Rough draft new ebook
Magick Works!
Intro
Like most of us, you no doubt
have struggles in life. Don’t we all? Money, family, jobs, health – in this era
of Facebook and Global Warming, the eternal problems of daily life continue to challenge
us just as much as they did our grandparents 50 years ago or 100 or 1,000.
Sure, every day brings wonderful advances on all fronts: better medicine, newer
technology, more and more developments. But the world is still full of hungry
people. We live in a land of plenty, yet even for those of us with jobs, homes,
and the so-called amenities of 21st century life, life remains a
struggle in many ways.
If you are like most people, you probably
tell yourself you have no right to be unhappy, just as you tell a child to
clean its plate at the dinner table because there are children elsewhere
without a plate to clean or anything on it.
Which is true. At the same time,
trying to guilt yourself out of what is a real-and-present low-grade fever of
misery only works for a little while at a time. The truth is, we all sense
something wrong with the general tenor of our lives.
Shouldn’t there be more to life
than going to work, paying bills, surfing the internet, eating and sleeping and
watching the days of your life slip away like the tide going out to sea?
Since childhood I have felt the
answer was Hell Yes, there ought to
be more. Up till our teenage years I think we all instinctively know this, at
which point most of us are fed a big load of horse crap about what’s important
in life and what isn’t; faced with the “serious business” of growing up,
so-called, most people cave in like a bad soufflé and buy into the whole set of
life-goals pressed upon them by the “grown-ups,” which leads in turn to
replicating their artificial forms of
adulthood and happy so-called life for another sad generation.
Up to that point change has
always been a huge constant in our young lives on every level. We mature
physically, and due to our educational system, regardless of its comparative
merits, we are fed a regular diet of new information up till the day we quite
school or graduate.
Beyond that point, change – which
continues till the day we die whether we work at it or not – becomes a much
more random set of circumstances.
This little book is an
introduction in how to continue to grow and change, but in a happier, freer way
than you’ve previously considered. To quote the late great Al G. Manning, “If
it’s not fun, I’m not going!” Many of us probably don’t feel we have quite that
luxury in our lives, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible, for each one of
you.
Chapter One: What is Magick?
Humanity has had a relationship
with the spiritual world in one way or another since we all lived in caves.
Although religion occupies a different social space than pursuits with names
like “witchcraft” or “sorcery” or “hoodoo” or fill-in-the-blank, the former –
religion – is, like magick, simply a cultural attempt to organize and control
what we all sense it Out There. Unknown forces, in other words. Forces we must
appease, according to some people, forces we can negotiate with or control,
according to others.
So one answer to the question of
why we should attempt to communicate with the spirit world/practice magick –
and even to change our lives for the better through this contact – is the fact it’s
part of being human.
But isn’t it dangerous, you ask?
Aren’t there things that shouldn’t be meddled with? Isn’t the occult a bad
thing?
Getting out of the bed in the
morning is dangerous. You could get hit by a bus walking to work. And yes,
there are probably some things that shouldn’t be meddled with. You shouldn’t
attempt brain surgery without training, nor mess with unexploded WWII ordnance.
And that may be true in magick as well, but you are putting the cart waaaay
before the horse worrying about that right now.
Naturally some people will be
drawn to the “forbidden” and “dark” aspects of magick, which is to say, they’d
prefer hollow skulls over silver chalices, black cloaks and inverted pentagrams
over the other kind. They’d rather truck with “demons” than “angels” etc.
I myself have tried a bit of
everything. A few years back I spent most of a year living in New Orleans and became very interested in New
Orleans-style voodoo, which is similar but not the same as Haitian voodoo.
(That’s a story for another book.) Bottom line, ever since then, about five
years all told, I have been working with the spirits of voodoo as best I
understand them. They are called Loa or Lwa. I enjoy them, I communicate with
them fairly easily, and they work with me.
Even far away from the cultural
and magickal center of New Orleans, even working in a solitary fashion with
spirits who traditionally are part of groups (voodoo is very much a group form
of spirituality or religion), I find the Loa effective and helpful friends to
have.
In magick, the different styles
and types of occultism are often referred to as “magickal currents.” (Incidentally,
I use the word “magick” as opposed to “magic” in part out of convenience – I
was brought up through Thelema, and Crowley added the final “-k” not only to
distinguish conjuring from tricks with cards or etc., but also because, he
said, adding the final “-k” gave the word more significance cabbalistically.) Western
ceremonial magick based on the Key of
Solomon, the Goetia, the book of Abra-melin, all constitute a current.
Gardnerian witchcraft is a current, as non-Gardnerian “traditional” witchcraft
is a set distinct separate currents. Some people work with Egyptian-based
forces (e.g. Thelema, Crowley’s
religion). That is a current.
Different currents often use
different terms for the same thing, but if you dig around and compare, you’ll
come to understand the same things are being talked about. Labels are just
labels. As the old science fiction giant Ted Sturgeon once said, “Taxonomy is
no substitute for understanding.” Just because you know what to call things
doesn’t mean you get it.
I enjoy working with spirit
entities for a couple reasons. For one thing, I have a continual sense I am
growing on a metaphysical level as a person by doing so.
For another thing, they help you
in a thousand little ways on a regular basis if you have or develop a good
working relationship with them. As Al G. Manning put it, “People who achieve
their short-term goals go on from success to success, and they are far better
off than those who ignore the small while dreaming of greatness.”
Spirits are amazingly helpful on
this level.
There are many people in your
life who might misunderstand your interest in the occult (aka the “esoteric” or
“metaphysical”) and react negatively, regardless of the details. That is their
right I guess. On the other hand, you aren’t required to tell everybody you
know every thought that goes through your head. So just shut up and do what you
like.
The Four Powers of the Sphinx – to
Know, to Will, to Dare and to Keep Silent – are an important element of
Thelema, the occult religion invented by Aleister Crowley, who took the idea
from the French occultist Eliphas Levi. To make “magick work,” you are advised
to know what you are doing, to have the will and daring to see it through, and
to keep silent. Don’t talk your energy out. Any negative feedback will only
weaken your results.
Coinci-dance
Often the best clue that you have
managed to open a communications link with the spirit realm is “simple
coincidence.”
Everyone has experienced
coincidence through their lives. I know I have and surely you have too. These
incidents usually elicit a nervous laugh at most and that’s all.
Let me tell you a secret: There
ain’t no such animal as a “coincidence.”
Here’s why: Coincidence is a function of your mental filters. When I worked for
13 months in an aluminum wheel-casting factory, I quickly developed the annoying/humorous
habit of spotting wheels everywhere. I couldn’t not see them. They leapt out at
me. I could walk around a parking lot
anywhere and tell you the stats on every rim I saw. I noticed them immediately
and in fact couldn’t help it. My mental filters had adjusted to my work. After
I quit the job, they adjusted back to their prior state. I never notice wheel
rims now.
If it weren’t for these mental
filters, we wouldn’t be able to function in modern life. When we all lived in
caves, we developed such filters as a survival mechanism. We could focus on the
animal we were hunting, or for listening for sounds of enemies, or whatever we
needed. But there is so much data flung at us every waking moment in modern life,
if we didn’t filter out 99% of it we’d go crazy.
Of all the world of phenomena
around us, the whirl-dance of energy that is unmediated reality, our brains
segregate and pigeonhole what we want or need to live. The clock ticking, the sounds of traffic in
the distance, all that exterior stuff rarely reaches our waking “normal”
consciousness.
Our five “normal” senses mediate
reality for us if nothing else does. What we get is what gets through. We learn
as infants how to process the information coming to us through our senses, and
as we get older, and as I have said before, we are quickly trained in what else
to filter out if we want to be functioning members of this culture. No more
imaginary playmates. Instead we get chores and homework, what is considered
appropriate, what’s acceptable to be a good little boy or girl, and we imitate
that and lose our connection with magick.
For most people, these filters
only change when they absolutely must. I am talking about everything from the
trivial – my sensitivity to aluminum wheel rims, which was a vocational problem
– to the deeply profound. Tragedy can cause this to happen to us, or profound
emotional shock of any kind.
Unfortunately, the changes that
occur in these cases rarely have a positive effect on our lives overall. A
broken heart, the death of a loved one, anger over a lost job, fear – these
things can cause a shift in how we look at the world, but usually it makes us a
worse person. We learn the wrong lessons from our “negative” experiences –
someone breaks your heart and you stop dating. Someone dies and you become a
hypochondriac or deeply depressed about your own mortality.
If you have begun to attempt to
communicate with the spirit realm, pay attention to coincidences. Carl Jung
defined “synchronicity” as “meaningful coincidence.” Just as events may be
grouped by cause – you neglect to pay the electric bill and they turn off the
power – events may also be grouped by meaning.
What is happening is that the
spirits often communicate with you via synchronicity, either as a response to a
specific request, or, as often seems to be the case to me, just to show they
are listening and have a sense of humor.
Magick works like that. Weird
little things start to happen. Nothing harmful or negative, just stuff that
shouldn’t normally happen by “normal coincidence.” It catches your attention.
It’s one way they say hi.
You have to do two things when
this starts happening. First, understand that this is one of the main ways
spirits connect. Believe wholeheartedly and consciously that that’s exactly
what is happening. You are being connected. Second, pay close attention to that
feeling you get when you realize you are being tuned into the spirits. That
frisson of thrill on the back of your neck. Remember that feeling, and train
yourself to associate that feeling with successful spirit contact. It’s
somewhat a Pavlov’s Dog situation: associate the feeling with the magick and
the magick with the feeling. One prompts the other after awhile.
This has been said a hundred
thousand times in many different ways, but let me say it like this: You are
like a person with a 100-room mansion who chooses to live in one small cupboard
near the side exit where the rain gutters leak, when you could be lord of the
manor. You are like someone with a new Maserati who doesn’t know it has more
than one gear – low.
Learning to widen your spiritual
lenses will help you find second gear that much sooner, while push you to
explore the next room in your mansion, the rest of the floor, even to ascend
the stairs to the mysteries above.
That’s how magick works. You’re
always already a magician; you just have to find your way to your power source.
Chapter Two: What are Spirits?
What are spirits? What are
ghosts? Demons? Angels? What are fairies
or goblins or devils or what is your Higher Power? What is your Holy Guardian
Angel?
I will tell you what I think. I
think it’s all in your mind, but it works better if you operate under the
assumption that it isn’t. What do I mean by this? Am I saying spirits don’t really exist?
No, I’m not.
Aristotle did us a disservice
2,400+ years ago when he taught categorical thinking. Instead of thinking of
the world in terms of black and white, in terms of Either/Or, the magician
needs to comprehend Both/And. In quantum physics, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty
Principle posits that the viewer changes a situation by viewing it. By becoming
part of the scenario. If you go walking in the woods, the woods you will see
will not be the woods as they would have been if you hadn’t gone there. Deer
and birds fled at your approach, leaves crunched underfoot, termite trails
crushed, etc.
If a tree falls in the woods and
nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
No. Your perceptions of the
spirit world shape your interaction with it. By definition. If you weren’t
attempting to communicate, there would be no interaction, no demon appearing
gibbering inside its captive triangle, no angel appearing before you in
resplendent glory, no fairies twinkling in the trees, no voodoo Loa keeping
your car from running out of gas one more trip to the store before payday, etc.
I am not saying that angels and
demons and spirits and Loa and everyone else are all the same. What I *am*
saying is that if you do it right, you will get the sorts of results you shoot
for, most of the time. You will contact who you need to contact.
Whatever their true nature, the
spiritual entities we come into contact with are as real as they need to be,
think of it that way.
At this point you may be asking
yourself, “Is this guy for real? Is he actually talking about seeing entities
with his own physical eyes?”
Well, yeah. It’s much easier to
see them with astral sight than manifested in this plane, at least for me.
Maybe I’m a lightweight. But I *have* seen the image of the ghost of a little
girl taken on a digital camera two feet away from me, and I *was* hissed at by
some unhappy entity one evening when I carried what I guess was a negatively
charged wall hanging into the room I was using as a chamber for magickal
workings and crossed the magickal circle I’d laid out semi-permanently on the
floor. Whatever it was didn’t like that all, and it scared the hell out of me.
So I banished fiercely and then went to bed. No more troubles.
Let me add this. It is possible
to develop your astral senses to the point where you can sense entities all
around you whenever and wherever, but it’s at lot easier, especially at first,
to do it where it’s quiet and you can focus. Try spending a few minutes alone
every day meditating, quieting your mind, and paying attention. (If you don’t
know how to meditate, google it. The point is to filter out distractions.)
You will also have noticeable
results at night just as you are dropping off to sleep. The hypnogogic state is
very close to the ideal state of mind for any kind of magickal work. The
problem is learning how to pause there just long enough, so you don’t either
come back awake with a jolt – you know the feeling – or sinking deeper into
sleep and forgetting what you’re doing.
When I lived in New
Orleans, my bedroom was at the rear of the shotgun house I rented
with anther guy, a magician and member of the local OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis,
a magickal lodge associated primarily with Crowley). The room where I slept was probably
supposed to be the laundry room and the ceiling sloped downward from front to
back so that when you lay in bed at night, you stared up at a blank white
ceiling like a movie screen.
One of the first nights I slept
there, just as I was had started to drift off to sleep and was in that
hypnogogic state, I became aware of a sort of cloud of faces swirling on that ceiling/movie
screen above me. I felt no overwhelming sense of good or evil, just the
presence of dozens of faces.
So I addressed them. “If you are
here with negative purposes, then get the hell out,” I said. “If you are here
to help, you’re welcome to stay.” And I went to sleep.
It’s not much of a story, except
that months later I met a girl who had lived in my house previously and had in
fact slept in the same room where I was. The subject turned somehow to ghosts.
“The weird thing,” she said, “was that the first night I slept in that room, I
kept seeing all these faces in the ceiling, looking down at me.”
And here I don’t mean to stress
“sight” as the only sense used in this way. It’s often more a feeling thing,
intuitive, than visual.
The nature of the Self
Who are you really? I don’t mean
the surface details: name, physical features, job (you *aren’t* your job no
matter how much you have been indoctrinated that you are). But underneath all
that, who are you?
Many religions old and new teach
not only reincarnation but the concept of multiple souls, e.g. Ancient Egypt.
To say reincarnation cannot exist, from a Christian viewpoint or any other, is
to argue with massive evidence to the contrary. But what do they mean by
multiple souls? From a purely functional p.o.v., we have different “souls”
(read “levels of consciousness”) because they each do different things. Freud’s
model divides the consciousness into the Superego,
the Ego, and the Id.
If we call each a “soul,” then we have three according to Freud.
This theory, not particularly
magickal, does correspond roughly with many different magickal models for the
Inner Self. Max Freedom Long’s Huna,
Gurdjieff, Crowley,
Victor Anderson’s Feri etc. – all
teach a Higher Self (A.C. called it his Holy Guardian Angel – his was named
Aiwass and dictated to him the Book of the Law on three consecutive days in
April 1904.)
But also a Lower Self, and not as
a negative. While Freud’s Id contains
our animalistic, childish, selfish impulses, our inner 2-year-old, the magickal
Lower Self is much more complex. Imagine you are separated from your Higher
Self – an entity that knows all you’ve ever known, your past and past lives and
future – by such a childish/animalistic barrier.
Imagine now your only way of
getting in touch with your Higher Self, who can help you immeasurably, is
through this very bright two-year old. Words, explanations, sophisticated
arguments are useless. Piss it off and you’re out of luck. It responds best to
emotional intensity and *imagery*, not talk.
Whatever you can get across to
your Higher Self, your Cosmic Spirit (hence Cosmo-Spiritology), you will
achieve, but you have to do it by way of your Lower Self, your bright inner
two-year-old.
This is why Crowley said, “Invoke often and inflame thyself
with prayer.” This is why (in part) all the trappings of ceremonial magick and
ritual in general. Casting a prayer up to the gods when you are scared shitless
or pissed as hell often works remarkably well, despite the emotional strain
involved – the emotion and associated imagery cross the barrier to Cosmic
Coincidence Control, and your HGA takes it from there.
(The emotions involved here do
not have to be negative. Joy works. Sexual arousal and release work. Those
moments when you get flashes of how excellent things can be are at least as
powerful as anger or fear in communicating with your Higher Self.)
Chapter Three: But How Do You DO
It!!!???
Okay, a little prep talk: As I
mentioned earlier, one of the reasons some people wear ceremonial robes when
they do magick, or draw a protective circle on the floor, light candles,
incense, possibly creepy music, have rituals, everything, is to get them in the
mood to do magick. Literally. I’m not saying that’s the only reason, of course.
It isn’t. But the effect upon the human mind standing on a moonlit night in the
forest surrounded by darkness and the sounds of a million night creatures, a
guttering torch perhaps and shadows flickering on the trees – it has its
effect, let’s put it that way, and can be highly conducive to magickal work.
Your senses then are Wide Open. Your mental blinders are waaaay down. You are
Paying Attention. Thus the work you do in that space will take much fuller
advantage of your psychic energies, with much more interesting results, in
large part to the atmosphere you have created for yourself as context for the
situation.
As Leary said, set and setting are important, and
they are as important in magickal work as they are in the context for
psychoactive and particularly psychedelic
drug experiences.
High on magick
Speaking of Drugs, which I
wasn’t: Yes you can do drugs to connect magickally. In my experience,
psychedelics work by far the best. I’m talking about LSD, mushrooms, etc.
Here’s from a faq on DMX, which I’ve experienced in this fashion: “Many things
can happen unexpectedly on upper plateaus, such as spontaneous memory recall,
complex delusions, hallucinations, out-of-body experiences, near-death
experiences, and perceived contact with spiritual or alien entities. You need
to be pretty stable and grounded before you can handle these things.” Yup. I
talked to an angel who identified my next major relationship. I saw my 3rd
wife walking toward me with arms outstretched. The angel didn’t say it would
suck quite so bad as it did, but then again I didn’t ask.
Marijuana works to make it really
easy to put yourself in the right state of mind to perform magick. It does not
(for me) connect with visualizations etc. but does help recognize
synchronicities far better than my “normal” (read “distracted by mundane
reality”) mind.
In case it isn’t obvious, I am
making neither a moral statement about the use of drugs in magick or otherwise,
nor recommending same. If you aren’t already familiar with your own response to
various entheogens, however, magickal work might not be the best time to find
out how you handle it, right in the middle of evoking an Enochian angel or casting
a spell.
The general response to use of
drugs with magick from the masters of many ancient esoteric forms is that yes
it works but you can’t rely on it and must develop the ability to work your
magick without tripping balls or being baked out of you mind.
Even if you are not nor have ever
been involved with a magickal group or lodge of any sort, from your own casual
reading you are probably aware that such groups typically initiate members up
through a series of ranks, each rank containing its own rituals, passwords, and
other secret information available only to the initiate and then only upon
taking solemn vows with unfortunate consequences for those breaking such oaths.
Fortunately or not, much of this
material has been revealed over the years and is readily available in print or
on the internet. What good, you may ask, is such material now? What’s the point
of all the secrecy anyway?
Here is my answer: Though it
might seem unnecessary or outdated, the form of the initiatory lodge with its
hierarchies and secret handshakes serves a valid spiritual purpose, content
aside: it is all designed to teach you on a metaphoric/symbolic level to
associate its secret spaces and ideas with your inner self, to help you create
your own sacred “temples” internally. As I said earlier, it is much easier to
communicate with the spirit world if you have a private dedicated space in
which to concentrate. Let me take that point a step further by saying that the
actual physical private space you establish is a metaphor for your own inner
sacred space. That is your goal. It is the place where you link through to the
spirits and communicate with them. It is not as simple as creating an imaginary
temple in your head, though people do do that frequently; you are creating a
sacred *zone* within yourself. You must create it and strengthen it through use
over time, and it will be there when you need it, rather than the normal bumpy
chaos of the inside of your head.
There are three stages to
performing occult ritual aloud, possibly four. You start alone of course and it
is horribly awkward hearing yourself chanting whatever it is. Gak! (That’s the
sound of the chicken bone sticking in your throat. Gak!) After you practice
awhile the feeling of awkwardness goes away, at which point you are probably
reading the rituals with relative ease off a sheet of paper taped to the wall
or something, but that’s okay too. The third stage would be memorization, the
point where you can forget worrying about the content and focus on putting your
energy where it needs to be, in the ritual, and doing it better from that
angle. Doing all this in front of other people isn’t particularly harder once
you have mastered it alone. Just focus on what you’re doing.
Ideally you get to the point
where you can trance out a little bit when you’re doing anything magickal. I
can’t tell you how it works best for you. There are several ways. Focus on a
piece of music or a lit candle or some other focusing target to the point where
you are a little cross-eyed mentally, if that makes any sense, and then go through
your ritual. Say what needs to be said. Charge whatever thought-forms need
charging. Do the magick.
I know for sure the “mental
unfocus” thing works splendidly well if you are scrying (crystal ball, tea
leaves, reading cards, whatever). You just let go and let the images come. Neither
external stimulants nor relaxants are necessary at all for this to work. I’m
talking about smoking or coffee or pot or whatever.
Imagination
The word “imagination” is used in
a couple different ways by people in the occult. One is the workaday “things
you make up in your head” sense, but the occultist also understands imagination
on a more profound level.
The cauldron of magick rests upon
three legs: Imagination, Will, and Emotion. Everybody hears that pretty quickly
and a little experience will tell you it’s true. The spells that work, the
conjurations that kick ass, are strongly fuelled by those 3 elements.
You must charge your working with
emotion; fear, anger, lust, joy – and you must determine fiercely for success
and shoot that intensity of Will like an arrow straight into the heart of the
spell – and you must visualize what you desire, clearly in mind, less in words
than vividly visualized, any/all the senses you can harness into your imagery.
And that is the profound meaning of Imagination, and that is a great secret of
Magick.
Common sense is a useful tool in
magick just like everything else. You certainly may be able to alleviate a lot
of your life’s problems with the help of the spirits. I know I have, and more
are coming every day!
But use your head. If you want to
light up a room, flip on the light switch. Magick isn’t required.
What do you want?
This applies to things like
setting goals. You can only conjure toward what you want out of life if you
actually want something specific out of life. Like a lot of people, I’d love to
win the lottery, or at least I think I would. You hear all the horror stories
about people destroying their lives by winning, all that money and being unable
to deal with it. I’ll take my chances!
On the other hand, don’t waste
your life waiting for your ship to come in. I’ve been guilty of some of that
myself. Oops. If you have ever read a single self-help book, you know that one
of the main barriers to success for most everybody is lack of goals. When you
get right down to it, what do you really want? A castle in Bavaria? Six mistresses? A new Jaguar, dark
green with wood trim and leather bucket seats? The health and physique of a 25
year old?
Make a list of what you really
actually want, that you would actually be willing to deal with if you had it. Maybe
you want to make a decent living working for yourself. Although to each his
own, that sounds a lot more manageable to me than six mistresses.
Do you want that Jaguar? That
means you need the means to maintain it, pay insurance, etc. Do you want that
castle in Bavaria?
I’d re-think that one if I were you, but nothing’s impossible. If you want
something badly enough, you will get it. If you don’t get it, you didn’t want it
badly enough.
What I have found out the hard
way is the folly of casting a spell (i.e. communicating with the spirits with
requests) and then trying to control or at least imagine how the request will
be answered. The less you dwell on that sort of thing, the faster the response
will be and the happier you will be with it.
Your intent is part of the
package. It’s easy to get into all sorts of mental gymnastics over the wording
of what you are requesting, like those old timey cartoons where the guy makes a
deal with a genii, and because he didn’t get the wording *exactly* right, the
spell misfires. “All I wanted was a little head!” as the old joke goes.
Don’t worry so much. If you need
money and work magick for it, most likely it won’t kill your Great Aunt Zelda
so you can get her inheritance – not unless she was about to go anyway.
If you experiment as broadly as
your circumstances permit, you will go far. Everything you need is all around
you. The internet is basically free, even if that means hoofing it to the
library to use their public access computers. There’s always a way through if
you keep looking.
In experimenting – and reading! –
you will find your own magickal current. In my educated opinion, all magickal
systems work if you apply yourself seriously.
Rhyming gives spell language a
certain anticipated rhythm. You can write your own spells. Rhyme in language
lulls the censors a little. Plus tug at the emotions. Both of which you want.
Words in languages you do not
know also hide the obvious meaning (even if you’re the one who did the
translation!) and sound strange, both of which help avoid the censor and elicit
a mild thrill.
Here’s a basic spell of mine for
the Loa, based on my personal needs, first in English and then translated into
Haitian Creole.
Papa Legba and all the spirits who help me every day
Grant me money enough today to meet my wants
Days of joy for my son
My wisdom of spiritual matters increased
Strong heart, strong arms, strong legs
And the smile of a pretty girl to make it all complete
Becomes
Papa Legba ak tout lespri ki te ede
mwen chak jou
Grant m' lajan ase jodi a pou rankontre m' vle
Yon jou de bonheur pou pitit gason m
Mwen gen bon konprann nan zafè spirituelle la une
Gwo kè, zam Fort, Fort
janm
Ak sourire yon bèl fi pou fè l' tout nèt
In Haitian Creole
Just go online and use Babelfish
like I do for translations.
Trying it out
Okay, let’s set up for a typical
magick working. As I’ve said before, it’s helpful to have a space set aside,
however minimalist or temporary, to focus when doing spells. Preferably it
should face east (rising sun) or north (direction of magick in many
traditions).
Again, all this is based on
personal experience. Subjectivity is my gift to you. Everything you can
possibly want to know about magick has long since been said, written, and
published on the internet. And if you will go look around, it’s all free.
I usually take a shower first.
Clean body, clean mind. It’s symbolic but everything is symbolic. It is a step
to take you from ordinary life into sacred space. Likewise with clearing the
space where you intend to do the working.
One good way to clear your space
on the psychic level is with the LBRP, the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the
Pentagram. Look it up online and you’ll easily find detailed instructions. It
isn’t particularly complex and can be memorized fairly quickly.
If this doesn’t appeal to you,
get a white candle. Keep it on your altar/shrine/focal space. When you are
ready to clear the space, light the candle and face east and recite the
following:
“Clear this space of ill intent
Helpful spirits welcome in
Helpful always you will be
Filled with helpful energy!”
Turn then to each of the other
three compass points counterclockwise, i.e., to the left: North, West, South, and
end up facing East again at the end.
This is a simple banishing ritual
which does not partake of any particular magickal current – no Egyptian or Hebrew
deities, for example.
Having cleared the space, you can
then commence with whatever it is you’re working.
Tools
Although I have practiced
ceremonial magick, nowadays I am not much on using magickal tools. Again, if it
works for you, I’m certainly not knocking it. I’m talking about the traditional
wand, chalice, atheme (knife), etc.
On the other hand, I’m deeply
interested in divination systems, i.e., ways of communicating with the spirits.
One of the easiest ways to
communicate with the spirit world is by use of a pendulum or plumb bob. You can
make one out of almost anything – basically a 12-inch piece of string and a
small weight on the end, a metal washer or a pendant or whatever. They also
come ready made of crystal etc. Mine is a small brass teardrop. I have had it for
at least a dozen years and don’t remember how or why it entered my life. It was
just there at some point. But every time I move somewhere new, it shortly pops
up again into my life, so I take this as a positive sign and keep on using it!
Using the pendulum is easy. Hold
is suspended in front of you with one hand. Put the hand about eye level. As
you’ll quickly notice, after a few seconds the pendulum will begin to sway.
First ask yourself a question
where you know the answer is yes. Example: “My name is Donald Ray Pendragon.”
Shortly the pendulum will swing back and forth. You may take that to be a yes.
Then ask it a question where you know the answer to be negative. “I have one
million dollars in my checking account.” It should shortly begin swinging the
other direction.
Now you know what’s a yes and
what’s a no. The third option is that it circles. You may interpret this as an
“I don’t know” if you like.
Now you’re ready to ask your
questions. It can take time if you go beyond yes or no questions, but you can
gather a lot of information in a hurry nonetheless is you think about how
you’re asking the questions.
I spent several months in Mexico in San
Miguel de Allende and rented a postal box while I was there. The only problem
it was quite a hike across town from where I was staying to the mail drop, and
so after a couple weeks, having my pendulum handy, I tried an experiment. I
would ask it whether I had any mail that day, then I would walk to the p.o. to
check whether or not it was correct. I did this for a week straight with 100%
accuracy, and so after that I just trusted the pendulum and didn’t bother
making the trip if it said I didn’t have any mail.
The underlying question here is
what’s up with the pendulum? Why does it sway at all? The cop-out answer is
that it’s “unconscious motion by your arm muscle.” But what does that mean?
Unconscious? The suggestion implies it’s basically a nervous tic or that you
are influencing it without realizing it. It’s certainly possible to make it
sway however you want without appearing to manipulate it. Just concentrate and
it’ll start going quickly.
The situation is much more
interesting from a magickal perspective. What lies in the unconscious? Your
Higher Self. Which generally does not communicate with you directly, but must
use roundabout means to do so, like the pendulum.
You can also use the pendulum to
locate things on a map. They have been used to find underground oil and water,
lost treasure, etc. You simply find a map on the scale you need and move over
it slowly with the pendulum. In this case, you might consider the pendulum circling
as a “hit.” Mark the hits and then go look for yourself to see if it’s right.
As part of a recent demonstration
for a college course on the sociology of the paranormal, I took a handful of
students on a treasure hunt of our own. The professor had hidden an object on
campus in the central mall, which is a grassy area of about 3 acres, well
landscaped with trees, flowerbeds, benches, and other suitable hiding places.
Using a map of campus, we
determined in the classroom that the object was in the northern or northeastern
area of the mall. We walked slowly in that direction. I had the pendulum in
hand and watched it carefully. When we reached the edge of campus, having found
nothing, I stood and concentrated on the pendulum again. It gave a swing along
a line that cut through a small tree and on to a decorate flowerbed about 40
feet away. I walked to the flowerbed and found the hidden object easily.
Spirit etiquette & “lust for results”
So try contacting spirits first
with a pendulum. Test things out. If you have a problem you need solved, ask
for help. Get a yes or no. Keep good notes. In fact, one of the best arguments
for keeping a magickal notebook is so you won’t lose track of successful
efforts. Trust me, it’s easy to do, and if you don’t, it’s easy to forget. It’s
as if, despite all our efforts to remember, some part of ourselves – that
censor we each have – is quick to dismiss the 1,001 little successes that add
up to a positive relationship with spirit.
Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.
If you are going to go to the trouble to cultivate a connection with things
that don’t exist (joke!), at least have the respect to trust them to know what
they’re doing. Don’t stress about whether or not it’s going to work. That’s
called “lust for result” and it slows down or cancels all the work you’ve done.
Don’t stress about how it’s going to
work, either. It’ll probably come totally out of left field anyway. You’re just
slowing things down. The New Thought people ago called that “outlining.” Read
Emmett Fox or Ernest Holmes or Frank B. Robinson or Henri Gamache.
The ability to want something
while simultaneously not thinking about it may seem like an impossible task at
first. I know it did to me. Here’s the secret: Don’t dwell. It’s the same
secret as how to successfully meditate. At first it seems completely and
utterly impossible to “still” your mind, to keep all your thoughts at bay. But
what you can do, as soon as you
notice a bit of some commercial jingle or what you’re having for lunch entering
your consciousness, is this: acknowledge it and move on. Don’t linger. Cut it
loose and go on with whatever you’re doing. It’s the only thing you can do,
really, and as with most matters of the spirit/mind, once you begin to make an
effort, They notice and will come
meet you half way.
All your contact with spirits
won’t come as coincidence or via pendulum (or any other
communication/divination system you care to indulge in – Tarot*, I-Ching, runes, etc.)
Anyway this is a trickier area –
more subtle, let’s just say – but your spirits are continually in contact with
you mentally – sometimes the voices in your head are trying to help! A wise man
once said that the schizophrenic is drowning in the same ocean the magician
swims in gladly. But then the magician can always walk ashore.
What I want you to take from this
is that if you want to get good at all this stuff, it is incumbent on you to
(a) understand you may be in contact with your spirit people mentally at any
time of the day or night, and (b) learn to discern your own thoughts from
theirs.
Years ago when I divorced my 1st
wife – we’d just had our child and I was devastated – I was in grad school and
took advantage of the campus health care system to get some counseling for
depression. It was free and I was down, so I went.
The reason I mention this is
later on, after a couple different counselors and a lot of talking, I got to a
point where when I needed someone to talk to, I could generate my own
“imaginary” counselor. I had been in counseling long enough to have someone to
model him on. Someone I could talk to when I was outside the campus, at work,
at home watching TV, anything.
In the beginning I thought of
this mostly as me just talking to myself. I pictured the guy as a sort of cross
between Sean Connery and Bruce Campbell, with a tweed jacket with leather elbow
patches and smoking a pipe. He did not judge me, and his input was always
productive.
After awhile I realized
something, however. I realized the suggestions and information I was getting
from the good Doctor (I never thought of a name for him) was better or at least
other than I felt I got from my own thinking through.
What does this mean? It meant I
was capable of reaching deeper conclusions for my issues than I was “normally”
capable of, which is certainly possible. But isn’t that just another way of
saying I had managed a clever way to get in touch with my “higher self” through
“pretending” it was an “imaginary” counselor?
Or maybe I had managed to get in
touch with a spirit guide. Or all three. That’s the thing. On a practical
level, get comfortable with receiving help from spirit energies and just roll
with it. Don’t gasp in surprise every time you realize it’s happened. Just
smile ear to ear and go on with your improved situation.
Whether you are a Wiccan or a
Satanist or Feri or Thelemite or whatever, for our purposes here it doesn’t
matter too much one way or another. Your goal is to connect with the spirit
realm, and either you do or you don’t. Once you do, pay attention. Nobody likes
being ignored, not even spirits.
Common sense once again comes
into play here. At least pause to ponder your new ideas before leaping in with
both feet. I am not contradicting my statement above about paying attention,
either. Just because the information you receive may seem like a challenge
doesn’t mean it’s b.s., but if it seems negative in any way or seems to lead to
potential problems for yourself, ask (a) is it worth it? And (b) am I
misunderstanding the communication? It isn’t rude to ask for clarification
there any more than it would be anywhere else.
Thought for Day: Doing nothing is
better than screwing up because you took the instructions wrong.
On a day to day level, this
shouldn’t be too confusing. Let’s say you want a girlfriend. I can tell you up
front if you’re conjuring for a specific woman, watch your ass. I’ve been
married three times and two of the three I credit to magick, ultimately magick
gone wrong. Be careful what you wish for. My previous girlfriend had been
somewhat aloof and hard to pin down, running hot and cold and keeping me at
arm’s distance when she wasn’t in them, so I conjured for what I thought would
be her opposite – a woman who would *need* me.
Well, that worked. She was clingy
and insanely jealous and led to five years of mess for both of us.
My third (final) wife was much
younger than I was, a stunning petite brunette, and I had been interested in
her for some time, and I can say with confidence that if you conjure for a
woman for long enough you stand a fair chance of getting her. Regardless of
what she actually turns out to be like when you’re finally married and she
drinks half a pint of whatever and turns into a Devil Woman and drags you
screaming into the pits of hell where she prefers to dwell in writhing flames
of bullshit melodrama.
She sure was good looking,
though.
My point is simple: Conjure for
appropriate companionship. I know that sounds dull compared to throwing the
mojo on Babe X, whether it’s the woman down the hall at work or the next door
neighbor or the checkout girl at the supermarket. And if she’s already in a
relationship, everything I’ve said goes double. Just don’t.
Or go ahead and do. It might work
fine.
Things come out of left field & DIY magick
Other things work similarly. If
you need money, you can conjure for a specific amount, not worrying about where
or how it will manifest. Or you can think about why specifically you need the money, and conjure/ask for help with,
say, the rent, or a car repair, or whatever. Possibly your landlord would let
you work off part of the rent. If so, you may expect to run into him in the
next couple days and have a chance to ask. Or you may encounter someone who
knows about cars, and can diagnose your problem in terms of severity or even
fix it for you cheaply or for no money at all. Or maybe you can barter car
repairs for something in return.
In any case – and all these
things have happened to me personally – the spirits are joggling your life a
bit so things work out in your favor. You just have to be alert and seize your
opportunities.
All magickal systems work. The
trick is to find ones that resonate within yourself because if so they’ll work
better for you. Your ways are not my ways. I have worked with Enochian,
Goetics, chaos magick, Right Hand Path systems, Feri (a little), Druidry,
Thelema, Wicca, and traditional non-Wiccan witchcraft. Not to mention Tony Robbins
and ½ a dozen New Thought writers from a century ago, all of whom were
practicing magick without calling it that.
It wasn’t until I moved to the
mystic city of New Orleans
that I began to work with the Loa seriously and found myself very comfortable
with that magickal current.
You need to do the same thing.
Maybe you won’t settle on a pre-fabricated system. Then invent your own! The
energies are out there whether you come to them with a pre-formed set of rules
and expectations or whether you work it out by yourself.
The key to DIY magick is to
understand that you can work out your own techniques and methods of working
with the spirits work for you. Experiment and keep good notes.
The best reason to go with
already existing systems is that theoretically anyhow, they have been worked
out and worked with by a lot of other people, tested, etc. Plus there’s the
possibility/idea that the more people have worked in a current, the more
powerful it becomes. Christianity would be an example.
Anyway, you can easily read up on
the subject or if you’re lucky enough to be living in a convenient geographical
area, actually meet with like-minded souls and learn one-on-one.
Contrariwise, the downside of
existing systems is their own built-in limitations. NEVER take limitations for granted!
It’s a trick! You can only find out the limitations of a system through your
own experience. As the say goes, You can’t prove a negative. All it takes is
one success, one positive, to dismiss all claims to the contrary.
Baby steps
Everybody hates a tourist. There
is no commitment in dabbling. Having said that, you can’t be expected to start
from zero knowledge and experience and leap straight to mastery. I certainly
have not and neither has anybody else.
First there is a mountain. Then
there is no mountain. Then there is. You have to learn the rules before you can
break them. But how to get there?
Short answer: start young, read
and practice nonstop for 30 years, you got it.
Many of you will feel unable
given your circumstances to fulfill this order in a businesslike timeframe.
I am nearing the half century
mark but I have a one track mind and I jump the track quite a bit. Nonetheless,
my point is that you need to be fairly consistent with your practice. Try to
tune in daily or several times a week. Don’t just make the occasional sporadic
effort in that direction. The results will only annoy everybody involved.
I do find I bounce back into the
groove of things pretty quickly when I finally do get off my ass and start
paying attention to my spiritual practice after I’ve been away from it for some
time, but I would have gotten a lot further by now a lot faster if I had kept
my eye on the prize and thus avoided the benefits of steady gradual growth.
But we do what we can.
Accentuate the positive
The truth is, if you get your
head right, a lot of life’s problems will take care of themselves. It’s just
that your head is a lot more complex on the inside than you realize.
One of the great condemnations of
“positive thinking” philosophies is that this seems to imply that people with
horrible lives bring it all onto themselves, and that it they just were more
positive, they wouldn’t be living in a cardboard box in some 3rd
world hellhole or whatever.
The truth is, about 90% of your
problems are of your own making. Make an honest list and you’ll see what I
mean. We’ll leave that extra 10% for issues that fall outside the scope of this
short book.
There are such things as pre-incarnation
assignments and agreements. The why’s and wherefore’s of that I’ll leave for
another day, but despite all, unless you go to the trouble to tap past life
memories – and I’m not saying you shouldn’t! – certain aspects of your life may
always be a mystery.
Contrariwise, so much of it can
be dealt with through your spirit contacts that it really does behoove anybody
to make a genuine effort over a protracted period of time and see it things don’t
improve dramatically!
Your status in life is largely
determined by your self-limitations. If you have been paying attention at all
in these pages, you will understand I feel nothing
really is off bounds in terms of finding ways to transform you life to the more
positive.
We are often sabotaged by the raw
material of our own thoughts. Let me pause to say I do not consider magick to
be only a sort of esoteric psychology of “self help.” Positive practice will
generate actual improvements in your life on a real and practical level. It’s
not just learning to see the world in a new way, although that’s a part of it,
nor is it a matter of adjusting your attitude so your current life “as-is”
becomes “okay.”
Having said all that, it is
nonetheless true that you can improve
your life by having a positive attitude. Do you doubt me? Negative thinking is
a terrible habit anybody can fall into, but one that can be broken through
effort. Be aware of yourself. Cheer the fuck up. I know we all have crap days,
but they aren’t all crap, I hope. Tune into those good days. Pay attention to
how it feels when things are going well. Fight the habit of cynicism. Not
giving a damn will only carry you so far. Paste a big grin on your face and aim
for optimism. Embrace having a good day.
My last ex-wife had a lot of
issues, and one day I tried out an experiment on her I’d read about. I asked
her to imagine she was holding a red helium balloon on a string. I instructed
her to imagine pouring all her problems into that balloon, one at a time, and
that each time she added one more problem to that balloon, it would rise a
little higher. Higher and higher. After just a minute, her arm was straight up
holding that imaginary balloon.
At that point, I said, “Now let
it go.”
Interestingly, she said, “I don’t
want to.” That gave me an insight into human nature that I now pass along to
you. Don’t let your problems serve as the anchor or focus of your life. In her
case they were quite melodramatic and involved a disturbed child, intrusively “helpful”
parents, a bona fide nut of an ex-, etc. It kept her life in a constant state
of chaos and torment, and when faced with even the idea of letting all that go,
she found she didn’t want to.
When last I heard, her life
continues as it did during our marriage and before: a daisy chain of hell.
Don’t be like that.
Practicality
People get into magick for one or
more of 4 reasons: power, sex, money, or health. Power implies control, so in a
way it encompasses the other three. Point being, I was quickly frustrated when
I began associating with other magicians and discovered I was WRONG! to want
practical results from my sorcerous endeavors.
The true value of magick, I was
told with some disdain, was spiritual evolution. Another name for that is Theurgy –
But isn’t that looking at things through
the wrong end of the telescope? Take your ordinary person. Money’s tight, wife
wants the sort of life a married person wants. Kids need braces. Car needs oil
change. Boss is an asshole. What to do?
Spiritually evolve? Hell no. You
need actual solutions to actual problems. Such a person needs Thaumaturgy – that is to say, practical
magick so your car doesn’t break down or your mother-in-law doesn’t move in.
Terminology is useless to us in
this endeavor and I have used various terms as they have occurred to me through
this text to refer to situations or conditions I hope will make sense in
context. I have tried to avoid arcane vocabulary overall but some things are
unavoidable. Spirits are spirits. Spells are spells. Etc.
There are many well-written books
on the Sacred Science aka magick. You can spend years reading them with a great
deal of pleasure. I know I have.
Ultimately though if you are like
me the time comes when you look at your crappy life and however much you enjoy
reading me or Al Manning or Ophiel or whoever, it would be kind of nice if
things in your actual life would actually pick up some.
Youth or old age do not come into
this equation. I am exactly in the midst of life but it doesn’t matter at all
except to the extent that I wish I had figured out a lot of all this 20 years
ago when I had a lot more wood in my trout than I do now. But what can you do?
Cosmo-Spiritology. Magick.
Onward!
As I’m sure is obvious, this
little book only touches in the briefest of ways the literally endless infinite
world of improving your life through esoteric means, through establishing and
benefitting from contacts with the spirit world. For practical purposes,
hopefully reading this will nudge you in a better direction, helping to give
you the faith and confidence in yourself necessary for you to act on your own,
to take steps to a better life.
You have to trust yourself. You
HAVE TO trust yourself. You are all you need. The powers are inside you waiting
to be tapped like a deeply buried oil reserve. Pure wealth. Don’t listen to
anyone else if it doesn’t promote your push toward your goals. You are your own
best cheerleader, my friend. Even people who love you have their own agendas,
so love yourself. Take care of yourself. Cultivate your own garden.
Cosmo-Spiritology is you finding
ways around and through the difficulties of your personal life because you have
the powers to do that already inside yourself and you don’t need the permission
of a preacher or priest or boss or cop or parent or significant other to
improve yourself. You have friends in high places who are happy to help if you
only ask, and the only catch is an occasional expression of gratitude.
People will try to reduce it all
to a form of attitude adjustment – if you get to the point where you don’t want
or need anything, living in a cardboard box in Florida (for the weather) is good enough, I
guess.
But I don’t think that’s the
extent of it, not by a long shot.
When I want to chill out, I go
down to the river underneath the big bridge a few miles outside town. People
dome down there and fish for shad to use as catfish bait, with hand nets, and
throw beer cans around, which sometimes I pick up, and make a mess, but at the
same time it’s not a park. No rules. You just come down there and groove on the
water and drink a little beer maybe or whatever you like. In that sense it’s a
Free Zone, what Hakim Bey calls a Temporary Autonomous Zone, and that compels
me deeply.
You can find your own Free Zones
in your own lives. They don’t have to be redneck hangouts under bridges. They
don’t have to literal places at all. Making a space in your life for the
techniques and insights of Cosmo-Spiritology creates its own free zones for
you, as you’ll find out.
You will find as you learn to
work with and TRUST the spirits that life becomes much easier to deal with in
lots of little ways. The thing is, all those little things add up even when you
don’t notice it, but once you begin to receive the aid of your invisible spirit
friends, the changes will become readily apparent. A load will be lifted from
your shoulders. It’s pretty great to realize it’s working for you, that it’s a
real deal.
Finally, I would be very happy to
hear from any of you readers personally and your stories and successes. You can
email me at cosmospiritology@yahoo.com.
If you wish, let me know and I’ll put you on my mailing list for upcoming
projects/books. It is always cool to hear from people you’ve affected –
hopefully for the better!
Thanks!
Donald Ray Pendragon
An IV xx Sol 27° Gemini Luna 18° Gemini Dies Lunæ Monday, June 18, 2012
e.v.
Suggested Reading
List
I am not going to hesitate to
recommend other occult writers to you. If you are truly interested you’ll have
already sought some of them out, and if not, I am recommending them 100%
because of the help their books have been to me, and for no other reason. It
certainly isn’t a matter of $ -- if I wanted to cash in, I’d have lived my life
differently the past quarter century. I’d be a CEO with a mortgage and a big
car and a wife and 2.5 kids or whatever the number is, investments, and
probably be dead from high blood pressure or ulcers years back.
If reading this leads you to a
happier life directly or by some reference here you seek out on your own, my
point is accomplished.
So: Read Al G. Manning. Read
Ophiel. Read Ramsey Dukes and Poke Runyon and Phil Hine and Ray Sherwin. Read
Raymond Buckland and Robert Cochrane and Doreen Valiente. Read Donald Michael
Kraig. Read Victor Anderson. Read, Read, Read!
You should certainly find your
comfort level as a reader. I don’t care much for the typical Barnes & Noble
“metaphysical” book rack selections of “fuzzy bunny” Wiccan, for example. If
you’re worried about any magick you do “coming back on you threefold” or
whatever, then don’t do any. It is certainly possible to be pagan – to observe
the cycle of the seasons, the phases of the moon, the spirits of place (genius
loci) without lifting a wand or lighting a candle. But at least read good
authors and not pop media crap.
On the other hand, Aleister
Crowley, who was a giant pioneer (don’t listen to anyone who slams Crowley without very
specific examples of why; usually they’re just repeating popular gossip from
the tabloids of the 1930s!), is a tough read. Tackle him if you want. I did. A
good intro is Robert Anton Wilson’s terrific Cosmic Trigger (Vol.1), which contains a very good chapter devoted
to “the Wickedest Man in the World.”
Read whatever excites you.
Excitement is a big deal if you want to change your life through magickal
practice. Getting a little theory under your belt is a good start, but then you
must Walk the Walk. This will
hopefully provide a way in for some of you.
To quote Crowley, “Every man and every woman is a
star.” Everybody reading these words has an opportunity to Rise Up with some
studying and some work. Rome
wasn’t built in a day. Better start laying bricks now!
ADD BOOK LIST!!!
*
The Tarot provides a lot of information when you use it, and the trick then
becomes figuring out which part is aimed at you. It won’t all be, but it will
usually be obvious on an intuitive level to know what you’re supposed to take
from the reading.
posted by Don at 10:24 AM
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