Llewellyn Publications's Blog, page 82

For the overview of the journey, start HERE.

At the end of this row we reach the end of this journey and so we would expect great rewards. We are not disappointed.

What we experience is Judgement, which we know has little to do with being judged. Rather, it has everything to do with being able to hear and respond to the voice of Spirit with faith and certainty. After gaining experience with feeling your own inner compass and recognizing communication from the external Divine, you can apply those skills to your everyday life. Then you get your reward: The World. A laurel wreath of achievement and a sense of how you fit perfectly in the universal flow of life. Comfortable, confident, and free.

But life is filled with cycles and we never stay at these thresholds of achievement very long. We eventually move forward onto new ones.

Now that you know how to read the static or linear Fool’s Journey, you can try the Alternate Major Arcana spread, which you can find HERE.

In my two previous posts I presented some basic ideas for astral projection and astral travel. In that second post I pointed out that astral travel was about more than going to the moon or visiting a girlfriend or boyfriend. It’s even more that visiting someone to help heal them from the astral plane or to have consensual astral sex with them. Astral travel can lead to the fountainheads of spiritual wisdom. However, as they say in the infomercials, “But wait! There’s more!”

Most practitioners of magick didn’t just chant a spell or wave a wand and woosh!, magick happened. And yet, you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t believe or hadn’t experienced the fact that magick works. So something else has to be going on. And to understand what, we briefly have to look at reincarnation.

Reincarnation—More than Physical

According to Kabalistic traditions, when a woman and man are making love they set up a vortex of energy which attracts souls waiting to incarnate. An interesting Kabalistic tradition holds that sometimes several souls will actually argue over trying to get into a particular body.

A soul, after incarnation, needs to focus on survival in the physical world. Its highly spiritual nature, by necessity, submerges and becomes the basis of your unconscious or subconscious mind. It ends up playing a secondary role to the emerging ego and personality that form your conscious mind (although it has far more things to do, such as operating your cardiovascular, digestive, and nervous systems below the level of conscious awareness).

Thus, it is your unconscious which is your link to your soul, the spiritual worlds and Divinity. The deepest level of your unconscious, your true “soul consciousness,” functions within, or is said to “exist on,” the Astral Plane. In this understanding of the nature of our existence, it is important to understand that If you had been born with another soul, you would not be the same person. Therefore, the essential part of you that makes you who and what you are, exists on the Astral Plane was in existence before your physical body was created.

Everything that exists on our physical plane, everything you can become aware of through your five physical senses, has an astral double or counterpart. This counterpart is usually known as the Astral Body. Every person has an Astral Body or Astral Double. So does every animal, vegetable or mineral. Everything has a pre-existing Astral Double. You do not have an Astral Body because you have a physical body. Rather, you have a physical body because the Astral Body already existed and needed to join a new “home” in order to manifest for the instinctive purpose of spiritual evolution. While your soul was waiting to inhabit its physical body with the body’s first breath, it was establishing a link between itself and the physical body. This link is the Astral Body. For anything to exist on the physical plane it must first exist on the Astral Plane!

Therefore, in order to create anything and bring it into your life, all you have to do is create it in the Astral Plane.

And that’s what magickal rituals and spells do. They create something on the astral plane, something that eventually must manifest.

The challenge is that this process doesn’t only occur when we perform some sort of magickal rite. It happens constantly. In most instances what we put into the astral plane—either through a willed action (magick) or without conscious intention—gets there by traversing through our unconscious, and without training we rarely have any sort of conscious control over our unconscious. As a result, our unconscious thoughts and concerns may actually end up causing opposition to and then easily overpowering, overcoming, and simply defeating our magickal practices. That’s one reason our magick may not be successful and why learning to master our conscious mind and appropriately program our unconscious mind are important aspects of magick.

So What Does This Have to Do With Astral Projection?

When we perform rituals, we are sending instructions from our conscious, to the unconscious (or subconscious) to create something on the astral plane so it will manifest on the physical. That process looks like this:

Ritual—>Conscious—>Unconscious—>Astral Plane—>Physical Plane

In my previous post I described how the astral plane was not limited to the physical laws that bound the physical universe. Visualize being somewhere and your astral body is there. Instead of being limited by the speed of light, you are only limited by the speed of thought.

If you astral project, and your conscious mind is on the astral plane, you can instantly create something there by thinking it. That cuts out the middle steps. It’s just:

Astral Plane—>Physical Plane

This reduces the chances for error and increases the possibility of achieving your magickal goals. In short, when you are on the astral plane you can more easily create what you want on the physical plane by simply clearly thinking what you want in your mind. By cutting out the extra steps of ritual work, control of energy, and possible problems as the results of your work go through the conscious and unconscious, you can speed up and increase the effectiveness of magick.

This is dependent upon your ability to astral project. Click on this LINK for descriptions of several books that can help you learn to project to and travel on the astral plane.

As I wrote above, it’s possible for us to prevent ourselves from achieving our magickal goals by unconsciously countering our magick. How do we prevent this?

I’ll discuss that next time.

The New Moon in Leo occurred yesterday, Tuesday, August 6, at 5:51 pm EDT (9:51 pm GMT), at 14 degrees. New moons signify a new cycle, new beginnings, and rebirth.

This New Moon, along with the Sun (also in Leo) will highlight the fiery Leo qualities of leadership, confidence, and (possible) bossiness, as well as fifth house themes of leisure, entertainment, and recreation. This New Moon period is the perfect time to examine how you view yourself. Are you lacking confidence or self-esteem? Or perhaps you have too much, and err on the side of egotistical? Perhaps you need to stand up for yourself, or plan a much-needed vacation. Now is the time to initiate changes.

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Cliff Seruntine, author of Seasons of the Sacred Earth.

Some say enchantment is only a fancy, a carry over from times long past when our ancestors knew no better. Others say enchantment is a tool and can be shaped to serve their own ends. But there are those who say it is something else altogether—the very essence of life and wonder; a vital link to mystery and wisdom. Come to know it and it will enrich how one approaches life, from the chores of day-to-day to how we interact with the numinous.

The shamans of aboriginal folk, the wise men and women of old Europe, and even the common folk of the distant past (before urbanization drew people far from the land) knew how to find enchantment. It was all around them, in their crops as they pushed up from the earth and in the green shadowed depths of the forest. The ancestors lived very close to the natural world—they drew their lives directly from it. How could they not know enchantment? It derives of Nature.

And while enchantment is no mere tool, it is a wellspring of power and hidden knowledge when used to good purpose. In Alaska, an aboriginal boy once told me of how his grandfather—the village shaman—used it to shape-shift into a bird to seek out the caribou upon which the people of his village depended. Witches of old drew upon enchantment to heal sick persons and livestock with secret charms. I have called upon it and seen an ailing garden revive beyond belief, and found myself suddenly with the knowledge of what to do to help that healing along.

The magical folk of old valued enchantment so deeply they told faery tales of it, created traditions to show respect of it, and founded many practices designed to draw them close to enchantment. They go by different names in different paths, but in essence these are vision quests and spirit quests. They involved entering the Otherworld with a foundation of ancestral knowledge, facing profound ordeal, and emerging with new insight and power. Yet while the quests are the subject of many current books and seminars, the other essential part of drawing close to enchantment is oft overlooked in the modern, urbanized era: the necessity of a relationship with the green world. Michael Harner, in his groundbreaking book The Way of the Shaman (Harper Collins, ©1980), wrote that the shamanic state of consciousness “[i]nvolves a deep respect for all forms of life, with a humble awareness of our dependence on the plants, animals and even inorganic matter of our planet.” In essence, knowing enchantment is closely tied to an understanding of the natural world.

Enchantment is out there, and finding it is not so hard. The shaman’s first vision quest, the witch’s initiation, the mystic’s first tentative meditations—they set one pointedly down the path. But that is only part of the journey; the other part comes of drawing close to the natural world. Tend a garden. Learn the ways of wild flora and creatures. Listen to the secrets trees whisper when the wind blows. In short, fall in love with the sacred Earth. The magical paths may teach you how to work with enchantment, but it is the green world that teaches you the better part—how to relate to enchantment, and more importantly, why.

Our thanks to Cliff for his guest post! For more from Cliff Seruntine, read his article “A Perfect Rain on an Enchanted Homestead.”

To see an overview of the journey, start HERE.

Today we look at the final challenge…the Moon. The Moon is a tricky card, full of unknowns. In this case, it is about how to travel your path when all around you is dark and uncertain. In some ways it is easier than you’d thing…but also more challenging, as it does require faith, faith in your personal spiritual compass.

The Moon reflects light, so it is not surprising that the two flanking cards are about light. Instead of shaping the problem, they hold the answer. The Star, which represents guidance, can be thought of as your personal North Star, the thing outside of yourself by which you navigate. I see this as the external Divine.

The Sun, which in this situation, represents yourself, your own inner light by which you are able to see. Maybe just the next step, but on a journey sometimes that’s all you need to see.

The two lights, internal and external, form lines that intersect and resonate, helping you to know what is true even if you are blind to reality or some of the facts are hidden. As long as you follow these, you will be okay.

The hard part is that your compass may have shifted some during the Devil/Tower experience and so you are not used to it and haven’t built up your faith. But don’t worry. You will. In time, anyhow. You can/will stay in each row long enough to work out the details.

After you do, then you move on to the finish line, which we will talk about next time.

In my previous post I shared a surprisingly easy method to consciously project Out of Body also known as Astral Projection. But after you do that, then what? Here’s what I wrote in Modern Magick:

Once you are able to freely project your consciousness into your Astral Body and travel around in that state, what good will it do you? Why even learn how to Astral Project in the first place? Sure, it is fun and exhilarating, but going to a movie can be fun and going dancing can be exhilarating. And movie-going and dancing take a great deal less preparation and practice.

There are many books which discuss how wonderful it is to be out-of-body. But once you achieve the ability of Projection, few of the books discuss what to do with it. Some say you can contact friends or visit the Moon or any other of a variety of more or less mundane things.

Why bother? I can call my friends on the phone or drive over and visit them. And although visiting the Moon might be interesting, it is not at the top of my “things to do” list. And why, if the goal of Astral Projection is so relatively mundane, have occult schools and fraternities from the earliest dates of recorded history stressed the importance of learning how to project?

The answer to this question is related to…hypnotherapy.

Hypnotherapy and

Process Orientation vs. Client Orientation

You may have heard—you may believe—that hypnosis is very powerful. It’s not. It’s natural, normal, and very common. We go in and out of hypnotic trances many times every day. Just watching TV puts you into a hypnotic trance. That’s why advertisers want to repeat their commercials so often: it’s like positive affirmations, only instead of you using them on yourself to improve your situation, advertisers apply them to you, urging you to pay too much for sugar water, unhealthy foods, and extravagant cars. The fact that the same advertisers continue to use TV commercials shows how powerful suggestions given while a person is hypnotized truly are.

And that’s my point. Hypnosis, in and of itself, isn’t powerful at all. It’s what you do with it that makes it powerful. That’s why the best hypnotherapists study for years to learn their profession. You can learn to hypnotize in a few hours or less. Learning what to do after a person is hypnotized, helping a person achieve effective and desired change, takes a lot of study.

Many people, however, think  learning hypnotherapy has got to be a simple process. They think that hypnotherapy is like a software plug-in to Western medicine. Here’s the basis Western medicine paradigm:

You go to a doctor.
The doctor examines you.
S/he gives a diagnosis.
S/he gives a prescription of drugs or procedures.
If you take the drugs or have the procedures done to you, you get better.

With hypnotherapy, instead of a drug or procedure at point 4, you just plunk in hypnosis—read a “script” of predetermined suggestions that are supposed to work for the diagnosis—and the client gets better. I call this approach the “process orientation” model. There is a process for resolving health issues and most people will be helped by the process. For Western (allopathic) medicine, it works incredibly well. It’s just not the basis of hypnotherapy.

One of the reason a process orientation works is that the causes of any medical issue are limited. The “flu shot” can prevent you from getting the flu because each year there is generally just one virus that affects most people. You only need to defeat that one virus.

But ten people could come to a hypnotherapist with the same issue (it’s technically called a “presenting problem”), and the cause for each person could be radically different. Therefore, rather than having a pre-set hypnotic induction to try and use on all clients and one generalized set of suggestions to deal with a particular issue. the best hypnotherapists talk with the client and determine which type of induction and which specific suggestions will be most effective. In other words, even though ten people have the same presenting problem, the hypnotist may work differently with each client. That’s why I refer to this as a “client orientation” rather than a process orientation.

This is one reason hypnotherapy is a great complementary tool for Western medical techniques: it doesn’t replace aspects of allopathic medicine, it follows another philosophy and works parallel to allopathic medicine.

Magick Books, Teachers, and Presenters…

They’re a Lot Like That

I have given presentations on magick, occultism, and other topics throughout the U.S. and Europe. In the coming months I am tentatively scheduled to appear in California, Nevada, Michigan, and on a tour of the North Eastern states. One of the things I love to experience is the “Aha!” moment. This is when a student who has been struggling with some topic or aspect suddenly has a flash of understanding. It’s as if a cartoon lightbulb turns on over their head and they scream, “Aha! I understand!”

This presents a question: why didn’t this person understand before? The answer is that for some reason, what the presenter (or other presenters, teachers, trainers, etc.) had previously stated didn’t make sense to that particular student. Now, however, something the current presenter shared suddenly makes everything clear and the student has an Aha! moment.

It’s important to note that the previous presenters or writers were not trying to deceive. They were sharing the best way they knew how. But perhaps a different word, a different inflection, a different metaphor finally made it clear to the student. That’s why teaching, like hypnotherapy, shouldn’t be a process oriented art (although that’s the way it’s usually done), it should be client oriented.

And that’s why there needs to be multiple books on the same subject. Different writers express themselves in different ways, and what works for one reader won’t work for another. In fact, that’s why I’m glad there are lots of good books on astral projection. It’s not that one is “better” than another, it’s that one is going to be better for you than another. The same is true for books on magick.

Here Come the Secret Chiefs?

However, I have to take this one step further. Right now, if you’ve been reading various magick-oriented blogs, you might have seen that there’s a furor over the “Secret Chiefs.” This was the name the original members of the Golden Dawn gave to the higher beings, masters, mahatmas or whatever name you want for some entities who seem to be guardians of the Order and can supposedly provide special advanced information. The furor right now has to do with their nature: Do they exist? Are they physical beings? Are they non-physical beings?

I can’t answer for others, but I can give you my response to the furor: I don’t care!

I don’t care if they’re real or not, physical or non-physical, a metaphor, saviors, guardians, space aliens, or whatever. In my opinion nobody will ever be able to prove they exist or do not exist in any form. The real question, in my opinion, is what do we believe of them?

If they are saviors or supermen/superwomen or aliens with knowledge we either don’t have or can’t obtain, it’s admitting that we are inferior little trolls incapable of obtaining this wisdom for ourselves. Further, it implies that the one way they have of communicating the information will work for all individuals even though all evidence shows that what works for one person will not work for another. So I’m not going to get pulled into this silly argument. Doing the work on a daily basis is far more important. Becoming self-reliant, in my opinion, is the essence of magick. Waiting for dribbles of handouts from ersatz gods-on-high puts us in the position of being dogs when our owners put a treat in front of us but order us not to eat it until they say so. It turns us into de facto slaves.

I’m not saying the concept of such mysterious beings doesn’t have value; it does. What I am saying is that we don’t have to turn them into Nietzschean Super Men combined with Jesus Christ and all the archangels and angels.

So How Does This Relate to Astral Travel?

This has been a roundabout way to get us back to the actual point of this post. When we have projected onto the astral plane, our conscious mind is no longer limited to Einsteinian time and space. We are not limited to the concept that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. Instead, we can travel at the speed of thought. If you want to visit your girlfriend or boyfriend, simply astral project, focus on being there, and you are there. This doesn’t have to be complex.

So after you’ve visited some friends or planets, etc. then what? The answer to this question is one of the reasons astral projection and travel is regarded so highly among occultists. When you can astral project and travel you no longer have to kowtow to beings who maybe will give you spiritual information and answers to your questions (or bow to those who claim to be in contact with them)—you can go right to the source and ask the beings who guard that information directly.

Do you have a question about magick? Project through the doors/gates/curtains (as described in my previous post) that have the appearance of the Tarot card “The Magician” and seek the guardian of that information. Need to improve your luck? Do the same with the “Wheel of Fortune” card. You can do the same for any topic. Just pick the card that represents the subject to you, project through it, use your mind to take you to the guardian of the desired information. As you get better with this technique, you can even design your own symbols or sigils to use in place of the Tarot cards.

Okay. It’s not exactly that easy. You may need to provide information such as passwords or symbols indicating that you’re entitled to the information. This is where all of those books with tables of correspondences come in handy. You can also follow the Golden Dawn’s concept of using the Tree of Life as a roadmap to those areas (Sephiroht) where you can find answers to your questions, answers in a form you will understand. In the brief words presented about I’ve share a design for what could be a lifetime’s worth of magickal study and work.

You may have noticed I wrote that this is “one of the reasons astral projection and travel is regarded so highly among occultists.” What’s the other occult reason for astral projection?

Tune in next time!

 

 

 

 

 

As I described in Modern Magick, one of the important tools of a magician is pathworking. The concept behind this skill is simple. It holds that the Tree of Life is a map of the levels of the astral plane.

The Tree of Life

Design: Kircher  ——— Colors: Golden Dawn “Queen Scale”

In my book I wrote, “Magicians can use this map to chart their way to meeting with higher spiritual entities, non-physical consciousnesses capable of giving any information needed.”

For this post, that leaves a lot of questions. First is the term “pathworking” itself. When I first became involved with the practice, the term exclusively described the process of projecting astrally up the Tree of Life. Over time, however, the term “pathworking” became so popular it came to mean “any visualized journey.”*

For a time I kept trying to say that pathworking was not just a visualized journey, but that was like trying to hold back the ocean’s tides…using a bucket…with holes in the bottom. It wasn’t going to happen. So now I refer to the original form of pathworking as Kabalistic Pathworking and only request that when people use the term “pathworking” they define what they mean.

So the Tree is a map of the astral planes, and the goal of Kabalistic Pathworking is to use the map as a guide to traverse those planes. The obvious question is how does one get to the first level of the map? That is, how does one astral project?

There are lots of good books on the subject. You can find a great list of books here: LINK. In Modern Magick I give some methods to prepare yourself and then astral project, too.

In this post, however, I want to share one of the simplest, most direct, and easiest ways I’ve ever found to project. I call it:

Doors and Gates

The concept behind this is simple. The image of the Tree of Life above, theoretically, is a map of the astral planes. But as you can see, it’s incomplete. The paths between the sephiroht, the colorful way stations on that design, are blank. One of the key secrets of occultism is that they are (or have become) linked to the major arcana cards of the Tarot:

Image by Alan SyncBookPress

So if the Tarot major arcana cards are the roads through the astral plane, how do you travel on the roads? How do you get there?

In NLP there is a presupposition that the map is not the territory. Maps only represent the reality. Similarly, the major arcana cards do not show the full extent of what is on the paths. Rather, they function like doors and gates to the paths, indicating some of the things you may find on a particular path.

So our doorway to the Tree of Life could be The World card, known as The Universe card in the Golden Dawn Magical Tarot:

Unfortunately, unless you have a treat like Alice in Wonderland, a Tarot card is too small to function as a door or gate to the astral plane. And that is where your very powerful magickal tool, your mind, comes in.

Take the card and stare at it for a few minutes. Get the image firmly embedded in your mind.
Imagine, visualize, create the concept of the image growing in front of you. Continue this until it becomes very large, at least eight feet tall.
Imagine, visualize, create the concept of that giant image becomes a door or gate. Some people prefer to think of it as embroidered onto a magnificent curtain.
In your mind’s eye, imagine, visualize, create the concept that the door or gate in front of you opens (or the curtains spread to the sides).
Step through into the astral plane

That’s it. Look around. Get comfortable and return. In my next post I’ll talk about what you can do after you project: astral travel.

TIPS:

Do this in a place where you can assure yourself of privacy while you practice.
Do a banishing ritual before and after the practice.
Don’t strain! If you repeatedly strain your mind will link straining and struggling to astral projection and you’ll always have to strain and struggle to project.
The goal of the Golden Dawn for this process was to travel on the Tree of Life. If you feel no need to do that, try this process with any card from your Tarot.

*This is similar to the way the term Tantra originally was applied to a large set of Pagan, pre-Hindu spiritual practices, but in the West it basically means a bunch of “sex stuff.”

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Debra Robinson, author of A Haunted Life.

One of the most common situations I run in to as a psychic is the person who comes along with their friend getting the reading and, when asked if they want one too, they fearfully say, “I don’t want to know.” Usually, when quizzed, they will spill the fear of being told they’ll die. Most people don’t want to know that!

The truth is, it’s hard to predict physical death. There are certain tarot cards that can represent it, but it’s usually a combination of several cards rather than just one. With palmistry, there can be indicators of “something” dangerous coming, represented by a cutting line or trauma line, or a gap in a line. But, other lines often make up for deficiencies in one particular line, short lines, or broken lines in a hand.

I remember a local story about a group of rowdy teens who went to an area “psychic.” Apparently, one fifteen-year-old girl was told she’d die in a car wreck. She was so traumatized by this that she couldn’t go to school. Her mother wrote to our local paper about it. It didn’t take any psychic abilities to intuit that it was more a case of an irritated psychic than any clairvoyance at work! Still, this was a terrible thing to do to a child. Not long after, the “psychic” closed up shop.

The week before my twenty-four-year-old son was killed by a drunk driver, he asked me for a reading. I was in a hurry, so I looked at his palm and did a quick tarot layout. And I didn’t see his death. I interpreted what I saw as a huge change coming, which fit with what was going on in his life. I’m grateful I didn’t understand what I was seeing; it would’ve been unthinkable. Now, I think that my interpretation wasn’t too far wrong. The biggest change we’ll ever undergo is our transition to the afterlife; I just didn’t realize it was James’s time to make that journey. I’m glad I didn’t see it—it was better left unseen. Maybe God in His mercy holds back our gift at times like these.

My story and his are detailed in my book, A Haunted Life: The True Ghost Story of a Reluctant Psychic. The uncanny “coincidences” leading up to his death and his own clairvoyance about it (the pictures he painted of a giant heart; the song lyrics he wrote—”As close to tortured as I’ve ever been is lying here wondering, if my heart might beat away and away and away”—they all fell into place when we met the man who received James’s heart and he uttered James’s favorite phrase: “It’s all good.”

So, don’t be afraid of a psychic predicting your death. It is difficult, if not impossible to do (not to mention a bad business practice). And many psychics, myself included, believe only a Higher Power is truly privy to this information.

Our thanks to Debra for her guest post! For more from Debra Robinson, read her article “My First Haunted House.”

I’ve always loved the study of differing cultures, traditions, and religions and even though it was a gen. ed. requirement, one of my favorite classes in college was anthropology. People are complicated and the beliefs we have and rituals we practice are like a kind of time machine. Glimpsing the history of how those steps have developed over time helps me stand within a new viewpoint and can affirm my own beliefs, have me shedding old traditions, or taking on wholly new ones I’d never even known I might consider. Suddenly I’m awake at a heightened level and I buzz with the rush of knowing I’m alive and connected to myself, this new knowledge, tradition, and people. Perspective. I love it.

I’m not an outspoken person on these kinds of topics, though. This alone is good reason I didn’t pursue philosophy or anthropology. I don’t dive full in because I hate confrontation. And when you’re moving through a world of alternate viewpoints you’re bound to meet resistance, ignorance, judgment, and racism along the way. I cringe at the thought of conflict. I just want to swim in the divine soup of knowledge with my mind wide open, sifting out what doesn’t mesh well for me and holding to all the gems that make me sparkle and shine. Luckily there are others out there who are willing to push through those tough spots so people like me can benefit from newfound knowledge. Many of our authors are those passionate people!

Today I came across a video of one such conlfict that had my stomach turning and my palms sweating on someone else’s behalf. I’ve never read the book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan, but his work sounds like something I would be into, providing a “fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told even as it affirms the radical and transformative nature of Jesus of Nazareth’s life and mission” as stated in the Amazon description. The beginning question of why, as a Muslim, he is writing about Christian material didn’t bother me; it could have actually been a lead in to really interesting discussion. The conflict came when this PhD religious scholar, writing on researched findings and not emotionally charged opinion, answered that question clearly within the first minute. Still, from there he was aggressively interviewed through a lens of assumptions that say as a Muslim he shouldn’t be allowed to write on Christian topic and as a Muslim writing on Christian material, he obviously has a hidden agenda.

So, who made up the rule that you can only study one religious category? Or that you can only comment on or study the religion that you practice? I study lots of religions that I’m not practicing, so I obviously missed that memo, but others out in the world seem to stand behind it, venimently. The kinds of assumptions behind this interview are what spark blind hate and war instead of open ideas and communication; it’s “us” vs. “them” without consideration. I wish I were as eloquent and unflustered by confrontation as Aslan, but for the sake of world knowledge I’m glad we have authors we can rely on to take the hit with style.

Have you ever been met with assumptions and judgment for your spiritual practices or beliefs? How did you handle the situation?

There has been a debate on the internet concerning the future of magick. I saw a discussion about it on Aaron Leitch’s Blog. There, Aaron  discusses comments by Jake Stratton Kent concerning the future of magick.

One of the problems in this discussion is the use of jargon. Aaron reveals, “Jake is a goetic magician, but that doesn’t mean what you probably think it does. When Jake uses the term “goetia” he’s not talking about the Renaissance grimoire of that name (which we will refer to as the Goetia of Solomon) – nor about something so simplistic as “working with demons”. Instead he is referring to one of the most primordial foundations of Western occultism: the ancient Greek Goen.” He later writes that Goen “was the word for shaman in Greece before the Olympian cults existed.” As a result of these different meanings of “goetic,” some of the posts I’ve seen on the internet seem to misrepresent Mr. Kent’s ideas.

The basic thrust of Kent’s argument is two-fold. First, it’s that “The whole Secret Society model is not only unhelpful, but actively counter-productive.” He claims that they don’t have any secret information and the fights between groups over false histories are harmful.

The model of the secret society he focuses on is that of Freemasonry. And it’s very true that groups like the Golden Dawn have rituals that are similar to, if not based up, those of the Freemasons. This leads to the second part of his argument. Kent contends that the dependence upon this structure has removed us from the sources of magick: direct links to the spiritual realms and spiritual entities, which he believes corresponds with aspects of Shamanism.

I think it’s absolutely great that Mr. Kent has brought this up for discussion. I think he’s absolutely right and, at the same time, completely wrong.

Why Magickal Orders?

As I’ve frequently seen in discussions on a wide variety of topics, it’s common that writers on all sides make certain assumption and accept them as truisms that are simply accepted as valid. Sometimes, even the people holding opposite opinions accept the assumptions as truisms. Until those accepted presuppositions are questioned, it’s like arguing over who makes a better burger, McDonald’s or Burger King, without discussing the health risks of diets heavy with meats and saturated fats.

The secret society, as Kent stated, can be “unhelpful” and “counter-productive.” But unhelpful in what ways? Counter-productive to what? Kent writes that he hasn’t really learned anything from these groups. To me this is a common approach of many students. It’s the attitude of “Here I am; teach me.” This is a presupposition of how a school, or secret society, is supposed to work.

This is not meant to be a denunciation of Mr. Kent so much as a denunciation of those running schools and the media who have made this attitude a part of our notion of educational systems. Just throw people in there, keep them locked up, and somehow, they’re supposed to be taught something. No wonder so many schools are failing. No wonder so many magickal orders remain small and have quickly changing memberships. “I’m here, teach me. If you don’t, I’m leaving.” Students with that attitude, often reinforced by parents who have the same attitude, are too often the worst students. If you don’t teach them exactly the material they want and they way they want to learn it, they reject everything.

The best students tend to be those with an attitude of: “How can I make use of this potential learning situation?” I don’t know the groups Mr. Kent was a member of or the quality of their leaders. If they were poor quality, I’m very sorry for Mr. Kent’s experiences. However, if they had a great deal of knowledge and Mr. Kent failed to take advantage of it because of preconceptions as to how such orders should work, then I’m sorry for the influences on Mr. Kent that resulted in his not taking advantage of available resources.

Many years ago I was a member of AMORC. At the time, they said they were not a secret society. Rather, they were a society with secrets. I attended ritual after ritual and observed little in the way of magick. I tell people that their teachings are a good way to get a very basic liberal arts education. However, I kept seeking, not for what they would give me, but what I could find.

At the lodge I was with, they played a horribly scratchy recording of some music during the meditation period that occurred in each weekly ritual. As a musician, the poor quality was driving me up the wall. I talked about this to a member whom I respected. He didn’t agree or disagree with me, he just started telling me a story:

Many years ago there was a man who learned meditation. One day, he started meditating and went deeper and deeper. Soon, he was deeper in meditation than he had ever been before. He kept going deeper. And deeper. He knew that in a few seconds he would be at one with the universe and have untold secrets of wisdom unfold before him. 

And then a fly landed on his nose and he instantly came out of the meditative state, never to achieve it again.

The member finished the story, then turned and walked away. I was humbled. It wasn’t the bad quality of the music that was keeping me from meditating, it was me.

A few years later I was in a group that was associated with a Golden Dawn branch. Some of the members had been there for years. Officers carried around huge books to read their parts of rituals, stumbled through movements, and could barely read their speeches, even though they had been through them dozens of times. I kept hoping for more, but it was thoroughly disheartening.

Eventually, I achieved the position of Dadouchos, representing the carrier of elemental Fire. At the beginning of our regular ritual, the opening of the “Hall of the Neophytes,” the carrier of fire and another person, the Stolistes, who carried Water, go around the temple purifying and consecrating the space. In the past, they had just wandered around at their own speeds, sometimes almost bumping into each other. I intuited that, being opposites, they should always stay opposite each other as they went around the temple. I simply did this, and for me, and for others whom I talked with, the result was electric. The entire feelings of the temple changed.

There is absolutely no way I could have learned this or experienced it by reading or practicing on my own. The opportunity for learning was there and I took advantage of it. I did not wait for someone to teach me.

It’s a Different Thing

I would contend, then, that Mr. Kent is quite right. It’s quite unlikely that secret societies/magickal orders are going to teach you magick. Those that claim they do often quickly vanish or turn into personality cults. However, what they can do is give you the opportunity to learn through observation and participation, through asking questions and by going through a formulaic set of instructions. Mr. Kent is 100% right in that secret societies are not providing what he’s looking for. But the problem is not with him or with the secret societies. Rather, it is simply that he has made an assumption of what should happen in secret societies and is disappointed when he doesn’t get it.

So I would say it’s incorrect to look for a chiropractic treatment at a chiropodist’s office. If you try, you’re most likely to be disappointed. That’s what has happened here. In the East, this concept has long been known: reality is unlikely to meet one’s expectations, and that loss leads to disappointment and unhappiness. No wonder Mr. Kent wrote what Mr. Leitch refers to as being close to an online manifesto.

So What Good Are

Magickal Orders and Secret Societies?

Instead of looking at what such groups can’t do, let’s look at what they can do:

They give you a place where, if you are wise, you can choose to learn. You do this not only by learning written teachings, but by observation, experience, and through asking questions.
They give you a place to meet and commune with others who have similar interests. Humans are social animals, and without such contact and feedback you can lose interest and direction.
They give you a place to learn by experience and example. This isn’t just about learning what to do, but also learning what not to do.
They link you with a current of energy not available outside of the group. Other such currents are certainly available, but they’re not these particular energies.
The give you the chance to meet people with knowledge or access to knowledge you don’t have.
They give you the chance to work with people who are better in certain magickal and spiritual skills than you.
They give you a chance to hear discussions among people who don’t want to spend their time debating on social media.
They can trigger new interests by an overheard word or thought.
They allow you to participate in rituals, giving you the chance to experience what does and does not work.

These are just a few of the benefits that may be found in a secret societies/magickal orders. It’s possible the ones you meet won’t give you some or all of these. It’s possible they may give you different ones.

Sorry, But This Isn’t Exactly New…

I am very lucky and grateful for the massive acceptance of my book, Modern Magick. Several years ago, a person asked me how it would feel knowing that decades from now, people would still be using it. I replied that I hope by then there would be new writers who would share updated versions of what I had written in a new voice, a voice that would appeal to new generations.

This is a common occurrence. People like Mr. Kent study magick, become disenchanted (no pun intended) with what’s available, and reinterpret it. I’ve seen this happen many dozens of time, as people discover or reveal the “true” secrets of magick. Most of them have been forgotten.

Some, however, not only last, but become important and influential. In 1976, two men had a meeting that would forever change the face of magick. They wanted to get rid of everything that was not needed (like Masonic-style rituals) and get to the core of magick. Originally named “Results Magick,” with the idea being that they wanted to get to the very minimum that would produce maximum results, it eventually become known as Chaos Magick. It has helped to spark an interest in magick by tens of thousands of people. You can read about the basic concepts and some of the basic techniques in Lesson 12 of Modern Magick.

I would guess that the energies behind the rising phoenix of magick that inspired Carroll and Sherwin, the founders of Chaos Magick, are the same energies behind Mr. Kent’s comments. This, in my opinion, is a good thing for magick.

Webinar!

Yesterday I presented a webinar that allowed me to speak, live, to people all over the world. Thanks to all of the people who attended! The topic was Tarot & Magic. One person asked if the Cicero’s were the best at presenting the ideas of the magickal order, the Golden Dawn. 

Chic and Sandra Tabatha Cicero

What I responded was that the books that had been written by the Ciceros had done more to advance the concepts and training of the Golden Dawn system than any other author since Israel Regardie. The moderator of the webinar stated that he had used pathworkings given by the Ciceros on a daily basis. And the truth is, that although people had occasionally written about the Golden Dawn, the Ciceros have done more and gone beyond the basics found in Regardie’s books, than anyone else. Until the Ciceros, the Golden Dawn had become stultified. Many leaders had an attitude of, “That’s what’s in Regardie’s book. Don’t do anything else.” With the Cicero’s books, the biggest advances in sharing information on the Golden Dawn in decades, the traditions of the Golden Dawn ceased being “that old stuff” and became enlivened once again. They helped bring life and vitality to the old Order. There are now many groups that claim to be “the” Golden Dawn. I don’t think anyone would care about them if the works of the Ciceros hadn’t brought the magickal current of the Golden Dawn back from the abyss.

The proof of this is not just in the popping up of Golden Dawn groups everywhere. Rather, it is in that very discord Mr. Kent discounts as being “unhelpful” and “actively counter-productive.” True, some people have formed groups for money or personal power or ego. But others argue/discuss minor points of practice and theory. New books on the Golden Dawn are beginning to appear from a variety of authors.

The spark that triggered the Golden Dawn in the late 19th century seems to be starting another fire at the beginning of the 21st century.