THE POWER OF THEURGY

‘Now you drink that down, Larry
Tell me how you feel
Oh, I feel goddamn weird D. Wayne
Do you feel the spirit?
I feel the spirit comin' to me
Are you changin' Larry?
I can change
Are you changin' from what you once were?
I can change, man I can change
You have the power to do as the Lord does
And remember Larry God has power
God has power
And if one does as God does enough times
You will become as God is
Feel the spirit movin' through you, Larry
As we go back
Back to the beat of the heart
Back to me and you, Larry
Now sing me a sad, sweet spiritual’

-         Alabama Three ‘Sister Rosetta’

  

He worships dogs and reptiles

He blackens his eyes with soot like a prostitute

He dances and plays the cymbals in vile nilotic rites…What one worships, one becomes’

Nile ‘Vile Nilotic Rites’

 

OK so not much to say after those opening quotes. Theurgy. You act like God, you become Godlike. In ritual, you wear the mask or the costume, you say the words, you make the moves. You remember, you act out, you merge. 

This is not just magic, it is religion. Consider the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. Loyola asks his monks to meditate on the sufferings of Christ in visceral and sense-engaging ways. See the blood, feel the pain of the wounds, hear the clamour of the crowd, put yourself there, be as Christ was, and you become Christ-like. I was not brought up Roman Catholic, and I found Catholic sensibilities to be over the top and tasteless when I was young. All those bleeding hearts and doves and plastic statues. Now I think it is populist theurgy. We remind ourselves of who Christ and Mary and the saints are, and that reminding is not just in our thoughts but in our senses. 

I have not meditated on the sufferings of Christ but I have done a three day ritual on the sufferings of Loki. Step by step I approached him as he lay bound on his rock, his lips sewn together, his screams silent and earth shattering. Loki had lost his children, remember, the ones he had by Angrbodr the Jotun. The gods had bound Fenriz his wolf son simply for growing too big. The gods had sewn his lips together and now he could not even speak his sorrow and rage. He could only long for Ragnarok. Freedom, and destruction. After the ritual, my head was Loki's happy playground for a week or so. He got into my dreams, memorably so, lost my stuff, and generally caused mischief. I was getting frankly pissed off with him. In the end, he confronted me with a true thing about myself, a positive thing I had never acknowledged. He made me say it to myself. Then he went away. Loki, huh.

Grant Morrison, chaos magician and author of the Invisibles Comics for Vertigo, has some simple and clear exposition of this idea. He is also good on sigil magic.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXBePJ42kdE&t=3661s

Let us say you want to do a ritual for prosperity. Feel yourself prosperous. Feel yourself in luxury. You are wonderfully warm and comfortable, wearing fine clothes, drinking fine wine, surrounded by admirers. Or you are in the cutest cottage by the sea, cool salt wind caressing you as you sit on the deck overlooking the sea. Whatever spins. Don't just imagine it, feel it with your senses. Who is a being of prosperity and worldly happiness? Perhaps Jupiter, kindly sky god who oversees all on earth. So go see him, but make yourself like him. Take a glass of the best wine, a perfect strawberry, a small model of a luxury car for your altar. Dress in your best clothes. This is one way of doing theurgy. 

A similar vibe occurs with the Shamanic practice of merging with helping spirits. Wear the antlers, dance the stag, sing the song Stag taught you, become the stag. This is a lot more than faking it until you make it, or acting as if. The merge is the merge. All the costumes in the world won't give you the power, and yet the costumes (in some traditions) are also necessary. 

In left hand path magic, one of the goals is to become a god. I have no interest in becoming a god, because I have had a go at acausality and the karma-free life and I love the world far too much to want to be beyond it. But I can get theurgy as a way of aligning myself with the powers or deities I work with. Much of magic is lining up yourself with the true grain of the universe, and then manipulating that alignment.  

So, are deities, entities and powers 'real'? Or are they imaginary? Yes, they are. I have generally been theistic in my practice. I started with the assumption that I was visiting real entities who exist in Non Ordinary Reality. But I am also aware that my history, culture, and expectations influence my experiences. I have seen so many images of Lucifer, say, where I just shake my head and go no, no, not like that, oh for fuck's sake, no - and yet those images may be deeply personal and true to someone else. Crowley wisely pointed out it is best to be agnostic about these things. Just take the ride, for now. 

And as always, blessings on you, gentle reader.