My personal experience of working with the element of Earth is that my attempts to use earth to cause change directly is often ineffective. Earth is normally perceived as a passive element. It doesn’t act; it is acted upon. How does that work in the real world? We will have to experiment and see. This article is not meant to be something that I deem to be 100% true, but instead, it is simply the result of my own experience as I try initiation into the element of earth. It is worth considering it as my own Unverified Personal Gnosis (or knowledge).
I believe that magic is a science where we experiment with things and if we are careful to do things in a devoted, immaculate and consistent manner then we can use the results to draw inferences about the nature of god, the human mind and the workings of the universe. This is me trying to find a way to present my findings, such that they might be useful to other people, to encourage others in their own journey and to keep magic in its perfected and beautiful form. I would like to hear from anyone who is also insistent about finding the nature of god, the mind, heaven and earth. To be clear I’m interested to hear your results and what you have learned from them.
Enochian
So I began this journey very enthusiastically summoning every earth based creature I could felt comfortable working with. I don’t have a full enochian set-up but I am working towards that with the help of my friend Iris (insert iris page here). I have been summoning as many “entities” mentioned in the enochian earth tablet as I have time for. This is a very weird process not yielding much sensicle information. Often the visions are too inconsistent to list everything and it would be of little benefit but I am making myself known to the enochian angels such that when I enter their world / they enter mine they will recognise me and might be more likely to help. A good place for me to start was the god name of the tablet Mor Dial Hectega and the angel ruling over each of the planets within the earth element, I think these are called the seniors.
Elementals
I was and still am summoning Ghobb asking for him to find a place for me in his Kingdom (the Kingdom of Malkuth and the Earth kingdom within in it) on a daily basis. I began trying to use “King Invisible” (prayer of the gnomes from Eliphas Levi’s Transcendental Magic) to summon Ghobb but this gave me a very different feeling to summoning him directly by name. I note some of the words in the prayer of the gnomes / “King Invisible” had a whole world perspective and not just an earthly one, for example, “who wearest the heavens on thy finger like a sapphire ring” and “seed of the stars”. As a result of these words, I came to the conclusion that this prayer is about summoning a big overarching god that presides over all the elements and must be read with the equivalent for air, fire and water. Not separately from them.
Change the element as it relates to my life
The first mistake I made was using the power of earth to try working magic on my money. Money is a very earthly thing and is often associated with the element of earth, but that doesn’t mean it has power over it. In the same way that fire cannot control fire, it would seem that earth cannot control earth. When we meditate on earth over time as I have done nearly daily for 8 and a half months you begin to notice why that mistake might be. You can do this by modelling the universe in terms of the elements. A chair I might sit on is like earth. It is stable and unmoved by my sitting on it. It doesn’t act but it is acted on. Gravity on the other and most other forces cause energy. The acceleration of a car causes activity as does fire.
It would seem to be that earth’s power is in its structure, its rigidity and its passivity. In order to use earth you need to recognise this. You can create a rigid structure to allow for the potential to cause the change desired. But do not use that structure to cause the change, but to support it! Change is not something caused by the element of earth but it can be used to nurture and feed change.
The way I ended up using this and what seems like the perfect way to cause social, educational, healthy or physical change in oneself with the element of earth, is by having a healthy balanced timetable which is as firm as rock. Such a timetable should enforce healthy eating, exercise and sleep in order to nurture growth in you just as soil nurtures growth in plants. The more firmly you stick to the timetable the more the timetable grows on you like a plant and the more you will naturally stick to it.
This doesn’t cause change directly but it is a rigid wall to bounce the force for change off of. It’s not the powerful river, but it’s the bank and rocks that focus and direct its flow. Earth isn’t the explosion that launches a canon ball it is both the canon, it’s the base that holds the canon and the ball that is launched. Earth directs the force and ensures that the object that goes through change (often the magician/witch) is able to handle the change. Having a timetable like the one mentioned above allows you the time to work on the change you are seeking and prepares your body, mind and endocrine system to handle the pushing you are trying to subject it to.
The same is true for any mechanism that is in place to deliver change. If you have a team that is about to do a project at work and cause a substantial amount of work, that Team will need structure. There will need to be clear definitions as to what they are putting their energy into (the banks of the river) and the team that is about receive the change needs a firm structure that will enable them to receive the change in a way that keeps them in the shape they need to be in when the project is finished.
When working on yourself, learning to have the mind-set of rock is very important. Rock is mostly unaffected by the forces acting on it. When you sit there and think about life you might be worried about losing your job, going broke and not being able to eat. The economy is set up to help the rich stay rich by shafting the poor. If the set-up does not work for you; there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. You’re one of the many people the system is designed to shaft in its corrupt immoral action. Anyone who does not see that is wrong and if you have to beg borrow and steal to keep yourself ticking over then that what you have to do and worrying about it isn’t going to help. Ask earth she knows. My experience has been that we often perceive spirit through its motion, but earth hardly moves other than its slow growth
The structure I’m talking about here could be applied to your diet and your budget just as easily. You’d be surprised at the change that can be caused with minimal force if the source of change is firm founded, the delivery system is well structured.
Also it’s like when you feel too lazy to do anything then you apply the will to do something. The lethargy is like earth and the will is like fire. This can often be frustrating because you will to do something but you’re body isn’t moving. The earth has not been reduced and an excess of fire has been added. It’s like a direct confrontation of fire and earth and the two don’t interact well. If you add emotion (water) that can quench the frustration and help break up the feeling of lethargy, but it needs rationality (air) to help control the emotion. Once again I note that balance of the elements is the only means to cause true change. Perhaps this is why groups like the A.’. A.’. have the initiate approach all the elements learning all the pentagrams right from the beginning.
This learning has been born from becoming ill and by nearly going broke! My body couldn’t deal with stress any more. I worked it too hard for too long. I had been active and working always (unlike earth!). I had worked hard to ensure I was job hunting to sort out my money and a future career that would be able to provide financial stability to practice magic and there was hardly a day in my life where I wasn’t working for the whole day for 6 months.
I soon learned that I had one of two choices, deal with stress, healthy eating, stick to a new diet (since my illness had causes an allergy to dairy), sleep better, exercise and sit down to meditate.
Results of change sought
This path continued for 2 years and I find myself in my 3rd job since the above post. First I took a job far away and was screwed by not being provided with a parking space as of 3 weeks into my employment. The cost of suddenly needing to pay £10 each day for parking meant I was going to be broke. I grew to learn how unimportant financial stability or success was since it was more often then not a distraction from ones own will / goals in life. Rarely do we need money to have the freedom we want, often it had the opposite effect.
Then I worked for one company for more money and had a parking space for 10 months and now I am working closer to home on more money and have been in my current role for 8 months. I also started a new company with a friend where I will teach tarot among being a drag queen on a regular basis. I’m not a huge fan but it has a great reception and is helping me become a comedian, musician and occult teacher so I am definitely not complaining.
I also recently took up kung fu as well which is helping me develop my body and get in touch with it. I am also dealing with my hang-ups around my sexuality and going out more and engaging with my body more.
The Earth initiation still has much more to teach me, but so much had changed. I am reminded of my aim to perfect my knowledge of astrology, my ability to summon and command earth elementals, my ability to summon and communicate with enochian angels of earth and my physical health.
There is still a long way to go. In the mean time I have seen much of the debt I used to have get paid off and I am excited for the day when my debt is gone.
It’s been many years since I wrote this article and still I have doing the element of earth. I have tried to make it clear to myself when this process will end. I determined that my debt will be gone as of 25th April 2020, my timetable is healthier, my consistent kungfu practice, which I have done for now 2.5 years shows a rigid commitment unlike anything I can shown before, but I still need to work on my weight. My money spending habits are healthier, but I need to learn to save money much more readily.
My body contains too much fat and not enough muscle and I often hurt myself when trying to be active because of the sheer weight I carry around. Doing a kungfu jump will require much strong ankles for landing. I hope to finish the element of earth when the following criteria have been met:
- My BMI is ideally 25 (boarder line overweight/healthy and far from obese)
- When I am capable of hiking up a mountain. I have 10 weekends of climbing mountains in Britain planned and I am hoping to climb Macchu Picchu which is a 4 day climb.
- I also hope to get to a place where I can go on a kungfu training camp / weekend and arguably say I was not “the fat guy” or at least keep up with the class.
- I am readily able to identify flowers and plants in the wild in Britain.
- I have completed the 3 initiation degress in Wicca.