Most Important Lesson in Magick and Witchcraft

Once a student has mastered the basic regimen of practicing meditation, casting a magic circle, undergoing trance, raising power for basic kinds of workings and performing the simple liturgies for Sabbats and Esbats, then the next and most important step in learning to be a witch and ritual magician is to master the rite of godhead assumption. In my system of magick a godhead assumption is an essential practice that everything else is based on. If you are working a system of ritual magick that employs immersion as its central tenant and foundational mechanism (such as the one that I have proposed in my writings) then you had better know how to automatically assume a godhead in order to protect and also empower yourself while practicing this type of magick.

According to my teachings, a godhead assumption is the key to the mysteries and the primary mechanism for fully experiencing the five mysteries in all of their awe, majesty, glory and power. I believe that this technique is so important in my system of magick that it is one of the major topics taught to a student, and once it is mastered, it should become an automatic process. An experienced ritual magician should be able to shift into their assumed godhead automatically when undergoing the preparatory work for a ritual working.

Even before the student considers mastering the simple ritual of godhead assumption, they must first determine which God or Goddess they are going to assume. When they have made this determination, then they need to develop a relationship with that Deity using regular forms of worship, adoration, focused meditation, devotions, votive offerings and other liturgical operations. Yet the technique of discovering one’s personal godhead is neither an easy nor obvious process, or at least it shouldn’t be. The mystery of being a human being is that we simultaneously possess a material body, a mind and a spirit, and that makes realizing something that is completely spiritual and intangible more subtle and complex than it might otherwise be. To enter into the very core of our spiritual being requires an undistracted effort that our body and mind will all too easily thwart. The layers of flesh, emotions and the mind can even obscure one’s internal godhead to the point where it is invisible. Our internal godhead is the supreme unifying point within us, but we cannot be fragmented (distracted) into our various parts if we are ever going to realize it.

Finding this internal godhead can be easy or it can be quite difficult, but it depends on the person and how psychically dense they are. Even highly spiritual individuals can lack a certain internal sensitivity, through no fault of their own. Sometimes the elected godhead changes over time or the deity attribute mutates into a personal hybrid that can’t be easily classified. One might expect this to happen at some point if the person performing the godhead identification and assumption changes over time, too. (After all, we are the reflectors of our own internal godhead, and that must be completely understood if this process is to make any sense at all.)

In Carribean forms of magic, the process of finding your personal godhead is called “finding the god of your head.” I believe that this phrase is quite apt for what the erstwhile ritual magician and Witch should undergo to discover their internal godhead. Once students begin this search then dreams and portends will lead them to find the right godhead. What this means is that the first impression or obvious choice should be carefully and cautiously examined over time to make certain that it is indeed true. The first choice may be an incorrect one and only later will the proper godhead be revealed. This search is an important magical process in itself and it is also a mystery, since it represents the first veil that hides or obscures our true God/dess Within. Once discovered, our internal godhead becomes the foundation for more advanced magical workings, such as the invocation of the Bornless One or the Abramelin Lunar Ordeal.

I can give you an example from my own experience to clearly illuminate this point. For many years I was more focused and fixated on the Goddess (although I will not reveal her name, of course) and saw myself as the godhead consort to that feminine Deity. I could assume a number of different names (and their associated imago), but the mythic thread that I was following was that of the mortal lover (with the God within) of the immortal Goddess. After some years, this situation was augmented by a deep and personal engagement with the Egyptian God Set, and I began to assume that godhead when working higher and more intense forms of ritual magick. I found that assuming the godhead Set was very helpful in warding and protecting me from the various spirits of the underworld that I sought to evoke. There were also a number of other Deities with whom I had developed a personal relationship and from those relationships gained insights and knowledge about many obscure things. For instance, I was shown a whole new method of performing an invocation through my dialog and relationship with the Goddess Lilith.

However, all during this time there was some unknown Godhead that was assisting me, revealing profound magical insights and guiding me to new heights of magical knowledge and ritual capabilities. I tried a number of times to determine who this Deity was and so understand the source of this assistance. Even so, this knowledge was kept from me for many years until the Deity finally decided to reveal itself, and then I quickly learned through that revelation that it was the composite deified form of Hermes-Thoth Trismagistus. Having undergone that revelation I also discovered that this Deity was also so intimate to me and my magical and occult workings that it was always present whenever I assumed my personal godhead. This knowledge was kept from me for whatever reason for many years, but it would seem that having achieved a certain level of knowledge and development that I had earned the privilege of knowing the identity of my greatest sponsor and Godhead backer.

Even though I evolved through the process of determining the nature of my personal godhead and that attribute has undergone change over time, at some early point in my career I began this process. For me, it was my passionate relationship with the Goddess that acted as the catalyst; but the typical student can pursue a more direct and obvious path to determining their personal godhead. What this means is that I went through a more circuitous and convoluted process because I lacked any understanding of what I was attempting to do or where it would lead me. If a student takes a more deliberative approach to discovering their personal godhead then it would probably be resolved in far less time. Still, the search for one’s personal godhead is not a simple matter, and as I have shown, it can and does change over time and sometimes the knowledge can be obscured or even deliberately blocked.  

How one begins this search for the God of one’s head is to start with a daily meditation where the seeker implores the greater powers and intelligences at large to reveal the specific God or Goddess of one’s innate being. This meditative search should be performed with as much emotional desire, curiosity and passion as one can muster, and the emotional tension experienced should increase over the period of this operation. As the days progress, seekers should note their dreams, insights, visions and thoughts particularly when they appear to identify a specific Deity. This process is an ordeal and should be conducted as one, so anything that the seeker senses that might be relevant should be noted down (in their magical diary) and carefully examined. The seeker might also engage in divination, either performed by herself or performed by a helpful outsider.

Over time, and this period will vary, a series of dreams, imaginings, insights and visions will coalesce that will clearly indicate that a specific Godhead is operating in the life of the seeker. In fact it is possible to determine more than one Godhead when performing this search. Even so, the next phase of this operation will help seekers to choose which Deity is appropriate to their present level of development. Students will have to choose the one Deity (and no other) that would greatly empower their spiritual and magical identity once it is assumed into their personal godhead. Students should also know that any Deity which takes a personal interest in them (and is revealed in this search) should be given a place of honor in their magical work. Thus it is natural that they will accumulate multiple Deities of varying importance over time as part of their personal pantheon. These additional Gods will be made part of the magician’s personal shrine and spiritual lineage, and they will also require periodic service, devotions and offerings along with one’s personal godhead.

How students make the final section of a specific Deity to function as their personal godhead is part of the overall mystery of this ordeal. Certainly it can’t be done without a period of meditation and developing a preliminary dialog with the elected Deity. This means approaching the Godhead and talking or praying to it, and carefully noting how one feels and what impressions one receives by doing this activity. There will be the evidence that one has collected through various dreams, visions and insights, but there will also be another highly important factor, and that has to do with how one feels about this Deity compared to any other possible candidates. If the Deity that one is considering appears to have a powerful positive impact on one’s emotions and feelings then it is likely that it is the correct God or Goddess for one to assume at that time. I can’t really tell someone how they must make this selection because it is so subjective and unique to the individual. What I can say is that the right Godhead will elicit the same kind of powerful attraction that one would feel when meeting a prospective lover for the first time. The choice should be unequivocal and decisive for the seeker. If there are doubts or hesitancy, then the elected Deity that one is considering is not the right choice.

Once a Deity is identified then the ritual magician and Witch will begin the next stage of this work. The seeker will need to develop a deep and personal relationship with this Deity, and that will include researching everything that is available to seeker in order to build up a cultural context, persona, characteristics and expectations associated with that Deity. He or she will assemble and write devotions, appropriate offerings and also write various liturgical rites that help to build a powerful spiritual alignment with that Deity. This might include acquiring a statue or pictorial representation of this Deity. Idolatry is a key practice in pagan ritual magick, and it should be actively pursued along with all of the other objectives since it helps to build up the image or imago of the target Deity. I won’t get into the art of statue animation, but that could be a later part of what magicians do to enliven their personal alignment with their chosen Deity.

These collective activities that a magician will perform are invocations, oblations, paeans, lunar and solar observations, meditations, special offerings, communal meals, and ultimately a full godhead assumption. In fact these activities could be seen as a kind of powerful emotional love affair between the seeker and the Deity, since love is the ultimate “glue” that causes them to become aligned and eventually, spiritually one.  Establishing a deep and meaningful alignment with a Deity is a lot of work, but it is so important that it could be considered a major part of the Great Work that a ritual magician and spiritual seeker must ultimately achieve.

I have already written a few articles about the actual rites and methodologies about Godhead Assumption, and the erstwhile student can find them here and here. I have also written up a critique about how Witches and Pagan typically assume the Godhead of their group or lineage, and also what can be done to make certain that this process is free of regressive psychic manifestations. You can find that article here. I believe that this preparatory work is critically important to anyone who considers themself to be a ritual magician and a Witch or Pagan. These lessons, however, go far beyond what one might be taught in a coven or a grove, but they are standard fare for anyone who seeks to work higher forms of magic within a Wiccan or Pagan spiritual and magical context. It is what I teach everyone who seeks to be my student and learn to work magick the way that I have done all of these many years.   

Frater Barrabbas

Hollywood Drama and Real Spirit Encounters

One of the things that really bothers me about the culture I live in is that so many people actually believe what they see in action, drama or horror movies is somehow true. This is especially a problem when it comes to encounters with spirits. These rather highly graphic and CGI enhanced images shape people’s expectations and how they perceive entities within the domain of spirit. The typical person that I have met doesn’t quite believe in God or necessarily goes to church regularly, but they do indeed believe in malevolent spirits, demons and perhaps even the Devil himself. How odd it is that someone could believe in spiritual evil but not believe in spiritual good, or in some kind of Deity. How indeed can one exist without the other?

I guess the perpetrator of all these strange assumptions and beliefs is Hollywood, which has produced a lot of horror and suspenseful movies about the Devil, demons and other evil entities. These themes have found their way into other media, too, such as video games, D&D, novels and anime. Don’t get me wrong, I love to be entertained by these various media, but I don’t allow such tropes to influence how I see the spiritual world. Coincidentally, these various movies and media have focused very little on the opposite forces of good, and the spiritual or magical power used to generate positive effects that would counter negative threats. That makes the threats seem overwhelming, and the means allotted to mere humanity to fight against them seem weak at best, or pathetic at worst. It all appears rather pessimistic to me, but then again, I just enjoy the stories and don’t try to use them to either explain occult truths or allow them to bleed into my perceptions of the real world.

Of course, as a Witch and a Pagan, I don’t subscribe to any kind of spiritually polarized or dualistic world view where the forces of good and light are arrayed against the forces of darkness and evil. In my opinion the world is quite neutral and so are the spirits that populate it. This is hardly the dramatic stuff of evil pitted against good as employed in Christianity, Islam, and to a lesser extent, Judaism. Yet you would think that people (of the Abrahamic faiths) who have been taught at least something in their respective places of worship would subscribe to the view that evil can be successfully combated by good. I suspect that cynicism is also playing a part, since the rich and powerful in our culture often seem to get away with committing heinous crimes while the lowly slob usually ends up heavily penalized. Add together the unhealthy qualities of political cynicism, post-modern Hollywood induced superstition, various conspiracy theories and a moderate disbelief in an active force for good and you have the special toxic cocktail of ignorance made to order for the rationally handicapped people of our post-modern age. I am glad that I am not one of those individuals so afflicted by our post-modern malaise (or so I think).

Needless to say, the three basic questions that everyone who would actually like to engage with spirits and spiritual beings without being paralyzed with fear are: how do we experience them, what do they look like, and in what world do they exist. I would like to take a moment to answer each of these questions separately and hopefully that will make things a lot more clear. These are good questions to consider whether one is an experienced magician, a beginner or someone not even trained in the magical arts.

How Do We Experience Spirits?

First and foremost, spirits are all around us and live in a domain that is coexistent and contiguous with our own. However, despite that proximity, nearly everyone can’t see them without some kind of special conditioning. A few rare individuals don’t need any preparation to see spirits, but they are usually highly gifted psychics, spiritual or magical masters, or acute psychotics. The rest of us, and that also includes myself, must perform specific meditations and trance techniques in order to shift our conscious mental states so we can perceive spiritual beings and even get a glimpse of their world. The necessity of acquiring a powerful altered state of consciousness in order to see spirits indicates that there is an excellent barrier between the domain of spirit and our mundane domain. It means that I can focus on something like my mundane job without being distracted or disturbed by some spiritual entity that, for whatever reason, wants my attention. It doesn’t mean that I am completely insensitive, but it does demonstrate that I can focus on mundane things unless something really critical or important enters my field of awareness.

Therefore, I can’t even imagine what it’s like for someone whose psychic sensitivities are always turned on. It must be highly distracting or perhaps even maddening if one weren’t able to turn it off and focus on other things. I have compartmentalized my world so that there is a time and a place for spiritual and magical workings, and there is a time and a place to function in the mundane sphere as well. The two typically don’t intersect, but when they do, there’s usually a very compelling reason for it. This allows me to function in both worlds without being overwhelmed by the differentiation or adversely afflicted by otherwise unseen forces and beings.

Why do I need to adopt a rigorous altered state of consciousness in order to perceive and communicate with spirits? The answer is quite simple. Spirits, if they have a material substance at all, are extremely subtle and not part of our normal perceptions of sight, hearing, smelling and touching. My theory is that spirits exist as beings embodied in pure consciousness, therefore, they don’t have any kind of physical body or at least none that we could scientifically measure. That means that spirits don’t occupy space and time the way that we do. They live in world that is also purely within consciousness, and that world is populated with all sorts of mythical creatures, deities and ghosts as well. I will talk more about this world when I answer the question about where spirits reside; but for this particular question, I can say that spirits are so subtle and nearly invisible to our senses that almost everyone will neither be able to sense or perceive them without aid.

The most sensitive and untrained psychic might feel a chill or sense something unusual when encountering a spirit, but otherwise, the rest of humanity walks around the common topography of their lives without sensing any spirits whatsoever. What most people believe about spirits and then when they claim to have encountered them are perhaps based on an almost imperceptible sensation that is amplified greatly by their imaginations. And that imperceptible sensation could be triggered by a natural phenomenon. Often our imaginations make up for what we really can’t see or perceive, and that makes many supposed supernatural experiences nothing more than just spurious interpretations of naturally occurring phenomena. It doesn’t mean that spiritual phenomena are non-existent, only that they exist in a highly rarefied world that is mostly imperceptible. It also means that human nature dislikes any kind of unknown or vague occurrence, and so it fills in the blanks making use of our a volatile imagination and our hardwired flight or fight instincts. 

If what I am claiming seems to question or even invalidate what people typically declare as the basis of their beliefs in the supernatural and their encounters with spirits then why do I and most other occultists need to adopt an altered state of consciousness in order to be able to perceive and encounter spirits? Wouldn’t a naked perception of a spirit experienced by someone completely skeptical or untrained indicate that such a spirit has a physical reality that can be filmed, videotaped, or otherwise measured or captured using scientific tools? Even the most audacious reality TV show that claims to hunt and capture ghostly activity often comes up with nothing more than ultra-subtle evidence that could be just as readily interpreted as the results of a natural phenomenon. The extremely faint whisper, the bizarre reflection of light or even the strange air temperature fluctuation cannot be used to prove conclusively that ghosts exist as objective physical entities.

So, it would seem that very subtle cues are being interpreted by individuals who don’t have the training and experience to know a real manifestation from one that is spurious. Even the expert psychic or a trained occultist isn’t infallible when supposedly encountering spirits. Everything that is experienced regarding spirits and their domain must be rationally evaluated and examined in order to determine if it is real, and then, relevant. Even some of my experiences with spirits have proven to be valid occurrences but spurious because what was revealed by them was nonsense. This happens more often with earth-based spirits (like the spirits of the dead) rather than more evolved and intelligent beings. We must, as occultists, carefully examine and qualify any and all spiritual encounters to make certain that they are real, meaningful and significant.

After many decades of practice and engaging with spirits I might be able to easily slip into the altered state of consciousness needed to sense them without the lengthy or arduous process of meditation and trance induction, but often what I sense under these conditions is very subtle and indeterminate. Only when I perform the classic methodologies used to achieve the correct mental state, and confined in the sacred space of a temple or grove, will I be able to “see” and “hear” spirits without any doubt or the need to aggressively question and rationalize what I have perceived. What that means is that an impromptu adoption of this mental state outside of sacred space can cause me to misinterpret what I am sensing almost as readily as it does to the untrained. It means that even I am susceptible to the same subtle cues and sensations that might give other people the “creepy” feeling that something spiritual is active when in fact it is only a natural occurrence.

Let me give you an example from one of my many experiences over the decades with spirits. I was visiting two old cities in the southeast, namely Charleston and Savanah, some years ago and when I was wandering with the rest of the tourists around the old brick docks of the port of Savanah, I sensed something disturbing despite all of the distractions and people, sights and sounds. I felt sensations of fear, sadness, pain, anger and bitter remorse. It was just a feeling that came and went, and I couldn’t figure out why I felt those emotions, since they are not typical for me to experience. My lady and I went on the obligatory ghost tours in both of these towns, but all of the supposed tours visited the graveyards and antique homes of white people. Wouldn’t such a place be haunted by the ghosts of all of the slaves that lived and died in that place as well? 

I briefly wondered about that and then forgot about it. Later on when we visited Tybee Island, we talked with a person who was studying to be a root doctor and he said that the old parts of Savanah were full of the ghosts of slaves, and that the ghost tours of white-only locations was a sham. I then remembered my strange emotions and sensations and told him about them, He concurred that I was probably picking up on the many ghosts of slaves who built the old town and the port area of Savanah, often suffering and even dying while they labored. The old town was built by the sweat, blood, tears and bitter suffering of black slaves, and it is likely that a real psychic would be able to sense that perturbation in a much more pronounced manner than that of the white privileged owners who gained immense wealth from their efforts. Did I sense the ghosts of departed slaves who were earth bound and seeking some kind of peaceful release denied to them over the centuries? I believe that I did sense them, but I have no concrete proof. I only had the brief sensations that seemed not have any kind of origin within me as a type of subject verification. 

How does one assume the proper altered mental state to sense spirits and the spirit world? It is done through a medium level trance state inducted from a deep meditative state. The simplest method for assuming a trance state is to stare at a fixed point for a period of time, such as a Yantra, diagram, wall painting or anything that is stationary or cyclically oscillating. Thus, a revolving light or shining object can also be used. The subject performs this type of trance induction once a deep meditative state has been achieved after performing many minutes of assana, breath-control and mantram vibrations. You can find these techniques in many books on meditation and trance, or you can fully read chapter two of part two (starting at page 204) in my book “Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick.”  The assumption of a moderate trance state is the foundational state that I use to sense and perceive spirits and their world.      

What Do Spirits Look Like?

Here is where the imagination comes into play, since without it, the many spectacular visions of angels, demons, ghoulish ghosts and other kinds of spirits would be subtle and unremarkable occurrences. What this means is that without any embellishment of the mind a spirit will look like a transparent egg-shaped sphere of light. The color of that light varies, of course, depending on the quality and vibrational rate of the spirit’s conscious being; but this is hardly the stuff of myth or imagination. However, a spirit, when it is perceived and encountered by a human being, can and does assume different shapes in accordance with the expectations and the imagination of the seer. In other words, a spirit can project an image of itself in a completely imaginary form within the mind of the seer, and it can also speak and produce other phenomena (music, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, etc.), but all within the mind of the seer. This means that what is perceived by the observer can’t be captured by a video camera or other measuring device, since it is not an objective, physical reality. Not only can the observer sense the spirit, but also a good seer can see the world (or the specific occult symbolic context) in which the spirit resides.

An effective seer experiences a spirit as a fully immersed occurrence, which includes that specific entity and its domain. All sorts of visionary imaginings are triggered when encountering a spirit, and often powerful visions occur as well. If we expect to see a terrible and grotesque entity stinking of sulphur and brimstone when evoking a demon then that is what we will experience. Since magical practitioners of different spiritual persuasions experience the evocation of a spirit differently, and sometimes even radically different, then we can rationally assume that our expectations play a powerful role in what we experience. This is yet another indicator that spirits are not physical beings like us simply because of the variety of impressions and experiences that many magicians have had when evoking them.

It might even be said that magicians experience something unique when evoking spirits, and that no two such experiences of the same spirit are identical. Spirits reside entirely within the fields of consciousness so they can be perceived in a myriad of imaginary forms. I would suspect that even the egg-shaped point of light is imaginary, except that it has the precedence of accepted modern occultism to back it up.

So, what does a spirit look like to the apparent seer? It looks like whatever they think it should look like. That would at least inform the would-be magician to be quite clear and also careful with his or her expectations when planning an evocation. It wouldn’t do to get the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Man when attempting to invoke the spirit of a demon or a revered spiritual ancestor.   

In What World Do Spirits Reside?

As I have said, the domain of spirits is all around us and contiguous with our own world, except that we can’t normally see or perceive them, or for that matter, their world. Since I have proposed that spirits reside in a world that exists entirely within the domain of consciousness, then all we need to do in order to see them is to change our conscious state using some ecstatic technique. This is also how one would enter into their domain, and that ecstatic technique has been part of the magician’s repertoire since the days of the shaman.

Because the domain of spirit is entirely within consciousness, it has a completely symbolic quality to it. Basically, the spirit world, which I might add is contiguous with our own world, has three basic levels, and each level is populated by different kinds of spirits. These three worlds are also found in classical shamanism and therefore, represent a kind of fundamental representation of the human experience of consciousness itself. These worlds are the heavens, the underworld and the surface world (where we reside). Spanning these three worlds is a device that connects them, which could be seen as a tree, ladder, pole or stang, or similar bridging mechanism. Let’s quickly examine each of these worlds and speculate about the kinds of spirits to be found in each.

Spirits of the Heavens

This is the place of stars and planets as well as the celestial Gods of the sun, moon, wind, clouds and storms. It is also the place of winged spirits who appear as birds or even angels. When considering the three worlds of spirit we should keep in mind that it is all based on symbology that has only a small bearing on the real objective world. This view is based on our subjective experiences of the world and the inner psychic structures that these experiences create.

Even though science has explained all of the natural phenomena seen in the sky during the day and night, our subjective and mythic experiences are still real and valid, based as they are on our collective perceptions, beliefs and culturally determined conscious topography. We can still think about the “Man in the Moon” even though it is deemed by science to be an impossibility, it has stubbornly resisted scientific explanations and retained its mythic value in our culture. The same is true about the apparent constellations of stars, whose outlines represent merely our subjective perception and interpretation of stars and galaxies from our earthly vantage point. The spirits of the heavens have a more macrocosmic perspective, and so they are remote from the events and occurrence of human activity, of course, with exception of those who function as messengers or intermediaries.

Ritual magicians are interested in the spirits of the sky because of their ability to see things from a lofty vantage point, and they often are able to give excellent long term oracles and also understand the world from the vantage point of the cosmogonic cycle. What they are not particularly good at is giving concise oracles about individuals and short-term events, since that is something that a remote viewing would be unable to discern clearly. 

Spirits of the Underworld

This is the place of darkness that lies under the surface of the earth, and so it symbolically represents all of the things associated with that domain. The spirits of this place are subject to the chthonic deities of the underworld and their intermediaries. The underworld is the place of our departed ancestors, both genetic and spiritual. Anyone who is dead and not trapped on the surface world is to be found in the underworld. However, the underworld is not confined to just a repository of death, darkness, coldness and things inimical to life. Indeed, the underworld is also the place of fertility, birth, a reservoir of the life-force, underground aquifers, streams and even rivers, as well as the treasures of gold, silver, gem stones and other precious or semi precious stones and metals. The underworld is also the well of souls to be born and the potential of everything that is manifested into physical form. Underground localities, such as caves, gorges, or man-made barrows and graveyards can represent symbolic and actual entrances to the underworld, but to engage with the spirits of the underworld only requires the right mental state and the ability to enter into the domain of darkness, death and rebirth.

As you can imagine, the spirits of the underworld are more intimate and relevant to our surface world than the spirits and deities that reside in the sky. If you want to acquire a material thing or objective, then the spirits of the underworld will be much more helpful and immediate in their aid than will the spirits in the sky. This is because the underworld is the true repository of everything material, including life itself, and it the place where everything that lives, returns. It is also the place where a ritual magician would go to learn about his or her specific destiny or about a short-term possibility. Oracles involving the dead and chthonic deities are often very specific and unambiguous, but they are less capable of perceiving the long term or the greater destiny of a people or a nation.

Spirits of the Surface World

The surface world is filled with spirits as well, and these are often associated with a specific places or geographic features. A large and unique looking tree, a lake, stream or river, hill or mountain, forest, fields, giant rocks - anything peculiar or interesting. It can be man-made, such as sacred locations (churches, temples, ancient ruins) or even villages, cities, town or massive urban locations, or it can a pristine natural and inaccessible location.

Spirits are everywhere in the surface world (and so are deities, yet not as populous), but they are mostly invisible to humans. Even so, it is easier to engage with spirits in remote locations than in the middle of large city, for the obvious reasons of distractions, noise and people. However, I have experienced spirits in a city late at night when distractions are at a minimum, and it was just as thrilling (and unnerving) as the same kind of experience in a natural setting. The spirits in such locations are quite different, since the location and the geographic context does have some influence on how such spirits appear and function, although the imagination does the real embelishing.  There are also wandering ghosts on the surface world who have not found their peaceful place of repose (although they are more rare than some people would believe), and there are swarming numbers of entities that are associated with the confluence of geographic features, ley-lines and other kinds of grids, both natural and man-made.

Therefore, it is just as possible for a city shaman to engage with distorted human-created paramentals in an urban setting as it is for a hedge-witch to engage with nature spirits or to walk the ghost roads of the ancestors in some remote location. Either approach is similarly valid, and it represents the fact that spirits are uniformly everywhere. All we need to do is to develop the methods and techniques of being able to see and engage them. Out of that experience comes the structures and systems of the occult and the spirit matrices of practical ritual magick.

What this article informs us is that spirits are everywhere, and that they can assume a shape based on our expectations and beliefs. However, spirits are nearly impossible for most people to see, experience or in any wise engage; so for most of humanity they are the stuff of myth, media and religious belief and not particularly real. Only the preternatural psychic, trained occultist or acute psychotic can see and engage with spirits, and of these, only the first two are likely seeing what is really there. 

Frater Barrabbas

Winter of My Discontent

I wrote this article in early March when it was still unseasonably cold outside. Although things have changed somewhat, the issues that I faced then are still very much active today. Therefore, I thought that I would share this writing as the Vernal Equinox has arrived. Winters are harsh up here in the Midwest tundra, and this winter was more harsh than typical. It makes me long for warmer climates and less hostile weather.

"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried." 

Richard III - William Shakespeare

Another day of sub zero cold, snow, ice and just miserable freezing weather. When the sun shines, it is too cold to even go outside and observe the day without being heavily bundled up and wearing a ski mask. We are teased once in a while with a slight thaw, only to be hit a day or two later with what the weather geeks call a polar vortex. One scientist has hypothesized that extreme weather is caused by warmer than usual air displacing the frigid air currents over the pole and pushing them further south, thereby causing the jet stream to loop north and south instead of maintaining a northerly transit over the North American continent. Some might joke that what we have here is more like global cooling than global warming, but it is in fact warmer air currents in the poles that are causing the shifts of extremely cold weather. Alaska is having a very warm winter and the Midwestern Great Lakes looks like a scene from the last glacier. Extreme weather will continue to become more extreme, and everywhere in North America is being afflicted by it. There is no refuge except in the southern most states and the Carribean. So, here we are, getting punished by one of the worst winters in recorded history, and all I can do is just endure it and hope for an early spring. I stay indoors as often as possible, and I don’t travel much, becoming even more isolated in my household hermitage. If I am grateful for one thing, it is that I don’t have to commute to work in the hostile frigid weather.

You have probably noticed that I am not writing as much as I used to. Articles are being posted perhaps once or twice a month. The reason why is that I am avalanched with work from my day job, and by the time I finish up the day, my brain feels like mush. Since part of what I do all day long is to write up responses for business bids from the various States, I am engaged in writing a lot. I am also writing UNIX scripts, SQL scripts and performing various other system analyses. I am in a world of work, and besides that and my ever important relationship with my lady, there just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to do everything that I want to do. I haven’t been doing much with my spiritual studies and practices other than the rudimentary meditations and minor offerings in my temple. There are no big workings planned because there is so little time to plan and perform them.

While it is true that I am in a bit of a rut that I need to climb out of, I haven’t had the inspiration or been able to build the initiative to do so. Winter has not only frozen the land that I live in, but it has also frozen my spirit and brought all spiritual and magical progress to a standstill. Perhaps there is hope since I am now starting to write articles for my blog, and I am starting to look over my notes and attempting to jump start my research projects. I have cleaned up my temple area and have organized it, but as of yet, little has been done in that space. I have made some plans to perform some workings in the near future, but we will see what happens. The harsh winter is having a paralyzing impact on me, and I need to break the spell that it has cast over me.

Even though I am doing quite well in all of the areas of my life that really count for a lot, such as my career and my relationship, I am still dissatisfied with my lack of initiative and achievements in the spiritual and magical areas of my life. I have book projects just sitting around and not being worked on yet and I have to do something about that stasis which seems to be pervading my work. I can blame it on the winter, and perhaps it is having more of an affect on me than I realize, but still, there really are no excuses. I just need to focus and get moving again. And so, I keep promising myself that I will endeavor to persevere, whatever that means. Hopefully I will be able to break through this frozen and static period of my spiritual and magical life, but I believe that things are only going to get more busy at my job. I knew that this day was coming when my job would once again take up the lion’s share of my time and efforts, but I seem ill prepared to deal with it.

Sometimes I envy those who are singularly dedicated to their art of magic and who can spend whatever time is needed in order to teach, write books and practice magic without any interruptions or distractions like having to make a living. Maybe someday I will have this kind of freedom, perhaps when I finally retire, but until then I can sense that my career is about to really take off and engulf me with a massive workload. If my company wins this project that I have been working on, helping them to build up technical responses and exhaustively answer questions for the State, then I will get my wish and be made part of the team working on a long term project. This large-scale project will fully engage and challenge me on all levels. It will be exciting and challenging to work on this project, and the company will earn quite a large amount of money for achieving it (and so will the team members). But I believe that my occult studies and practices will correspondingly suffer, since they will have to be put on the back burner while I toil away at my job.

Luckily, I happen to love the work that I do, but there is more to life than work, or so I am told. All I know is that I must push forward and take whatever opportunities come my way. Unlike some people my age, I don’t want to loose my job and become underemployed doing something for a living that I hate . It is my burden and my good fortune to have to spend the majority of my time working at my job, which is probably what many other people go through each and every work day. I should be grateful for having such a demanding and rewarding job, but sometime I would rather play the flute, work magick, read and research new ideas and concepts and not have to deal with the everyday stresses of an IT type career. Of course, when payday comes around every two weeks, I forget about what I would rather do and instead feel relieved that I can pay all of the bills and have a little left over. I am lucky to have this well paying gig, and I know it, but still, the winter goes on day by day, and I wonder what other possibilities there might be for me to have my cake and eat it too.

*****

Spring is coming, and the first thaw has already reduced the amount of snow on the ground, although it has snowed again since and carpeted the ground with white just as it was beginning to look like some kind of transition in the earth was really happening. I have sensed a number of changes already occurring, and I know that this year will be quite different than any other year. I don’t exactly know why, but I sense that changes (and I might add, good changes for me and those close to me) are immanent. I want very much to get really deep into my magical work, and I hope that one of the changes that will occur is that I will get this sorely needed opportunity soon. As the Vernal Equinox is nigh upon us, I am hoping that I will be able to once again re-engage with my magick and spiritual discipline. Sometimes life just becomes so busy that everything else takes a back seat until that busy time has passed. I understand this fact, and it is one of the issues that any magician who has to work a regular job, keep house and manage a relationship will have to resolve in order to have the time to have a spiritual life.

Frater Barrabbas

A Corporate Dystopia Clouds Our Future

Magicians are often not very politically motivated since they have their feet in both the physical world and the spirit world, and attempting to manage both can be an arduous challenge at the very least. This might not be true of all magicians, but it is probably true of many of them, and this includes me. However, sometimes I find that I do stir from my self-absorbed catalepsy of occult ruminations and take a hard look at the world around me. I have to say that I often don’t like what I see going on in the US, or for that matter the world. It might even make me want to disengage and go back to my little private world. Yet sometimes I just have to express my outrage at the mendacity, moral myopia and ethical dyslexia that seems to be shaping our collective future from behind the scenes, that is, unless the common people wake up and realize that they are being slowly and certainly enslaved by greedy corporations and the wealthy power-elite.

The middle class of this country is being rapidly eroded and weakened to the point where it might even disappear. Even though I have a good paying job, I still don’t have the purchasing power that my father had when he was my age. This is the first time since the end of the depression where the sons and daughters of working class families have achieved less than their parents. I cannot even begin to talk about some of these changes because they are so sufficiently complex, subtle, long-term and so overwhelmingly ubiquitous. Most of these changes do not bode well for the middle class.

Pensions, which once were the financial foundation ensuring that those who had retired would be guaranteed to have something to live on, have become nearly extinct, and corporate sponsored healthcare benefits are merely insurance policies against catastrophic illness, if even that. Our much ballyhooed 401K retirement investment accounts, which were supposed to replace pensions, were not the protected assets steadfastly accumulating for our day of retirement. Once pensions became market driven retirement “investments,” they became nothing more than ready cash for the ultra-wealthy Wall Street power brokers to use in their greedy manipulations of the market. The debacle of the 2008 real-estate bubble collapse caused trillions of dollars to evaporate from those investment portfolios, leaving the common masses with little or nothing. The bankers were bailed out by the government and never prosecuted, and we, the little people, were screwed out of our retirement investments. Many of us will not be able to retire until we are older than 65. I am not planning on retiring until I am at least 70 in the hopes that I can regain what I lost and keep myself out of poverty when I am no longer employable. As a contrast, my father retired early when he was just 60, and is still living comfortably off of his pensions and retirement accounts. (I will turn 60 next year, and I am far from being able to retire.)   

What many of us younger folk have forgotten is that what built the middle class and empowered people of modest means were a combination of the unions spearheading the labor movement along with a government that was friendly and aligned with them. This relationship was cemented in the FDR administration during the great depression, and it was that relationship (via The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938) which gave the workers a five day, 40 hour work week, paid vacation, overtime pay, pensions, health benefits, and most importantly, a living wage. When I was a child, the unions were considered the “good guys” who kept corporations from rolling over and dominating the working class. Sometimes the unions seemed too powerful and a few of them became quite corrupt, having been infiltrated by organized crime syndicates. Yet despite these problems, the unions were once so important that both the Democrats and the Republicans courted them and sought their help in electing their anointed politicians.

Now in the 21st century, unions are steadfastly declining, and so, I might add, is the ability of the working class to negotiate with large corporations. I might also add that whole job categories that were invented after WWII have been able to omit any union representation. This is particularly true of the IT profession, where whole companies could exist without any union representation whatsoever. It may have seemed superfluous during the boom years of the 1990's when IT pay advanced more rapidly than nearly any other job class, but that boom ended later in the next decade when whole company departments were off-shored to China and India. Suddenly, scores of IT professionals became part of the hosts of the chronically underemployed, and those who were lucky, sufficiently advanced in their career or too invested in business processes to be off-shored managed to survive. Would unions have made a difference in what happened? Probably not, but the unions of the 1950's and 1960's would have been able to beat back the trend. Unions today have been successfully reduced in power, prestige and have lost many of their allies in government. 

Corporations are responsible for the demise of the unions, that is, corporations and their bought and paid-for allies in both the national and local governments. Some States in the US have enacted “right to work” laws that have helped corporations destroy unions and keep non-union factories and businesses from forming them. They are using propaganda, fear of job loss, or sometimes just simply off-shoring an entire manufacturing plant to Asia where the labor is cheap and unions non-existent. Corporations have rigged the economic system so that they receive massive subsidies, legalized tax evasion schemes and even compelled their labor force to augment their earnings with food stamps and Medicaid. They have also made it more difficult for individuals of modest means to join their ranks. The great upward mobility of the 1950's through the 1980's has essentially ended. Some might still make it, but only at the behest and inclusion by the corporate power-brokers. The rest of us are locked into a system that keeps us from ever being able to better ourselves. We are blocked from attending the prestigious high-priced universities and colleges because of the crushing debt that achieving these higher degrees now entail. The various avenues of mobility that once existed no longer exist. We live in a time that is differentiated by the consolidation of the “haves” at the expense of the “have nots.” Correspondingly, income inequality is now at an all time high not seen since the late 19th century.

Do you think that I am making all of this up just to attack free market capitalism and thereby show my socialist underpinnings? Just read this article, part of which I have quoted here, and see the evidence that large corporations are gaming the system and engorging themselves on government subsidies. They, instead of the poor, are the real welfare queens. You can find that article here.

“Good Jobs First shows that the world’s largest companies aren’t models of self-sufficiency and unbridled capitalism. To the contrary, they’re propped up by billions of dollars in welfare payments from state and local governments.

Such subsidies might be a bit more defensible if they were being doled out in a way that promoted upstart entrepreneurialism. But as the study also shows, a full ‘three-quarters of all the economic development dollars awarded and disclosed by state and local governments have gone to just 965 large corporations’—not to the small businesses and startups that politicians so often pretend to care about.

In dollar figures, that’s a whopping $110 billion going to big companies. Fortune 500 firms alone receive more than 16,000 subsidies at a total cost of $63 billion.”

Mitt Romney told a heckler back in the 2012 presidential election that corporations were people, and the US Supreme court seems to agree with that sentiment. The implications of that cultural shift are pretty easy to understand if we think about them long enough. We are becoming a nation where the corporations rule and we, the people, are made powerless and disenfranchised. One billionaire recently suggested that the ultra-rich should be given more than one vote commensurate with their wealth. Maybe some day the wealthy elite will decide that democracy is too messy and unpredictable, and that laws, policies and decisions that affect the local as well as the national arena should be made by the ultra-rich and the corporations, and not the common people. If you listen to what some of the wealthy plutocrats are saying as well as what the corporate backed politicians of the Republican party (and even some of the Democrats) are promoting then it doesn’t seem far-fetched that a corporatist take-over of this country is not only possible, but is, in fact, already occurring.

One of my favorite TV shows is playing around with this idea. It’s called “Continuum” and even though it is basically a low budget science fiction series, it has some pretty interesting ideas. Here are a couple of quotations taken from Wikipedia that give an overview and an outline to the basic plot of this series.

“The series centers on the conflict between a group of rebels from the year 2077 who time-travel to Vancouver, BC, in 2012, and a police officer [Kiera Cameron] who accidentally accompanies them. In spite of being many years early, the rebel group decides to continue its violent campaign to stop corporations of the future from replacing governments, while the police officer endeavours [sic] to stop them without revealing to anyone that she and the rebels are from the future.”

“Every episode begins with the plot of the show narrated by a voiceover from the point of view of Kiera Cameron.

    ‘2077. My time, my city, my family. When terrorists killed thousands of innocents, they were condemned to die. They had other plans. A time travel device sent us all back 65 years. I want to get home but I can't be sure what I will return to if history is changed. Their plan, to corrupt and control the present in order to win the future. What they didn't plan on was me!’

City Protective Services (CPS) law enforcement officer Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols) lives a quiet, normal life with her husband and son in 2077-era Vancouver. Under the corporatocratic and oligarchic dystopia of the North American Union and its ‘Corporate Congress’, life goes on in apparent freedom under a technologically advanced high-surveillance police state.

When a group of anarcho-socialist self-proclaimed freedom fighters known as ‘Liber8' escape execution by fleeing to the year 2012, Kiera is involuntarily transported with them into the past. Joining with Detective Carlos Fonnegra (Victor Webster) and the Vancouver Police Department, and enlisting the help of teen computer genius Alec Sadler (Erik Knudsen), Kiera works to track down and thwart Edouard Kagame (Tony Amendola) and his followers in the present day while concealing her identity as a time-traveller from the future.

Kagame and the members of Liber8 plot to alter the past to avert the rise of what they see as a dictatorial and Orwellian corporate regime to be stopped at all costs. Meanwhile, Kiera learns that Alec is none other than Alec Sadler, future corporate mogul and head of SadTech, one of the mega-corporations that dominate the world in 2077.

Fighting to return home to her family, Kiera finds that her presence in 2012, and that of the members of Liber8, may be no accident at all.”        

The really odd thing about this series is that the character Kiera is initially shown as being the typical good cop fighting despicable and evil terrorist bad guys. However, as the series moves along, it becomes clear that the future world that Kiera is fighting to preserve is really a terrible corporatist dystopia, where the working class has been completely absorbed and enslaved by corporations that hold absolute power. It is an artificial world where consumerism is captivated and kept solidly in place while the disempowered common working classes are forced to stay in line by an overpowering police state. Does this seem like a far-fetched science fiction fantasy or does it seem like a warning of what might happen in the next century? If we give up our rights for security and a piece of the economic pie then the future will be a lot like the TV show “Continuum,” but probably even darker.

Even though an occultist and a ritual magician has to balance two worlds against each other, and often seems to be absorbed in arcane studies and practices, it is important to also be aware of what is going on in the world. It is important for the erstwhile occultist to never give up his or her rights and privileges that made the middle class a great power in this country in the first place. Whatever you do in your studies and practices, make certain that you also stay tuned to what is going on around you and also vote in every election. Keep engaged with the world around you. Remember that even one vote might make the difference between a positive future outcome and one that is doomed. Otherwise, why would the rich and powerful be so adverse to any form of democracy? Because it is our one last power that we can collectively use to shape our own future.

Frater Barrabbas

Thoughts About Love Spells

Here is a topic that I often get people asking me questions about, and I am usually reluctant to discuss it. Since this topic is so often asked, I have decided to weigh in and give my readers my perspective on this kind of magic.

Love magic is typically considered one of the main elements of “low magic,” right up there in importance to money magic, magical healing and magical retaliation, or getting justice through backhanded mechanisms. I don’t usually write about love magic because I have found it to be not particularly useful or efficacious, particularly if it is targeted on a specific person. My opinion is essentially that if you want to really mess up a potential relationship possibility, then by all means, use love magic on your desired target. Of course, there are ethical considerations as to whether or not you are justified in performing such magic, but I have found that those who do it are so obsessed with their targets that such considerations don’t even register.

In my opinion, projecting your will upon another and dressing it up with spirits, energy, sigils, dolls, pictures, ancestors and even some hoodoo based alchemy in order to target an innocent person so that they would love and desire you against their will could be considered highly negative magic, since the intent is obviously to dominate someone’s will. I have often thought that the next best thing to outright cursing someone is casting a love spell on them, particularly if they are not in the least bit attracted or interested in the perpetrator.

If you work such a magical operation and it’s successful then you have overturned someone’s will in an obviously deceitful and disreputable manner just to satisfy your fancy. Do you think that all is fair in love and war? Well, think again! If that were true then date rape and other forms of sexual assault would be legal and even encouraged. It would also be quite acceptable if the potential victim struck back and murdered their assailant. If love is your object then it hardly helps you if you are engaged in a veritable war with those whom you would shower with your affections. Love is one thing, and dominance is altogether another thing. It is important to be clear about your intentions and what you want to accomplish, since if your objective is confused then all else is even more murky.

Magic always has some basic ground rules that are practical and even obvious. A completely non-magical and practical approach to achieving a relationship should follow some basic steps, and no amount of magic can make them happen if there isn’t a mutual interest between the two parties. What I have found is that magic often makes these stages either more difficult or more complicated then they already are. Also, many people have the belief that magic will somehow make something that is highly improbable or impossible happen, as if it were a miracle.  

Here are the practical steps, and I think that just about everyone knows this on some level. If you love someone, then that love must be perceived by the other person and returned in some fashion if anything is going to develop. The whole process of courting a potential lover is getting that exchange to occur. This is called mutual attraction, and if it doesn’t exist or even have the potential for existing, then forget about anything further happening. Thus getting your beloved’s attention so that they will focus on you is the first important step. However, that is just the beginning. You have to somehow appeal to what that other person desires in some manner (or stumble upon it by accident), so changing and augmenting how you look, act and even smell is important. I might also add that people who are considered naturally attractive usually have more confidence in their ability to attract others to them. The rest of us who are not so endowed must make the best of what we have. Yet certainly attractive clothes and an attractive style can make up for what one lacks in stature, physique and appearance - at least to a point.

There also has to be a social connection between you and the other person, and you have to have something in common with them. At some point if this process is going to be successful, then you have to access and gain an intimate social contact with them, and it has to be situations that are periodically repeated (like dating). Obviously, courting in our post-modern world, despite how fast everything happens around us, still takes time and patience, but seduction can happen very quickly. This is true even though a successful sexual encounter doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be a romantic relationship as well. Relationships between people are quite complex and also quite fluid, and anything can happen to either enhance the connection or destroy it completely. The most important consideration is that you can’t control everything that happens, and as they say, sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you.

I think that the most difficult and problematic aspect of looking for love has to do with the fact that unlike many other things in our lives, we can’t really control other people. We can try, but it eventually fails, even for the most sophisticated of manipulators. This is also why I believe that working love magic on someone is so difficult, since it is a form of continuous domination. For example, you have forced someone to love and desire you who wouldn’t normally be so disposed, and as the enchanter, you have to always be glamorous, mysterious (or at least your underhanded intentions have to be invisible), and you have to always be engaged with feeding that love spell so it can be maintained. It’s a lot like pretending to be someone you aren’t and somehow over time, keeping up the pretense.

When the truth is discovered by the victim of such magic (and it usually does happen at some point), then the perpetrator of that magic experiences a full and complete reversal or backlash. The ensorcelled individual suddenly realizes that their lover is a fraud and not at all attractive or even interesting, and this makes them not only enraged by the deceit but also repulsed by the one who has been deceiving them. It’s doubtful that such a catastrophe could ever be mitigated, and usually it represents a profound end to such a relationship. It is, in a word, an emotional train wreck, and worse, it often attracts a lot of public attention. The victim usually is not content to just slip away, they also have to let everyone they know that they have been deceived and outrageously defrauded, thereby justifying why they spent any time with that disreputable scam artist they have so recently dumped. Besides, the victim’s friends were probably wondering about that as well. This kind of occurrence happens even without magic, and to outsiders it is highly amusing. It’s also the kind of situation that is used in romantic comedies. Yet in real life, it represents a terrible tragedy without a happy ending that is best avoided by being honest.

That’s why I think that working love magic on a specific person is not only unethical, but it is also fraught with possible failure. We can embellish ourselves to a point so we can be seen as attractive, but in the end, we have to be who we are, and that includes our flaws and unattractive qualities, too. It’s something that is unavoidable - we just are who are and nothing more. Pushing the envelop on this stark reality is to perpetrate a fraud, and if a relationship is to emerge from an initial infatuation, then it must be followed by honesty and integrity.

Another thing that typically happens when someone tries to cast a love spell is that they haven’t made certain that all of the practical steps that could potentially build up a relationship have been done first. In other words, there isn’t an established link and social process for a relationship to occur. They might be lazy or just confused, or they might think that the other person is the perfect match for them, as if willed by fate itself. Thus they will believe that the potential for love is mutual when it actually isn’t mutual at all. Then to confound matters they’ll work a love spell hoping that whatever shortcomings are in play (if they are even aware of them) they will somehow achieve their desired outcome. The psychic energy that they are projecting won’t be able to reach the target because there isn’t any link, but that magic will have to go somewhere, and it does. What happens is that the love spell rebounds back onto the perpetrator and causes them to become obsessed with the object of their desire. They have managed to merely ensorcell themselves, and then their odd, creepy behavior will completely turn off the person that they are unwittingly stalking. In my experience, this is usually what happens when someone attempts to cast a love spell.

In my humble opinion, working a love spell on a specific person is really a bad idea. I always try to talk someone out of this kind of approach if they happen to tell to me about it. Usually, I only hear about the failure and the collateral damage, and it elicits from me a typical face-palm kind of response. Yet human nature is what it is, and the question remains, what can a person do to magically help them attract a lover and build a rewarding relationship? My response is always the same - make yourself desirable and lovable, and then let nature take its course. Make certain that you have a wide social network of people that you actually visit and spend time with, and learn to be open, kind and compassionate to others. You can help yourself by being presentable and attractive in your chosen social network, and also by learning to listen and empathize with others. Where magic comes into play is to address any internal issues that you might have that would obstruct or keep you from having a relationship.

You should also do this simple and practical exercise. Ask yourself these questions and make certain that you get clear answers. Are you open and available for a relationship right now? Are your expectations too high or do you judge others too harshly before even knowing them? Have you cleared yourself of all of your previous emotional baggage or relationship histories. If you are pining for someone with whom you once had a relationship or if you are seeking someone who would never want to have a relationship with you then you will have to eliminate this obstacle before you will be able to find someone. These considerations are so practical and basic to human relationships that they don’t require any kind of occult interpretation or intrusion.

Finally, I would like to say forget about finding your soulmate or that pre-destined love that you have been looking for your whole life! Besides, soulmates aren’t discovered, they are made over time with a lot of hard work and effort. If you can eliminate these erroneous romantic ideals from your head and be open to any possibility, then you won’t be disappointed. Perhaps the most important bit of advice that I could ever give any magician who is seeking a lover is actually quite simple. Do you want to work magic to get a lover? Then work that magic on yourself! In other words, use your magic to discover the lover within you and then you will find a corresponding lover in the material world. It’s really that simple, even though it took me decades to truly realize it.

Frater Barrabbas

Science, Religion and Magick

A savvy and intelligent occultist and ritual magician would never attempt to rewrite scientific knowledge nor would he or she attempt to prove that religious doctrine is somehow objectively scientific. A wise occultist knows that there are very important boundaries between what science has determined and what religion has determined. Magick, as a practical spiritual discipline, occupies that nether region or undefined domain that lies somewhere in between science and religion. A smart ritual magician wouldn’t make assumptions that oppose scientific thought, such as denying physical evolution or climate change on one hand, nor would he or she deny that religions are based on subjective spiritual truths that can’t be proven or measured, only experienced.

As I have maintained previously in my articles and in my books, science has its domain and religion has yet another domain entirely. Perhaps they might intersect here and there, but they remain exclusive to the objective and subjective worlds in which they occur. Where problems arise is when science denies the possibility of subjective spiritual truths or when religion attempts to make its tenets objective or as absolute truths. Sacred writ is allegorical and based on subjective spiritual truths and science is governed by the scientific method. One perspective cannot over-rule the other, and they should, therefore, live happily side by side. This is especially true when you consider that science has done a pretty good job in defining the objective physical world, and religion has been good (more or less) at defining the subjective spiritual reality. Yet we live in a secular society so that our very freedoms to believe, worship or practice our faith as we choose is not dictated by the government. So, living in a secular nation, using the fruits of technology as driven by science, and choosing to believe and practice our spiritual faith in whatever manner we choose is the foundation for a diverse, harmonious and democratic society. 

Unfortunately, we human beings live in a world of consciousness that intersects all of these realities, and at times, due to the nature of our subjective experience, they can seem to blend or merge into each other, even they are and should remain distinct. While dreams, imagination and intuition play very important roles in both religion and magick (and I might add, even science), they need to be disciplined so that they won’t lead us to make erroneous assumptions about ourselves and the world that we live in. Magick, much more so than religion, can be a great source of personal and subjective misinformation, especially when we take those experiences that we had while undergoing conscious transformation out of the context of our subjective experience. Even if other individuals who were either with us when we underwent this magical experience or who performed the same rite at a different time might make what is experienced by the individual more objective if it is corroborated by a group, it doesn’t make it an objective physical fact that can be tested by the scientific method. This particular issue with the nature of subjectivity represents one of the critical areas where magick can cause delusions or supply us with erroneous assumptions.   

Problems arise when someone takes religious doctrines (or occult tenets) and attempts to understand them as an objective physical reality, or correspondingly when science attempts to explain away or deride the paradoxes and inexplicable events that lie within the subjective experience of the observer. What we get when these domain boundary incursions occur is either pseudo-science, aggressive atheism or religious literalism, all of which are fraught with erroneous assumptions and overly simplistic explanations. As magicians who work with the shadowy fringes between the objective physical world and the subjective spiritual world it is our responsibility to carefully judge and understand the basis ofo both worlds. Simply put, it means that we should not attempt to overly objectify our subjective occult experiences, since in doing so we will open the door to personal delusion and adopt a propensity for mythic thinking. We should also be able to recognize hyperbole when it emerges in the declarations of scientists, religious leaders or particularly other occultists. 

We saw this contrast between world views on display when Bill Nye recently debated physical evolution vs. creationism with Ken Ham, who happens to own and operate the Creationist Museum in Petersburg, KY. To declare that the world is not older than 6,000 years based on the chronology of the Old Testament Bible is to open oneself to ridicule and derision, since there are trees alive today that have been measured as being older than 6,000 years. Even Pat Robertson, who has publically maintained some pretty ridiculous notions rejects “Young Earth Creationism,” saying that it gives secularists and atheists grounds to ridicule and reject Protestant Christian theology. What wasn’t in evidence at the time of this debate was a corresponding agreement in either Catholic or Jewish circles, who seem to have an altogether different perspective for interpreting their sacred literature. I never heard of any Jewish Rabbi or Catholic theologian argue for interpreting the Bible literally, and I think that this is a key point that they seem to understand and that fundamentalist Christians don’t, and these different groups are reading the same texts!

In my opinion, and it would seem that it is an accepted fact in many religious organizations, sacred writ consists of allegories disguised as spiritual truths, but these truths were never meant to contradict or replace the theories as generated from the scientific method. To force these religious truths into direct contradiction of established scientific theories is to foster a kind of pseudo-science that is more mythic than factual. That is how I would classify such hypotheses as Creationism or Intelligent Design. Correspondingly, there has lately been a lot of public buzz about a new hypothesis called Biocentrism that attempts to explain away the possibility of an objective physical world governed by the objective although relative phenomena of space and time. What might not seem obvious to the layperson is that Biocentrism, Creationism and Intelligent Design are all unprovable religious-based doctrines, as we shall see.

When unqualified individuals attempt to re-explain or abrogate scientific theories without any evidence or for that matter, any counter theory, it ends up promoting the worst kind of pseudo-science. This is the crux of the problem facing our post-modern age. We seem to be haunted by the profound absolutist beliefs and propositions of our pre-scientific past and are unable or unwilling to embrace what modern science has been able to aptly prove. While it is true that we don’t have all of the answers and that the scientific community continues to mature and develop its understanding along with the tools they use to demonstrate and prove their scientific hypotheses, there is more than enough of a foundation to be able to determine the boundary between the objective and subject worlds.

I believe that it is important for occultists and ritual magicians to understand this important boundary between the objective and subjective domains of their experiential worlds and to ensure that their beliefs and perspectives are scientifically “neutral.” What occultists and ritual magicians want to avoid is attempting to reinvent the metaphorical wheel when the “wheel” has been so well established and is an integral part of the world that we live in. To attempt such an exercise in futility is to invite ridicule and mockery from those not so aligned to occult and metaphysical truths. Let’s face the reality that someone else’s hypocrisy or hyperbole is quite amusing to us, but it isn’t so amusing when we are the butt of the same kinds of jokes. If we proceed in a manner that respects the accepted theories of science and the also the tenets of religion and occultism, and thereby avoid making unwarranted claims on the objective world, then we will experience our occultism and magical phenomena in a sane and rational manner. What we experience subjectively must be kept within its individual context, but it still should be subject to the scrutiny of peer review. Such a regimen is not only optimal, but it should be pursued in exclusion to other more dubious approaches.

This brings me to the topic of my article, and that is to deliver some ponted opinions about Biocentrism. There’s an old adage that if something sounds too good to be true then it probably isn’t true. This could be an important truism as to why Biocentrism has become popular amongst New Age types but is not accepted by the scientific community. When the biggest name of those either agreeing with or promoting your scientific counter-theory is Depak Chopra, then your hypothesis is already in trouble. I say this without any disrespect to Depak Chopra, whose writings I have found interesting and useful. However, he is hardly the objective judge of a new approach to interpreting Quantum Mechanics, which, by the way, has spawned a lot of hopeful imaginings from occultists and metaphysicians who have grasped onto an overly-simplified version of this discipline in order to explain metaphysical or spiritual phenomena. Still, I digress from the topic. I have read the book “Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe” written by Robert Lanza, MD with Bob Berman, and I must admit that it did indeed intrigue me at first.

Biocentrism is a hypothesis that defines the material world as having arisen due to the impact of consciousness acting as the “observer” so that the universe, which was in an indeterminate state of probability, became resolved into a material universe predisposed to supporting life. This is a case of the tail wagging the dog in order to explain what might otherwise be a minor paradox. Thus, Robert Lanza has reversed the basic scientific assumption that living conscious beings evolved out of an essentially lifeless and soul-less material universe. Those who are occult students will immediately see that this is the Mind Before Matter perspective that has been prevalent in occult metaphysics and is a staple of the religious theology of the west.

So, according to Dr. Lanza’s hypothesis, consciousness was the driver for the materialization of the universe. This would mean that this field of consciousness would have had to exist, or perhaps pre-exist, from the very beginning of the universe. It would almost seem that Dr. Lanza is proposing some kind of intelligent design by an unknown conscious entity or by a field of unified consciousness, but he doesn’t quite go that far. Instead, he just doesn’t define what that disembodied consciousness actually is. In fact, he fails altogether to define what consciousness is, and this is a subtle but fatal flaw in his entire hypothesis. At least in the occult metaphysics of the Mind Before Matter theme, the mind that existed prior to the manifestation of the universe is obviously either a Deity or represented by the Neoplatonic definition of the One.

I admit that I was intrigued by Lanza’s speculation since it turns our notions about the nature of the universe and the power of human subjectivity into the reverse of what scientists have been saying since the 19th century. Such a hypothesis, if it were true, would put the subjective mind into the driver’s seat for all material creation, and that would shine a whole new light on such occult practices as magick. After getting excited by this new perspective, I decided that the prudent thing for me to do was to browse the web and read what other scientists thought of his hypothesis. What I found is that the scientific community has flatly rejected what Dr. Lanza has written, and I might add, for some really good reasons.

This debate between the New Age proponents of Biocentrism and the adherents of accepted physical sciences, such as those who are on the cutting edge of Quantum Mechanics, reminded me of the debate about physical evolution between Nye and Ham. While Dr. Lanza does at least understand the science of Quantum Mechanics from the perspective of the layman, he is not an accredited physicist. He is, in fact, a medical researcher/engineer of some renown. However, despite his disdain of New Age fads and beliefs (as stated clearly in his book), Lanza has become something of a darling amongst the New Age populous, and his ideas about Biocentrism are already being mutated to propose concepts and ideas that he never states in his book. You can find a website here that pretty much demonstrates what his backers think and how they are using Quantum Mechanics to bolster all kinds of metaphysical truths. There is even a video on that web page that has captured Lanza’s basic public presentation of Biocentrism, just in case you want to get the gist of his hypothesis without having to read his book.

Unavoidably, the scientific community has also responded to Biocentrism, and I might add, they have more or less excoriated his hypothesis quite completely. It would seem that Dr. Lanza’s popular book has taken some basic Quantum Mechanics experiments and given them an interpretation that they were never intended to support. You can find a good critique of Robert Lanza’s Biocentrism, and also Depak Chopra, in an interesting website managed by Indian scientists (Nimukta) who know all too well the metaphysical sources of this hypothesis. As I have stated previously, the argument about a conscious universe is a staple of the occult Mind Before Matter perspective, and it is a tenet that has not been scientifically proven so far. In fact, the scientific evidence still supports the Matter Before Mind perspective, and I doubt that will change in the future no matter what shape or form science takes. As occultists, we can appreciate the scientific perspective on this issue, and we can also see the spiritual truth associated with the occult and metaphysical perspective. Both represent the greater truths about the universe and the nature of the human spirit, yet one is materially objective and the other is spiritually subjective. 

Some of Dr. Lanza’s seven principles of Biocentrism are very popular and in evidence today amongst those who are engaged in occultism and magick. Lon Milo Duquette has stated that the reality of occultism is all in our minds, it’s just that our minds are a lot bigger than we think. This might presuppose that Mr. Duquette is aware of Dr. Lanza’s hypothesis, but the similarity is rather compelling whatever the truth. However, the fifth principle for Biocentrism is the main argument, and in it you can see an interesting bias appear. That principle is basically stated as, “The universe is fine-tuned for life, which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe, not the other way around. The ‘universe’ is simply the complete spatiotemporal logic of the self.” Lanza’s premise that “life creates the universe, not the other way around” is pretty much taken from the annals of ancient metaphysics and western occultism in general. It is also the underlying theme for most religious cosmogony, and it is the crux of the debate between Creationism and Evolution. We can find it variously promoted in the New Thought religious paradigms of the turn of the 20th century, and it is also evident in the New Age.

Robert Lanza has come up with this startling perspective because he has followed the Quantum Mechanics maxim that it is the power of the observer who determines what is perceived when performing and measuring the results of the behavior of sub-atomic particles. In other words, Dr. Lanza is interpreting this classical QM theory that all matter requires a conscious observer in order to collapse the probability field and determine an outcome. Of course if we take this to its ultimate conclusion, then we would expect the mind to formulate all reality and that physical reality doesn’t really exist. It reminds me of the New Age maxim that we make our own reality, although the opposite is a more powerful but obvious truth - that reality shapes and makes us who we are. The error in this logic is that the physical world does have an objective and verifiable quality despite the fact that how we perceive it is derived from our sense organs.

For instance, light still has objective and measurable qualities that determine the spectrum of colors that we observe, since these are represented by different wave lengths as detected by the nerve cells in our eyes and processed by our brains. (We don’t just make up the colors in our head as an interpreting factor.) This is also true about time and space, while they might be relative, they are still an objective fact. Our minds are indeed powerful, but they are bounded and limited by physical laws that uniformly affect all of us. If this were not true, then our world would be run by mentally projected magical powers and not by technology that is based on physical laws.  

Robert Lanza has made pronouncements that have overly simplified and distorted the actual science of Quantum Mechanics. He disregards the most important question that his hypothesis leaves unanswered, namely, if conscious life shaped the universe then why is the origin of life quite recent compared to the relative age of the universe. Consciousness is localized to living beings with a brain yet somehow it is expanded to encapsulate cultures and languages, thus making it a shared phenomenon. This is part of the mystery of consciousness that has yet to be tackled in a satisfactory manner by scientists. Then there is the question, is consciousness energy, and if so, what kind of energy? While energy itself might be indestructible, the death of the brain causes all body-centered consciousness to cease. Consciousness seems to be beyond and prior to the material brain (according to metaphysicians), but there is no objective truth, so far, that would lead scientists to presume that this is indeed a fact. Dr. Lanza’s hypothesis also says that space and time aren’t objectively real, but in fact they are real, just not absolute. In this, I believe that science has the better explanations, even though there are still some questions not yet answered.

We can see Biocentrism (like other creationist based beliefs) functioning as a typical domain distortion between a religious based philosophy and empirical science, and as such, it should be taken with a grain of salt. Occult philosophy declares the principle that the Mind originated before Matter, and Science has declared the opposite theory, that Matter precipitated Mind. Both perspectives present an element of truth, but the context for either one is completely different. One is a materialistic and objective perspective, and the other is a spiritual and metaphysical perspective. Thus, both are true as long as they retain their appropriate boundaries. It is foolish for occultists to meddle with science and engage in pseudo science, and it’s probably foolish for scientists to attempt to define or debunk spiritual beliefs based on physical laws.

A quote from the website Nirmukta seems to define the nature of the problem of Biocentrism and why it is a seductive but erroneous proposition. According to the latest cutting edge scientific perspective on Quantum Mechanics, the nature of the “observer” has been redefined in a significant way, and there is experimental evidence to back up that hypothesis.

“A different resolution to the problem of interfacing the microscopic quantum description of reality with macroscopic classical reality is offered by what has been called ‘quantum Darwinism.’ This formalism does not require the existence of an observer as a witness of what occurs in the universe. Instead, the environment is the witness. A selective witness at that, rather like natural selection in Darwin’s theory of evolution. The environment determines which quantum properties are the fittest to survive (and be observed, for example, by humans). Many copies of the fitter quantum property get created in the entire environment (‘redundancy’). When humans make a measurement, there is a much greater chance that they would all observe and measure the fittest solution of the Schrödinger equation, to the exclusion (or near exclusion) of other possible outcomes of the measurement experiment.”

This new hypothesis in QM pretty much destroy’s Lanza’s hypothesis since the environment itself can be the witness, and also that there are multiple copies of the quantum property and the “fittest” is the one that gets measured. So it would appear that consciousness (i.e., a direct observer) is not required to collapse a probability field into an observable material manifestation. After fully examining what the scientists had to say, I found that the hypothesis that they provided which debunks Biocentrism is far more interesting and compelling. I have always found science to be intriguing and fascinating because it establishes the nature of the objective universe that I live in. I also know that science is limited in what it can study and prove, and I am at peace and comfortable with the ambiguities, the realm of the unknown, the mysteries of mind and spirit as well as the established scientific facts. 

Will science ever be able to define consciousness or determine the nature of the human soul? While the nature of the physical phenomenon of consciousness that is associated with the human brain is something that can be measured and could be experimentally proven, I suspect that the human soul and even the nature of Spirit itself will be far beyond the boundaries of science, at least for the foreseeable future.

Frater Barrabbas