(this is rough…it's something i'm working on and working out).

I grow weary of students who seek to make everything as complicated as possible. Firstly, I find the need usually arises out of pure ego, the desire to make oneself seem like hot shit; and secondly, magic isn't really all that complicated.  If you need to make it excessively complex, dependent on any number of material items, you're doing it wrong. 

Part of the problem arises, I believe, because novices don't have the experience that would allow for purely theoretical instruction combined with praxis. Instead, of necessity, emphasis is put on various tools and equations, charms, and mantras.These focus the mind, open up the energy channels, and, if used correctly, help develop the necessary psi-talents for sensing/seeing and interacting with the planes of power. That takes time, however, and it's all too easy to become fixated on the tools themselves. You see this with many ceremonialists who must have the perfect ring, or a breast plate that is just so, or this robe, or that crystal. that isn't magic. Magic isn't worked by way of any of those things. They are at best tools and conduits of the will and they can be helpful in focusing the mind. 

I've yet to come up with an effective way of teaching magic without going through a phase where one uses all the tools. It just takes time to learn to see, interact with and effect the magical plane. it's a hard leap for a student to make. For most, the tools are meant to bridge that gap and siphon off some of the mental strain. It's way, way too easy, however, to become overly tied to these tools and fancy ceremonies and i haven't come up with a way to avoid that in students. But I digress. I want to turn for a moment to what magic really is, the why of it, and where it's worked. 

All magic is about negative space. It's about the space between things. Science teaches us that everything is energy in motion, whirling atoms. Everything is in flux and flow. Magic affects the flow. It alters and shifts the space between realities, between things, the place where a thing rests. We're used to focusing on the concrete physicality of objects and this corporeal bias gets carried over naturally, into our magical practice as well. It's very limiting. To truly affect the flux and flow of power, to cause a thing to happen, or block a thing from occurring, to create opportunities or take them way and any number of other actions, all one has to do is work with the negative space. It takes much less raw power and much, much more focused skill. 

Basically, it's about attractions: of one thing to another, of a thing to its shape, energy to its path, the relation and inter-relation of things. Attraction is all about covalent bonds. Magic has the power to affect the bonds. It can shift the rhythm of a thing. One need not have a tremendous degree of power to do this. There's a lovely quote by Balzac that i learned long ago: "Power is not revealed by striking hard, or striking often, but in striking true." This is absolutely the case with magic. What it does take is an understanding of the power of negative space and a developed ability to see and work within it. it's not the thing itself that's important. what's important is how it's connected to every other thing, and the spaces around it where it is not every other thing. What's important are its weak spots, and how easily they can be influenced. A magician must know where one is able to push the hardest for best effect with least amount of resistance and effort. Basically, don't focus on affecting the person or thing, focus on affecting everything around that person or thing: every relationship, every bit of space, every connection. Do that and you own the situation. You can do what you like. It's all about that shift in focus, of where to focus. 

Magic is all about how things react to each other. The magician is a chemist, bringing about specific reactions.  It's not about affecting a thing itself, but about affecting the way it's connected to every other thing. Essentially, magic is a combination of quantum physics and string theory (my teacher looked at string theory and dryly commented that science had finally discovered wyrd). When training, first a magician must accept and know that this is possible, that the negative spaces are there; then with training he or she learns to sense or see those connections and negative space, the flows of power. Finally, with training and lots and lots of practice (and usually a good percentage of trial and error too), the magician learns to manipulate them. the hardest hurdle is often accepting that we are not at all limited by what we think of reality. Physicality is only one means of engaging with the world. There is so much more that we do not see…like the negative space. 

Think on the spaces between the physical world and all the others. That's where power flows and where it can be accessed to best effect. It's all chemistry and physics. The magician has to know those spaces are there, has to be able to tap into them, and then, having established that awareness and connection, has to be able to animate it. Half the  point of magical training is becoming a person on the planes of power. Power is the coin of those realms and we are judged by how neatly and well we are able to wield it. That is worth remembering, before cracking open the first book on evocation. 

Those who learn Ceremonial and Goetic magic are taught from the very beginning that our first line of defense is the magical circle. This is the circle of protection wherein the magician stands that is said to protect him or her from any threat. It's considered essential for any magical working, the first tool in the tool box, the first weapon in a magician's arsenal. I believe it is absolutely crucial, just not for the reasons generally given. 

Too much import is invested in the physical, tangible circle, in the names and sigils and letters drawn around its borders. That is not where the protection comes from. Those things are a lens through which the magician can work, reflections of an understanding and a process of spiritual and magical connectivity that should have already happened. If it hasn't, the best circle in the world won't protect a one and if it has, then the physical accoutrements aren't necessary. Given the way I was taught, I'm very much of the school of "if you can't do it naked at 2am in an empty room you can't do it" mentality. This doesn't mean that i automatically dispensed with tools, rather it means i was forced to examine and study why we used them and what their real purpose was. What is the theory behind each tool? What is the magician trying to accomplish by its use? It's all too easy to get caught up in form and forget function. Nowhere is this more evident, at least in my opinion, than in circles of evocation. 

The protective circle of the magician serves several purposes: 

1. Protection: this probably sounds like a no-brainer but the circle itself isn't doing the protecting; rather it's a visible representation of an esoteric construct, an understanding, an access to lines of power that the magician should already have created. the real circle isn't contained within any chalk outline or colored cord, rather it's something the magician carries with him or her always. it's the lens through which he sees the world, the cosmology in which she is rooted. It's all the lines of power to which he has access and all the allies the magus has made. It's everything that informs their world and esoteric worldview. Two magicians, no matter how similarly they were trained will never (or should never) have the same protective circle. Their internal construction, their alliances, the way they access power will, at least in small ways, be different. A circle is a very, very personal thing. When I teach magic, I force my students to examine their world-views, their cosmologies, their unique way of looking at the world, and their unique relationships with the Powers. They have to work out for themselves what their best circle might be. I may shield someone within the scope of my circle, but that is a far thing from another magician trying to *work* with my construct. Circles are an expression of personal mastery and part of that is, as the oracle of Delphi cautioned: knowing thyself. Know yourself, your motivations, and what you truly believe about the world inside and out. The corollary to this, by the way, is that the circle will change and evolve as the magician does (or should). 

For instance, when I initially trained, I was taught to use a full Solomonic circle yet I reject the Abrahamic worldview and very few of the Beings named in the crafting of the visual representation of the circle meant anything to me. It was very hard to invest with power. Once i thought about it and thought about what my personal cosmology was, and Whom I would call upon if I were ever in danger and threatened and needed to call upon a Power,  i dispensed with the Solomonic circle and created my own, rooted in those places from which I draw my power. that is essential: the circle is a magnifier of one's personal power. It is the framework through which the magician can access her lines of power. If the names on the circle don't mean anything to you, it's not going to do that. It's especially not going to do that if the magician doesn't even really believe in the existence of the Powers upon which he 's calling for protection…and many of them don't. 

2. Calling Card: The circle provides a snapshot, a slice of who you are, with Whom you're allied, to Whom you're in debt, and Who might owe you…all things by which many spirits define personhood. It's the equivalent of a business card, or the old fashioned name cards that a Regency era lady might leave when making the rounds of her neighbors on morning visits. It gives whatever you are summoning a means of identifying you. You don't just bring yourself into the circle; you bring an interlocking network of alliances that define you in esoteric reality. This is actually massive protection if you think about it: without the magician having done anything other than essentially show up, he or she has announced clearly his or her place in the hierarchy of power within which he or she is working. The magician has announced the Powers that may be called upon in an emergency and that may be vexed should harm come to their ally. The power and number of one's allies is a hint to the power and strength the magus too, something that isn't overlooked by many spirits. 

3. Pomp and Circumstance: the care taken with the circle shows respect to the Beings that one is calling. If a magician doesn't know herself to the core, then there is no competent circle. This will become immediately apparent as an evocation progresses. By dotting one's i's and crossing one's t's, the magician is showing respect for the strength and danger of the Powers being called. It's like military pomp and circumstance: could the soldiers do their job without all the fuss? of course, but it is a matter of protocol and morale, acknowledgement of hierarchy, and respect.  A properly crafted circle gives you life in the planes of magic. It demarcates each parties responsibilities and expectations.  It makes you a player in a very, very ancient game of power. Part of power is knowing when formalities are essential and part of power lies in knowing to the -enth degree the limits of one's power. The arrogance that I see cultivated --undeservedly---by many Western magicians is not an expression of power. It's what they play with instead of power. 

In the end, a truly skilled magician doesn't need to draw anything on the floor---no fancy diagrams, no elaborate circles, no embroidered regalia. The circle should be an integral part of him, something that can be called forth at a moments notice to redefine his world. 

This is down and dirty, short, and to the point - just what I like in my magical instructions because really, if you're concentrating on the bling, you're not concentrating on getting anything done. This brief article is the first of what i hope to be a series (if i am able to effectively pry it out of my friend L.) on working with the Goetic spirits. In our work, we tend to throw ceremonial traditions on their head. We understand the theory. We've been well trained in it, and because of that, we understand that the trappings are but a lens through which to access the technologies. They're not the technology itself. These lenses, moreover, are specifically imprinted to each individual time, culture and place. Many of them are also so assed up as to be utterly absurd. Nearly all of them that have come down to us rooted in Judeo-Christian theologies, are also based on a paradigm of control and coercion…the same type of attitude that brought us--as one of my early teachers would be the first to point out-- the Doctrine of Discovery, the Conquest of the Americas, colonialism and the destruction of countless indigenous traditions. (Thank you, G).  You'd think by now magicians might have rethought the whole thing but no, we do the same things in the same way over and over gain. Einstein, by the way, called that madness, especially when we keep expecting different results. 

Now, magical theory as i was taught tells the magus that he or she is in complete control of the sacred space. S/he is the personification of "God," a  microcosm of a greater hierarchical macrocosm. It is through this assumption of divine personification that the magician becomes imbued with the power to summon other beings.  Traditional magical theory also has it that Goetic beings are dangerous and the magician must be sure to stand within his circle, maintain his little triangle and behave like a complete and utter ass. Think about it. You're a Goetic being going about your work and suddenly -- regardless of whether or not it's convenient--you're summoned by forcible use of your sigil to a magician's triangle. you're not greeted with any respect or courtesy, nor are you given any offerings. Instead, you're ordered about -- often for dubious or stupid purposes--, threatened, coerced, and at times tortured. I"d be pretty pissed off too. Fortunately my teachers weren't idiots and hopefully neither am I. We decided to go about it a different way. We decided to approach the Goetic tribes with respect. amazing the results too. 

What follows is a brief article from a member of my lodge on how she approaches this type of work. It came out of a conversation several of us had this past weekend. Whether or not you agree with us, you can't say we're hoarding knowledge to ourselves (not that i think this is necessarily a bad thing sometimes) and you can't say we don't make you think. Enjoy. 

L.'s Super-Nifty Ancestral Goetic Downloads Volume 1
By L. 

Many traditional Ceremonial Magicians come to bad ends, and there’s a reason for that. When you look at the mindset, summoning and ordering are acts of supreme arrogance. Goetic Beings are ancient, powerful, and supremely intelligent. Humans are shortsighted and hubristic. It would behoove the Ceremonial Magician to remember that their lifespan is but the blink of an eye to the Goetic nations. Humans are all finite and mortal: they will all weaken, get sick, lose their strength and faculties and die. If a magus acts like an asshole to a Goetic Being, all they have to do is wait 5 seconds in their time and then demolish said asshole gleefully.

It would do a world of good for the magus to approach as if, in the space of five minutes in human time, their circle and seals and all their implements will disappear, leaving them at the mercy of their summoned Guest. The word of the day should be respect, closely followed by alliance. I would say that the first time the magicians evoke a Being, they should not ask for anything. They should have offerings, gifts for their honored Guest. That is hospitality and courtesy. The magicians should make it clear that they know the power and brilliance of their Guest and are there to request the formation of an alliance built on mutual respect, and that will be mutually beneficial.

The Goetia are ancient and brilliant…the very thought that a human would summon them, command them, and treat them as if They were put here to serve said human is obnoxious. It adds insult to injury to summon such a Being and then refuse to speak to or communicate with them apart from issuing orders. The breadth of Their knowledge is immense. A wise human would listen.


(Sophie: i just have to add that it never hurts to be courteous. I think far too many people come to magic so they can stroke their egos, pretend to be bigger and more important than they are, act like dicks, and strut around like impotent peacocks. I'm more interested in getting shit done). 

I've been thinking a lot about magic lately and the changes that the active practice of magic make in the magician. i am glad i'm not apprenticing now. I see the garbage that's out there, the feel good pabulum presenting itself as knowledge. I don't know how I would have fared were I coming up in the Art these days. I was really lucky: my training was old fashioned and severe. I was never allowed to forget for one moment what magic was: the application of power. I hated it at the time but i could sense, smell, the threads of power there; every so often i tasted the glory of its revelation and that was enough to keep me going until i realized my teachers were right. The discipline was essential. 

It's a truism amongst us that magic changes as person. The one who began learning is not the same person in any way, shape, or form, as the one who reaches adept level. I see a lot of bullshit being touted as magic on the market today, most of it written to cater to the New Age market, suffering from an excess of WASP ethics. Forget all of that. Magic is power and it is the application of power to take care of oneself and one's people. Period. To be really good at it, a magician must seek power as avidly as an addict seeks his next fix, as consistently as the average person seeks love and pleasure, or success, or money, well being or whatever it is the average person seeks. I wouldn't know. Those things too go up  very early on in the altar of one's training and if the discipline is not there in training magic doesn't just change a person, it eats them up, spits them out: it destroys them. 

Ironically though, insofar as those "good things" in life are concerned, one acquires them in time, if one is a competent magician. They come because one has learned to order one's life both physically and esoterically in ways that encourage them, in ways that allow abundance to flow, in ways that summon it. By the time one can do that, however, one's priorities may have radically changed. One's relationship with those things might be very different because there is a ruthlessness about high level magic, real magic. there has to be. 

One of the first exercises an aspiring magician should learn (and these basics are shared across various disciplines not just magic) is grounding and centering. The usual analog is for the student to be told to imagine a tree. This is a good analog. In Norse magic, in Kabbalah, in several other systems too the image of the World Tree is a powerful one in esoteric lore. We work and work for years to learn how to ground and center properly, how to send energy down into the earth, and into otherworldly places, and we learn how to draw it up and channel it into the physical world. Thus passes the first several years of training. 

What no one ever talks about though is the work that comes after that, after the roots of the tree are established. Then one works on the branches, on reaching out, making connections with the sepiroth, with the various worlds, with the places of power with which one will work, making connections, alliances, and learning to link into all of them at once. The magician stands in place of the Tree, connected above and below to realms of power and he or she learns to maintain those connections and to allow those lines, those rushing flood-tide rivers of power to flow into her and then --without any apology or hesitation--opens up and wields them on the human world at large. That's magic. The magician is the lens through which massive lines of power are focused, and it is the magician's will that's doing the focusing. 

Much of the severity of training is designed to ready the student over a period of years to endure that. Discipline is essential. I just laugh when the average New Ager, fruit of the hippy womb comes up to me babbling about "Magick" and yet they have no physical endurance to any discomfort, and their emotional resiliency is nil. They are committed and loyal to nothing. They do what makes them feel good and avoid any challenge.  No. I don't think so. It is sometimes hard not to play with such people but they are so earnest in their errors. I have long ago disciplined myself in such cases to be kind, usually.

Let me give a better, more accurate exactly of how a magician thinks. A good magician calculates the potential value of every person he or she meets. A good magician is always aware of power dynamics and where he or she sits within them. A good magician is generally calculating several steps ahead on how he or she may acquire better positioning or at least avoid inconvenience. Power games grow tiring after awhile and after a certain point in one's work, are no longer necessary but the awareness of it is always there.

 If all of this sounds quite ruthless it is and let's not pretend that modern ethics and morals have any use in magic. The sooner a student can be eased away from them the better. That is not to say a magician should be without morals. I think that would be a very, very dangerous thing indeed. Rather I think a magician's moral code evolves out of the magic he or she studies and therefore it is necessary and good to balance such training with devotional practice, with piety, with the structure of a strong, supportive House. I had that, early on and I learned that magic has a cost, that nothing's free, and that a House takes care of its own. 

Since I began to advance in magic, I have been quite often referred to as cold---not by other magicians mind you, not by my House and my friends, spouse, and teachers, not by those who have gained entry into my inner circle of friends and loved ones and who know me well, but by those outside that, who see only my professional facade. I can be. I save my commitments for my own. I may feel a thing deeply but dependent upon my commitments those feelings may not motivate action. I may be capable of tremendous passion but i channel it in very specific ways. emotions and emotional attachments are sources of power or loss of power and need to be approached as such. One should not squander and waste power. For women who come into the Art, this is often a steep hurdle to overcome (though it was not, in my case). 

Even amongst traditionally trained magicians --who are not immune to the culture in which they were raised no more than anyone is immune---it is sometimes difficult for them to see a woman wielding power ruthlessly and without apology. This is usually where a cultural disconnect happens. I have a good friend who is a priest and grows continually weary of people expecting her to be nurturing and motherly. She is not and am not. Neither of us give any indication that we are or will be and yet people insist in their own minds that because we are female this will be the result. They build up expectations that have no bearing in reality and become upset when we prove quite, quite different. As women, there is a cultural expectation that we will cater to others needs. This is occasionally problematic for female magicians and it complicates training: there are powerful barriers of social conditioning that must be overcome; and make no mistake: they must be dispensed with sooner rather than later. 

 Quite recently I was discussing case studies with a friend, who is also a magician similarly trained as I. She'd recently had a client consult her about a love affair gone wrong. There had been a bad break up and it was largely due to the man's inability to keep it zipped. The client wanted ..well, she wouldn't say precisely what she wanted. She came to my friend wanting to know her options yet she was almost incapable of admitting that she was even angry at the guy. She wanted, let me tell you, retribution but she wanted it without taking culpability for either the desire, the attendant anger, or the results. She simply would not admit she was angry. My friend called her on it, and then told her the options of course. Neither of us has time for bullshit, but both of us see this type of thing more often than I can count. 

this is incomprehensible to any well trained magician. One: admit your emotions and deal with them. Two: decide what you want to do and do it. If you want vengeance, fine but don't hedge. Own your emotions, own your desires and stop worrying about being a "good little girl." It's a huge cognitive leap for way too many people. 

Now, my general rule of thumb in going about my day is simple: don't be an asshole. Being a magician doesn't give anyone an excuse to act like a total jerk. Courtesy and kindness are not misplaced actions, but they're decisions, choices, conscious behaviors. They are useful disciplines in and of themselves. Lack of control after all in any venue is not a virtue in magic and there are more important things than the acquisition of power. This article however, is specifically about the inner nature and mindset of a good magician….i'm not talking about piety or relationships or how one should behave as a decent human being. I'm talking about a very specific area of one's life, a very specific avocation taken out of the context of a greater community life. 

With that being said, what qualities are the most usual, perhaps even necessarily in a student of magic? Well, being nice doesn't make the list. One should be bright. It's not enough just to be willing either. One should have a measurable degree of a psi-gift---it doesn't really matter which one though empathy and sight are the easiest to work with. If you don't have a high level of psi-talent, develop it. the basic exercises are useful for doing so. There is nothing more tiresome and irritating than someone well meaning who is both dim and almost head-blind, but who insists they're magicians.  It's not my job to challenge anyone on their self-definition of choice (unless that person comes to me as a student then it becomes my job) so I'm inclined to give people who come to me the benefit of the doubt. But when I have someone who is convinced he or she is a spirit-worker or a magician (two different things, i might add) but then, in the midst of a conversation about oh i don't know, say energetic taint asks "well how do you know it's there?" when to anyone with a decent level of psi ability it's glaringly obvious,…well, that shit gets old mighty quick and it just seems to rude to say "you're way out of your pay grade, honey." 

Part of the problem I suspect is the idea that this Art is accessible to anyone. It's not. It's not even always accessible to those of us who want it badly and who are willing to make the requisite personal sacrifices…no more than musical virtuosity or mathematical genius might be. Like any other craft of value, it takes a tremendous amount of work and most of that is not in spells and exercises, it's in honing the will and carving out a character worthy of enduring without breaking, without becoming corrupt, without becoming mad; and that is not something that's going to be found in the latest feel good tidbit of new age philosophy.