High Magick...

Sapien

Wonderful to find a forum for Irish paganism, and enough pagans to fill it.

I myself am an aspirant ceremonial magician, taking liberally from all areas of the Western Esoteric Tradition, and stringing it together in a rough Golden Dawn, qabalistic structure.

While I'm not a million miles away from paganism, my interests are quite distinct. Perhaps there are others here who are inclined towards the Hermetic side of things? Enough to warrant a separate forum or sub-forum?

Irish Qabalists, Ceremonialists, Alchemists, Hermeticists - declare yourselves!

PaulinCork

I'm a Pagan Qabalist

Sapien

PaulinCork wrote:

I'm a Pagan qabalist

Interesting. How do you incorporate the Qabalah into pagan practices - what elements of it do you use?

PaulinCork

Well, this is a bit hard to describe without pictures, but here goes:

Vizualise the Tree of Life as a Circle.(!)

Kether is still at the top, Malkuth at the bottom

Tipareth is at the exact Centre.
Yesod is just above Malkuth

But the Left and Right -hand Pillars are now each a half circle

Geburah, Hod, Chesed and Netzach are all near the widest part of the circle

Binah and Chokmah are near the top of the circle, so there is less distance between them than there is between Geburah and Chesed or between Hod and Netzach

Now the ancient three-armed cross appears, with the topmost horizontal bar shorter than the other two!


Anyway if you map the 8 Pagan Festivals to the Sepiroth which are on the edge of the circle (alll of them except Yesod and Tiphareth), you get:

Samhain - Binah (the Dark Goddess)

Winter Solstice - Kether (the Birth of the Light)

Imbolc - Chokmah (the begining bursting forth)

Spring Equinox - Chesed (abundant growing)

Bealtinne - Netzach (sexual love, green, the spine & chakras/Maypole)

Summer Solstice - Malkuth (like Kether only the Birth of Darkness)

Lughnasadh -Hod (Lugh, games)

Autumn Equinox Geburah (the Darkness conquers the light)

(Tipareth and Yesod become the Sun and the Moon inside the circle. Together they generate the Wheel of the Year)


By the way, I also see Chokmah as Maiden, Kether as Mother and Binah as Crone.

And in the Circle, we have an ancestors altar in the North-west (symbolizing Binah/Samhain)


I also relate Pagan/Magical teachings to the Sephirah:

Kether: the Oneness of all being, the Great Goddess.

Chokmah: Polarity the Goddess and the God, the Yang Maiden as welll as the Yin Mother

Binah: Trinity: the Crone of destruction, added to Mother and Maiden

Chesed: the Four Quarters and Elements, Order

Geburah Magic,the pentacle, instabilty, unpredictability, banishing, human conciousness

Tiphareth the Goddess within

Netzach - the chakras, sex-magic

Hod the eight Festivals

Yesod the Astral

Malkuth - the Sacredness of the Earth

Sapien

Fascinating. The correlations you describe are quite pleasing, and demonstrate the beauty of the Qabalah and the Otz Chayiim as has been understood by Hermeticists for centuries - its flexibility as a means of systemisation and correspondence - a kind of divine filing cabinet if you will.

PaulinCork

Exactly. What aspects of Qabalah are you interested in at the moment?

Sapien

As an Hermeticist and student of the Western Esoteric Tradition there is hardly any area of magick and mysticism that is not framed by the Qabalah in my understanding.

I am recently interested in the meaning of distance from Kether on the great glyph - what is it that distinguishes one emanation from the next; what property can be assigned to the downward progression. I consider Da'ath to be immensely important in understanding this, as well as the Qlippoth. I am trying to define the nature of angels and demons as they relate to their positions in the tree and their relationships to ascension or descent therein.

I would be delighted to find people to discuss such ideas with, and did not expect to do so in a pagan forum. Who knew!

PaulinCork

Please tell me more about the Angel and Demon stuff.

Its a long time since I read Kenneth Grant, but one correspondence that fascinates me is between Daath and the connection that Yogi's make by putting the tongue to the roof of the mouth, they say it complete's a Circuit.

How do you see the Chakra's on the Tree, by the way? for me its

Malkuth Muladhara- the Root Chakra
Yesod Swaddisthana- the Lunar belly Chakra
Nezach and Hod, Manipura, the Solar Plexus, ego Chakra
Tiphareth, Anahata, the Heart Chakra
Geburah and Chesed, Vishuddi the Throat Chakra
Daath- that Yogic Tongue-tip hidden Chakra
Binah and Chokmah Ajna, the Third Eye
Kether, the Crown Chakra

PaulinCork

One teaching that I think is key to the understanding of distance from Kether is that Malkuth " is Kether after another fashion"

And there's the stuff about Malkluth the Daughter, marrying Kether

We need to make the Feminine and the Earthy part of our understanding of Divine, that's the marriage

I think the declaration of the Assumption was important in bringing about the healing, as Jung said, because a woman still in her physical body ascended to heaven

Sapien

PaulinCork wrote:

Please tell me more about the Angel and Demon stuff.

I am working upon the idea that the upward direction on the tree of life is porgression toward unity and simplicity, while the downward direction is toward division, multiplicity, conflict and complexity. There are some who would define demons as those entities which exist below Malkuth, within the divisions of the four elements or composed of an admixture of aspects of the elements. However, there are demons who are associated with higher sephiroth, as any Qabalistic table of correspondences will tell you. I believe that it is more useful to define angels and demons as vectors within the tree - angels pointing upwards, bringing about unity and resolution; and demons pointing downwards, bringing about the multivarious and chaotic complexity of the universe and the human being. As such, an angel or demon can be placed at any point on the tree.

In relation to Da'ath - and the corresponding demon: Choronzon, Lord of the Abyss - it seems that he represent the first instance of division in the tree of life. According to the Zohar, Kether, Chokmah and Binah are all perfectly unified, often being called the Supernal Triad, as they exist above the Abyss. However, the duality of Binah and Chokmah creates a void, a division, manifesting as Da'ath, which propagates from each emanation to the next. Essentially, all division, complexity and disorder (entropy) is adumbrated and latent in Da'ath and Choronzon. He is the unity of disunity, and other such mystical sounding paradoxes...

PaulinCork wrote:

How do you see the Chakra's on the Tree, by the way?

My familiarity with the yogic system is not what it once was, as I decided to forsake it lest it become confused with its Qabalistic equivalent. I see them both as parallel but incompatible systems - they do describe the same thing (in reference to the astral body) but not according to exactly the same divisions. I see it like dividing, say, twelve into three fours in one case, and four threes in the other, if you get my meaning. As such, I don't believe that a given chakra need necessarily commute perfectly to any sephira.

As to Grant and Da'ath "completing the circuit", that's new to me. Useful though. I sometimes think of Da'ath as a reflection of Kether, its antithesis, though displaced from its proper location - as though there exist further sephiroth below Malkuth which form a mirror image of the tree and which terminate in another version of Kether. After all Da'ath is not properly a sephira, and so could be understood as the projection of some such anti-Kether. Of course the Qlippoth are in some senses the reflections of the sephiroth, but they have always seemed to me to be too weak and unimportant to represent a real duality. Either that, or the treatment of them by Qabalists over the centuries has been lacking, which I believe is the case. They are perceived as an annoyance by most, an inconvenient elaboration of the system to which few give much thought. I will not be satisfied with the Qabalistic construct until I can asign some meaningful purpose to the Qlippoth and Da'ath.

PaulinCork

( I think the equivalence between the Chakras and the Tree is precise and exact. 7 horizontal planes of the Tree, each with one or two Sephirah, 7 chakras.)


Kenneth Grant explored the idea of A Dark Tree with Dark equivalents of the 32 Paths, which could be accessed through Daath." Here, instead of the Paths, we find the strangely looping "Tunnels of Set""

There's a review of his book on it here:http://www.kiva.net/~julianus/typhonian.html#nightside

V: Nightside of Eden. After completing his Typhonian Trilogy (The Magical Revival, Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, and Cults of the Shadow), Grant embarked on a new series of studies in his "Draconian Tradition." The first of these is a specialised discussion of the Tree of Life based on the Class A book, Liber CCXXXI. Grant's premise (partly derived from Fr. Achad's "Formula of Reversal") is that there are two sides to the Tree: the normal "Dayside" which is familiar to all Magicians in the Golden Dawn / A... A... Tradition, and the "Nightside," or "back" of the Tree, which is the source of the Qlippoth. The Qlippoth are normally said to form an upside-down Tree depending from Malkuth and are to be avoided at all costs. Grant, however, considers them to be a dark "mirror image" in Universe B, a "non-existent" reality underlying our normal Universe A. Here, instead of the Paths, we find the strangely looping "Tunnels of Set" winding their way through the "dream-cells" of the collective unconscious. This realm consists not of "evil spirits," but of the most ancient atavisms that may be accessed by the intrepid Magicians in quest of knowledge and power. The means for doing this are provided by the sigils in Liber 231 utilized in conjunction with sexual Magick.

"Very well," you say, "let us see how Grant deals with this." First of all, it must be noted that he does not present all of 231, merely the Qlippothic sigils and individual verses. He does not give, or even mention, the "Dayside" material at all. Perhaps there was some worry about copyright infringement if the entire Liber was included, but I suspect that this omission reflects an overall tendency of his to concentrate on the "dark side" of Magick to the exclusion of all else. The entire first half of the book is a long, rambling, disjointed collection of weird Qabalistic goo that generally leaves one wondering just what the point is.5 It often seems that this section was chopped into chapters at arbitrary intervals, especially since the chapter titles usually have only a tenuous connection to the material they introduce.

As for the text itself, we learn among other things, that the O.T.O. Degree system is "old Aeon," that "Choronzon manifests as the Scarlet Woman," that nuclear experiments have caused an invasion of "powers from the other side," that Ain = Ayin, and therefore 0 = 70, that apes are "the outcome of pre-human magical experiments by extra-terrestrials who copulated with primitive women6," and all manner of bizarre lore culled from Blavatsky, Bertiaux, Massey and others. He also seems determined to reduce every possible Deity to an aspect of Set, no matter how unlikely the subject.

Another point to be made here is that while Grant denies that the Nightside is really evil, and advocates working with these energies as a spiritual necessity, he can't seem to help always dragging out the most lurid descriptions possible, often reminding one of a bad horror novel rather than a serious occult tome. It is as if he cannot see any way to invoke the Tunnels except through fear. In my humble opinion, anyone working with this material stricly from Grant's perspective is in for a very wild ride.

Part Two is more coherent, simply because it follows the very obvious structure of discussing each of the twenty-two Tunnels in turn. The sigil of each guardian is given along with a few pages describing its nature and powers. Much of this is simply taken from 777. Grant puts special emphasis on the specific type of sexual Magick worked by the adepts of each Tunnel, thus making this a comprehensive, if overly specific grimoire. The major idiosyncracy here is,of course, Grant's re-definition of the XIš to cover menstuation. He goes on for so long about how Moon-Blood is the true original sacrament and how it breeds abhorrent monsters in the Aether that it seems both offensive and ridiculous.

Whilst reading this book, I thought at first that Grant had finally run out of perplexing words. In fact, it was just that he was saving his strength for a supreme effort of amazing proportions. Here we are faced with "discreted," "insee," "teratomas," "appertained," "entifying" and its cousin, "entification," "expatiating," the "inferior Hebdomad" and the "superior Hebdomad," "advert to," "aduced," "impubescent," "equipollence," "pre-eval," "olid," "keraunograph," and the ultimate "excrementious manifestation."

As a final note, I must say that I regard this book not so much as a completely wrong-headed project, but as a worthwile idea that got ruined in the execution. Those wishing to explore the mysteries of Liber 231 are directed to The Shadow Tarot by Linda Falorio and Fred Fowler, available from Black Moon Publishing, which provides a far superior treatment of this same material.

5 Some years ago a group in the Bloomington, Indiana area did considerable work with this material. Some of the participants had their photocopies of Part One out of order and did not notice the fact until they specifically looked at the page numbers! They also said putting things back in the correct order didn't seem to help much.

6 To be fair, later on Grant says this is to be understood symbolically.

Sapien

PaulinCork wrote:

( I think the equivalence between the Chakras and the Tree is precise and exact. 7 horizontal planes of the Tree, each with one or two Sephirah, 7 chakras.)

I agree, it is rather neat. In terms of comparative religion, it is nice to draw parallels. But from the point of view of the Qabalah, it is a little superfluous to do so in this case. The Qabalah comes equipped with its own anatomy of the human person - the divisions of Yechida, Neschamah, Chiah, Ruach, Nephesch and G'uph - each corresponding to a sephira or group of sephiroth. Again, bringing two disparate strands together can be fruitful, and in fact lies at the heart of Western magick - but as I said, I decided on the Qabalah over Yoga, and so tend to prefer the Qabalah native system.

PaulinCork wrote:

Kenneth Grant explored the idea of A Dark Tree with Dark equivalents of the 32 Paths, which could be accessed through Daath." Here, instead of the Paths, we find the strangely looping "Tunnels of Set""

Thank you. Is this book easy to come by?

PaulinCork

Amazon have one copy for 38 euros: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0584102062/103-4377426-3702239?v=glance

The Shadow Tarot is also Based on the Tunnels of Set
http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/shadow/

Sapien

Does anybody else have any High Magick interests?

I know a lot of pagans use Qabalistic/Golden Dawn style meditations and banishings - Qabalistic Cross, Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, and so on...

Nevyn

See I have been really really good up until now.
I have sat and watched and enjoyed the chat and the exchange.


What do you define as high magic ?
and why the Term 'High' ?
and 'high' so what is then low magic ?

PaulinCork

Hi Thaed,
Traditionally Ceremonial Magic, is largely based on Judeo/Christian Islamic cosmology, and since the 20thC, mainly on the Golden Dawn/Crowley's work.

It involves very complex rituals often in Latin Hebrew and Greek, and is firmly Kabbalah-focused.

It survived among upper class mainly men through the centuries of Church power

Low Magic is used to describe folk magic and nature -based traditions like Wicca.

I prefer to use Deep rather than Low, as a contrast to high!


Its a bit of a misleading split though. One prominent member of the Golden Dawn was W.B. Yeats, and one of the best books on Kabbalah was written by Dion Fortune, and she was a nature-based Pagan Magician

And Wicca was re/created in the 1950's partly by using a LOT of High Ceremonial stuff

The traditional shape of Kabbalah's Tree of Life diagram is a hierarchical ladder, but I've found a more Goddess-y circular version works well.
(see above)

Nevyn

That is your take on it Paul, I am waiting for Sapien's before I say annnnything more

Sapien

Thaed wrote:

That is your take on it Paul, I am waiting for Sapien's before I say annnnything more

*Tugs at collar nervously* I knew this was going to happen.

Paul is right and has anticipated my response perfectly. Few will disagree that a distinction is necessary between these two broad types of magick, however much they can, in the techniques of certain eclectic practitioners, overlap. High magick is a term coined, perhaps a little arrogantly, by the eponymous high magicians of the early part of the last century, and is almost exactly interchangeable with "Ceremonial Magick" and "Art Magick". The term does not denote superiority, as any author on the subject will point out before the end of the first chapter of his or her introduction.

As Paul says, it is the magick of the aristocracy, academics and ecclesiastics, harboured and hidden for centuries in ancient grimoires written by legendary mages and in the rituals of impenetrable secret societies. "Low" or "Deep" (clever) magick was generally that of the peasantry, commuted through oral tradition, within families and small rural communities. Naturally, the former is more complicated, and much more difficult to use successfully. Both are quite similar at the early stages - requiring very similar training and exercises - with the result that many of the more effective techniques pioneered by High magicians have been imported into Pagan traditions (Qabalistic Cross, the magick circle etc, ).

As to the components of High Magick, and those areas I came here seeking to discuss, they are generally grouped under the heading: "The Western Esoteric Tradition". This is an impossibly broad composite spiritual system that incorporates elements from every culture and religion in the history of Western Civilisation - from Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Hebrew Mysticism, Graeco-Roman theogony, Middle-Eastern Gnosticism, Medieval Necromancy, Renaissance Alchemy, and the initiatic systems of secret societies from the Freemasons, back to the Rosicrucians, the Templars and beyond into the mists of antiquity and myth.

More specifically, it could be said to be predicated on Hermetic philosophy, which comes from Egypt via Greece and Rome from the semi-historical, semi-mythological figure, Hermes Trismegistos; heavily structured and systematised through the Qabalah and the Tarot; lent a huge amount of symbological vocabulary by astrology, alchemy, geomancy, etc.; occasionally sampling (at least in the last century) from certain Eastern philosophies. A High magician will, in the broadest sense, be interested in completing, in the present or a subsequent lifetime, the "Great Work", which could be understood as a final union with the divine. Such a magician will use manifold techniques and operation towards this end - both mystical and magical - including pathworking, astral travel, divination, angelic communication and demonic evocation, and much much much more that I cannot think of presently. This was commonly done in a Temple or Lodge system, with magicians of varying grades and knowledge, teaching and learning, rising through the ranks in elaborate initiation ceremonies. This is less feasible nowadays, most practitioners being solitary - depending on remote contact with other magicians to further their progress.

That's why I'm here. There are other sites that cater to High Magick such as occultforums.com - but they're mostly Americans. Which is fine, of course. But they have a tendency to exaggerate their achievements in a way that I have found Irish and Europeans tend not to. Also, they're thousands of miles away...

Rothen

Archives

There...thats a good site for some high magic.

PaulinCork

I love Ceremonial Sigils. They're so beautiful and somehow satisfyingly magical-looking.

http://www.esotericarchives.com/gifs/gifs.htm:

Sapien

Rothen wrote:

Archives

There...thats a good site for some high magic.

Yes, I downloaded everything on that site, and a dozen like it, long ago. Doesn't have a forum though...

Sapien

PaulinCork wrote:

I love Ceremonial Sigils. They're so beautiful and somehow satisfyingly magical-looking.

http://www.esotericarchives.com/gifs/gifs.htm:

There is an interesting section in Agrippa's Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, that describes how the components of a spirit's sigil can indicate whether it is good or evil... here.

It would appear that the above spirit is... em... good! Mostly.

PaulinCork

Well, its a Sigil of Mercury, so I'd hope its ambiguous and avoids dualities !
Thanks for the link.

Sapien

So, Thaed, not to push the issue or anything, but is there any inclination among the Mods to provide for those interested in non-Pagan magick? I'm not sure what you could do - a separate forum would probably be too much trouble, and there doesn't seem to be quite enough interest to justify it. Yet. If you build it...

PaulinCork

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Nevyn

Sapien wrote:

So, Thaed, not to push the issue or anything, but is there any inclination among the Mods to provide for those interested in non-Pagan magick? I'm not sure what you could do - a separate forum would probably be too much trouble, and there doesn't seem to be quite enough interest to justify it. Yet. If you build it...

Well I dont have a magic coding wand that creates forums only the admins have them, and yes you would have to justifiy it and in some cases it can be as bad as posting instructions up on how to make a flame thrower if you know what I mean. Magic in all forms is like a knife or blade is you are careful and mindfull of what you are doing you are unlikely to seriously harm yourself,
loose repect for what and who are are dealing with and you can cause yourself and others a lot of grief.

I have no problem with these topics here at all, My path is 'Lexy Wicca currently so there is many places where such things are not totally unknown to me.

This was one of the things myself and Tallisein knew would happen and we are fine with this being dicussed here infact we prefer it for that way we can
keep an eye on it as it were.

If it got to the stage where a seperate forum was needed I'd jump that hurdle when we get there.

Talliesin

Thaed wrote:

This was one of the things myself and Tallisein knew would happen

We're spooky that way

Thaed wrote:

and we are fine with this being dicussed here infact we prefer it for that way we can
keep an eye on it as it were.

Yes. First off, welcome to boards to both Sapien and PaulinCork, and congratulations on a very interesting thread (something I have an interest in, but not much knowledge of, but I enjoyed reading it.). If you haven't already, it may be worth taking a look at the Newbies / FAQ board, especially the "stickies".

Now, from the beginning we've had a policy of being quite liberal in what we allow here. I've decided to formalise this a bit by [post=2765803]adding to the charter[/post].

To get a new forum, you have to ask for it in the forums forum. Don't even bother unless:

1. There will be at least a handful of people who not only say they think the forum is a good idea, but that they will participate.
2. There is at least one, ideally two, people suitable to moderate the board.

To be suitable they'd need to have at least some interest in what is likely to be a large board (you can moderate large boards by mainly dealing with disputes and trouble-makers and letting discussions handle themselves, if you want) and a lot of interest in what is likely to be a small board (with a small board it's more important to keep conversations going, particularly answering questions people post as best you can). You also have to be a member of good standing in boards, which you aren't yet because you've yet to be here long enough to prove yourself, though IMHO you got off on the right foot. There's a guideline that the person who suggests a board cannot be a moderator, though exceptions have been made, to avoid people suggesting boards just because they think being a moderator will automatically confer status upon them (the fools).

Ultimately it's all up to the admins then. Boards.ie is unapologetically feudal; the admins can do what they want and appoint moderators who can do what they want in their own patch unless the admins slap them down. It works because those people all want to have a good site and hence do listen to the users, but ultimately the only democracy is the fact that nothing is stopping you from setting up your own rival site. Do not annoy admins, avoid annoying moderators.

Talliesin

Sapien wrote:

The term does not denote superiority, as any author on the subject will point out before the end of the first chapter of his or her introduction.

I'd say that's more a modern phenomenon not a million miles away from political correctness, probably coming from the arguments made by those who combine both "low" and "high" magic (I like "deep", but I've no problems with "low", "low" can mean getting down to important things that are sometimes overlooked or dismissed but shouldn't be).

Dion Fortune stands out in my mind as someone who was quite negative about folk-based traditions. Of course the fact that she took Montague Summers' view of the Craft and blamed a lot of bad things on the reincarnations of our departed elders didn't help (along with being at odds with what we believe happens when our departed elders reincarnate, but that's another matter). Still, it's ironic, but Fortune has been very influencial to a lot of Witches, and the Psychic Self-Defense, where these comments are made is a must read (I won't give an book-buying link like I normally do, because the entire text is on the web here.)

Some high and low magicians continue to be disdainful of each other. Not an attitude I share and not a dispute I want to encourage here, but that it does happen should be acknowledged IMO.

Sapien wrote:

As Paul says, it is the magick of the aristocracy, academics and ecclesiastics, harboured and hidden for centuries in ancient grimoires written by legendary mages and in the rituals of impenetrable secret societies. "Low" or "Deep" (clever) magick was generally that of the peasantry, commuted through oral tradition, within families and small rural communities.

From Peasant Revolts to Class War, history shows that those two groups do often harbour animosities.

Sapien wrote:

with the result that many of the more effective techniques pioneered by High magicians have been imported into Pagan traditions (Qabalistic Cross, the magick circle etc, ).

True, but I'm not sure I agree that the magic circle has been borrowed into Pagan traditions. For one thing the use of circles in Wicca and Witchcraft, the use of other circles in other Pagan paths (whether stone circles, cast circles, or something else) and the use of circles in CM are three (or more) different things, with different purposes and different rules as to how they must be treated.

We have circles amongst the practices of the stone-age peoples, though just how we do not know, circles when we look at the sun and the moon, circles in many representations of the cycle of death and rebirth, circles in the shape of early houses and forts, circles in children's games, all of which are very much "ours", with the possible exception of whatever the neolithic people where getting upto in the likes of Stonehenge, which was likely the High Magic of the day.

On the other hand we have the circle as a shape of mathematical perfection, which is more "yours".

In all I'd say that the use of circles is something where high and low magical practices have influenced each other for millenia, rather than a clear-cut case of one borrowing from the other.

Sapien

Excellent. Now I feel all warm and fuzzy.

I'm quite happy for CM to be allocated some small corner of your pagan forum for the time being. Perhaps, if I, PaulinCork, or any others interested in these areas, post an occasional CM related thread, then enough like-minded posters will accrete to the cause, and, eventually, we can confidently go before the Big Giant Heads asking for a space of our own.

So, any more Ceremonialists, or pagans with an hermetic leaning out there...

Exeunt Magi ad me Veniunt!

Nevyn

So how you have gotten arround to calling it CM.
See if you had of called this thread CM,
honestly the fact that it was called High Magick had me scowling
before I even click to open the thread but that is a personal reaction not a mod one.

Sapien

Thaed wrote:

See if you had of called this thread CM...

... you may never have replied