Hitting the spirits instead of psychology

A True and faithful relation of what passed between me and a bottle of spirits

Anyone who has read my books will know that I am a big fan of psychology.  Since the 1930s psychology has stopped a large number of magicians going nuts by making them realise that what they might be experiencing is not the anti-christ but by some repressed complex that they have not dealt with.

In my new  book Magical Imagination I look at psychological techniques which are now called “active imagination” but are better known in occult circles as pathworking or visualisation.  I do this so that people can master those aspects of themselves so that they can be more balanced when they come to do more serious magical work on both the physical and astral planes.

But like many things, the psychological approach in magic has gone too far.  Like many things lately I have to chant the mantra “I blame Regardie” but to that mix I have to also blame Francis King, who coloured his history of the Golden Dawn with Regardie’s bias.  Dion Fortune also inspired much of this approach, being one of the pioneers of lay psychology in her time.

Both men believed that inner states were psychological states and that the beings we encounter there were all aspects of our unconscious.   Thus when Dr Felkin, or Samuel Mathers channelled their secret chiefs they were just opening up a path to their repressed unconscious aspects.  To Regardie, the Book of the Law came straight from Crowley’s unconscious, rather than any spirit.

In many ways I agree with Regardie and King, you always have to interpret visions, or dreams psychologically first.  This is because any energy you encounter on the astral plane is going to be communicating through your unconscious.  If you encounter a Goddess then it is going to appear through the symbols you associate with your “significant mother archetype.”

Israel Regardie channelling Harry Potter

But where I differ with Regardie is that spirits, angels, and gods do have an objective reality which is separate from your own psyche.  When you work a ritual to a particular god or goddess, and you are lucky, you are going to pick up the real deal.

These spirits will appear to have a personality, a life and memories which are just as real as any being you meet on the material world.  They are going to have plans and needs which will go well beyond what you think that being would have or need.

In the cases of the bigger ones, such as gods and archangels, there will be a celestial version of it which acts very differently from the sub-lunar lower astral version.  The celestial version will be the highest and most abstract version of the god or archangel.  It will also be the most aloof from the needs of humanity and be more concerned with cosmic events, rather than helping you get a girlfriend.

The sub-lunar aspects of these beings are closer to earth and therefore understand humans more -- they have also been more anthropomorphized by humans.  It is more often these beings that we end up talking to the most.  But the downside of dealing with these sorts of beings is that they have a few of humanity’s negative traits and need to be handled with care.

Some entities, such as ancestral spirits, elementals, and the darker daemons (I am not convinced that demons exist but are just Christian corruptions of sub-lunar entities) remain sub-lunar.  This sub-lunar realm also encompasses the underworld and anything you find there.  These sub-lunar entities which lack a celestial component are the most risky to deal with.  However they are also the most rewarding, because contacts with these spirits teaches us more about ourselves.  They are also more likely to help us with some of the magical heavy lifting.

The point of this particular blog is to say:

“Spirits exist.  They are not aspects of your unconscious, but real living beings.”

When that particular card is pulled out of the house of psychological magic, then a whole lot of things comes tumbling down with it.  Psychology becomes a method of communication and self understanding rather than a complete philosophy which can be applied to magic.

Let the Underworld Sacrifice Begin

One of the reasons why magic does not work is because a person has not understood what they have to sacrifice for the rite to happen.

In different systems of magic, there is the concept of sacrifice – of giving something up to achieve a desire or receive something from the gods.  Usually this is symbolic; a person killed an animal, or poured wine into a trench to give something up to achieve a goal. 

Even in initiation, the concept of taking an oath can be considered a form of sacrifice where the “victim” is the person who is dying so that they can become something more.  They are narrowing their life and promising not to do something so that they can be more than human.

However, there might be something more behind these symbols than first appears, which could lead us to an area of experimental magic.

Most magicians believe that magic can be used to create a change in their lives or environment.  They do rituals because they want something to be different.  In many ways they are creating a new universe in which certain undesirable components are not there.  Effectively they are taking the role of the mind of god, Thoth, and speaking a new universe into being.  Having made their last utterance, and cleared up the wax, which has stuck to the carpet, they wait for the new universe to unfold around them.

Magic seems to create four “effects”: the first and least noticeable is that it does not work at all.  The ritual is said to be a failure and often others are tried.  The next is that something happens but it does not quite manage to achieve its goals.  The third effect is that it works but things do not work as intended and, while the primary goal is achieved, other unexpected events happen.  Lastly, the ritual works and the new universe replaces the old one.

Recently I have come to believe that the reason that some rituals do not work is something to do with the strength of the old universe and the desire on the part of the magician (or outside forces) to maintain it.

Give your old stuff to the Baron at the Crossroads

Ask yourself, for this ritual to work, how much change will be required.  Some rituals require cosmetic changes to the existing universe and should be more likely to be successful. 

It makes little odds to the universe that you get to a certain destination on time without the aircraft developing turbulence and you having to be anally probed by US customs and immigration when you arrive.  A travel ritual to protect against this will probably succeed.  But a much more considerable aspect of your life would change if you won a huge sum on the lottery.  You would also be doing “black magic” to prevent another person’s universe changing as result of your win.

Let’s look at another area of “low magic” to explain the problem.  You had a problematic relationship with a person and you were always fighting.  One day you both worked out this was self-destructive and ended it.  You find yourself alone and do a ritual to find a new partner.  Nothing happens.   The answer might be that the old destructive relationship is still in your life.  You can’t ask the gods to create you a new universe with a new one until you have a space to put a new person inside it.

This idea of “having the space” to roll out the new universe is vital. What appears to happen is that when the creator gods of magic unfold your new shiny universe, there have to be holes cut inside the design for all the things you want to remain.  After all, if you invoke for a new job you do not want your relationship to pack in, or your dog to suddenly vanish overnight.  The problem is that if something in your life is central and antagonistic to your ultimate goal remains, then the new universe will end up exactly like the old one.

While the creation of a new universe is one idea, with its own set of gods, we have to ask the important question “what happened to the old one?” and “what needs to be chopped out of my universe to make this work?”  It is these things that need to be sacrificed for us to make sure our magic works.

This god of sacrifice is a variation of one of the many underworld death gods within religion.  They are Satan, Set, Baron LaCross, Typhon, Pluto, Dis Pater and Saturn.  Before any creation ritual they must be unleashed onto your existing universe, removing those things which stand in the way of what you want.

The first thing many of you must be thinking is “hang on, allowing the destruction of my existing universe by letting this lot make merry with it is insane.”  In some ways you are right.  But equally does that really mean that you don’t want something enough to make the sacrifice?  Is it possible to say that something is your True Will if you are not prepared to sacrifice something else to obtain it?

This attempting to hold on to a large chunk of your universe while at the same time hanging onto your old one is simply not possible.  One change should create other dramatic ones and when you do your invocation, you unconsciously know what each one is.

In fact when you do an invocation you will find yourself putting riders on what you want, which could ultimately kill off any potential universe unfolding correctly.  “I invoke for a magical order which is suitable for me, but has to meet within walking distance of my house, have a pub nearby, have no fees and will recognise my magical genius.”

St Expeditus

So how can we find out what impact our magic will have?  How can we find out what we have to give up, to obtain what we want?

If we invoke gods like Thoth, or our spirit guides, or who (or whatever) to help us create a universe, we have to invoke the death gods to help us discover what our sacrifices will need to be.

This might be the reason that Dis Pater, the roman Hades, was called the father of all riches.  It was because he let the old bad things die so new wealth could come into a life. 

Before you do any invocation which would lead to the creation of a new universe, you should invoke one of the death gods to ask their permission and to request that they tell you what the sacrifice will be.  They will probably tell you and once that sacrifice is made you can invoke for your new life (if you still want to go ahead with it).  

It might be that to get what you want you really have to break up with your girlfriend, who is holding you back.  You might have to leave your mother’s basement and start taking some responsibility for your life.  You might really need to leave the country before the police knock down the door, or give up that person who you are convinced is the love of your life.  It will be the underworld death gods which will arrange that for you so the good work can begin.

It sounds curiously inverted, invoking a death god to ask for a new life, but this is exactly the principle behind a Voodoo magician invoking , who was connected to the king of the dead Baron LaCross.  Expeditus, as his name suggests was called upon to make things happen today rather than tomorrow.  What better way to make something happen quickly than if all the obstacles to your new universe are sacrificed.

Magic has a price... you have to give up your old life to get the new

The discovery of the Vault as a symbol of Divine Realisation:

What finding the Vault means and where to seek it.
 

MOAA's Vault

  "We speak unto you by parables, but would willingly bring you to the right, simple, easy and ingenuous exposition, understanding, declaration, and  knowledge of all secrets."

Approaching the legend of the discovery of the vault of Christian Rosenkreuz, we are are presented with a symbolic allegory of the finding of our own spiritual self and a system of truth. It is a personal discovery and one which cannot be dictated by dogma and doc­trine. To understand how we may begin to unlock its secrets, we must see the use of the allegory in its historical context. The author or authors of the Fama Fraternitatis, where this legend first appears, were used to looking at symbols in a different way from modern humanity. Therefore, we should look at what they understood when writing the alle­gory.

"If you pay attention you will be able to see things better. Repeat again what you hear, for by hearing and saying the same thing, what you have learned is easier to remember. What you hear, place on what you know."

In other words, if you want to remember that Ajax was a sol­dier in the Trojan Wars, you would imagine him standing next to a statue of Mars in a room in your bathroom cleaning the bath with a big map of Greece in the background. You would remember to put all Ajax's soldiers in the bathroom. So if you were going through a speech you would mentally walk through your house until you got to the bathroom. In your mind's eye you would see a soldier cleaning the bath, remem­ber Ajax, see the map of Greece and remember he was on the Greek side of the Trojan war.

The Greeks and Romans needed to codify things better and cover the long lists needed to remember their speeches. They already had a list of gods, who were attributed to the different planets. In memory terms, all they had to do was see a statue of the god and then they would immediately think of the planet. Cronos (Saturn) would be a link to words like death, time, inheritance and blackness, while Zeus (Jupiter) would connect to things like rulership, wealth and purple. The net widened to include the zodiacal attribu­tions. This meant that if they were making a speech about war with the Persians, they would use a magical image of a statue of Mars with the various points of their speech being placed around it.

Whare Ra Vault

The period immediately before the writing of the Fama, the Renaissance, was a period were Greek and Roman ideas were being incorporated into the mindset of the European intelligentsia. Amongst these were the writings of Cicero and Pliny, who advocated the use of a symbolic method to enhance memory. The method was first codified by Simon­ides of Ceos (556BC – 468BC) and was summed up in a 4th century fragment known as Dialexeis:

One of the important aspects of this technique was the idea of having a place which would be visited in the imagination. These places, and the symbols contained in them, became a shorthand to different meanings. One of the main presentations of an esoteric system is to learn a language of symbols which help the person unlock the mysteries within it.

This was a side effect of using this type of system. People using it started to have new realisations about their subject. This side effect was noted and explained by the philoso­phers Plato and Aristotle. Both considered obtaining knowledge as simply recovering information (remembering information) that had been forgotten when we were born and fell from our perfected state in the higher realms of existence. So when people were using these memory systems it was no surprise that they ‘remembered’ something else about the subject at the same time. While this might be true, it is more likely that the meditation on symbols causes the mind to focus and invent new ideas.

Either way, it was perfectly reasonable then that 'memory systems' could be used to teach by bringing new information to the conscious mind of the practitioner. This is particularly important when you consider that contemplating some symbols, information which many considered esoteric would have been remembered by the person using the system.

Modern occultism developed pathworking from the techniques that The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn called ‘skrying in the spirit’. Others now call it pathworking. It is too easy to dismiss such techniques as simply daydreaming or imagination. One of the great Rosicrucians of 19th century, Dr Wynn Westcott, said that "imagination must be distin­guished from fancy, which is mere roving thoughts, or simply visions". He said that imagi­nation is "an orderly and intentional mental process and result. Imagination is the relative faculty of the human mind, the plastic energy – the Formative Power."(1)



"It is an ancient Hermetic dogma that any idea can be made to manifest externally if only by culture, the art of concentration be obtained.. Man by his creative power through will and thought was more divine than the Angels, for he can create and they cannot."

It is clear that the writers of the Fama were drawing on these imagination techniques, which were developed from the Middle Ages and 16th century memory systems. Frances A. Yates, in her book 'Art of Memory', suggests that it is these techniques that may have evolved into the medieval magical system called the Ars notoria. Under this system, she says, the magician would stare at magical symbols, recite a prayer, and gain knowledge of all arts and sciences.

The allegory of the discovery of the vault is designed to reveal by meditation esoteric knowledge which was not only buried by the writers, but to help remember new infor­mation. The vault itself was a memory place, which was supposed to contain all the wis­dom that Christian Rosenkreuz could provide. What then becomes crucial to the story is how the would­be Rosicrucian finds that vault and connects to it. This paper will show the sort of thought processes involved. However, I should warn that the experience will be unique to everyone who tries the technique. A symbol of a dog will mean one thing to a person who has been attacked by one and another by a person who loves the ani­mal, so each symbol in the allegory will give a different message to the person who ap­proaches it.

Westcott added that the power of imagination to create images enabled it to produce external phenomena by its own energy.

(1) See 'The Golden Dawn' by Israel Regardie

The Fama describes the finding of the vault thus:
"The year following after he had performed his [Fr. A.] school right, and was minded now to travel, being for that purpose sufficiently provided with Fortunatus purse, he thought (he being a good architect) to alter something of his building [of the school of the Rosicrucians], and to make it more fit: in such renewing he lighted upon the memorial table which was cast of brass, and containeth all the names of the brethren, with some few other things; this he would transfer in another more fitting vault: for where or when Fr. R.C. died, or in what country he was buried, was by our predecessors concealed and unknown unto us."

To understand what is happening you have to put yourself in the place of Fr. A., whose name begins with the first letter of the alphabet and has a similar role to the spiritual Adam. You have to use your imagination and see through his eyes and hear through his ears. This technique was familiar to the Jesuits of the period, who used it to deepen their spiritual experiences of the life of Christ. From the above quote, Fr. A. would be a well educated, trained Rosicrucian, who having enough money was preparing to travel. More importantly, he was an architect. Architects use mathematics to design important build­ings. Mathematics was moving out of the period were it was regarded as occult, but was still widely treated with suspicion by the common people. It was considered a pinnacle of intellectual achievement.

The allegory says this architect wanted to change the way that the Rosicrucian temple worked. He believed that it needed to be reformed. The legend adds that the brothers had forgotten who founded them. This could be seen as a Lutheran dig at the Roman Catholic church, but it could equally be applied to any system of thought which has be­come jaded. Indeed, as our reformer carries out his renewal, he finds a brass tablet upon which are the names of those who ruled the order. The fact that the tablet was of brass is important. Brass was attributed to the planet Venus – the planet of Nature. The sym­bol of placing the names of these illustrious fraters on a tablet of brass, binds them to the forces of Nature. Fr. A. decides to place this tablet in a more important place within the school. In other words, he wanted to acknowledge achievements of the past fraters.

In this Tablet stuck a great nail somewhat strong, so that when he was with force drawn out, he took with him an indifferent big stone out of the thin wall, or plastering of the hidden door, and so unlooked for uncov­ered the door.

In his book "The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order" the 20th cen­tury Rosicrucian Paul Foster Case makes the interesting suggestion that the nail being described here is the Hebrew letter Vav, which means ‘nail’. To Case, the letter represented the Divine Self and was represented by the Tarot Key "The Heirophant". He suggests that Fr. A. was having an inspired realisation about how to find true wisdom. Whether this is literally true or not, it gives us an example of how the symbolism of the opening of the vault can give us insights into a par­ticular spiritual process. Without following Case we can also find ideas relating to the symbol of the nail.

The nail supported the brass plate, which contained the names of all the members and was hard to get free. In other words, when we are bringing out new spiritual ideas, it is often hard to free them from our past belief patterns.
This nail was driven into an "indifferent big stone" which, once removed, revealed the secret door. Masons are well aware of the symbolic meaning of the word 'stone', how­ever this sentence implies that, while the basis of the Fr A.'s tradition was rooted in imper­fection, it nevertheless covered the truth.
This motif of truth being found among falsehoods, or strains of spiritual gold being found among heathens, is examined several times in the Fama. In an earlier part of the legend, Christian Rosenkreuz found much wisdom amongst systems which are limited or cor­rupted by religion. It implies that you will never find complete truth in the various relig­ions, or even esoteric schools around you. You must sift through the rubble to find the vault. Then, when you least expect it, or are not looking, you will find the way to the truth.

It implies that the discovery of truth always involves the ending of an old pattern of life. Before the vault can be found, the old ways must first be demolished. Dissatisfaction with these old patterns is usually the precursor to revelation. This is somewhat alarming to those who believe that at their spiritual tradition is pure and correct. The Fama seems to be saying that even if it was, it will only be from the rubble of its death that the next reve­lation will spring.

"Wherefore we did with joy and longing throw down the rest of the wall, and cleared the door, upon which that was written in great letters, Post 120 annos patebo [after 120 years I open], with the year of the Lord un­der it."

This implies that the realisation of truth is always carried out with the knowledge of that spiritual impulse which, in this legend, is represented by the body of Christian Rosenkreuz at the vault's heart. Another way of saying this would be that true spiritual understand­ing only comes from God. But there is another message here, which is that if we are meant to find the truth it is because we were destined to do so. We can sift through the rubbish of countless belief systems, but if our spiritual selves do not think we are ready to see the truth within, we will carry on searching.

The number 120 also gives us a clue. Moses died at age 120. Hiram sent Solomon 120 talents of gold, as did Sheba. It seems likely that the number represents the completion of project and reward. It could also be seen as an indication of spiritual wisdom, maturity and perfection. To open the vault we cannot be spiritual children, we need to have gone through the various trials that life throws at us. This is not a path where we are expected to deny any aspect of life. Indeed, we are expected to be people who have lived more than the 70 years the Bible ordains for the ordinary human. It is through the attainment of this level of wisdom that the door to the vault is revealed.

However, there is one last step before the truth revealed itself. It was night and the Fama says that the Rosicrucian brothers delayed opening the door until the morning. This was so that the brothers could first "overlook" their "Rotam". "Rotam" is an irritating word be­cause it literally means wheel but the Fama gives no real clues as to what it means.

Paul Foster Case insists that the word is a blind for Tarot.  Case believed this because the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn considered the 'Book T' mentioned in a description of the Vault to be that of the Tarot but the use of cards for esoteric purposes was a 19th century development. The cards were not being used for divination during the 17th century and the Fama mentioning that Christian monks performed a tarot divination before opening the vault would have attracted much contemporary attention. The Wheel was considered a symbol of life processes and if you look at the full quote, it makes sense that before they opened the vault they considered their lives up until the current point.

"Therefore we gave God thanks and let it rest that same night, because first we would overlook our Rotam; but we refer our selves again to the confession."

Before the truth is unveiled, we must look at our lives in detail. The moments before reve­lation are like the seconds before death. Once the truth is revealed, life is never the same again. The symbol of the revealed but unopened vault waiting in the darkness for the first rays of the dawn is powerful. The vault provides a new truth and its potential impact must be thought about before it is enacted. Truth may not be revealed in the darkness, that is among the ignorant, nor can it be revealed at the time when a cycle is over. Truth appears with the dawn because it is the sun of initiation.

The process to find this vault, then, always starts with the raw material of meditation on the Rosicrucian allegory. Before we can understand the symbols of the vault, we must understand the symbolic process of finding it. As stated at the beginning of this paper, that process is unique to each individual performing the search. This is because each per­son's reaction to these symbols is unique. Therefore let each find the vault within their own heart and understand the allegory's meaning.