secret – Between The Pillars

The Great Secret of Magick Pt3: The Mind, Body and Soul

July 2, 2021July 2, 2021Tagged Angels, ceremonial magick, demons, enlightenment, evocation, hermeticism, invocation, kabbalah, magic, magick, Occult, philosophy, power, religion, secret, spirituality, Theory and Insights, white raven, witchcraft1 Comment

Welcome back. Let me do a little follow up to the last post, which was perhaps a bit strange and felt unfinished. It was important to show the history of how and why ideology replaced traditional religion. And additionally, I had to draw attention to the source of human endeavor, which is Will to Power, which is often ignored, and many people they that they alone are correct and that their beliefs are ‘good’, not realising that everyone is driven by the same impulses as them.

We are motivated, to a great extent, by this Will, and it drives us forward. Each person has their own truth, their own ‘god’, and eventually a magician has to discover and speak their own truth, rather than attempting to realize some grand and false ideal they have been conditioned into. Especially in this time where many of the old ideals have fallen from their place.

I began to pursue magick for two reasons: to take control of my life, and to see what was beyond the mundane perception. I started this blog to share insights and experiences I had had, for the benefit of others, and eventually began to weave them into a philosophy.

You see, I was angry, depressed and bored. I was a pawn in someone else’s game, and like everyone around me, I believed that someone else had the keys to my happiness and someone else would create my future. But I found magick, and after my first successful evocation I committed to it.

I went deep. I did not stop at sigils and spells, but I kept following the rabbit hole until I reached Wonderland. It was mostly an escape. But then I tore down the walls, and brought Wonderland up to the Surface. The two integrated, and I no longer had to escape. I knew, from a certain moment, that there was no rabbit hole nor wonderland to begin with. Reality simply is, and magick is not an escape. Magick is reality itself. It is life, a life lived fully.

Even if you feel upset by my ideas and opinions, remember that you were likely drawn to this blog because of my unorthodox approach. To me, all this is absolutely real. Magick is not just psychodrama. It’s all literally true, and the more I realise that, the more my faith strengthens. And the more I feel like it’s okay to open up about these things on this blog. So pardon me, sometimes I need to shake things up a bit.

I waited, for far too long, for older and wiser folk to get around to it. But they’re unhappy and depressed, and they’re just making it worse. Life is so very short. Too short to spend waiting for it to begin. So you know what, fuck it. I’m going to say what I know to be true. Just because I can. Just because I was given the gift of speech, and for no other purpose than that.

Magick And Archetypes

In Magick, we often work with various beings that are not quite of the material plane. We call them gods, demons, angels, spirits, and all manner of other names. Traditionally, religion told us that these spirits or beings have a fixed place and purpose, in relation to humanity.

Isn’t it strange how, in most religious theology, only human beings seem to be evolving? Why is it that only we seem to have a destiny, a mortality, a free will and the ability to sin, while everything else is seemingly eternal and serves only one purpose?

Mainstream religion in the 21st century gives various justifications which have no reasoning nor basis behind them. These beings are shown to not have a Will of their own. They are presented as not growing or evolving, but being as they are forever. It’s quite an anthropocentric view of the Universe, where our own conscious, perceiving Mind alone is special and evolving, and all other things are fixed. In fact, religion acts as if these beings aren’t actually real, and as if religion only has a utilitarian purpose. As Richard Dawkins once joked “all religious people are atheists”. In a weird sort of way, this is true.

Then you come to magick, where many traditions tell you that these beings exist inside of your head. This is why they’re eternal, because they’re actually just projections of your own psyche, like personas who become detatched from you and act as independent characters during a ritual. Of course, this illusion falls apart for any sufficiently experienced magician.

First and foremost, I want you to full understand archetypes.

What are archetypes?

Archetypes was an idea explored most in depth by Carl Gustav Jung, often called the father of modern psychology. Those of you who have studied kabbalah may have heard of the “archetypal” plane as being the highest plane of existence.

12 Jungian archetypes. But this is not all there is. There are, in fact, infinite archetypes of thought, behaviour and narratives. Jung’s theory was actually much more fluid and complex than often depicted.

Archetypes are essentially prototypes, of behaviors, forms, symbols etc. For example, we can say that there is an archetypes of a ‘chair’, which would be a transcendent object which contains all the defining traits of a chair. All things that we recognize as ‘chairs’ would adhere to its traits and characteristics.

Jung recognised that archetypes are the framework of the human psyche. These archetypes came about as the result of millions of years of evolution, and strongly influence the way we see the world. For example, ‘Mother’ is an archetype, as is ‘Father’. We, as human beings, do not ‘learn’ what mother, father, king, teacher, tyrant, trickster are. We simply have a natural inclination to recognise these archetypal ideas. ‘God’ is an archetype, as is ‘tribe’.

Not only Jung, but various others have also recognised certain archetypes which are universal. Sage, magician, wise man, hero, jester, tyrant, creator, devil, all these are archetypes. Homeland can be an archetype. Even the ‘Known’ and ‘Unknown’ are archetypes, as are Heaven and Hell. You could say that the Magician or occultist is like a archetype of the person who ventures into the Sacred space, while ‘shaman’ is the archetype which is shifting and fluid.

In the last post, we discussed how Culture is the Divine Father, and responsible for morality, which is learned. These archetypes are not ‘learned’, but inherited. They exist within us naturally, and thus they are the product of Nature, the Divine Mother.

But Jung studied these further. This is the most important thing to understand in this post: the projection of archetypes. Essentially, human beings do not just use these archetypes on other people, but also project them onto the world. For example, we project the archetype of ‘Mother’ onto our surroundings, and the place of dwelling. Somehow, millions of years of evolution have molded the human psyche to regard ‘Mother’ as the nourisher and protector. Hence, we say ‘Mother Nature’ and ‘Motherland’. We say ‘God the Father’ and regard our culture and religion as a patriarch. Remember how in the last post we talked about Utopia simply being paradise on earth? In essence, it is simply taking the archetype of Heaven, but instead of projecting this idea to the afterlife, it gets projected to the future here on Earth. Utopian and Dystopian stories are no different than mythology about Heaven and Hell.

Stories and narratives which are extremely compelling are often archetypal in nature. Religion makes strong use of archetypal narratives, as do political ideologies. This is why they replaced religion.

Hero and Saviour can be seen as archetypes too. The longer something is around, the more it gets ‘refined’ and closer to being archetypal. This is why the more ancient a religion gets, the more its power grows. Gautama Buddha was likely a mystic who lived in the 7th-5th centuries BCE. But, over 2000 years, his story has become ‘archetypal’, meaning it has slowly warped and changed to resemble the archetypal story of the ‘Hero’. By the way, this is also why mythology from different parts of the world often has similarities. Human beings have the same archetypes, and all over the world, even in disconnected cultures, these archetypes emerge.

In magick, many traditions make heavy use of archetypal narratives. The myth of Christ, Bacchus, Buddha and Horus are often used to show the stages of magickal initiation. This shows that archetypes are more than just stories and symbols, but behaviours too. They are intrinsically linked to human existence. These figures, by the way, may be real people. But that’s not the point.

We use their legends because these are archetypal. Modern day superheroes are nothing but a modern expression of archetypal figures. Where once people were obsessed with Pantheons of Gods, now they are drawn to characters in pop culture. Superman is particular, is a strong symbol for magicians to study. And yes, the story of Superman was inspired by Nietzsche’s ‘ubermensche’.

People who do not know about archetypes often make the error of claiming that if two cultures have the same mythology, symbols, rituals and language, then one of them must have borrowed or learnt or it from the other. For example, why does the story of Jesus so closely resemble that of Horus and Bacchus? Why did the Mayans and Egyptians built pyramids? Why do so many cultures have the idea of an Earth goddess and a Sky Father? People then, mistakenly, assume that one of these must have ‘stolen’ these ideas from another. Now, there are many cases of overlap and cultural exchange, but not always.

Yes, some cultures have similarities and some religions came from the same place. But all these cultures and religions are simply expressions of the one culture and one religion shared by all humanity, expressed as archetypes all over the world. People respond to these symbols and myths on a very strong and emotional level. We feel that they are ‘true’, as in they are linked deeply to the human experience.

Its almost like the archetype describes characters and a script, and we put on these masks and personas and act out the play, at different times and places.

It isn’t just mythology that is archetypal either. Star Wars is pretty damn archetypal, as is Lord of the Rings. The Journey of Frodo and Luke Skywalker are simply another iteration of the same journey and sacrifices undertaken by Christ, Hercules, Bacchus, Horus and Krishna, or those of Beowulf and Arthur.

This how the Tree of Life works. The Sephiroth represent archetypal categories, to which multiple symbols can be ascribed.

For example, Geburah is the archetype of the War God. Horus, Nergal, Parashurama, Samael, Kamael, Indra, Tyr, Ares, all adhere to this archetype.

The mistake that many, many magicians make is failing to understand what the Tree of Life actually is. For example, they will force a deity like Sekhmet to fit into Tiphareth because she is ‘solar’ or was worshipped as a solar deity. In reality, she is an archetypal War Goddess, and belongs to Geburah. Or perhaps they will force Artemis into Geburah because she is is a Huntress, when her place is clearly Yesod as well.

A deity can even have different attributions. For example, Horus the Avenger may belong to Geburah, the Horus the Prince belongs to Tiphareth. Horus the Elder certainly belongs to Kether.

Human beings, therefore, project the contents of their psyche onto the world. It is my understanding that we project the Archetypes of our own mind onto the Cosmos. A dark forest becomes the archetypal ‘underworld’. A strange epidemic becomes the archetypal Judgement Day. The leader of an enemy nation becomes the archetypal Devil, and a charismatic political leader becomes the Messiah.

Ancient astrologers, projected the archetypal deities onto the constellations. Aries the Warrior, Taurus the Mother, Gemini the Twins, Virgo the Sacred Virgin, Leo the Hero!

When you truly love a person romantically, or truly hate a person, this is more descriptive of you than of them. Because what you’re seeing is a reflection of you, your own archetype of the Lover and the Adversary. This affects your relationship not just with people, but with Spirits, with nations and religions, and with ideas and beliefs and philosophies.

Our life becomes an archetypal journey, a story narrated by our own Mind, filled with archetypal characters, and this is especially true for a magician, who will attempt to see their life paralleled by legends of great heroes and prophets. A fantastic study of this phenomena was done in the book, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Despite getting flak for being new age, the book is a solid exploration of the magickal initiation, and written by a openly practicing magician.

But the trouble begins where people do not realise this, and think that the archetypes are outside themselves. And then, the power passes from them to external forces.

Pay close attention to how your magick manifests, how the Deities appear, how your spells work, what you see and what symbols you channel, and what experiences you have. This is your own mind being reflected back at you. This is why you should write it down, and contemplate it.

When the contents of the mind become projected and visible, the magician can interact with them. He can interact with these archetypes, now manifest in the realm of the Unknown into which they have stepped. The magician learns about them, knows them, faces them and embodies them. And then, they recede back into his mind, now integrated into the Ego, which transforms into the Self.

Written here, is the whole secret of the magickal art, to those who will read between the lines.

The Projected Cosmos

You have likely come across the idea in many modern works of magick that magick is all psychodrama. In the 20th century, the scientific method was all the rage. Magick, occultism and spirituality were fast fading into obscurity as weird delusions and primitive superstitions.

Then came along Carl Jung with his revolutionary research on archetypes. Despite being accepted by mainstream science, very few textbooks on psychology will ever give you a full picture of Jung’s work. Jung was openly mystical, and a self proclaimed alchemist. He made absolutely no attempts to hide the full contents of his belief and work. Once, asked if he believed in God, he simply smiled and said “I don’t need to believe. I know”.

But much of it is not promoted. If you look into mainstream psychology today, you’ll see that his dry, scientific analysis is all they look at. Most are too scared to talk about or even admit to the existence of his other works like Aion, to say nothing of The Red Book. The content of these works is too much to be attributed to such a major scientific figure. Then again, no one talks about the major spiritual experiences of Newton, Descartes or many other scientists either.

Magicians too, seem all too happy to say that it is all psychodrama. Scientific materialism is all the rage among many magi these days, who are maybe too keen to be part of the status quo, or simply unwilling to challenge it. But the Gods are real. Let me explain.

Let us revisit archetypes. Consider your ‘Mother’

She is a real person, yes? And onto her, from the moment of your birth, you have projected the archetype of ‘Mother’. To you, she represents Motherhood. Keep in mind that even if it isn’t your biological Mother, you likely have a Mother figure if your life.

But, while this individual is a Mother figure to you, that’s not all she is. She is a lot more than that. An individual in her own right. A complete manifestation of the Universe, with her own Will and Destiny. And yet, within your psyche, and your perception of reality, this individual is a ‘Mother’.

Similarly, you are her Son or Daughter. But to a friend of yours, you might fill a different role, and yet to an enemy, you are the ‘adversary’. To different people, you wear a different mask/persona. In fact, in traditional theater, this is literally what actors do. While the individuals are ever changing, evolving and growing, they exist within your mind as a fixed archetype. The Mother shall always be the Mother, even though she will change a lot in one’s life.

Are the Gods real? They are. They manifest to you within the framework of your spiritual tradition, complete with a name, appearance and traits we have ascribed to them. Sometimes these are symbolic of their own Nature. But beyond that, they have an independent existence, just as you and I. Everything in Nature is alive, evolving and independent, regardless of which mask it wears at which time.

Ares is not just the God of War. This being, or phenomena of Nature, merely filled the role of War god to the ancient Greeks, who dressed him in their cultural symbolism, and gave it a Greek name. And today, we may dress him in our own symbolism. The true nature of this Being shall never be known to us, since we cannot experience the world from it’s perspective, only our own. This same being may have filled different roles/ work different masks at different times for different cultures.

If you want a quick run down on Jung, watch this video. I highly recommend it, and it will help cut down this post by 1000 words.

There are said to be three major components to magick: astrology, alchemy and theurgy. In the first post, we already discussed how the ancient Alchemists projected their minds onto the alchemical processes. These projections are really just archeytpes, and these archetypal stories and characters are encoded into alchemical mythology.

This is even more evident in astrology. Ancient humans projected their archetypes onto the celestial bodies. The constellations formed the 12 core archetypes. The planets came to represent parts of the human psyche, with the Sun being the Ego (the conscious awareness, or Ruach). You may now understand the point of astrology. As the Ego (Sun) goes around the Zodiac, it expresses itself as different archetypes. The ancient people then turned the Cosmos into a map of their own psyche. So when the Ego (sun) is in Virgo, it was understood that the energies of the Virgin archetypes would be more prevalent in people’s conscious awareness. When the sexual drive (Mars) was in Scorpio, it was understood that people would be more driven to explore hidden or taboo sexuality, as Scorpio is the archetype of the Concealer, or Antihero.

The astrological chart is really a map of one’s own consciousness. The constellations are archetypes, the planets are parts of the psyche. This is why tropical astrology works better than sidereal astrology. This is why there’s no ‘correct’ version of astrology. It all depends on which magickal tradition you use. You tap into that current, and us its symbols.

Because yes, archetypes must be understood as symbols. The last aspect of magick, theurgy, is also about projecting archetypes. Theurgy refers to invocations and evocations of various spiritual beings.

You may have heard that a ‘true’ system of magick is one which provides the student with a ‘complete’ set of symbols. This is what that means. A real, effective system of magick takes into account all the parts of the psyche, and the archetypes which they can express. For example, take the system from the O.T.A, who combine the Keys of Solomon with astrology. It gives you 72 angels and 72 demons, each divided under the Zodiac, and by planetary rank, which are under 4 Kings and Watchers. In a sense, you have every archetype you could imagine represented here, and many sub archetypes. This is a COMPLETE system. If you use this system, you do not need to include Pagan or Egyptian gods, or Rosicrucian mysteries.

The same would be said for various schools of Witchcraft, or the Golden Dawn, or Thelema, or Tantric Yoga. However, you have probably come across certain new age schools which basically throw together a hodge podge of random symbols, often deities who are all roughly the same. This is an incomplete system of magick. There is no complete set of archetypes, nor a complete cosmology given. It is based on limited logic and lack of experience, and the previous post should have made it clear why logic and commonsense can only take the magician so far.

The Symbolic Universe

While our axiomatic Values are learned, and therefore unique to each individual, these archetypes are inherited. All of humanity has the same archetypes. This is why they are said to belong to the ‘collective’ unconscious.

This idea is often misunderstood. People think of it as some sort of Hive mind, or some energetic field ‘separate’ from us. But what this really means is that there are certain traits common to all of humanity, and inherited from previous generations. This is the collective unconscious. Archetypes are universal, and passed on from generation to generation. The collective unconscious refers to those parts of the human psyche which we all share.

For millions of years, humanity lived as nomadic hunter gatherers. Our modern agricultural societies, which are only about 12,000 years old, are relatively young by comparison. Therefore, the archetypes we project are reflective of our older, nomadic past.

For example, why do many cultures depict ‘demons’ with reptilian skin, glowing eyes, sharp teeth and claws? Simple, reptiles and carnivorous animals were the biggest threat to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Even if you’ve never seen a snake, you’ve got a fear of snakes and lions hardwired into your DNA. If you ever see glowing eyes in the dark, your first and most natural reaction would be to run, because your primal consciousness knows it means ‘predator’.

Similarly, many of our Gods of prosperity and fertility are depicted with radiant halos, golden or white clothing and vibrant faces. Because to daytime mammals like us, the Sun represents safety, security, life and warmth. The darkness represents fear, danger and death. Hence our Gods of death often appear dressed in black robes. If we were a nocturnal species, perhaps this symbolism would be inverted.

Let us assume you invoke the God Ares. He is the God of War, and there almost a grantee that he will appear to you as a well built, perhaps bearded, male. This the archetype of the Warrior. For millions of years, women gathered food and men hunted. Our brains are hardwired to recognise the ‘warrior’ as being a physically strong man, perhaps armed with a spear. Interesting how so many war Gods appear with spears, because we have used those for far longer than we have used swords, and perhaps have a natural recognition of it. The God of Wilderness, Pan, on the other hand, shall likely have horns, body hair and hoofs. The God Osiris may appear glowing, wearing white clothing, and a crown, archetypal symbols of purity, power and royalty. Kali may appear with black skin, covered in blood, with fangs and glowing eyes, archetypal symbols representing predators, danger, fear and the nighttime.

Different cultures, in different time periods, projected their archetypes onto the world. This resulted in the birth of various Pantheons. It’s the same Gods you see, and the same fundamental archetypes from the Dawn of time, and perhaps the same beings who embody them, but different manifestations.

In his book Aion, Jung described how when these symbols first appear, they grip the imagination of a culture. But then over prolonged periods of time, they turn stale and boring. Everything that can be gleamed from them has been learned, and they begin to feel empty and hollow. This is quite literally a cultural Ragnarok, or what Nietzsche called the “Twilight of the Idols”.

These symbols, or ‘idols’, die. And then a new set of symbols emerges, more relevant, more meaningful, more powerful. Sometimes, the new symbols may just be a reiteration of older symbols. (Such is the case, for example, with Paganism, Christianity, and neo-Paganism)

Interestingly, I think this is what the mystics of various religions meant when they asked their followers to give up “idolatory”. In a sense, they thought that they could get most people to give up the worship of symbols and work with the forces behind them.

And yet, it seems all such efforts are in vain. Idols do not refer to physical statues, they refer to symbols. But it seems that symbols do not go so easily. Only the most advanced Adept who has gone through all the trials of initiation can successfully give up the symbols and recognize the nameless, formless archetypes that dwell behind them.

Different orientations of these symbols produces different spiritual traditions and religions. This is what is really meant by the phrase “all religions teach the same truth”. It doesn’t mean all religions have the same moral and philosophies, because of course they don’t. But they are all paths to the same primordial, archetypal forces, and teach the same archetypal myths. Although they may be represented by various different symbols, and recognised in various external forces and phenomena, they are inner forces, found within the heart, mind and soul of every human being.

Religion involves the worship of these symbols, to imbibe and commune with the energies behind them, and spirituality involves learning to study and understand them, to increase one’s knowledge. Magick is the work beyond that, to actively call upon them, to embody them and recognize them within one’s own Being.

Nature, The Divine Mother

A lot of people these days are believers of social constructivism: the idea that pretty much all human behavior, beliefs and values are the result of social conditioning.

You know, the idea that human beings are a blank slate at birth and entirely the product of their environment.

The truth is that we are affected by Nature more than we realise. She is our Divine Mother and Her influence remains hidden in the unconscious. So much of what we do and who we are is the result of our genetic predisposition. Recent studies show that even your political leaning is genetic. This is why it’s pointless to debate people over politics, since people do not vote based on facts or beliefs, but rather based on their temperament, which is biological.

The archetypes, whatever they really are, are understood in magick as cosmic concepts. But this isn’t just a concept dreamed up by magicians in the 20th century.

Many mystics throughout the ages have also realised that archetypes are universal. For example, there were many different local religious traditions in ancient India. The ancient priests noticed recurring themes, deities and practices in these traditions, and concluded that many of these deities must be ‘avatars’ of the same larger deities.

And so they made extensive study of these and categorized them. They imagined that there was one single Divine being, and it expressed itself as a few larger Deities. All the deities that were worshipped in the world (as they knew it) were simply avatars of these deities, and then those deities were further avatars of even bigger dieties.

Pretty much the exact same process occurred in other polytheistic cultures like Egypt and Rome, where all the various Gods and myths and cults were identified as different aspects and manifestations of a core pantheon of a dozen or so deities, which in turn were identified with about 3-5 major deities. And when foreign deities were encountered, they were identified with one of the existing deities. This was an early recognition of the concept of universal archetypes, and is called syncretism.

The ancient Hebrews took this a step further, and actually recognised the conceptual nature of archetypes. For example, there were many ancient Semitic deities. Many of them were called as Ba’al (lord) or YHVH (god). You see, YHVH is not the name of a specific deity. The word is a title for a ‘male God’. Their female consorts were called ‘ASRA’, which roughly translates as ‘Wife/consort’.

The Hebrews concluded that all these deities were simply different aspects of the same God/s, and they referred to this simply as ‘Yah’ or Yehovah, meaning Father or God. And so they decided that instead of worshipping many separate deities, they would categorise them and worship the category (archetype) itself. Instead of separately worshipping many Sky fathers or War gods, there would be one primordial ‘Sky Father’ (YHVH) or ‘War God’ (ELHIM GBOR) deity. Since they were concepts, not deities, they were left without name and appearance. Eventually, all 10-12 concepts became identified with a single Divine force.

Now they did end up demonising all the other Gods in the process, but they did have the right idea. It’s just that they thought this made their religion ‘better’ and that the other tribes were worshipping false Gods, which over time became perceived as demonic.

Hopefully you see now that archetypes are not a modern concept. Even before Jung, it was noticed that spirituality and religion were universal expressions. Cultures separated by hundreds of miles would have common spiritual expressions, since these are born from the psyche itself.

This psyche is the child of Nature. It is most of who and what we are.

The Masks of the Cosmos

When magicians encounter the Cosmos, we project our psyche onto it.

The psyche is a perfect Microcosm. It is a reflection of the complete Cosmos, and the Cosmos a reflection of it.

When you cast the circle, you are establishing a symbolic Order. It is ruled by the Sun, the bringer of Light and the Heroic Ideal. The circle itself is ruled by Saturn, the Lord who binds the Universe, and rules boundaries and separations. Beyond the magick circle is the symbolic darkness, is the Chaos, the Mother, the Unknown, and she is the Moon, who reflects the light of the Sun, but also at times becomes entirely dark.

She is the Cosmos in all it’s splendor. And when you invoke the Gods beyond the circle, they are in reality masks worn by the Mother of the Cosmos, just as you yourself are a mask worn by the Father.

But what is the Unknown, exactly? It is wildness, it is animalism. Religion can shun and be afraid of it, but the Horned wild ones are always there, always lurking, waiting for us to take the first step.

One comes into this world surrounded by symbols. We are kept safe within our culture, content to believe in the world as we know it. Even in a chaotic and uncertain time, people will often fall back on something they can rely on, even if it’s a fallible ideology. The forces of Light protect us, discipline us, and prepare us for the world. They are like a bulwark against fear and death.

But the Nightside beckons always, and always it is feared by the many. The magician is the one who looks to it, and at first it glistens with brilliance. Think of how Nature is portrayed in media, as peaceful, gentle and exotic. And it is this shining call to adventure that first draws the magician out of his shell, into the Unknown. He takes on the mask of Horus and follows his Mother Isis to reclaim his birthright.

But then, as he begins to take the Light into the darkness, leaving everything behind in a youthful impulse, suddenly the Mother disappears, and the magician realises with horror what awaits him. For he sees that the Cosmos is cold, harsh and that her laws are absolute. Isis is lost, and Horus is alone faced with Set, the fury and power of the Cosmos itself, which brings it’s entire arsenal against the young God. And here Horus is blinded, because the malice he faces is too great, too powerful and beyond his imagining. And thus he is banished into the desert, where he must wander alone and lament.

But there, Horus finds Hathor, his love, and must make himself worthy of her. Now there is no Isis to protect him, and Set comes ever closer to destroy him. And so here he must delve into the Underworld, which is yet another part of the Unknown. And then the magician sees that the Cosmos he perceived before was just a surface level illusion, and that Her true secrets lie in the darkness, in the crypts and caverns hidden from view, down in the Infernal Empire where there is only confusion.

But Horus must descend. He must pass through the Temples of Darkness unscathed, and he must resist their temptations. He must master their forces. And there, at the lowest point, lies the Sarcophagus of Osiris, his slain father. And now the Cosmos reveals her final mask, as Horus makes the ultimate sacrifice of love to revive his dead father, who returns and the whole of the Underworld is filled with Light, and it becomes a gateway to world beyond. And here the Cosmos shows herself as Osiris reborn!

And only then can Horus truly call himself a Warrior, now worthy of facing Set one final time, and this time he shall succeed, having the whole of the Cosmos assist him in his efforts. He shall succeed and be crowned King! And in this way the Mother reveals her triple aspect. In Pagan witchcraft, this is the Goddess Hecate as Virgin, Crone and Bride. In Tantra, this is the Goddess Shakti as Parvati, Kali and Durga. This is why Tiamat, and Ishtar were represented being half dragon.

The Cosmic mother is the sparkling lady of stars, and yet she is also a serpentine dragon who turns one to stone with a single gaze of her glowing eyes. But if one should stand firm under Her gaze and kneel before her power, she is the radiant and mighty Queen of the Heavens.

It represents the nature of reality at the most fundamental level. It shall be understood that just as here the analogy of the Mother, of Cosmos, and Nature refers quite well to the Human psyche. The Underworld is the Subconscious.

All symbols which surround us as masks worn by the Mother. And the Individual is the Mask of the Father, which shifts and varies also. Magick is the dance of these forces in passionate romance. The magick circle is a symbolic whirling of Light and Shadow, of Fire and Water, which merge and mingle together. And where they meat, the whole of Reality manifests in the conscious perception, which is Airy. The Line which separates the Inner and Outer reality is ruled by Saturn for a reason, since Saturn is ‘The Lord God’, the highest Ideal, the Law, the Reason and the Judge, which is created by the union of the Father and Mother (Order and Chaos/ Culture and nature), which are the also the Son and the Daughter (Sun and Moon).

The impulse to drive the circle outward into Chaos, to expand the Order is ruled by Mars, while the driving forth is towards Venus, his lover who dwells beyond the circle. And Jupiter rules the balance of these forces, while Mercury causes the cosmic dance to go faster and faster, dissolving the boundaries until there shall be only Unity. Sammadhi. Apokalypsis. Gnosis.

The Sacred Feminine

It is often common for magicians, especially ceremonial magicians, to focus too much on the Sacred Masculine. That is to say, to get lost in one’s abstractions and theories. In a hastiness to describe and understand and categorise all the spiritual phenomena, the magician can fail to experience the Unknown even as he walks in its midst. This is the problem with those who ‘have an answer for everything’.

Having absolute surety in everything is masuline, yes, but it is not Sacred. The impulse to expand Order is masculine, but unless it is complemented by the feminine, it is simply a mental tyranny. It is nothing more than ineffectual theories and worldviews which often do not have any basis in reality.

Similarly, some do focus too much on the feminine, but this is rare. This is for those who jump straight into the Chaos and completely disregard all culture, all tradition and indeed, civilisation itself. Here there is only insanity, and many magicians do suffer this fate as well. This insanity is feminine, but it is not sacred. Without the masculine, without a symbolic structure, it is simply a endless void which will consume one’s soul.

The Sacred feminine, then, is Nature. Our true Nature. We, often living inside our own heads, neglect our nature too often, as we do our impulses, our bodies and our emotions. We like to act that we are entirely a product of our own Will and choosing. We like to behave like we can think our way in and out of everything, and think our way to truth and happiness, and explain everything away with thought.

As if millions of years of evolution has no effect on us. As if we can somehow ‘think’ away or ‘will’ away ancient impulses, behaviors and emotions. Our animal instincts towards sex, hunger, and aggression. The traits of our ancestors, their diets, lifestyles and instincts. The way our body works, the way it is meant to move.

And then we wonder, why we are all always so tired and depressed. The Sacred Feminine is not an idea or thought. It is awareness.

Notice your body right now. Is it not aware? Is there not a feeling and awareness from head to toe? And yet, it is not thought. Your hand is aware, but it does not think. Your heart is pumping blood, but it does not require your will.

Are you not aware of the world around you too? How often does one notice the world, and really engage with it. How often is one not thinking about what one has to do, dwelling on pointless and chattering thoughts?

To do true magick, we develop not just a strong Will and Moral compass, but also an Awareness. We also have to tap into our drives and instincts, to become one with the body. We also have to learn to feel our emotions and sensations fully and freely.

To those of you who ask how to learn to feel and sense energy, and perceive spiritual phenomena, this is the answer. Only when we learn to flow with energy, to flow with the world, does the Mother reveal her secrets. For this we do meditation, where we learn to maintain awareness and breathe deeply. We practice mindfulness, and Qigong/ Yoga, so and we become in tune with our bodies and surroundings.

This is the secret also, behind many of the gestures and motions found in magick ritual. They are not mere gestures and salutations that one must memorise and perform, but ways to draw on and direct energies.

And these powers are also developed through suffering. As we discussed before, Nature seems inviting at first. But the moment we leave our mental abstractions and fantasies and engage with Her in reality, we will suddenly be faced with the absolute and inescapable fact that life is suffering. Living in the mind is simply a coping mechanism to numb and relieve this pain.

But if we engage this pain fully, push through it, and learn to endure it, then one’s own spiritual powers shall be developed. A warrior cannot train in his garden forever. Eventually they must face real battle, which will be very different, and only many battles can make a true warrior.

Archetypes are not thoughts or concepts, but the Fundamental principles which govern the Universe, the highest Meta-Gods. To stop living in one’s head will also involve slowly learning to not rely on one’s symbols, and by extension the Gods. Because the Gods certainly are here to help us, but you shall have understood by now that we rarely engage with the Gods directly. Instead, we engage with an ‘image’ of them, created within culture and passed on to us through religion. Too often, magicians are unwilling to alter or expand their various traditions and schools of magick. But then you should have stayed nice and safe within mainstream religion. If you’re going to make the effort to come this far, you may as well take the courage and open up that shell.

Stop being so quick to judge other magicians, to categorise their and your own expereinces, to decide what you agree or disagree with. Stop being to quick to make up your mind or project yourself onto others. This closes the aura to the actual world outside, to reality and to the outer Gods.

And when you invoke the Gods with an open mind, you will begin to see them outside the frameworks you are stuck in, and they will come as they really are. And when one has the recognition that the Cosmos within is mirrored in the Cosmos outside, there will be no fear and uncertainty.

One who understands that by controlling the mind, one can control one’s entire reality, and that everything in one’s life is the result of their own Mind, shall never lose their way or get lost. And if this isn’t obvious, and if you still look for the source of your problems in the world outside, and cannot understand why the World is unfair and cruel: seek the Underworld. There, in the subconscious, are all the problems you cannot seek. Set them right, and the world shall follow suit. Awaken the Father who was slain, and the Mother shall reveal herself in new glory. And this requires sacrifice. Let the first be to embrace the pain, and face the world and life head on.

And although in the last post I told people not to wait for Utopia, that does not mean give up hope. Change is coming, and change HAS come. Look around you, and you will see the world is rapidly changing. So have hope, the world will get better as a new age dawns. But remember that even in the new age, you’re the magician. You’re the one who directs the forces of your life.

That shall be all for this time. I hope you found it helpful and gained some insight. Remember, you do not have to agree or disagree. Just take it as it comes. We all do 🙂

Until Next Time
~White Raven

The Piscean Magi Lied

April 20, 2021Tagged age of aquarius, alchemy, astrology, between the pillars, ceremonial magick, complicated, golden dawn, grimoires, hermeticism, hidden, high magick, kabbalah, magi, magick, magus, new age, Occult, real, religion, revealed, secret, sorcery, spirituality, symbolism, theurgy, truth, white raven, witchcraftLeave a comment

Yes really.

Don’t believe me. Fine, let me say the same sentence to you using many more words.

What was the Age of Pisces? It was the Astrological Age which began somewhere around 100 BCE and 100 CE. An astrological age lasts around 2100 years, meaning we are currently close, or have pretty much already entered into, the Age of Aquarius.

Lots of people talk about the Age of Aquarius, and how it will be a meritocratic, technological age. An age of free knowledge, open practice of magick, decentralization, sexual fluidity, and indeed the break down of many fixed, dual structures. But I want to talk a bit about the Age of Pisces before we say goodbye to it for good.

Oh, and before we begin, an update regarding the book: The Tree of Life: A Beginner’s Guide has been updated. A full email announcement regarding the changes has already been sent a while back to those who purchased it. Obviously, this doesn’t impact those who will buy it in future. But just in case you did buy it, but missed the email, here’s a reminder to go download it again.

A Very Brief Introduction

Pisces was the last zodiac sign. Over the course of 26,000 years, the belt of the Zodiac moves slowly, counter clockwise. This is the result of the Earth’s axial tilt. Basically, the Earth ‘wobbles’, and the axis is not actually fixed on the star we call Polaris. As this wobble happens, the Earth’s axis traces a slow circle around the constellation of Draco, the Dragon. This means the ‘Pole Star’ shifts too, based on where the Earth’s north pole is pointing. It is currently Polaris, but one day it will be something else, and back in ancient times it was something else too.

The other effect this has, is that the belt of the Zodiac appears to slowly move around the Earth. We determine the current astrological age by seeing which sign the Sun rises in, during the Summer Solistice. So the Age of Aquarius is when the Sun is rising in the sign of Aquarius (which is pretty much happening now by the way. I checked last year). This process is called Axial Precession, or Precession of the Equinox.

Many astrologers and even magicians make the error of thinking that the made up constellations themselves affect us, which isn’t quite right. I mean, for one, different cultures have different constellations, and the ones we use commonly nowadays really are just arbitrary patterns thought up by ancient Greeks, based on an older Egyptian model. Yes, the Stars do have magickal affects on Earth, just like everything else in the Universe, but they are far away and this affect is minimal. Our lives are affected much more strongly by the elemental forces on Earth, and by the energies of the planets in the Solar System.

The constellations should not be thought of as the cause of astrological phenomena, but rather a convenient ‘clock’. They simply represent the shift in elemental forces cause by the rotation and revolution of the Earth, and the planets. Similarly, the Axial Precession represents the completion of various cycles in the evolution of the Earth. Every astrological age is influenced by the archetypal energies ascribed to the current astrological sign, and the planet which is assigned rulership over it. But when did this cycle begin?

Presumably, the Earth has been wobbling and going through this cycle for hundreds of millions of years, over and over. But when talking specifically about the current cycle, we of the Hermetic tradition take Leo, the sign ruled by the Sun, to be the first. Not Aries (which is the first sign of the year, since it brings spring, but not the first sign of the Axial Precession).

The reasons for this are simple, because human ‘civilisation’ as we currently understand it, began around 12,000 BCE. This was the time when the Holoscene epoch began. It is also around this time that the first Agricultural Revolution began, and historians usually consider the invention of agriculture as the first step of ‘civilisation’.

Also, in the Hermetic tradition it is believed that beginnings of high magick date back to this time period. Calculating from there, we get the current time period, and the Age of Aquarius.

What was the Age of Pisces

Pisces is the astrological sign ruled by Jupiter.

What does Pisces represent? Any basic book on astrology will tell you: dreams, visions, fantasies and spirituality. It is mutable Water, meaning it is very passive, and has to do with emotions, feelings and subconscious impressions.

And how were all the great Piscean religions started?

Through the dreams, visions and prophecies of great Seers, Prophets, and Mystics. It spread through rumours, through wandering sages, through stories. The rumour of some great magician who challenged the authority of the Emperor and was crucified in a far away land was enough to turn the ENTIRE Roman empire Christian. The idea and stories of the Buddha wandering from place to place and sharing his wisdom, which was further shared by others, was the basis of spreading Buddhism across half a continent. And those religions which did not start in this time, adopted a Piscean character. Hinduism became devotional, Judaism became mystical. Islam is entirely emotional and based on feeling and trance. Even the Pagan religions which persisted in this time became highly reliant on divinations and utterances of shamans.

The Piscean cultures and civilisations of the last 2000 years have been sensual, placing a great amount of importance on emotional impact of symbols. Things were true if enough people felt they were true, and most rulers maintained power through shows and displays of their authority, like wearing impressive clothes and using symbols and banners and words which left an impression. Subconscious impressions. It is also no wonder that humanity became a highly seafaring race, and the great Empires towards the end of the Age of Pisces all held great control over the seas (Maybe in the Age of Aquarius we will perfect air/ space transport, although I do not foresee space Empires just yet).

Pisces is ruled by Jupiter, and Jupiter is the planet of benevolence, wealth, kindness, opulence, luxury, majesty and royalty. What was the dominant form of government in these last 2000 years? No, not monarchy. Feudalism. Feudalism, where power was maintained by the concept of “royal” and “noble” blood, and the hierarchy was dictated by Jupiterian concepts like wealth, valour, honour, dignity etc.

It was not military might, since that sort of power structure belongs to the Age of Aries. Yes, military played a role, as it always will, but it is generally known that the greatest warrior was not automatically made King. A royal claim by an heir with noble blood, superseded any military strength. Obviously, institutional religions played a big role. Consider the Catholic Church, and how strong they were. It is literally a full on Piscean institution. In fact, did you know that the funny hat the Pope wears is literally a fish. It comes from the Ancient Sumerian sea god Dagon, who had a fish on his head. Over centuries, it has ended up on the Pope’s head. Pisces is also the sign of the Fish.

By the way, this isn’t some conspiracy theory, but just a normal case of syncretism.

Jupiter rules benevolence and kindness. In this past Age, benevolence and kindness were considered the greatest virtues, and all who had power and status were expected to be well mannered, kind and generous with their wealth.

Every astrological Age decays over time though. The Age of Aries ended when people had become too violent, and when the abuse of power was common and military strength was a tool of oppression, and used as justification to rule. This is why Piscean religions like Christianity and Buddhism, which preached mercy and tolerance, so quickly replaced the martial cults and creeds of the past, and left a permanent impact on all the world. But in the last century, we watched the Age of Pisces reach it’s end, as man became obsessed with wealth and material pleasure, and with a near fanatical obsession to satiate emotional needs and wants. Money became the sole object of worship and desire, both the means and the end to all endeavor. Wars were fought for money and material resources, and people’s opinions, beliefs and values all became heavily reliant on emotions, and everyone who wanted power had to make appeals to emotion, and those in power made great shows of false kindness and opulence.

Celebrity worship is perhaps the most overt symbol of a Piscean excess. The worship of people surrounded by Jupiterian symbols, and their followers who feel emotionally connected, and even reliant upon, them.

Pisces is also ruled by Neptune. Neptune is a planet whose influence was not strongly felt until the last century or so, when it revealed itself. Neptune rules psychology, psychosis, psychadelics. Now, this post is not about the end of Pisces and the birth of Aquarius. I am simply giving an idea of what the Age of Pisces was, and how to think about it.

Some of you may say I am interpreting history through a very specific lens. But that is precisely what history is. All ‘history’ is a narrative, an interpretation through a certain lens. If we simply take the facts and a sequence of events as they happened, without any interpretation, then that is not history, that is a chronicle.

To divide history into astrological ages like this is no more or less ‘scientific’ or ‘academic’ than, say, dividing it up into things like the classical and medieval eras. Those are also just interpretations and narratives.

But what was the Piscean lie?

Look at the signs of Pisces and Aquarius. Both represent duality. But they both show it in a slightly different way. Aquarius shows duality as fluid, as two different strands which weave and mingle together, and then separate. Like a double helix formed from energy. But Pisces shows duality as being fixed and held in place, and even opposing.

By the way, anyone who ever wondered why Piscean religions were so obsessed with categorizing and defining ‘good’ and ‘bad’, will now see why. It isn’t just morality they separated, but gender too. Everything became one way or another, yin and yang, with little room for doubt. You either were a peasant, or a noble, and unlike modern times these categories did not shift so easily. It was exceedingly rare for, say, a peasant to become a noble, and even a nobleman who had lost all his wealth and land and castles, was STILL a noble and had to be treated as such. So, Piscean culture was highly dual and rigid. And it was a very emotional culture, so rational arguments against this would hold little weight.

Many grimoires of magick from the Middle Ages, to a modern magician, may seem….outdated, and dogmatic.

Let’s take some popular ones. The Book of the Sacred Magic of Arbamelin. This is a popular one from the 14th century, and is most likely the basis of many later grimoires like the Ars Goetia. The first sections of this book document the journeys of a figure called Abraham the Jew. He travels across Europe, Arabia, Egypt and other regions. He meets Kabbalists, Christian mystics, Egyptian and Islamic magi, Pagans, Black Magicians, and each of them teaches him some small part of magick and wisdom. In the end, Abraham concludes that the best and truest magick he learned was from the only High Adept he met, which is an Egyptian mage named Abramelin.

In the second and third sections, he explains the basics of an elaborate working called the Abramelin ritual. However, as he explains what magick is, he immediately starts off by criticising and decrying paganism, polytheism and idolatory. He criticizes elemental magick, astrology, alchemy, and every other craft besides Kabbalah and Christian mysticism. Although he has so far defined them really well, he now repeatedly emphases Abrahamic values and the importance of prayer, and warns people against anything besides that, and also how everything they do must also be for the betterment of ‘their neighbours’. This sentiment is then echoed in later grimories like the Ars Goetia, which also seem to be emphasizing religious worship. It’s almost like they’re compensating for something.

Let’s take the Bhagawat Gita. It is not a religious scripture…not really anyway. It was almost certainly written by mystics. It is a very funny little book, because it seems to contradict itself so often. It begins by declaring that all systems of class, gender and caste are arbitrary in spirituality, and no individual is held back from spiritual awakening because of their birth. It also declares that traditional religion and priesthood have become erroneous, and that the study of scriptures can be a distraction. But then, towards the end it seemingly retraces its steps, reiterating feudalism, casteism, the importance of following religious norms and emphasizes divisions between people.

What of Dr. John Dee? His diaries on Enochain magick are full of seeming dead ends, incomplete systems, seemingly random and arbitrary materials, and a repeated attempt to interpret everything within the Christian framework. I mean, that’s why it’s called ‘Enochain’ magick, even though the ‘enochian’ Angels never called themselves that, nor indicated that they had anything to do with Enoch. At one point in his dialogue with the Angels, they straight up tell him not to bother with worship and religious observances, and also that Jesus was a mystic, not the literal son of god, and need not be worshipped. Yet, he continues his Christian theological interpretations, seemingly.

Why did the Sufi mystics, even though they clearly did not believe in Islamic dogma, pretend to follow and accept Sharia law? I mean, half of them didn’t, and these were chased out of Arabia, but the other half did. Even after their beliefs and contemplations became significantly different from Islamic theology, they continued to attempt to fit it in with what the clerics said.

Or what of the Hindu prophetic figure and theologian, Adi Shankaracharya?

Towards the end of his life, he went off to live alone on the top of a mountain. Here, he had a bunch of spiritual visions and experiences with the Goddess Shakti, and composed what is essentially a magickal grimoire called the Saundarya Lahiri. This is very similar in style to European grimoires, and contains hyms, spells, pentacles and sigils, along with detailed descriptions of invocation and the Maha Yantra.

However, this book has many strange instructions. For example, some hyms are required to be chanted, say, forty thousand times, and under very specific conditions, to be effective. This sort of thinking has persisted in Hindu magick, where exceedingly long and elaborate instructions are given for basic magickal workings. So elaborate, that no one in his right mind would even consider attempting them, unless you want to be in the wilderness on the midnight of the Spring Equinox standing before a roaring fire and repeating a mantra eighty thousand times, after having fasted and abstained from speech and sex for several weeks.

Or let’s take the Ars Goetia? Are you really going to wear a lion skin belt, pray to Jesus, then invoke demons from the Bible who shall appear breathing sulfur?

What about the Grand Grimoire. Half the recipes in that book will either poison you or kill you, and I genuinely cannot imagine that anyone in history has tried some of the ones which involve ingesting toxic metals, or growing a bean plant inside a decapitated human head for attaining wealth.

Hey, and how about my very own Golden Dawn tradition? Anyone who’s read the Golden Dawn books might find that there’s plenty of information that’s contradictory, seemingly incomplete, distorted, and just outright WRONG.

You get the point. I mean, if you can call upon a Spirit by merely chanting it’s name and visualizing, why do some books have you sacrifice rare, exotic virgin animals at a very specific hours of the night using a dagger made from a very specific type of wood from a very specific tree which is found in only very specific places, collected at a specific time, and in a specific way? How can an art, as sacred and universal as Magick, be so goddamn complicated, inaccessible and bizzare?

The short answer is: it isn’t. It’s lies.

Yes, really.

I would say about 90% of the instructions and methodology from both grimoires and religious scripture can be safely and easily left out in actual ritual performance. They serve no greater purpose, nor is there any greater or special significance to them. Yes, they are often symbolic, and studying them can help one understand the specific symbolism of that particular occult tradition, but more often than not it only gives you a glimpse into the psyche of the specific magus or mystic who wrote these things, and may not apply to others even from the same tradition.

The Long Answer

The Age of Pisces was a time of duality. It was a time of Good and Evil. These were fixed categories, and the important thing was to align with the Good and reject the Evil.

Many magi of this period, and even ages before, were terrified of one thing: magickal knowledge falling into the wrong hands, and being misused for the purposes of what they would have called ‘evil’. Another danger when simply writing down knowledge that was once well protected and only passed personally from Master to Student, was about how to make sure that only ‘worthy’ students received this knowledge.

The first instance of magickal knowledge being fully committed to writing, in it’s entirety, comes to us from religious scriptures of religions like Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. Still not meant for the public, these books are essentially encoded. They use symbols and archetypal stories to get important spiritual ideas and concepts across, and over time these stories and symbols have become more refined. As reading and writing became more widespread, books of magick also began to contain intentional lies and manipulations. Often, it was something as simple as little omissions here and there, or subtle distortions to important symbols, or extra steps to rituals. For example, your average book on alchemy goes from being a set of instructions on metallurgic refining, to being an allegorical, symbolic legend, filled with wild goose chases, and the work appears so complex and troublesome that any ordinary person would simply toss away the book in annoyance, except someone who has already received alchemical instructions or performed basic experiments. A worthy student who can sift through the lies to get at the real matter of the book.

Additionally, bear in mind that the practice of magick leads to a strong, almost radical sense of individualism. But that doesn’t mean people were always free to express this. So, when writing works of magick, they had to be sure to conform to socio-political and cultural norms. For example, even if the writers of the Keys of Solomon were not Christian, they had show that everything they were doing was, in reality, Christian after all, and completely in line with Christian dogma. The author of the Book of Abramelin may have believed that both men and women could do magick, but he still couldn’t say outright that we should reject gender roles, just as the authors of the Bhagawat Gita couldn’t just reject the caste system.

This, by the way, is true even today. I can’t, for example, tell you to reject or even break tyrannical laws in your country, because that would probably get this blog unlisted from search engines and possibly even banned in various countries. So far, I’ve always straddled the edge between what is and isn’t socially, culturally or politically allowed, and will remain that way. Only you can infer my true meaning and beliefs about religion, politics and the modern world in general. I can never state them outright, because I’m not keen to draw undue attention.

To us, living in the Age of Aquarius, “good and evil” seem like superfluous concepts. We live in a time beyond Good and Evil, and understand that they are subjective boundaries and not based upon anything real. Doesn’t matter what your political or ideological leaning is since both, the existentialists like Nietzsche came to the same conclusions as the post modernists like Satre. This is not a rigth wing-left wing thing.
Good and Evil do not exist, and so it makes no sense to try to be a “good” person. But rather, the Aquarian ideal is about truth, honesty and moral integrity.

The Gods don’t want us to be good and reject evil in this Age, but rather be truthful and have integrity, and reject lies and deceit. And so the Aquarian Magi focus on being as open, transparent and as truthful as possible, and do everything they can to cut down lies, propaganda and subversion. It is one of the reasons why, these days, we do not demand that society, governments and religions be ‘good’, so much as we want them to be transparent and honest. Honesty is a virtue, while ‘goodness’ is seen as pretentious. This is also why modern magicians can invoke Spirits who were formerly called as ‘demon’. These ‘demons’ represent things which, to the Piscean cultures, would have been seen as ‘evil’. To us, no such dichotomy exists. All that we ask for and focus on, is clarity and integrity, and the same is expected from us.

But that was not true in the previous age. It may not make sense to us, but to those who lived in the time it seemed perfectly fine to lie, manipulate and distort information in order to serve the ‘greater Good’. After all, what harm was being done, except deny power to those who were evil?

Problem is, there was also a lot of copy-pasting. A lot of books of magick, yoga and spirituality are filled with material that was simply copied from older books by people who neither practiced nor understood the material. A lot of them merely gave their opinions, and the best logical answer they could come up with, to make sense of all this. A vast majority of occult grimoires fall into this category. They’re simply amalgamations of previous works. The Grimoire of Armadel is perhaps the best example of this. Naturally, all the lies and distortions are retained, since the authors simply had a scholastic interest in these books, and did not practice magick themselves. And so, there’s a further distortion.

A lot of things that are written on the topic of high magick and yoga are just completely…..meaningless. They serve no purpose besides a passing scholarly interest, and it is sad to see so many beginners of magick get so worked up over arbitrary categories, needlessly complex rituals, contradictory philosophies, and various theological and moral restrictions. I think a majority of New Age literature is just that, further opinions given on these various distorted works. A distortion of a distortion of a distortion. Wonderful.

I myself was once really worked up over these things. What is a demon, what is an angel, what is a god? What does it mean to be noble, what is the purpose of culture, and how to be a good person? Growing up, I often had a keen interest in doing the “right thing” and frequently remained obedient to rules, procedures and expectations. Now, I can look back and see it was nothing but servility. I was merely going against my own better judgement for people who did not know better. In fact, many people I listened to were just weak and confused, and were trying to pass it on to the next generation. I realised that power is not always earned, and often people who have been granted authority did not earn it, and do not deserve it. Just because someone says, with confidence, that something is right and correct and moral, does NOT make it so.

Redeeming the Truth

So…what is to be done?

There’s no one size fits all solution. It requires personal discretion, and most importantly, experience.

For example, try to understand the essence and purpose of a ritual and cosmology, without following it blindly. What does the lion skin belt of the Ars Goetia represent? The Animal self, and tying it around your waist represents that you have conquered your inner demons.

Remember that most mythology and scripture is symbolic. For example, the ‘end times’ in the Biblical Revelation represents, not the “end of the world”, but rather Apokalypsis, which is a Greek word meaning the attainment of knowledge, or Gnosis. it also shows the passing from the Age of Pisces to that of Aquarius, which has been happening since around 1980.

A lot of things are exaggerated. Many Tantric mantras do not need to be repeated 40,000 times. Just 40 times will suffice, and you can have the intent of putting the power of a thousand recitations into a single one. These recitations are simply to enter a meditative trance, and imprint the instructions into your subconscious. If you can understand the why, then the what is irrelevant.

Remember that everything the alchemists did refers to real chemical phenomena. If you understand chemistry, you shall understand the instructions.

The Enochian tablets are pages of an instruction manual, not an object of worship or altar piece.

The cosmologies of Gods, Angels and Demons always refer to the elements, the planets, the zodiac, or the 9 gates of understanding.

There’s also few tips I can give. Remember, your OWN gnosis and experiences, and your own thoughts and worldview supersede everything.

But what if you’re wrong?

Trust me, better to think for yourself, and be wrong, than not think at all. The risk of being wrong, and having to reevaluate your beliefs is the price for self determination. Personally, I remember when I first started magick so much of it felt wrong, meaningless, obtuse, misleading or just plain ignorant. But I had to convince myself that it was written by masters who knew more, an that every occult author was of the same caliber, and every book contained valuable information. Never occurred to me that many occult authorities could be..well, just some guys who never had any spiritual experiences with dumb opinions, beginners just like me.

Remember, sometimes, if things feel wrong or don’t make sense, that’s because they are wrong. Not everything happens for a reason, not all categories are true. Sometimes, bad ideas are very popular. Sometimes, the thing that everyone believes could be wrong. Just because something is older, doesn’t mean it’s better, and all people, even masters of High Magick, are human and fallible.

This applies not just to magick, but to a lot of things.

And, most importantly, the Piscean Magi lied.

That doesn’t mean they were bad people or had bad intentions. But they lived in a separate paradigm. Maybe the magi from the Age of Capricorn shall look at us the same way, unable to understand our obsession with honesty and integrity. Perhaps in their time, being truthful and honest would be so common place, that they’ll see our obsession with transparency and openness as weird. Or maybe general reality would have become so magickal and fluid, that ‘truth’ will just feel like a childish and infantile concept, because nothing will appear fixed even to ordinary people.

But we can only go with what makes sense to us in our time, and this applies to those who came before us too.

So without judging them too harshly, remember to take everything they wrote with a healthy amount of skepticism. A lot of it is simply a clever little distraction.

Until Next Time
White Raven Invictus

The Great Secret of Magick Part 1: Science, Psudoscience and Occult Science

January 21, 2021Tagged jung, magick, magickal technology, manifestation, materialism, mysticism, Occult, occult science, pseudo-science, psychology, religion, science, secret, spiritual technology, spiritualism, spirituality, white raven2 Comments

Happy new year! I wanted to start 2021 off with a experience from a ritual, as is classic for this blog. Then I thought perhaps there are other, more pressing matters in people’s lives. But now, intuition had guided me to write about something I consider to be of great importance to all magicians in this time. This is going to be either a 3 or 4 part series of articles describing, to the best of my ability, the most important secret of Magick and the Occult. The actual key to manifestation. Before I can get to the matter itself, I shall give about 2-3 posts of background material, of which this is the first.

So, let’s get on with it, shall we? Keep an open mind, and feel free to take your time to understand everything. Remember, the Internet is your friend when it comes to terms and concepts that you aren’t familiar with. I try explain things as completely as possible, but people have different levels of familiarity with various subject matters. Knowledge is power, and the growth of knowledge, is the growth of power.

What Exactly is Science

Some of you might scoff at the title. Allow me to explain.

These days, many New Agers, Neo-Pagans and even full fledged occultists create various theories about spiritual and occult experiences. This is nothing new, since ALL science emerged as the result of people trying to explain the Unknown.

But then, we have materialists, skeptics, and sometimes scientists dismiss many of these explanations as “pseudo-science”, due to lack of peer reviewed evidence and the inability to replicate results. While they may be right, in the end they are simply motivated by their own biases. Then the new agers angrily insist that it is “science” after all, because there is an established cause and effect, as well as physical evidence. They are also largely motivated by their beliefs, and claim this quite proudly, and then the other side insists that all beliefs are nonsense, and they they “believe” in science (an idiotic idea).

Many of you in the West are likely familiar with this, due to the hard line between science and religion in Abrahamic/ Atheistic nations, as well as the deep divides between spiritual, religious and secular ways of thinking.

Secondly, you may have heard about people in ancient, classical and medieval times who came up with some ideas long before modern scientists, such as evolution, atoms, the idea of parallel universes, planets etc
As I’m Indian, you can imagine that I’ve basically heard this argument my whole life, and I’m sure anyone in any non western country that is sufficiently ancient, especially in the Middle East, the Orient and the Mediterranean, has heard it too. For example, “why should we credit Darwin with evolution when the ancient Greeks had a similar concept”, or “why credit Dalton with atomic theory when the ancient Indians had a similar idea”, or even “why credit Einstein with quantum mechanics when the Vedas speak of the various different lokas and the supposed relativity of time?”

This has led me to realise that many, many people don’t actually understand what is meant by “science” and how something becomes a “science” in modern times. This is a problem not just when discussing the occult, but any other field. In fact, these days it seems to be a particularly important issue, where people’s opinions and ideologies are so divided that we cannot even sit down and agree upon a single set of facts, let alone debate their interpretation.

So what is science?

First off, to say that you “believe” in science is a very, very stupid statement that I hear often from atheists. I draw a clear line between “scientists” and “science cheerleaders”. Anytime I hear people angrily defending science, I usually find that they are ‘cheerleaders’, because they often aren’t up to date in their scientific knowledge, and often don’t even understand what science is. To them, “science” is like a religion. Similarly to Christian fundamentalists who think everything can be answered by the Bible, these “cheerleaders” read the basics of Newtonian physics, some biology and maybe chemistry in school, and they’ve turned these into tenets.

Whenever they encounter someone who disagrees with them, they just angrily dismiss their ideas because it contradicts what THEY think are real facts. They often use science as a shield, but usually are not scientists at all, not even having any scientific or academic training. This is the type of person who thinks Carl Jung is too “out there”. As magicians, you will most likely meet such people throughout your life. My general advice is to avoid them and not get into it, since you won’t convince them of anything, anymore than you can convince a religious zealot that the modern English Bible was not literally written by God 6000 years ago.

So, back to the question. What is science? Let’s look at the most crude, basic and easily accessible source for knowledge, Wikipedia.

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
~Some dude who writes for Wikipedia

In other words, a science means the study of things, or the expansion of human knowledge. Any field of study into some specific field is a “science”, and the sum total of this endeavor is scientific knowledge. So yes, you could say that it goes back as far as the birth of human civilisation, and even before. However, when we usually talk about Science, we are often referring to modern science.

We can draw a line between the natural curiosity of early man, the academic endeavors of ancient man, and the research conducted by modern people.

Modern science is conducted via the scientific method. A lack of understanding of what the scientific method means, is at the root of all these debates and misunderstandings by spiritualists, occultists and new agers, as also the general populations.

People often think the scientific method means providing physical evidence. This is why you have new agers insist that something is “scientific” if they have been able to provide material evidence, or at least established cause and effect. For example, claiming that a person can do telepathy because they were able to correctly predict what is present another room.

But this is wrong. There are many scientific theories, especially regarding interstellar objects, for which no physical evidence can be provided, and many areas of science where cause and effect are poorly understood or not at all, such as regarding gravity and dark matter.

Basically, people think that science involves creating a hypothesis, and then trying to prove that it exists.
However, the scientific method is the exact opposite. First, you create a hypothesis. Then, you actively try to disprove it. In other words, you test your hypothesis. If it stands up to all the scrutiny, not just by you but by others, then it becomes a theory (I’m simplifying it a lot here. Remember I’m not a scientist or researcher either, this is just my own understanding of it).
This does not mean that it is now proven. Much more evidence will be needed for that. This is why you often have different theories regarding the same thing within science, which contradict each other.

Do you understand now, why so much “research” conducted by New Agers is dismissed? This is because many New Age and alternative science theories do not follow this method of scrutiny, nor are they peer reviewed. Often, they are entirely based on one person or group trying to prove something they already believe, which in turn is often based on scriptures. This results in conformation bias. And as all of you practicing magick know, when you really want something to happen, your entire perception conspires to make it happen for you. So if you REALLY want to prove something to be true, you’ll probably succeed, at least in convincing yourself, and maybe others too.

And then, whatever the findings are, the new agers try to extrapolate very, very broad conclusions. For example, let’s say you freeze a camera and take a picture with it. This results in the appearance of “bubble” like structures around the pictures of people. New Agers take this as proof of the aura. While I personally believe in the aura, you have to remember that this doesn’t actually “prove” anything. You have proven that frozen cameras take pictures where living things appear to have a bubble around them. That is all, and all the remaining interpretations are based on belief. You cannot jump from there to “the aura is a bio-magnetic energy field generated by the heart of every living thing” so easily.

Like it or hate it, this is how the scientific method works. I’m not saying I fully agree with every aspect, nor that it is suitable to understand all of reality. But hey, it is responsible for many of our modern inventions and discoveries. It made possible things like this blog.

Opinion: In fact, I personally disagree with identifying the aura as “bio-electric” or “bio-magnetic”. Personally, I think the etheric energy which makes up the aura has no electro-magnetic basis. If it did, I should see interference with electrical appliances at the height of a particularly powerful ritual. Now, there are cases of lights going out or appliances going haywire when people do magick. I’ve seen it, others I know have seen it, and even some readers have reported this. But then again, why would it affect the lights of my building, but not my cellphone? Why isn’t it more “localised”. There’s something else going on there, something far greater which we cannot even begin to comprehend.

The Problem With Modern Science

On the other hand, while I trust in science, scientists can lie. Here, I agree with new agers. At the end of the day, scientists and academics are human beings. Like any person, they can be biased, bought over, manipulated or corrupted. You would honestly be surprised how often scientists have been bribed and threatened into suppressing information, or how often they allow their bias to cloud their pursuit of the truth. Did you know professional academics were once bribed and threatened into assuring people that smoking was safe, or that it was okay to use radium in paints, or that petroleum stored in lead barrels was not causing lead poisoning en masse? Keep in mind, how “scientific” knowledge and data were distorted during the Chernobyl incident, or how the world was lead to believe for centuries that our diets should have high carbs and low protein, and that fats and oils were the cause of obesity (when it truth it is sugar). Now Chernobyl is going to be radiated for another 120,000 years, and 40 years of high carb diets laced with artificial sweeteners have left us with soaring levels of obesity and diabetes.

After all, one of their most important goals is to secure funding for their research. In this sense, the modern scientific establishment have become nearly like the medieval Catholic Church. They are the arbiters of truth, and we are entirely beholden to them. We cannot cross check or test any of their claims ourselves, especially now that science has progressed well beyond what a person can do at home. We simply have to take them at their word, and truth that they’re telling the truth about their discoveries. We can only hope that there’s government or corporate sponsored suppression of information.

Well, would you look at THAT! The world is currently in the midst of a global pandemic that got out of control due to suppression of scientific information at an INTERNATIONAL level.

Now yes, the existence of an entire global network of scientists, all competing with one another, ensures that there’s only so far that deception can go. If a certain groups of scientists make a claim, another group from another country may be quick to dispute this. But that is precisely where we are now, and it’s actually a bigger problem. In the 21st century, the scientific landscape is littered with contradictory claims about even the most simplest of things.

I’d once heard it said that “the greatest embarrassment of modern science is that it cannot even give us simple, conclusive information on which diet is best”.

Go ahead, try to find out what is the best type of diet. Keto, carnivorous, high carb, high fat, vegan or something else? You’ll quickly realise that you can find “scientific” claims to support anything and everything you want to believe. Besides truly outlandish claims like the flat earth, you would honestly be surprised at how often we lack concise scientific knowledge on something as simple as diet, lifestyle and disease. Let us say that one scientists claims that he can prove with “evidence” that a high carb, low protein diet is great, and another says that a high protein, low carb one is great, and both claim the other is full of crap. Tell me, is this so different from medieval theologians arguing about witches, werewolves and possessions? At the end of the day, we cannot test the evidence ourselves. We are simply reliant upon the testimony of a person who has been given the authority to decide these things. And who gave them this authority?

An institution? One which seems “credible” to us, much like Catholic Church seemed “credibe” to medieval peasants. After all, the members of the Church were much more educated than the average peasant, and yet they were still routinely wrong, and more often they actively distorted facts.

Perhaps people in the future will laugh at us the way we laugh at the ignorance medieval peasants. Are we any different? Do we have much of a choice? We wonder why people in medieval Europe practiced bloodletting as a cure to illnesses. Did they not realise that it was making matters worse? Well, perhaps in the future they’ll say:

“ha ha ha, you’re telling me those primitve 21st century folk WILLINGLY created environments that made people depressed, wrongly diagnosed depression as a genetic disorder for decades, then gave them medicines that made matters worse? Were they just stupid?”.

Well maybe we are.

And let’s be totally honest. If tomorrow some crazy dude managed to create some sort of miracle cure in his garage, or find evidence of aliens, or successfully summon a demon, you think that stuff wouldn’t immediately be suppressed?

To be honest, I’m not discrediting modern science. I still believe that the scientific method is one of the best tools we have for conducting research, and so far there is no real reason to challenge it. I’m simply pointing out some issues with it, and that “scientific knowledge” isn’t as reliable as we think it is. At the end of the day, we aren’t all that different than we were in previous eras of human history. Many scientific and philosophical truths that we cling to, may simply be scoffed at and criticized, the way we criticize medieval superstitions. On the other hand, some of those medieval superstitions may turn out to be very true after all.

Scientists are regularly proven wrong about various theories and predictions they had, and this is largely thanks to the scientific method itself. If you actually follow scientific news on a daily basis, you’d be amazed how many firmly held facts are frequently shown to be untrue. Many of the facts you learned in school are probably not true anymore.

For example, did you know that water IS actually blue, and not colourless?

Ancient Modes of Science

We saw how modern science is built upon the scientific method, which began to be used only about 500 or so years ago, towards the end of the Islamic Golden Age, and became common during the European Enlightenment.

So what did people do before then? And why don’t we consider the various philosophical works of Greece, Rome, India, China and the Middle East to be “science”?

Well, you may have picked up on one word: philosophy. Science that was practiced before the scientific method is regarded as “natural philosophy”. The distinction is important, with regards to how this knowledge was gained. Starting around the time of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, people began to make extensive records and write books about various topics regarding the natural world. The tools used varied from time to time, but most common were logic and math, and also theology and reason in more sophisticated eras.

Science was considered a branch of Philosophy, and so the way people came up with scientific theories and concepts was through, well, philosophizing. If you’ve ever read any philosophical works, you’ll notice they do not use the scientific method. Instead, it is based on logical reasoning, discourse and insight. Basically, a person literally thinks their way to conclusions. Now, this works quite well for some branches of philosophy, such as moral or existential philosophy. Certainly, many achievements of humanity, such as art, literature, political and legal systems and yes, even the scientific method, are the product of philosophy. Secular reason and scientific method were born out of the the philosophies of Ibn al-Haythan, Rene DeCartes and John Locke.

And yet, philosophical methods were simply not good enough for a objective study of the material world. In truth, it was like an elaborate method of trial and error, based on how things seemed to be. For example, the reason why people of Ancient Europe and the Middle East believed that the Earth was the centre of the Universe was because that’s just what it looked like to them. Based on their “logic”, it made perfect sense for the Universe to be made of seven concentric rings. And you might ask, what “logic”. Well, religious logic (theology).

What annoys me when people say that quantum physics and atomic theory are mentioned in the Vedas, or that the Greeks understood evolution, or that the ancient Arabs and Persians practiced chemistry, is how often people forget how these discoveries were made.

For example, an ancient Indian Sadhu was once walking along the banks of a river. There, he saw grains of rice floating in the water, and how they would clump together. In that instant, he had a realisation that the whole world around him was also made of similar particles, which attracted to each other. He concluded that these must be like magnets, being of opposite poles. This led to the creation if Vedic atomic theory, where it was believed that all things in the Universe were made of two particles, armanu and parmanu. The Greeks also had similar conclusions, calling these particles “atomos”. And these are remarkable accurate.

But notice how this entire encounter was the result of insight. Natural philosophy was entirely dependent on such insights, followed by logical reasoning. Only exceptionally creative, intelligent and skilled people could do it, and only those who had both time, and an education, meaning the society they lived in needed to be both prosperous and progressive. If you ever ended up in a situation where such people were lacking, or suppressed (such as the European dark ages, or by things like the Indian caste system), a whole society could completely decline in it’s scientific understanding.

Besides, it really was just a case of belief. If enough people believed the natural philosopher, or couldn’t produce a counter argument, they just went with it.

This is the case with Aristotle. Many of you have probably heard of him. For someone who was consistently wrong about almost everything, he seems to be very popular. He is the one came up with the geocentric model, and the idea that planets were made of ether. You see, he was a very gifted speaker. He was so good at logical reasoning, and so confident, that most people just assumed that he knew what he was talking about. Despite being wrong, and having little evidence for his claims, it was assumed he was right because his conclusions appeared logical.

Now, let us take a hypothetical example. The ancient Hindus placed a great emphasis on purity and cleanliness. Some people claim that this was because they understood germ theory, but it’s more likely due to observation. They observed that people who stayed clean and lived in clean environments stayed disease free and lived longer. Why do you think the concept of untouchability came around?
Perhaps some day a priest observed a leather tanner coming to the temple. Perhaps this leather tanner had just finished his work, and his hands were still dirty from working with animal carcasses and skins. Perhaps, as was custom, he washed his hands and feet in the Temple basin before going inside, contaminating them. Perhaps, following this several people who used the basic or drank water from the same well fell ill and died. Maybe many such events happened.

The priest must have quickly consulted a local theologian, who drew the “logical” conclusion that leather tannery was a sinful, and impure profession, and all who were engaged in it were polluted. This led to this job being designated to the weak and ostracized members of society, and perhaps resulted in centuries of stigma against their tribes and communities, even toward those that did not work in leather tanning. This is the product of “natural philosophy”.

Logic and perception are not always true. Even the logical conclusions of gifted minds can be wrong. Yes, many of the insights they gained happened to be correct, because these are messages from the Divine, but they were also wrong very often, since not every thought the Ego has are divine messages. Often it’s just noise.

That is the fundamental difference between natural philosophy and the scientific method. In fact, in the early Enlightenment even the scientific method was reliant upon insights by gifted individuals. People like Newton and Einstein would have sudden insights that would suddenly and greatly increase human knowledge. But we cannot rely completely on such insights to develop human understanding forever. Yes, these still happen, but science now is also a profession. While the insights of brilliant individuals propel use forward from time to time, scientific research is also conducted side by side. Unlike insight, research is slow and incremental, but anyone can do it. Technically, you could study science and become a researcher in any field. You do not even need to have a very high IQ. As long as you are good at logical analysis and math, you can become a researcher and contribute to our slow and steady growth on knowledge. And even if you’re not all that good at math, there’s probably still some fields you can participate in, such as geology or archeology.

Some of you fellow magicians may feel bitter that people are overly cynical and skeptical of magick. But let me remind you, that very skepticism is what stops things like the Salem witch trials from happening. Since the scientific method places doubt and critical enquiry as the highest value, people cannot just get away with making stuff up. As far as the ordinary masses are concerned, it is better for them to disbelieve, than believe too easily. Can you imagine if tomorrow some crazy, charismatic cult leader came around and said he had a vision from Jesus and that the world would end in 3 years unless all the “heretics” were purged?

Heck, that still happens, despite such people being unable to prove anything. Think how much worse it would be if modern science was replaced with the insights, experiences and musings of gifted individuals, many of whom may not be all that benevolent.
In fact, the whole reason the witch hunts in Europe stopped was because a certain group of Dominican friars adopted skepticism over Church dogma. These friars insisted that just because someone was having strange experiences, did not mean they were a witch, and just because someone claimed to be in league with the devil, did not mean they really were. To us this may seem obvious, but thanks to this the Church was able to stop using forced confessions as evidence for devil worship.

Personally, I think the scientific method is the best toll we currently have for advancing human knowledge, at least until something better come along.

Occult Science

Now, let’s talk about matters that are important to us. What about our sacred science? And what of pseudo-science?

Personally, I think the line between pseudo-science and natural philosophy is quite blurry. You could say that pseudo-science is simply natural philosophy that came around after the scientific method. Many spiritualists, occultists and new-agers get accused of pseudo-science, largely due to the methodology. Even when they use math and logic, the lack of critical enquiry is the problem. That is to say, very rarely do people actively attempt to disprove what they have found, or get their work peer reviewed. But this isn’t all that different from ancient natural philosophy, and as we know the natural philosophers often stumbled upon truths about the Universe which were very deep, such as atomic theory, without being able to prove or understand it beyond a superficial level.

It is very difficult, even for an occultist, to say exactly how much that was given to us by our predecessors is literally true, how much is metaphor, and how much is willful distortion of secret knowledge, either to hide it or destroy it. Similarly, it is difficult to say how many non-scientific ideas present within the spiritual and occult community are true. For example, is the Aura really a bio-electric or electromagnetic field, or not? Are crystals really better at conducting magical energy, or would using plastic or metal have the same effect? In fact, what even is magical energy, and is it “energy” in the same way that the word is understood by science (i.e. kinetic energy), or is it simply a word we use for an entirely different kind of substance?

Do binaural beats truly work, or is it simply the belief in them? Do different metals have attributions to Planetary energies, or is it some totally unknown process? If all of these are true, then how do we justify the contradictions that exist within different traditions of magick?

I’m not saying that these questions have or don’t have clear answers, just posing some obvious questions that many occultists may considered.

One obvious answer would be that we cannot know for sure, and that we should subject all our findings to the scientific method. But then we run into another problem. The scientific method is built upon one single, extremely fundamental idea: that our thoughts and beliefs do not directly affect objective reality. After all, since the scientific method is based on critical enquiry, it works on the assumption that the result of any experiment will be the same regardless of the beliefs of a scientist. It is thanks to this that the scientist can actively seek to disprove something, in an attempt to prove it.

Now, all you who practice any kind of magick will see how amusing this problem is. Occult wisdom and practical experience with magick tells us that beliefs and thoughts are the SINGLE and perhaps ONLY factor that shapes and guides our reality. Objective reality is fluid, and I wonder how much it even exists. Anyone who has had spiritual experiences will know how quickly “reality” appears to shift and fall apart.

This is a major problem in uniting occult science with modern science. Modern scientific research often involves research on very subtle levels of reality, especially with fields like quantum physics, astrophysics and psychology. These are not simple and material fields where things can be easily tested and physically observed.

The result of this clash is that scientists simply disregard the occult (even though all science is and continues to be born out of delving into the occult) while occultists and spiritualists disregard science itself (even though without critical thinking we are simply left with unproven claims). Personally, for me this is a very major contradiction. I am a strong supporter of science and the scientific method, and yet I know that objective, material reality is fluid and illusory.

So, what is to be done? Well , nothing for now. For the time being, the scientific method reigns supreme. Until someone can come up with something better, we occultists should abide by it, at least publicly.

My personal approach has always been to keep my personal spiritual and occult experiences to myself. Yes, I write about them on this blog, but my approach is never to convince someone of anything, nor present any alternative frameworks to modern science. In fact, often I present them within the framework of modern science. My experiences are my own, as are my beliefs and understanding. I know what is true for me, and I know it may not be for others.

In my opinion, I suggest the same to all of you. Making claims beyond the realm of science, or trying to understand things we yet cannot is simply the Ego trying to pretend that it controls everything. And in fact, you may be wrong at times, or misunderstood by the masses, and unwillingly cause new dogmas and incorrect beliefs to persist, much like Aristotle.

The pursuit and study of Occult knowledge is a good thing, but it is kept secret for a reason. If you must share it, as I do, simply share experiences and leave it up to the reader to form their own opinions. True occult wisdom often falls within the realm of philosophy, which is far more flexible and open ended than science. Sometimes it is best to answer philosophical questions instead of forcing some sort of new scientific understanding onto others, unless you have some really ground breaking evidence.

Magickal Innovation

To end it off, I just want to say a few things regarding genuine innovation in magick.

To say that magick is opposed to science is a fallacy. As I have explained, a lot of people who talk like this don’t understand these words very well, and are strongly influenced by modern American politics. It never ceases to amaze me just how much the petty disputes among the American leadership affect and shape global culture.

Science is the study of the world. Occult simply refers to all that which is yet Unknown to humanity. Not necessarily just scientific knowledge, but also philosophical ideas and creative concepts can fall within the realm of “occult”.

Religion is something else entirely, and is not even in the same category as “science” or “history”. Religion is more like a collective set of beliefs, artforms, values, philosophies, mythologies, folktales, and histories possessed by any group of people. It is inherently linked to the culture from which it comes. I genuinely do not understand where the whole “science vs religion” thing comes from. If you think about it, it truly makes no sense. It’s like saying “music vs history”. A meaningless comparison. I suppose the correct terms would be “Theology vs Rationalism” or “Traditionalism vs Progressivism” or even “Mentalism vs Materialism”. But this would force both sides to actually have an honest discussion!

Spirituality is the development and evolution of the individual, and often within the framework of religion. After all, a set of symbols needed for spiritual growth and magick. And before the Internet, people simply HAD to rely on their own culture and religion to supply these symbols.

Spiritual development takes place when a person encounters the Unknown/ Occult. For the ancient people, this may have meant venturing into the dark forest or staring up at the sky. For us, it may mean using psychadelics or performing invocations. In the future, it may involve exploring the cosmos and understanding the nature of reality. By encountering the Unknown, the process of spiritual development is initiated (do you get it? That’s why spiritual Adepts are called ‘Initiates’. The word “initiate” means to “begin a process”. When you undergo Initiation, you are initiating this process!)

I suppose we can say magick/ yoga is simply an advanced state of spirituality. A person who is sufficiently developed spiritually, becomes able to detatch himself from the perspective of the world that he has inherited from his culture, or developed throughout his life without thinking much about it.

By doing this, the person is entirely left on their own, free to define their own reality and form an entirely unique and independent world-view. By altering their world view, they can literally alter reality according to their Will. This is true magick. (Keep this in mind, it’ll be really important in the next post)

I stated that all that is Unknown to us is “Occult”. But that word also means “Secret”, referring to the Secret knowledge held by Magicians. When magcians encounter the Unknown, they come into possessions of new understandings, ideas and information. Sometimes, they may also discover new phenomena of Nature. But revealing this to ordinary people usually leads to persecution, or worship. Often both together.

Think about the ancient alchemists. They made demonstrations of chemical processes, at a time when no one understood this. They had come into possessions of this knowledge through ancient teachings that were passed on to them, which they expanded upon. At times, they would become worshipped, butoften they would be tortured and persecuted out of fear. People desired their knowledge and tried to steal it, or simply reviled them for their knowledge. Often, the moment alchemical knowledge leaked out, pretenders would show up trying to make a quick profit, and this would tarnish the name of alchemy as a whole, and confuse the masses . As a result, the alchemists kept such knowledge secret and passed it on, and with each generation it expanded. By leaving social norms and tenets behind, those who chose to be alchemists would have been exceptionally brave, inquisitive and humble. They did not have text books or chemistry, and had to painstakingly decode secret knowledge left to them in form of metaphors and ciphers. This required tremendous patience, persistence and skill. Sitting by the fire of the furnace for long hours, gazing into flasks of boiling liquid, they entered an almost meditative trance. Every experiment was a new step into the Unknown. They would contemplate and learn about themselves, they would see how the chemical processes resembled their own trials and tribulations. Their strange experiments and observations became a canvas onto which the projected their inner Being. They combined this with prayers, hymns and chants. They built philosophies and stories to pass on their knowledge and wisdom. In the purification of gold ore, they saw the story of the magician himself becoming purified. In the production of herbal tinctures through repeated extarction, they saw how man’s spirit itself was reborn countless times. These insights initiated the spiritual process, and they became enlightened. It was also dangerous. Some metals were toxic, some experiments explosive. Only those who were undeterred and brave could proceed. Some did not make it. It was like Mother Nature revealing her mysteries to they who were chosen, amidst the seeming Chaos. Kalki turning into Durga. Black Isis turning to White Isis. Order from Chaos. Think of all the motifs! Of lady Venus appearing shrouded in veils, revealing herself to the worthy!

Do you see now?! It was never about the chemical processes! It was not the physical purification of metals or the herbal tinctures that contained the magick. The Magick was in the alchemist himself, not in some external object!

Finally, there came an especially progressive and open minded era, when many people became interested in this stuff, and humanity underwent a sudden burst of mass spiritual growth. The knowledge had grown to the point where it could be made public. The alchemists of the 17th and 18th century, who were able to formalise all this “occult” knowledge and reveal it to the world, made it the standard science known as chemistry. Now imagine this same process in every other occult and scientific field. It happened for astrology when it became astronomy, or for herbalism when it became biology, or even psychicism which became psychology.

Currently, the same is happening in the field of psychadelics, mediation, breathwork and deep psychology. Did you know, last month there was even a scientific paper that proved the similarities between neurons in the human brain and the web of galaxies in the Universe? After decades of being called a pseudo-science, some researches actually managed to prove these things through the scientific method.

Some day, the same may happen for invocations and evocations, sigils, crystals, psychic healing etc. And besides, who says all the secrets of alchemy or herbalism have been revealed? Even now, there are many experiments recorded by alchemists that have yet to be reproduced.

And, we ourselves may be wrong about many of these things. For example, when we invoke an archangel using sigils and incense, we only have a vague idea of what is happening. Due to our lack of understanding, we are forced to rely on archaic metaphors, passed down to us by our predecessors, where we recite Latin hymns to these “winged beings”. For all you know, in the future there will be a simple and straight forward method for contacting these “angels”, much like how simple chemistry is compared to the archaic and elaborate methods of ancient alchemy. Therefore, we should always keep an open mind and never get bound down by dogma and tradition. If something doesn’t work, we need to be more willing to cast it aside, as well as adopt new techniques that work better. This is how the knowledge grows and becomes refined with each generation.

My approach is to be completely open minded about magick, and not try to force pseudo-scientific dogmas of others, or even ancient religious dogmas of my predecessors, upon it. I form my own understanding and techniques, and keep developing my own frameworks and theories. A lot of it is based on intuition and insight, which is how the beings on the higher planes communicate with us and guide us. Remember, tradition is the preservation of the fire, not worship of the ashes. My suggestion to you ALL is to be completely free and open in your magick, and do not allow modern science or pseudo-science to limit it. What we are doing IS the sacred science.

It is good to be in touch with mainstream science (so you can think criticially), and good to at least understand the more popular theories in alternative science (since many of them may turn out to be true). But ultimately, be inquisitive and free thinking. If a magician combines critical thinking with open mindedness, they will truly be one among few, and very powerful. Save your energy, and don’t waste it arguing with zealots, materialists or anyone simply not open to new ideas.

That has been my take on science and magick. Hopefully you enjoyed this first part, and next time we shall look at philosophy.

Until Next Time
~White Raven Invictus