Techniques in Magic

[…] Such considerations turn this historic anecdote into a curious case of possibly authentic goêtic practice – in the sense of a lived reality of chthonic sorcery – that took place in the Southern Alps of the 17th century.

Let’s examine a largely unknown example of how the Olympic Spirits were pragmatically incorporated into the ever-evolving strands of folk magic. Specifically, we are taking a look at how the Olympic Spirits were leveraged as lares or household deities.

Here is the second, slender volume in the series titled Büchlein Morgenstern. On less than twenty pages it offers an introduction to some of the essential thoughts on character-shaping and character-showing as concisely summarised by Henry Clay Trumbull in his 1889 book of the same title. As it might seem unusual to see his name appear in the context of practical magic, I am sharing my own short introduction and a personal note below.

The tools of authenticity lie embedded in the unimpressive quality of being able to call us back into the present moment with all of our (magical) senses. Standing wide awake, stretching out into all of our senses, while surrounded by the debris of the certainty we lost, counts among the most magical of all life skills.

If we were to translate Paracelsus’s explanations on faith in the above quotes and elsewhere into a 21st-century position, we could give it as such: He defines the human capability of having faith in something as the ability to flow into one.

This article is meant to help you decide in general whether the study of the solitary practitioner’s path in Western Magic is for you. And, more specifically, to illustrate some of the core skills you'd grow by enrolling in the distance learning course offered by the independent training institute IMBOLC.

This week I have the very rare opportunity to share two new books with you. They grew and materialised in completely separate ways through my practical work and historic research over the last decade. (…) Let me tell you a bit about both books. Just enough so you know what to expect, and whether they are for you.

Holding a firm opinion is not at all the sign of an educated mind. In fact, mostly it is the reverse: Only once we have delved deep enough into a subject we begin to see its paradoxes, entanglements, and inconsistencies. But there is no way to ‘delve deep’ into any subject unless we proactively loosen our mind’s ties to what we think we know already.

Here is a humble gift in a year in which we all deserve some good news: In honouring All Hallows 2020, the one night when even the Christian tradition remembers its goêtic roots and communes with the dead, Erzebet and I are sharing the Introduction of my upcoming book Clavis Goêtica (Hadean Preass, 2021).

[…] Speaking of Rosicrucian Magic is a folly for many good reasons. It’s best to be avoided to be honest. Most people – scholars and practitioners alike – quickly came to substitute it with terms such as Theosophy, Pansophy, Astronomia Olympi more rarely, or simply adepta philosophia. So if we dare to use these two often romanticised and rarely understood terms here bound into one – Rosicrucian and Magic – it is for one reason alone. Because, if properly understood, nothing describes the essence of the work better than this simple term. The four arms of the cross span the world, they uphold its necessary tides and tensions; the rose is our work.

The heart is the medicine, the real-world Mohlomi wisely said. Two hundred years after his death, through Mignola’s inspired vision, this medicine took on the form of a small liturgic bell, passed on from beyond death by an ancestral spirit to an antihero from hell. Even more than a tool of protection, Mohlomi’s bell is a tool that offers restoration of the heart.

In ancient Islamic societies the animal realm was closely connected to the realm of the jinn. Julius Wellhausen in his widely published ‘Remains of Arabic Paganism’ (Reste Arabischen Heidentums, 1897) asserted that Islamic ‘zoology is at the same time demonology’; a notion that sounds rather familiar to the student of Ancient Egyptian magic.

In the seventh volume on Alchymica we find the magical script- and seal-generator, that very well might have inspired the Golden Dawn’s evolution of drawing seals from their version of the Rosy-Cross. The following images are taken from this manuscript: They show several of the double pages of the text, including the secret script, and then the circular master-key at its end.

The following short text is an excerpt from an upcoming book. It forms the introduction to a chapter on conjuring celestial spirits with nothing but the sound of your voice and a magical bell. The deceptive simplicity of the operation can make us fail to realise the complexity that underpins it. Often the simplest of rituals take the highest of skills to accomplish.

Nothing stops you short from growing beyond your own wildest dreams, like the desire to hold on to a clear identity. By definition, having a clear answer to the question who you are - both to yourself and the world - means you have stepped out of the process of becoming.

They say ‘common enemies unite’. In the same vein, a good enemy can make us grow quicker and taller than we would have ever attempted to do without them. So here is to all the things foreign and forbidding - and to us knowing how to treat them with respect.

Just recently Josephine McCarthy rediscovered some of her archive treasures and made them available for free on the Quareia website. Amongst these texts, are four particular magical operations that focus on our relationship with and active support to the ecological environment we are an integral part of.

Let's start this journey at its end. Let's start with the moment you step into your grave. I want you to read this paragraph, and then close your eyes. Close your eyes and look at yourself as the person you have become in the last moments of your life. What do you see? Who do you see? Which qualities shine through? Which scars do you hold - and what have you made of them?

It's been four full years of ritual magic abstinence for me. Now this time is coming to an end. Next week, I'll be consecrating my new temple, and then slowly from there begin to engage with it. Based upon almost 20 years of experience as working as a lone-ritual-practitioner, here is the advise I’d give myself.

At the end of day, there might be no virtue these days which is more subversive, more counter-culture, more occult for lack of a better word, than mastering one's patience. Nothing more seditious, then engaging in the art of pleasure delay. Not for the sake of it alone, but in service to the acts of significance that may come from it.