opinion, the old pattern of being a recluse or a sequestered and isolated practitioner is no longer tenable for the practicing ritual magician.

Frater Barrabbas

More Baloney from Bill Schnoebelen Rebutted

This is a response written by me to the blog article “Freemasonry: The Witchcraft Connection” pathetically penned by William J. Schnoebelen. You can find the article here.

I thought that I had already written the final chapter about my arch nemesis and former teacher, the ever self-propagandizing, ridiculous and all-around hypocrite, half-assed minister of With One Accord Ministry, Bill Schnoebelen. But alas, he continues to scribble his lies, half-truths and religious bigotry throughout the internet. The latest diatribe would be quite amusing if weren’t so profoundly stupid and annoying. So I am drawn back into a brief one sided skirmish with the ultra-conservative Christian Fundamentalist who was once a member of the Wicca and a Mason.

It’s really like doing battle with the torso of the Black Knight (as fondly remembered in Monty Python’s Holy Grail movie). He has teeth, but no arms or legs left to do battle, and can be easily defeated. I guess Bill makes a great straw man, since his positions are based on Christian myth and imagination rather than real facts. I apologize in advance to mainstream and esoteric Christians who must be quite embarrassed by this clown.  Anyway, let the battle begin!

“Rebellion is a sin of sorcery, presumption a crime of the teraphim.” - 1 Samuel 15:23 (The Jerusalem Bible)

Bill starts out his article with this quote, although he uses the terribly antiquated and much rightly criticized Kings James Version, where the word “sorcerery” is substituted by the word “witchcraft”, which changes the whole meaning, of course. That King James had an obsession with witches and witchcraft bordering on insanity is besides the point - it did, however, influence the translation of the bible into English.

This sentence is part of larger section of the chapter that contains the dire pronouncements by the prophet Samuel used to denounce King Saul. Samuel was apparently livid with Saul and his decision to disobey Yahweh, so instead of ensuring that the Amelikites were completely annihilated and all of their possessions destroyed, Saul allowed the Israelites to keep the prisoners as slaves and their belongings as booty. The word “teraphim” in the sentence refers to household idols, so it represents false gods and their worship.

The key point is that King Saul rebelled against the commandments of his god and presumed to make decisions for him. What this quotation has to do with modern witchcraft and Masonry seems pretty obscure to me. I think that Bill used it out of context because the KJV bible uses the word “witchcraft” instead of “sorcery”, even though the point is really disobedience and presumptuousness. The irony of Bill using this statement is pretty hysterically funny, since presumptuousness is very much his mode of doing business. So we start out with a sentence taken completely out of context from the Old Testament, and somehow this will make the rest of the article sensible and erudite? Right!

First of all, Masonry is not a religion. It is a fraternal organization with some biblical themes and obscure symbolism based on those themes. While one could make occult interpretations of the various Masonic rituals and lore, those same interpretations are not held by either the rank and file Mason, nor the esteemed members of their ruling bodies and their studied intellectuals. Masonry is not an occult organization nor would any of its members consider themselves to be occultists or members of some kind of alternative religion. So when Bill says the following in his article, we can easily refute him. The Lodge of Masonry is not a religion, nor is its underpinnings theological, occultic or rooted in ancient forms of paganism - those underpinnings are actually philosophical in nature. We can look at the foolishness of this claim, and I quote it in full, because it is the keystone to Bill’s entire argument.

“Thus, the Lodge is not just ‘another religion’ like the Muslims or the Buddhists—although that alone should be enough to keep Christians from involving themselves in it. The nature and character of the Lodge's deepest theological underpinnings are rooted in Witchcraft and Paganism.”

Of course, we are to presume that modern Witchcraft has an unbroken line going back to the paleolithic past, and that somehow Masonry borrowed heavily from those sources. However, both Ronald Hutton and Philip Heselton have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that modern Witchcraft can’t be traced back further than the early 20th century. That would mean that modern Witchcraft is considerably younger than Masonry, which itself only dates back to the early 18th century. If modern Witchcraft shares many common features with Masonry, then one would have to conclude that the reason this does in fact occur is because Gerald B. Gardner (who was himself a Mason) put them there. While some witches may argue this amongst each other, scholars have shown that much of the lore of modern Gardnerian witchcraft was cobbled together from other sources. What this means is that there is no conspiracy and the linkages between one tradition of witchcraft and Masonry can be easily explained - it was a matter of creative plagiarism and not some kind of Satanic conspiracy, as Bill would have it.

The reason why this is so transparently obvious is the fact that only Gardnerian witchcraft (and it’s various offshoots) have these points in common with Masonry. Other non-Gardnerian traditions of witchcraft are quite different and have few if any points in common with Masonry. How does one explain that troubling little discrepancy to Bill’s over-arching theory? Why it’s elementary, my dear reader! Bill is making an argument that is quite fantasy based and profoundly dramatic - it is, in a word - a great lie! This is even more curious when one considers that some of the more traditional non-Gardnerian forms of witchcraft may actually represent older systems from the previous epoch, although the proof for that supposition has yet to be verified.

Cunning folk considered their magickal works to be their “craft,” just like anyone else who had a skill for hire. They made things for their paying clients (spells, talismans, amulets, herbal remedies, tonics, etc.), although none of them ever professed to be adherents of an alternative or “old” religion. Likewise, craftsmen were individuals who worked with their hands, used tools in a skillful manner and made things, unlike the ruling classes and the church. To call Masonry a craft is to hearken back to the days when Masons were builders and architects, or at least that is part of the theme of following the Masonic path. There is nothing sinister or esoteric about this phrase, just as one would assume - since we still use it today without any theological pretensions.

We will pass over Bill’s definitions, since we have shown that witchcraft is much too varied to apply one definition to the entire movement. Bill is using definitions that were put together in the late 19th century (about paganism in general), so they don’t reflect the modern perspectives of historians and archeologists. Bill has obviously not read anything about witchcraft since he left the craft in the early 1980's, and even then, he spouts the old arguments and lines that most folk, whether from within the movement or outside it, no longer hold as true. Suffice it so say that for every supposed fact that Bill states in his article, there are modern witchcraft and pagan groups who don’t adhere to it or where it isn’t even relevant.

A case in point is one of Bill’s arguments, which is flawed and really a terrible generalization.

“Essentially, a Pagan believes most everything the Witch believes, but is kind of a lay person, whereas a Witch is more of a Priestess or Shaman.”

I think that the above quote has more fallacies in it than anything that I ever seen written by anyone with any amount of knowledge. Modern witches and pagans represent very different traditions of belief and practice. Even within these generalized categories there is quite a bit of difference, based on the fact that every witch or pagan calls upon different traditions within that generalized group. While some could find some very broad points in common between them, they are quite distinct. Also, a member of a specific witchcraft tradition would not be an elite amongst a group of neopagans, since there isn’t any really defined hierarchy between all of these divergent traditions in the first place. Each group has its own leaders, and often there is a fair amount of squabbling about even that obvious point. You will also notice that Bill conflates a priest or priestess with a shaman, which is a completely different category altogether. It just seems that Bill doesn’t really know what he is talking about, so it would seem that his entire thesis is based on utter and complete nonsense.

Deeper into his article, Bill does concede that Wicca is modern, and that if there are resemblances between Masonry, then obviously one would have been the model for the other. Such an admission almost destroys his entire thesis, but then he saves it by proposing some more ancient (and sinister) source for both Wicca and Masonry. Although there isn’t any proof for this statement, it does represent the foundation of Bill’s thesis. I quote his damning admission, with the merest caveat that saves his thesis from nullifying itself.

“As it is currently constituted, Wicca is barely a century old. This is not to say that it doesn't draw on elements from the ancient mystery cults. To be certain, it does—to a high degree. However, it is a difficult task to ascertain whether contemporary Wicca so strongly resembles Freemasonry because two of its principle architects (Aleister Crowley and Gerald B. Gardner) were Masons; or whether that similarity is a derivation of more ancient practices.”

Historians have shown that the supposed ancient mystery cults passed away without leaving very much evidence behind. Christianity was quite thorough in its destruction of all of the pagan practices of antiquity. What we have today is a mere conjectural reconstruction, drawn from many different sources and completed with a lot of creative imagination. Masonry and witchcraft are modern creations, and they have very little in common with the older mystery cults, since that knowledge passed away long before either of these two organizations were invented. Masonry was a product of the Age of Enlightenment, and Wicca, a product of Victorian England. There is no unbroken lineage spanning the ages of antiquity to the present time.

Another point, Aleister Crowley didn’t have anything to do with writing the corpus of the Gardnerian Witchcraft Book of Shadows. This has been proven quite definitively, since Crowley and Gardner didn’t meet until the year of Crowley’s death, and then only a couple of visits occurred. It may be a difficult task to ascertain the resemblances between Gardnerian Wicca and Masonry if you are looking for some kind of satanic connection, but of course, the simpler explanation is just a form of plagiarism.

Then comes the really nail gripping and ghastly supposition, that (oh my!) Wicca somehow has engulfed the evil source of Masonry, making the rites more sanctified and less (still my beating heart!) blasphemous than their original form. What this amounts to is the belief that Masonry is evil and satanic, so if some group has modeled itself on those rituals and beliefs, then that group, too, is tainted and satanic. This belies the known fact that Masonic organizations spawned a plethora of analogous organizations and institutions, both in England, the European continent and the U.S. One could even go so far as saying that a number of democratic countries, such as our own, are powerfully influenced and saturated with Masonic beliefs, symbolism and philosophies. If you are a citizen of the U.S., Italy, France, England, and others too numerous to mention, you are an unwitting pawn influenced by the evils of Masonry. I guess the whole world should be so lucky!

Here’s Bill’s altar stone for his article -

“If Masonic rituals were engrafted into Witchcraft in the late 19th and early 20th century, and if that melding was so seamless and effortless—even to the point that in some cases, the Wiccan rites were less bizarre and blasphemous than there[sic] Masonic counterpart, then what message does that send about Masonry? As a preacher friend of mine, Jim Spencer, observed, ‘If the devil can preach my sermons without changing them much, what does that say about my sermons?’”

I suppose you could say that it really says nothing at all, since lots of organizations around the world have modeled themselves on Masonry. I would also say that the Devil has been preaching Mr. Spenser’s sermons, and Bill’s as well. Anyone who preaches bigotry, religious intolerance and advocates sectarian hate crimes against others is really doing the work of the Christian devil. How illuminating for Bill to show us who his mentor really is.

From this point on in Bill’s article, things get completely silly. The merest suppositions become embedded and obvious facts, and from them the world turns into a dark gothic negative image of itself, with ravens cawing in the background and bats flitting overhead, while the world is wrapped in a sinister stygian mist that hides the supposed real truth. Bill goes on and on with his arguments, building them up to a crescendo, like listening to Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” or reading a story by H. P. Lovecraft. Even the list of satanic members of witchcraft and masonry is pretty astonishing. I am sure that Arthur Edward Waite would have been horrified to be considered a member of the witch cult, just like many of the other members of the infamous list. Only Gerald B. Gardner and Alex Sanders belong there, and the fact that at least one of them was also a Mason really proves nothing.

One of Bill’s final arguments is totally inane and even laughable, so I shall present it here for our amusement.

“The Masonic temple is a temple of Witchcraft! There can be little doubt about that. Veiled within its symbols are the deities and even the working tools of Witchcraft! As has been shown, the square and compasses are representations of the generative organs—the ‘sacred altar’ of Witchcraft! The blazing star at the center of the lodge is the Witch’s pentagram, symbol of the god of Satanism, Set! The Letter ‘G’ stands for generativity[sic], sexual potency.”

Anyone who has ever been a Mason (or has read Masonic material) will know what the mysterious “G” symbolizes. It represents the first letter of “God” and “Geometry,” both of which are quite prosaic and tame. Bill has outdone himself, becoming a laughing stock in the process. I am certain that his audience, the credulous and the ignorant, will find his article illuminating (no pun intended). They will undoubtedly lose sleep over it and have many nightmares about Masons and witches cavorting together in some satanic grove, dancing merrily and obliviously around the hooves of the big “D.” I do feel sorry for them and wonder at the foolishness of their critical thinking, but I have little further to say about Bill except to shake my head and wonder how he is able to make up all of this crap. He must be ingesting some potent hallucinogens in order to come up with these obvious fantasies.

Perhaps some day Bill will be rewarded for his virulent punditry. Maybe he can get a day job as the pastor exemplar for the Fox News Network. However, I doubt if other and wiser Christians will ever appreciate his work, since it is so far down in the gutter and living in the sewer of popular thought.

Frater Barrabbas

Heartland 2010 and the Order of the Gnostic Star

Well, I got back from my road trip to Kansas City on Tuesday night, and I am still getting settled back into my work regimen. A lot of things happened while I was on my vacation, including some interesting and amusing events at Heartland that involved yours truly. I promised to report on how the pagan festival went, so here is my report.

The trip down to Kansas City from Minneapolis took around seven hours to complete, consisting of some hazardous driving. The interstate is being massively repaired in sections, so the road was reduced down to two way traffic for nine to ten mile sections, and I had to pass through five of these gauntlets to get to my destination. Then, when I returned home, I had to pass through them again. At least the interstate highway system is being repaired. I suspect in a few years the road will be almost like new between these cities. Until then, driving them has some hazards that have to be dealt with.

In addition to going to Heartland, I spent a couple of days both before and one day after the festival with my friend Frater Arjuna, who lives in a quiet residential area north of town. Frater Arjuna and I have been friends for over 23 years. He and I are the only active members in the Order, a situation that has been going on now for the last fourteen years. We talked about many topics, from politics to hard core occultism, while listening to the music of “Therion” and “After Ever.” I also looked over a book that my friend had recently acquired that was written by E. A. Koetting, entitled “Evoking Eternity.” I ordered a copy for myself, which is a good thing, because it is now temporarily unavailable. After reading over several chapters, I found this book to be informative and interesting, although written somewhat pretentiously. However, I was rather dismayed at discovering Koetting’s intellectual alliance with Joseph C. Lisiewski, since that appeared to put him into the clique where poltergeist activity and fire and brimstone apparitions are considered important proofs that an evocation has successfully been achieved. These magicians eschew subtlety for the drama of delusional pyro-techniques and special effects. They also appear to denigrate the task of learning to master the mind through an arduous practice of meditation. Someone who engages in all of the extremely pious preparations required for the first step (Consecratio) in performing the rites of one of the old grimoires would undoubtedly experience something analogous to someone who has mastered meditation, except the one who has mastered the mind through meditation will have a powerful skill independent of any specific application. The power of the “As If” paradigm can make even the most absurd magickal practice work, although it may work less efficiently and inconsistently. I will attempt to write a more thorough review of Koetting’s work in a future article.

On Thursday, I traveled out past Bonner Springs in Kansas to where Camp Gaia is located and registered for the festival. I hadn’t been to the camp ground in over fifteen years and I marveled at what had been accomplished during that hiatus. The camp ground had formerly been quite rustic and bereft of amenities, but now it had a new bathhouse and a concert pavilion, while the older buildings had been spruced up. I was given a cozy half cottage for my stay, with a bed already made, towel and even a package of ear plugs, which I would find great use for in the coming days. (Circle drumming seldom ended before 5 am the next morning.) The camp site also had a really nice outdoor ritual area with the circular area laid with golden sand and permanent solid wooden benches arranged around it.

Camp Gaia is quite beautiful, being divided into two levels by a forty foot escarpment. The lower level has a lovely mud bottom lake where the cabins, dinning cabin, bathhouse, office and caretaker’s home are located, and the upper level, where the ritual site, pavilion and most of the camp grounds are located. To travel from the lower level to the upper level, one can either follow the road that curves around the camp ground or access the stairway that climbs up the escarpment for a more direct ascent. I can claim to have gotten quite a bit of exercise during my stay going up and down that stairway, since a single ascent can leave one a little bit breathless and momentarily rubbery legged. Many such ascents will function as a daily exercise regimen.

During the four nights of the festival, the weather was nearly perfect, perhaps a bit too hot on the days leading up to the last day, Sunday. On Sunday, the perfect weather was profoundly interrupted by a violent storm that lashed the trees and camping tents and dumped quite a bit of rain on the ground for an hour or so. The clouds and rain cooled things down a bit, but made everything far more humid and less comfortable. Prior to the storm, the days had been quite warm and the evenings comfortably cool.

After getting the festival brochure, I examined the schedule and found when all of my workshops would have to be performed. I had three workshops to give and they were spaced out one per day, starting on Friday around lunchtime. I was to give my History of the Heartland Pagan Festival at that time, and then the Twenty-two Stages of the Cycle of the Hero on Saturday, and finally, on Sunday early evening, the workshop on Elemental Magick. I had my work cut out for me, since I now always study my notes a few hours before I have to give my workshop. This usually cuts into my ability to socialize, since I have to carefully manage my time so I will be prepared to give the best presentation possible. I have to make certain that I have eaten, that I am properly hydrated, had enough rest and not suffering from any partying done the previous night. I know that I am not in my best form if any of these important tasks are either omitted or partially completed. Getting enough rest is very important, since it allows me think clearly and respond to any questions or cues from the attendees. What I didn’t need was to be hung over or exhausted from an evening of carousing, something that I would have enjoyed but later regretted.

My first class was on Friday and it was reasonably well attended, of course the subject matter was something that probably interested nearly everyone at Heartland, or at least those who are interested in history. Word got around that I was one of the founders of the pagan festival, so that got me more attention than I might have gotten otherwise. I was in good form and didn’t make any egregious mistakes or commit any faux pas. All of my classes were conducted in the pavilion, which was an arched roof building that was open on three sides. The pavilion was used for the music concerts, since it had a stage, a powerful sound system and a lighting system.

The second class, conducted on Saturday at around lunch time, was marginally attended, but it also went quite well. I had done some additional work and added some new points to this class on the Twenty-two stages of the Cycle of the Hero, predicating that it is part of the psychology model of magick and developing a deeper explanation of what that model is like, its usefulness and also its flaws. I felt that this class was a lot better than when I had done it at Pantheocon back in February. Going over the notes and adding some additional points helped to make it a lot smoother. Oberon Zell-Ravenheart helped me out by showing the trumps of the Tarot cards as I silently read off the cue cards and distilled their content into my workshop narrative, adding deeper material from memory. Except for one cue card being out of synch, the workshop proceeded at a good pace and I was able to end it earlier than expected. Although everything went as I had hoped it would, I came to the realization that lunch time (12:15 pm) didn’t seem to be a good time for having a workshop, and not only that but the afternoons were very warm, probably almost 90 degrees F. It seemed more conducive to having an afternoon siesta than listening to me drone on for 75 minutes.

The final class held on Sunday was at 6:30 pm, which might have been the perfect time for a class if it wasn’t for the fact that the weather finally decided to break from being perfect to quite foul. As I hurried up the stairs and past the merchants area to the pavilion, I was all too aware of the fact that the sky had become quite dark, with distant flashes of lightening and the rumbling of thunder. The wind had picked up quite a bit as well, so as I situated myself in the pavilion, I made sure that all of my papers had something heavy on them to keep anything from flying away. The wind was occasionally blowing through the pavilion, so I decided to use a mike to help amplify my voice over the noise of the coming storm. The technicians also turned on the house lights so I could see my notes. As I waited for everyone who was going to attend to find a seat in the front rows around me, I noticed that the storm was getting more severe. There were only around 25 folks assembled around me, but there were also probably around 50 or so who were clustered in the rear of the pavilion, to wait out the storm. As I started my workshop, the bottom fell out of the clouds and it began to fiercely rain, with the wind blowing wet breezes into the pavilion. Luckily, I was just out of reach for most of the storm, but things did become a bit damp. About a third of a way through my workshop the storm got so loud, with lightening and thundering, that I temporarily halted the class, since I was not able to compete with the noise that mother nature was producing. I waited for around ten minutes as the front passed directly overhead and then the storm began to subside. I then continued the class and managed to complete it without too many distractions.

There was a great deal of irony in me attempting to lead a workshop on elemental magick when the elements of nature were showing a great deal of fury and power. I would refer to the element of fire, and there would be a great flash of lightening. I would talk about the element of air, and the wind would shake the trees and blow gusts into the pavilion, and of course, water, the cloud burst of rain, and earth, the shaking of ground as the thunder broke overhead. It was a chaotic cataclysm of unbounded nature on display for one and all. I was able to use the powerful display of the elements as a kind of hilarious antiphon to the serious nature of what I was talking about. It was quite humorous, in a “Frater Barrabbas” sort of way. I did get carried away at one point. I pointed to the stormy sky with the lightening and thunder, and said, “You there, gods, I defy you!” Some of the folks in the pavilion (most of whom were there just to escape the fury of nature and not to attend my workshop) actually booed me for saying that. I rejoined on them in an entreaty, saying, “Come on, haven’t any of you seen one of those old sword and sandal movies where Hercules shakes his fist at the sky and says, ‘I defy you, Zeus!’” The boos died away quickly amid a few laughs. I guess you could say that I probably went a bit too far on that joke, but sometimes I am amazed at how superstitious some people can be.

Anyway, I managed to get through my workshop in the midst of one of the biggest storms I had seen so far this season. There were reports of some twisting clouds and some hail, but by the time I was done with the workshop, the storm had ended. I guess we were lucky that the storm wasn’t more fierce or damaging, but it did dump quite a lot of rain on the campground in a short amount of time, making some of the paths and walkways a bit treacherous. I was quite careful when walking about after that storm had passed over, not wishing to slip and fall.

While my classes were not attended to the capacity that I had hoped, at least I was able to sell quite a large number of books - probably close to 20. I also would run into individuals who would want a copy of my class notes after the class, and the left-over class notes for the second class disappeared by Sunday evening, since there was nothing to collect on Monday morning. However, what was missing was the hunger for knowledge that I had experienced at both Pantheacon and MPUC Ostara. Perhaps it was more subtle, or that what I am attempting to teach was not as useful as, let’s say, relationship classes or Nordic divination and magickal practices. 

All in all, the festival was a good experience for me and I must say that I enjoyed it. I met some really wonderful people, and I also got reacquainted with a number of folk that I hadn’t seen in a long time. I got to play my flute with some really good musicians and share some drinks with some friends. I attended two of Oberon’s classes and found a new level of respect for his current project, the Grey School of Wizardry. I met his second significant other, Julie, and found their company to be quite warm, understanding and insightful. For the past two years, at every event where I meet and get to spend time with Oberon, I become more impressed with his wisdom, deep insights and historical perspectives. He lived through the late great sixties, which I saw only as an adolescent. Oberon is also one of the founders of neopaganism as a cultural movement in this country, so his memories of those formative times are vitally important and relevant to all of us. I could listen to his tales for hours, and I also had a blast exchanging ideas with him as well. I will look forward to seeing and sharing thoughts with him again. He and his lady are warm, down to earth and quite accessible to ordinary folk. Oberon dressed as one would expect a wizard to dress, looking a bit like either Gandalf the Grey or Albus Dumbledore - I found it fun and engaging.

The Heartland Pagan Festival has been going on now for twenty-five years. It is a sustainable gathering that relies on a group of loyal and faithful attendees, a large number of whom have been attending this event for many years. There were more than 800 attendees, and this number is exactly what the HSA organization seeks to replicate each year, since more attendees would adversely affect the camp site and overcrowd the finite resources. According to one past vice president of HSA, the magick number for sustainability is 500. While I had feared that Heartland would be adversely affected by the proximity of the Pagan Spirit Gathering (PSG), both in terms of geographics and calendar, I believe that I can rightfully say that each event has its own mutually exclusive loyal following. So I believe that Heartland will be around for the 30th anniversary, which I also hope to attend.

There were a few things that I experienced at Heartland which I thought could be improved. Overall, it’s a good festival that is well organized and staffed. As a guest speaker, I was made to feel special and privileged by the staff, which was a unique experience. However, the festival was lacking in regards to really substantive workshops and discussion groups. The heaviest presenters were all hired speakers (such as myself), and the indigenous presentations were light and infrequent. The workshop schedule was poorly planned as well, with classes starting at 12:15 pm, which is usually when people would be seeking something to eat or to rest up during lunch. I had to hit the dinning room early myself in order to make my classes. I can imagine that others who were not so well organized would have been eating when I was giving my classes. I also felt that the pavilion was not a good venue for teaching classes, since it was too large and open on three sides, allowing for people to wander in and out, talk and socialize while classes were being conducted.

Years ago, when I was involved in planning and executing the Heartland Pagan Festival, we had a lot of really substantive workshops and discussion groups, most of which were headed by local occultists, witches and pagans. Most of those brilliant people seem to be absent and are now greatly missed in the current incarnation of Heartland. It’s my hope that as time passes on, that some of these wise local folk will come back to the festival that they helped to formulate years ago. I know that doing an event like this every year can be frustrating and unrewarding, but it’s my hope that as things are always changing, that this, too, will change for the good.

In my honest opinion, it would seem that Heartland is more inclined to musical entertainment than actually sharing knowledge or discussing critical issues. There were half a dozen different musical acts that were presented during the three evenings, and all of them were of a very high caliber. The final act for Sunday evening was probably one of the best Celtic Country bands I have heard in some time, they were called “Flannigan’s Right Hook.” A band consisting of three women, called “The Traveling Fates” was also extremely good and very entertaining. The women excelled at playing multiple instruments and percussion, and their voices blended in wonderful harmonies. I particularly found the one band member named Bekah to be quite fetching.

The main rituals were also well thought out and performed, but only the closing rite was done during the night, the rest were done while it was still light out, which was strange. The main ritual focused on sacrifice and loss, which I thought was rather daring, since this is a topic that most pagan folk would rather avoid. There were some minor logistic problems with the main ritual, but it did manage to get its point across. I would recommend that such topics, if they are to be presented in a main ritual at a pagan festival in the future, should first be discussed and clearly defined in a workshop. I saw that many people were confused about what was going on and probably didn’t get the deeper meanings of the rite, since it was obscure even to me.

I would like to announce one final item of great importance that happened to me during my visit, but it wasn’t at Heartland. One of the founders of the Order contacted Frater Arjuna and wanted to meet both of us on the last day of my visit to the Kansas City area. He had dropped out of the group twenty years ago and had not been involved with it since that time. I welcomed the opportunity to meet him again, and after breaking the ice, the three of us toasted a new era of cooperation and engagement with the presently dormant Order. I hope that this individual (we will call him by his old name, Frater Discipilus Merlinii) will be true to his word and help us to rebuild the Order. I took it as a good sign and an auspicious omen for all of us. Since I performed the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, large swatches of my past have been resurfacing and getting reclaimed by me. I feel as though I am being refilled with all of my past historical doings (much of it forgotten), and remembering them as if they had happened just yesterday. I would assume that as this process continues, all of the facets of my life will be present and fully activated before the days of autumn arrive. Then I will be able to complete the final task in the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal, or at least that is my hope.

I believe that my trip to Kansas City and attending the Heartland Pagan Festival represents yet another facet of my past becoming reactivated and reclaimed. It was magickal and quite insightful. I have several pages of notes highlighting things that occurred to me while on my retreat. I look forward to fleshing them all out, including four new workshops to develop.

Frater Barrabbas