MYSTERY AND REGENERATION

Tag: hermetica

The Still Point of the Turning World: Meditation for Magicians

Hilma af Klint, Svanen, no 13 (1915) 

Meditation is recommended by Denning and Phillips at various points in their work, but it is rarely emphasised as a foundational practice. This short addition to the Steps of the Foundation series of posts is a reflection on the role it has played for me in practice, and gathers some of the scattered references to meditation in the published Ogdoadic material. For the aspiring magician, meditation has three functions: one using the trained meditative mind to unfold and integrate texts and symbols; another, developing the skills of concentration, openness and focus needed in ritual magic; another, in ‘mystical’ meditation, a transformation and illumination of the spirit.

One word, many meanings

We should briefly think about the word ‘meditation’ itself, which can sometimes be an unhelpful one, summoning images of a saffron-clad monk turning his mind off, with the gentle chime of temple bells and a curling plume of incense. Successive generations of occult teachers bear responsibility for this, as they sought to supplement what they perceived as a badly degraded western tradition with techniques derived (sometimes badly mangled) from esoteric Buddhism. In fact, as we will return to later, sublime noetic silence is not unknown in the west: being ‘alone with the alone’ was greatly desired by later Platonists and their inheritors. But an emphasis on total mental silence misrepresents the range of meditative practices in Indian and Tibetan sources, and obscures the shades of meaning the word possessed in European thought. In Crowley’s system, responsible for much of this overemphasis in 20th century magical culture, it is combined with a range of pointless if characteristic exercises in sadism. The aim in elementary meditative practices is not to achieve non-thought, but to concentrate one’s thought and attention – with minimal deviation or wandering – on an object, principle, symbol, or to achieve (as far as possible) mental dwelling purely in the single present moment. These are achievable goals. The ability to return at will to this ‘still point of the turning world’ is a very helpful one in magic.

In the long span of European spiritual thought, ‘meditation’ usually meant bringing the mind to bear on an appropriate object. Some Stoics, certainly, knew something like it; Christian scriptural devotion works in a similar way. The form of mental attention intended is not excessively rational, nor the mental recitation of material got by rote – involving instead a calm pursuit of chains of association, allowing the intuition to descend and guide the reflection. (To use the jargon of western magic, the desire is that the ruach is guided by the neshamah.) In appendices to each volume in the first edition of The Magical Philosophy, Denning and Phillips give a series of exercises using flashing tablets as a means of developing this skill; these exercises are condensed into a single brief reference in the combined edition’s guide to practice. They recommend the absolute beginner construct tablets for Jupiter and Mars, and meditate on these for a week each, in succession. (Note here the very strong emphasis, very early on, on balance between the powers, a theme repeated through the Aurum Solis material.) The exercise can be repeated for all seven planetary powers, and then go well beyond them. I have conducted sequences of meditations on traditional magical images, the Major Arcana (fairly regularly), as well as texts – including ritual speeches, but also highly allusive alchemical texts and passages of the Corpus Hermeticum.

This form of meditation, sometimes called discursive meditation by modern magicians, is a great boon. Some distinctions ought perhaps to be made: direct meditation on a power, though not an invocation itself, will bring some kind of contact with it. It is not unusual to feel one’s concentration ‘picked up’ and recognised by that power – the feeling is unmistakable though difficult to describe, and can come with an overwhelming jolt of emotion or mental disposition suitable to that power. Sometimes one feels a symbol unfolding itself to the mind: thus some magical groups give students specific symbolic meditations to foster deeper connection with its egregore. Defects in mental attention are more noticeable and more easily corrected than when trying to silence the mind altogether; love for the ever-creative perceiving mind and a gentle but unswerving return to the object will develop the skill much more securely than brutalising the body.

There is, however, another form of meditation in western spiritual traditions, strikingly similar to some yogic practices. This is the use of certain psycho-spiritual techniques – visualisation, repetition of divine names or prayers, withdrawal from the senses – to encounter the divine light. This mystical, or contemplative, form of meditation seems to have been discovered and rediscovered – or transmitted – among diverse spiritual traditions, often upsetting more conventionally religious practitioners whenever it broke out. The Aurum Solis technique of ‘Rising on the Planes’, given in a little-discussed section of Mysteria Magica, may produce an analogous effect. But one of the most potent forms of this meditation was publicly outlined in one of Denning and Phillips’s mass-market New Age paperbacks – effectively powerful little bits of occultism dressed up in voguish ‘80s pop jargon. They called it, with a nod to its origins, the Tabor Formulation. We will return to this crucial form of meditation below.

The ’70s have a lot to answer for.

Two further points on the question of ‘East’ and ‘West’. There has long been a scholarly movement questioning the usefulness of the ‘western’ in ‘western esotericism’. Certainly in a time when all sorts of claptrap about innate ethnic spiritual traditions gets smuggled in under the name of esotericism, it is useful to stress that esoteric thinkers in the west have often looked to sources they perceived as older and outside their culture for wisdom – Chaldaeans, Arabs, Indians or Tibetans. If it is still cogent to talk about western esotericism – and I think it is – then it is a tradition that is highly porous, often hungry for wisdom from elsewhere and just as often disclaiming the sources of that wisdom.

On that note, though, I believe there are great benefits for magicians in engaging in some of the basic Indian and Tibetan meditative techniques which have made their way to the west. So-called ‘shamatha’ or ‘shinay’ technique – sometimes called ‘calm abiding’ – is a superb foundation for any meditative exercise discussed here. Many of the Buddhist centres in Europe and the US teach introductory classes in (putatively) non-denominational formats; one London centre has a decent pair of recordings online.

But why meditate?

At the outset I suggested that meditation is an essential foundation for (this kind of) magic. Most of the reasons I gave were instrumental, e.g., that developing mental direction and focus is essential for invocation. That is, meditation is important because it allows us to do something else. This is of a piece with the graded curriculum-style approach to magical training taken by most older magical orders, which build up by deepening and expanding a set of fundamental ritual practices. They’re also structured according to certain magical-experiential landmarks, which simply recognise that – in general – repeated practice brings on experiences which, while individualised, are predictable and recurrent. My quibbles with this style of instruction aside – that it would benefit from incorporating some of the last century’s advances in pedagogy, and disliking its infinite capacity to inspire stupid competitions about ‘rank’ – it is a better start to magical practice than the consumerist pick-’n’-mix approach common today, partly because it should decentre the instincts towards consumption and immediate gratification on which much of contemporary society is based.

Meditation also has benefits in its own right. Among them is the capacity to recognise the way the individual mind moves, exercise control over it, direct it, still it or open it. It can grant awareness of the emotional manipulation common in advertising or mass media. And it can grant insight – sometimes initially painful and unwelcome – into the emotional and mental burdens, often unconscious, which pattern and sometimes warp our lives. These are especially helpful in the world of occultism, where many seekers who wash up on its shores do so injured and ill-treated, suffering and harming in turn. This is not a sneer: the world is a frequently cruel place, and often specially cruel to those who feel the yearning for spirit. Few make it into adulthood without carrying some such burden; modern occulture tends, perversely, to reward people who feign having overcome all such problems, and discourages its prominent names from talking honestly about them. The cyclically-repeating dramas which periodically tear through public-facing occultism look, with a little distance, like symptoms of just such problems. The powers of discrimination, self-possession and insight granted by meditation are significant remedies for these afflictions; I know some candidates for whom these meditative gifts turned out to be everything they needed from their initial attraction to magic, utterly transformative in themselves. They are essential for all of us, especially solitary magicians – not least in interactions with the wider occult ‘scene’, where capacity for discrimination is essential.

There is a wider point here. Denning and Phillips often write that magic is a way of freedom. That is true, and it is also a good test: if a particular practice makes one feel less free, more fearful or diminished, or a tradition demands unthinking loyalty and open wallets, then it’s probably harmful. There are nuances: sometimes binding ourselves to a discipline might make us more free, or we might give up our freedom to speak about certain things as a sign of respect and trust – but in both cases the sense ought to be that such commitments enhance, rather than diminish, our sense of agency. Freedom, however, is not always easy: the corollary of increasing agency and freedom is increasing responsibility for one’s decisions, a prospect which can initially be terrifying. But magic, even in its most highly spiritualised form, has always concerned itself with liberating the practitioner from powers which predetermine or constrain his or her life – sometimes understood as the disposition of the birth chart – and remedying their afflictions. Thus Ficino, in whom Saturn’s black flowed strongly, hung his neck with gold and danced in a secret place to the Sun.

It might be objected that none of this is magic proper, but a combination of psychological self-examination, spiritual exercise and self-improvement. Quite so. The theurgy taught in the Ogdoadic tradition combines spiritual transformation with its practical magic, a combination which recognises that one informs the other – and that combination is as ancient and venerable as disciplines which focus solely on either meditation or spirit-calling. (I stress this point because there has been much bad-tempered polemic on the issue in recent years.) The tradition also avoids the habit of some more staid schools, which insist on many years of meditative practice before engaging in practical magic at all, preferring to allow the one to develop alongside the other, thus intentionally speeding up the transformation. The speed of this transformation makes a strong meditative practice desirable: would you build a temple on shifting sand? If the personal insights and gradual transformation gained from meditation – discursive, contemplative, ‘calm abiding’ – seem less magical than the power of scrying, spirit invocation or talismanic consecration, that is fair. But it is worth stressing that almost all magical traditions incorporate such work of rectification into their earliest stages – whether elemental initiations, first degree, first hall, pronaos. To repeat: there are few skills as important and transformative as the ability to anchor oneself to the still point of the turning world.

The Uncreated Light

As Denning and Phillips give it, the Tabor Formulation proceeds very simply thus:

Stage One: Simple Breathing – Lower your gaze, fixing it upon your navel or a point in that region. Breathe in an even, gentle manner as deeply as you can without strain. If your mind wanders, as soon as you notice bring it back gently but firmly to your breathing.

Stage Two: Awareness of the Light – Entering into the second stage of the meditation, on an in-breath be aware of a nebulous radiation of golden light, which is also a radiation of love, from just below your sternum; it seems to form a luminous cloud about midway between your navel (at which you continue to gaze down) and your chin.

You don’t have to do anything about that light. Simply be aware of it, of being illuminated by it, of being loved by it. Accept that awareness; don’t think about it, don’t even try to aspire to it. Just keep on being conscious of it, and of your breathing.

Stage Three: Silent Utterance – Retaining awareness of your breathing and of the light, silently “utter” mantrams – phrases or single words – which you feel to be suited to your meditation: formulate each word distinctly in your mind, but with no vocalization or movement of the mouth. You will need two mantrams to use together, one for the in-breath and one for the out-breath. Their chief purpose is to express in brief compass something of your essential relationship with the Cosmos. It is to affirm your bond of oneness with the Cosmos: that bond in which you are sustained by the beneficence of the Whole, at the same time participating actively in the Whole. You are a living and purposing component of it, giving forth again with blessing that which you receive.

We’ll return to the question of what phrase to use below. Two very brief notes on this technique: the next post in this series will take in the Ogdoadic tradition’s method of awakening the centres, but here it’s worth noting that the solar plexus centre is distinct from the heart centre proper. It is used in psychic operations, like the formation of the astral double, but not included in the standard (middle pillar-like) rousing of the centres. That the light is first experienced through the emotional and instinctive nature governed by this centre, rather than the higher rational faculties, may chime with the chapters on the Holy Guardian Angel in Book IV of The Magical Philosophy.

Students of Christian mysticism will immediately notice the source of this technique: Hesychasm. Derived from the word ἡσυχία, meaning ‘stillness’, this internally-directed form of prayer involved psycho-spiritual techniques similar to those used by modern occultists. It flourished among Athonite monks, who silently recited the Jesus Prayer while gazing downwards, thus mocked by opponents of Hesychasm as navel-gazers. The light experienced by advanced practitioners was interpreted by Gregory Palamas as the ‘uncreated light’ seen on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration. (Those interested in the occult uses of music may find it suggestive that the drone in Byzantine chant – the ison – is taken to represent the Tabor Light.) The Greek Orthodox compilation of mystical theology, the Philokalia, has extensive reflections on this practice, especially in its fourth and fifth volumes. Here it is shorn of its Christian trappings and non-denominationally ‘universalised’. 

Lee Mullican, Peyote Candle (1951)

A Hermetic Hesychasm?

This might give the conscientious modern magician pause. Many of us are less confident than our predecessors that the inner technology of a method can be so easily separated from its given cultural form. Even if Christ and the Agathodaimon, for instance, are two expressions of the same solar mystery, is the ritual repertoire for one so easily transferred to the other? (In this case, at least, many ancient Orthodox writers are happy to talk about the psycho-spiritual technique as distinct from its prayerful content and orientation; this, of course, they see as a danger.) Other problems arise: the states we seek using this technique, and the manner in which we use it, are precisely those about which Orthodox thinkers are at best ambivalent – in fact, many of them would think it dangerous, irreligious and disordered. But in too ready a rejection of a thousand years of writing on this form of meditation, we risk losing some of the wisdom which can enhance our practice.

I don’t worry so much about the magpie nature of modern magic, though I try not to be an ass about it. Hermes is also the god of thieves. I am especially relaxed about adapting this practice, because I believe very similar techniques are likely to have been used by non-Christian mystics throughout the Mediterranean basin in late antiquity. The parallel is often drawn between the posture adopted by Jewish mystics ‘going down’ to the Merkava and the Hesychast gaze, but something similar is at play in Plotinian spiritual exercises as well as later Iamblichean theurgic technique. I am also absolutely certain that a similar method was used by ancient Hermetists. Consider the famous opening of the first tract of the Corpus Hermeticum, where the speaker enters a state similar to sleep, κατασχεθεισῶν μου τῶν σωματικῶν αἰσθήσεων, ‘my bodily senses suppressed’: an emphasis on withdrawal from the bodily senses also characterises early Hesychast writing. It is through this withdrawal from the outer senses that Hermes encounters a vision of limitless divine light and its shepherding mind (ὁρῶ θέαν ἀόριστον, φῶς δὲ πάντα γεγενημένα – C.H. I.4). That tract was certainly supposed to inspire recognition in its readers of meditative techniques they themselves used.

A little thought along these lines will be enough to dispel the notion that meditation is an alien graft on to western magic. In its discursive form, it was so common a spiritual practice as to be unremarkable for most of the last millennium; in its contemplative form it is recognisable in the pagan desire for henosis – union with The One – and in precious traces in hermetic and theurgic texts. It is recognisable in mystical traditions in Eastern and Western churches, though often condemned by their official authorities. Though there are certainly forms of magic which can be done without it – ecstatic forms of witchcraft, natural magic – meditation, in at least its discursive form, is a key foundation stone for modern ritual magic.

Of Words and Warnings

Discursive meditation is best brought to perfection by doing; the rest of this note focuses on contemplative meditation of the Tabor Formulation type. Denning and Phillips recommend choosing a short phrase or mantra to accompany the rhythm of the breath, and give examples: ‘Light and life fill me / I share my abundance with all’, or ‘Energy / Ecstasy!’ Both are fine as they go, though their New Age formulations now seem a little dated, and of course they would horrify an Athonite monk. 

It’s always fun to horrify a monk, however hypothetical, but there might be something worth listening to as well. Hesychasts utter the Jesus prayer because their meditation is precisely that, a form of prayer. However strongly we dislike the prayer’s pleading for mercy and repeated self-identification as ‘a sinner’, it does stress the partiality and finitude of the individual – that divine presence is an act of grace, not a mark of personal power or election to sainthood. One need not share Christianity’s theology of grace to see there is something important in its emphasis on inwardly-directed humility, especially as a guard against spiritual delusion. There are two way to incorporate this insight into practice: one is to formulate the phrase more clearly as a prayer – perhaps taking inspiration from the various hymns in the Hermetica (especially CH I and XIII). Another is, simply, to adopt a humbler, more reverent attitude: not of cringing self-abasement, which is just the shadow of self-importance, but the calm joy which can come from participation in the light. 

Personally, my experience of this kind of meditation includes a sense that one’s own intellectual structures are clumsy approximations of the real, a sense almost like being a little brother marvelling at an older, infinitely more complex, loving and wiser mind. So different, in fact, that even the word ‘mind’ isn’t right for it, and my phrasing here is only a partial, sublunary approximation. It’s no accident that the verb for seeing used in the Poimandres – θεάομαι – refers to a different, visionary kind of seeing; it is also the verb Plato uses for the sight of those who have left the shadow-world of the cave.

For practitioners who work with the divine powers of the Ogdoadic tradition, orienting this practice to the Agathodaimon is another potent option. A future essay will discuss the Agathodaimon more fully, but it suffices here to say that he is the solar theurgic deity par excellence, and utterly fitting for invocation in this practice. The two phrases I have used in this practice are the god’s name – ‘Knouphis / Agathodaimon’ – on in- and out-breaths, and a paired epithet derived from the wider tradition: ‘who comes forth as the phoenix / who shines as the morning star’. 

Wash the Dishes, Sweep the Floor

Meditation is not magic, though it is an immensely helpful foundation for magical work. Mystical meditation of this kind should form part of a magical routine, rather than replacing it entirely. Many classic occult authors warn against merely seeking absorption in the infinite; one of the most desirable magical skills is the development, from long practice, of the ‘Janus-faced’ position of the soul, pointing both inward and outward at once. Denning and Phillips borrow that phrase from one of Ficino’s most touching letters, and though it is a skill few of us will master as a permanent state it is a key to unlocking deeper levels of practice. They were more circumspect about drawing from the treasury of writing on Hesychasm, doubtless ambivalent about its ascetic Christian disposition, there are two points from the literature useful to us.

Many Hesychasts write at length about the danger of spiritual delusion; many of them would categorise everything we do under exactly that category, if not demonic obsession. Nonetheless there are insights to be gleaned from the extensive writings on πλάνη (planê, lit. wandering), or spiritual delusion. In particular, these case studies stress cases where people have received flattering visions or intensified their spiritual regimen and begun to think of themselves as special, saintly or prophet-like. Anyone who has watched an occult group fall apart because of inflated egos or delusions of singularity will recognise these symptoms (which are sometimes associated with excessive invocation of Solar powers.) The remedy prescribed in the monastic tradition is usually a grounding, earthly kind of humility: sweeping the floors, washing the dishes, digging the garden. It’s an insightful remedy, placing us back in the body, a human among other humans. 

One sign of incipient planê among occultists is an excessive intensification of the daily regime, to the detriment of other aspects of personal life. Its remedy is two-fold: first, the adoption of some volunteering work which actively benefits the living world and, ideally, exerts the body. That might be soup kitchen volunteering, given the number of homeless in our great cities, or active restoration of the natural world, given how important our changing climate is. Involvement in political movements around these issues is also an option, though many of the same risks of ego inflation attend that arena; a good remedy to that is absorption in the tiresome, dutiful service part of political work. The second aspect is the development of a strong practice of discursive meditation, through which any visions or revelations ought to be integrated into the waking mind – with detachment and compassion, understanding the powerful but personal and subjective symbols with which the living cosmos communicates.

The Philokalia lays great emphasis on the spiritual director or confessor, in the same way that many Tantric texts lay emphasis on the guru (this is not the only point of striking similarity between these two spiritual traditions – a subject for another time.) Even within traditional magical orders today such a close supervisorial relationship is rare, although admirably more common than it used to be a couple of decades ago. The practice of the magical diary, and regular examination of its entries to discover recurrent themes and patterns, partially remedies this absence – provided it is filled in honestly. Nonetheless, the decrease in serious ‘communities of practice’ means that the individual magician often has to bootstrap their own development, sometimes without trusted friends to check in with: the internet has, as ever, proven a double-edged sword in this regard. As I get a little older, I am struck by how much I return to the question of community and its relation to spiritual practice, and how surprisingly little many occultists have to say about it.

The Hesychast literature also outlines three stages of the mystical life: purification (κάθαρσις, katharsis), contemplation (θεωρία, theoria), and divinisation (θέωσις, theosis). This division is very ancient indeed, and goes back at least to Pseudo-Dionysius; the latter two stages are sometimes also called illumination (φωτισμός, photismos) and perfection (τελείωσις, teleiosis). Some later writers are keen to stress that progress between them is not linear, as if they can be checked off and forgotten, attained for all time. But initiates of many western magical traditions will recognise a common structure here: the First, Second and Third Hall initiations of the Aurum Solis and its descendant orders can be seen to map, though imperfectly, to these stages. The same, naturally, can be said of the magical work of the sefirot of the middle pillar in ascending order. Though by no means is all of it applicable, much of the literature on these stages can provide precious insight to an often neglected aspect of western occultism. It is perhaps worth noting in conclusion that the sole active inner body of the Aurum Solis before Osborne Phillips relinquished his role as grand master was explicitly oriented to the practice of theosis.

The next post in this series will return to our foundational ritual practices, with an examination of the practice of the light-body, the Clavis Rei Primae – which, in truth, sits somewhere between meditation and ritual. When I finish a session of Tabor meditation, I typically close with this adoration derived from the Hermetica, and so I do here:

O Powers within me,
hymn the One and All:
chant in harmony with my will, 
all ye Powers within me!
 

Holy Gnosis, illumined by thee, 
through thee I hymn the light of thought, 
I rejoice in the joy of the mind. 
All ye Powers, chant with me! 

Steps of the Foundation II: Calyx

Piet Mondriaan, Evolution (1911), Kunstmuseum Den Haag.

This is the second post in a series of ‘deep dives’ into the fundamental rituals of the Ogdoadic tradition. Find its predecessor here. These analyses are the product of practice and meditation on the forms, but they also draw on historical research and resonances within the wider magical tradition. Needless to say I don’t speak for the AS or any of the post-AS groups or orders: it’s all me. (And as such reflects my own idiosyncrasies and interests, which are wide but not universal.) This extended meditation will take us through the relation of magical force to the body, the work of the ancient Hermeticists, and the cultivation of the body of light – all latent in this simple little formula.

The Calyx has a claim to being the first properly magical ritual an aspirant practices – but because it is a simple little rite, it is often overlooked or subsumed into a broader discussion of the Setting of the Wards. But that would be to miss its potency. Its basic dynamic and symbolism are capable of significant elaboration – and it is intimately connected to some of the most powerful advanced work in the curriculum – but even by itself it is a powerful tool. Unlike the solar adorations, which connect the aspirant to the rhythm of the day and year (a useful sense to build ahead of learning planetary magic), the Calyx is magical: it draws divine force into the body of the magician with the intent to transform it. How? By breath, voice and image.

Breath and Body

In my last post I suggested that one of the hallmarks of magical techniques descended from the Victorian occult revival is an emphasis on visualisation, especially the visualisation of the body of the magician overlaid with concentrations of light or fire in symbolically important places, which vary slightly according to tradition – thus awakening powers or states of consciousness associated with this-or-that centre, or ‘charging’ the magician with the appropriate energy for a ritual. Of course this was partly the result of the revival of interest in esoteric yoga prompted by Bennett, Blavatsky et al, and really came to fruition through the popularising work of Israel Regardie –but there’s plenty of at least circumstantial evidence from the writings of late antique theurgists, some sections of the Graeco-Egyptian Magical Papyri and the more charming and disreputable parts of Late Platonism that such techniques were historically part of magical practice.

But my concern here isn’t really historical. It’s about what we do when we do ritual magic. One of the most attractive features of The Magical Philosophy, when I first read it, was the consistent emphasis on the physical body: from the careful attention to the basic gestures (and the flow between them), or the distinctive planetary gestures, and especially the stress on the ritual power of dance (which I know now to have been a deep love of Melita Denning’s.) This is good: one thing that has often puzzled me is the apparent neglect with which some magicians treat their physical bodies, or the odd, only half-inhabited relationship to the body some bring to ritual – self-conscious or half-hearted in gesture, shrunken in, afraid to properly grasp their own power. The body is the first and most powerful of tools.

Why might this be so? Sedentary lifestyles are part of it: serious magical practice helps break much of the appeal of screen-based life, but even then we moderns are historically aberrant in how little we move. In Don Kraig’s manual – still the first workbook for many would-be occultists – he recommends the ‘five Tibetans’ as part of daily work, but the details of the choice matter little. In truth, the issues go deeper than sedentarism – or rather, it’s the fruit of a more pernicious mind-body dualism set deep into our culture. Working away at that cultural pattern – taking the work of the body as seriously as we take the cultivation of the mind – is sometimes a tall order for ritual magicians, who are often by inclination bookish and retiring. It takes work and time to unlearn cultural patterns of disdain and neglect; in doing so you might learn how memories can lie hidden in muscle, or that what appears as instinct can reveal itself as conditioning. You might weep. But the rewards are many, because the body is the instrument through which we do our magic.

It is also the reason magicians are encouraged to learn their rituals by heart. The phrase itself is revealing: when we learn the words of a ritual – really learn them, not so that we can occasionally stumble through them but so that they flow from us like heat from a flame – we have made it part of ourselves. This is true in the trivial, physical sense of course: we’ve altered the material of our brains to hold the memories. It is also true in a magical sense: we can then allow the words to move us into gesture, or pay attention to the hum and resonance of the words in our body, the change they produce in the temple room. It is therefore also a kind of transubstantiation: dead words are given life through the body.

This may all seem like a digression in an essay purportedly about a very simple little rite. I am stressing it because breath and body are the key to unlocking these foundational practices. It is why, for instance, the study plan in the combined edition of Foundations instructs the aspirant to take a couple of weeks to really learn how to breathe, and even how to sit, stand and lie prone. (Just like the use of the robe and ring, these all become bodily cues that, combined with actual practice, become rapid ways of shifting one’s mind into the proper magical state, opening the senses, focusing the will.) Each of the foundational practices is carefully keyed to the breath, and so, when mastered, the visualisations and vibrated words should flow along with it. There is a reason that two of the names we give to the pillars of the temple are ‘breath’ and ‘body’: without them the temple cannot stand.

On Vibration

In many magical textbooks, instruction is given to ‘vibrate’ this-or-that magical name. Details beyond that are usually sketchy: effectively vibration is a form of chanting pitched in just such a way as to make the chest cavity resonate, with tingling physiological effects that can be felt throughout the body. Denning and Phillips provide a useful exercise in ‘finding the magical voice’ [TMP combined edition, I. pp. 295-6], which should help absolute beginners: once found it is easily relocated. Importantly, vibration is not shouting, bellowing or badly projecting the voice; many a novice magus has injured his (it is usually his) vocal cords this way, an injury which is not always immediately obvious. (There is, in fact, a place for shouting in ritual magic – as there is for most affective states. But it is rare.)

Is it just a physiological technique, then? No. Used correctly, it is the most tangible part of a magical action taking place on multiple levels, bringing the power of a given divine force into the body of the magician – and the temple space. This is why some magical traditions instruct students strictly to vibrate only divine names. It is hard to describe this technique without reaching for metaphorical language: I’ve just used metaphors of force and power, and a family of other metaphors about charge and energy are also frequently employed. Metaphors of music, tuning and resonance also help. I often find myself thinking of it like the physics of a lightning strike: building the small upward charge that creates a channel for the vast answering charge we thinking of as lightning proper. Fully developed – through familiarity with the physical technique and mastery of visualisation and concentration of the will – the effects of vibration can be brought about with very little noise at all. This is a matter of some relief when a magician might be staying in, say, a hotel room.

I spoke above of memorisation as a kind of small-scale transubstantiation; we can also think of vibration as a mode of deliberate magical transubstantiation, where the divine name is intentionally taken in to the body of the magician and allowed to transform it. Thus some authorities write of envisioning the name in white fire over the heart, or hearing the name resound to the ends of the universe. (This relatively simple technique can be elaborated into a system of mystical contemplation, prayer and ecstasy very similar to Orthodox hesychasm or Merkavah mysticism.) Thinking of it this way also lets us think about what should be vibrated and what not: what do you want to take into yourself? What power are you making way for, or bringing through your body? How central is it to the rite? And where does this leave us with the Calyx, which does not call for the vibration of divine names or nomina barbara, but a small formula, a magical doxology?

The Form

The text of the Calyx is available on the Citadel of Pharos’s website. For readers more familiar with the magic of the Golden Dawn, this is indeed very similar to the Qabalistic Cross. It invokes similar divine power – the same, in fact – from above to below, and distributes it in a symbolic balancing, ending at the heart centre; the Kabbalistic symbolism is the same, as are the words, save in Greek rather than Hebrew. Nothing to see here, then? The GD with the serial numbers filed off? Not quite.

The differences are small but meaningful. When presented in full, the Calyx comes with clear instructions for visualisation; the exact form of visualisation used in GD traditions varies slightly, partly as a result of never being clearly systematised in the order’s papers, at least in its earliest forms. (Very early adept papers don’t instruct on visualisation – see, e.g., Ayton’s copy of the pentagram rituals, now in the library of Freemason’s Hall – some claim this is a sign that it was communicated only orally.) Many recensions will instruct the practitioner to imagine growing to cosmic size, then to perform the cross by visualising three beams of light – following his gestures, one for each axis of space – to converge on his heart. The Calyx is similar, save that it lays greater stress on the descent of light from crown to feet: that invocatory movement, and its balancing, are the fundamental actions of the rite. Though the symbolism of the cross is present, in the Calyx it is secondary to the symbolism of the cup – which gives the rite its name.

It is my experience that such differences, though apparently small, can significantly change the feel and effect of a ritual. Why the difference? In general, where there are analogues with other forms of ritual magic, the version presented by Denning and Phillips is usually de-Christianised: that is certainly the case here. More substantially, the Calyx accords with the central symbolic structure of the Ogdoadic tradition – the House of Sacrifice [.pdf]. The drawing down of the light in its first two points (the major magical action of the rite) relates to the two pillars, the breath and the body; the subsequent three points represent the equilibration of that force through invocation of the triune superstructure. The emphasis is on the reception of divine force: properly achieved, the rite ends with the operator standing with arms crossed over the chest – in a symbolic position of resurrection and rectification – focused on the heart centre shining at the balance point of the microcosm.

There are already several threads to pull on there when thinking about the Calyx, then: the symbolism of the cup, the subtle motif of resurrection, the interplay of the breath and the body, the predominantly receptive and microcosmic orientation of the rite (i.e., the operator is doing something to himself), and the conclusion at the heart. All repay meditation. To dwell a little on the last: a fair accusation sometimes levelled at Anglo-American ritual magic traditions is that the solar focus of many of the initiatory orders, when improperly applied, can lead to ego inflation, narcissism and spiritual derangement. There is far too much evidence to deny this – many cases bearing similar hallmarks – and it is a serious risk especially for anyone writing, thinking about or teaching magic publicly. That so many orders now lay special stress on self-knowledge in their early training is one beneficial outcome: some work through analysis of the natal chart, others through exposure to a balanced variety of magical energies, usually the four elements. Personally I’ve found an exercise originally published by Norman Kraft useful: taking a six month chunk of your magical diary, use four coloured pencils to attribute elemental (or, properly, humoural) properties to the predominant moods across the period. This gives an excellent way into beginning the work of rectification and balancing. The Ogdoadic tradition is certainly not without its egos and public contretemps, but much of the ritual material demonstrates a special concern with keeping the operator well-balanced (for instance, the published pathworkings feature balancing rites for when they are employed out of sequence for magical purposes.) It is no surprise to find that feature in the Calyx, therefore: though it ends with a focus on the spiritual sun at the heart, there is a heavy accent on receiving, balancing and allowing oneself to be transformed by divine power. This rite, likely the rite a magician will perform most often through his life, is also especially a prayer – and can inspire humility alongside empowerment. It is a reminder, at the start of our work, every day, that the power we invoke does not come from us, is not the property of the ego, and is no more ours than the sunlight.

Ernest Page, in initiatory robes and pentacle, performing either the Calyx or the Arista. Painted by Melita Denning, undated.

The Cup: From Hermes’s Vessel of Mind to The Grail

Why the symbol of the cup? On one level it is simple: the cup receives liquid as we receive divine power – it is a symbol of receptivity. It would be an excessive digression to spend many words disentangling the knot of spiritual paranoia, cultural dogma and genuine insight that led many magicians of a century or more ago to make dire warnings against ‘passivity’. Suffice to say the Calyx involves the active concentration of the mind and the will, and like all genuine invocation it can contain moments of weightless stillness and surrender to the current. Perhaps modern magic might be in a better state had those virtues been less scorned. Nonetheless,purely passive it is not: perhaps it makes greater sense to think of it as internally focused, especially when paired with the outwardly-directed ritual drama of exorcism and creation that constitutes the Wards. 

Yet it is more than a convenient symbol for the calling down of divine power. One of the less remarked but powerful features of ritual magic is that its fundamental symbols gradually unveil deeper layers over time. The motif of the cup will recur and deepen in the course of the work: this is not the elemental cup of water, but the greater cup, the grail.

The grail is a distinctive magical weapon used in the Ogdoadic tradition. Denning and Phillips say of it that though it “is not in one sense the ultimate instrument of the magician, [it] is the one used in the highest operations, for, being a symbol of the passive and receptive aspect of the Work, it may be used at those high levels where the magician cannot presume to command but only to situate himself so as to receive.” (TMP, combined edition, I. p.269) The consecration of the the Grail is one of the most beautiful of our consecrations, and there is much that may feed back into the practice of the Calyx from meditation on this ritual invocation of the ‘Virgin of Light and Mother of Ecstasy’, who declares herself thus:

‘Myrrha am I, and Marah am I, and Mem the Great Ocean
Within me mingle time and eternity:
I am the Mother of all living, and I am the womb of rebirth.’

The Calyx is not the Grail, of course, but I think it is right to see it as a prefiguration, and one of the ways the powers of the supernal mother are woven through the tradition. 

The resonances of this cup are many, though: the protean object of medieval grail romance – at once stone of heaven, dish, or crown – or the regenerative, superabundant cauldrons of Welsh and Irish myth. Depending on background one might also hear chimes with the alchemical vessel, or the graal-work of many 20th century British occult orders, or even the Cup of Babalon of Thelemic mysticism. For me, though, most striking is the echo of ancient Hermetic texts, which speak of the krater full of mind. A krater is a large cup or bowl in which wine was mixed with water (or sometimes snow) before consumption; this social and domestic metaphor was given cosmic weight by Plato, who described the demiurge’s fashioning of the world-soul and human souls via mixture in a krater. Taken up by the Hermeticists, this becomes both an explanation of the different types of human souls in the world (a tripartite division is most common: divine, reasoning and those locked in the animal sense-circuit of stimulus and response) and the means of rising, freeing or divinising oneself. The texts sometimes seem to allude to a ritual drinking from the krater, and sometimes to a practice of immersion; a symbolic layering that has caused great confusion to scholars but will cause none to magicians. Its most prominent use is Corpus Hermeticum IV.4:

—κρατῆρα μέγαν πληρώσας τούτου κατέπεμψε, δοὺς κήρυκα, καὶ ἐκέλευσεν αὐτῷ κηρύξαι ταῖς τῶν ἀνθρώπων καρδίαις τάδε· βάπτισον σεαυτὴν ἡ δυναμένη εἰς τοῦτον τὸν κρατῆρα, ἡ πιστεύουσα ὅτι ἀνελεύσῃ πρὸς τὸν καταπέμψαντα τὸν κρατῆρα, ἡ γνωρίζουσα ἐπὶ τί γέγονας.
ὅσοι μὲν οὖν συνῆκαν τοῦ κηρύγματος καὶ ἐβαπτίσαντο τοῦ νοός, οὗτοι μετέσχον τῆς γνώσεως καὶ τέλειοι ἐγένοντο ἄνθρωποι, τὸν νοῦν δεξάμενοι· 

He [God] filled a great krater with it (i.e. mind, nous) and sent it down below, appointing a herald whom he commanded to make the following proclamation to human hearts: “Immerse yourself in the mixing bowl if your heart has the strength, if it believes you will rise up again to the one who sent the krater below, if it recognises the purpose of your coming to be.”

All those who heeded the proclamation and immersed themselves in mind [ebaptisanto tou noös] partook of knowledge [gnôseôs] and became perfect humans when they had received mind.

[tr. copenhaver, amended.]

There are many interesting features to this passage, including the divine initiator, the resolution and will of the candidate, and the emphasis on the heart – they are worthy of meditation. The text goes on to disparage those unable to understand the message, or those given over to the appetites of the world; it is one of the more ascetic and negative of the Hermetica. The theme was clearly thought central by ancient Hermeticists: Zosimos, father of Alchemy, makes pointed reference to it in his exhortation to Theosebia to plunge into the krater; his own visions contained a dramatic transformation in a vast altar-vessel. Recent scholarly attempts to reconstruct the initiatory practice behind the Hermetica have assigned this tract to an early, ascetic stage of the candidate’s progress, and its world-hating rhetoric is understood as specific to that stage – a preparation for the more exalted palingenesis [rebirth] of CH.XIII, in which Hermes hymns the presence of the divine throughout the material cosmos

The cultural foibles of late antique Alexandria are not ours, and the confusion of the flesh with a prison has done much and enduring harm – especially when severed from that later vision of the god-breathed kosmos – but there is still great wisdom here. Given how often references to the krater are accompanied on the one hand by exhortations to self-knowledge and withdrawal into silence, and on the other contempt for the ways of the masses, I think modern scholarship is right to accord it an early position in the Hermetic way; the most perceptive scholars have also noticed that the symbolism transfers back and forth between the vessel full of mind and the candidate as a vessel to be cleansed before receiving divine power. Both valences are present at once in our ritual. (Similar exhortations to states of mental emptiness and receptivity are, as Eric Dodds noted decades ago, also present in the Chaldaean Oracles.) All this – for me – is hidden under the deceptively simple surface of the Calyx, a rite which I therefore regard as one that links me not only to my ancestor magicians who raised their hands every day in the same ritual, but further back to the Hermetic seekers and Gnostics of Alexandria plunging themselves into the well of mind.

What might the Hermetica teach us about the Calyx? It bolsters our sense that it is a rite of the reception of divine force, and one intended to transform the magician. The exhortations to practice self-knowledge, meditation or asceticism which appear in krater texts make intuitive sense as part of a foundational modern magical regimen. The disdain for the masses and the hierarchy of souls are less comfortable topics for modern sensibilities: without seeking to make ancient culture conform to our own, one sense in which this might be understood is as a description of the results of magical training. A consequence of repeated practice of the Calyx, alongside the other foundational rituals, is simply a greater awareness of – and control over – mental processes. Sometimes this can prompt a paranoiac reading of the world when one notices how many products and people seek to manipulate others’ psyches; more often it brings the candidate face-to-face with unpalatable truths about his own compulsions, self-excuses, or simply poor habits. It also frequently dims their attraction, and offers the possibility of stepping beyond them – if the magician is willing to embrace change. Given how much like death real change can appear, it’s hardly surprising that this often prompts the first serious crisis of the magician’s path. And from this position, it is easy to share the ascetic scorn of CH IV: all the more so in our age of new and more gleaming snares of the mind. But as the Hermetica also remind us: that’s not the whole story.

Two further small and useful points from our dip into the ancients. Where we instinctively reach for the word ‘energy’ to describe what we use in magic, we might equally reach for the ancient equivalent of ‘mind’ in the Hermetic sense. That is not to ‘psychologise’ magic, but to say that we live in a cosmos utterly permeated by noetic power, in infinite modulation and variety – and that we are part of it, and it part of us. This is the basis of our work. What is this mind? CH X.23 tells us οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ ἀγαθὸς δαίμων – ‘this [mind] is the Agathodaimon’, a figure of immediate interest to Ogdoadic magicians and other Hermeticists, and who will prompt a return to the Hermetica in a few posts’ time. The second point is this: though the word ‘calyx’ puts us in mind of the cup, the word has other harmonies as well, derived ultimately from καλύπτω, to conceal. Thus the calyx – the thick, green protecting leaves – conceal and protect the rose as it grows. The grail, too, is often depicted as a covered cup.

The Mirror of the Kosmos: Inner Alchemy and the Body of Light

You might very well ask, then, what is happening inside the calyx? Or what effect its repeated practice is supposed to have? Here is what Denning and Phillips say:

“As in all magical operations involving the central column energies, whether visualised as the downward-coursing light or as the Centers of Activity themselves, the primary domain of controlled function is the astrosome. Initially, therefore, the effect of such practices is likely to consist solely in the increase and harmonization of energy patterns within the astral body. But this is only the beginning of the process, for through continual and regular use of these practices, higher and more inward faculties of the psyche will become increasingly involved in the work, and a true harmony and interaction of forces will thus be wrought through all levels of the psyche.”

(TMP, III.9n.)

Note the emphasis – consistent through their work – that it is only repeated practice which allows the fullness of the rite to unfurl. There are two additional implications that are useful to note. First, the stress on the astral effects of the rite underscores the link between the explicitly magical works and the programme of mental training (meditation, scrying, astral projection) which make up the foundational work of the tradition. Regular invocation of divine force should and does aid in the opening of the subtle faculties. The second implication is that the Calyx is the first of a series of techniques that cleanse, fortify, open and empower the subtle body through the use of its central channel: most obviously this is true of the Rousing, a close equivalent to the Middle Pillar, but the same basic technique is modified into methods of rapid empowerment, projection, consecration and even invocation and assumption of god-forms. One development not outlined in TMP is into a form of healing, a method for which becomes obvious after some practice; the formula has also been developed into a method of sublimation and transformation of difficult or unwanted forces.

The Calyx is therefore the first step in a work of inner alchemy, one which awakens the microcosmic reflections of the powers and begins to move them towards equilibration. I will explore this inner alchemy more when we come to focus on the Rousing itself. Some of its effects have already been sketched above, so it is perhaps worth noting a few others. Increasing awareness of the way much of the world seeks to stimulate us (generally for profit or control) via our instincts is a particular instance of a more general sharpening of a sense of how our instincts work; one may also become aware of the way our thinking has bent to this or that dogma, that certain habits are not in our full control, or that one’s taste for various forms of passivity has diminished. It is also not uncommon to notice certain physical pains or tensions that that one had until now kept repressed and unconscious. Changing these is all to the good, though very public announcements of grand changes to one’s life (or The Great Reordering of The Universe, Shattering of the Aeons, Revelation of The Sole Mystic Truth) are best avoided, if only because these may in retrospect appear embarrassing. An undervalued power of the magician is silence.

The other result of unfogging one’s personal magic mirror is a greater sensitivity to people and places. Sometimes this manifests as auric perception, but sometimes as a clear and unmistakable gut feeling about individuals: inner discrimination ought to be ruthlessly applied to hone this faculty and free it of the dross of prejudice, because rightly used it is invaluable. The faculty extends beyond people to buildings and spaces; for magicians living in cities, especially, it can start as a strong and undefinable impulse to find greenery and nature, and it can be developed into an ability to properly feel the land (this can be, however, quite an overwhelming experience.) These effects perhaps underline the value of the Setting of the Wards of Power in ensuring the opening of this faculty is under our control, rather than the reverse.

On the Magical Use of the Calyx

All of the foregoing is taken from practice and reflection on this little rite: it is my belief that meditations and elaborations of this kind feed back powerfully into the ritual form. Perhaps that appetite for detail and history is no surprise, given my ascendant sits on the cusp between the first and second decan of Virgo. One Virgo quality, which can be set to use by the working magician, is a willingness to practice and perfect – but in its unbalanced form, that inclination to perfection can be paralysing and even disrupt the state of relaxed awareness needed for magical practice. (As a magician with lots of strong Air placements, too, it was the work of relaxation and letting go of the endlessly diffractive analytical mind which was by far the most difficult and rewarding lesson of early practice.) Though I think the magical use of scholarship – that is, reading serious work with a magician’s eyes as well as a scholar’s – is immensely useful for us, I would not want to give the impression that any of the foregoing is necessary to work or even to perfect the Calyx. It is simply one way of deepening the practice. I therefore conclude with these brief notes on practical applications.

First, Denning and Phillips’s comments on the rite: this ‘fundamental technique … aligns the practitioner with the forces of the cosmos and awakens awareness of the counterparts of those forces with the psyche.’ It thus encapsulates the ‘chief method and purpose’ of high magic. The formula is ‘variously employed as a psychic energiser, as a mode of adoration, or as a preparatory formula for the bringing through of power’ – they go on to highlight its use in the advanced formulae of transubstantiation or evocation as a gratulatio, a thanksgiving and a balancing at the end of magical work, and stress its use as a ‘complete “spiritual toner” in its own right” and commend its frequent use. Study of the advanced ritual formulae help develop this sketch: it is notable, for instance, that in work calling for the projection of force (as in a consecration) a different method is used, which draws power up as well as down the central column. These differences are not haphazard.

In my own practice, I have used the Calyx in most of the ways outlined above. That is to say, I usually use it as a prayer to begin and end the day; it combines well with the practice of solar adoration. I have also used it as an empowerment: obviously it is used as such daily in the Setting of the Wards, but personally I have also found it useful ahead of difficult mundane situations, or prior to events where I’m aware there is likely to be either conflict or hostility (here it is useful to conclude with a certain ‘hardening’ of the edge of the aura in visualisation.) Perhaps paradoxically, I have also found the Calyx useful in sensitisation – so I tend to use it prior to divination, or scrying, or when opening my senses to the land in a given place. (I should mention that it is also my experience that a well-performed Calyx might wake up presences which have been passive, resting or waiting.)

The form may also be developed into a slightly more sustained meditation than it currently is. The column of light may be sustained for several cycles of breath, arms extended, allowing awareness of the descending light – infinite, brilliant and unburning – to flood through the body, drawing to mind awareness of the twin powers of mercy and severity, warrior and lawgiver, on either side. After several cycles of this, the rest of the Calyx should proceed as normal, without further suspension, though some greater time may be spent in contemplation at its end. This simple expansion is – in my experience – quite powerful. It also brings us to a theme I will develop more fully in the future, but which is worth noting here: for this meditative expansion to work, the other practices of the central column – especially the rousing – need to be properly developed. With a little work, that is, the subtle body practices form a magical virtuous circle, in which they deepen and enrich each other, and reinforce each other’s power.

This tour around a very simple ritual has been extensive but not exhaustive: I hope it has given food for thought, and suggested that there are depths to be found in the contemplation and practice of even the simplest rites. In our next discussion, we will look at its use in a ritual of exorcism, which is also a miniature ritual drama of the creation itself –– The Setting of the Wards of Power.

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