Greetings, gentle reader.
This is an outroduction. Its main purpose is to refer you to the Introduction, the first post. PLEASE READ THE INTRODUCTION FIRST. This blog is meant to be read like a book. This blog has a beginning, various sorts of middle, and an end.
This is the end.
Blessings on you.
This an idiosyncratic guide to resources, mostly books. Everything in here relates to this blog in one way or another. It is not exhaustive. It does not cover articles or social media or anything I have only half read. I am bound to forget something significant. It is light on women authors, and at first I thought that it was because the voice of women is poorly heard in this space. I may be wrong about this. It also skews Eurocentric, because that is the kind of magic with which I am familiar. Some books I literally inherited and are very old. In the 1980's I began a Masters Degree in History with the topic Occult and Esoteric Practices in New Zealand Before 1945, so some of the books are from that time. Many are now in the common domain and you can get free PDF's. At times I will make comments.
BOOKS
HISTORY OF MAGIC
Briggs, Katharine M British Folk Tales and Legends: A Sampler 1977. Folk magic lasts longer than religion. And longer than ceremonial magic too, probably.
Copenhaver, Brian The Book of Magic: From Antiquity to the Englightenment 2015
Gardner, Gerald B Witchcraft Today: Secrets of the Witch Cult Revealed 1954. Stunningly lurid, absolutely of its time, now almost unreadable; we have to remember that Gardner was such an important figure in the development of the Craft.
Gilbert, RA The Golden Dawn: Twilight of the Magicians 1983. Has a foreword by Israel Regardie
Harrison, Michael The Roots of Witchcraft 1974
Howe, Ellic The Magicians of the Golden Dawn 1972. Tells of the implosion of the GD by competing talents and egos.
Hutton, Ronald The Triumph of the Moon 1999. Best for the early part of the book, which described the antecedents of modern pagan witchcraft. He nicely collapses the distinction between high and low magic maps onto witchcraft.
Lachman, Gary Politics and the Occult: the Left, the Right and the Radically Unseen 2008
Levi, Eliphas The History of Magic 1913. I think my copy is a first edition. Also describes operative magic.
Turner, Palmer (ed) The Heptarchia Mystica of John Dee 1986. Dee is important because his experience of angels was not at all angelic in the new age sense. His angels demanded group sex, and eventually got it. Even the most cerebral of magics comes down to sex in the end.
Valiente, Doreen An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present 1973. This particular copy has stamped on it 'Hillmorton High School Library. Reference Only'. I imagine sitting in a high school library reading about how to make witches' ointment at the tender age of 14 or so. Valiente was a major figure in the development of British Wicca, but she was new to me when I inherited the book.
GRIMOIRES, BOOKS OF MAGICAL PRAXIS
Chappell, Helen The Waxing Moon: a Gentle Guide to Magic 1974. Reads like it's 1974. Sweet.
Crowley, Aleister 777 undated. This is a book of correspondences, for the paths of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, which include sexual acts and sexual fluids etc and their correspondences to planets, numbers and so on.
Crowley, Aleister Magick in Theory and Practice 1976. Begins with the gorgeous, transgressive Io Pan! evocation which is a ritual in itself.
Echols, Damien High Magick 2018. Damien Echols of the Memphis Three spent years on death row for a murder he did not commit. He survived by practicing what is basically Golden Dawn ceremonial magick. Excellent for anyone making excuses for not doing the thing. If he can do it on death row, with no special tools from the local witchy shop, you can damn well do it in your bedroom. He now has a YouTube channel.
Ecouteux, Claude The Book of Grimoires 2002. More wide reaching than Peterson (see below) but less thorough. These together give a great outline of 'low' magic practiced by cunning people in the early modern period.
Fries, Jan Seidways: shaking, swaying and serpent mysteries 2009. Fries' unique take on the Norse magic of Seidr, it is a form of bodywork that has some implications for sex magic.
Loyola, St Ignatius The Spiritual Exercises trans. Thomas Corbishley 1973. Medieval bodywork lol. Iggy's highly ritualized explorations of the interior imaginal world mirror that of the ceremonial magician.
Levi, Eliphas Transcendental Magic 1972. Levi gave us modern interpretations of many magical staples such as the pentagram, and Baphomet.
Mason, Asenath Lilith: Dark Feminine Archetype 2018
Mathers, SL McGregor The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage 1975
Peterson, Joseph Grimorium Verum 2007. Fairly kick-ass as grimoires go, my favourite spell is to extinguish a fire. And to make two ladies or two gentlemen dance in the nude. Cf Lecouteux above.
Waite, Arthur Edward The Wordsworth Book of Spells 1992. This is the latest iteration of Waite's The Book of Ceremonial Magic from 1911
SEX MAGIC AND MAGICAL SEX
Alexandrian, Sarane The Great Work of the Flesh: Sexual Magic East and West 2015. This is mostly a history, by a writer best known for his work on surrealism. It deserves to be less obscure.
Carrellas, Barbara Urban Tantra: sacred sex for the twenty-first century 2007. It isn't tantra, but it is lovely, life affirming stuff. Recommended. Great exercises.
Flagg The Forked Tongue Revisited: A Handbook for Treating People Badly 2015. This is a book for tops and dom/mes, more particularly sadists. I put it under magic because it is. This is the most ethically clear piece of writing on the subject I know. Welcome to what was my world for a while. Such fun!
Flowers, Stephen E and Flowers, Crystal Dawn Carnal Alchemy, Sado-Magical Techniques for Pleasure, Pain and Self-Transformation 2013. Oh dear, Stephen Flowers is pretty influential on the far right side of Heathenry and his work on Runelore has become definitive beyond its ability. However, this is a really good book on actual sex magic, it doesn't flinch, there is no fluff in it, and it is workable.
Grey, Peter The Red Goddess 2016. Especially good at the start of the book, this is a most beguiling story of Babalon. Recommended, although the ramblings about Mary are a bit Dan Brown.
Grey, Peter and Dimech, Alkistis 'The Brazen Vessel' 2018
LaVey, Anton Szandor The Satanic Witch 2003. Originally the Compleat Witch, it is wildly dated and is mostly about using magic for a woman to get a man. Bizarre, mostly.
Mason, Asenath Rituals of Pleasure 2018. Along with Bill Duvendack, Asenath Mason has published many books of LHP magic and her works on Lilith are relevant here. Not for the faint of heart.
Miller, Jason Sex, Sorcery and Spirit: The Secrets of Erotic Magic. 2014. This is a solid work and a good intro from a lifelong practitioner.
Williams, Brandy Ecstatic Ritual: Practical Sex Magic 2016. Cute.
CHAOS MAGIC
Carroll, Peter J Liber Null and Psychonaut 1997
Hine, Phil Condensed Chaos 2012
Mace, Stephen Shaping Formless Fire: Distilling the Quintessence of Magick 2019. Stephen Mace has been around for ages and straddles Chaos and LHP magic nicely. Readable intro to the subject, very right wing politics unfortunately, it is the curse of the magical ego.
Morrison, Grant The Invisibles Comic book series from the 1990's, published as four volumes 2014. I so wish I was an Invisible. Has that edgy conspiratorial end-of-the-century vibe, not unlike this edgy conspiratorial end-of-the-world vibe we have today, come to think of it.
SEX
Berkowitz, Eric Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire 2012.
Carellas, Barbara Ecstasy is Necessary: a practical guide to sex, relationships and so much more 2012
Grant, Melissa Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work 2014
Lister, Kate A Curious History of Sex 2020
Thomashauer, Regena Pussy, a Reclamation, 2016
USEFUL FICTIONS
Fortune, Dion The Goat-Foot God 1936. Reads like it's 1936. Dion Fortune was chaste in her practice, so all the sexual tension remains just that, with the final ecstatic ritual thingie being a fairly abstract business. But she was a wise practitioner and very influential.
Huysmans, JK La Bas undated. This copy is very old, hand cut pages, more than slightly foxed. La Bas (Down Below or Down There in English)was famous in its time as the height (or depth) of decadence. First published in 1891, it has it all: a femme fatale, a defrocked priest and a black mass. The raddled tail end of the romantic Satanism movement that started with the likes of Shelley and was such a powerful reaction against modernity and rationality.
ALSO
Douglas, Mary Purity and Danger: an Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo 1966. I refer to this in the text, directly.
ONLINE
Angela Puca 'Angela's Symposium' YouTube Channel. Angela is a PhD and a university lecturer, and her videos are always based on a work of academic research. She has a brief series on magic and BDSM and also covers more general sex magic.
'The Whores of Yore' is Kate Lister's lovely sex-positive website about prostitution, its history, and the rights of sex workers. She has a section on sex workers' voices and I contributed there under the name Clio Magnum Rossi.
'Against Everything with Conner Habib' is a podcast by Conner, an ex porn star and sex worker now embarking on an academic career. He covers a wide range of occult and cultural topics, and also talks about sex positivity from time to time. Interesting interview, although very long at times.
'Mistress, Mercy' 2018 is a docu-drama about Renee Chignall, the young dominatrix who was eventually acquitted of murdering her client. I unpack this in the text, about what not to do.
I have previously written about transgression and the pushing of aesthetic boundaries, and especially transgression in relation to the body. This topic has a practical application for the magician and for the whore. I will address that here.
Disgust is where the rubber meets the road. Some psychologists divide disgust into physical disgust and moral disgust. Physical disgust is related to disease, dirt, and breaching the boundaries of the body as I have described previously. Disgust also arises when we are reminded of our animal natures. Moral disgust relates to transgressive behaviour, and it is closely related to anger or a sense of outrage. Presumably both types of disgust kick in when the police detective discovers the mutilated bodies of the serial killer's victims. It is this place where moral and physical disgust meet, that we can do our work.
Those who are more sensitive to disgust trend more conservative in their politics, and even those who aren't usually conservative become more so when confronted with disgust. Disgust protects us from disease and contamination and when we think of other people who are not like us, or the Other, as being a contamination, we experience disgust and are more able to dehumanize those others. That sense of protection afforded to us by disgust thus is highly contextual and is often manipulated by those who are homophobic or racist, for example. This is one reason racism and homophobia are so damned hard to rise above.
There is a current trend towards cleanliness and purity which reflects this conservatism. Clean eating is an example of this, or orthorexia, which is an eating disorder (not yet in the DSM) that arises out of the drive to eat only the correct foods. Our bodies are a warm mess of fluids and chemicals. The word 'flesh' is slightly onomatopoeic. Say it over and over and feel yourself wince. Reminders of our fleshiness brings disgust. Such reminders also tell us about our mortality. Meditating on death is powerful and life-affirming, and a good way to start with that is with the body. I have written previously about the boundaries of the body and the dangers of breaching those, and how problematic are substances that are neither one thing nor another, like stickiness.
Purity politics is to moral disgust what clean eating is to physical disgust. Purity of race or heritage or culture is nonsensical and yet is has a powerful emotional pull. We can relate to the Other with acceptance and openness, or we can allow disgust to guide us. Differences in ability can kick our disgust reflexes as well. For magical purposes, learn to do better.
I urge the utmost ethical clarity and care. All people are valuable and none more so than another. The hubris of many magicians bores me at the same time as it worries me. It is no coincident that many magicians are right wing. I can tell you, the universe is not rolling in ecstasy at your feet. When you sit down it is not night. You get out what you put in, and when you extend your senses and sensibilities as I suggest, you will get - extended senses and sensibilities. These are very useful in making your Will work for you, and they also in the end make you more compassionate. We are whole people. We are joined as humanity by our lofty ideals, but also, even more so, by our sufferings and our flaws and the grind of the day in the body and mind. We are human beings having a human experience.
The place where moral and physical disgust meets happens fairly often in sex work. Try this mental exercise: imagine the person who you are least attracted to. I don't mean in a horror movie sort of way, just a real life type of person who represents something truly unattractive to you. Someone where you would go, oh my god no, no way. And then imagine that it is your job to have sex with them. Not just sex, but enthusiastic, caring, memorable sex. In this case both your moral and physical disgust sensors have gone off. Here is a man before you and he has paid you good money and you are with him for a whole hour. He is single long term and you instantly know why. He is not dirty or sick or dysmorphic, particularly, and he is not trying to do anything violent or illegal or painful, so there is no good reason to send him away - but - no. Just no. So you gird your loins and learn to find the good in him, and you both learn something.
The activation of the disgust reflex is a boundary. When you take on that man as a client, you cross that boundary, and you do it deliberately, and often you put some other boundaries in place as well. I will do this, but not that, you say.
This is not unique to sex work. Many service roles involve at least getting up to the disgust reflex boundary. Nursing is a great example. What happens is that you push the boundary out. What used to be disgusting is now just a day at the office. You just pack the abscess or clean the shit. You become desensitized. I consider this different from crossing the boundary. I am interested not in ignoring or accommodating disgust, but in working with it. Magic is always deliberate and reflective. See the boundary, experience the boundary, cross it, look back on it. Each time, you are a bigger person.
My clients who were submissives would often ask me to 'push their boundaries'. It is a common requirement when looking for a mistress. Pushing boundaries leaves a lot to interpretation. 'I said push my boundaries, but not like that'. This is classic 'topping from the bottom'. I think it can be subverted by the notion of crossing boundaries, actual transgressing, which means to carry across. First you need to know where your boundaries are, so that is all to be explored. Then there is a liminal pause, where the sub can decide what to leave behind. Then the crossing, then the repercussions. If you start off not knowing where your boundaries are, effectively you have none. I started off like that, thinking I was open to everything. Disgust is an almost perfect guide to what your boundaries are.
Magician Austin Osman Spare used to practice playing with disgust by having sex with people who he found physically repulsive. (I kinda feel for them, like imagine saying afterwards 'Austin, I thought you liked me'!) Aleister Crowley also employed a deliberately eclectic sexual practice. It amuses me to think that any compassionate and wise whore can compete with that.
Summarizing, use your innate sense of physical and moral disgust to teach you where your boundaries are. Reflect and pause. Cross those boundaries without accommodating them to the status quo or ignoring them. Be ethical and wise especially when it involves other souls. Once you have crossed the boundary, done the thing, you are a bigger person.
Blessings on you, gentle reader.
He has driven for eight hours to see me.
He brings with him the things I have demanded of him. Twelve long stemmed red roses. A white dressing gown. A bottle of single malt whisky. His utter devotion.
I have offered him this: that I will cleanse him, that I will show him the dark feminine divine, and that I will fuck him.
By the time he arrived he was already a mess.
I had turned the house into a occult play space, from spa bath to lounge. It was now dedicated to Lilith. Lilith is not usually a goddess of sex for me, but in this case I felt it was worth the risk. Lilith has three daughters/sisters/aspects, as described here by Asenath Mason of the Temple of Ascending Flame:
The Four Angels of Prostitution is a title attributed in the Qabalistic lore to Lilith, Naamah, Agrat bat Mahlat, and Eisheth Zenunim. They are described as succubi, demonic entities inciting erotic dreams and stealing semen from sleeping men for the purpose of breeding demons and evil spirits. They all are also believed to be partners of Samael, the Prince of Darkness and the ruler of the Qliphoth - the Kingdom of Shells. They reside on the border of dreaming and waking, at the gate between the physical world of manifestation and the astral plane, where they introduce the traveler of the Nightside into mysteries of their sexual gnosis.*
So you can see here the aim of the ritual. And the vibe. It was dark and sweaty and hot and nasty and there was blood on the roses and a lot of lube. And he did well, considering he was exhausted and well wrought, and he was truly not the same afterwards.
My first ever ritual on the Left Hand Path was to Naamah, and it was way over-engineered, involving half the night, getting lost on a river bank in the dark, and breaking a coffee grinder trying to grind a crystal. It worked though. I think first rituals have a heft to them that comes from a mixture of singularity of purpose and ignorance. But Lilith in her entirety is a far more wary proposition. I will never be comfortable with her.
There is a small market for this kind of D/s ritual. You can charge a lot for it, for the right person, in the same way most fetishes have a niche. You need to know your sub well, and be confident of their mental and physical health. There are men out there who trawl the local Fetlife pages and sex worker sites asking to submit to a powerful domme, but most of them are not up to it and they are active only online anyway. I did this one unpaid, but the dynamic is important. The sub pays for everything. Demand things that are rare and hard to get, and then you can decide whether or not they will suffice. The sub has to work for it. You provide the ritual and the environment and the psychic heavy lifting. But they do the grunt work. So be impressive. Show the implements. Choose the best music. Dress the room. Attend to detail.
Most of all, take the magic seriously. Whenever you evoke your Red Goddess, you invoke too a little. You take some of it into you. When you invoke, you take as much of it into you are you are able. When you approach Lilith in her antinomian power, who need to be up for it. Whatever flows through you may be greater than you. So, (lol) be the Goddess you want to see in the world.
And as always, blessings on you, gentle reader.
* This particular open project of the Temple of Ascending Flame, was partly written by myself, under the name of Clio the Whore.
This ritual changed my life, partly because I did it way before I was ready for it. If I had not done it, I would not have been able to make a living whoring.
The Red Goddess is Babalon in the Thelemic system, and she hearkens back to the Whore of Babylon in Revelations, as expressed by the febrile mind of John the Revelator. The Red Goddess is also many other goddesses, and also yourSelf, whatever sexual identity or orientation you have. Your Red Goddess speaks to the Goddess outside of yourself, just as with other powerful expressions of magical archetype.
PREPARATION
Set up your altar according to your beliefs and ideas. Take two sweetmeats, as they were once called. Examples might be Turkish Delight, with its implications of the exotic and the forbidden (did you read the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where the White Witch tempts poor Edmund with Turkish Delight?) or rich chocolate in small amounts. Other possibilities are figs or pomegranates. Take two shot glasses of wine or rich red cordial. Port is appropriately scarlet and sticky. Place them on the altar, one for the Goddess and one for yourself.
Make the room warm and fragrant, and inviting for the Goddess. Use red or orange candles. Rose petals, rose water, sweet incense or red or orange flowers. Then cleanse yourself. If you have a bath, put sensual oils, rose water or whatever feels sensual to you in it. Make yourself beautiful. You are, after all, beautiful. Dress in red or orange. Wear your most opulent jewellery. While preparing, you may wish to play sensual music of your choice.
You may sit in a comfortable position, a yoga or meditation position, or stand in front of a mirror if you choose. But you will need to hold the position for a while, so don’t put too much stress on your body. Once you are comfortable, begin.
OPENING THE TEMPLE
Take your wand or ritual knife and make the sign of a trident in the air. Use your non-dominant hand. Make a statement of intent, such as ‘I am here to meet my Red Goddess. I hereby open the Temple’.
INTRODUCING YOURSELF
Introduce yourSelf to the Red Goddess. This is not like saying, err, hi, it’s me. This is mythologizing yourSelf. Speak in epithets about yourSelf in the way you would to the Goddess. Boast, providing you are truthful. If you have overcome a serious illness, describe yourSelf as the One who conquered Pain. If you did your higher education later in life, talk about your fight for Wisdom. You are the Flame of Wisdom in your family; you have flirted with Death and seduced him on your own terms, and so on. This sounds incredibly silly when you start with it, but it is great stuff and the thing is, it is all true. We are our own myths. And if we can’t boast here, where can we?
If you have a magickal name, use it here. And write it all down carefully beforehand, because if you try and wing it you will just feel awkward and you won’t do it. It is very good practice to learn to write your own rituals. It is also good practice to try to memorize them, because memorizing is an excellent discipline for the magician.
THE DUAL OFFERINGS
Make your offering of a sweetmeat and wine to the Goddess, and eat and drink the other one yourself. These sensual morsels are a kind of eucharist, the body and blood of the Goddess if you like. (And yes, that is a counter narrative to the Christian one, and even maybe blasphemous. And yet, here we are.) They also express the kind of theurgy I talked about before. If we eat something a Red Goddess might like, we are that much closer to becoming a Red Goddess ourselves
MEDITATION ON THE BASE AND SACRAL CHAKRAS
Take a few quiet, slow breaths.
Start with your base chakra, which is located at your perineum. It is your root, your grounding place. Turn your attention to it, breathe into it. With each outward breath, see it growing red and large and healthy. Perhaps it glows or pulses a little. It might appear as a crystal, flower or wheel. Lovingly observe it. Then feel the energy from the base chakra spread down your legs and into your feet, and from your feet down into the loving Earth. Feel tendrils or roots pushing through the Earth, down, down until they reach a crystal. What colour is it? It is large and bright. Draw the tendrils down to it, and wrap them around it. This is an anchor for your energetic work. Now breathe in, and breathe up the good Earth energy up through the earth and into your base chakra. Breathe out, and send the good energy back into the crystal. An exchange of deep and sustaining love is taking place here. Now with the next in breath, draw the energy up to your sacral chakra. This is located right below your belly button. It is the chakra governing creative force, and sexuality. Breathe into it a few times. Feel it growing large and bright and healthy. It might appear as a crystal, and flower or a wheel. Feel or see it pulsing, opening or turning.
Now, with your base and sacral chakras open and happy, attend to the pathworking.
THE RITUAL PATHWORKING
You are standing on a cliff, overlooking the sea. You are wearing a red cloak, that billows in a stiff wind. You look down and you can see and hear the waves crash onto the rocks. You know you are already a long way up.
You feel something tugging your sleeve and you turn to look at who has done this. Who is it? An animal? A person? Someone you know? A non-human being?
Whoever it is, it turns away and you follow it away from the cliff. You walk along a path together. What is the path like? Narrow, broad, natural or human made? It is warm and breezy and you smell flowers and grass, and hear birds. Your senses are waking up.
You and your companion come to a building, atop a small hill. It might be lavish and big or small and part of nature. There are steps up to it. As you walk up the steps you can feel yourself becoming lighter, as if the air is pure up here.
There is a door, and here your companion leaves you. You knock and the door swings open. A red carpet leads towards an elaborate throne and there is a woman sitting on the throne. She is surrounded by servants or guards, perhaps human, perhaps not. She is dressed in red, but scantily clad. She wears gold jewellery and a headdress. What does she look like to you? Is she dark or fair, older or younger, what colour are her eyes, what are her clothing, jewels and headdress like?
She looks straight at you, and waves her hand. Her attendants leave silently. She indicates for you to approach, and to remove your cloak. You remove your cloak, and you are naked underneath. You might be nervous, but you are not embarrassed. You are curious and excited. You move towards her slowly. She puts out her right hand and touches your third eye. You may feel some heat or a sensation of light. What colour is that light? How does the touch feel?
Then she holds out her left hand and she is holding something beautiful and special and it is just for you. She places it on your sacral chakra, about two inches below your belly button. It sinks right into the chakra area, through the skin. It is now yours.
You feel the chakra pulsing orange, growing larger and healthy and gorgeous.
For a time, let whatever visions and experiences take you with them. Interact with your Red Goddess, she may speak with you, show you things, or give you her wisdom straight to your heart.
Thank her for her gnosis and prepare to leave. Walk back along the red carpet and out the door the way you came, and shut the door behind you.
Come back to your usual state of consciousness as you are ready. Take note of any spiritual influences that are in your Temple and release any that have turned up because they are attracted to the energy released by the ritual. You can do this just with a statement of intent. Say something like ‘I release all beings and energies that have come into this temple’.
You may feel sexually aroused after this pathworking, and if you do, feel free to act on that. Consider this to be a part of the ritual. You are beginning a practice of worship to your own Red Goddess.
You may have some leftover energy and if you don’t deal with this you might become irritable or out of sorts. Here are some grounding techniques:
- On all fours, on the ground, let energy drain out of your body, through your arms and hands, and legs and feet, into the earth
- Dance
- Eat some ordinary healthy food
Once you have finished, write down what you remember. You can also draw or make diagrams.
Things to consider: Some people have vivid experiences when undertaking this sort of pathworking. Some don’t. It is fine if your visions are vague and seem like not much. It will be a good first attempt and you can always do it again. It is also possible that gnosis was delivered straight to your heart, like a download. In that case, wisdom can come later and unpredictably. Watch for signs and omens. Things in your day may remind you of your pathworking. Pay attention, without trying to force your memory. During the pathworking you were in a slightly different state of consciousness. That can alter your memory. Think of it as being a bit like a dream where you can remember it only that moment after you awoke, and the memory fades within minutes. That is why you write things down as soon as you can.
Afterwards, you may wish to research what you experienced. You may discover that your Goddess is a deity from a particular spiritual tradition, or maybe she is something just your own. Find out what you can about her. Lean into the experience and watch for signs and omens. When you are ready, write a ritual to your Goddess that you can use whenever you approach her.
Here is mine.
When I wrote this invocation, I sensed myself as a very young sacred prostitute in a Near Eastern Temple, hoping to take the Goddess into myself as I waited for my sacred lover to arrive. There is a reference to the painting The Origin of the World by Gustave Courbet. The words describe what I saw and experienced in my pathworking.
EVOCATION TO THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN
I hail Astarte;
I call you by your ancient names:
Innana, Ishtar,Sekhmet, Ashtart, Ariadne, Ashtaroth, Babalon.
I have much to thank you for.
You touched my breast.
You hid me in your red cloak.
You sent your men away.
You bade me kneel between your glorious pale thighs,
And your sweet cave opened for me, the origin of the world,
And a golden snake emerged, and I took it in my mouth.
My very own snake.
Now, my dark lord approaches.
His very footfalls send me shuddering.
Oh, Astarte, what can I do?
Make me ache for him.
I ache for him.
Make me say his name when I come.
Oh, Astarte, I said his name
And again.
So now you have the beginnings of a relationship with your red Goddess, you need to attend to it. Do the ritual over again from time to time. You may come up with something new. Make the Dual Offerings regularly. Do some research. Write, sing, dance. Watch for signs and omens. Remember who and what you are. Remember.
My whoring practice was dedicated to Astarte. Her picture was displayed in an elaborate gold frame, along with the poem. The room was decked out for her. I aimed for opulence and exoticism. The bedding and furniture were kept very clean. There was nothing cosy about it. It was never a bedroom. It was a shrine and a place where I was completely in charge. At the beginning of each working day I would light a candle and say the poem. As I waited for my client I would imagine him to be my demon lover, my dark lord. Each booking was thus sanctified. Even before the client walked in the door, magic was happening.
Blessings on you, gentle reader.
‘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 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.
