I note when performing rituals with some other pagans, they are always so quick to change all the rituals. When they are handed down traditional Hermetic, Rosicrucian, High Magic, Qabalistic and Grimoiric rituals. So quickly I hear people say “oh let’s get rid of this bit and add this in.” “I don’t like X and I like Y.” “Let’s swap out a couple of Hebrew names for pagan ones.” “Also, we like doing this poetry reading, so let’s stick it in the middle.” Then poetry reading awkwardly floats in the middle of a section that was likely supposed to induce excitatory gnosis, so we miss the whole point of that part of the ritual. While I question this my comments are treated like the arrogance of someone that would not know. Then I walk away wondering what the ritual would have been like had we performed it as a group in its original form. My concern is always for the potential lost learning.
If we stick to the original practices before changing them, then we have experience of magic in its unaltered form. I prefer this experience of an established magical practice that has lasted the test of time, to variations of which there are infinite possibilities. One could try many variations and not have cracked the possible learning, when one’s syllabus includes all possible variations of ritual. However, if we reduce the amount of learning down to the ritual in its original form then we have completed the necessary learning relatively quickly. We can then vary it slightly to see if we experience a difference. However my own experience with the Lemegeton would suggest that often the same ritual must be performed 10s of times before there is any result. For example, if a person completed a degree in English Literature and have never read the works of Jane Austin or Shakespear it would be said that their education was quite incomplete, however if they lacked a recent variation on the vampire novel by Stephanie Meyer, their literary education would not be said to be incomplete.
Why stick to the original and why change it? Well, to begin with, rituals are passed down for a reason. There’s a reason a ritual was done a certain way. They use specific techniques to achieve a certain state of being and then the ritual uses that state of being to achieve a goal. For example, fast chants and dances get the body and mind excited and allow the ritualist to have direct access to an altered state of mind, which can be used for shamanic goals. Divine names have power associated with them that supposedly the world and spirits respond to. Qabalistic names often correspond to aspects of the soul, which are activated in a precise way for inititations. To change these rituals without understanding precisely how they work will often break the intended means of function of the rituals and render them ineffective, at least for their original intended purpose.
So why change the rituals? Well a ritual was written by someone. That person was probably not omniscient. In fact many famous Occultists were deeply flawed individuals. Especially when you compare them to modern moral philosophies, which would not have been taught to children in the 1890s and before; not the way we were taught. It is very easy for a person to convince themselves they knew better than someone who lived 100 years ago. With access to years of sound bites and books naturally selected by market forces to stroke the initiate’s ego, it is easy to assume we know far better. Our books have secretly been telling us that we know better for years to encourage us to buy more books. The books around in the 1800s however were different they were attempts to preserve knowledge and bring it forward. So I repeat, it is easy to assume we know better. If we do in fact know better, then we should use our “better” knowledge to create “better” rituals, which provide the intended purpose “better”. Also rituals for today might need to be more suited to a people who grew up in a very different culture. So the rituals might need to better reflect the audience who are to experience them.
Magic however was often passed down without all the information. It gets revealed slowly in a piecemeal fashion through initiations. Some information is not provided until initiates show they can be more trusted. Sadly, this means that many people are trained a little, but only have a small part of the information and there are often subtle differences, which have been kept from them and only a few end up fully trained, who are of course sworn to secrecy many times by the point they reach full awareness. This is often a case that holds true to the aphorism “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” A perfect example of this is Aleister Crowley who was not initiated to 5=6 of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and only took its outer order grades and in a fashion probably too fast to let them properly sink in. His writing and teaching was later responsible for most of Wiccan and Pagan ritual. He then went on to teach varied forms of them more oriented for his own religion, Thelema, but probably did not fully understand them.
Often rituals are based on many years of deep learning. This involves reading texts which provide the history and theory of magical ritual. They are rarely easy reads. With access to many modern books which are easy reads, books that simplify magic to the point of inaccuracy, we are often drawn to easier learning rather than accurate learning. Magic loses its precision, its theory and its history. Do we want to be part of that loss or help it regaine it.
In the early days of the 60s-80s witch craze, it became common for authors to plagiarize each other. Often they believed well because they were passing on rituals and spells which were ancient and predated any copyright, however many authors complain about being told their work which they wrote was ancient. This makes it very difficult to trace the origins of magical ritual and sets a precedent for neglecting origins. Inaccuracy is published left, right and centre and distinguishing between truth and falsehood becomes difficult. It is must easier to turn to publications, which predate the end of the Second World War.
It is easy to be misled by the current materials. Suddenly an entire generation grows up hearing plagiarism, inaccuracy and modern ideas presented as “ancient”. Then if one attends a witch group, they notice their view is reflected by other people who grew up with similar books. Suddenly it seems like they have a complete understanding of a subject, of which they only have a basic grasp with many errors. If the rare individual comes along who has been careful to seek the origin and truth behind every spiritual practice, then he is the outsider who does not share the knowledge the insiders of the group share. So he seems inaccurate.
So it is easy to convince oneself that one knows better than authors writing rituals in 1200s – 1920s. You could not be blamed for doing so, every thing around right now, is geared up to convince you that you know well, but if you can’t talk about alchemy for 30 minutes without referring to chakras and energy work then you really should question whether you understand things like the chemical marriage, great rite or gnostic mass. If you have not read authors such as Vital, Gikatilla, Reuchlin, Kircher or von Rosenroth then it is unlikely you are able understand the use of qabalistic names in Ceremonial Magic. Unless you have practiced Grimoire rituals in their original form with a similar attitude to the original practitioners then you might have no real experience of demon summoning at least not in its original form. Often when practitioners want to rearrange these sorts of rituals they have no understanding of the ritual itself, but sadly they think they do. If you have done a ritual 1000 times, but its origins are steeped in mystery, then you probably do not understand all the subtle nuances of the ritual.
The thousand times I’ve seen Wiccan practitioners swap around the cup and athame and say they are “reversing the polarity” like an episode of Doctor Who talking techno babble about some imaginary technology that doesn’t exist yet. They are totally unaware that they just said in posh vocabulary, as their reasoning, “so we have it backwards”. They have no greater understanding of alchemy than those who originally wrote the ritual. Often the rituals such as the great rite and the gnostic mass rely on the women to symbolise the capacity to bare a child in the womb. This represents a chemical processes that holds one chemical within a compound, no amount of passing the cup to a man gives him a womb for this symbolism. I say this as a gay man who recognises that my own sex life is as inept to create this symbolism as it is to impregnate another male. This why, despite being gay, I struggle agree with some versions of Queer masses that attempt to symbolise the birth of the host and wine with a same sex couple and ask that people try to empower the ritual with totally different symbolism if they wish to perform it queer.
The issue is that so many who are so quick to change rituals do so because they do not believe in the ritual in its current form. They have no faith in magic’s origins. It all seems like “made up roleplay” to them. Well on some levels we encourage this mentality because we have to live in a disbelieving world. It can be embarrassing when a person takes magic too seriously and then is unable to back up their claims. They make us all look silly when they do this in a BBC or Channel 4 documentary. In truth however it is a religious belief like any other and should be respected, even if we encourage people to think of magic as self-delusion and roleplay or as something that should be represented as such outside of magic circles. However, that is not how magic should be treated among practitioners who take it seriously. For those that do not take it seriously, I ask that you do not take ownership of it. It ends up being a mockery of those that have faith in it. If you conclude that magic is entirely a psychological process, then practice psychology! Stop wasting your time trying to break magic ritual to make it fit your own psychological needs. Psychology has many tools and to meet your needs and by misusing magic you end up stopping people who have faith that there is more to magic than psychology, of being able to call more than just psychological states of being. The supernatural is sacrificed for the natural, and in doing so you take over and debase the one place where seekers after the supernatural, can seek it.
Too often people change rituals without ever trying it in its original form. That being so, they never have the experience of anything in its original form. They do not have the experience to comment on the change they are making. They often disregard the need for this experience, because they have little faith in the experience of magic. They do not believe in it so they don’t bother to learn.
Experimentation is important and variation is necessary for experimentation. However, the scientific process requires that some experiments are done with a “control” group. This is a group were the experiment was conducted without variation. Also, then some small aspects of the experiment are varied, but only slightly and only one thing is varied at a time to investigate the affect of that individual thing. This change is then documented and a different variation is compared again to the control group. This is the scientific method.
Why you won’t hear what I am saying. What I am saying often falls on deaf ears. Well the result of what I am saying is that people should have less freedom with ritual. Noone likes that. Noone wants to hear they should be less free. It’s inconsistent with our morals so we want to disregard comments like this. However our desire to not hear them does not make them any less valid. Having said it people will assume I then wish to be the keeper of what is valid ritual, but I do not operate that way. I only suggest that rituals which have lasted for thousands of years be given more weight than one written yesterday. I only have time to learn original rituals and a few slight variations for experimentation, not the millions of variations.
In some views magic and its rituals are a play that one puts on for oneself. The result is observing your own reaction to the ritual. If however you believe that some part of the ritual have a direct effect on the universe then it does not matter your feeling of the ritual. Also for the sake of performing rituals with other people it would be more ideal that we reacted the same way to the same ritual actions. This is achieved through less variation. In some beliefs it is held that as a tradition is practiced a egregore is formed which reacts to the symbols and ritual actions magically, not dependent on the ritualists experience of their own actions.
There are many of us that try to protect and build the collective knowledge and experience of magic: what it originally meant, how it was originally done and more. We try to make sure that secrets are not lost with the rocketing of magic into more futuristic styles. This is a difficult task with constantly being tempted by books that make it seem so much simpler. Then we have the added difficulty of needing to play in the same sand pit with people who are ready to kick down our work researching history and reading long complex treatises for something they prefer, something simpler, less accurate. We are members of similar groups, but how we perform magic is quite different. All our efforts to build something is continually fwarted when it comes to rituals with others. Others want fast ego gratification and flights of fantasy.
I have come upon astral gates with guardians that would not let me through and challenged me to change the nature of my very soul. As I rose to the challenge I grew as a person and after time I was permitted entrance and supernatural results ensued. While many of these supernatural effects could be ignored or explained away, I noticed that my capacity to nurture initiates, performers and other people grew. My control over my financial situation grew and I was able to change my employability. My emotional capacity grew and as I became able to invest less in worldly things and recognise their temporary nature. My own experience attempting to contact the Holy Guardian Angel was frightening, depressing and encouraging all at once. It changed my life and left me needing to halt nearly everything in my life to reflect on it for weeks until I was able to continue with life yet with a very different outlook. As I lead a group yesterday, I saw people with similar difficulties, but I was able to to tell them of how smoothly I rose to the challenges and the supernatural effects I observed having achieve the necessary changes. I have seen the members of this group grow in what they are capable of over just 2 years that I have worked with them and they too have developed incredible powers of energy work in just a short time of practice because they’re driving at the correct initiatory pathways. My own elemental work supposedly affects other initiates in a powerful way and if I touch someone while in Communion with my HGA they feel a sudden flow of power and often end up dizzy because of the fast change in their energy system. One person even buckled at the knees and near fell over, when I touched them on the shoulder soon after a recreation of Liber Samekh.
Alternatively, I attended a ritual where the ritualists attempted to summon Baphomet and I sat there feeling very little of actual magic ritual going on. Then I realised they did not know the spirit of Baphomet to call it; their ritual words did not reflect an understanding of Baphomet. They just hoped the name was enough. There was no change in the astral plane, but their focus was not the astral plane, but a physical doorway in the physical room. Soon appeared in the doorway another initiate with a large papier mâché bull’s head on their shoulders. He then struggled to enter the room because the head was too big for the doorway and the mask kept trying to fall off. The whole thing was embarrassingly awkward and I was disappointed for their focus on physical papier mâché rather than astral forms. Their choice of a shape more reminiscent of a bull with bull horns, rather than a goat, the genderless aspect of Eliphas Levi’s Baphomet being forgot all betrayed a lack of knowledge or much purpose at all. It failed to include anything to do with Baphomet before its representation by Eliphas Levi or Baphomet’s role in the organisation. It concerned me that this was the culmination of occult knowledge of what was once a group very gifted in magic knowledge and power. Ritual focus was lost for the awkwardness of fitting through a doorway and the physicality of it all. You could not hear the initiate speak as Baphomet because the hood muted his words and he spoke too quietly. An opportunity to practice interacting with spiritual reality was replaced by gawking awkwardly at a papier mâché minotaur and requests for further ritual space were denied because we had already done a ritual. The supernatural was replaced by the dramatic.
It can be difficult when you hope for space to work group magic together to make accessing ancient practices easier and with feedback from other people who have experience working with spiritual reality and instead this is what you face. Often when your own experience of magical events and gates such as the abyss are life-altering and ongoing for many months, while others claim to have crossed the abyss by a visualisation in a weekend get-away, it can seem like a mockery is being made of what you worked so hard for. But we must maintain that years of attempts to conceal magic has resulted in magic concealing itself behind a diet of ego-stroking laziness.
When questioned about the depth of their experiences initiates who deny the hard work path often say that little is to be gained by it, without event trying it. They say that they already mastered magic believing the supernatural results that others gain to be unreal. Those that and are not faithful to ancient practices, often lack faith that the supernatural is real. At least they lack faith that those that came before had any success that is worth repeating. Frequently, they posit psychology rather than spirit as the driving force in magic and neglect the spiritual as they drop, its divine words and rituals actions in favour of more characterable entities that they prefer. They often quote Chaos Magic as the reason for the change without understanding typical Chaos Magic doctrines. It is as if just saying the words “Chaos Magic” is permission to do whatever they like, but that they . True Chaotes however explore systems to their extreme before altering them and when they do alter them, they do it specifically to explore how changes in belief change experiences. It is an entirely different philosophy not just words to throw around so you can do whatever you like.
I seek to posit that people who are unfaithful to magic ritual are such because they lack faith in magic. They do not believe in the symbols, they do not believe in the rituals, they believe foremost in psychology and roleplay. If there is the potential for supernatural results, then acting only on the rules of psychology is sure to miss it and only summon the psychological. Then if this becomes the driving force in magical groups, a grave error has been made and much potential for the supernatural has been lost. It is the one place people will come to seek it, but these groups will then lead them astray. Also without a proper degree in psychology, they may lead people into dangerous waters.