Manifestationem Volume 1 Issue 3

Contents Editorial

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Acknowledgments

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Disclaimer - Risks of Magic: please read!

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The Risks of Magic 7 Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Symbolic Tables 12 The Lesser Magic System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Sample Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Lesser vs. High Magic Basic Distinctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Initiation and egregores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Editorial By Jaden F. Ward When you discuss with someone, you can guess his feelings by the observation of his facial mimics, of the tone of his voice, and the vocabulary he uses. However, when you do so, you are not ”inside” his head! Using a different vocabulary, his feelings are the prototypes, the source of his behavior. The behavior is the manifestation of these prototypes. Another example would be road signs: they indicate (manifest) the existence of a material place (commercial center, hospital, etc...) that the driver cannot directly see - but they are not the place itself! From these metaphors, one needs to add only one concept to obtain the theory of manifestation: when one speaks about magic, if one moves the road sign, then the hospital will disappear. And indeed, if one wishes to destroy a building using magic, destroying the material road signs would be a valid symbolic act - however, this would not harm the physical hospital, but its ”subtle” representation. But, what the hell do we mean by changing the subtle representation of this building? Let me detail the concept of manifestation a little more. Manifestation is one of the core metaphysical theories of magic (be it lesser or high magic). The idea, simply expressed, is as follows: the material world is the manifestation of more subtle, less perceptible, prototype worlds. Magic is a method exploiting the mechanisms of these subtle planes, which are mostly symbolic. When one changes these prototype planes, their material manifestation is altered; and vice-versa. This has two implications: 1. If one observes a mechanism in the manifested (material) plane, then it means there is a counterpart in the subtle planes - this is the base of astrology. And, off course, we are not interested about the influence of the planets themselves (they are also just manifested rocks), but about the prototypes behind these planetary manifestations. We will see later that for each of these prototypes several manifestations exist (including, but not limited to, the planets). 2. If one uses appropriate symbols, tuned to the structure of the subtle (immaterial) planes, he will induce changes both in the subtle and manifested planes. This bi-directional effect is resumed in the Emerald Tablet as ”all that stands above is similar to what lies below”. Concerning the subtle planes themselves, their metaphysical description is out of the scope of our topic. One should just remember that they are usually 3

represented for more convenience as discontinuous with the material planes (hence, supernatural) - they could be seen as Russian dolls for instance. However this discontinuity is wrong in principle: their true structures are rather like those of fractal curves (with embedded dimensions, in our world there is nothing ”supernatural”).

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Acknowledgments Editor: Jaden F. Ward Editorial committee: The Stone of Ollerus First draft: Jaden F. Ward Proofreading: Kokuyoh Morisawa, Aspen Artworks: Jaden F. Ward General content and discussions: meeting of the Stone of Ollerus, Januray 5th , 2009 see our website: http://www.meetup.com/Stone-of-Ollerus/

Publication: Stone of Ollerus - publishing (webzine) Tokyo, Japan May 21st , 2009 All articles are copyright of the authors.

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Stone of Ollerus - publishing

Disclaimer - Risks of Magic

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The Risks of Magic By Jaden F. Ward

Theory Would you let a child play football with a nuclear warhead? This is what using magic without proper preparation looks like - who is ready to blow himself up? We will discuss here about the dangers of magic, and how we can reduce these dangers. As a first preliminary disclaimer, I will just mention that if you disagree with the following guidelines and refuse to use them, I will not be held responsible for the consequences of your acts. You will be alone when you will face Nemesis. There are a few risks inherent to the very nature of magic, that you must be aware of before trying to play with it. They could be summarized in a few famous sentences: • Money can’t buy happiness. • The road to hell is paved with good intentions. • Be careful what you wish for. We will see below some more details about these three sentences. Last but not least, the practice of lesser magic puts you in contact with the subtle planes. After a while, you might notice changes in your interactions with reality, and acquire some abilities going beyond the level of lesser magic - your interaction with higher planes grants you an intuitive (but partial) access to high magic. This is out of the scope of today’s meeting, but in simple terms, high magic is even more dangerous than lesser magic. Therefore, 7

unless you are truly aware of what you are doing, and prepared to face the consequences. . . Do not use it!

Money can’t buy happiness Most people are attracted by magic because they want to realize their desires, wether it be money, lust, revenge, control of their environment, or simply power. Realizing desires is not usually good - one has to learn the distinction between his true will, and his earthly desires. A simple example would be the main character of the movie Citizen Kane. A child who lost his childhood realizes all his desires and becomes a journalism and finance magnate, and ends his life in a crazily opulent property. . . But never finds what he truly wished for: the carefreeness of his lost childhood! Our desires are usually the manifestation of spiritual limitations - and one would always be better off overcoming these limitations, rather than reinforcing them. On the spiritual plane, these limitations are usually termed as “larvae” or “astral larvae”. It is said that the practice of magic can easily lead to the reinforcement of such entities: when you use magic to run after your desires you just feed them, and they grow bigger. In order to avoid feeding larvas, magic should be directed towards higher (non material) goals. To give an example, if one wishes for a better job, it would be much more proficient to use magic in order to dissolve the larva preventing him from getting the job; rather than using magic to obtain directly the job, which would create a new larva (or feed an existing one) whose sole purpose is to obtain promotions.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions What about helping others? Some of you might have read the Wiccan ”threefold law” motto. . . They believe that when magic is used to help someone, they get back three times what they gave (and conversely when they harm). It seems nice, but this view of the world is too simplistic. The first problem is that giving is not always good per se. Let us see one example: someone wants to help a friend quit smoking. He uses a magical ritual to remove the need for smoking, and obtains a perfect success: within a week his friend is cured of his need for tobacco and nicotine. But two weeks later, the very same friend becomes alcoholic. . . Who can guess why? This is pretty obvious: 8

smoking is a psychological kickstand, a necessary equilibrium for a weakness, without which he was no longer able to survive. In this case, it would have been much better to remove the weakness of this person. In other words, the magic targeted the symptom, but not the cause (the manifestation, i.e. smoking, but not the astral larva causing it).

Be careful what you wish for It should now be obvious that magic should always be applied in order to change the cause, and not the symptom. This is, however, not sufficient. The second missing statement on the Wiccan three-fold law is the mechanism of magic explaining why we should always avoid harmful effects (such as cursing) and violent effects (e.g. earthquakes); and need to be extremely cautious with the desired effect. To put things simply, the structure of the world of desire (yetzirah, or the astral plane) which is manipulated in lesser magic is similar to the internet: everything is linked one to another. This leads to several consequences: • Changing a detail will change everything. In other words, magic has secondary effects, on everything that relates with its target - including to a large extent the spell caster (so if you try to kill someone using dark magic, be prepared to get harmed). • The second problem with such a structure is that when you disturb it, it automatically seeks for a new equilibrium. So, if you use magic to create huge size effects, the consequences can be dramatic. • However, to obtain such large effects high magic is usually necessary (large effects tend to breach causality). • The last problem (corollary of the previous one) is that magic will always use the simplest path, i.e. the one that disturbs minimally the reality. The first consequence is that if you successfully use magic to become rich, it is rather likely that your whole family will die to bring you an inheritance (the simplest solution). The second consequence is that if you use magic to be cured of a cancer it would be stupid to stop your chemotherapy (because chemotherapy is the simplest solution magic will increase your survival rate when you take those pills from 60% to 90%, but if you do not swallow the pill. . . ). 9

Guidelines Now that you now the risks, we can see a few guidelines to avoid them: 1. When you use magic, target results in the astral plane, and not in their manifestations, 2. Use very precise symbols to channel your ritual properly, 3. Do not use spells in an area that your mind cannot cope with (do not use something too destabilizing for your mind), 4. Try to minimize the induced imbalance (do not use something too destabilizing for reality), 5. Do not use spells to go against the divine planes (see thereafter lesser vs. high magic), 6. Never use spells to feed larvae (egregores are usually the exception, see below lesser vs. high magic). 7. Do not use magic to harm, unless the punishment is fair. Who are you to judge anyway? 8. As a generalization of the previous rule, never use magic to affect the material world or obtain a material result, unless you have a clear and equilibrated understanding of the meaning of what you are doing, 9. Always write down your ritual and test it using scrying techniques before usage (for instance using Tarot, clairvoyance, or with whatever method you are familiar), 10. Should you teach magic to someone, unless you have clearly explained the above points, you will share with him the consequences of his deeds (because you will remain symbolically connected every time he will use what you have taught). Hence, always teach the limits before teaching the methods. If you fail to follow this last warning, you commit one of the worst spiritual crime, hubris (or hybris), and you will pay the consequences (facing Nemesis together with your student).

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Discussion Q1: What is the problem with mental health? Could you give an example of how magic could destabilize a mind? E1: Human mind is fragile. Human mind is structured to cope only with experiences that match previo9us experiences. Usually, when something contradictory is experienced, the mind tries to ignore the new information with an obtuse generalization. This process, cognitive dissonance, is necessary to maintain an internal balance. Magic provides tremendous psychological experiences, and the mind cannot shut down the incoming flow of information. New experiences, especially those of high magic, should be approached very progressively. Imagine what would happen if a materialist saw the evocation of an entity to visible appearance? His conception of the material reality might collapse, and he would become crazy. Actually, in the legends surrounding Cogliostro (Joseph Balsamo), the story is told of an aristocrat who went crazy after seeing a ghost that Balsamo evoked. Furthermore, generally speaking, if you use magic through the guidance of an unbalanced emotional-self (or ego), you end up reinforcing this unbalance. So for instance, if you are afraid of your own death, do not try to play with necromancy, you would end up crazy. Similarly, people with psychiatric alienations such as schizophrenia or severe delusions are not encouraged to practice magic, which could worsen their pathology.

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Symbolic Tables by Jaden F. Ward

The Lesser Magic System Lesser magic uses symbolic tables in order to tune the concentration of will of the mage to a specific force. Several systems exist, generally inspired by manifested items (as all that stands above is similar to what lies below) organized in a completed (hence equilibrated) system: 4 or 5 elemental classification (such as Dee’s Enochian system, F. Bardon’s system, or the geomantic evocations), 5 agents (Taoist magic), 7 planets (medieval magic and astrology), 36 arcs of 10 degrees (the decans), 72 arcs of 5 degrees (the schemhamphorash). I will present here symbolic tables of the planetary system, first because it is the most famous, second because it is both simple (72 items is too much!) and flexible (it can be used for almost all styles of magic, including high magic). The symbols are presented depending on their tradition of origin (medieval = Agrippa , OTO = Crowley and Regardie , AS = Denning and Philips ), for each planet. When some common elements are found between the traditions, they are written in bold. The difference between these systems, and means to select the most appropriate for your work, are detailed in the next section. Planetary aspects (the purpose of each of the seven forces) can be studied through mythology, but I provide here a simplified list if need be: Moon: astral plane itself, astral travel, dreams, illusions, creation. - Mars: action, judgment and law, punishment, regulation, strength, war and martial arts. - Mercury: knowledge, symbols, teaching and learning. - Jupiter: wisdom, paternity, authority. - Venus: charisma, love, friendship, but also sexual attraction. - Saturn: death, usually the planet of curses, but also 12

karma and awakening. - Sun: harmony, victory. The seven planets correspond to the seven days of the week (so a work dedicated to Mercury should be performed on Wednesday, one for the Moon on Monday); and they also correspond to the Roman/Greek mythic gods, and to the last seven Sephirah of the Tree of Life (in reverse order starting from the 9th Sephirah to the 3rd: Moon=Yesod, Mercury=Hod, Venus=Netzah, Sun=Tiphereth, Mars=Geburah, Jupiter=Chesed, and Binah=Saturn).

Sample Tables Discussion Q1: How were the symbolic tables decided? Someone had to decide on these symbolic relationships. If one day someone decide that the proper representation of the planet Mercury is a banana, is it considered valid? If not, what distinguish these tables from an impro13

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vised symbology? E1: There are three answers.

1. Philosophically: a purely philosophical approach is correct, if the philosopher is strongly attuned with the divine planes. If not, it is not philosophy but poetry. 2. Signatures: from the signatures of the divine symbols into material elements. For instance, the sunflower turns towards the sun, hence it is a sun symbol. This is the method of Agrippa, but as the previous method, the interpretation of the symbol depends on the connection with the divine planes. . . 3. Experimental: one select an element, and through trial and error, checks for what works well or not. This is however impossible without proper training, and judging the result is not so easy. This approach, if passed down through generations of mages, becomes a tradition. In the end, it all narrows down to the idea of egregores. When an experimental approach forms a tradition, it becomes part of an egregore (generally by alteration, or linking, to a pre-existing one). And because an egregore is necessary for the two first aspects in order to be attuned to the divine planes, it becomes a closed loop: • Initiates of a tradition would be able to change their symbolic tables. but they will usually not undergo such a complex task unless necessary. • Profanes will need more than one human life to develop their own table. Unless they have a very inspired character, they will have a hard time doing it. This could be summarized as a traditionist/reconstructivist opposition. A traditionist has the tools but do not have any interest in using them, whereas a reconstructivist does not have proper tools but wants to work! Finally, one has to remember that different egregores have different sensibilities to the three approaches (so depending on the tradition you would study, experience or philosophy will have a different contributions for the construction of symbolic tables). 16

Q2: Do you mean that Greek and Roman gods are the same? Mars and Ares seem to be very different from the religious perspective. They had different temples, and were worshipped with different prayers. How is it possible that we can use similar symbolism to channel the forces they control. A2: Depends on your interpretation level. Remember that in magical working, the astrological interpretation and the mythological ones inter-penetrates: magic is a mysticism, not a religion with an established dogma! Consequently, the forces of the seven planets are symbolic, and should not be taken as an exegesis. Magic works with symbolism, not with dogma, and the purpose of symbolism is to provide a map in order to explore the spiritual realms. But the map should not be confused with the truth! Note also that the symbolism can be adapted depending on the pantheon. For instance, in AS symbolism, the Nard substance is used only when evoking Hermes Psychopompe. Q2: Could you give an example of use of these tables? This is a lot of information. How is this practically used? A2: The invisibility ring. In medieval magic, there is a pretty famous method to create an invisibility ring. It is based on the sacrifice of a weasel whose eye is inserted into a ring, on which is engraved words of power associated with Mercury. Placing the eye inside your palm makes you invisible, and you become again visible when reversing the ring’s position. This is off course a tool of lesser magic, so the “invisibility” effect is more based on discretion and some kind of astral hypnosis rather than truly making rays of light pass through your body. Before any of the reader goes to catch and sacrifice a poor weasel, he would be advised to check on the table for symbolic equivalents. The table gives the symbolic meaning of the weasel: it is a Mercury symbol - and the eye obviously refers to vision and invisibility. A true initiate could easily replace these symbols by something more appropriate and less bloody. . .

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This is one usually ignored strength of symbolic tables: once you know the symbolism behind a ritual, you can adapt it using tools more readily available. By comparing tables, you can adapt a ritual from another tradition to your own (to do so, you also need to respect the core ritual structure of your tradition - for instance in Aurum Solis, the House of Sacrifice).

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Lesser vs. High Magic by Jaden F. Ward

Basic Distinctions What distinguishes lesser and high magic, is that lesser magic uses the usual world’s laws, while high magic creates these laws. You can have a good representation of how the world works by looking at the crowd in Shibuya at the Hachiko Square exit. When the signal becomes green, hundreds of people run to cross the street - yet no one gets hurt. This miracle comes for a simple mechanism of convergence, and the simplest path for everyone is chosen; which can be represented as the solution of a multi-dimensional equation. If the light was to remain constantly green, then some stable traits would start to appear. The idea is the same with the law of causality: the reality is somehow stable, with constant traits. These constant traits exist because of an interacting equilibrium between all the existing forces. Lesser magic respects this equilibrium. High magic disrupts this equilibrium, in order to find a new one: in other words, it “re-writes” the laws of nature in a certain locality. The problem is that usually, the ability to rewrite the laws of nature is attributed to high-degree beings: bodhisattvas, pagan gods, saints/archangels, etc Unless you belong to one of these “clubs”, you cannot attempt to do it. Here is below a table of the level of power you can reach with both lesser and high magics. So, if you do not hold a “god club member’s card”, how can you rewrite the laws of nature? Here comes the concept of high magic. The idea is that you will ask the “god club members” to work for you. Unfortunately, they will only obey to people who:

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• Speak to them appropriately, with rituals that they like to hear. This is called theurgy. • Ask for something that would not go against the “god club” goals. One who do not respect these conditions usually faces what is termed as the “threshold warden” (sometimes also termed “threshold dragon”) - which is a force of re-equilibration who tends to make the mage “pay” for his acts of ubris. As an example, in the Greco-Roman mythology, this warden is the goddess Nemesis; in the Kabbalah it would be the archangel of Geburah. From the first condition you can deduce that high magic leaves much less freedom to the practitioner regarding its style. For instance, if you intend to evoke the power of a Greek god, you will have to use a Greek ritual (most probably using the orphic rites). If you intend to evoke a Judeo-Christian archangel, you will need Judeo-Christian Kabbalistic names of power. And you need to use rituals that were revealed by the very same entities, usually old rituals dating back to antiquity (you cannot improvise or use your own inspiration - unless your inspiration comes from the same divine planes). From the second condition, you can guess that there are two solutions: either you obtain a ”god worshipper club member card”, or you must be blessed. This means that high magic is only accessible to people who have received an esoteric initiation (they are club members) or to people with a very developed spirituality (for instance, those who meditate in average more 20

than 6-8 hours per day). As people rarely belong to the second group, let me introduce the concept of initiation.

Initiation and egregores Initiation is a process where an initiate attempts to use a high magic ritual to change the nature of the applicant. The initiate himself received a similar initiation, with a lineage coming back to original spiritual guides. Theoretically, the original guide was a workaholic saint who meditated around 14 hours per day, could speak directly with the Almighty God Creator, and thus did receive his own initiation directly from the divine planes. This is however mythological: usually, a direct chain of initiates can not be traced up to this first guide - in reality, the true force comes from a disincarnate being (call it spirit, thought form, energy, or force if you like) called an egregore. The term comes from the book of Enoch, but similar concepts could be found in Greco-Roman mythology (the Titan Prometheus is a good equivalent). These beings are guides of mankind, and establish a link between the material planes and the divine ones. The purpose of initiation is that someone, who is in contact with an egregore, grants acces to the egregore to someone who is not. The mythical “original initiate” is hence very likely a mythological representation of the egregore itself. The mythological aspect has an operative necessity, as it gathers energy and symbolically links the tradition with the attributes of this first mythological guide, so somehow the myth is “true” in the subtle planes. Some authors present the idea of self-initiation. The idea is to get in contact with an egregore without having to go through the ordeals of esoteric societies. This can be very helpful to isolated seekers. Unfortunately, there are stringent limitations to such self initiations: 1. Most of the self-initiation rituals were created by humans - whereas the rituals should have been created being taken from a preexisting egregore. Take a great care, and look carefully at the method, does it involve chanting New Age songs on New Age music? Then this is not self-initiation, but self-delusion! 2. Avoiding the ordeals means that you avoid most of the training (as most of the teachings are oral). Did you really think initiates bother to go through these ordeals just for fun? 21

3. You may become acknowledged by the egregore, but if you do not have access to the rituals, of what use would it be? For instance, a huge amount of material about the Golden Dawn or the Aurum Solis was published. However, much more unpublished material exist, and, off course what was not published is the most powerful: publishing rituals means they become desecrated, and consequently lose much of their egregoric potency. This is the reason why usually lesser magic is easier to find than high magic (you will find published lesser magic rituals with high magic’s theory, but rarely complete and effective high magic rituals). 4. Most of the high magic rituals are group operations. Belonging to a group of initiates creates the necessary social organization which can recruit peer mages for a magical operation, especially for the reason that you need them to be initiated. If you gather a group of self-initiated persons, belonging to the same egregore. . . Then what is different from joining an esoteric society? Probably that you are just wasting your time! Let we define more precisely some aspects of egregores with a few sentences. First, the positive points: • They are spiritual guides, and often provide guidance through dreams, signs, etc. • They grant access to high magic, without needing to be a “superhuman”. After a while, using their guidance, you are supposed to become some kind of a super-human. • They have a role of protection, as they prevent attacks from the threshold dragons, but also because they protect initiates from astral larvas1 . • They are (mostly) positive beings. Now, the dark side: • They are unperfected, like human beings. This means that initiation is only a first step. 1

as defined in Manifestationem Volume 1 Issue 2

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• Concerning the spiritual path, they will only bring the initiate to the door of heaven, and he will have to do the last step himself. If he fails, the initiate falls (this is the abysmal fall, described as the main risk of the left-hand spiritual path) and the egregore partially shares the initiate’s corruption. • Corollary to the previous aspect, my intuition is that powerful egregores are ALL corrupted to some degree; hence you should always keep some precautions when dealing with them (avoid performing magic when it feeds their corruptions). They help us to get to the last step, because we return them the favor (if we succeed in the last step, they get purified). In other words, egregores guide humans, because they raise this way some spiritual guides who can in turn guide them. Finally, one should note that high magic effect can sometimes be exceptionally observed without the intervention of an egregore, in a “normal” human being. This tends to happen more often for those who practice lesser magic, and the context is usually one of high necessity (for instance when one’s life is in danger, or when it corresponds to one’s destiny).

Discussion Q1: Do I have to join an initiatic society in oredr to use magic? It seems like it is a necessary step to join an esoteric society which will grant access to an egregore. E1: Not exactly. You only need an egregore to perform high magic (theurgy), not if you only care about lesser magic (sorcery). But obviously, the scope of lesser magic is limited, and does not constitute a complete spiritual path. To the best of my knowledge, a truly effective self initiation has never been published - but who knows, someone may develop something worth in the future? Regardless, a true self-initiation would not be very cost effective regarding spiritual progress. Despite the fact that initiation is useful, some initiatic societies can be maladapted to your spiritual progress as some follow positive gnosis, some 23

other negative gnosis, etc. Many different sensibilities exist. Some societies are exclusive and will forbid you from frequenting other groups. Furthermore, some pretender “initiatic” societies are hollow or even misguided. Use discretion if you intend to join a group. And obviously, avoid groups charging prohibitive costs, forcing you to participate in grouped sex rituals, and requesting you to cut all ties with you family and friends: these are cults, not occult societies.

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