Ceremonial Magick On a Shoestring

Get Free Access to the Supplemental Video Course

Get Free Access to the Supplemental Video Course

The lessons in this book, particularly regarding the Ritual of the Pentagram, are also covered in my video course. The Golden Dawn's Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram is available on Udemy. While this book goes into more detail, the video course is useful for learning things like how to intone sacred names, and how to make magickal gestures, which are difficult to convey in a book. Readers of this book are welcome to email me at [email protected] to receive free access to the course for a limited time and/or a discounted price for access to the course forever. (Discounts vary according to region and the whims of Udemy’s pricing department.) Feel free to preview the course at https://www.udemy.com/course/lesser-banishing-ritual-of-the-pentagram/.

Disclaimer

Common sense is a virtue, and one which you should utilize at every given opportunity. The words expressed in this book are based off of the experiences of the author. If there is a suggestion provided which will get you in trouble, then don’t do it. This book is only a guide. Remember that we are each responsible for our own choices. Nothing in this book is an order. Even if direction and instruction are provided, it is up to you to discern what is appropriate for your situation.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the following public domain authors:

Israel Regardie, without whose book, The Golden Dawn, this would not be possible. The figures for the hexagrams are taken from that book.

Aliester Crowley, to whom this work is similarly indebted, particularly his book Magick, from which I pulled his definition of magick.

The Ordo Templi Orientis, from whose work, The Record of the Magical Retirement, I borrowed the picture of Crowley giving the Sign of the Enterer.

The founders and members of the original Order of the Golden Dawn, including William Wynn Westcott, who provided the translation of The Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom.

Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, for the Smith-Waite Tarot deck.

G. H. Soror Q. L. (thought to be Harriet Miller Davidson), whose essay, The Tarot Trumps, is included as the first appendix.

Samuel Liddell Mathers, another one of the founders of the Golden Dawn. His translation of the Bornless Ritual is included as the second appendix.

Aryeh Kaplan, from whose translation and commentary on the Bahir, I acquired the figure of  Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

The Brothers Grimm and their translator, D. L. Ashliman, from whom I acquired the fairy tale The Nixie in the Pond.

Lon Milo Duquette, from whose Enochian Vision Magick I took inspiration and a quote.

Don Michael Kraig, whose Modern Magick, I consulted to fact-check the ritual work.

David Robles and A. Marina Aguilar, for teaching me all of this.

Heather Awen, for the idea and encouragement to do this.

The folks at Ellhorn Press, for making this book a reality.

Introduction

This book came out of an instructional video I made a couple years ago explaining the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, or LBRP. The LBRP (as you will learn in the first chapter of this book) is arguably the cornerstone of modern Ceremonial Magick. It has, in a sense, taken on a life of its own and is used in many contexts that have only a loose connection to the tradition of Ceremonial Magick (for example, many modern witches use it). People have invented their own rituals based on the LBRP, but the original stands alone as a lens into a much greater system of Magick. That is what this book is about.

My intention, with this book, is to go deeper into the Magickal system that is used by Ceremonial Magicians, and which has influenced every Magickal system in the English-speaking world since then. I say every, not nearly every or virtually every because it has been so influential that, if you ignore it, you’re probably using it without realizing it. And if you are intentionally avoiding it, then you are still influenced by it in that you are explicitly trying not to use this system. Put simply, it is ubiquitous because it is effective. That is why so many other systems have used it. And you might as well know what you’re doing. In fact, even those magicians I know who do explicitly avoid using this approach to Magick all have a firm grounding in it to begin with.

There are many introductions to Ceremonial Magick. Why write another one? I have two reasons. First: My intention with this book is to provide a complete resource for people with extremely limited resources, mobility, and privacy. It was written with two populations in mind: prisoners and college students. One of the things that discourages many from following this path is the impression that you need incredible resources in order to follow it. It sometimes seems as though the only way one could really follow it would be to be an independently wealthy gentleman from the Victorian era, as were the people who originally put it together. That, however, is not true. Sure, it’s nice to have access to a fully decorated temple with all the accoutrements, but it is not at all necessary. Everything that exists in that temple primarily exists as a mnemonic device—a reminder—of that which exists on the inner plane. You do not actually need any of it.

The other motivation for writing this book has to do with my approach. One of the things I found when I started this path was that I would pick up a book and it would say how much more important it was to do the work than to read about it. Then it would go on and on about all this theoretical stuff and only finally get to the practical bit at the end. So I would skip to the end to try it out but have no idea what I was doing. My approach in this book is different. I start right away with providing practical exercises to be performed, breaking them down as we go. I introduce each theoretical concept within the context of how you might use it. In this way, I provide a complete introduction to the theoretical concepts of Qabalah but do so through the lens of practical ritual. My hope is that this will both accelerate your practice and at the same time, keep your interest in the theoretical aspects of the work which, on its own, can be overwhelming, sometimes leading to the question, But how do I use any of this? Hopefully you will not be asking that through this book (or if so, not for very long).

Who Am I?

Who is this person who presumes to write yet another introduction to Magick? I might as well start with my bonafides: I was initiated into a Golden Dawn-style Order over twenty years ago. It should be noted that this is a Golden Dawn-style Order, and not the Golden Dawn, nor any of its descendant Orders. In fact, this Order claims no lineage at all (though the founder suspects that his teacher was probably initiated into a number of traditions that he does not know about). While some might consider this a flaw, I’ve come to see it as a strength. I am not interested in who anyone’s teacher was or whether the charter for their Order came from a legitimate source. I’m interested in who you are and what you can do. I have found, too often, with Orders that claim a lineage they can trace back to the original Golden Dawn that they seem far more interested in that lineage than they are in actually doing the work to develop themselves, as though they believed that just because they had lineage, that gave them a shortcut. Based on my experience, it doesn’t. You have to do the work either way.

This Order was not my initial introduction to Magick, though it was when I became serious about it (dare I say, devoted my life to it). I was introduced to Magick by my parents, particularly my mother. When my classmates at Catholic school got confirmed, I was initiated into witchcraft. I have since been involved in Reclaiming Witchcraft circles. I’m also a Druid in the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids. I’ve also received Tantric initiation in the Shakta tradition in Varanasi, India. My path has been eclectic, but Ceremonial Magick has been a path I’ve continuously come back to.

So what is Magick?

The first definition of Magick I came across was the one in the book of the same name, Magick, by Aleister Crowley. He defines Magick as the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will. He then goes on to explain that writing that book was an act of Magick. He wrote:

It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take magical weapons, pen, ink, and paper; I write incantations—these sentences—in the magical language, i.e., that which is understood by the people I wish to instruct; I call forth spirits, such as printers, publishers, booksellers, and so forth, and constrain them to convey my message to those people. The composition and distribution of this book is thus an act of magick by which I cause Changes to take place in conformity with my Will.¹

I both love and hate this definition. I love it because it encourages the Magician to think of every intentional act as a Magickal act. This, I think, is very good and a useful practice. At the same time, I hate it because it is not at all what most people think of when they think of the word Magick. Is getting a job an act of Magick? Crowley would say, Yes, so long as getting that job was in conformity with Will. But you did not pick up this book to learn how to get a job. Based on Crowley’s definition, David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done (GTD) would be the ultimate book on Magick. And while I would agree that GTD and other productivity tools are valuable to the Magician (and anyone, but perhaps especially to the Magician) I would think it a stretch to consider GTD a Magickal system.

Magick with a ‘K’

By now you may be wondering why I spell Magick with a ‘k’. This is a convention that was invented by Aleister Crowley. On the surface, it is to distinguish it from stage magic. (Though, as I write this, there is a stage magic show in New York called Speakeasy Magick. So much for that.) Some have argued that Magick is an older spelling of the word, which is both true and false. Before spelling of words was standardized, it might be spelled magic, magick, majik, or various other spellings. Magick was actually relatively unusual. Crowley was fond of altering the spelling of words for other reasons though, usually numerological. However, that isn’t why I use the spelling either. I use it because it’s the spelling I used when I was first learning Magick in the 90s. It seems to be going out of fashion to spell it that way, perhaps in an attempt to distance oneself from Crowley. However, I still like it. I see it as more magickal, if you will. Outside of the context of this book, when talking about magic as a general human practice done across cultures and millennia, I will use the more universal and generic magic without a ‘k’. But in the context of this book, I am talking about a particular practice, rooted in a particular time, with a particular contemporary context. And that I call Magick with a ‘k’.

Think, for a moment, how you would define the word Magick. Think of what it connotes for you, and what it doesn’t. Perhaps write some words down. It may be useful to draw a mind map. A mind map is a simple technique where you take a blank piece of paper, put a word or phrase in the middle (in this case, Magick), draw a circle around it, and then think of what other words or concepts come to mind. Write those down, circle them, and draw lines connecting one to the other where you see connections. This is a kind of non-linear word-association technique that can be helpful in developing an understanding of subtle concepts, like Magick. Once you’ve done this, you might try your hand at writing your own definition, before reading mine, below.

My definition of Magick is this: Magick is the art of working with unseen or invisible powers through symbol and ritual. I would say that if there is not an element of the unseen or the imaginal, then it's not really what I would call Magick. If there isn't an element of symbol or ritual involved, I would not really call it Magick; it requires both of these. Simply engaging with unconscious images and making them conscious (say, by recording your dreams) is related to Magick, but is not Magick per se. Manipulating symbols, as in computer programming or cryptography, might be related to Magick as well, but it is not in itself Magick the way I mean it here. But once you are actively engaging with these powers using symbols and/or ritual (usually both, but not always) then I think we've got Magick. That is why the first part of this book is devoted to Ritual and Symbol respectively.

Why learn and practice Magick?

So why engage in this at all? Well, if we go back to Crowley’s definition, the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will, then there could hardly be a more important endeavor than that! That is to say, if you have any desire to have any agency in the world, then Magick (as he defines it) is for you. But even if you constrain yourself to my definition, the art of working with unseen or invisible powers through symbol and ritual, I would say that while Magick might not be for everyone, it is for anyone who is interested in fully engaging with who they are and how they can influence their world. Most people walk through the world with very little sense of the unseen and unconscious influences upon their lives. They react, even when they think they act. While Magick is not the only way to become aware of—and ultimately utilize—these forces (psychotherapy and certain artistic endeavors come to mind), Magick is a particularly effective and direct way to widen your perception and influence in the unseen world. Magick helps you to be aware of what you were once blind to. It helps you to develop agency and align yourself with higher powers, rather than simply being a pinball in a machine.

What is Ceremonial Magick?

Magick (or magic) has been around for millennia. It is older than writing (though it is tightly interwoven with the development of writing … there’s a reason we call it