THE RITUAL FOR THE RED GODDESS

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.

 

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.

 

 

FUN WITH SIGIL MAGIC, AND HOW TO WORK WITH EMOJIS

 Sigil work is a mainstay of chaos magic and it has become common even within the more positive-vibe-only practices of vanilla witchcraft. I first came across it in a book called 'Shaping Formless Fire: Distilling the Quintessence of Magic' by Stephen Mace and others. This is not the usual chaos magic classic, but it is a useful and engaging work for beginners.

The principle is simple. You take an intention or statement of will, write it out, remove the vowels and/or repeating letters and see what is left. 

So you might take

I want to be king of the moles

and remove vowels and repeating letters so you end up with:

wntbkgfmls

Then you combine the letters into a form that is attractive to you and makes a single symbol. You can use letters upside down or backwards or merge letters into each other. Make it beautiful or meaningful to you. Consider your intention as you make it. Play appropriate music, image yourself as king of the moles, turn the sigil into a mole in your mind. Think mole-like thoughts. Make into something resembling a king of the moles.

If you are a vanilla witch and influenced by new thought, as most of us (I have written previously about the influence of new thought on magic), a good use of sigils is to remind us of our intentions and to propel the will forward. So it is like an affirmation we could carry with us, write on our exam paper, on our car, on our mirror. It is a stylised way of saying positive things to ourselves or expressing positivity in the world. 

What this misses is the charge. Sure you can breathe on it or bless it or cleanse it with smoke or put it on your altar, and that is magical work. But to charge the sigil you need to change your consciousness. 

Orgasm is a great way of charging sigils. The idea is that at the moment of orgasm, you focus your entire will into the sigil, and then hurl it into the void. This is not easy to do. The state of orgasm naturally is diffuse and difficult to get a hold of. Focusing power at this point requires practice and self discipline. Then, what to do with the sigil itself. You do something to enable you to forget about it. Bury it or burn it. Leave it in the bottom of your wardrobe. Then you forget about it. That also is hard to do, as ignoring is not forgetting and nor is wondering about whether or not it is working. So, forget about it, don't mess with it, let it do its job. Go off and become king of the moles. 

You can see why this is simple but not easy, and why you need to practice and experiment with yourself beforehand. This is where the thinking tricks bear fruit. 

Here are some twists and ideas around this simple, but not easy, process. 

Tricks to remember your sigil so you can focus on it at the moment of orgasm: I read about writing it all over the body of your partner in fluorescent paint and having sex in the dark. I have not done that. Calling out your intention at the moment of orgasm is a secondary reminder - I can imagine shouts of 'I want to be king of the moles!!' coming from the bedroom amusing your roommates. (Perhaps shouting Oh God has the same effect, effectively sending orgasmic power to a deity, or dedicating your orgasm.)   

Anointing a sigil with further symbols of power can help. I mentioned the Court House Workings in a previous post, where four sigils were anointed with blood, cum, bourbon and the ash of a large denomination banknote. 

A similar change of consciousness can be achieved by other means. Eroto-comatose lucidity is the obvious example. A Shamanic trance is also effective, providing you are deep enough to perceive the void but not do deep you lose all your will. You can see how much practice is needed to do this properly. I have used the group power of a black metal gig, casting a sigil written on paper into the pit at the climax of a track I knew would do it for me. You could use any mass event where consciousness is altered by music or chanting or movement, such as a festival or a political demonstration or a bar fight. This way you are surfing on the power of everyone else's psyches as well as your own. 

EMOJI MAGIC

I think I invented emoji magic. I probably didn't, but I don't know anyone who has done it and I did make this up myself. I have suggested it on various online forums but people don't seem to get how it works. I like the idea of using what it to hand, and using tech. We are wedded to our phones, why not use them for magic as we use them for everything else. It is like grabbing a kitchen knife and telling it it is an athame. It is a quick and dirty magic of the sort I enjoy.

Instead of writing words, use emojis on your phone. Tell a story. Your friend has been called in for a urine test at work and he thinks he will fail. Your emoji string might start with an image of weed, or something like this😰. Then you put in some images of cleansing such as a tap running water or a drop of water. Then an image of success, a happy face or a medal. Here is another example. Your friend has broken her leg and is in hospital. You might start your emoji string with images of illness, then images of doctors or red crosses, then images of healing (perhaps herbs or water), and then an image like a dancer or a sport, depending on what your friend is into. After you have made your emoji string, charge it, as above, and send it to your friend. You may not want to mention how you charge it.

The principle behind sigil magic is the condensation of energy. Emojis force you to say a lot with a little, you are restricted to a limited number of images which can be only representative of what is going on. It is the limitation and condensation that provides the force behind your intention. This is similar to the use of only a few letters in symbolic form that you use for the written sigil. Either way, you are taking a lot of intention, and forcing it through a narrow channel of limited symbolism in order to condense its power, in order to release it into the void to do its work. 

You will be pleased to know my sketchy friend got a clean urine test. Go me!

And as always, blessings on you, gentle reader.

 

HOW TO MINDFUCK YOURSELF CLEAR: EXPERIMENTS AND EXPERIENCES

 Practicing magic requires, well, practice, and waxing off and waxing on before you can actually do anything. 

Start with things that are path-neutral and simple, if not easy. Find a meditation practice that suits you. Yoga, martial arts, dance. Just basic stuff for mental and physical discipline. Just about anyone you read will suggest this. 

Experiment with yourself. Be prepared to mess with yourself, but always in a conscious, reflective manner. Make notes. Give things a good go, you don't know at the outset what will and won't be for you. The idea of these experiments is to become more aware, less judgmental about your experiences, and to push some boundaries. Always notice what you feel and how your cognition is affected by these activities. And don't jeopardize your health.

Here are some useful experiments. Some of them are part of Michael Kelly's Apophis project; he has a large oevre and an active project going still. 

Experiment with the senses: practice by having a day of the week for each sense. For example, make Monday a day for sight. Each Monday, notice things of a particular colour, or notice intersecting lines, or particular shapes such as circles or triangles. Do this throughout the day. Find ways of playing with this. I experimented with touch, by touching all of the things in my room in total darkness - and in a drawer I found $100 USD I had hidden years before! I experimented with smell by going dumpster diving with a friend. I experimented with hearing by listening to different music, and by listening to silence as much as I could attain it. 

Fast: try water only for three days, providing you are otherwise healthy and do not need food for any meds. When you go back to food, eat slowly, simply and very mindfully. Notice what fasting does to your mood and perception. 

Stay awake for as long as you can: I was disappointed with this. As a shift worker, after three days and nights I just felt a bit grumpy. 

Walk or run for as long as you can. Ensure you can get back home; get someone to pick you up.

Here are some experiments related to sex.

Orgasm denial: Masturbate to the point of orgasm, then stop. Do this over and over again, as often as you can in a day. Notice what this does to your whole state of mind, not just the sexual bits. If you finally allow yourself to orgasm, what happens? If you never allow yourself to orgasm, what happens? You can do this solo or with a partner.

Orgasm exhaustion: Solo or with a partner (or several) orgasm over and over. You can do this in one session, or over a period of time provided it is short enough, like a day. You are aiming not for the number of orgasms you want to have, but for orgasming way past the fun stage. 

Sex magic of this sort changes consciousness. Both forms propel the magician into a state called eroto-comatose lucidity, a state between sleeping and waking where visions and other unusual phenomena can be experienced. Aleister Crowley popularized the first method, where he attained this state with the help of several attendants. There are different variations and I encourage you to consider the differences. Solo vs with partners. Finally orgasming vs not orgasming. Consider what to do with any resulting fluids. And the set and setting - do you do this in a full blown ritual with the room draped in red and black, or in the loo during your tea break? Both have potential. 

The next entry will be about what to do with this insight, and particularly sigil magic. 

And as always, blessings on you, gentle reader.