The Arbatel Experience - Ritual of PHALEG

Well, I guess some people simply are slower than others? In the same time it takes me to perform and go through the repercussions of a single rite I see other magicians working through an entire Grimoire, publishing a new book and engaging in countless discussions online...

Since I embarked on this journey it has taken me three months on average to plan for each rite, perform it and integrate its impact into my daily life. In doing so I always tried to follow through each step of the Spirit Contact Cycle as consciously as possible. Clearly that slows things down. Incredibly so.

Here is but one example: When I set out to perform the entire Arbatel cycle I stopped drinking alcohol, stopped smoking and became more strict on not eating any meat. All of this happened under the assumption I would be much quicker than it turns out I am. My somewhat naive assumption was I could perform all seven rites within four to six months maximum - and be back to my occasional fag and a glass of wine by spring 2011.

Well, clearly that wasn't quite the case. Here I am more than a year later completing the fifth of all seven rites. But boy, do I enjoy the journey! I know now it was one of the best decisions of my life to tackle this magic mountain... And so each time I am reminded of my slow pace of performing and integrating these rites I end up recalling that I will do each rite only once in a life-time. 

What I realize now is that the way I approached my 'Arbatel Experience' a year ago and still do today is exactly the same as I approached previous liminal experience and retreats. Never worry about time. There is more than enough of it. The really scarce good is mindfulness. 

So when I present the fifth ritual account of the Arbatel Experience - this time of the Olympic Spirit of PHALEG - it's still with the same intent as a year ago. To share the entire journey with you, from start to finish, from stepping out into the lunar realm until we reach the spheres of Saturn some day. Feel free to join me or drop out whenever you wish. I guess, one of the privileges of the lone practitioner is that you can do everything just in your very own time.

Lou Reed never gets tired to mention in interviews that his latest album is the best he ever released. You might disagree, but who knows his standards? What I know for the Arbatel rites is that same is true for me: When I look at the ritual communions I had the chance to experience thus far I am utterly humbled. 

When I was a young teenager and set out on my occult path I always hoped - but never dared to assume - I could encounter magical experiences like these. They might be small to the degree of irrelevance compared to other practitioner's achievements these days. That's okay; it doesn't actually matter. Because we all know what matters: It's never how we compare to others. But how we enrich our own lives and the ones of others through the magic we are given.

I hope you enjoy the read. Here is the full account of the fifth ritual of the Arbatel, Concerning the Magic of the Ancients, the rite for the Olympic Spirit of Phaleg.

The beast that almost got me... - or OCH's aftermath

While writing this post the sentence kept coming back to me: "This beast almost got me." And that's the truth. Going through the aftermath of the ritual of OCH took its tribute and I paid the toll. 

I guess any successful spirit communion will express itself in changes in our lives? So when it comes to determining the impact of a rite it is much less about what happens while we are in the temple than it is about what happens once we leave it behind. The forces of the spirit we work with will take shape and merge into our personality as soon as we allow them to sink into our subconsciousness and become one with who we are underneath our skins... Assimilating the powers of spirits into our everyday lives is similar to the way our body assimilates the nutrition of food - the powers unfold once their taste has vanished in our mouths. 

Entering the sphere of the Sun taught me how it feels to arrive at the spot marked 'X' on my life map: there is no next step to take, no next goal to turn to. Once I allowed the forces of OCH to enter my live it was easy to lose any sense of direction. In an earlier post I had mentioned that the Sun is the only place at which a wind emerges into all directions. The solar winds come forth from a single point and expand into all directions. The Sun is the ultimate center of our realm of creation. And measured from its centre every other point seems to be just as far away. No living thing approaches the Sun, yet the solar winds reach out to everything... 

As a human we are not made to live in the Sun, but to live in its orbit. We are not meant to be the centre of our own universe - but to circle around it in spheres. To maintain stability our lives depend on a reference point that is bigger than ourselves, a point that can sustain balance while we go through the transformations we call a living. As a human we are the host of our body and minds. We welcome experiences, strangers that come to visit and to change us. As humans we are constantly becoming by allowing life to work on us.  

The Sun, however, never changes. It is the agent of change itself. The Sun is not a host but the light that shines over every encounter. We need the Sun to shine in our back to look far into the future or close up at a detail. If we come too close to it, if we even allow it to shine behind our own eyes, it will blind us and leave us without a sense of direction.

Engaging with the spirit of OCH was a wonderful experience. It took me to the centre of everything we know. It kills social and cultural stereotypes about the shining star and replaces them with real life experiences... The spirit of OCH is a wonderful teacher. But he is also unforgiving, relentless, merciless. His light doesn’t mind if it dries tears from our face or burns the last fertile soil in Somalia. More than a rose ever will be, the Sun is the Sun is the Sun.

If we approach the Sun to engage with it, we need to understand that we will be blind for the duration of the encounter: Every other life, every other career, every other relationship  will suddenly seem in reach. The power to re-imagine and start afresh will be abundant and the ease to destroy what we have built uncannily alluring. When we encounter the spirit of OCH it take all our willpower and a busload of faith not to burn down the bridges of the live we had created before... Because once we shift identification from the objects we see in the Sun, to sunlight itself no single shape will ever be good enough. Ego and hunger will be infinite.

Here is the beast that almost got me: As humans we don't belong into the Sun. We carry its seed in our hearts, a single spark instead of a planet of fire. If we re-imagine each day who we are and what we will achieve, we won't achieve anything. And ultimately we will be at the end of everything and nothing.

From the moment we step into the Sun it will burn us to ashes. It will eat our centers of identity and give way to the illusion that any form and shape out there could be us... This is the illusion we have to face: while we can engage with forces and spirits that are lightyears beyond us, our nature as humans will remain the same. We are the flask that contains all elements, not the fire underneath.

::

Arbatel Experience - The Ritual of the Olympic Spirit of OCH

Last week I performed the fourth ritual of the seven Arbatel operations. As I am following the sequence of the planets as indicated by the Tree of Life, this was the ritual for the Olympic Spirit of the Och, associated with the Sun or Tiphareth.

I started preparing for this ritual in late May. The preparation of the actual paraphernalia, the temple consecrations or the design of the Lamen actually don't take too much time. Yet what does take time for me is to tune into a new field of spirit experience and energy before I feel comfortable approaching its source in a ritual setting. I found this normally takes between six to eight weeks for me. The longest it ever took were 18 months though. This was when I allowed a deity to give my entire life a new makeover...

Photos from the creation
process of the Lamen of OCH

The liminal point when I decide to set a date for a new rite is often indicated by a subtle change of qualities and 'ruling' energies in my daily life. In most cases it takes a lot more patience than I normally have to wait for and realize this shift... Anybody working with the influence of the planets or Sephirotic forces on our bodies will be familiar with it: It can be as simple as my appetite changing for things associated with the spirit I am planning to work with. Other times I find myself talking to the spirit in inner dialogues while going through everyday activities. And sometimes I am asking my HGA questions about the spirit. 

Most often, however, I am given the opportunity to work in settings during my work or private life that are closely connected to the forces of the spirit I am approaching. For a solar spirit such as Och this could be the opportunity to give presentations or trainings to large groups, the chance to help others achieve higher self-confidence, or simply to invite friends to my house and host them. If several of these incidents culminate over a short period of time, I know that my life is rich with the spirit's energy already. Communing with it in a ritual setting at this point is much easier than trying to tune into its rhythm with a cold start...

You can read more about how this worked out for this particular rite - and about the idea of spirits as fields of rhythms - in the full account of my ritual for the Olympic Spirit of Och.

I tried to be as accurate and open about the experience during the ritual as with the previous three rites - all mistakes and failures included. The simple idea still is to share ritual experiences more openly - and thus help to tear down the traditional border between life inside and outside of our temples. Yet, what is different with Och's ritual account is that I refrained to provide a lengthy interpretation or summary of the findings of the rite. When you read through it you will understand why. 

There is one more thing, however, that might be interesting to add here. 

This morning during communion with my HGA I asked how s/he would define the nature of the Olympic Spirit of Och and what the main difference is between her/him and Och. Here is the answer s/he gave me:

"He is the constant where I can chose to be thou. He is the eternal source, where I am what lives in its spirit. I know the land, the river, the sea. The source knows the beginnings only. I am the full circle of life. I am you as you are I. We hold the privilege of change."

May all your magic be filled with life.

Arbatel Experience #4 - OCH approaching

It's time for the next ritual in my Arbatel Experience. Well, to be precise, it will be time for it in three weeks time from today. This time I am taking a slightly different approach than during the three previous rites: While preparing the required paraphernalia I chose to approach OCH, i.e. the Olympic Spirit of the Sun in vision in advance. After the intense experience of the first three ritual communions - as well as having learned a lot about my mistakes from Josephine's wonderful book - I guess I simply became more sensitive to building up spirit contact step by step... rather than going from 0 to 100 during the relatively short time of the actual rite.  

My first spirit visit in vision happened last Friday - it was very short, yet intense like a powerful blast. I had merged with the angelic body of my HGA at the usual place where we meet. Then my angel suggested to lift me up and pull our merged bodies out of the sublunar realms. For a short moment we were hanging in the quiet darkness, earth shimmering below us like a wonderful pearl... Then suddenly my angel's body started to gain incredible speed and head towards the Sun. It only took a short moment, then my entire vision was filled by the erupting, burning, blasting surface of the Sun. It was one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen in my life. The little sphere of light of our joint bodies was hanging in front of this huge globe of fire as meaningless, as powerless as a single particle of dust... The sheer size of the body of the Sun blew away any sense of proportion. This was the centre.

At the same time a flogging, unrelenting, powerful wind emerged from the surface of the Sun and blew in all directions. Never before had I considered that there is a physical place in our universe from where a wind emerges that shoots and storms in all directions at once? Truly, this place was the centre of everything I was part of. This was as close as my fragile self could get to the epicenter of the macrocosm. And never before had I realized so harshly that Hermes Trismegistos' saying "As above so below" was exactly that - a philosophical saying, an idea, a spark of a thought - that had precious little to do with the reality in front of me. The fire in my heart and the fire in front of me were world's apart. They certainly were of the same nature - but one had taken the size of a star, holding a whole solar system in balance by force of its pure presence alone, whereas the other kept the blood pumping in my small body at night when I lay asleep in bed...

We are part of the most amazing wonders of nature, all secrets of live, condensed in our small bodies and minds. But boy, we are small. 

What a humbling experience. OCH is approaching.

Hagith Speaks - on Love and Sickness

Hey, this is a tough topic. If you need some company while reading, maybe try this.

This week magick taught me something essential on afflictions and sickness. Actually this is something I would have never understood without the interference of the Olympic Spirit of Hagith. I guess you know these moments when your consciousness takes a leap of faith and takes a perspective that was completely unknown to you before? Let me share how Hagith created such a moment for me last Sunday...

During the Arbatel ritual of Hagith she had asked for a sacrifice in form of bringing down her powers and binding them into earth. I had followed this wish on the subsequent day and started to understand how our HGA can help draw down planetary forces. For some reason I felt compelled to repeat this process more than once. I wanted to learn more about this technique and also to show appropriate devotion to Hagith, as she had shard so many valuable insights with me during the ritual. So last Sunday I went back into my temple, calmed my mind with my standard meditation, went into union with my HGA and allowed his body to cover the ground around me like a large blanket of light. Then - jut like before - I called down the forces of Hagith by singing her psalm 22:14: "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the middle of my bowels."

Immediately on intoning the psalm my heart opened like a gate, my voice broke and tears rushed into my eyes. I was overwhelmed by the intesity of the emotions and continued to sing her psalm, concentrating not to break into tears for reasons I didn't know and didn't dare to control...

When Hagith's forces had established a stable connection with the body of my angel, I felt her white light rushing down through the skies, entering the surface of the body of my angel and disappear into the soil of earth. I felt the circle of light around me expanding and starting to include meadows and houses and neighbors and animals and people and plants surrounding me... - Then, while still singing to Hagith a deep understanding of the nature of sickness dawned on me. To be honest, I have no idea where this came from. My best guess is that during this moment I was caught in a healing process that was much larger than myself - the lights of Hagith streaming down into a sore earth, a planet that desperately needs more TLC than we are willing to return.

Here is what Hagith said: The key to overcome illnesses is not to want it to go away. The key to healing is to accept sickness. Maybe I am stating the obvious for more experienced healers, but this is some mind-bending truth for my little brain! Here is how she continued: When a sickness enters my body it is looking for shelter. It is looking for a place to rest, to be what it is and to transform slowly into something it needs to become. Our body and our minds are the places for this transformation to take place, our bodies are the athanors in which the alchemy of affliction is accomplishing its great work.

Fermentation - the fifth operation in the Great Work
comes to my mind. Physiologically it is the rousing
of living energy in the body to heal and vivify.

Up to this day I had always believed the key to healing is to foster the process of healing with all means and resources available. That healing occurs when we can actively hinder the forces of illness to spread and expand. Now, I still know very little about healing, but Hagith clearly disagreed with this. The comparison she gave me was that of an animal shelter: If you are a keeper of an animal shelter it is your job to open the gates for animals that are all in a horrible shape. They look ugly, they are ugly, they are close to dying and stink and disgust all your senses. But they are what they are - and what they need most at this point in their miserable lives is a place to be loved.

During the rite Hagith had taught me that love is a tool that opens and that life is the seed that follows. It seems she wants me to understand that this even applies to sickness? She wants me to love my sickness and to use my body as an animal shelter - just in case there is a near-dead creature in front of my gates. If I accept this - as this is just the understanding of sickness from a single Olympic Spirit's point of view - the goal of my body isn't any longer to be a fortress of health and beauty. But it is to be an alchemical athanor that allows transformation of matter and states. Some of these transformations are beautiful and some of them are incredibly painful and invidious. I guess nobody ever promised loving would be easy? It might even mean giving up my body to a force that needs sheltering and a place to recover.

What I learned during this rite of sacrifice is exactly this: There is no space which we should call our own except for the spark of light that we are. We share our minds, we share our bodies, we share our consciousness with all the forces around us. Often this sharing doesn't require us at all to be active. Loving doesn't need us to be in control. We simply need to rest, to accept what needs happening and to continue to believe in the power of the vessel that we are... If a larvae covers itself in the ground, if a grub climbs on a bush and solidifies on a branch, the only thing it needs is a place to be safe. A place that allows for magic to unfold. When I am sick I am exactly this - the soil that shelters a larvae, the branch that shelters a grub. The animal shelter that just took in a new guest...

I guess at the very end our role in healing is quite simple: We need to be present and let love run through us like a river. We need to endure the state of being sick, of being incomplete, of being part of a change that happens on us. At some point the work will be done. A process concludes, a butterfly appears, an old shape crumbles. It didn't take a moment of worries, of sorrow, of being at our wits ends for this magic to happen. How it happened or what the result of this process will be, we don't need to know. Luckily our body is just the athanor and not the alchemist.

Now, here is one more point: What about all of us with terminal illnesses, with severe disabilities and animals to shelter that are more than we think we can take? Maybe the above is disrespectful to all the pains we are being forced through? Maybe there is a point where some animals need killing as they will infect others? Maybe there is a point where the animal shelter needs a pause and needs to recover from overuse?  Of course my answer is that I don't know. I only know what Hagith told me: Each sickness needs a place for healing. A place where it can rest, stretch out for a while and is allowed to be what it is: a symbol of change. Only then can healing occur. 

After the healing took place the sickness might still be with us. Some animals never leave the shelter and all severe illnesses change the people they encounter. So I guess the goal of a healing process is not always for the illness to disappear. But for the change it came to start to take place and transform. It is not us who define the outcome of an encounter with sickness. We are the soil and the branch the grub clings on to - we are not the butterfly that emerges. We are a place of events, we are a space for encounters and sometimes for transformations.

Maybe this is what made me cry while singing to Hagith? What a bitter truth to accept - that we do not own our bodies. The best we can do is to love the strangers who drop by to visit and allow them to become friends... I always thought loving is much more easy than this. True love seems to want me to let go of everything - my own body included. What a bitter truth, what a wonderful thing to strive for.  

Well, here am I stuttering around, when we have the beautiful Damien Jurado who seems to find all the words just so easily. Over to someone who knows how love and sickness intertwine...

I wish that I could float

Float up from the ground

I will never know

What that's like

You have a way about you

I wish that I had

Thought it was impossible

To live and love like you

Funny how we all can change

If we just try to

Thought it was impossible

To live and love like you

One day you will be taller

Taller than the sky

Until that day you will be

Here with us below

Magic will do what magic does

Living in your eyes

Do you think someday soon

You will have the time?

I could use another hand

To help pull me through

Someday these hospital stays

Get the best of me

Trying to fix my mind

Still trying to fix my mind

Trying to work it out

I'm still trying to fix my mind

Still trying to fix my mind

I'm still trying to fix my mind

::


Damien Jurado - Cloudy Shoes

A Key Called Love... or a sigil for my evil demon

Let's start this with a warning. Maybe big bold letters can help: THIS POST IS A SIGIL FOR MY EVIL DEMON. He is bound into this text. Do not continue to read as reading this sigil might set him free... Well, not that my evil demon can do any harm to you; after all he is mine. But you know how demons are - they help each other out like real mates. And he might just figure where yours is kept locked inside? 

::

One of the most fascinating results of my evocation of the Olympic Spirit of Hagith was her take on the interdependency of love and life. Love being a light that opens and life being the seed that is put inside. The simple, yet perplexing insight: nothing can receive life if it hasn't been opened by love before. 

Think that sounds cheesy? Well, let's consider this: life is a pretty general term. It is not the same as beauty, harmony or balance. Life includes all the nastiness and ugliness we normally don't tend to associate with it. Life is rainy days, depression and sickness - just as it is ice cream, sunshine and a walk in the park.  

So the key of love that Hagith provides opens all kinds of doors, irrespective of what has been kept inside... Still sounds too much like theory? Then let me share a story of a door that I had nailed shut for all the right reasons twenty years ago and which Hagith just decided to tear wide open...

When I first experienced the beauty and fulfillment of Tiphareth I was simply blown away by how quietly contempt and in love I could be with the world around me. At the same time, however, I realized that this brightness, this complete effortlessness, has an evil twin. A mirror face of the buddha-like smile that covered my face for many days after entering the realm of Tiphareth... Similarly, I realized that I wasn't exactly in a rush to hunt for this shadow and leave the beautiful sunshine in the garden of Tiphareth behind. 

So while I was sitting on my Tiphareth meadows for weeks in one long wonderful picnic, deep inside I knew that there was a gravel walk leading out of the park into a dirty suburb and to a run down door with a house number and a name on it... I even knew the house number and the name on the doorplate (see the Note at the end). Yet, I still was in no rush leaving my unfinished picnic, walking down the path and essentially spoil the entire day... First off I needed to achieve balance and stable connection to the forces of Tiphareth. There was still plenty of time left to go scouting in the suburbs afterwards...

Well, fast forward about a year: here comes Hagith. Suddenly I am standing in front of the run down door in that far away alley. I have no idea how I got here? The old door slams wide open: Inside is a room covered in ashes. All things are quiet and still inside. It is the living room of my parent's house. I am a child again, standing in the middle of the room and looking around me. This is the burial chamber of my past. I am right in the room I promised myself never to return to... I realize a part of me has been standing here since all these years: the same boy, the same clothes, the same haircut. The same bitter taste of sadness in my throat, the same profound disillusionment on my mind that life will never become for me what I knew it could be for others... It is incredibly quiet in the Pompeii house of my past. Surrounded by memories whose life I have drawn out and used to build up my future, surrounded by ghosts and furnitures made from ashes... I guess this is the place where my evil daimon lives.

Here is what Agrippa has to say about the nature of the evil daimon:

"As therefore there is given to every man a good spirit, so also there is given to every man an evil Diabolicall spirit, whereof each seeks an union with our spirit, and endeavours to attract it to it self, and to be mixed with it, as wine with water; the good indeed, through all good works conformable to it self, change us into Angels, by uniting us, as it is writ of John Baptist in Malachie: Behold I send mine Angel before thy face: of which transmutation, and union it is writ elsewhere; He which adheres to God is made one spirit with him. An evil spirit also by evil works, studies to make us conformable to it self, and to unite, as Christ saith of Judas, Have not I chosen twelve, & one of you is a devil?"

(Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, Book III, chapter XX) 

Well, I wish he had also called out this: My evil daimon is the spirit that never appears in full sight. He is the ugly part of me that everybody can see but I. He is the force that hinders, wears out and withers my ability to love and give. He is the strange gravitational force that holds me back when I need to speak, that closes my eyes when I need to see. He is the force that creates my armor of pride and the darkness inside. My evil daimon is the quiet usurper, he is the one who stands behind me, the voice that sounds like mine and the face I have never seen.  

At the same time, however, my evil daimon also is the force that allowed me to survive. By surrounding me like an armor of cold it sheltered what was kept inside. He didn't help exactly to escape from the room made of ashes, yet because of him I outlasted while I was caught inside. When things get so tough that I cannot allow love to help me anymore, my evil daimon is the last line of defense. He is the ugly truth and every touch of his leaves a stain. But I guess we all have been to places where we were willing to pay the price: By closing down all other resources, by slamming shut all doors, by embracing the counterforce of love, we can create a confined space of survival. A living grave, a shadow in the sun. 

The door to the room of ashes is wide open now. For the first time I can see my evil daimon. He has left the run down house, stepped out on the street, eyes wide open he is staring into the sun above the garden. The burning light pierces through his eyes, they burn and die down to ashes. My demon doesn't move, but keeps on standing and holds his face of ashes into the sun...

Suddenly I get it: every living thing has a right to be set free. Be it an evil demon or an angel, be it made of ashes or light. Hagith's love is blind.

    

::

Note: When I prepared for the rite that took me through the veil of Paroketh and into Tiphareth I had worked with Agrippa's instructions on how to construct the name of your genius and evil daimon from your natal chart. You can download The Genius & Evil Demon Calculator on myoccultcircle.com for free. Any questions on how to use it, just send an email to acher300@me.com

    

Arbatel Experience - The Female Divine

Last week I performed the rite of Hagith; this week I continued with my personal therapy. I arrived at the session exhausted from a long day of work and had a few minutes to settle and calm down before my therapist arrived. As I was relaxing on the sofa, not doing anything but focussing on my body as it calmed down I thought back to my communion with Hagith. As I will explain in the full ritual account Hagith had shared a simple way of contacting her. And that's what I did sitting on the sofa... I opened the channel to her consciousness and allowed her force to flow freely into my sphere. Then my therapist arrived and we started the session... For a very long time I had pondered on a way to combine therapy and theurgy. Without being aware of it, suddenly I had discovered the beginning of a journey. Here is what happened.

Without a clear topic on my mind the session started to circle around my desire to form, mold and design the world around me. The pleasure I take from creating experiences for me and other people, to shape things and situations. This was starkly contrasted by my experiences when I wasn't able to follow this habit freely, e.g. meditating for several days and nights in the desert or being alone in a remote mountain forrest for a weekend. These situations presented some of my most fearful experiences in Magick - as there ceased to be a counterpart, a force or situation that presented itself as raw material as substance to be shaped. Sitting in the desert, silently, time passing by, covered in my own sweat, surrounded by sand and flies every form of resistance retreated and flinched. My hands were empty and neither echos nor images of my mind came back from the emptiness around me. I was losing myself, the boundaries that defined me, the skin of my body in the adamant silence and nothingness of time...

As I was sharing these experiences I something reminded me of the myth of Ishtar descending into the underworld to rescue her loved one: At the entrance of the underworld the gatekeeper refuses to let Ishtar in. Ishtar threatens him to break the gate and set the dead souls free to devour the living and thus unsettle the balance of the world of the living and the dead. The gatekeeper turns to Ereshkigal, the queen of the underworld, and she gives permission for Ishtar to enter, but "according to the ancient decree". This decree demands that Ishtar may pass through the seven gates of the underworld only if she sheds one element of her garment in front of each gate. And this is what Ishtar does... Once she passes through the final gate she has given up everything that defined her: 

• Her crown - her spiritual connection
• Her earrings - her intellectual mind
• Her necklace - her power to speak
• Her breastplate - her power to love
• Her hip girdle - her power to desire
• Her measuring rod - her power to act
• Her breechcloth - her power to reproduce

Ishtar is naked as she the enters before the throne of the underworld. She has lost everything that represented her identity, that allowed her to shape and form and participate in the experiences of the living. She has lost all connection to live. Nothing is left but her pure Gestalt, the essence of her being, a spark represented by her naked body.

I wonder if when a larva climbs on a tree, solidifies on a branch and dies - does it know that it is giving birth to something new? Is it aware that something is waiting to be set free from underneath its skin? Is it aware that what it considers itself has done its service and has now become the prison of something even more beautiful to emerge from it?

When I was sitting in the desert I was as naked as Ishtar and as dead as a grub on a tree. I had given up all my powers to shape and connect with life.  I had  retreated into complete isolation. I was full of fear like the sky at night full of wind - no boundaries left, nothing to distinct, nothing to define what was left of me. The gates of all my body, the gates of all my mind were wide open and everything I had kept inside had disappeared. I was an empty shell, covered in sweat and by flies. I guess that's the way a larva feels when it dies?

Here is what Hagith told me in the ritual: "I am life, but love is my tool that opens everything." Loving in the sense of Hagith is the ability to radically accept things as they are. To let go of the desire to change what already is perfect in itself. This kind of divine love is the ability to not desire to manifest yourself in the realm of someone else, but to open a space for something new to emerge. 

Being able to connect with this type of "love that opens" requires me to let go of the eternal game of shaping the world in my own image. It is the Adam within me that has to die. And all the names of the plants and animals of the world need to be washed away and crumble to dust, for life to take its own shape. That is the female divine. The force that opens but doesn't confine. The force that sows the seeds of life - rather than trying to force a shape on what grows from it. 

I cannot tell you how far understanding this maybe simple truth is from who I used to be before the rite of Hagith... 

This is the female divine. The force that opens and doesn't confine. 

Arbatel Experience - some thoughts on ritual purification

Last Friday I performed the third rite in the Arbatel operation, the ritual of Hagith. It was another wonderful experience that taught me so much about magick, planetary spirits and my own shortcomings in dealing with both of them. While I am writing up the full account I thought it might be worthwhile sharing some general learnings that came with it? So here is a snippet on what this week's rite taught me on creating proper purifications in advance of any ritual...

(...) The key to any successful ritual preparation is to alter your state of consciousness in order to break through perceptive filters which normally inhibit direct experience of and communion with spirits. Therefore the term purification in this case refers to a period in advance of a rite that supports the breaking down of these filters or attachments to everyday life. Similar to most elements in the tradition of the Magickal Grimoires, the actual means to purify our state of mind and living are heavily influenced by a Jewish-Christian worldview. The standard procedures involve multiple weeks of e.g. fasting, cleansing, prayers and isolation.

I feel it’s important to point out, however, that the actual change brought forth by purifications happens in our hearts more than anywhere else. Whatever means we chose to purify our lifestyles, the real aim of the game is to change the state of our heart: Imagine we all had a compass in our hearts and the compass needle would normally be guided by our everyday affections, desires and fears. Then the purification rites are what replaces the magnetic field of our personal desires with a field of devotion to God or the spirits we summon. The foremost goal of purification rites is to change the intention of our hearts.

Martin Buber in his seminal introduction to the Legends of the Baal-Shem summarizes the four aspects of a purified life according to the Chasidim:

• Hitlawut: is the flare, it is the zeal of ecstasy. A flaming sword guards the path to the tree of life. It sputters on the touch of Hitlawut.
• Awoda: is devotion. If Hitlawut is the mystical feast, Awoda is the mystical sacrifice. All deeds bound into one and eternal life embedded into every action.
• Kavanah: is the mystery of a soul directed towards a single goal.
• Shiflut: is humbleness. It is the awareness of the uniqueness of each aspect of creation. It is the awareness that doesn’t compare two things but surrounds each of them with the love it deserves because of what it is alone.

Martin Buber’s wonderful introduction together with Aaron Leitch’s chapter on purification and prayer should suffice for anybody to get to the bottom of what purification rites in magickal rituals are all about. It might take a lifetime, however, to fully express and experience it in your own way. Or as Lou Reed put it: “Between thought and expression lies a lifetime.”

   

Alright, enough deviation. Here is what this has to do with my rite for Hagith: I really think my preparatory purification for this rite didn’t get close enough to what I am sharing above. Here is what it consisted of:

• Continued abstinence of meat, alcohol and cigarettes since the beginning of the Arbatel operation, i.e. August 2010
• Setting the day of the Hagith operation one week in advance and consciously focussing on the forthcoming ritual during every day of that week
• Dedicating the full day of the operation to the work, including several hours of preparatory work (e.g. creating the Lamen) and meditation
• Ritual cleansing, bath and meditation before the performance of the rite

Now, before I started to perform the ritual I thought this was a pretty solid approach to changing the intention of my heart. And it was. But I forgot about everything outside of it. When I cleaned and prepared my temple on the morning of that day I forgot to realize that the atmosphere in it was cold and damp from the long winter months during which it hadn't been used. I did realize a lot of large spiders and white cobwebs behind the black curtains - but here we are living on the countryside and I guess building a temple into an old barn will always come with these types of silent visitors. Yet, what I overlooked was that the presence of spiders and cobwebs should have pointed me to the astral state of my temple: the energy was low and there were certainly some astral cobwebs on the curtains. I should have purified it by burning menthol crystals and performed a ritual cleansing of the entire sacred space. Perform a ritual act to revive the energies sleeping in the astral patterns of the temple so that they would actively vibrate and resonate when I entered for the Hagith rite at night... I took this as a deep learning and hope not to repeat it too soon: as a magician it is just so easy to become overly focussed on ourselves and forget about the world we are living in. 

As always good old Martin Buber hit it right on when he quoted the Chasid wisdom: “Don’t look at yourself but look at the world around you.” (...)

::

Well, I guess I should have listened more to this song in advance of the rite? Isn't Herman Dune the best artist on the entire planet - he even knows about purification of hearts!

On Love and Magick

Okay, the truth is at this point I would have long loved to give you an update on the third Arbatel ritual on Hagith, the Olympic Spirit of Venus. Fact is, however, it hasn't happened yet as February turned out to be much more busy than expected. At first thought that left me without anything to say - as my ritual work is on pause. Yet, on second thought I realized that my whole intention for this blog was to bring life inside and outside of the temple together. So if you allow, let me share a thought that stems from outside the temple...

Today I heard the sad story of a friend whose relationship broke after 23 years of marriage and four kids, all in teenage years. While the marriage ended five years ago already and my friend  is fine now, it still reminded me of the fragileness of life: How little it takes to bereave us of what we cared about most once? How little it takes to make us turn from what seemed to be the largest 'X' on the treasure map of our lives a few years before. What a sad thing to consider, what a horrible thing to experience.

When I came home tonight I shared the story of my friend with my wife. We are a couple since 13 years and while I can say we are deeply in love still, it is stories like this that even create an uncertain feeling of angst and tremor for us... Yet, tonight was also a wonderful reminder how much I can take responsibility for my own little actions - step by step and day by day. It reminded me of a truth another friend told me years ago based on her job as a therapist. She said in her long career she has seen very few examples for why splitting up has to do something with the people we leave behind. Yet she has seen countless examples for why splitting up often is the easy way out from who we have become ourselves.

On recalling this long lived advice, it suddenly dawned on me how important magick is for the health of my relationship. And this is the actual thought I want to share with you...

In my life - as I guess in yours as well - magick provides a deep, powerful and inexhaustible source of meaning. It enriches my life to an extend that I constantly feel blessed and thankful for the experiences and encounters I am allowed to make. It truly is my fountain of youth, if we follow Gustav Meyrink's saying:

The secret of eternal youth is not 

to look at constantly new things with our old eyes,

 but to look at the same things with constantly new eyes.

Magick renews the sight of my eyes - in a rhythm which I rather need to slow down than to increase. And each time my eyes are renewed a part of myself is reborn; I become a different man. It is from these moments that everything derives meaning in my life - and the wonders in the world around me start to matter more to myself than I do. To me this is the biggest, unshared secret of love: to be to yourself what you expect from love to bring to you. I actually never dared to say this, but here is what I think: What makes you ready for true love, is to be free from concerns about yourself. To look at another person, at the world around you, in a state of wonder and awe, without any intent. 

So it is because magick fills my life with meaning, that I can love my wife without intent. She doesn't have to be 'meaningful' to be as beautiful as she is. And she is beautiful because of everything she is to herself, because of how free she is from me, because of her honesty, her integrity, her foolishness and curiosity. She has a kind of beauty that has become more blinding over the years - because she has become more and more herself. And hopefully my love is no boundary to who she needs to become... We accompany each other on our separate ways, we share our experiences, we love - and we are free to discover different sources of meaning.

The husband in the story of my friend left her for another woman right when midlife crisis hit him. Four kids at home, the usual story we all know. The usual story that leaves a scar that never heals... By no means is our love unattainable for strikes like this. My sense of reality has matured enough through encounters with people and spirits to teach me we should never consider ourselves out of reach for pretty much anything... Yet, what I do know is that I am immune to ending a relationship because of the desire to reinvent myself. Because of the desire to be more meaningful as a different person. 

I have learned what magick and love can do if I treat both with respect and tenderness. And I learned not to mistake the talents of one for the talents of the other. The temple was destroyed only when Samson aspired to bring the two pillars of Jakin and Bohaz together...

The biggest gift of my wife to me is to allow me to become whoever I need to be. To not have any fantasies about who I should be - except for true to myself - in order to deserve her love. It's only now that I see this: Her love sets me free, it's magick that binds me.

Well, in the end it still feels like Hagith is approaching?

::

Well, it seems this is starting to become a habit... here is the song I am listening while typing this on a calm Sunday night: Low, Violent Past. Isn't this a wonderful description of what allows our relationships to end so easily? So carelessly as if we didn't care, but fail to show and share... Here is to the dweller on the threshold:

All I can do is fight

Even if I know you're right

All I can do is fight

Pretty fingers, holding fast

Maybe it's your violent past

Maybe it's your violent past

All you can do is hide

God bless the darkness of the night

All you can do is hide

Pretty fingers, the golden calf

Maybe it's your violent past

Maybe it's your violent past

Maybe it's the violent path

Maybe it's your violent past

Maybe it's the violent path

Maybe it's your violent past

Low - Violent Past 

On how to - maybe? - treat spirits

Here is a story for you... yes, something like a breakfast parable if you want. Take some time for a coffee, maybe put on this song like I just did and if you are ready, feel free to follow... I'll promise - or better hope - it will make sense at the end.

Think of a goldsmith living in a small town. Our goldsmith is the only one of his kind in his town; maybe even in the state. He has a unique talent to create art and adornment from metals. This particular goldsmith happens to not only have a huge gift for working with metals, but also a huge passion. Doing his job is a calling for him and that's how he approaches every piece of work he does. To be honest, even though he's been working as a goldsmith for decades, every day he still is humbled by the way the metals behave in each of their states he is putting them through and he is humbled by the beauty they reveal in shapes they take... You get it: we are dealing with a bit of goldsmith nerd here.

Now, unfortunately our goldsmith isn't earning a lot of money with his art. He actually is quite in debt and owes money to quite a few people in the town. Much to his disadvantage, one of these believers is a very rich and ignorant fellow. One day this guy comes into the studio of our goldsmith and asks him to pay back his debts. 

The goldsmith offers him the remaining adornments he has left on the shelf. But the creditor doesn't want them simply because he doesn't know what to do with them. Rather he insists the goldsmith should rob a bank for him - as he had heard the goldsmith would be very talented with all sorts of precious thing and he was planning a coup anyway. Hearing this demand the goldsmith is aghast and refuses! 

Now the creditor hesitates - looking at the goldsmith he gets doubts if he really could do the job... After reconsidering the situation he offers him to work in his garage and polish his cars. As this would make significantly less money than a bank coup, however, he would need to work there for the rest of his life. The goldsmith breaks out in tears... And as he doesn't stop crying at some point the creditor finds himself feeling sorry for the poor soul.

Thus he asks: 'So what do you want? In some way or another you'll need to follow my will!' The goldsmith cries: 'But I am a goldsmith! I am an artist, I can create beauty from metal ashes and slag! Give me a job that uses my talent, I can work on anything that is related to creating value from precious metals. Just don't ask me to do something I am not.' 

Well, I'll spare you the rest of the conversation; but at some point the creditor really loses his nerves. Finally, with a big sigh he gives in and orders the goldsmith to work in his kitchen and polish sterling cutlery for the rest of his life...

Still with me? Okay, if you have made it until here, I promise the tough bit is over. I am not much of a story teller - but I told you this would only work with a parable as the beginning... Because here is the thing I was pondering about: What if we are the creditors to the spirits we summon?

What if some part in us is as ignorant, as self-obsessed, as uncaring as the creditor in the story? And what if we aren't even the first generation to treat spirits like this... but we are living off a heritage of abuse, of ignorance and dominance? What if we often fail to acknowledge the true talents and gifts of spirit and demons? 

Technically the creditor wasn't wrong in assuming a goldsmith must be good with 'precious objects'. Generally speaking he could claim to be right... And generally speaking Jupiter can bring you luxury, and Mercury will make you win the lottery and the Sun gets you the next promotion and Venus your spouse and Mars keeps you invincible. And here we are - turning spirits into service staff of our astral Tesco or Walmart or BestBuy or what have you...

Sometimes when I read about Grimoire magic, I feel we are so obsessed with putting these creatures to our use and make them work for our benefits that we - just sometimes - forget to respect them for what they are. Un-human creatures, but creatures like us. Goldsmiths of their own kind, masters in their own disciplines... being forced to first bring us and then clean our sterling silver. 

Wouldn't it be great to be at a point in the history of magic where we (re-)learn to acknowledge the beauty and subtleties of the spirits we relate with? If we don't want to do it for them - then maybe we should do it for ourselves? Or are we really aware of how much we can grow by allowing spirits and demons to work their craft on us - rather than on our enemies or love lives?

If I only could find books on these questions: What are the result of a spirit working on my psyche that is supposed to 'bring you treasures'? What is the psychological impact of a demon 'that overcomes any opponents'? Can we use his force to overcome our own anxieties or depressions? And what happens if we allow the Egyptian God Kephri to be reborn within our heart - rather than our bank accounts? 

RO recently mentioned (here) that magicians shouldn't have to worry about money. I think the same is true for the spirits we work with. They shouldn't have to worry about our odds and ends. We can do that if we chose to. Because they are living creatures just like us, forces that shape life and plants and stones and animals even more than we do... I guess we should allow them to do what they are best at? For any spirit I think that's working on a spiritual level.

::

Ha, and on finishing this post I just realized the lyrics I was listening to. Remember, I am German so I can listen to English songs for hours without paying attention to their lyrics... 

Why aren't you kind to me ?

You could so easily

Take me in your arms and see

A donkey – a beast for thee

If you had half a mind

Leave worldly things behind

Devote to being kind

You to me – a beast for thee

Love in some way you choose

God's plan can easy bruise

One bone and blood mass we fuse

And I can be a beast for thee

I will toil for years and years

Give you muscle, tone and tears

Overcome and flay all fears

Leaving me – a beast for thee

And at home on Wednesday morn

Astride my horny horn

You'll be in glory born

And I will be a beast for thee

Happily a beast for thee

Quietly a beast for thee

Endlessly a beast for thee

Superwolf : Beast for Thee

Note: Thanks to The Scribbler (link) for pointing me to the fact that I had used the word 'believer' instead of creditor incorrectly. This was a mistake from my end, as in German language the follower of a religion or cult and the creditor are marked by the same term which is translated as 'believer'. Interesting enough, that the latin word 'credere' (believing) also is the root of the English term creditor... So, a big Thank You to The Scribbler!