8067226 magick and hypnosis

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Magick and Hypnosis

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Magick and Hypnosis

Magick andHypnosis

by

Katherine McGowanCopyright 2009 by Katherine McGowan

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Table of content Foreword (Page 5) The Basic Business of the Magician (Page 8) The Kingdom of God is Within (Page 10)

What is Hypnosis? (Page 14) Mesmerism (Page 18) Psychological Suggestibility or Circulation

of The Force (Page 26) Magical Operations (Page 36) End Notes: Magick and Hypnosis (Page 44)

CHAPTER TWO:THE SECRET OF THEDARK MIRROR (Page 53)

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ForewordIn this article the author takes the

position that hypnosis is the operative technique

of Ceremonial Magick. Visions of Spirits appearingin the Triangle of Art are actually archetypesevoked from the deep-mind via hypnoticinduction. As a practicing magician specializing inthese methods, she gives an insiders perspectiveon how Magick really works.

I recently received a letter from a man whoclaimed to be an investigator of paranormalphenomena. After a few introductory remarks hecame quickly to the point: Can you demonstratethat the techniques you practice and teach areauthentic and effective, not merely hypnotic and

illusionary?My reply was somewhat blunt: Ceremonial

Magick is a valid art, not a pseudo-science, Iwrote. Certainly its visions are hypnotic andthey are no more illusionary than are JungianArchetypes in the Collective Unconscious which,

in fact, is what they actually are. Their existence

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cannot be proved or disproved in a high-schoolphysics lab.

I posted my answer with a sense ofsatisfaction, but in the days that followed I beganto realize there was a great deal more involved inthis question than could be answered in one clever

paragraph. The present occult revival has beenunderway for a decade, but there are still only afew people who actually practice ceremonialmagick and this situation persists in spite of hundreds of different books on the subject inconstant circulation. Why? The reason is thatmany, if not most, of our modern occultists arejust as na ve about the true nature of magick as was my correspondent. Ceremonial Magick isRITUAL HYPNOSIS. As Dion Fortune put it:

Magick is the art of causing changes inconsciousness to occur in accordance with the

willThe reason why so few people practice

magick is not that there are so few students ofthe art -- there are thousands but that only a few know the real secret. (1.)

Granted, there are a number of magicians

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who will grudgingly concede this hypnoticdefinition, but in order to be a successful modernmagus, I feel you should embrace the concept! Bytaking such a plunge you simultaneously improveyour technique, confirm your results, confoundyour critics and make an honest person ofyourself. Dont worry about betraying some

great tradition; magick was always hypnotic.Dont worry about being scientific, scientistsdont know what hypnosis is, and most of themwill admit that they dont.

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The Basic Business of the Magician

If magick was always hypnotic and if thekabbalah always taught that the inner microcosmwas the key to personal transformation, then

why, for the past hundred years , have we beenskipping over, or completely ignoring, thefundamental principles of magick? Lost in a mazeof quasi-masonic initiations, and quasi-Freudiansexual speculations, we have forgotten that thebasic business of the magician is to command spirits(i.e. components of his personality). He summonsthem to visible appearance and then compelsthem to perform tasks for him well, thats what he used to do back in Renaissance times, butour more recent Victorian forbears of The GoldenDawn were not able to reconstruct the oldmethod of magical evocation because they refused

to accept its hypnotic basis. Certainly there ismore to magick than evocation, but that is whereit starts: in the magick mirror of Yesod with theritual of the Goetia of the Lemegeton. (2.) Thishypnotic system, if properly employed in theJungian psychoanalytic process of individuation,can be a cornerstone of successful lodge work.

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Before we discuss the characteristics ofmagical hypnosis, we need to look a little moredeeply into the historical and philosophicalreasons why this essential principle of the art hasbeen overlooked and underrated.

The Victorian and Edwardian magicians

were more reactionary and superstitious(relatively speaking) than their Renaissancecounterparts. They bequeathed to us a legacy ofquaint and whimsical ideas about magick. We stillfind ourselves grappling with their outdatedconceptions of secret chiefs who come from anastral world that might as well be anotherplanet. Hypnosis was a dirty word in thisVictorian fairyland not because it was scientific,but because it was subjective. In this case thetendency to objectify magical phenomena ischaracteristic of philosophical dualism. It will berecalled that the dualist believes God to be

separate from his creations, whereas the monistholds that God is present in all things. (3.)

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The Kingdom of God is Within

At this point the romantic reader may beexperiencing something of a let-down. Am I sayingthat angels, demons, Goddesses and Gods of old

are only figments of the individual imagination?Certainly not! The Gods are real and their poweris awesome. Hypnosis is the key to entering theirkingdom, the Olam Yetzirah, or astral plane; butwe must realize that this other dimension beginswithin ourselves, in our subconscious mind. If wego deep enough we venture beyond our own

personal dreams into what Carl Jung called thecollective unconscious, that vast realm wherethe archetypal Gods abide. (4.)

Make no mistake about it, the collectiveunconscious is a reality that goes beyond anyonesindividual conception of it. It contains the entirehistory of the human race and probably thedestiny of mankind as well.

It is certainly linked to the Anima Mundi,the World-Soul-Earth-Goddess of theRenaissance magicians. I hold that its sensitivities

extend throughout the solar system, and I

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suspect that it is intrinsically related to the DNAcode. These ideas are philosophically monistic inaccordance with the teachings of HermesTrismegistus and the doctrines of the kabbalah.(5.)

When the student fully grasps the

significance of the collective unconscious inrelation to the Hermetic kabbalah, he will notneed to ask such questions as Carlos Castenedaput to Don Juan: Did I really fly? The objectivevs. the subjective argument will no longer involvea value judgment, but only a matter of relativeperception. This may be a difficult hurdle forsome to leap, but the rewards are infinite.

The dualist seeking objective phenomenon e.g. photographable ghosts, apparitions formedfrom ectoplasm and the like is constantly in danger of disillusionment. The more he tries to

justify his beliefs, the more antirational hebecomes. For him occultism is a long, down-hillslide away from the intellectual position whereas, if properly pursued on monistic-subjective principles; the study and practice ofmagick should expand and extend theconsciousness, thereby improving the intellect.

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The reader might agree with most of whatI have said, and yet still raise the question: whatabout Aleister Crowley? Wasnt he subjective inhis approach to magick, and didnt he practicethe goetic thaumaturgy of the Lemegeton?

Yes, but even though Crowley wrote an

excellent psychological introduction to Matherstranslation of The Goetia, showing that heunderstood the subjective nature of the system,neither he or his mentor knew the operativetechnique. Crowley spent many weary hourstrying to conjure a spirit to visible appearance insmoke over the Triangle of Art. Now smoke isprobably the worst hypnotic focal point anyonecould imagine, but a pretty good medium for anexperiment in telekinesis; a totally objectiveprocess. (6.) If Crowley had realized that thesystem was hypnotic, he probably would have useda crystal or a dark mirror. With this proper

equipment results would have been achievedwithin fifteen or twenty minutes of work.

Why didnt he realize this? Mathersignorance of the hypnotic factor is easier tounderstand. He was a Quixotic medievalist whoinsisted on objectifying everything. He believed

that the Key of Solomon was actually written

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by the Biblical monarch himself!

However Crowley should have knownbetter.. Even so, I think that three factors mayhave combined to keep Crowley from discoveringthe real secret of Renaissance ceremonial magick:first, the prevailing opinion of the time in the

area of phenomenology ran to objective, pseudo-scientific causes such as the ectoplasm of thespiritualists; second, Crowley was a philosophicaldualist which thrust him toward objectifiedconceptions even though he was less credulousthan Mathers; and third, he was deeply intodrugs. Such agents tend to activate their ownunique effects, whereas ritual hypnosis is a moredirected vehicle, through which the magician canproduce a desired effect in accordance with hiswill.

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What is Hypnosis?

What is hypnosis? Nobody really knows, butwe do know several things about it. One thingwe know: it isnt sleep. In the physical (blood

pressure, etc.) the hypnotic trance is more likethe normalawake condition. Putting togetherseveral modern definitions of hypnosis, we cancome up with something like this: hypnosis is astate of heightened suggestibility in which themind is totally centered on one idea to theexclusion of everything else, including sensory

perceptions that are unwanted or distracting.

By this definition anyone who is reallyconcentrating on something, like reading a book, oreven watching television, may be said to be in ahypnotic trance. They certainly are. Gurdjieffwent so far as to suggest that most people arehypnotized most of the time. To achieve theirpotential they had to become de-hypnotized.The point is that any routine task can becomehypnotic. Here in southern California, forinstance, we are all familiar with the freewaydriving trance. There are also musical trances,

dancing trances, etc. There may even be a general

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everyday living trance as Gurdjieff intimated.

These trances are different, and they havedifferent levels of intensity, and sensoryselection. If a person is deeply engrossed in a bookhe may not hear the phone ring, whereas if he islistening to the radio with one ear, he will

hear the phone. Hypnosis is a normal and commoncondition. It is the unusual behavior associatedwith the deeper cataleptic and somnambulistictrances that seem strange and mysterious.

Hypnosis was known and used in ancientEgypt, where magician-priests officiated atsleep temples in which sufferers of variousafflictions were cured by visitations of the Gods

most probably while the patients were in a somnambulistic trance. Egyptian magicianshypnotized animals such as lions and cobras. InIndia the occult hypnotist first hypnotizes

himself before operating on his subject. This is amost magical approach and very effective. Itseems unknown outside of esoteric circles.

From ancient times up into the 1840s thephenomenon was thought to be the result of themanipulation and transmission of life force: a

subtle substance called spirit, or in the East,

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kundalini.

This concept is not as objective, or assimplistic, as it first appears. The greatRenaissance magus Marsilio Ficino, theorized thatthe flow of spirit, by the rites of astrologicalmagick, to improve the health and intellectual

capabilities of the operator. (7.) Ficino did notextend his method to include the influencing ofspirit in others which would have been a dangerous in his time but such a capability is implicit in his theory.

Many medieval and Renaissance magi solicitedthe intercession of angels and demons in whatDaniel Walker calls transitive operations (foror against others), but before we assume thatthis practice was entirely dualistic and objectified,we should remember that these operators derivedtheir philosophy from the Hermetic Holy Book

known as The Asclepius, which plainly taughtthat angels, demons and gods of the earth spherewere originally creations of man himself! Themagicians of the Renaissance knew very well thatsuch entities were subjective. We might even calltheir magical pantheism a proto-Jungianarchetype theory in its own right.

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They were also well aware of the powersof fascination, which they attributed to rays ofspirit directed from the eyes of the enchanter.

These magicians were monistic in theirphilosophy; subjective visions were as importantas objective phenomenon. They can perhaps be

criticized for not caring to differentiatebetween the two.

The crystal ball and the dark speculum(mirror) were their most important items ofritual equipment. Their use was linked to theoriesof celestial rays, planetary sympathies and thelike, but the actual operations and the effectsachieved were hypnotic. And yet, in Victoriantimes, Arthur Edward Waite called suchtechniques minor hypnotic processes. How littlehe understood. (8.)

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Mesmerism

This spirit theory in magick and hypnosiswas revived in a different form 300 years afterFicino by the Viennese physician Franz Anton

Mesmer. He called it animal magnetism. In TheAge of Reason spirit could no longer be directedby the singing of Orphic hymns under theinfluence of appropriate planets. The 1780sdemanded a pseudo-scientific approach. AlthoughMesmer was a keen student of the Renaissancealchemist Paracelsus, and a believer in astrology theorizing that the flow of magnetic fluid inthe human body was effected by planetarypositions he succumbed to the 18 th centuryspassion for toot-whistle tinkering by having hissubjects sit with their feet in tubs of waterfilled with iron filings and bundles of jointed iron

rods. With a flair for the dramatic and,according to his critics, a penchant for hocus-pocus, Mesmer and his fellow magnetizers beguiledEurope for the next 50 years with their miraclecures and spectacular demonstrations of tranceinduction.

Mesmerism has been completely discredited by

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the medical profession and the scientificcommunity in my opinion undeservedly. Because of its importance in magick, we should pause inour brief chronology to take note of how itdiffers from modern concepts of hypnosis. Thecurrent popular notion , still hanging on frommedical propaganda predating World War I, is

that the hypnotist has no power. He guides awilling su bject into a trance state and thesuggests that the subject use his own powersto achieve whatever effect is wanted, providingthat effect is also desired by the subject himself.

According to this conception, a snakehypnotizes a bird by first gaining the birdsconfidence. Next he asks the bird to relaxcompletely. He then suggests to the bird that itactually wants to become the snakes dinner. Thisploy cannot possibly succeed because deep downinside the bird knows that it wants to fly away

from the snake . . . And yet snakes have beenhypnotizing and eating birds for a good manyyears. The rejoinder that animals are differentfrom humans is not good enough. The point isthat there is a big gray area where some ofMesmers ideas may still be valid. It is importantto note that some psychologists who use

hypnosis do not share such out-dated views on

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its limitations. Men like Dr. Milton Erickson willfrankly admit that they dont know what theydo or how they do it.

Many of Ericksons colleagues refuse to shakehands with him out of a certain reluctance toexperience his hypnotic touch. I submit that

there probably is a form of life energy that iscapable of manipulation and even transmission. Tototally discount the work of such sincere andqualified researchers as von Richenbach (odic force),Reich (orgone energy) and, more recently, ThelmaMoss (Kirilian photography) and the bio-magneticists on this subtle form of energy wouldbe frankly reactionary (an anathema in politicsbut a praiseworthy attitude in science).

The Mesmerists held that a magnetizer wasa person of great energy with a talent forinfluencing others. He could accumulate and

concentrate large quantities of energy in hisbody, projecting it from his eyes and his fingertips. His eyes could fascinate and his hands couldheal. The passes which the Mesmerist made overthe subject with his hands were intended tomanipulate the flow of energy within thepatients body. We should note that Mesmers

method involved what we would call hysterical

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hypnosis. He brought his patients to an emotionalcatharsis and sometimes into convulsions in orderto clear away supposed blockages to the freecirculation of magnetic fluid in their bodies. Weare reminded of todays primal scream therapy a different rationale but a similar effect.

In modern magical Mesmerism such violentand imprecise methods of induction are no longerused. We have discovered that actual contactwith the finger tips increases the effect andproduces a trance state of tremendouspotential. (9.)

The question still posed by Mesmerism iswhether hypnosis is only suggestion operating onthe individual nervous system, or if it alsoinvolves manipulation and transference of a formof energy. Science has not disproved this fluidtheory in spite of all the rhetoric to the

contrary. What it did prove is that hypnosis canbe effectively induced by suggestion without anypretense of transferred power; but to concludethat this therefore proves hypnosis to beexclusively a product of suggestion within theclosed system of the individual with notransitive factor involved is patently fallacious.

You can prove that ducks fly, but you have no

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right to assume, as a consequence, that theydont swim underwater.

To return to our chronology: there is nodoubt that the Mesmerists were effective. Theyfascinated half of Europe but they infuriated themedical profession. Nothing bothers a doctor so

much as a healer without a diploma. Even thoughMesmer was an M.D., many of his successors werelaymen. Although some were rank charlatans,others were operators of considerable ability.Todays performing hypnotists are paledescendants of those wondrous magnetizers whocould walk out on stage and knock peoplesenseless with a mere glance or a wave of thehand.

In the early 1800s Mesmerism had thescientific community between the proverbial rockand the hard spot. The Mesmerists were

obviously doing something in accordance with someunknown natural law, but if their theory aboutthe manipulation of life force were to beaccepted, then the whole philosophical structureupon which science was based would have to bescrapped. The scientists had their own form ofdualism, and the inevitable tendency toward

objectification that accompanies it. In the 17th

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century the French rationalist philosopher ReneDescartes, had broken with the monasticconceptions of the Renaissance to propose thatmind and body were totally separate. To carry itfurther, he postulated that the province ofhuman intellect was separate from the realm ofthe physical universe. In higher philosophical

circles this idea was never considered more than aconditional expedient (to facilitate theadvancement of science and to counterbalancethe obvious excesses of monism ) but, on theengineering level, it became Holy Dogma. Today itis philosophically obsolete, but we still find manypeople in the physical sciences clinging to it. If youhave ever wondered why certain spokesmen forAmerican science sound very much like otherspokesmen for American religion, you consider howmuch Cartesian dualism and Christian dualism havein common. In our field of hypnotism, thisCartesian myopia is responsible for the

preposterous notion that hypnotic anesthesia isreally amnesia; the patient feels the pain butforgets it !

The scientists and physicians of the earlyVictorian era, realizing that Mesmerism could notbe ignored and could not be discredited as far as

its actual effects were concerned, still found it

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impossible to accept on Cartesian terms.Somehow they had to have a compromise. In the1840s a Scottish doctor, James Braid, providedit.

He coined the modern term hypnosis, andestablished the modern principles of hypnotic

induction. Following the lead of the Abbe deFaria (1755-1819), who had been a critic ofMesmers magnetic fluid theory, Braid declaredthat the motive agent in hypnosis was theimagination of the subject. No magnetic devices,hand passes or dynamic powers transmitted fromthe operator were necessary to achieve ahypnotic trance and its unique effects. Of coursethis was true, as Braid and others proved. Wecannot say that they threw out the baby withthe bath water when they cleaned up hypnosis,but we can say that Mesmerism is a differentform of hypnosis, and that the two methods

overlap each other. In this regard we should notethat Estabrooks (1957) cites case of hypnoticsubjects falling into hysterical convulsions similarto those Mesmers magnetized patientsexperienced. I also think that there was anelement of humbug in Mesmerism that neededchucking out: the water tubs, iron rods, etc.

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Even though Braid and his followers wentto opposite extremes, reducing the awesomesecret of the ancients to the harmless status ofa verbalized aspirin tablet, their new (?) form oftherapy was, and still is, frowned upon byconservative doctors and scientists. No matterhow harmless the hypnotist claims his method to

be, he is initiating a direct influence of the mindover the body. This poses a threat to Cartesiandogma and elicits gut-level adverse reactions froma large segment of the scientific community eventoday.

Frankly, I am pleased that hypnosis is stillnot accepted as a science. This is because it isnot a science and trying to conceptualize it injournal-jargon terms is not going to make it one.

Braids mono-ideism and Van Pelts (1957)more recent units of mind power are only labels

for something no more understood in terms ofphysical science today than it was in 1840. (10.)However, there has been considerable progress inunderstanding hypnosis from a psychologicalstandpoint.

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Psychological Suggestibilityor Circulation of The Force

Estabrooks points out that in Freudianterms hypnosis and auto-suggestion (self-

hypnosis) tend to function like the earlytraumatic experiences in imprinting thesubconscious mind. According to his theory, strongemotional experiences of a negative natureproduce complexes and phobias in much the sameway as post-hypnotic suggestion causes the

subject to react to a forgotten (intentionallysuppressed) stimulus in a manner he cannotexplain. (E.g., When I snap my fingers you willsing the National Anthem, vis-a-vis thepersonwho goes into an hysterical fit at the sight ofa harmless insect.)

Estabrooks cites several analogies along thisline. He likens the brain, in this instance, to aphotographic plate on which emotional traumasand/or intense hypnotic suggestions make strongover-exposed impressions that do not fade outbut continue to flash when activated byconsciously perceived triggering stimuli. Thisingenious theory helps to explain the apparent

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dichotomy between magick and witchcraft: theceremonialists stress measured hypnoticconjurations, whereas the witches favor theemotionally stimulating abandon of the circledance and yet both achieve similar results. This is because both methods imprint the subconsciousmind with the desired impression, or release a

specific suppressed component of the personalityto be cathected or controlled.

If we accept Dr. Estabrooks theory -- and Ido, as far as it goes then we must realize that magick and witchcraft are powerfulpsychodynamic systems, even in an exclusivelysubjective, phenomenologically conservative sense.The practice of the art and the craft is notas dangerous as our credulous Christian criticscontend, but neither is it as frivolouslydysfunctional as Cartesian pedants wouldsuppose. We are the inheritors of a great ancient

system of psychology perfected over thousandsof years. It can bring much good and happiness tous and our associates or, like any of the majorsystems of knowledge, it can be misused withharmful effect. In magick and witchcraft,however, most malicious transitive operationstend to backfire because the would-be sorcerer

does not understand the subjective nature of the

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art. (11.)

As valuable and important as thepsychological aspects certainly are, let us notforget the force. If you dont think it existsjust remember the last time you were at asporting event, or in any crowd of people where

emotions ran high. You were caught up in theexcitement as you never would have been sittingin front of a t.v. Set.

You were receiving an interchange of energyfrom the crowd; granted it may have been asecondary interchange via a synchronization ofbio-rhythms, but it was a transitive link-upnonetheless. The negative side of this phenomenonis called mob reaction, wherein otherwisepeaceful citizens become violent in the midst ofan angry crowd. The black magick nadir of thissyndrome would be Hitlers Nuremburg rallies,

with thousands of mindless stormtroopersshouting Seig Heil!

Hitler first hypnotized his subjects, usingthe power of suggestion to open theirsubconscious minds and make them receptive; thenhe raised their emotions to an hysterical pitch,

creating what can best be described as mass-

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Mesmerism.

Keeping the Nazis in mind, we would do wellto consider the dangers of hypnosis andMesmerism. People certainly can be hypnotizedagainst their will, and not merely by deception asEstabrooks suggests. Hypnotized subjects have

committed murders and other crimes. The use ofhypnosis in intelligence operations is common, andsuch thrillers as The Manchurian Candidate arenot as fanciful as they may seem. (12.)

In occultism we find the villain in theperson of the unscrupulous hypnotist-guru whois always on the lookout for that one person inevery dozen with the right combination ofcharacteristics to make him or her the idealvictim: a natural capacity for somnambulism witha credulous attitude and a weak ego. (13.) Oneout of every five people can reach a

somnambulistic trance state (the deepest level ofhypnosis)

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This ability has nothing to do withintelligence or character, any more than havingred hair does, but when combined with gullibilityand an underdeveloped sense of identity, wehave the psychological profile of the truebeliever. These people are the natural prey ofthe occult Svengali. We can never fully protect

them from such exploitation, any more than wecan eliminate poverty or crime, but we cansubstantially reduce the prestige of the shadyoperators who prey on them by establishing agenuine western mystical tradition withrecognized standards.

Applying Hypnosis in Ritual Magick Havingestablished that magick is a hypnotic process andhaving examined the theories underlying thatphenomenon, we are ready to consider practicalapplication and technique. First you have toestablish an understanding of the subjective-

hypnotic nature of magick with your studentsand lodge members. I strongly advise againstinitiating anyone who refuses to accept thisconcept. In order to underline this point, I willadmit to having made the mistake and finding outthat there is no convincing such a personafterward to abandon his objective view. You

will only succeed in convincing him that you are a

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poor magician because you are unable to make thefloor burst open and spill forth the legions ofTartarus in cinemascope and stereophonic sound.In this case rely on a good preliminary screeningtest rather than informal questioning. In cocktailparty chatter such a person my seemsophisticated, mentioning Jung and Crowley glibly,

but then turn out to be a semi-literate barbarianin lodge. Be warned!

If you are fully honest about the hypnoticnature of magick, you cannot avoid ethicalconsiderations. All conjurations, path-workingscenarios, and invocations should be known andstandardized.

The more traditional they are the better.Everyone operates and everyone receives in turn.There must be a cadre of adepti, but their job isto teach others to be operators. As such they

should operate only with members on their ownlevel, or for instructive purposes. In ceremonialmagick everyone should have their turn at takingevery role in temple rites, seasonal ceremonies, andinitiations; otherwise a magical lodge becomes acult in the worst sense of the word. (14.)

There is as much self-hypnosis (auto-

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suggestion) involved in magick as that directlyinduced by an operator: in fact self-hypnosis maybe considered the practical key to developing themagical trance state. The Order of the Templeof Astarte (O.T.A.) insists that neophytesmaster self-hypnosis as soon as possible. Werecommend Leslie M. LeCrons Self-Hypnotism: The

Technique and Its Use in Daily Living as a basictext. Frankly, no one has any businessparticipating in a magical operation (with theexception of seasonal ceremonies) who is notcapable of putting himself into a trance stateand maintaining it. It is this ability, which can beacquired only through training and practice, thatenables the magician to carry out the complexmaneuvers required in a formal operation, andstill be able to hold his trance. He can quicklydeepen the state, or bring himself up to nearnormal consciousness when necessary. The readermay be thinking that yoga students and Zen

sitters can also do this, but I would not agree.Their trance states are closely associated withsedentary asana positions, and induction of thetrance is less controlled and direct. It is, in fact,a by-product of the meditation rather than theprinciple effect.

I do not mean to imply that yoga techniques

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are not important in magick, or that yoga andmagical hypnosis are not interrelated. One of thefirst techniques the magical student has to learnis the practice of tratakam, the fixed gaze.This is a hypnotic facet of yoga meditationwherein the student develops the ability tostare at a fixed point, or symbol, for long

periods of time without blinking or letting theeyes change focus. This ability is absolutelyessential to future Almadel and Goetiaoperations.

A noted anthropologist once wrote thatshamans could be recognized by their agitatedmanner and shifty glance. If he applied this tomagicians, he could not have been more wrong. Amagician looks right through you and never blinks.No one can stare him down except anothermagician.

Before going any further we should dispelthe idea that magical hypnosis implies a similarityto the post-hypnotic demonstrations of stagehypnotism. If that concept applied, an operatorcould hypnotize his subjects and then instructthem as in the analogy of the fellow singing the National Anthem to see a spirit in the

Triangle when he says the key word,

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Tetragrammaton! Granted, such a procedurewould probably work, and might have some valuein an experimental sense, but it is not the waythe Art is practiced. It would be a gimmickyapproach at best, and at worst, it would raiseserious ethical questions.

What I am saying is that ritual magick is atype of hypnosis in its own right. It has been myobservation, having operated, received, andotherwise assisted in several hundred suchceremonies, that the magical trance state isunique. In clinical hypnosis it is supposed that asomnambulistic state is necessary for visions to beseen and voices to be heard by a hypnotizedsubject. In Goetia evocation, however, a trainedritualist-receiver can quickly drop from a light(hypnoidal) trance down into a receptive moodwhere he can appreciate the manifestation of anentity in a speculum, communicate with it, allow

it to speak through him; and also answer anoperators questions in his own persona. His ownremarks will be interspersed with the entityscomments (depending upon whom the operatoraddresses: the receiver or the entity) and the ritualist can do all this while standing up as anactive participant in a group ceremony. It is

important to note that such rituals do not

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depend on the use of drugs or hysterical dancingpreliminary to the experience.

Before any magical working is undertaken ,there should be a period of preliminarymeditation. This is also a hypnotic proceeding,usually led by the operator for the coming

operation. It is best done outside the temple inan ante chamber with a suitable atmosphere anddim lighting. In the O.T.A. we like to sit in acircle around a candle set upon an appropriatemandala. We hold hands and establish a rhythmicbreathing pattern in unison; then the magus leadsus into a reverie wherein we absorb the imaginedlight of the kabbalistic sephira (sphere or psychiccenter) in which we will be working. (15.) Whenthis experience reaches its peak, we rise and moveinto the temple, maintaining our set, or trance.This preliminary meditation serves severalpurposes: it acts as a vital transition stage

between the mundane world and the sacreddimension of the inner sanctum within thetemple, and, in a temporal sense, it leadssmoothly from real time into dreamtime. Itreestablishes what we think of as the groupmind of the lodge. In this respect it may be saidto be Mesmeric, in that an exchange of energy is

initiated and power is raised.

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Magical Operations

As most readers know, there are three basictypes of magical operations: evocation, whereinthe operator calls forth the spirit from his, or

his receivers, subconscious; invocation, wherein asupernal power is called down to in-dwell in thesubconscious; and inner-plane projection (pathworking, soul-travel, etc.) wherein a journey ismade into the realms of the subconscious in this case the collective unconscious. Healing, thebuilding of telesmatic images, the charging oftalismans, and even divination are variations onthese basic themes.

The grand operations may be said to bedirectly hypnotic, whereas the lesser workingstend to be post-hypnotic.

Of these grand operations, magical pathworking is the most overtly hypnotic in itsinduction technique. Here the operator induces atrance in much the same way as a doctor wouldhypnotize a patient in his office. The path-workers lie on the floor of the temple, with

their heads on pillows, in the center of the

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magick circle. They look up at a symbolic focalpoint overhead while they are told to relaxand make themselves comfortable. Once theirheavy eyelids close in hypnotic sleep, theoperator conducts them, via a descriptivenarration, on a tour to the sephira of thekabbalistic Tree of Life, along one of the

subjective paths leading from Malkuth upward.The traditional symbolism of these paths andspheres is set forth in Gareth Knights APractical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism (1965),(16.) but remember, this is a reference book, not amanual on path-working. For an example of apath-working scenario you may consult the sameauthors New Dimensions Red Book (edited by BasilWilby, 1968). The method is to create aconsistent, realistic fantasy land which willinclude all the symbolism we wish to encounter-- something like visiting Alices Wonderland. One of the most common mistakes made by would-be

operators who have written their own scenariosis to take us all along the path, showing useverything, as; as if we were on a ride atDisneyland. This amounts to little more than anentertainment and really cant compete with agood movie.

The purpose of working a path is to learn

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more about it and yourself, that will bringsomething up from your subconscious that willhelp you along the road to individuation. Theway we do this in the O.T.A.s path-workingsystem is to establish attention points. (17.)

These attention points are situations,

objects, or entities that we are instructed toquestion individually and privately, or otherwisecomprehend. We are told to remember the specialknowledge we have received. Later, in the critiquewhich always follows any magical operation, weare asked to recount what we have experienced.Some of these revelations are remarkable andoften confirm our contention that thecollective unconscious is truly a trans-personaldimension.

As long as we stick to traditional symbolismin path working we are towing the mark in the

ethics department, but if we venture off intorealms of our own capricious devising, taking ourhypnotized lodge members along with us as weexplore the dark regions of our own subconscious,we are abusing their trust and exposing them tounpredictable dangers. Avoid the magus who hascreated his own revealed system for it will

inevitably reflect the particular imbalances of his

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own personality. There is a more subtle dangerwhich may be encountered even in traditionalworking. The operator himself is in a light stateof trance (as he would be in any magicaloperation) and is subject to impromptu visionaryexperiences. He should not involve his group insuch a phenomenon and should banish it, or

extricate himself, as quickly and quietly aspossible. If the scenario is properly written andrehearsed this should not be too much of aproblem.

Always remember in magick that the generallaws of hypnosis apply. Keep your narration simpleand carefully sequenced so that you will notprematurely evoke a vision that you willcontradict with a subsequent description. Forexample Denning and Phillips published a pathworking script which contained the followingpassage: Some little distance ahead of us stands

a solitary arch, built of flints by men in some pastage. The keystone of this arch is of pale granite,sparkling with myriad points of transient whitefire; and carved deeply into this keystone is anemblem, the curling horns of a ram.

This is beautiful symbolism, written in a fine

literary style, but as a hypnotic scenario, it is

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improperly sequenced and confusing. As soon as theoperator says: Some distance ahead of us standsa solitary arch. . . , his subjects are quicklyconstructing arches gothic arches, classic arches, megalithic arches all of which will have to be torn down and rebuilt as the descriptioncontinues. I dont think we have to belabor this

point. Romantic poetry and elegant prose areexcellent mediums for evoking images in the lightlevel of the reading trance, but when we godown into somnambulistic depths, we have tokeep out instructions simple and direct.

Thus far we have discussed hypnotictechniques in relation to tratakam, evocation,preliminary meditation and path working. Itremains for us to consider invocation. This typeof work is usually done on the double-cube altarin the center of the great circle with a crystalorb as a focal point. In ourLemegeton system we

derive Invocation Rituals from the book Almadel.In the interest of maximum participation, wefavor a round-robin sequence of invocations. Eachmember of the circle recites his or her ownrendition of the invocation.

With trained magicians this group-working

actually intensifies the result; even though there

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is a teeter-totter effect in the trance depth aseach one rises from passive to active participationin turn.

This should underline the necessity ofhypnotic training. (18.)

In this article I have taken off my magicianscloak and talked to you the reader in asstraightforward a manner as I can about asubject very few people understand. Of thosewho are more than casually interested, some cannever be enlightened because, quite frankly, theydont want to be. I am not concerned withthem, except to put them on notice that we aregoing to make our high art of magick into acultural expression we can be proud of, and ifthey try to impede us in this process, we willnot hesitate to discredit them And yet there is a danger in too much dissembling. We can become

so intellectual and sophisticated that we loseour sense of wonder, dimming the light ofintuition that leads us on. I hope that I have atleast hinted at the philosophical key to avoidingsuch a trap: the grand Hermetic monism of theRenaissance magi. If we emulate them in audacity,vision and style, we shall surely delight children

of all ages especially the child that dwells

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within us: our subconscious.

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We should establish canons of magick interms of kabbalistic philosophy, Jungianpsychology and hypnotic practice for these are the three pillars upon which the art standstoday. We need to develop magick as the bright,cutting edge of a new romantic movement torejuvenate our culture.

There is no place in such a sublime endeavorfor the charlatan or the mystic demagogue.Magick should develop the ego and thewillpower of each individual who practices it.Becoming devotees of a guru may be a validEastern practice, but it is the antithesis of theGreat Work here in the West. If hypnosis is ouroperative method, then we must insist on thehighest standards of integrity in magical practice.The power is awesome and the reward is asinfinite as man may conceive for whatsoever he envisions usually come to pass.

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End Notes: Magick and Hypnosis

(1.) In the intervening 20 years since this articlefirst appeared this situation has notimproved as much as we had hoped. I am left

to assume that those who make themarketing decisions at the occult publishinghouses have determined that hypnosis is anegative selling point with an essentiallycredulous customer base. But we are slowlygaining ground. My colleague, Philip H. Faberhas written a fascinating paper on thesubject, Hypnosis and Ritual Magick forParadigm Magazine. This can be accessed onFabers website:http://members.aol.com/discord23/hypno.htm

(2.) This is correct in a kabbalistic sense,Yesod being the gateway to the Yetzirah,or formative, dimension. However, from astandpoint of actual practice, we requirethe student to invoke the four Archangelsof the quarters, as protective and

balancing psychic components, before

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undertaking Goetic evocation.

(3.) A currently annotated version ofNegative vs. Positive Gnosis will be postedon our web site at some future date.

(4.) In recent years a counter-reaction

against Carl Jungs ideas has becomefashionable. A dirt-digging biography byFrank McLynn attempts to discredit Jungsposition in the history of Western Ideasbased on his extramarital adventures( which pale to insignificance in comparisonto Bill Clintons ). A former Jungian admirer,and avid promoter of Jungian ideas, RichardNoll, experienced a sudden change of heart(not uncommon among cult devotees) andwrote two books scathing the life andwork of his mentor with yellow-journalistic fervor. Both these authors have

capitalized on the unfortunate fact thatCarl Jung, like Pope Pious, did not lie downacross the tracks of an on-rushing Nazitrain before and during World War II. ( Foran extensive, and corrective, critique ofthese anti-Jungian works see RobinRobertsons review in Gnosis magazine,

Winter 1998. For a clearer perspective on

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Jung and his ideas see The Undiscovered Selfand Modern Man in Search of a Soul.)

(5.) The biologist Rupert Sheldrake (1981)has stirred the ant-hill of mechanisticbiological dogma with his revolutionaryMorphic Resonance Theory. At the risk of

a vast over-simplification, let us say thatSheldrake purposes something similar toEliphas Levis idea of The Astral Light inwhich all things, and life processes arerecorded. This dovetails with Platonic,Neoplatonic and kabbalistic conceptions ofpre-forms on a higher plane of emanation(the Olam Yetzirah). Sheldrake issympathetic to Jungs Collective Unconscioustheory, but he disagrees with Jung that itscomponents are necessarily inherited. ThisMorphogenic Field is not thought to bean energy-driven process, but rather an

imprint, or template, which exerts itsinfluence throughout the universe, and canbe accessed via the deep-mind. Sheldrakesexperiments with rats in mazes is his primaryhard evidence for the Morphic ResonantFields existence. This is also corroboratedby the famous 100 Monkey experiments in

primeatology.

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(6.) Fifty years previous to this, EliphasLevi (whom Crowley claimed as a previousincarnation) attempted a similar experimentto summon the shade of Apolonius of Tyana.Quite properly he used a mirror as aconjuration device, but he mistakenly

thought that smoke on the altar wouldprovide a substance for the spirit to use inbuilding a visible form. He was successful, atleast in the visualization, but banishedbefore attempting communication. Today weuse smoke before the dark mirror as anolfactory correspondence, and a moodenhancer. Concentration stays on the mirror,not the smoke.

(7.) A comparison to Taoist theories ofQi (Chi) come to mind. The manipulation ofthis life-force energy through the body via

meditation and acupuncture techniques isnow widely known, but such practices werenot known to Europeans until the 20th

Century.

(8.) This statement needs someclarification. Actually Waite was aware of

the hypnotic nature of magical visions and

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said as much. What he did not understandwas the importance of dark mirrors andcrystals as hypnotic conjuration devices (seeThe Book of Black Magic & of Pacts ).

(9.) In this case I am referring to theO.T.A.s Assumption of God/Goddess

Form method of conjuration in which thereceiver lies under a dark mirror while beinglightly massaged by the operator and hisassistants. For a detailed description ofthis procedure see Chapter Ten of TheBook of Solomons Magick by this writer.

(10.) However, there has been considerableresearch on trance states (Alpha, Beta,Theta, etc.) and sleep-state REM (rapid eyemovement) receptivity, etc. along with the bio-feedback system developments andthe new Neuro-Linguistics discipline but all

this work, as valuable as it may be, merelyrefines our ability to employ a phenomenonwe still dont understand.

(11.) This is especially true if the operatoruses our facial reflection/distortion darkmirror method of spirit evocation (see The

Book of Solomons Magick ). The reason is

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implicit in the microcosm/macrocosmHermetic model of the human psyche. Weare all differing reflections of the sameprimordial Adam (or Eve) and lightning willstrike the nearest target. From a strictlypsychological point of view we can surmisethat ordering a reflected aspect of

yourself, no matter how distorted, toreach out and hurt another person wouldresult in related collateral damage closer tohome.

(12.) This statement needs to be carefullyqualified. The idea, popular in the 1950s,that any one can be broken and re-programmed via brainwashing which derived for Pavlovs stimulus-responseexperiments in Russia, and B. F. SkinnersBehaviorism in the U.S. -- came in for asound drubbing by structural linguist Noam

Chomsky. Chomsky demolished Skinnerstheory that the brain was a blank slate atbirth, and that all human knowledgeacquisition was stimulus-response driven. Heproved that there was an innate structurefor grammar born in all of us. Brainwashingof the North Korean Paks Palace

(Manchurian Candidate) variety will only

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work with borderline personality subjects,and it is no more reliable than the borderlinepersonalities themselves (who, by thenature of their condition, are subject tosudden snapping, or reversal of affections,commitments, etc.) Although no longerconsidered practical for black covert

operations, brainwashing is still dangerous inthe hands of cult leaders who seek outborderline personalities. Cult mass-suicidesare a grim testimonial to the legacy ofPavlov and Skinner. However, Chomsky didnot escape from spawning a new and moresubtle form of mind-manipulation which isnot limited to special personalities. TodayBrainwashing has given way to the far morepervasive (or if you prefer: insidious) Neuro-linguistics.

(13.) I am not aware of any studies

suggesting a link between naturalsomnambulism and borderline personalitysyndrome, and I am not suggesting that sucha connection exists.

(14.) The most pointed example of thisone-sided Svengalism, was a student of mine

who absolutely refused to enter a trance

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state himself, but was most eager to use ourdark mirror Goetia technique to beguileothers (especially young women). In 1972 heleft the O.T.A., and went on to establisha reputation as a sorcerer-at-large. Sincethat time several of his students havefound their way back to the original fount

of his knowledge.

(15.) The O.T.A. was the first (1977)Western occult lodge to adopt its ownfully functional kabbalistic ten-spherevertical chakra system. This essentialaspect of high magick, so important toEastern practice, had been denied toEuropean practitioners as a result of theirobsession to objectify and concretizespiritual realities. How the Tibetans musthave pitied us! They have a different chakrasystem for each tantric entity. For a brief

description of the O.T.A. HermeticCaduceus, see The Book of SolomonsMagick, Chapter Nine.

(16.) When we say traditional we meanGolden Dawn traditional. Although basedon a Rabbinical structure, the 19th century

G.D. system incorporates Tarot symbolism,

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and Pagan mythological archetypes. It hasbecome standard for most students ofWestern magick.

(17.) The O.T.A. system was inspired by thesoul-travel methods of Sikh-Sant guruKerpol Singh (also the mentor of Paul

Twitchell who developed Ekankar.) Wekabbalized the attention point path-working method. With a monist philosophyand a subjective approach, Eastern magicalmethods translate easily and effectivelyinto Western practice in most cases.

(18.) In angelic Almadel operations it is notnecessary to actually see a personage orsymbolic vision in the crystal. A radiantglory on the altar top and a sense ofspiritual presence is followed by channeling(the entity speaking through the receiver),

or subjective knowings that may beprofoundly moving.

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The Secret

of the DarkMirror

byArchangela Antonioni Corelli

Copyright 2009 by Katherine McGowan

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Know that the Jinn which mighty SolomonDid conjure in the Triangle of Art

Were formed in the reflection of his faceFor they were the aspects of his soul,

Each agreeing unto a Quadrant,A planet and a metal thereof

Which when burnished did reflectEven as a mirror

And when thou holdest the lighted tapersIn thine own hands

And thou dost gaze deep into thine own eyesKnow that thou dost perform The Art

In the very manner in which it was truly done

from The Book of Astarteby Frater Aleyin (Thabion)

CHAPTER TWO:THE SECRET OF THE DARK

MIRROR

MY ILLNESS AND MY QUIXOTIC attempt tocure it through hypnosis had driven me into the

shamanic tradition of my ancestors -- and, as the

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saying goes, when the student is ready, theteacher appears. In this case the teacher came inthe form of a book. My first introduction toWestern Magick still stands as the best surveywork written on the practical aspects of thesubject: The Black Arts by Richard Cavendish,published in 1968. Using Cavendishs excellent

bibliography I quickly acquired Waites The Bookof Black Magic & Pacts along with the Mathers-Crowley Goetia, Mathers The Key of Solomonthe King, and Francis Barretts The Magus.

The medieval Key of Solomon provided anauthentic handbook for making magical regalia,implements and talismans but it was the morenotorious Goetia of the Lemegeton, the so-called Lesser Key of Solomon, that was the realwizards Liber Spirituum. The Goetia (pronouncedGo-EY-sha) cataloged and described 72 rebelliousspirits that, according to a Talmudic legend, old

King Solomon has imprisoned in an enchanted Brassvessel submerged in a lake in Babylon. This read likea fabulous tale from The Arabian Nights but inmy irrational state I was convinced that therewas a hidden truth behind the fantastic story.Like Aladdins wonderful lamp or Ali Babas OpenSesame there was a Secret Key to calling up

those mighty princes of the Jinn that Solomon

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had imprisoned so long ago and I was determined to find it.

Years later, when I was doing graduatestudies in cultural anthropology I realized thatback in 1969 I had crossed over into a realm ofdivine madness that few Anglo-Americans had

ever experienced. I had gone through a trueshamanic initiation, that mortal illness and visionquest that brings the shaman in touch with hisgods and gives him the power to practice hiscraft . . .

It was during that season of my madness,when agony alternated with ecstasy, that I haddiscovered, or more properly re-discovered, thelost secret of the magical Art and I wrote TheBook of Astarte from which the key passage thatheads this chapter is drawn. (see Note 1.)

I had studied the writings of the ancientand modern magicians. They had filled their bookswith the most detailed instructions on how tobuild, inscribe and decorate all the necessaryequipment, all the signatures of the spirits andeven the hours in which to summon them but the most important element, that method by

which one could make the spirit physically

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appear, was always missing from the old grimoiresand not explained in the recent texts,

I knew that over a dozen ancient andmodern writers on magick could not be involved inone big, long-standing conspiracy to suppress thisfinal secret, so it seemed obvious that at some

time after the 17th century and before themiddle of the 19th century the practical keys tothe magical evocation and invocation processeshad been lost.

This turned out to be true. The ancientwriters had hidden the secrets in plain sight as you will see when we examine the old texts but the Victorian age magicians of the GoldenDawn school, with their phobia against hypnosisand their commendable distrust of passivespiritualist mediumship, had deemphasized theactual methods of renaissance evocation and

invocation in favor of a Western Tantra in whichimages are carefully built up in the imagination andthen allowed to provide psychic feedback.Instead of the traditional crystals and darkmirrors for visionary work, they preferred to useabstract colored symbols to stimulate theimagination. These methods are different in

conception and technique from the shamanic

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calling down or summoning up of spontaneousvisions from that great storehouse of imagesrenaissance magicians knew as The World Souland we now refer to as The CollectiveUnconscious.

If I hadnt been touched with divine

madness aty the time I probably would haveaccepted the Victorian reconstruction of magickand put aside my yearning to actually conjurespirits to visible appearance in Solomons Triangleof Art. I would have agreed with critics likeProfessor Eliza Butler that those whopracticed out of the old grimoires were credulousand self-deluded. However Arthur EdwardWaite, who was also a ruthless critic of the ArtMagical, had conceded that they had achievedresults. In the introduction to his 1898 Book ofBlack magic & Pacts he wrote:

It would, however, be unsafe to affirmthat all persons making use of the ceremonies inthe rituals would fail to obtain results. Perhaps inthe majority of cases most of such experimentsmade in the past were attended with results of akind. To enter the path of hallucination is likelyto ensure hallucination, and in the presence of

hypnotic and clairvoyant facts it would be

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absurd to assume that the seeering process ofancient magic which were many did not produce seership, or that the auto-hypnoticstate which much magical ritual would obviouslytend to occasion in predisposed persons did notfrequently induce, and not always in thepredisposed. To this extent some of the

processes are practical, and to this extent theyare dangerous.

This paragraph was one of the clues thatset me on the trail to discovering the secret ofSolomons Triangle. It should be note that I hadfirst read all the available 16th and 17th centurymaterial before I got into Regardie and the GoldenDawn. Therefore my original perspective was, andstill remains, that of a renaissance magician ratherthan a Victorian occultist (even though I will bethe first to concede our tremendous debt to theGolden Dawn). I think it is important to mention

this because there is a natural tendency forpeople to be heavily influenced by their firstimpressions in any field of endeavor.

This was especially true in my case given mynear-terminal illness and altered state ofconsciousness. I literally devoured the books listed

above with the obsession of a religious fanatic.

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But even in the grip of a toxic psychosis, I hadntlost my intellect. Madness is known to stimulategenius. I was on the verge of discovering, or re-discovering, an extraordinary secret hidden inthese quaint, and apparently whimsical, books offorgotten lore.

I knew there had to be a way to makeSolomons traditional operations actually workwithout resorting to drugs, fasting or endlessconjurations to produce hallucinations throughhysteria and exhaustion.

A century ago Aleister Crowley had triedto conjure one of the Lemegetons Goetia demonsout of incense smoke. He had very little successafter a great deal of effort. As a self-taughthypnotist this did not surprise me. Trying toform an image, or commanding a spirit to producean image out of curling, twisting smoke was more

of an experiment in telekinesis than a scryingprocess. Crowley obviously did not know thetechnique but he certainly understood thephilosophy. He stateed it clearly in his 1904edition of The Goetia:

But can any of the effects described in

this our book Goetia be obtained, and if so, can

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you give a rational explanation of thecircumstances? Say you so?

I can, and will.The spirits of the Goetia are portions of

the human brain. Their seals therefore represent(Mr. Spencers projected cube) methods ofstimulating and regulating those particular spots

(through the eye). The names of God arevibrations calculated to establish:

(a) General control of the brain.(Establishment of functions relative to the subtleworld.)

(b) Control over the brain in detain. (Rankor type of spirit.)

(c) Control of one special portion. (Name ofthe spirit.)

The perfumes aid this through smell.Usually the perfume will only tend to control a

large area; but there is an attribution ofperfumes to letters of the alphabet enabling one,by Qabalistic formula, to spell out the spiritsname.

I need not enter into a more particulardiscussion of these points; the intelligent reader

can easily fill in what is lacking. If then I say,

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with Solomon: The spirit Cimieres teaches logic,what I mean is: those portions of my brain whichsubserve the logical faculty my be stimulated anddeveloped by following out the process calledThe Evocation of Cimieres.

I have quoted the above passage at some

length because it made such a strong impression onme when I first read it. It is certainly notromantic or artistic; in fact it is downrightanalytical like wiring a ballet dancer with electronic sensors so we can get a scientific read-out on Swan Lake but it serves an absolutely necessary purpose. Crowleys statement placesSolomons Magick squarely within the parametersof a psychological system.

Solomons spirits are portions of thehuman brain.

But the human brain is only the hardwarefor the greatest computer system ever designed:The Human Mind. A modern hacker-magus wouldsay we run our Solomonic Magick program on anoperating system designed by Carl Jung using alanguage called Agrippa 777.

For those who are not yet magical

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cybernauts that needs some explaining: Crowleysconceptions of Magick pre-dated Carl JungsArchetypes in the Collective Unconscious theory.Crowley knew that magical manifestationsinvolved altered states of consciousness andcould produce psychosomatic effects but he maynot have been aware that entire pantheons of

ancient Gods and Goddesses, choirs of Angels, andhordes of demons might exists in the deepestreaches of everyones mind.

Actually the theory was not very modern.Around 200 A.D. Hermes Trismegistus, themysterious founder of Hermetic Philosophy, hadwritten in his Asclepius that: The Gods of theZodiac are eternal but man creates his own lessergods. The implications of this statement areawesome. If we create gods, then we controlthem! And if we can control them, are we notGods ourselves? (En Tuo Templo, Tu Es Deus!)

This is why the late Warburg Institute scholarFrancis Yates called The Asclepius The charge ofdynamite behind Renaissance Neoplatonism.

Echoes of that explosion reverberate in thewords of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa written in1527:

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Such things are delivered and writ bygreat and grave philosophers, whose traditionwho dare say are false? Nay, it were impious tothink them lies: only there is another meaningthan what is writ with the bare letters. Wemust look for the principle of these grandoperations without ourselves; it is that internal

spirit within us which can very well performwhatsoever the monstrous mathematicians, theprodigious magicians, the wonderful alchymistsand the bewitching necromancers can effect.

In the 1920s Jung declared that beneath andbeyond the personal subconscious mind thereflowed a vast, deep sea of dream images andforgotten lore he referred to as The CollectiveUnconscious. This mysterious psychic ocean wasnot the exclusive property of any individualhuman being. It was a dimension shared by us all!Here one might discover the great Archetypes of

mythology: the heroes, the beautiful courtesans,the martyred saints and monstrous villains ofour past. Here were the mysterious man-createdgods which Hermes Trismegistus had writtenabout so long ago. Here was the World Soul ofthe Renaissance magicians. Here were the demonsof Solomons Brass Vessel.

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When Jung discussed his theory with hisfamous colleague, Sigmund Freud, Freud washorrified. Carl! he whispered. If you reveal thisto the public you will release a black flood ofoccultism!

However it would take more than just a

theory to release the flood of occultism Freudfeared. Theories by themselves do not produceresults. For results the magician still dependstoday, as he did thousands of years ago, onmethods and techniques.

Since time immemorial magicians have placedthemselves and others into states of tranceduring which visions and oracles were received.We now know that this process was hypnoticand that all the phenomena we have come toassociate with modern hypnosis were in factknown and practiced by ancient sorcerers under

the guise of fascination, spell-casting andenchantment.

The powerful hypnotic effect achievedthrough a fixed gaze at a reflective surface isthe reason why the crystal ball, or shewstone,and the dark mirror (the speculum), were used by

wizards of olden times as their spiritus locii, the

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actual place where the angels and spirits could beconjured to visible appearance. This was and stillis a hypnotic process. . . However the final secretof how to use these magical aides was alwaysmissing. With all the philosophy, the atmosphere,the paraphernalia, the powerful conjurationsand the hypnotic techniques, such spontaneous

visions in a crystal or in a dark mirror, stilldepended upon some special psychic talent. Tomake it really work one had to be a naturalmedium Now, with all my hypnotic experiments and my toxic fever dreams, I had certainly becomea mystic . . . but not a clairvoyant.

This is a very important point. Mediums,psychics and clairvoyants have dominated themystic arts for centuries because most of us haveassumed that they are the only ones gifted withthe abilities to see and hear the spirits. Thissituation was so pervasive that even great

magicians like Abramelin the Mage, Dr. John Dee,Count Cagliostro and the later Frederick Hockleythought they had to employ specially talentedscryers or gifted children to do the actualreceiving for them. If I had been in a fully rationalstate of mind at the time I probably would haveaccepted this historically established handicap

but obsessed genius knows no bounds.

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I was convinced there had to be a way, amethod by which anyone with the desire and thedetermination could summon spirits to visibleappearance and converse with them. This waswhat Solomon had promised and like the indefatiguable amateur archaeologist HenrichSchlieman, who had actually discovered Troy

right where Homer said it was I was sure that

the medieval Solomon was telling the truth.

I could place a crystal ball into thetriangle, but then if I stood back inside the magickcircle, as the operator was supposed to doaccording to the ancient texts, even a 60mm ballwould appear the size of a door knob but I knew something had to be placed in that triangle:something fascinating, something hypnotic, andsomething large enough to provide a viewingsurface.Obviously the speculum, the darkmirror.And what better entrance into that

realm the mystic poet Coleridge had called:Caverns measureless to man.

It had to be the dark mirror! But how touse it? How to make it actually work, I askedmyself then something I had read the year before jogged my memory something I had read

somewhere about the use of dark mirrors in the

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Far East.?

That all-important clue had been sittingright there on my book shelf! The secret was in awork called Tantra, The Yoga of Sex by OmarGarrison published in 1964. In this book the authorexplained an ancient Oriental method of conjuring

up images of previous incarnations from thereflection of ones own face..in a darkmirror.flanked by candles!

As I re-read this passage in Garrisons book Ifelt a shiver of excitement. I was experiencing thesame tingling exhilaration that an archaeologistmust feel when he brushes away the sand andlooks down at the unbroken seal of an ancientroyal tomb! I tried Garrisonss experiment andfound that it worked with remarkableeffectiveness. If a person in a darkened roomstares for several minutes into a mirror flanked

by candles, a strange phenomenon will almostalways happen: the familiar reflection will fadeout and disappear. The mirror will go black and,when the image returns, it will be the face ofsomeone or something else!

This experience is usually accompanied by a

profound sense of other-worldly presenceIt

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was obvious that this phenomenon must have beendiscovered long before any concept ofreincarnation. It probably went back as far as thepaleolithic when stone-age people staredfascinated at their reflections in dark, still poolsof water, seeing the strange transformationoccur and being convinced they were in the

presence of their Gods!

I suspected that in a ritual setting, usingtraditional conjurations and symbols, specificspirits and even ancient Gods and Goddessesmight be summoned from the Other Side.Thismight well be the ancient secret behind thatstrange passage in the Bible that reads: Godfashioned Man in His own image.

It was certainly the reason why Solomon hasus command the spirit, often described as amonstrous hybrid, to Appear in fair and human

form and speak unto us in a clear, intelligiblevoice in our mother tongue.

After this discovery the use of the magickmirror in an elevated triangle seemed obvious. Ourlate 17th century Lemegeton manuscript, Sloane2731, clearly shows a large black-filled circle in

the center of Solomons Triangle.

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Note that the instructions written aroundthe Triangle say: Two foot off from the Circleand three foot over.) Not Three foot across, as the published version has it. TheTriangle was intended to be raised up to eyelevel. . . .

This is clearly shown in a drawing from a17th century manuscript by the mysterious D.Thomas Rudd, which depticts a mirror on a standwith Solomons Secret Seal from the Goetia ofthe Lemegeton clearly rendered on the reverseside. . . (See figure 2.)

We know that polished obsidian mirrorswere used in the neolithic Middle Eastern city ofKatal Huyuck as far back as nine thousand yearsago before the Great Flood. And later, in the time of Solomon, the Egyptians and Canaanitesmade mirrors of polished copper and of silver,

metals attributed to the planet Venus and theMoon.

Let your mind travel back to those ancienttimes and imagine what might have happened whena priestess sitting before her mirror, putting hermake-up on in the dim light, saw her face change

and become The Goddess! Perhaps she would call

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the high priest to witness the transformation.They would both be familiar with possessionsand trance states and would be quick to see thepossibilities.

Now I am certain that some of my magicalcolleagues will cluck in their beards and say: Well

Runyon developed an effective system but its

modern. They will cite the fact, alreadymentioned, that Cagliostro, Dee, Hockley andothers had to employ scryers to do theirvisioning. If these worthies hadnt know thereflection secret, then who had known?

My answer is that the medieval Arabianmagicians probably knew it as these quotes from C.J. S. Thompson indicate:

According to Arab tradition, magic or sihr,which means to produce an illusion before the

eyes was revealed by two angels in Babel, namedHarut and Marut, who instructed mankind in thisart . . . When a miracle was deemed a sihr it wasregarded as an optical illusion or due to an illicitdealing with demons . . . The use of the magicmirror which was made of metal or glass with a polished surface for seeing spirits, was known to

the Arabs at an early period. The image was said

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to Appear in a cloud or vapor floating betweenthe medium used and the gazers eye. . .

Ceco d Ascoli, Dr. Thomas Rudd and othersmay very well have known but kept it secret.The method was so simple that there was no needto write it down. It could have been passed from

mouth-to-ear (and yet the hints in the Sloane2731 Goetia are almost too obvious). We shouldrecall that the Goetia was not a system magiciansfelt comfortable writing about back in the daysof the Inquisition.

And they did not need Carl Jungs subjectivepsychological theories to justify using their ownreflection as a focal point. There was a hauntingOrphic myth about Dyonisus being entranced byhis own reflection in a mirror, caught by theTitans and torn to pieces, his parts rescued byZeus and given to Apollo to plant in the earth

from which he rose reconstituted and revived.Here we have the modern psychological

concepts of fragmentation, reintegration andindividuation of the personality; we also haveour seventy-two all-encompassing spirits let outand put back into The Brass Vessel. The ancients

did not create such fables for idle amusement.

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But my most telling argument sits in everygrammar school class in the country. Along withplaying hopscotch on The Tree of Life, childrenhave a game called Bloody Mary (Clive BarkersCandyman ) which they have been scaring eachother with as long as there have been mirrors tolook into. Any modern magician who thinks his

predecessors didnt discover this samephenomenon ages ago and made use of it doesnthold them in very high regard but to those who still insist that this method of magical evocationis modern, I will be most happy to accept creditfor it. (See Note 2.)

In the week following my remarkablediscovery (or re-discovery) my illness overcame meto such a degree that my doctor was compelledto conduct a more through examination. At thathe discovered the truth and advised me thatonly an operation could save my life but that I

was too debilitated and inflamed to undergo thesurgery. I asked the Archangel Raphael to heal meand Prince Baal to give me strength then (because the Gods help those who helpthemselves) I went out and found anotherdoctor. When I recovered from my surgicaloperation, health and sanity quickly returned

but I remember what I had learned during my

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sabbatical in Tartarus and, to my surprise, Idiscovered that Solomons Magick was still aseffective and even more so when contrasted with my otherwise rational state of mind.

To my even greater surprise, I found thatthis ancient system would work for any sincere

person who could concentrate on a fixed pointlong enough to achieve a light hypnotic trance.

I extended my experiments to include othersand I soon discovered that the process was just aseffective if I as the magician stood behind a passive receiver who would only need to holdthe candle sticks and concentrate on the mirror.

At that time I was a bachelor in my thirties,living in a beach-side Southern Californiaapartment and riding a motorcycle. This put me ina position to recruit young women willing to

transform into the Goddess Astarte. Theseexperiments, harmless as they were, made menotorious.

According to one published account one ofmy Astartes disappeared off the face of theearth and yet I saw her socially a week

following the operation.

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It did appear that women made the best, orperhaps the most enthusiastic, receivers but forthe most part my female volunteers were notclairvoyant. Those few who were naturalpsychics would receive their vision off-faceafter the mirror blacked out. Non-psychicreceivers (most of us) will see a different face

replace our familiar reflection. However, it isimportant to note that rthis transformationprocess for non-psychics is, if anything, a moreintense and consciousness-altering experience thanthe more familiar visioning process the psychicundergoes.

So I had the secret. Like Dr. Frankenstein, Ihad learned how to do it but even though I may have been just as obsessed as the fictional VictorFrankenstein, I didnt want to make his mistake.Before I opened the Brass Vessel and releasedthese spirits into the world again, I wanted to

understand the philosophy and the spiritualsignificance behind a process that had been keptsuch a closely guarded secret for thousands ofyears. I had to ask myself, was it possible therewere slumbering demons from our past that as the late Howard Phillips Lovecraft had suggested

might better be left un-awakened? How and

why had the beautiful Goddess Astarte and her

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handsome consort, Prince Baal, the ThunderGod, become demons in the forbidden books ofmedieval balck magick? . . . I found some of theanswers to these questions in the long-lostBiblical Book of Enoch . . .

Notes on Chapter Two:

1. This passage may be familiar to some occultstudents outside of the O.T.A. The Bookof Astarte (Liber Astarte) has been piratedand circulated in the occulted undergroundsince 1979 even though it was copyrightedunder my pseudonym by a major universityin 1976.

2. In actual fact the method has become sopopular that one of my former studentsprivately took credit for it and startedthree mini-lodges of his own. Another

O.T.A. defector offered a typescriptexpose of the mirror-reflection Goetiatechnique in 1979 then in 1988 a popularizer of of magick admittedly drewon the earlier expose for a chapter onGoetia evocation in a book issued by a majorpublisher. He and his publisher followed this

up with a simplistic mass-marketed

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phamphlet on the Goetia Dark Mirrormethod in 1994. This finally prompted us togo into production of The Magick ofSolomon video and The Book of SolomonsMagick to present the real story behindmodern Goetia/Almadel magick and teachthe proper methods of practice. Other

Chapters in The Book of Solomons Magickinclude: Hypnosis and Yoga, Fallen Angelsand Pagan Gods, The Secret of the HolyTable, The Kabbalah of Wizardry, ArabianOrigins of Magick and Witchcraft, andSolomons Sex Magick, and more. . . There arenumerous reproductions from ancientmanuscripts, including all of the originalsigils of the Goetia spirits, the sigils of theShemhamephorash Angels and the DemonKings of the Quarters. The book containstwo full color plates showing the FourGreat Archangels of the Quarters and The

Solomonic Master Mandala.

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