Results magic

 Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

In this post I want to talk a little on an aspect of the work that I don't really give much attention to. Eagle eyed readers will have noticed that in my title I have (mis)-spelled 'magic'. leaving out the k in Magick. There is a simple reason for this, to me, results magick is not the same thing as Magick. Some will doubtless disagree with this, or misunderstand what I mean, which is perfectly ok. But this is my opinion based on my experience over the last nearly 30 years of messing around with both magic and Magick, and I seek only to express rather than persuade.

My very first experiments at spells were probably at the age of about 10 or 11, when I recall finding a small booklet of spells for an old AMIGA game (not old back then in the early 1990's) of the sword and sorcery type. It had various spoken spells to make it rain, light fires, and other things that I forget. I remember shouting these simple bi-syllabic words at the heavens with my brother, and appearing to have some success in which we both marveled at the apparent power were had tapped, although looking back it was just as likely coincidence and I don't regard this as a result as such. This probably piqued my interest in the occult. Later, on discovering Wicca at about 13, whilst charms and spells are all part of that system, I cannot say I had any real success with them. I remember being a love lorn teenager petitioning the Goddess to make the girl I was in love with reciprocate, which she did after a fashion but not as I wanted, which in hindsight is just as well for both of us. In any case even at that point I had the sense that these things were really only window dressing and not really what the system was about. There was the Goddess and the horned God behind it all, quietly ruling over nature. Wicca has a distinctly religious aspect of the animistic type and somehow messing around with poppets to gain love or money seemed a bit vacuous compared to the great tides of nature. 

Crowley was at pains to separate his system of Magick from the parlour tricks kind of magic that we call results magic, or low magic. That's not to say that one should not ever do results magic, but that it should always be results "Magick". This is to say, that it should be in line with ones True Will. To paraphrase from memory, any other sort of magic (other than the Great Work) tends towards black magic, and to deliberately work towards anything other than the Great Work is black magick by definition. Of course, this means that the first and foremost task of the magician should be the that of discerning the True Will, which in the A.'.A.'. system stats with the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, although we need not confine ourselves to that label.

I spend a fair amount of time using the internet and haunt a few occult, spirituality and Thelema based groups and forums. I often see posters asking for a spell for this, a charm for that, or advice on how to summon some demon from the Goetia. I've even seen people asking how to invoke the Virgin Mary and Christ! These people want spirits, up to and including God himself to manipulate reality on their behalf in order to obtain some secular end that they have been unable to secure for themselves. If God doesn't perform as they ask, they ask Satan or his demons. Others will try to use spells to effect changes in society, make politicians see sense or influence the ruling of high-court judges, and while these desires may be laudable in themselves, only a Magister can really claim to understand the universe, only a Magus has the Wisdom, and for the rest of us the use of magic to effect such things is I think presumption at best. Only one time have I managed to raise a significant amount of energy using results magic, for a protective spell for a friend going to a dangerous part of the world. The result was a backfire, resulting in a near mental collapse on my part and a withdrawal from the occult lasting several years, and however well intentioned my efforts I clearly didn't understand what I was dealing with. Far better to keep things on their respective planes, if you want a better world, work towards it in the usual, pragmatic way, but first, work on yourself, to quote Gandhi: 

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”

The use of results magic to enact changes to the external world may be labelled as 'spiritual', but in my opinion there is nothing spiritual about it, it is entirely secular in its methods and objectives, and stems from the view of magical powers as a sort of supernatural Swiss Army knife to obtain ends more or less arbitrarily, with no consideration as to whether such things are proper to their nature or to the course of events. In fact, such people don't care about their real nature, their True Will, and are in reality only a collection of wants, justified with one or other label of spirituality.

As I have gone on in life, and with initiation, I have found more and more that I cannot perform even the simplest results magic, such is not in line with my Will. I understand the technical methods, and could probably put together a recipe for such a working well enough, but I lack to energy, the drive, the will to pull it off. On the other hand, not long ago I performed a working using four sigils for four spirits which I evoked directly as part of my current grade work. This was a directly willed task related to and supporting the ultimate end of the work of an Initiate, and instead of the halting, forced and artificial atmosphere of results magic, this was profound, intuitive, simple and effective, and entirely in line with the above quote, in that the subject of the required change was myself, to better express the universal will, not vice-versa. The results started almost immediately and those four forces, which had always been active in my life, now being named and recognised became much more obvious, and thus easier to control, which was the intent of the working. This has led to greater self-awareness and control in my daily life on the one hand, and unexpectedly, greater peace, trust and equanimity in my interior life. A deeper silence has opened up beyond the silencing of the internal dialogue, as a stream opens to a deeper lake, so the superficial silence of interior words has given way to a deeper interior quietude beyond a simple absence of words. 

The reason for this difference is clear enough I think. Results magic is based on exterior wants, the desires of the senses, it is focused on secular ends, on that which arises and passes away. Magick conducted as part of the Great Work, under the direction of ones Holy Guardian Angel, is interior, spiritual, of universal scope whilst also being entirely human and in harmony with our basic nature. The effects on ones outer life are not arbitrary, but are the result of a greater harmonising of the outer and the inner. Another way to put this would be to say that when what you really want is in harmony with the Tao, when ones personal life is in sync with the way of the universal, the True Will, or the Will of God, then magick becomes a natural expression of life rather than a device for fulfilling wishes, and the magician is then no longer a mere 'occultist', but a magician in the true sense, a being more powerful and yet simpler than the pseudo-spiritual type of occultist who wears his spirituality as a sort of posture. Nothing can stop you when you have the momentum of the universe behind you! 

Love is the law, love under will.

 

Inner Order Grades 1: Adeptus Minor 5=6

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

The grade of Adeptus Minor is both the heart of the Great Work and the Heart of the tree of life. It is the summit of the Outer College grades and the focus towards which the aspirant has been aiming all through the preceding work. To get here she will have endured challenges on the physical, mental and emotional planes, have been proven time and again, and finally admitted, after a period of close scrutiny as an Dominus Liminus, to the grade of Adeptus Minor without. 

In truth, this is the furthest anybody can directly lead another, and all subsequent grades must be claimed by the aspirant as part of her ongoing work as a member of the Order of the Rose Cross. While grade papers do exist for these grades, they were written post-Crowley by an unknown successor and are not strictly necessary for advancement, which is not formal, but actual. 

This grade is situated in Tiphareth, the central point of the whole Tree of Life system. In terms of initiation this central point is the apex of the pyramid formed by the four grades of the Outer College, just as a pyramid was constructed by the Neophyte from the four powers of the Sphinx. This pyramid represents the alignment of four aspects of his being in Yetzirah, being the physical, emotional, intellectual, and socio/sexual aspects of the adepts exterior person, harmonised during the period as a Dominus Liminus, precipitating the dawning of the light of the Rosy Cross. 

Adeptus Minor (Without)

There is no set ritual to admit to the grade, although there are guidelines and the oath paper as per previous grades. Formally speaking the Adeptus Minor wears the robe of a Probationer, but with one important difference; within the pentagram on the breast is a symbol, which can vary between Adepti, but which will sum up the attainment of that Adept. I had though that this was a personal adaptation of my own, but began to notice that others were doing the same, thing, so I suppose some traditions arise naturally. My choice is a burning heart girt with a serpent, familiar from readers of Liber LXV. My take is to leave the choice of symbol, or no symbol at all, up to each initiate.

The Adeptus Minor has a single task, to "attain the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel". There are any number of options that the adept may use to complete her task. Liber Samekh can and has been used both as it is and adapted to suit the individual, which is what I did. The call of the 8th Aethyr provides another model, a streamlined version of the Abramelin ritual that only takes half the time to complete. But these are all really fingers pointing at the moon, certainly useful, they create the right mood in the Adept, but they themselves will not cause the Knowledge and Conversation. The thing is, and this should have been apparent for some time, the Adept cannot decide exactly when and where Knowledge and Conversation will take place, you can't simply will it into existence as if you could pull yourself up by your bootstraps! This seems to be a truism in all systems of attainment, and while the aspirant has been in relative control of her advancement through the previous grades, which were really a series of tasks that she could complete in sequence, entrance to Tiphareth is not something that can be forced. You can set the scene, light the incense, put on the soft music, but you cannot force the Holy Guardian Angel to pay you a visit, you cannot force success. There is every chance that the adept will not know success when he sees it if he thinks of it in terms of baking a cake, a little salt here, a dash of Abramelin oil, repeating barbarous words day in day out until like the postman, one's Holy Guardian Angel makes an entrance and solves all of one's problems, telling you to go write a book or start a new religion. Such thinking is doomed to failure. This step requires a different approach, a different mindset entirely, one of grace and a great deal of humility.

All through the Outer College grades, the magician has taken an active role, worked his way up the tree of life, accepted challenges and braved ordeals. He got here largely through grit and determination and by now will be a well honed and disciplined individual. But now, all that is done with, a switch has to occur. Instead of the masculine role, the feminine must be assumed. This is what is meant when it is said that the Holy Guardian Angel is always male. Biological gender here is immaterial, we are not dealing with biological matters, but spiritual ones, and here more than ever the magician must become mystic. The active must become receptive, a sense of Holy expectancy pervades the life of the Adept. For this reason, I tend to regard those who insist that their Angel is female, usually young men, as fantasists mistaking their fetish for illumination.

So, the Adept must set the scene, prepare themselves, truly make themselves fit, and then......wait, and watch. In a way the description of this stage as a sort of marriage is misleading. This waiting cannot be the impatient waiting of a bride for her groom. In a sense it is not even waiting for anything in particular, since such a psychological stance like a cat awaiting the mouse, or a runner awaiting the pistol shot, would create intolerable tension and soon tire. Boredom sets in, and with it stagnation.

Instead life goes on. The adept knows that she is waiting, and what she is waiting for, and thus vigilant awareness is required. Along with this, perhaps for the first time in years, there is nothing else to do, and aside from the routine of the operation and whatever ritual or practices this might involve, life takes on a very ordinary aspect. The adept is a very different person to Probationer who entered the Outer College, perhaps years before: the star in sight is overhead, a sense of knowing is there that was absent before; trust, faith even. Not the faith of 'belief in things which we know to be untrue' of the cynic, but the living faith of one who knows that dawn is approaching, and that the glimmer of pink on the horizon will soon bloom into the first golden rays of dawn.

Adeptus Minor (Within)

Descriptions of the Knowledge and Conversation experience vary. Some are poetic in expression, ecstatic even, while others are more reserved, but they are notable for their paucity, leading to the common conception that it only happened to Crowley, and perhaps a handful of others. I don't know whether this paucity is because the event is rare, or because it is so personal, and people don't want to put their experience on display for fear that somebody will come along and tell them they are dreaming. I propose a third option, that of embarrassment! A light show was expected, flashing words writ across the sky and a voice of thunder declaring the True Will to the enraptured Adept. Quite the opposite seems to be the case. The Adept may even think she has failed, and it may take a while to realise that anything has changed, because in a certain sense, nothing has changed, the Knowledge and Conversation was there all along.

The Adept will have already had the 'Vision of Adonai', and will notice the difference. In my case the vision consisted of waking up one morning to light inside myself, brighter than the light of the sun when I opened my eyes, and a clear, lucid consciousness that what I was waiting for (as a Neophyte at that point) had occurred. The result of this was fresh confidence based on the knowledge that there was something to all of this business of attainment, and the long term effect was a kind of confirmation of the path, which is why, I believe, that a Zelator (2=9) is considered to be on the path for life, whether they like it or not. Reports vary, and it has been described as a 'kiss' of the angel, but I am not an emotional type, and there was no sense of love or eroticism, simply light and awareness that the source of that light was the very heart of my being.

The key difference between this and the Knowledge and Conversation, is the aspect of communication. While one effect of the K&C is the continued purification and refinement the lower sephirah, the real benefit is that inner certainty, trust in life, that even while I don't understand it, and sometimes it is unpleasant, there is a process going on which I am a part of, and that part is ultimately worth it, even though the why is beyond my comprehension. This is Knowledge. While the vision assured me that I was on the right track, the K&C gave specific marching orders, a path which I was to take in life, nothing beyond the realms of probability, no earth shattering revelation of things I'd never considered, but acts that I'd put off for years through fear of failure and a desire to be sensible, to do the right thing in the eyes of others, all of which doubts have since been kicked into the long grass. That was five years ago now and I have followed out the task as given almost to its completion. Not that I think that is an end to it, simply that I have no idea what comes next, and I don't need to know. The path continues.

Some thoughts on the nature of the Holy Guardian Angel: the Holy Guardian Angel is not 'a being', it is being itself, intuited in the mind of Man, and thus taking the form of that mind. However this is illusion, as it must be as an Atziluthic force descending into Briatic, archetypal consciousness with only the vaguest expression in the Yetziratic, astral plane. The Knowledge and Conversation is not an event in time, like a conversation with a person, it is ongoing conversation and communion with pure being. I have read descriptions of flashing lights and unearthly visions, rapture and ecstasy, but I tend to view such descriptions with a degree of scepticism, they are too flowery, they try too hard to make something special out of it, they are full of astral 'noise', the emotional and intellectual content of the perceiver, and to my mind this detracts from the utter simplicity of the event. I am inclined to the opinion that the shock of a vision is in inverse proportion to the readiness of the recipient, as a stone dropped perfectly into a pool leaves no ripple, so the final union is consummated in silence.

Love is the law, love under will.

Knowledge and Conversation is only the beginning

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

The A.'.A.'. path from Neophyte to Adeptus Minor is a long slog. The amount of time, dedication and study required, the tests needing to be sat, the diaries written and submitted, and the plethora of other ancillary tasks to be completed is truly daunting, and many people seem to just get stuck chugging away at one or another grade for years at a time, never mind the ordeals. However, what people fail to realise is that all of this is preparatory and should probably take no more than five or six years. 

Now, I enjoyed my Outer College years immensely. Never in my life had I so systematically studied and practiced the magical and mystical arts. However, once you get to the Inner College you realise that this was all just practice and preparation, essential groundwork but still only preliminary. The Outer College curriculum is designed on one hand to begin working on breaking down mental, emotional and physical limitations, and to give the individual a full suite of techniques to meet any circumstances, a veritable Swiss army knife of occult knowledge, on the other. It has to be like this since as the aspirant has not yet attained knowledge and conversation he has no real idea of what he is and what he should be doing, and so he is trained as comprehensively as possible in all of the classes of methods of attainment. 

It all changes at the Adeptus Minor grade (without). While as an adept in the A.'.A.'. he must be armed at all points, he will now be in a position to select the most suitable tools for his particular job. At the same time his knowledge puts him in a position to teach others. This is essential because one key component of A.'.A.'. membership is the will to teach. Even if, of all the tools available, he himself only requires one or two fine tuned to his own needs, he still has to be able to offer instruction and testing in the full curriculum of the Holy Order if he is to authentically claim his grade.

The Adeptus Minor (within), having attained to the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, and newly awake to briatic consciousness, has received his marching orders so to speak. A new sense of purpose awakens in him, and although he may not know the ultimate goal of his orders, he knows where to start and intuitively begins the necessary adjustments. If the Outer College is like the private soldier receiving his basic training (an extremely thorough training I might add), and the Adeptus Minor (without) is his commission, this next stage (5=6 within) is akin to his receiving orders from high command (K&C), via the path of Gimel. He may not know the overall strategic mechanism in play and can only guess at his ultimate role in the operation, but he at least knows what to do next and has the necessary tools and training to do so.

While 5=6 may entail a period of repose, it typically shifts gear quite quickly. It is this switch from knowledge to action that constitutes the shift from 5=6 to 6=5. Without trying to cover every detail of either grade, the Adeptus Major not only has his orders, but is actively implementing them, even though he may not know the full meaning of his acts. This is what is meant when it says (One star in sight) that the 6=5 has full magical power, but without comprehension. If will stops and asks why, etc.....he does not need to ask, but he must act, he must follow his orders, the will of his angel.

The Adeptus Exemptus is a much more complete individual. Having learned to discern the will of his angel (5=6), he was given command and told to act (6=5), the act complete and, as is often the case, understanding his role in hindsight, he then comes to understand the deeper strategy, not just what the Angel requires, but what it means (7=4), he knows more fully who he is and what his place in the overall scheme of things is. The adept at this stage is one who has come into his own in life, the captain of his ship, the professor in his college, he then formulates his attainment in his thesis, and only then can he, understanding his role in the action, be in a position to firstly, accept the curse of the next step, and willingly walk into the abyss. He can only offer all that he is to the cup of Babalon if he knows what that all consists of. Further than this, it is not just knowing what one has to offer, but the work and awareness attained in getting to this stage make the next step the only conceivable action when one's life is seen in its proper context in relation to the universal life. I would hazard to say (I'm not a 7=4), that anyone who cannot easily and definitely take this next step has not really attained to the maturity of this grade. If you are ready it's not a jump, but a step, a natural progression. If you are not ready nothing at all can force the issue and failure, possibly even insanity await those who presume to do so. The risk is not that the abyss is inherently dangerous, only that in failing to understand oneself the unprepared adept will not be able to make the jump, and if he insists that he has done so when he hasn't then all of his acts and words will be based on a false premise. This is by definition insanity.

We can see then that the Outer College grades are really preparatory for the step taken at 5=6, and of these the most important is probably the step up from 1=10 to 2=9, the step at which most people stop, unable to attain a genuine interior awareness they remain mere 'occultists', rather than magicians in any real sense. They may bring with them shifts of awareness that seem amazing to the magician traversing these grades for the first time. He will be tempted to hang around and enjoy the view, and this is fine in itself, each to their own. But the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation is only the first real step. The Inner College grades are where the True Will of the Adept is carried out, where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. While success of any given 1=10 is anybody's guess, I would recommend, that each aspirant of the first yetziratic triad (2=9, 3=8, 4=7) makes every effort to complete their Outer College grade work as quickly as possible, without skipping any steps or skimming over anything, but not spending too much time procrastinating and trying to get everything perfect (since you are not an adept, how can you know what 'good enough' is, let along perfect?). Even once these things are done the operation to invoke the Holy Guardian Angel is still ahead, and beyond that, the Great Work awaits.

Love is the law, love under will.