HOW TO WRITE A CRITICAL BOOK/FILM REPORT

Theory and Practice of the Occult

•Pick a book or film that deals with magic (magick) and how it works

•Basic Plot (for non-fiction: basic outline of the contents)

Analysis

•What is magic, according to the book/film?

•Who practices magic?

•How does it work? Is there any indication of theory behind the magic?

•What kind of magic is it? E.g.:

–Wiccan

–Traditional Witch Magic

–Black Magic

–Religious Magic

–Satanic Magic

Analysis of Bias

•Is there any indication of the author/director’s religious background? (take a guess if you have to)

•How does this background affect the way s/he presents magic in the work?

–Is magic presented as good, evil or neutral?

–Do you think the author/director believes that magic is viable? Why or why not?

Critical Evaluation

•Do you agree with the author/director’s point of view on magic? Why or why not?

•Do you think that the work is simply propaganda for one point of view, or does it present more than one possible interpretation of events?

Conclusion

•Do you think this book/film enhances our understanding of the occult, or is it just filled with stereotypes?

•Would you or would you not recommend this book/film? Why or why not?

INTRODUCTION TO THE OCCULT

Western Magical Tradition

Definitions and Misconceptions

HOW TO WRITE A CRITICAL BOOK/FILM REPORT

Theory and Practice of the Occult

What is the Occult?

•Basic Meaning: Occult = "Hidden"

•Practiced in Secret

•Esoteric tradition existing with Western Religious tradition

•Secret teachings

•Only for initiated

•Magical tradition (High magic)

•Basic Theme: "there are hidden relationships between all elements of the universe“

MAGIC(K)

•The word "Magic": Persian

•Zoroastrianism: Magus

•Astrologer/Priest

•Plural: Magi

Magic and Sorcery

•Magic: implies a sophisticated intellectual system

•Sorcery: magic applied for practical ends

•Magic = theory; sorcery = application (like science and technology)

Mechanical Sorcery

•No reference to theory

•“It works like magic”

•TO THINK CLEARLY: You need cotton, powdered eggshell, cocoa butter, grated coconut, grated yam, coconut water, a white cloth. If you feel that you are not thinking with your accustomed clarity, make a paste with the yam and the grated coconut. Mix in the rest of the ingredients and soak up the result with the cotton. Wrap the soggy cotton in the white cloth. Lie down and put the package on your forehead. Close your eyes for an hour. Keep the mixture moist by sprinkling it with coconut water.

•TO WARD OFF EVIL: You need cooking oil, five eggs, cinnamon, and a deep white dish. Fill the dish with cooking oil. Float the five eggs on the oil. Sprinkle them liberally with cinnamon. Insert a cotton wick in the oil and burn the lamp for five days.

•TO KEEP THE POLICE AWAY: Grind sage leaves into a powder and blow on your door.

•TO OBTAIN A JOB: Rub your hands with corojo oil and honey. Lick your hands three times and ask for the job.

•TO WIN A WOMAN: You need coral, cinnamon, crème de menthe and anise. Powder the ingredients and mix them with a few drops of the crème de menthe. When drunk or eaten, the mixture will turn the most indifferent woman into a passionate lover

•TO DESTROY HAPPINESS IN A HOME: You need ashes, goat excrement, pig excrement, dog excrement, Chinese pepper, guinea pepper, and black pepper. Dry the excrements thoroughly and reduce them to a powder. Mix the powder in equal parts with the ashes and the peppers. Sift the mixture into a fine powder. Sprinkle inside the house you wish to curse.

•TO DRIVE AWAY SICKNESS: Tie a dry corn cob behind the door with a purple ribbon.

•TO PROTECT AGAINST COLD OR FLU: During the cold and flu season, take a small jute bag and fill it with a few pieces of camphor and two or three mint leaves. Hang the bag from your neck or pin it to your underclothes.

•TO MARRY THE PERSON YOU WANT: Rub your hands with powdered eggshell before you shake hands with him or her.

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947)

•Definition: Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will

•Postulate: Any required Change may be effected by the application of the proper kind and degree of force in the proper manner through the proper medium to the proper object

Witchcraft and Magic

Witchcraft: Is it Religion or Occult?

•Russell: “Witchcraft is not the same as the occult, and many witches take pains to dissociate themselves from the occult.”

Etymology

•Old English (not Celtic)

–wicca (witcha) = male sorcerer

–wicce (witche) = female sorcerer

–from the verb wiccian = "to cast a spell"

•NOT from Old English witan ("to know")

–Therefore (Russell): Witchcraft does not mean, and never has meant, "the craft of the wise“

Warlock

•Not a male witch (a male witch is a witch)

•Old English: waer (truth) + leogan (to lie)

•Originally a traitor or oathbreaker

•Later equated with witch and applied to both sexes equally

•For modern witches: one who has broken the "rede": "an though it harm none, do what thou wilt“

But to define witchcraft properly we have to look at history: how they have been perceived has changed over time

•From the standpoint of anthropology (in ancient and traditional societies): Witch = Sorcerer

•From the standpoint of European history and our culture: Witch = Satanist

For modern witches: Witch = Pagan

•A religion

•Pagan but not satanic

•Practice Magic as part of the religion

All these definitions are correct, depending on your frame of reference

Perception: The Key to Understanding

•Image of the Witch

Virtually universal cultural viewpoint: Witch = bad, demonic

•Native and African Traditions

–Inherited power

–Sorcery: Harming when no just cause

•Ancient Mesopotamia

–Kaššapu (m.); Kaššaptu (f.)

–Illegitimate practitioner of magic (vs. Ašipu, "exorcist")

–Powerful human figure who introduces chaos into social order

–Demonic figure masquerading as a person

Greco-Roman Society

•Lamia (Stryx)

–Women performing rites connected to the netherworld; darkness

–Illegal: death, banishment or imprisonment

Perception the Opposite of Apparent practice

•Popular Stories: Women

•Magical Papyri: Men

Common Characteristics

•Usually women

•Often elderly

•Ride brooms or sticks, etc.

•Assemble at night

•Orgies

•Drink or suck blood, eat children, etc.

Why this Common Image?

•Not Specifically Christian (except for diabolical element)

–Syrians accused the Jews of this sort of thing

–Romans accused Christians of this sort of thing

•Occurs in Paganism

•No Clear Commonality of Culture

•Patriarchy

15th to 17th Century Witchhunts

•Historical Problems

Numbers: estimates vary from 100,000 to 9 million. Why?

•Confusion between Heretics, Jews and Witches

–Inquisition given to Dominicans (order of preachers) to convert heretics

–Jews = Arch heretics

–Witches = heretics

•Inflated Numbers

–Inquisition became a self-perpetuating business

What exactly was a Witch?

•On the continent

–Linked with heresy

–Ecclesiastical crime

–Burning

•The Christian Witch Myth

–Withes = aconcerted fifth column attack against Christian Society by an organized Satanic Cult, dedicated to destroying European Christian values

•Sage Femme/Wise Woman Myth

•England (not Scotland)

–Civil crime

–Sorcery

–James I tried to make it ecclesiastical as well, but it remained a civil crime

–Hanging

–In Canada: Remained a civil crime until 1951

•Salem, Massachusetts

–Puritan Society: Theocracy

–Therefore: Religious Background

–Therefore: Civil crime

–No burnings at Salem: Hanging

•Ratio of women to men varies from 60/40 to 85/15 owing to many of the same reasons

Historical Firsts

•Orleans, 1022

–Dualistic Sect

–Accused of worshipping the devil, having sex orgies,etc.

–Tried for Heresy

–First burnings

•Cathari, 1140’s

–Dualistic Sect

–Similar accusations

–St. Dominic and Inquisition installed to deal with them

–When refused to convert, burned

–“The Pact” with the Devil

•Explicit: Literally call up the Devil or demons (Black Magic Tradition)

•Implicit: Tenaciously professing heresy

•Waldensians, excommunicated 1184

–Early Protestants

–Accused of Devil Worship (Pact)

–Name eventually became synonymous with “witch”

First Execution for Witchcraft: The Knights Templar

History of the Knights Templar

•Founded 1118 in Jerusalem by crusaders to protect pilgrims to the holy land

•"Knights of the Temple"--original founders supposedly camped near the site of Solomon's temple

•Officially recognized as an order by Pope Honorius II, 1128

•By 14th century one of the most powerful organizations in the Christian world

•Charged with blasphemy and heresy by King Philip IV ("the fair") of France (1307)

–Protection from secular jurisdiction

–To get Philip out of debt

•Avignon pope Clement V abolished order 1312

•1314--Grand Master de Molay and other Templars burned at the stake for witchcraft

Legend of the Knights Templar

•Converts to Islam, influenced by the Sufis

•Adepts in Kabbalah and Alchemy

•Worshipped devil named Baphomet--included denunciation of Christ, intercourse with succubi (sensual female demons), roasting and eating children, etc.

•de Molay's curse on the family of Philip IV to the thirteenth generation:

–Clement dead within a month

–Philip dead within the year

–Philip's dynasty gone within one generation

•Founded Freemasons

•Founded Rosicrucians

Theories of Witchcraft

Classic Theories

•Either you believe the evidence of the church

•Or you don’t

•e.g. Montague Summers

•Believed everything and and believed the pernicious witch-cult was still around

•Malleus Malleficarum

•Very popular cheap books

Jules Michelet La Sorcière (1862)

•Believed the evidence of the Church

•A consequence of the long "age of despair" in medieval Europe

•A communion of revolt against life ruled by the Church

•A turning toward the pagan and the demonic

Joseph Hanson Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprozess in Mittelalter (1900)

•Did not Believe the Evidence of the Church

•Witchcraft never existed

•Invention of the inquisition

•Accepted a lot of gross superstition and invented a cult of witchcraft to persecute

•Created a mass delusion

Margaret Alice Murray The Witchcult in Western Europe (1921); The God of the Witches (1933)

•Believed the evidence of the Church

•Witches were pagans/heretics

•Survival in Christian Europe of the ancient fertility cult of Dianus

•Encyclopedia Britannica (till about 1968)

•Very influential on modern Wicca

Problems with Murray's Work

•No such cult of Dianus

•Her methodology has been discredited

Modern Theories

Carlo Ginsburg: Scythian Shamanism

•Actually Follows Murray

Shamanism

•Mircea Eliade: Not a religion proper, but a “technique of ecstasy”—a system of ecstatic and therapeutic methods to obtain contact with the parallel universe of the spirits and win their support in dealing with the affairs of a group or individual

•Virtually universal

•Traditional religions

•Drug use is often found

•Brought to Europe by Scythians

•Used Marijuana and Magic Mushrooms

•Mistaken by Christians as diabolical

•Really no evidence

"Witch Party Line" or "Old Religion"

•First title coined by Wiccan researchers into Wiccan origins

•Second title coined by Charles Leland

•Note: Most Witches no longer hold to this view

•Basic view: Witchcraft is an ancient religion that has been preserved in secret: modern wicca = old religion

Charles Leland: Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899): “vecchia religione”

•Leland claimed to receive this story from Maria (Or Maddelena), an Italian witch

•Ancient Witch-cult going back to at least Greco-Roman times

Chief Deity = Diana

•Created before all other beings and contains all things in herself

•Divides self into light and darkness

•Retains darkness for herself

•Makes light into a diabolical figure: Lucifer, her brother and son

•Diana attracted to the light

•Changes into a cat to make love to Lucifer

Daughter = Aradia

•Goddess who is special to witches

•Witches = Diana's patronesses

•Found in most Wiccan manuals

Problems

•Based clearly on Michelet

•Does not derive from pagan beliefs (except for the name Diana), but from Gnosticism, Catharism and Zoroastrianism (which is, suspiciously, just what Leland liked to study)

•Ancient cult of Diana has nothing in common with this myth

•Leland's work would have faded into obscurity except that Murray's work tended to corroborate it (if you change Dianus to Diana)

•Popularized by Robert Graves, The White Goddess (1948)

•Adapted by Gerald Gardner and later by Starhawk and Zsusanna Budapest

Reigning Academic Theory: Jeffrey B. Russell and Norman Cohn

•Basically follows Hansen

•Medieval Witchcraft did exist but was not an organized religion

•Heretics of every stripe

•A loose combination of folklore, superstition and pagan beliefs which were artificially designated heresy and used by the church as an excuse for persecution

Sidky/Litke Variation

•(Sidky) Likely were no witches

•(Litke) Vulnerable (perhaps “Wise”) Women and Men

•Witch myth = propaganda of control (fifth column)

•Witch trials =

•State and Church sponsored terrorism aimed at social control

History of Modern Neo-Pagan Witchcraft

•A revival and reconstruction in modern terms of some medieval customs and pagan ideas into an organized (sort of) religion

•Founder of Wicca: Gerald Gardner

Gardner’s Claim

•Met a witch named Dorothy Clutterbuck

•Initiated into a coven

•Discovered in this coven a religion going back millennia

•Broke the rules and published the coven's ancient Grimoire or Book of Shadows containing 161 laws of the Craft

•Summarized in Witchcraft Today

The facts as we know them

•His student Doreen Valiente indicated that she and Gardner wrote the Grimoire

•Gardner was a student of Aleister Crowley and studied the ceremonial magic of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

•Early copies of the Grimoire: Judeo-Christian Gnostic flavour of Golden Dawn mixed with Crowley material

•Later copies: Replaced the above with neopagan material from Leland, Murray, Graves plus English folklore

•Critical consensus: Gardner invented the religion

•Most Wiccans agree with this

Sources of Wicca

Source 1: Western hermetic/high magic tradition (considerably watered down)

•Grimoire/Book of Shadows: from medieval black magic tradition

•Athame: from Black magic tradition

•Comparison of Gardner’s Book of Shadows and Crowley’s Book of the Law

•Comparison of Gardner’s Wiccan rituals with Crowley’s Gnostic mass

Evolution of the Wiccan Rede:

•St. Augustine: “Love with care, then do what thou wilt”

•Rabelais’ “Law of Theleme”: “Do what thou wilt”

•Crowley’s “Law of Thelema”: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”

•Gardner’s Rede: “An it harm none, do what thou wilt” (cf. Hippocratic oath)

Source 2: Folklore and surviving pagan customs, especially in England:

•Very little in common with the “wise woman” tradition (Dianic is closer)

•e.g., “Drawing Down the Moon” from nefarious conduct of Greco-Roman Lamia

Source 3: Medieval Witch mythology (invented by the church)

•Sabbat (High holiday)

•Esbat (Full moon)

Coven ("gathering")

•Convent

•(French) Couvent

•(Latin) Conventus

•(Greek) Synagogue

Traditional 13 members of a coven

•Phases of the moon

•NOT

•Number of people that can fit around a 9 foot circle

•NOT

•Parody of Christ and the 12 disciples

–13^th Disciple

–Friday the 13th

Traditions of Wicca

•Alex Sanders, Janet and Stewart Farrer and the Alexandrian tradition

•Zsusanna Budapest and the Dianic Tradition

•Starhawk and the Reclaiming Tradition

•Selina Fox and Native North American tradition

•Scott Cunningham and the birth of the "solitary practitioner"

nBasic Magic(k)al Worldview and Theory

nHogwarts 101

n

nThe word "Magic": Persian

nZoroastrianism: Magus

nAstrologer/Priest

nPlural: Magi

nMagic and Sorcery

nMagic: implies a sophisticated intellectual system

nSorcery: magic applied for practical ends

nMagic = theory; sorcery = application (like science and technology)

nMagical Principles

nPrinciple 1: Cosmos

nPrinciple 2: Sympathetic Magic

nPrinciple 3: Words of Power

nPrinciple 4: Will (Energy)

nPrinciple 1: Cosmos

nOrigin of Magical Theory: Ancient Mesopotamia

n“There are hidden relationships between all elements of the universe“

nAncient View of the Universe

n3-level Universe

nHEAVEN: GODS

nEARTH: HUMANS

nHELL: DEMONS AND THE DEAD

nAlive with spirits

nDemons—hostile

nEvil gods—hostile

nGood gods—forgetful

nTherefore: Life is precarious

nHow to survive:
Law of Cosmos

nUniverse is a whole--ordered; coherent; all parts interconnected

nHidden connections

nWorld follows this law

nHumans follow this law

nGods follow this law

nDemons follow this law

nNothing is accidental

nBoth magic and science have roots here

nScience = principle of uniformity

nMagic = law of correspondence ("as above, so below")

nBasic Principle of Correspondences: Universe a Single Substance, or can be reduced to a single substance, through which everything is connected

nBasis of Alchemy: Philosopher’s Stone

nThe Emerald Tablet (Agrippa's Version)

nIt is true, without falsehood, and most certain.

nWhat is below is like that which is above; and what is above is like that which is below: to accomplish the miracle of the one thing.

nAs all things were formed from one, by the thought of one, so all things are born from this one thing, by choice.

nIts father is the Sun, its mother the Moon, the Wind carries it in its belly, its nurse is the Earth.

n

nIt is the author of all perfection throughout the world.

nThe power is strong when changed into Earth.

nSeparate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the gross, gently and with care.

nAscend from Earth to Heaven, and descend again to Earth, to unite the power of higher and lower things; thus you will obtain the glory of the whole world, and the shadows will leave you.

n

nThis has more strength than strength itself, for it overcomes all subtle things and penetrates every solid.

nThus the world was framed.

nHence proceed the wonders, which means are here.

nTherefore I am Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of world philosophy.

nThat which I had to say of the operation of the Sun is perfected

nAgrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535)

nWorld Soul

nResemblance

nSympathies

nAntipathies

nParacelsus (1493-1541)

nNature the highest authority

nNature, unlike humans, cannot commit errors

nMachina Mundi, "World machine"--divine plan

nHuman beings have the capacity to help themselves by working with the qualities God instilled in nature at creation

nTwo-fold light

nMortal Stellar Light

nDivine Light

nMortal stellar light

nStars and planets inhabited by Greco-Roman gods

nHuman beings molded from the dust of stars

nThe stars and their inhabitants are humanity's elder brothers

nTherefore: Astrology works

nFranz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815)

nAether = imponderable fluid permeating the universe

nEliphas Levi (1810-1875)

nLaw of correspondence

nAstrology for the soul, not the body

nSoul = "magical mirror of the universe"

nAstral light

nMixture of Paracelsus and Mesmer

nFormless and invisible

nPermeates whole universe

nCapable of being molded by human will into visible forms--apparitions; ectoplasm

nThe two major occult divisions have their origin in the Law of Cosmos

nIf a red dog enters the temple, the gods will desert it.

nIf a dog is found lying upon the king's throne, the palace will be burned down.

nIf a white dog enters the temple, it will stand for a long time.

nIf a grey dog enters the temple, it will be deprived of its possessions.

nIf a yellow dog enters the king's palace, the palace will be destroyed.

n

nScott Cunningham, The Art of Divination: “Divination and magic are not the same thing and anyone who says they are is either ignorant or has his own axe to grind.”

nSorry Scott!

nDivination and Magic: A mirror image

nDivination: discerning the connections

nSorcery (Magic): manipulating the connections

n

nPrinciple 2: Sympathetic Magic

nModern psychology

nLike influences like

nAgrippa’s “Resemblances”

n“Antipathies”

nContagion

nAgrippa’s “sympathies”

nDefinition: an object is said to affect an object with which it has been in contact, even if separated

nPersonal items

nPsychometry

nZoroastrian Persia: Hair and Nails

nThe Avesta

n1. Zarathustra [Zoroaster] asked Ahura Mazda [Ormazd]: O Ahura Mazda, most beneficent spirit, maker of the material world, thou holy one. Which is the most deadly deed whereby a man increases the most baleful strength of the daevas, as he would do by offering them sacrifice?

n2. Ahura Mazda answered: It is when a man here below, combing his hair or shaving it off or paring his nails, drops them into a hole or into a crack.

n3. Then for want of the lawful rites being observed, daevas are produced on the earth which we call lice, and which eat up the corn in the cornfield, and the clothes in the wardrobe.

n4. Therefore, O Zarathustra, whenever here below thou shalt comb thy hair or shave it off, or pare thy nails, thou shalt take them away ten paces from the faithful, twenty paces from the fire, thirty paces from the water, fifty paces from the consecrated bundles of baresma [holy twigs].

n

n5. Then thou shalt dig a hole, ten fingers deep if the earth is hard, twelve fingers deep if it is soft; thou shalt take thy hair down there and thou shalt say aloud these fiend-smiting words: Out of his pity Mazda made plants grow.

n6. Thereupon thou shalt draw three furrows with a knife of metal around the hole, or six, or nine, and thou shalt chant the Ahuna Vairya three times, or six, or nine.

n7. For the nails, thou shalt dig a hole, out of the house, as deep as the top joint of the little finger; thou shalt take the nails down there and thou shalt say aloud these fiend-smiting words: The words are heard from the pious in holiness and good thought.

nSanteria Spells

nTO SEDUCE A MAN

nYou need seven earthworms, menstrual blood, excrement, hair, and genital hair.

nCollect seven earthworms. Lay them in the sun to dry. Also collect a little of your menstrual blood, a pinch of your excrement, hairs from your head, and hair from your genitals. Lay them on a plate and let them dry in the sun. When all the ingredients are thoroughly dry, grind them to a very fine powder. Administer the powder in the man’s food and drink.

nName

nPower of a correctly spoken name gives control

nEgypt

nTwo spirits and two names

nba-lesser-known

nka-greater-secret

nThe Egyptian Book of the Dead

n

nGreek Magical Papyri: Names of deities, heroes and magicians: IAO; Jesus

nBlack Magic tradition: Use names of God to control demons

n"Aglon Tetagram Vaycheon Stimulamathon Erohares Retragsammathon Clyoran Icion Esition Existien Eryona Onera Erasyn Moyn Meffias Soter Emmanuel Sabaoth Adomai, I call you, Amen."'

nTetragrammaton

n

nThe Name of God

nUnpronounced since 2^nd century BCE

nReplaced with Adonnai (my Lord, my Lords) or Ha Shem (the Name)

n“The Lost Word of God”

nKabbalah: Tetragrammaton is basis of all creation

n

nEx. 3:14-15: God said to Moses, "I am who I am." He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I am has sent me to you.'" God also said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you' :This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations."

nv. 14: ehyeh (I am)

nv. 15 yhwh (Tetragrammaton = perhaps Yahweh)

nkethiv (“written”): yhwh + qere (“spoken”): adonnay = Jehovah

nYahweh = some sort of form of "He is"

nSanteria Spells

nTO ATTRACT A LOVER

nYou need: red ocher, sulphur, borax, powdered poplar leaves, three pins, cooking oil.

nWrite the loved one’s name on a piece of paper four times and pierce the paper with the pins. Place the paper inside a large colourful teapot. Add a pinch of the four powders and the oil. Insert a wick and burn the lamp for nine days.

n

nTO TIE A LOVER TO YOU

nWrite your lover’s first name on a piece of paper. Turn the paper ninety degrees and write the last name so that it crosses the first name. Place a pair of scissors on top of the piece of paper.

nEgypt: Image = Person

nStatue (Idol; Image)

nPesel

nAmulet (protection)

nTalisman (good luck)

nImitative Magic

nRitual: Acting as if . . .

nSanteria Spells

nTO ATTRACT MONEY

nDress in yellow and go to the ocean or to a river. Walk into the water, while dressed, with a bottle of honey. Rub your whole body with the honey, especially your head. Let the water wash it off. Don’t swim.

n

nTO CURSE YOUR ENEMY

nYou need a funeral candle and a knife.

nAt midnight, light the candle and call your enemy’s name. As you pronounce his name, make small cuts and stabs on the candle. Repeat the procedure for three consecutive days.

n

nTO PREVENT PROBLEMS WITH THE LAW

nPut a white rabbit and a white dove together in a comfortable cage. Feed them well every day and sprinkle drops of holy water and coconut water on their heads. The day before the court date, free the animals in a field. Tell them that you fed them to give them their liberty, so they should give you your freedom.

nMagical Imagination

nVisualization

nDocumented (claimed to be another magical revelation) by MacGregor Mathers and Wynn Westcott of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (1890’s)

nPrinciple 3: Words of Power

nOriginally prayer

nThe trouble with prayer

nThe God factor

nAncient pagan gods

nForgetful

nAgenda

nThe evolution of prayer into incantation

nIllustration: “What’s the magic word?”

nAssurbanipal’s library (7th century BCE)

nAkkadian prayers

nMiracle stories

nLanguage of incantation

nGreco-Roman magical tradition: Persian or other “barbarous languages”; e.g.: Abracadabra

nContemporary Occultism

nHebrew

nEnochian

nHebrew

nKabbalah considered Hebrew divine creative language: therefore powerful

nTemurah: Hebrew anagrams: e.g., Agla: ‘atah gib’or le’olam adonnai (Thou art mighty forever, oh Lord)

nGematriya: Hebrew numerology: e.g., Naqzaq = YHWH

nNotarikon: Transposition of letters

nEnochian of John Dee (1527-1608)

nNatural Philosopher looking for a Grand Unified Theory of everything

nAlchemist

nCourt astrologer of Elizabeth I

nSuspected of black magic

nClaimed to commune with angels through medium (scryer) Edward Kelly

nPossibly the most gullible man that ever lived

nTaught abandonment of morality in favour of self-indulgent hedonism

nEnochian language

nSpecial language and alphabet

nLanguage of Enoch and others before the flood and of angels

nGenesis 5:21-24: When Enoch had lived sixty-five years, he became the father of Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him.

n

nModern Occultists: degenerate form of language of Atlantis

nPreserved through Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

n“Enochian Keys”

nEnochian magic: not from Dee; magical spells using Enochian language; shows influence of H.P. Lovecraft

nLinguistic analysis

nNot gibberish or code: it is a language

nDerived from English and Welsh

nAlphabet derived from Hebrew, etc.

nIn the form we now have it reveals influence of King James Bible and several 17th century writers

nPrinciple 4: Will/Energy

nOriginally: “Life Force”

n“The Force”

nSacrifice

nSanteria Spells:

nTO ESCAPE THE LAW

nRub your head with two quail hens. Bite their heads off and let the blood drip on your head. Spread their feathers up and down the street.

nSexual Magic

nSatanism

nIntroduction to The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor La Vey

nSatanism is a blatantly selfish, brutal philosophy. It is based on the belief that human beings are inherently selfish, violent creatures

n

nThe Nine Satanic Statements

nSatan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!

nSatan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams!

nSatan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit!

nSatan represents kindness to those who deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates!

nSatan represents vengeance, instead of turning the other cheek!

nSatan represents responsibility for the responsible, instead of concern for psychic vampires!

nSatan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better more often worse than those that walk on all fours, who, because of his “divine and intellectual development” has become the most vicious animal of them all!

nSatan represents all the so-called sins, as they lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!

nSatan has been the best friend that the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all of these years!

nLaVey’s Satanic Rituals

nBlack Mass (corporate)

nLust

nGreed

nCompassion

nDestruction

n

nHealing techniques

nCatharsis

nSanteria Spells

nTO CURSE A PERSON

nYou need: a candle from a funeral; coal dust; salt; and seventy pins.

nBuy the coal dust and salt at three different stores. Mix equal quantities in a plate. Set up the candle so that it burns upside down on the plate, on top of the mixture. At midnight, strip yourself nude and light the candle. As it burns, let out all the hatred you feel toward the person you want to curse. Stick the pins in the candle as if it were the flesh of your enemy. With each pin, shout out that you wish the death and destruction of the hated person. After the candle has burnt down, leave the plate at your enemy’s doorstep

nDevelopment into Will

nAgrippa: All human thought is magic

nFranz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815)--"animal magnetism"

nEliphas Levi: Human will = raw power--capable of anything if properly developed and directed (“a force as real as steam or galvanic current”)

nAleister Crowley (1875-1947)

nCareer

nBorn 1875; mother calls him "the beast of revelation"; later calls himself “The Beast, 666”

n1898 joins Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

n1900 Adeptus Minor

n1904 Cairo. Egypt: revelation of Thelema by spirit Aiwass through wife Rose Kelly

n1910 joins Ordo Templi Orientis

n1922 takes over O.T.O

n1945-1947: works with Gerald Gardner

nReputation

nSupernatural power

nSex

nDrugs

nSatanist

nSpy for Germany

n“The Wickedest Man Alive”

nInfluence

nSystem of Magick

n"Law of Thelema“

n(Greek for Will)

n

nNew religion of force and fire

nReligion of the New Age = "Aeon of Horus“

nGospel for "kingly men;" "the few and secret who shall rule the many and known;" "the slaves shall serve“

nMain Teachings

nCrowley is the prophet of the New Age, the Beast 666 of Revelation

n"Every man and woman is a star": each human soul is a unique entity with the right to develop in its own way

n"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole of The Law"

nWill = destiny

n“Love is the Law; Love under Will”

nCrowley's Magical Theorems (Magick in Theory and Practice)

nI. Definition: Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will

nII. Postulate: Any required Change may be effected by the application of the proper kind and degree of force in the proper manner through the proper medium to the proper object

nIII. Theorems:

n1. Every intentional act is a Magical Act

n2. Every successful act has conformed to the postulate

n3. Every failure proves that one or more requirements of the postulate have not been fulfilled

n

n4. The first requisite for causing any change is through qualitative and quantitative understanding of the conditions

n5. The second requisite of causing any change is the practical ability to set in motion the necessary forces

n

n6. "Every man and every woman is a star"

n7. Every man and every woman has a course, depending partly on the self, and partly on the environment, which is natural and necessary for each. Anyone who is forced from his own course, either through not understanding himself, or through external opposition, comes into conflict with the order of the Universe, and suffers accordingly

n8. A man whose conscious will is at odds with his True Will is wasting his strength. He cannot hope to influence his environment efficiently

n9. A man who is doing his True Will has the inertia of the Universe to assist him

n

n10. Nature is a continuous phenomenon, though we do not know in all cases how things are connected

n11. Science enables us to take advantage of the continuity of Nature by the empirical application of certain principles whose interplay involves different orders of idea connected with each other in a way beyond our present comprehension

n

n12. Man is ignorant of the nature of his own being and powers. Even his idea of his limitations is based on his experience of the past, and every step in his progress extends his empire. There is therefore no reason to assign theoretical limits to what he may be, or to what he may do

n13. Every man is more or less aware that his individuality comprises several orders of existence, even when he maintains that his subtler principles are merely symptomatic of the changes in his gross vehicle. A similar order may be assumed to extend throughout nature

n14. Man is capable of being, and using, anything which he perceives, for everything that he perceives is in a certain sense a part of his being. He may thus subjugate the whole Universe of which he is conscious to his individual Will

n

n15. Every force in the Universe is capable of being transformed into any other kind of force by using suitable means. There is thus an inexhaustible supply of any particular kind of force that we may need

n16. The application of any given force affects all the orders of being which exist in the object to which it is applied, whichever of those orders is directly affected

n

n17. A man may learn to use any force so as to serve any purpose, by taking advantage of the above theorems

n18. He may attract to himself any force of the Universe by making himself a fit receptacle for it, establishing a connection with it, and arranging conditions so that its nature compels it to flow toward him

n

n19. Man's sense of himself as separate from, and opposed to, the Universe is a bar to his conducting its currents. It insulates him

n20. Man can only attract and employ the forces for which he is really fitted

n21. There is no limit to the extent of the relations of any man with the Universe in essence; for as soon as man makes himself one with any idea the means of measurement cease to exist. But his power to utilize that force is limited by his mental power and capacity, and by the circumstances of his human environment

n22. Every individual is essentially sufficient to himself. But he is unsatisfactory to himself until he has established himself in his right relation with the Universe

n

n23. Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one's conditions. It is the Art of applying that understanding in action

n24. Every man has an indefeasible right to be what he is

n25. Every man must do Magick each time that he acts or even thinks, since a thought is an internal act whose influence ultimately affects action, though it may not do so at the time

n26. Every man has a right, the right of self-preservation, to fulfill himself to the utmost

n27. Every man should make Magick the keynote of his life. He should learn its laws and live by them

n28. Every man has a right to fulfill his own will without being afraid that it may interfere with that of others; for if he is in his proper place, it is the fault of others if they interfere with him

•The Psychology of Magic

•Critical Thinking

•Experience and Perception

•

•Limits of Experience

•Perceptual Limits

•Expectation and Suggestion

•Expectation--Placebo Effect

•Suggestion

•The Curse

•Hypnosis

•Religious/Occult Ceremonies

•Divination

•Vagueness or Uncertainty--Forer Effect

•Cognitive Biases and Heuristics

•Tendency to see pattern in randomness

•Tendency to see meaning in meaninglessness

•Selective Attention

•Constructive Memory

•Selective Memory

•Cryptomnesia

•Basis of Magic: Assumption of a causal connection when there is only a temporal connection

•Gambler's Fallacy

•Altered States

•Intoxication

•Hypnogogic / Hypnopompic / REM transition

•Near Death Experiences

•Suggestive States

•Intuition

•Unconscious observation or something else?

•Is it reliable/controllable?

•Science

•Disciplined observation

•Controls tightly for variables

•“Systematic Removal of Doubt”

•Scientific Theory: Criteria of Adequacy

•*Testability

•An hypothesis is scientific only if it is testable, that is, only if it predicts something other than what it was introduced to explain.

•Fruitfulness

•Other things being equal, the best hypothesis is the one that is the most fruitful, that is, makes the most novel predictions.

•Scope

•Other things being equal, the best hypothesis is the one that has the greatest scope, that is, that explains and predicts the most diverse phenomena.

•

•*Simplicity (Occam’s Razor)

•Other things being equal, the best hypothesis is the simplest one, that is, the one that makes the fewest assumptions.

•*Conservatism

•Other things being equal, the best hypothesis is the one that is the most conservative, that is, the one that fits best with established beliefs.

•Humian Skepticism (David Hume)

•The more an alleged phenomenon differs from ordinary experience the greater the evidence needed to overcome skepticism

•The Rationalist’s Axiom

•Once you have ruled out the impossible, the possible, no matter how improbable, is the best explanation

•Tacit Knowing

•Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch, Meaning

•We cannot learn to keep our balance on a bicycle by trying to follow the explicit rule that, to compensate for an imbalance, we must force our bicycle into a curve--away from [toward!!!] the direction of the imbalance--whose radius is proportional to the square of the bicycle's velocity over the angle of imbalance. Such knowledge is totally ineffectual unless it is known tacitly, that is, unless it is known subsidiarily--unless it is simple dwelt in.

•The Pros and Cons of Pure Rationalism

•Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism"

•What is skepticism? It's nothing very esoteric. We encounter it every day. When we buy a used car, if we are the least bit wise we will exert some residual skeptical powers--whatever our education has left to us. You could say, "Here's an honest-looking fellow. I'll just take whatever he offers me." Or you might say, "Well, I've heard that occasionally there are small deceptions involved in the sale of a used car, perhaps inadvertent on the part of the salesperson." and then you do something. You kick the tires, you open the doors, you look under the hood. (You might go through the motions even if you don't know what is supposed to be under the hood, or you might bring a mechanically inclined friend.)

•

•You know that some skepticism is required, and you understand why. It's upsetting that you might have to disagree with the used-car salesman or ask him questions that he is reluctant to answer. There is at least a small degree of interpersonal confrontation involved in the purchase of a used car and nobody claims it is especially pleasant. But there is a good reason for it--because if you don't exercise some minimal skepticism, if you have an absolutely untrammeled credulity, there is probably some price you will have to pay later. Then you'll wish you had made a small investment of skepticism early.

•

•For example, take a fashionable fad, channeling. It has for its fundamental premise, as does spiritualism, that when we die we don't exactly disappear, that some part of us continues. That part, we are told, can reenter the bodies of human and other beings in the future, and so death loses much of its sting for us personally. What is more, we have an opportunity, if the channeling contentions are true, to make contact with loved ones who have died.

•

•Speaking personally, I would be delighted if reincarnation were real. I lost my parents, both of them, in the past few years, and I would love to have a little conversation with them, to tell them what the kids are doing, make sure everything is alright wherever it is they are. That touches something very deep. But at the same time, precisely for that reason, I know that there are people who will try to take advantage of the vulnerabilities of the bereaved. The spiritualists and the channelers better have a compelling case. . . .

•

•Or take UFO's, the contention that beings in spaceships from other worlds are visiting us all the time. I find that a thrilling idea. It's at least a break from the ordinary. I've spent a fair amount of time in my scientific life working on the issue of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Think how much effort I could save if those guys are coming here.

•

•But when we recognize some emotional vulnerability regarding a claim, that is exactly where we have to make the firmest efforts at skeptical scrutiny. That is where we can be had.

•

•If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything new. You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) But every now and then, maybe once in a hundred cases, a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and either way you will be standing in the way of understanding and progress.

•Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

•If I can only conceive pulse, I cannot appreciate tone. If I can think of painting only as a way of making colored photographs without a camera, I can see nothing but ineptitude in a Chinese landscape. We learn nothing of very much importance when it can be explained entirely in terms of past experience. If it were possible to understand all things in terms of what we know already, we could convey the sense of color to a blind man with nothing but sound, taste, touch, and smell.

•Shifting Paradigms: Thomas Kuhn

•Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

•Normal Science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend almost all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Much of the success of the enterprise derives from the community’s willingness to defend that assumption, if necessary at considerable cost. Normal science, for example, often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments. . . . When . . . the profession can no longer evade anomalies that subvert the existing tradition of scientific practice [,] then begin the extraordinary investigations that lead the profession at last to a new set of commitments, a new basis for the practice of science. The extraordinary episodes in which that shift of professional commitments occurs are the ones known . . . as scientific revolutions.

•

•Historians confront growing difficulties in distinguishing the "scientific" component of past observation and belief from what their predecessors had readily labeled "error" and "superstition." The more carefully they study, say, Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or caloric thermodynamics, the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as a whole, neither less scientific nor more the product of human idiosyncrasy than those current today. If these out-of-date beliefs are to be called myths, then myths can be produced by the same sorts of methods and held for the same sorts of reasons that now lead to scientific knowledge. If, on the other hand, they are to be called science, then science has included bodies of belief quite incompatible with the ones we hold today. Given these alternatives, the historian must choose the latter. Out-of-date theories are not in principle unscientific because they have been discarded.

Wicca

The Craft of the Witch

Outline

—Introduction

—Dispelling Myths

—Defining Wicca

—Deities

—Sacred Days

—Magick for Beginners

—Traditions

—Conclusion

Introduction

Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the circus that is my life. I am a witch. Yes, a real live witch. No, I’m nothing like you’ll see in Hollywood. I don’t have green skin and a warty nose. No, I’m not a mean-spirited woman (though some of my friends will tell you differently). I am a witch and I’m here to tell you what that really means.

Warnings!!!

—First, this is a lecture on Wicca and Paganism. I don’t mean to offend any one group, but some of a more sensitive nature may take it that way. Don’t.

—Second, this is a lecture meant for adults. This is not a PG rating, it is an R rating at best. If you have any objections to adult context and the free discussion of a somewhat sexual nature, then this is not for you.

Myths

Unlike most modern religions, Wicca is unique in that it is the object of the most misconceptions of any religion today. Tell someone you are a witch and you’re likely to get any number of reactions. The reason for this is all the myths that surround the word “witch”. There are a number of myths and misconceptions I’d like to get rid of with your assistance.

The Broomstick Story

This is one of my favorites. During the Inquisition, one of the groups targeted was the midwives. These women were often responsible for the health of the region. An area of specialty that the church felt it should be exclusively responsible for.

One of the things that the midwives were known for was their ability to create potions and ointments.

The other thing they were well known for was for being closely tied to the hearth and home. A symbol of the home was the broomstick.

One of the ointments that many midwives cou.ld make was a powerful halucinagen. This halucinagen worked best when in

direct contact with the blood vessels. On a woman, the blood vessels are nearest the surface in the vagina.

The church, as a means to discredit these women and create an aura of fear in the populace in relations was to use this information to their benefit. Thus, the church contended, these women were spreading the ointment on the end of the broomstick and “going for a flight” (please

use your imagination on that one).

Now, I do own a broom and have been known to use it on a regular basis. However, I am not now, nor have I ever been, that close to my broom. Thank you. I am rather afraid of getting splinters. Ouch.

Black Cats

The time of the Black Plague in Europe was a time of fear and suspicion. People were dying and no one quite knew why.

Yes, they understood there was a plague, but where had it come from? How did you get it? Why did some people get it and not others.

This was not a time of science in Europe due to the Inquisition and any exploration into these questions was strictly repressed. As a result, the people turned to superstitions to give some explanation to their fears.

The nursury rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie” explains the superstition of keeping posies in one’s pocket to keep the plague away.

Some of the symptoms of the plague included rash, itching, sneezing, among others. These symptoms are very similiar to allergic reactions.

Thus, someone with an allergy to cats may not understand or even know they had such a problem. However, the results of this ignorance were disasterous.

A cat may walk into a room causing the person in question to itch and sneeze. The person then thinks that

they have the plague. The cat leaves the room and they return to normal.

It didn’t take long to add two and two to come up with five. The cat caused the plague. Add to that the fear that everyone lived with that witches were alive and consorting with the devil while they lay awake trying to steal your soul. Again,the logical assumption was to put these two elements together and come up with an answer.

Witches were, originally, changing into cats and causing the plague. Later it changed into the cats were small demons called “familiars” who came to do the witches bidding. As a result, thousands of cats were burned to death as witches or demons during the plague.

This caused even more problems as it was the cats who were killing the rats who were really causing the plague.

Now, it is true that I do have two cats. Yes, they are little demons sometimes. One is even black. Though now she is getting a little old and has shots of grey in her fur.

However, that having been said, they have never done my bidding a day in their lives. I am here, they believe to serve them. A dog thinks, I am fed, adored and played with. Humans must be God. A cat thinks, I am fed, adored and played with. I must be God. This is very true.

Warts

During the Inquisition, there was a very influential book call the “Maleus Malefactorum”. Translated, it means “The Witches’ Hammer”. This book was a step-by-step guide in how to identify a witch.

This book identified that witches made a pact with Satan and, as proof of that pact, Satan would kiss the witch. This k iss left a mark, usually in the form of a mole or wart, that would be proof of the witch’s part in the pact.

Now, I do have some birth marks in unusual places. However, I doubt that is a result of Satan kissing me. I think I’d remember that. Besides, Witches don’t even believe in Satan.

Eating Babies

One way of frightening the public into believing that the men and women being slaughtered was for the Church to spread horrific and brutal tales about them. Tales that are still spread today despite all efforts to disprove them.

One of the talestold about witches was of something called a “Black Mass”. The Black Mass was essentially the same as a Catholic mass except bastardized. During this mass such events would occur as dancing naked around a bonfire (reminiscent of the Baccanalea), sex with Satan (usually a commentary on the autonomous nature of sexuality), and eating babies (a commentary on the service of midwiveswho disposed of unwanted children).

As well, during this period there was a practice of baptism that has since changed. Infants would only be baptized once a year, I believe during Good Friday or Easter Sunday. A child born in the summer had to wait nearly an entire year to be baptized. Many children died during their first year during this time of fear and superstition and the men and women tried to put their loss in some kind of perspective.

The children who died were in mortal danger. As unbaptized souls they were doomed to purgatory or even Hell. Thus, a parent could find some comfort in the fact that there was a reason for their child’s death. The Black Mass became a morbid kind of comfort for many.

Now, it is true that I’m not overly fond of children. Especially when they’re next to me screaming. However, I haven’t found a method of preparing them that satisifies my pallette yet, so I think I’ll leave them off the menu for a while.

Wicca is the celebration of the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth as they are represented in nature through the Goddess and her consort, the God.

Now, let me break that down for you. First, Wicca isn't a system of worship as much as it is a celebration. Yes, it is a religion, but our beliefs are not of doom and gloom as in many other religions. In that air of festivity we do not believe in and adamently fight against the practice of convertion. I will explain to anyone who wishes to know what my beliefs are, but I will not tell anyone that they are the only truth.

Defining Wicca

The celebration is of the cycle of life. Wiccans believe all life is a cycle as it is in nature. In nature nothing is ever wasted or really ends. Everything is born, lives, dies and is reborn. For instance, a seed falls to the ground, it has died as it is no longer nourished by the tree, it grows, lives and gives fruit, grows old and dies. It then falls to the ground where it is reborn as a home for certain animals, nourishment for the forest, etc. Wiccans believe it is no different for our souls.

Wiccans celebrate this cycle through two deities, the Goddess and the God. This couple may vary from tradition to tradition, but in my tradition they are in balance with each other. I'll come back to this point later.

Deities

The Goddess

Wiccans primarily worship the Goddess. She takes some presidence over the God, though they are supposed to be equal in standing. Her realms are the moon and the earth. The Goddess has three forms; Maiden, Mother and Crone and some traditions also add the Huntress.

The Maiden is usually seen as a young girl, about the beginning of puberty and younger. For traditions that add the Huntress, she is a teen. Not old enough to be married and not young enough to be a child. The Maiden is pure and innocent while the Huntress is wild but virginal. Their season is spring and their color is green or white.

The Mother is usually seen as a woman in her childbearing years. She is often portrayed as pregnant and is sometimes clothed in a gown of leaves or nude. Kind of like Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity. Her season is summer and early fall and her color is red

The Crone is the wise old woman. She is beyond childbearing years and she teaches the young the ways of life and she has control over death. Personally, I have often imagined her as a grandmotherly figure. Her seasons are late fall and winter and her color is silver or black.

These images vary from person to person and tradition to tradition. The way the Goddess is viewed is personal . However, the three or four divisions of the Goddess are pretty much universal.

The God

The consort of the Goddess is the God. Some Dianic traditions change this male diety to a female or leave Him out altogether. However, for most traditions, He is the consort to the Goddess.

Although the God has somewhat of a lesser role than the Goddess they are usually seen as equals, depending on the tradition. It is similar to the relationship between God and Jesus in Christian tradition. Although God is the primary figure and is above Jesus, they are pretty much equals.

His realm is the sun, the stars, the sky and the wind. His three forms are the Willow King, the Corn King and the Holly King. Again, some traditions add The Hunter and he takes much the same role as the Huntress.

The Willow King is the god of spring. He resides over birth, rebirth and the returning sun. He is innocent though he has been taught the magical and sexual mysteries by the Crone. He is usually pre-pubescent or just beginning puberty. Again, he rules over spring and his color is green or white.

The Corn King is the god of fertility. His seasons are summer and early fall. He resides over growth, the harvest and fertility. He is seen as a man of about 20 to 50 years old or pre-retirement. Another name for him is "the Green Man" and this usually is a reference to his sexual virility as he is the most sexual of the three forms. So, if you call a Wiccan male a "green man" you're giving him a compliment. However, "Green Man" is not a very common reference, so he may not know what you're talking about He rules over summer and his color is red.

The Holly King is the god of wisdom and death. He is portrayed in the mainstream society as Father Time. He, along with the Crone, complete the cycle of life. His seasons are late fall and winter and his color is silver or black.

Like the Goddess, how the God is viewed is a personal thing. What the God is to each individual varies and there is no one right interpretation.

Sacred Days

There are eight sacred days through the year; Beltain, Lughnasad, Lammas, Mabon, Samhain, Yule, Imbolc and Ostara. Wiccans also celebrate Esbats or nights of the full moon though these are just minor celebrations.

Beltain is May 1 and is the time when the Corn King takes over from the Willow King. In some circles this is the marriage of the Goddess and the God. In others, this is the first act of copulation. The symbolic act of this copulation consists of dancing around the May Pole and jumping over a bonfire. Usually only couples jump over the bonfire as it is meant to ensure fertility. Single people can jump over as well, taking fertility to mean good fortune, but sometimes they can wind up being a parent before they know it.

Summer Solstice falls around June 25 or 26. The Maiden has made way for the Mother who is now pregnant. Some traditions maintain this is the marriage between the Goddess and the God, others say that is on Beltain. Celebrations on this day usually begin a few hours before sunset and go well into the night. Some Wiccans prepare themselves at dawn and continue throughout the day. This day marks the beginning of summer and the season of plenty.

Lammas and Mabon, comes on August 1 and the fall equinox respectively. These are two of the three harvests with Mabon being the time when the Crone takes over from the Mother. The Crone begins draining the Corn King's strength so the Holly King will be able to fight and kill him (symbolically only! Wiccans don't do sacrifices) at Samhain.

Samhain is also known as Halloween and is the Wiccan new year. The Crone is at her full power and the Corn King is at his weakest. The Holly King fights the Corn King, takes his power and the Corn King sleeps/dies until he is reborn at Yule. This is the end of the old year but the new year doesn't begin until dawn the following morning so it is a time between times. As such, it is the time when the veil between this world and the next is at it's thinnest thus giving rise to many Halloween ghost stories. This means that it is also the time to remember the dead and invite them to the celebrations. As well, it is also the third of the harvest festivals.

In ancient Ireland, adults would dress up as members of the opposite sex on this night and go from house to house "trick or treatng". However, they didn't get candy, they got shots of liquor. Personally, I'd like to revive this tradition...

Yule is the precursor to the Christian Christmas. Many of the Christian traditions; for example, lighting a candle; were originally pagan traditions. Yule happens on the winter solstice, around December 22, when the Corn King is reborn as the Willow king to awaken the earth. Celebrations consist of lighting candles or bonfires (to welcome back the sun), exchanging gifts, feasting, etc.

Candlemas or Imbolc is on February 2 and is the time when the Crone teaches the Willow King the magical and sexual mysteries. She also introduces him to the Maiden at this time but the Crone doesn't give up her power yet.

Ostara falls on the Spring Solstice and many of its traditions have been modified into Christian Easter traditions. This is the beginning of the courship between the Willow King and the Maiden. Celebrations consist of anything from an Easter Egg hunt to a bonfire dance. Traditions vary wildly on their celebrations of this day. Symbols such as the egg and the rabbit denote the fertile nature of this day. Then Beltain comes again on May 1st and the cycle begins again.

The Esbats, which are also important, fall on nights of the full moon. This is the time of power for the Goddess and women. Women who are menustrating are at their personal peaks at this time. Celebrations vary from person to person due to the intimate and personal way of the Esbats are viewed.

Magick for Beginners

•Hogwarts 200

•Gnosticism

•The Hermetic Tradition

•And Kabbalah

•Basic Elements of the Western Magical Tradition

•Hermetic Tradition

•Kabbalah

•(Sufism [maybe])

•The Hermetic Tradition

•Plato

•Ideals vs. real becomes spirit vs. matter

•Dualism

•The Daimon

•Greco-Roman Mystery Religions

•Object: to secure salvation from being subject to moral and physical evil, Destiny, and the corruption of the material side of human nature

•Ptolmaic Universe

•

•

•A Mithras Liturgy (Paris Papyrus 574)

•First origin of my origin, first beginning of my beginning, spirit of spirit, firstfruit of the spirit within me, fire which art god-given to my mixing, the mixing of the mixings within me, firstfruit of the fire within me, water of water, firstfruit of the water within me, earthy substance, firstfruit of the earthy substance within me, whole body of me, A, son of my mother B, framed by the honourable arm and incorruptible right hand in a world unilluminated yet bright, with no living soul, yet with a living soul: if it seem good to you to give me, held as I am by my underlying nature, to immortal birth, in order that, after the present need which presses sore upon me, I may behold by deathless spirit the deathless Beginning, by deathless water, by solid earth and air, that I may be born anew by Thought, that I may be initiated and that the sacred spirit may breathe in me, that I may marvel at the holy fire, that I may behold the terrible great deep of the Dayspring, that the life-giving and surrounding Aether may hear me; for today I am to gaze with deathless eyes, I who was born mortal from a mortal womb, but transformed by mighty power and an incorruptible right hand . . . .

•

•Method: prescribed rituals through which to become united with the divine and enjoy mystical communion and have eternal life after death

•Myth

•Based upon the fundamental annual cycle of agricultural fertility: dying and rising

•Reenacted in ritual, especially initiation: incorporated candidate into the divine action of the myth; achieved immortality through the resurrection of the god

•Consecration of a priest in the Cult of Cybele (The Great Mother)
Prudentius, Peristephanon

•The high priest who is to be consecrated is brought down under ground in a pit dug deep, marvelously adorned with a fillet, binding his festive temples with chaplets, his hair combed back under a golden crown, and wearing a silken toga caught up with a Gabine girding.

•Over this they make a wooden floor with wide spaces, woven of planks with an open mesh; they then divide or bore the area and repeatedly pierce the wood with a pointed tool that it may appear full of small holes.

•

•Hither a huge bull, fierce and shaggy in appearance, is led, bound with flowery garlands about its flanks, with its horns sheathed; yea, the forehead of the victim sparkles with gold, and the flash of metal plates colours its hair.

•Here, as it is ordained, the beast is to be slain, and they pierce its breast with a sacred spear; the gaping wound emits a wave of hot blood, and the smoking river flows into the woven structure beneath it and surges wide.

•Then by the many paths of the thousand openings in the lattice the falling shower rains down a foul dew, which the priest buried within catches, putting his shameful head under all the drops, defiled both in his clothing and in all his body.

•

•Yea, he throws back his face, he puts his cheeks in the way of the blood, he puts it under his ears and lips, he interposes his nostrils, he washes his very eyes with the fluid, nor does he even spare his throat but moistens his tongue, until he actually drinks the dark gore.

•Afterwards, the flamens draw the corpse, stiffening now that the blood has gone forth, off the lattice, and the pontiff, horrible in appearance, comes forth, and shows his wet head, his beard heavy with blood, his dripping fillets and sodden garments.

•This man, defiled with such contagions and foul with the gore of the recent sacrifice, all hail and worship at a distance, because profane blood and a dead ox have washed him while concealed in a filthy cave.

•Basic kinds

•Eleusinian: quiet solemnity

•Dionysian: orgiastic

•Theurgy: Greco-Roman magic

•Legal magic

•Legitimate magic performed by priests and court practitioners

•"Working things pertaining to the gods"

•Purpose: Union of person and God

•How? Four main principles

•Power (dynamis)

•Cosmic Sympathy (correspondence)

•Sameness

•Soul Vehicle

•Technique:
Two types of operation

•symbols and tokens

•mediumistic trance

•Reconstruction of a theurgic ritual (Eduard des Places and Georg Luck)--from Oracula

•Long periods of silence and ascetic discipline

•"The understanding warmed by fire"

•"Symbols and tokens"

•Specific magical tools

•Music, dancing, drugs (incense, vapours)

•Results

•"Divine madness": Ecstasy

•Highest experience: "Light vision"

•Glow

•Bodily visions of the gods

•Visions of lesser beings

•Gnosticism

•Hermetic Philosophy/Theology

•Secret Gnosis (Knowledge)

•Self knowledge

•

•The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 13

•Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to something and tell me what I am like." Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a just angel." Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher." Thomas said to him, "Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like." Jesus said, "I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended." And he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends, they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?" Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you."

•

•GT, Logion 67

•Jesus said, "Those who know all, but are lacking in themselves, are utterly lacking."

•GT, Logion 70

•Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you."

•Exc. Theodotion

•What liberates is the knowledge of who we were, what we became; where we were, whereinto we have been thrown; whereto we speed, wherefrom we are redeemed; what birth is, and what rebirth.

•

•C.H. I

•Once on a time, when I had begun to think about the things that are, and my thoughts has soared high aloft, while my bodily senses had been put under restraint by sleep, . . . methought there came to me a being of vast and boundless magnitude, who called me by my name, and said to me, "What do you wish to hear and see, and to learn and to come to know by thought?" "Who are you?" I said. "I," said he, "am Poimandres [Pymander], the Mind of the Sovereignty." "I would fain learn," said I, "the things that are, and understand their nature, and get knowledge of God. These," I said, "are the things of which I wish to hear." He answered, "I know what you wish, for indeed I am with you everywhere; keep in mind all that you desire to learn and I will teach you." When he had thus spoken, forthwith all things changed in aspect before me, and were opened out in a moment.

•The Alien God and the Demiurge

•The Apocryphon of John

•He [is the] invisible [Spirit]; it is not right [to think] about him as a god, or something similar. For he is more than a god, since there is no-one above him, nor does anyone lord it over him. [He exists] in nothing inferior, [for everything] exists in him.

•He [the chief Archon--the Demiurge--Yaltabaoth] apportioned to them [the Archons] some of his fire, which is his own attribute, and of his power; but of the pure Light of the Power which he had inherited from his Mother [Ennoia--Sophia] he gave them none. For this reason he held sway over them, because of the glory that was in him from the power of the Light of the Mother. Therefore he let himself be called "the God," renouncing the substance from which he had issued . . . .

•

•Cerinthus, in Irenaeus, Against Heresies

•The world was made, not by the first God, but by a poser that was far removed and separated from the source of being and did not even know of the God who his exalted above all things.

•Cerdon, in Irenaeus, Against Heresies

•The God whom Moses and the prophets preached is not the Father of Jesus Christ; the one is knowable, the other not, the one merely just, the other good.

•The Cosmic accident

•Mandaean speculation

•B'haq-Ziva [the Demiurge] regarded himself as a mighty one, and forsook the name which his Father had created [for him]. He said, "I am the father of the Uthras [Archons], who have created sh'kinas [abodes of glory?] for them." He pondered over the turbid water and said, "I will create a world."

•Lactantius, Frag. 15

•Man has two souls. One of them comes from the first Intelligible, and partakes of the power of the Demiurgus; the other soul is put into man by the revolution of the heavenly bodies, and into this latter soul enters subsequently the soul which is able to see God.

•The Nature of Humanity

•C.H. I

•Man, unlike all other living creatures upon earth, is twofold. He is mortal by reason of his body; he is immortal by reason of the Man of eternal substance. He is immortal, and has all things in his power; yet he suffers the lot of a mortal, being subject to Destiny

•The heavenly spheres and the Archons

•C.H. I

•And the first Mind,--that Mind which is Life and Light,--being bisexual, gave birth to another Mind, a Maker of things; and this second Mind made out of fire and air seven Administrators, who encompass by their orbits the world perceived by sense; and their administration is called Destiny.

•

•"And having learnt to know the being of the Administrators, and received a share of their nature, he willed to break through the bounding circle of their orbits," and does so thus: "At the dissolution of your material body, you first yield up the body itself to be changed, and the visible form you bore is no longer seen. And your moral character you yield up to the daemon, so that it no longer works in you; and the bodily senses go back to their own sources, becoming parts of the universe, and entering into fresh combinations to do other work. And thereupon the man mounts upward through the structure of the heavens. And to the first zone of heaven (Moon) he gives up the force which works increase and that which works decrease; to the second zone (Mercury), the machinations of evil cunning; to the third zone (Venus), the lust whereby men are deceived; to the fourth zone (Sun), domineering arrogance; to the fifth zone (Mars), unholy daring and rash audacity; to the sixth zone (Jupiter), evil strivings after wealth; and to the seventh zone (Saturn), the falsehood which lies in wait to work harm. And thereupon, having been stripped of all that was wrought upon him by the structure of the heavens, he ascends to the substance of the eighth sphere (the fixed stars), being now possessed of his own proper power; and he sings, together with those who dwell there, hymning the Father.“

•Deliverance: Gnosis

•Irenaeus, Against Heresies

•I am a vessel more precious than the woman that made ye. Your mother does not know her origin, but I know myself and know whence I come. I invoke the incorruptible Sophia who dwells in the Father and is the mother of your mother . . . .

•Epiphanius, Haeresis

•They say that the soul is the food of the Archons and Powers without which they cannot live, because she is of the dew from above and gives them strength. When she has become imbued with knowledge . . . she ascends to heaven and gives a defense before each power and thus mounts beyond them to the upper Mother and Father of the All whence she came down into this world.

•

•C.H. X

•And the vice of the soul is lack of knowledge. A soul that has gained no knowledge of the things that are, and has not come to know their nature, nor to know the God, but is blind, --such a soul is tossed about among the passions which the body breeds; it carries the body as a burden, and is ruled by it, instead of ruling it . . . . On the other hand, the virtue of the soul is knowledge. He who has got knowledge is good and pious; he is already divine.

•GT, Logion 22

•Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the <Father's> domain].“

•

•GT, Logion 114

•Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life." Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the domain of Heaven."

•C.H. I

•"Learn my meaning," said he, "by looking at what you yourself have in you; for in you too, the word is a son, and the mind is father of the word. They are not separate from one another; for life is the union of word and mind."

•C.H. XIII

•If you would be born again, you must cleanse yourself from the irrational torments of matter.--Tat. What, father, have I torturers within me?--Hermes. Yes, my son, and not a few; they are terrible, and they are many.--Tat. I do not know them, father.--Hermes. This very ignorance, my son, is one of the torments.

•Christian Gnosticism

•The heavenly messenger

•Docetism

•Classes of People

•Pneumatic (spiritual)

•Psychic (Intellectual [“soulish”])

•Sarkic (Fleshly [carnal])

•Kinds

•Ascetic

•Libertine

•Connection to Magic (Hermeticism)

•Simon Magus

•Acts 8:4-24

•Now those who were scattered went from place to place, proclaiming the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah to them. The crowds with one accord listened eagerly to what was said by Philip, hearing and seeing the signs that he did, for unclean spirits, crying with loud shrieks, came out of many who were possessed; and many others who were paralyzed or lame were cured. So there was great joy in that city.

•

•Now a certain man named Simon had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, saying that he was someone great. All of them, from the least to the greatest, listened to him eagerly, saying, "This man is the power of God that is called Great." And they listened eagerly to him because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic. But when they believed Philip, who was proclaiming the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Even Simon himself believed. After being baptized, he stayed constantly with Philip and was amazed when he saw the signs and great miracles that took place.

•

•Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money, saying, "Give me also this power so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit." But Peter said to him, "May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain God's gift with money! You have no part or share in this, for your heart is not right before God. Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and the chains of wickedness. Simon answered, "Pray for me to the Lord, that nothing of what you have said may happen to me.“

•Simon Magus the Gnostic

•Simon Peter versus Simon Magus

•Simon and Ennoia/Sophia

•A Purported Sermon by Simon Magus

•Origen, Contra Celsus

•I am God (or a son of God, or a divine Spirit). And I have come. Already the world is being destroyed. And you, O men, are to perish because of your iniquities. But I wish to save you. And you see me returning again with heavenly power. Blessed is he who has worshipped me now! But I will cast everlasting fire upon all the rest, both on cities and on country places. And men who fail to realize the penalties in store for them will in vain repent and groan. But I will preserve forever those who have been convinced by me.

•Hermeticism

•Hermes Trismegistus

•Thoth

•The human Hermes

•Ancient King

•Reigned 3,226 years

•Wrote 36,525 books on principles of nature

•“3 times the greatest”

•

•Iamblicus: only 20,000 books

•Clement of Alexandria: Only 40 books he knew of

•We have 14 short Greek texts

•Fragments cited by Christian authors

•Astrological writings

•Either the ever popular 200 BCE

•Or anonymous Christian writings from c. 3^rd to 4^th centuries CE

•The Texts

•The Corpus Hermeticum; Most important #1: The Divine Pymander

•The Latin Asclepius

•Excerpts of Stobaeus

•Quotations in Christian and philosophical writers

•The Emerald Tablet (and the Leyden papyrus, 1828)

•Alchemy

•The Technology of Hermeticism

•Alchemical Lore

•The Angels of Genesis 6:1-4

•When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, "My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years." the Nephilim were on the earth in those days--and also afterward--when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.

•1 Enoch 8:1-2

•And Azazel taught men [anthropoi] to make swords and Knives and shields and breastplates, and made known to them the metals (of the earth) and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antinomy [alloys], and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures. And there arose much godlessness and they committed fornication, and they were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways.

•

•Chemes

•Isis to Horus (Stobaeus)

•Mary the Jewess

•Theory of Alchemy

•Philosopher's Gold

•Philosopher's Stone

•

•A. Coudert, Alchemy: The Philosopher's Stone

•The second and third precepts [of the Emerald Tablet] refer to the fundamental alchemical doctrine of the unity of all matter. Every created thing emanates from a single, divine soul-substance which assumes innumerable material forms, each of which is in a constant state of flux. Transmutation is, therefore, an inevitable fact of life, and the reactions which occur in alchemical vessels are microcosmic reflections of the transformations in the world at large. The fourth precept describes the sun and the moon, or sulphur and mercury, as parents of the stone . . . . The philosopher's stone is "the father of all perfection" described in the fifth precept, but only if it is "changed into earth," or "fixed" in the alchemist's fire so that it cannot volatize and vanish. During transmutation the gross elements in base metals are separated from the subtle essence of perfect gold as the seventh precept advises. The eighth precept is a cryptic description of reflux distillation in a kerotakis . . . . This was the method Greek alchemists most commonly used to transmute base metal into gold

•

•Mystical Exaltation

•The Hermetic Scheme of the Universe

•Formulae

•Michael Magner, 1565-1622

•Learn about the egg and cut it with a flaming sword. In our world there is a bird more sublime than all others. To search for his egg be thy only concern. Vile albumin surrounds its soft yolk; heat the egg according to custom, then with thy sword search for it cautiously; after Vulcan, Mars will accelerate the work; and when thenceforth has come the chick, it will overcome fire and sword. In order to make perfect the noble medicine, apply a toad to the woman's breast, that it may take milk from her, and the woman will die when the toad is full of milk.

•

•Cremer's Testament (14th century)

•Take the water of an unpolluted youth, after his first sleep of three or four nights, until you have three pints . . . . Add two glasses of very strong vinegar, two ounces of quicklime, one half ounce of living water . . . . Put the mixture into an earthen pot and place over it an alembic, or distilling vessel [in which is sulphur and mercury].

•Main Concepts in Formulae

•Make the fixed volatile--unite the fugitive female with the fixed male.

•What heaven shows, is found on earth. Fire and flowing water are contrary to each other. Happy thou, if thou canst unite them. Let it suffice thee to know this.

•Did it Work?

•Nicolas Flamel

•Dr. Martini and the Irate Student

•Paracelsus

•Agrippa von Nettesheim on the "Puffers"

•There is no greater madness than to believe in the fixed volatile or that the fixed volatile can be made--so that the smells of coal, sulphur, dung, poison and piss are to them a greater pleasure than the taste of honey--till their farms, goods and patrimonies are wasted, and converted into ashes and smoke;

•

•when they expect the rewards of their labours, births of gold, youth and immortality, after all their time and expenses; at length old, ragged, famished, and with the use of quicksilver, paralytic; only rich in misery, and so miserable that they will sell their souls for three farthings; so that the metamorphosis which they could have produced in the metals, they cause to happen in themselves--for instead of being alchemists, they are cacochymists; instead of being doctors, beggars; instead of unguentaries, victuallers; a laughing stock to the people; and they who in their youth hated to live meanly, at length grown old in chemical impostures, are compelled to live in the lowest degree of poverty, and in such calamity that they receive nothing but contempt and laughter, instead of commendation and pity; at length compelled thereto by penury, they fall to ill courses, as counterfeiting money

lKabbalah

lJewish Mysticism

lGeneral Characteristics

lAim: to achieve personal and intimate communion with God

lKnowledge of God = immediate, experiential, not through ideas

lEsoteric: concerned with "secrets"; "hidden" things

lSeeks to penetrate below the surface to see ultimate reality

lTeachings meant only for the initiated

lAreas of speculation

lCosmology

lNature of God

lBereshit Mysticism

lCosmological speculation

lMajor writing: Sepher Yezirah (Book of Foundation)

lGen. 1:1

lIn the beginning (bereshi't) God created the heavens and the earth.

lCreation by:

lNumber (10)

lLetter (22)

lBoundary

lMerkavah (chariot/throne) Mysticism

lNature of God and angels

lSeek ecstatic experience: vision of God on his chariot/throne

lEzekiel 1:26

lAnd above the dome over their heads there was something like a throne [chariot] (merkavah), in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne [chariot] (merkavah) was something that seemed like a human form.

lMajor writing: Heikhalot Rabbati (The Greater Treatise on the Heavenly Palaces)

lKabbalah (proper)

lInsight into the inner life of God

lCommunion through contemplation

lMost important writing: Zohar (Book of Splendour)

lMain Teachings (very basic) of Kabbalah

lGod = Ein Sof

lCannot be known apart from emanations--10 Sefirot

lSpeculations on relations and interconnections of Sefirot

lUniverse (Sefirot) is made up of Hebrew letters, which are all bound up in the Tetragrammaton (name of God)

lFun with Kabbalah

lFamous Kabbalistic Magicians

lR. Joseph Della Reina

lR. Shelomo Molkho

lMaggid

lGilgul

lDibbuk

lGolem

l

Presentations:

Divination

The I Ching

Introduction

•I Ching translates to “The Book of Changes” and refers to changes in life and the universe.

•Is cyclical.

•Motto is: “Everything passes in time”, from happiness to sorrow.

Origins

•Originated in China 1000 years before Christ.

•Stemmed from the burning of bones or tortoise shells and interpreting the cracks.

•I Ching is one of the oldest books in the world.

•Confucius and Taoists thought very highly of it, treating it reverently as a sacred book and prizing its powers of divination.

Practice

•Responds with the same spirit in which you consult it.

•Questions should be phrased as single “if” questions as opposed to “yes or no” questions.

How To…

•In order to prevent altering the question, write it down on a piece of paper.

•Throw 3 coins.

•The “inscribed” side of the coin (shows dollar value) has a value of 2, the reverse has a value of 3.

•If the total is an even number, draw a broken line; if it’s odd, draw a solid line. Start from the bottom and work your way up.

•After 6 throws, consult the I Ching to find your matching hexagram.

The Oracle

Introduction

•In ancient times, oracles had a sacred position.

•No important decision was made before first consulting the oracle.

•In Delphi a priestess known as the Pythia acted as the medium between the god Apollo and the enquirer.

•The Pythia’s answers were usually ambiguous.

Origins

•The ancient Greek, Roman, Sumerian, Babylonian and Hittite cultures were all said to have consulted oracles.

•Most famous is the Delphic Oracle in the Temple of Apollo.

•Consulting an oracle was meant to be a way to communicate with the gods themselves.

Practice

•In modern practice, each oracle (divine diagram) is linked to the 10 planets** of the astronomical pantheon.

•Answers are associated with the areas of life ruled by that planet.

•Is useful for immediate answers and guidance.

** This point will be discussed in more depth later.

How To…

•Think of a question you want answered.

•Place the page with the desired oracle in front of you and rotate it clockwise 3 times.

•Close your eyes and using your index finger, point to a spot on the page.

•If your finger lands on a number, consult the corresponding number. If not, you can either go again or choose a number you’re closest to.

•If you keep landing between numbers, the Gods may not want to speak to you at the moment.

Belomancy

What is it?

•Belomancy is divination using archery.

•Various suggestions are written on tags which are then attached to arrows. The enquirer then fires each arrow and takes the advice on the tag of the arrow that flew the furthest.

Creomancy

How To…

How To…

•Study the shape and then interpret it “until the meaning comes to you”.

•If you think your shape looks ‘like’ something, allow your imagination to fill in the gaps.

Tasseomancy

Origins

•Originated centuries ago in the Eastern part of China.

•Bells were believed to be able to drive out evil. So, a tradition developed of looking inside bells for omens. Gradually, tea cups were regarded as oracles because of their bell-like shape and Tea Reading was born.

•Popularity has faded due to use of tea bags.

How To…

•First, choose a smooth, white tea cup with no indentations on the inside.

•Prepare your tea using loose tea leaves. Do not use a tea ball or bag.

•After the tea is consumed, take the cup in your right hand and swirl the tea around 3 times counter-clockwise.

•Then, place cup in left hand and tip cup over onto a saucer.

•Examine the inside of your cup and interpret your findings.

•Remember to keep an open mind while interpreting and use your imagination to find shapes in the leaves.

Cartomancy

Origins

•It is uncertain whether or not playing cards came before the Tarot.

•Cards existed in Europe as early as the 13^th century.

•It is an ancient ritual with links to the Earth.

Practice

•There are 52 cards which represent the 52 weeks in a year.

•The 4 suits represent the 4 elements: Diamonds = Earth, Spades = Air, Hearts = Water and Clubs = Fire.

•The 13 cards in each suit represent the 13 lunar months in a year.

•The 12 court cards represent the 12 months in a year.

How To …

•Shuffle the deck very well and do a spread.

•Here, we will use the Bohemian Spread – 7 cards in a pyramid shape.

•After the spread is created, interpret the meanings.

Meanings

From left to right:

Card 1 – Your current situation

Card 2 – Your current influences

Card 3 – Your relationship

Card 4 – Your hopes and wishes

Card 5 – What is unexpected

Card 6 – Immediate events

Card 7 – Favorable influences

* Interpret according to definitions in book.

Dice

Origins

•Dice are believed to date back to ancient Asia, but its origins are not really known.

•Dice were originally made from bones and had 4 faces. It later evolved into the six-sided dice that we have today.

How To…

•Dice are to be thrown in silence, so one must ask the question silently.

•3 dice are tossed into a chalk circle. (For our purposes, we will just use a placemat.) The total is then added and later interpreted.

•The predictions are said to come to pass in 9 days and are only for future predictions.

Other Forms of Divination

•Gyromancy – walking around in a circle until one falls; the position of the fall is significant.

•Haruspicy – drawing conclusions from the physical state of the entrails of slaughtered birds and animals. (Also known as Extispicy).

•Ornithomancy – divination through the interpretation of the flight pattern of birds.

Other Forms of Divination

•Lecanomancy – throwing a stone into a basin of water. Divination by interpreting the sound the stone makes and the ripples formed.

•Cartopedy – essentially “feet reading”.

•Omphalomancy – divination by examining the navel of a newborn child. This was used to ascertain future conceptions of the mother.

Other Forms of Divination

•Phrenology – the art of reading the bumps on one’s skull.

•Eromancy – divination using air and water. The diviner would cover their head in a napkin and expose a vase of water to the air. They would then whisper their desires over the vase. If the water showed bubbles, the outlook would be good.

nCandle Magic

n

nCandle burning is one of the most simple forms of magic

nCandle magic can be used for over coming bad habits, attracting things, protecting, developing psychic powers, etc

n

nThe basic principles are to concentrate, visualize and focus

nCandle magic is sympathetic magic (how the connections in the world work)

nAccording to modern psychology everyone believes in this (is that why it is so popular?)

n

nThe positive or negative energy that your magic creates will come back to you so be careful

nKarma will come back and bite you in the ass so be careful

nMagic effect’s the entire world so be careful

n

nKeep candles away from curtains as you would not want to burn down you house so be careful

nWith candle magic as with any other remember the Wiccan Rede

nAn it harm none, do what thou wilt

n

nYou can buy any kind of candle that appeals to you

nSome say you should carve the candle yourself so your energy is in it

nOthers say if you prep the candle that will work too so buy any candle you want

nBut always use a virgin candle so it does not have the energy from anything else

n

nWhite is always a good choice

nYou may choose ones who colors correspond to specific energies

nThere are different colors for different wants and people have made there own color charts so here are a few

n

n

nRed-bring love///passion or stamina

nPink-enhance love///overcoming evil

nBlack-ultimate harm///evil///loss

nBrown-send them away///protecting pets

nGreen-money attraction///luck///fertility

nSilver-remove negativity///psychic protection

n

nBlue-harmony///psychic awareness

nWhite-healing///spirituality

nYellow-mental clarity

nOrange-solving legal problems///openness

nPurple-reversing a curse///speed up healing

nGold-intuition///protection

nGray-cancellation

n

nCandle color dictionary

nA-to guard against accidents~purple&orange

nTo be given advice~white&yellow

nB-to have babies~pink

nTo obtain a loan from a bank~blue&green

n

nC-to receive a call from a certain man~yellow

nTo win at the casino~green

nD-to protect yourself from danger~purple

nTo release your fear of death~white

nE-to have energy~red&blue

n

nTo enjoy life~blue&pink

nF-to be faithful~pink&purple

nRelease the need to fight~yellow&white

nG-to get a car~white&green

nTo get money~green

n

nH-to have hope~pink&purple

nI-to improve the quality of your relationship~pink

nJ-to have joy in your life~yellow&blue

nK-to find a lost keepsake~blue

nL-to have a lover~pink&yellow

n

nM-to perform magic~brown&yellow

nTo get married~yellow&pink

nN-release nicotine addiction~orange&brown

nO-to have an opportunity~blue

nP-to be perceptive~orange

n

nQ-to have peace and quiet~white

nR-to have the truth revealed~white

nS-to have sex~red

nT-to pass a test~yellow

n

nV-to go on vacation

nW-to get your wish~pink

nY-to find yourself~white

n

n

n

n

nCandle spells

nTo help the candle magic you can place a piece of the wax under your pillow and repeat the desire every night before you go to sleep, do this every night for a week after the ritual

nBasic steps to a candle spell

nPick a candle

nAnoint the candle (rub it down with oil)

n

nUse olive oil if you don’t have aroma therapy oils

nCarve a simple word to sum up your wish (love)

n

nSit in front of your candle and imagine a blue circle vibrating around you (protection from ill thoughts)

nLook into the flames and visualize the successful outcome of your wish block out negative thoughts

nContinue until you feel ready to extinguish the candle

n

nPut out the candle and watch the smoke rise from the wick, imagine that your spell have always changed your life

nLove candle spell

n1 pink candle

n1 bottle of 100% virgin olive oil

nSomething to light the candle

n

nPlace candle on a table

nRub down with oil

nAs you do this visualize love and channel all your emotion into the candle

nAfter the oil is finished, take a knife and carve what it is you want into the candle

n

nEXAMPLE:I wish for (Jeremy) to love me

nAfter you finished writing in the candle , simply light it and concentrate on love and throw as much emotion (love) into the flame as possible

nYou may even want to add words if you wish

nSit and do this until the candle has burnt out

n

nOnce the candle has burned out, the spell in finished

nFriendship candle spell

nGet a pink candle and a pink and a white silk ribbon

nAnointed it, light it, call out the things that are important to you and your friend

n

nConcentrate on the flame as being the energy between you and your friend

nTake the two ribbons and weave them together (winding them together will do)

n

nWhile doing this think of bringing that friend closer to you

n Only bind the idea of the perfect friend because binding a person harms that person’s free will (you do not want this)

nTie the ribbon at the base of the candle

n

nWhen this is done sit and meditate on the spell you have just cast

nWhen you feel the spell has been completed, then it has

nLet your candle burn all the way out

nYou are done

n

n

nA few books you can find on candle magic

nCandle burning magic by Anna Riva

nA little book of candle magic by

n D.J. Conway

nPractical Candleburning Rituals by Raymond Buckland

n

n A few web sites

nCandle therapy.Com

nWicca.Com

nAngelfire.Com

nAstrola.Com

nAccessnewage.Com

n

n

n

n

n

lNumerology

l

l

l“The world is built upon the power of numbers.”

l- Pythagoras

lIntroduction

lNumerology is a method of divination which is used in magic.

lIt is the study of the Occult meaning of numbers and their “meaning” of life

lNumerologists believe, every number has a certain hidden vibration or power that is not expressed by the basic figure or symbol used to denote quantity only.

l

lWe will be looking at:

l -- History

l -- Process

l -- Application

l

lHistory

lPythagoras is said to be the founder of modern numerology, which is used for the purpose of fortune-telling, however

l

l

l

lthe origin of numerology precedes Pythagoras, as it is found in ancient texts, such as the Hebrew Kabbalah.

l

lHebrew History

lIn Hebrew history, letters of the Hebrew alphabet were based on numbers, which related to “cosmic forces”.

lHebrew History

lDuring the 13^th century, Kabbalists developed the process of Gematria, also known as cryptography, which is a mystical numerical interpretation of the Scriptures.

lGematria is the calculation of the numerical equivalence of letters, words, or phrases.

lGematria Hebrew Letter Table

lHebrew History

lThis concept provides the basis to the theory behind the process of numerology called:

lName Numerology

l

l

lHistory

lThe ancient Chaldean, Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Chinese and Indian alphabets attached numerical values to letters as well

l

lHistory (cont.)

lTwo philosophers/mathematicians, Pythagoras (530BC) and Cornelius Agrippa (1534 AD) contributed greatly to the hypothesis of numerological interpretation.

lIt is Pythagoras’ theory which provides the basis for modern numerology.

lPresent Day

lPresently, numerology is often used in attempts to forecast the future.

lConsequently, it can be combined with other forms of divination such as

l -Astrology

l -Cartomancy

l -Geomancy

lHistory of Numbers

lThroughout the ancient history of numbers, certain characteristics were assigned to each integer.

lFor example:

l - odd numbers (which can not be divided equally ~ or separated) were considered masculine therefore powerful.

l - even numbers (which are easily split ~ or separated) were considered feminine, therefore whole, yet weak.

lHistory of Numbers

lSome numbers were also considered more significant than others:

v 3 – represents the Trinity

v10 – considered the perfect number by Greeks/Hebrews; 10 comprehends all arithmetic proportions. When one arrives at 10, they return to 1, the number of creation

v13 – generally considered unlucky

v666 – denotes “The Beast” in the New Testament

v888 – Represents the Greek Variation of Jesus (Iesous)

lBirthday Numerology

l

lIn birthday numerology, the date of birth is used to find one’s LIFE PATH NUMBER.

lThe Life Path Number represents who you are at birth and the native traits that you will carry with you through life.

lIt is the most important number that can be discussed because it describes the nature of one’s journey through life.

lBirthday Numerology

lTo find your Life Path Number, add up each individual number of your complete birth date.

lBirthday Numerology

l

lFor Example: If you were born today, your birthday would be April 2, 2003, which is

l 04/02/2003 =

l0+4+0+2+2+0+0+3=

l11=

l2

lTherefore, 2 is your Life Path Number

lBirthday Numerology

lFor Example: Dr. Wayne Douglas Litke was born on February 10, 1954, which is

l 02/10/1954 =

l0+2+1+0+1+9+5+4=

l22=

l4

lTherefore, 4 is his Life Path Number

l

lBirthday Numerology

•It is important to note that, along with the single digit numbers 1 – 9, there are Master Numbers as well, which are 11, 22, and in same cases, 33. After adding up the individual digits of the birth date, if you end up with one of these three numbers, you are not supposed to break it down again.

•Master Numbers indicate spiritual gifts  - a higher sensitivity to intuition and a greater ability to be in touch with higher guidance. 

lBirthday Numerology

lThe Basic Meaning of the Numbers

l

l1 - Individuation, independence, attainment, beginnings, innovator, leadership

l2 - Cooperation, balance, diplomacy, the peacemaker, power behind the throne

l3 - Self-expression, creativity, communication, artistic, sensitive, social

l4 - Limitation, order, service, practical, foundations, discipline, reliable, systematic

l

l

lBirthday Numerology

lThe Basic Meaning of the Numbers

l

l5 - Constructive freedom, change, versatile, explorer, travel, adaptable

l6 - Balance, responsibility, love, caring, protective, nurturing, community-oriented.

l7 - Analysis, understanding, knowledge, wisdom, introspective, analytical, spiritual

l8 - Material satisfaction, authority, power, ambition, giving and receiving

l9 - Humanitarianism, selflessness, idealist, compassion, completion, universal love

l

l

lBirthday Numerology

lThe Basic Meaning of the Numbers

l11 - Illumination, revelation, intuition, visionary leader, psychic, sensitive, creative, inspirational, revelation, uplifts humanity, brings light, Spiritual Light Messenger

l22 - Master Builder, practical mystic, mastery through self-enterprise, visionary, practical idealism, dreams into reality, ambitious, intuitive, methodical, disciplined, natural leader

l

lBirthday Numerology

lThe Basic Meaning of the Numbers

l 33 - Altruistic, Selfless Service, Ministering, Avatar, Mystical, Nurturing of the Spirit, intuitive, Emotional, Protective, Loving, Teacher of Teachers, Crusader for Justice.

lName Numerology

lName Numerology calculates the numerical equivalence of letters in ones name.

lThe number revealed may be used to interpret character, talent and ones purpose in life.

lTypes of Name Numerology

l1. Kabbalah (Hebrew Alphabet)

lKabbalah means knowledge that comes from the mind & soul

lOriginated in Hebrew mysticism

lInterprets only meaning of the name

l

l

lTypes of Name Numerology

lThe Kabbalah was developed for the Hebrew alphabet, and therefore has only 22 vibrations ranging from 1 to 400

lIt was adapted for the Greek alphabet, then further adapted for the Roman alphabet

lTypes of Name Numerology

lTypes of Name Numerology

lChaldean numerology was originally developed in Ancient Babylon (now Iraq)

lcombines Kabbalistic name interpretation with aspects of astrology

lThe 9 is considered holy and therefore is kept apart from other vibrations, except when it results as the sum of vibrations (e.g., from an individual's name)

lTypes of Name Numerology

lSingle digits represent the outer aspects of a person

ldouble digits reveal inner influences

l

lTypes of Name Numerology

lTypes of Name Numerology

lThe Pythagorean method was developed by Pythagoras, a Greek mathematician and metaphysician

lThe right triangle was Pythagoras' "Eureka" (which means "I found it")

lThe right triangle can also be used to symbolize the world of an individual and serves as the original basis for the numerological interpretation of the life pattern of an individual

lTypes of Name Numerology

lAnalyzes both name and date of birth, and the interaction between the two

l

lTypes of Name Numerology

l 4. Abracadabra

lAbracadabra is a less frequently used form of numerological interpretation

lIt is based on the subject's name, and uses a series of triangles to arrive at numerical values that provide information about character and events

lTypes of Name Numerology

l 5. New Kabbalah

lA New Kabbalah has also been developed for use with the modern Roman alphabet

lBased on name, and relies on Pythagorean methods to determine time periods

lConcerned more with events than character

lProcess – Name Numerology

lEach Letter is assigned a numerical value

lProcess – Name Numerology

lAdd up the numerical values of each letter of your full name.

l* Note: The full birth name, as recorded on your birth certificate, is the name that must be used for all calculations.

l

lProcess – Name Numerology

lFor Example:

lW A Y N E D O U G L A S L I T K E

l 5 1 7 5 5 4 6 3 7 3 1 1 3 9 2 5 5

l =23 =25 =21

l= 2+3+2+5+2+1

l= 1+5

l=6

lProcess – Name Numerology

lOnce again, the presence of a Master Number should be noted.

lProcess – Name Numerology

lThe Basic Meaning of the Numbers

l1 is ambitious, independent, and self-sufficient.

l2 is supportive, diplomatic, and analytical.

l3 is enthusiastic, optimistic, and fun-loving.

l4 is practical, traditional, and serious.

l5 is adventurous, mercurial, and sensual.

l6 is responsible, careful, and domestic.

l7 is spiritual, eccentric, and a bit of a loner.

lProcess – Name Numerology

l The Basic Meaning of the Numbers

l8 is money-oriented, decisive, and stern.

l9 is multi-talented, compassionate, and global.

l11 is enlightened, intense, and high-strung.

l (Also read the "lower" vibration of 2 above.)

l22 is goal-oriented, a global planner, and inspired.

l (Also read the "lower" vibration of 4 above.)

l

l

lConclusion

lNumerology can help you better understand yourself, and your strengths and weaknesses.

lIt is important to note, however, that numerology can be very general, and like any other form of divination, is open to interpretation.

l