1 Lesson Correspondence Course

“Put me in coach, I’m ready to play, today, look at me, I could be, centerfield.”

So you want to be a magician. If you’re not a magician, I assume that’s why you’re reading my blog. Maybe you haven’t found the right group, or the right teacher. Maybe you can’t afford one of those other correspondence courses. Maybe you’ve tried other systems, but it’s too difficult to invest six months or a year or three years to a system before you see results. You’re in luck because I’ve come up with a 1 lesson correspondence course that will make you a magician. I’m giving it away free, so all it’ll cost you between a quarter and two dollars in supplies. You don’t have to study. You don’t have to learn protection techniques or magical theory. You don’t need a teacher and you don’t need a group. All you have to do is read this one post, follow these instructions, and tomorrow morning you will be a magician.

If you haven’t yet done a spell, if you’ve never performed a magical operation, even if you’ve never seen a ghost or had a psychic premonition, what I’m offering right now is the key to your spiritual attainment. Whatever you want to do or become spiritually, it all starts right here, right now, and all you have to do is want it.

Right now you’re being given a choice. You can choose to become a magician today. If you chose that, then today you’ll start on your spiritual path, whatever that may be. Whatever it is you want spiritually, you’ll find it on that path. Whether that’s doing magic, seeing ghosts, finding your higher self, gaining enlightenment, flying on a broom stick, or whatever else you want spirituality to be.

If you choose not to become a magician today, I don’t know why you’re reading my blog, or any magical blogs or books. You should give up, save yourself some time and money, and not waste the time of legitimate teachers and group members. If you aren’t yet a magician and you don’t become one today, I have very little faith that you will ever become a magician.

Magicians are defined by their actions. They do things. They also tend to jump right in and do things. They don’t wait until they’ve studied enough, until they’ve learned the right techniques, until their success or safety is assured, or put things off until tomorrow. Magicians get an idea for some magic in their head, and then they go out and do it.

If you put off doing this today, you will probably never do it. If you want to wait until you’re ready, you will never be ready. If you want to be a magician, if you want to be a spiritual person, just take this first step, and everything else will come to you.

I implore anyone reading this who has never cast a spell, or who hasn’t cast a spell in a long time, to change that and become a magician today. I want people to be magicians. I want other people to find their spiritual attainment. So please, do this for yourself, and make yourself, spiritually, into what you want to be.
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So you’re still reading, so I assume you’re at least thinking about seeing this through. You might be wondering how you can be a magician. It’s easy. A magician is someone who does magic. If you do magic, you’re a magician. The wonderful thing about magic though is that once you start doing it, everything else will start to fall into place. You’ll be having spiritual experiences, which will teach you about the metaphysical universe, and then you’ll have practical knowledge to apply to theory. This will make you a stronger magician who can do more, which means you’ll have even more spiritual experiences, and those will teach you even more about the metaphysical universe, giving you even more practical knowledge to apply to theory.

You’ll begin a cycle that will make you more and more powerful through out your entire life, and even into your afterlife.

All you have to do to put everything in motion is do one spell tonight. That will start the chain. I suggest trying to do magic as often as you can. You can easily do one of the spells you’re going to do tonight every night if you want to. Or you can experiment with other spells, maybe even your own. You don’t have to commit to all this right now though. Right now all you have to commit to is doing one spell.

I figure some of things people want are sex, money, and power. I think most people want at least one of these things. So I’ve devises four simple spells to help you attain sex, money, and/or power.

Will these spells work? That depends on you. The magical theory is solid. If you do them well enough, the spells will work. They might not though. Don’t get discouraged if they don’t work on the first try, or if they never work for you. It might take a few tries, or it might take a different kind of spell to see results. Just keep on trying until something finally does work, and always perform these spells with a positive attitude, never giving up faith that this time it will work.

Right now the important thing isn’t results. Right now the important thing is to be doing magic. Even if it doesn’t work, it’s still a first step on the journey to becoming an adept, and even a horribly bad novice magician is still a magician, which makes them much more spiritual than someone who isn’t a magician.

So, four spells, pick the one you like. All of these spells require a candle. I suggest a new white pillar candle that will burn for a few hours. That’s just a suggestion though. Feel free to use any kind of candle you want, can afford, or happen to have on hand. If it burns too long, you can always just put it out. You’ll also need a lighter, and something to put the candle on, preferably a candle holder. The prosperity spell also requires some pocket change, and the glamour spell works best with a mirror.

I also suggest taking a nice relaxing shower prior to doing any of these spells. If that isn’t possible, that’s okay, it’s just a suggestion. A quiet, dark place where you won’t be disturbed is also ideal, but not necessary.

Once you’re ready pick your spell and get to work. You may want to copy your spell into a text editor and print it out in case you need a reference during the spell.

Spell 1: Making Yourself Pretty

This spell is a basic glamour + projection. The idea is to make yourself more attractive, so more people will be interested in you.

This spell works best if you haven’t pleasured yourself lately. If you have, don’t worry, you can still do the spell.

First things first, take off all your clothes, including your socks and underwear. I didn’t include clothes in my $2.00 of required tools, and clothes can be expensive. This will also get you into a magical mindset, and it may even help you get used to experiencing new things and being able to still work magic under those conditions. Don’t worry, it’s a solitary ritual, so no one will see you. Except your gods. And any spirits that happen to be around. And any one who may astrally project or remote view you. Actually, unless you’re a never-nude, not being seen naked isn’t really an achievable goal anyways.

Hold the candle in your hand and look into the mirror, and focus on your better physical qualities. Figure out the things that make you attractive. Spend a few minutes (like five or ten) looking into the mirror, and thinking of yourself as an attractive person. Be attracted to yourself. Ignore your flaws, or any parts of yourself that make you unattractive.

The goal of a glamour shouldn’t be to give yourself specific attributes, like six pack abs or larger breasts. That doesn’t really work, and there’s no telling if a potential mate will even want that anyways. The goal is to put an aura of attractiveness around yourself, and then the person looking at you will fill in the blanks to make you attractive.

After you finished that, sit down with your candle. Put your hands on either side of the candle, bow your head down, and close your eyes. Say out loud, “Let what I think and what I feel leave me and enter into this candle.”

Now start thinking about either love or sex. Remember what it feels like to be in love, or even to like someone and have a crush on them. Think about how wonderful it is to think about them and spend time with them. Think about some sexual fantasies and things that turn you on. All the while hold the candle in your hands, and try your best to think about the candle. If you can, visualize these thoughts going into the candle.

I suggest spending five to ten minutes on this.

Place the candle on its candle holder.

Say out loud, “As it burns, let all that is within this candle come to be with me. Once all that is within this candle has come to be in me, let it come off of me as the heat comes off the flame.”

Light the candle. Spend about five minutes staring at the candle and feeling whatever it might be giving you. After that, go about doing whatever you want to do that night while the candle burns.

The next morning you may want to repeat the mirror ritual without the candle, but you don’t have to. For the first half of your day, maybe the entire day, you may notice people looking at you a little more lustfully.

Spell 2: Bringing Yourself a Lover

Chance encounters with people you find attractive are great, but they’re so chancey. There’s no guarantee that you’ll meet someone when you go out tomorrow, and very few ways to increase your odds. Maybe you would have more luck at a singles bar, but the love of your life might just be doing their grocery shopping tomorrow. This spell is designed to bring about a chance encounter with a potentially special someone. After that it’s up to you, since the spell doesn’t offer any help beyond that.

To start, take off all your clothes, including your socks and underwear. I didn’t include clothes in my $2.00 of required tools, and clothes can be expensive. This will also get you into a magical mindset, and it may even help you get used to experiencing new things and being able to still work magic under those conditions.

Once you’re naked, stand up straight, close your eyes, and say out loud, “I am a magnet, the person I want will be drawn towards me.” Repeat this for a total of five times. Louder is better, but don’t yell or scream. If you think you might be overheard, you don’t have to say it loud enough to be heard.

Next sit down with your candle. Place each of your hands on either side of the candle. Bow your head down and close your eyes. Think of all the traits you want your boyfriend or girlfriend to have. Think of the different physical attributes you would find attractive. Imagine all these things combined together into a dream person who would be your new boyfriend or girlfriend. While doing this try to think of the candle. Imagine all of these thoughts entering into the candle. If you can, visualize these thoughts, and your dream lover, leaving you and entering the candle. Do this for five to ten minutes.

Place the candle on to the candle holder. Say out loud, “Let another lonely heart, like the one described within my mind, be drawn to me. Let this candle burn, and in doing so bring us together.”

Light the candle.

Stand up straight, close your eyes, and say out loud five more times, “I am a magnet, the person I want will be drawn towards me.”

Spend a few minutes staring at the candle while it burns. See if you can feel anything, like the universe twisting around and coming together around you to offer you an opportunity.

Now go about your business for the rest of the evening and let the candle burn. You may wish to repeat that last part of the ritual about being the magnet again in the morning. If all went right with the spell, you may find yourself having a chance encounter with someone special.

Spell 3: A Simple Prosperity Spell

Maybe you’ve already found the love of your life, so those other spells aren’t going to be all that useful to you. But all of us could use a little extra spending cash, so here’s a spell to help make you part of the 1%.

In addition to your candle, you’re going to need some pocket change for this spell. Try to get between five and ten coins, and ideally have at least one of each.

Now that you got your pocket change, you aren’t going to need your pockets anymore, so take off all your clothes, including socks and underwear. I didn’t include clothes in my $2.00 of required tools, and clothes can be expensive. This will also get you into a magical mindset, and it may even help you get used to experiencing new things and being able to still work magic under those conditions.

Sit down. Put your money in your left hand and make a fist. Hold the candle with your right hand. Put your arms at your side, and raise your hands so they’re level with your head. Close your eyes. Say out loud, “Let these two things be as one. Let this candle be as money, and make me richer and bring prosperity. Let this money be as the candle, released into the universe.”

With your hands still raised, and your eyes still closed, imagine the money coming out of your hand and entering the candle. If you can, imagine it entering your hand, traveling through your arm and across your chest, and exiting out your other hand into the candle. Then imagine the candle burning, and showering coins into the universe around you. Finally imagine the candle burning, and coins showering out, and being drawn to and entering your body.

Continue these visualization for five to ten minutes. When you’re about to finish, bring your hands together, putting your left fist, holding the money, against the left side of the candle. If you can, take a minute or two to imagine all of your thoughts and imaginings from the last five to ten minutes leaving your mind and entering the candle.

Place the candle on the candle holder. Say out loud, “Burn and bring me prosperity, and riches for a day.” Light the candle.

Spend five to ten minutes staring at the candle. See if you can feel the candle doing anything to you, specifically enchanting you with a prosperity spell. If you can’t that’s okay.

The next day you’ll hopefully either find or come into some extra money. It’ll probably just be spare change, but it’s still money, and if you want to develop your own prosperity spell, the basic concept is the same, you just have to think bigger.

Spell 4: Feel the Magic

Maybe you’re content with the material aspects of your life. Maybe you’ve done the first three rituals already, so you have the love of your life and you’re piggy bank is all filled up with pocket change. All you want now is to feel something magical. Let’s do a little empowering magic.

WITH THIS SPELL YOU NEED A LIGHTER – NEVER USE MATCHES!!!

First things first, strip completely naked, and that includes socks and underwear. I didn’t include clothes in my $2.00 of required tools, and clothes can be expensive. Being naked will also get you into a magical mindset, and it may even help you get used to experiencing new things and being able to still work magic under those conditions. With this spell in particular, being naked is going to make it that much easier to experience something.

Sit down with the candle, and put your hands on either side of it. Bow your head and close your eyes. Think about the candle for a bit. Think about its shape, how it feels, what it is, and how its about to be used magically, and what it might symbolize ritually. Imagine the thoughts and images in your head flowing out of you and entering into the candle. If you can, specifically imagine the route they take from your head, through your chest, through your arms and hands, and finally into the candle. Continue these visualizations for five to ten minutes.

Once you finish, place the candle on the candle holder. Take the lighter in your hand and say, “I am of the magi, and I call forth fire elemental to sit upon this flame.” As soon as you finish, flick the lighter, and use the flame to light the candle. If you screw up lighting the candle, start again with, “I am of the magi…”. As you light the candle, imagine a fire elemental (whatever you think that would look like) being pulled up from underground and into the flame.

Once the candle is lit, sit down. Watch the flame for a minute. If a fire elemental is inside, it may be moving erratically. The flame may be much bigger than it should be, or the flame may rapidly change from being small to large and back.

Sit down facing the candle. Spread your legs a bit, but not so much that you’re uncomfortable. Hold your hands up to your head with your palms facing the ceiling.

Look at the candle. Look at the flame on the candle. Think of the energy coming off the candle as it burns. Think about the heat coming off that flame. Imagine that the energy is like the heat, an invisible aura that emanates from the flame. Look at the flame, and visualize that energy coming off the flame. Imagine pulling that energy and that heat off, towards you. Imagine pulling that energy off the flame and into you.

Continue sitting there, legs still spread, hands still up, imagining the energy coming into from the flame like a steady stream. Imagine the fire elemental being pulled off the flame and into your body. Imagine it coming to rest inside of you.

If you managed to successfully evoke and take in the fire elemental, you’ll probably begin to feel a bit hotter underneath your skin, and a lot more powerful. Taking in a fire elemental is like getting a quick boost of power. If you don’t manage to get a fire elemental, you may still end up drawing some of the energy from the candle into yourself. If you’re not used to taking in energy, it may seem like an awful lot.

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“Got a beatup glove, a homemade bat, and brand-new pair of shoes, you know I think it’s time to give this game a ride.”

So there’s four spells. All you have to do is follow the instructions and do  one tonight and tomorrow you’ll be a magician, and you’ll be on your way to spiritual attainment.

If you have any issues or questions with the different spells, or have trouble getting them to work, I’m more than happy to help. The only thing is, I’m not going to help anyone who hasn’t attempted one of the spells. The whole point is to do something tonight, not put off doing it until I can get around to answering your questions.

Even if you’re having problems, try doing the spell. If you don’t understand why you’re doing something, that’s okay. If you’re not sure about something, guess. If there’s a part of the spell where you don’t know what to do, make something up. If you can’t do a spell exactly as its written for some reason, then make some sort of modification to it so that you can do it. It doesn’t need to be exact. It doesn’t even need to work the first time you try it. What does need to happen is you need to be doing magic today, even if you completely fail at it.

Likewise if you want to tell me that this is crap, it’s dangerous, tell me why it won’t work, tell me how they can be improved, or otherwise complain or point out flaws in these spells, go ahead. But if you’re going to do any of that, do one of the spells first. If you’re not a magician, I don’t care about you’re opinion on magic. It’s uninformed, and I know a hell of a lot more than you do.

If you want to compliment me on this post or tell me how great it is, I always like to hear nice things, but wait until after you’ve done one of the spells. Then you can talk about what you did and experienced if you want. And, until you’ve done one of these spells, doing one of these spells is going to help you a lot more than commenting on Internet blogs.

If you want to talk about your experiences with these spells, or how well they worked for you, feel free. I always like hearing about how this sort of stuff works or doesn’t work for other people.

Tools: Candles and Lanterns

Candles and Lanterns are the tools of the element of spirit, or akasha, or void (whatever you want to call it). It is that which flows through all things, that from which all things come forth, and that which is composed of all elements. It is a hermaphroditic element, being both completely male and female. Fire’s physical representation is the flame. Earth’s physical representation is the dirt in the ground. The physical representation of spirit is what we call in modern magical practice energy. Energy is invisible, but it is still sensible and quantifiable. Energy is what makes up your aura, your shield, it makes up the majority of your astral body and a good deal of your physical body. Energy manipulation is one of the basic magical abilities, and the vast majority of magic is dependent upon it.

The element of spirit is both active and passive at the same time, which also means that it is also neither active nor passive at the same time. It is a hermaphroditic element, being both masculine and feminine (and being both completely masculine and feminine). Spirit is seen as the first of the five elements, and Fire and Water spring forth from it (with Air and Earth coming forth from Fire and Water). Spirit is seen as the divine force. The element of spirit is also associated with our connection into the spiritual realm. Spirit is what connects us to what lies beyond our physicality. It also connects us to the divine source. And it connects us into every other thing in the universe.

It is actually the flame upon the candle or lantern that is representative of the element of spirit. This can get confusing because common sense would dictate that we should use a flame to represent fire, so candles and lanterns should be elemental tools of fire. However in practice a flame represents spirit.

Unfortunately energy, which is the manifestation that we attribute to spirit, is not recognized by the mundane world. Although energy can be sensed, manipulated, identified, and quantified by an experienced practitioner, the average person can only sense energy and only in a very limited way. Although energy can be quantified, it can not be quantified in an empirically quantified. There is no purely objective way to sense, identify, and categorize different energies. Because of this it is very difficult to find something which can be associated with spirit.

We use a flame because a flame seems to exist halfway between the two worlds (like energy), being as much physical as it is spiritual. A flame has no weight. When we light a torch, it doesn’t become heavier. It doesn’t have a physicality. We can pass our hand right through a flame. In this sense, a flame seems to be completely spiritual. Yet even the uninitiated with no ability to see spirits can see a flame. And if we touch a flame, it hurts. In this sense a flame is a very physical thing. This is very important to how we use flames in magic. Flames bridge the gap between physical actions and spiritual effects. Also if we burn something, it ceases to have a physically and instead ascends into a spiritual form.

Also of interest is that flames cast light. Since spirit is connected to the divine, this light is often associated with divine light and spiritual truth.

Using candles in magic

Candles are by far one of the most powerful and versatile magical tools. In fact it would be beyond the scope of a single blog post to completely explore the many uses and nuances of candle magic. Others have tried to condense the subject into large books and have still failed. If you’re looking for a book that goes over the basics of candle magic, I highly recommend The Magic Candle by Charmaine Day. If you’re already adept at candle magic, don’t expect to learn anything new from the book. It covers very basic theories and ideas that are key to understanding how to use candles in spellwork and ritual.

It’s important to remember that in ritual candles, particularly their flames, represent several things. They are a connection between the physical and the spiritual. They are a source of energy. They can also represent fire.

Another very important attribute of candles is that they burn. If you were to put something, like say energy, into a candle and then burn the candle, what was put into the candle would be released into the universe. If you were to carve a word or sigil into a candle, that word or sigil would go out into the universe once it burned.

Some Cool Things You Can Do With Candles (Far From All Inclusive)

Release a thought or idea into the universe: You can put a thought or idea into a candle. There are a couple of ways to do this. The simplest is to put energy into the candle containing the thought. Alternatively you can concentrate on the candle and try to push the thought into it. Then once the candle is lit and burns it will release the thought into the universe. So how is this useful?

As an example suppose you wanted someone you liked to ask you out. You would take a thought that would promote this, like “Rob is so hot” or “Rob would make such a great boyfriend”; or even something more direct like “I should ask Rob out” or “If I asked Rob out, I’m sure he’d say yes.” You concentrate on this thought and you concentrate on the person you want this thought to go to. Then you burn the candle and the thought will hopefully pop into their head.

Now suppose you didn’t concentrate on a person. Suppose you just put the thought “Rob would make such a great boyfriend” into the candle. Then you could take the candle to a crowded place, like a party, and light it. Now the thought might go into the heads of several different party guests.

As an offering to activate an altar: Candles are commonly used on altars. The main reason we do this is to attract the attention of whatever the altar is made to and activate the altar. For example if the altar were to a god, then we would be requesting the presence of that god and their energy in the room. Most of the time when a candle is lit on a deity’s altar the deity will show up. The candle can be put out before it finishes burning if needed, but if the candle is put out be careful to remember that the candle was used as an offering and who or what it was used as an offering too. The candle can be reused, but only as an offering to the same entity. If the candle was made as an offering to a deity I would highly recommend that it be reused until it is finished instead of throwing it away.

Summon a fire elemental into it: A candle has a flame on top of it so we can summon a fire elemental into it. In fact this is one of the best and easiest places to evoke a fire elemental. Fire elementals are very useful and there’s quite a lot that can be done with them.

Energize a seance: Candles provide a source of energy. This energy can be taken and used by spirits to manifest in different ways and perform different tasks. We see this done a lot in seances. Dead spirits are typically very weak and the candles provide a source of energy they can drain in order to materialize into this world to various degrees.

Sense some entities: One trick to discover certain kinds of spirits is to turn off all the lights at night and light a single candle. Move from room to room carrying the candle. If you notice the flame dramatically decrease to almost nothing you have a spirit in the room.

This is an old trick, and it only works with certain kinds of spirits. Once again this goes back to the energy in the flame. The spirit is trying to eat the energy, or in some cases trying to eat the light, and this causes the flame to go down.

The energy trick: The energy trick was actually taught to me as a party trick, but it can be used in other ways. Basically you can push energy into a candle to charge it. You can also leave it on an altar to charge it. In either case, the candle will fill with specific energy. Later you can burn the candle to release the energy.

With this method a candle can be charged over a long period of time and release very large amounts of energy when it is burned. The first time I saw this done was by a fellow who charged and dressed a candle every day for three months on top of a Martian altar (the candle was also left on top of the altar wrapped in cloth when he wasn’t charging it). After the three months he took the candle to a party and lit it. The effect was cool to say the least.

Burn on top of a symbol: One trick is to burn a candle on top of a symbol, the idea being that the energy from the symbol will be released upward as the candle burns. One of my favorite things to use for this is tarot cards. You can find certain decks (including the Rider-Waite) online. You can print the card out on to paper, cut them out of the paper, then use them in this ritual. You can use any symbol you feel comfortable with though. You can even write a word or phrase on a piece of paper and burn that.

When doing a spell like this, it’s helpful to empower the piece of paper containing the symbol prior to burning the candle on top of it. Charge the symbol with the proper energy. Meditate on the symbol. Concentrate on the symbol and its meaning.

Trap a spirit into it: This is a fairly basic attack. You can push spirits into things to trap them. You can push a spirit into a candle and trap it inside. Then you can burn the candle with the intent of causing pain to the spirit as the candle burns. Once the candle finishes burning the spirit will be freed, albeit harmed (this is important for me because I consider it unethical to permanently imprison things and recommend not doing it except in extreme circumstances).

You can grab a spirit’s energy and directly push it into a candle. An easier method though is to first pull the spirit into yourself, then push it out of yourself into the candle. The disadvantage of this method is that it leaves you very vulnerable to both attack and possession. You have to be able to overpower the spirit and keep control of your person once the spirit is inside of you. Once you push the spirit into yourself, retaining complete control over the spirit is the only defense you’ll have against it.

Wax divination: After a spell is performed you can divinate into the candle wax. Look into the wax and see if you see any shapes or forms. Often times these shapes will be related to the target of the spell, what has happened with the spell, and how successful it may or may not have been. Unfortunately wax divination isn’t always possible due to many modern candles being designed to burn evenly so they leave little to no wax when used properly.

Some Common Types of Candles

Pillar: Pillar candles are the most common types of candles for spellwork. They’re easy to find, they come in a variety of colors, they’re tall enough to dress, and they’re usually big enough to carve words and symbols into. They also lie flat on a surface which is good if you want to burn a symbol under them.

Taper: Tapers are almost as common as pillars, but they’re a bit less useful. Tapers need special candle holders designed specifically for taper candles. Tapers can’t stand up on their own, so you can’t burn them on top of symbols. Lastly it’s difficult to carve words and symbols into tappers because of how thin they are.

Tea Lights: Tea lights have very limited use in ritual and spellwork. They’re small, they burn out quickly, and they’re in those little metal cases so you can’t carve into them.

Image: Image candles are candles in the shape of a person (either a man or woman). They are one of the more useful candles out there. If you want to cast a spell on someone or a spell that will affect someone, even yourself, image candles can help make the spell stronger. The idea being that we connect the candle to a specific person, then we either physically do to the candle, or enchant the candle, in the way we want to affect that person, then we light the candle and let it burn until it finishes.

7-Knob: Seven knob candles are candles that have seven different parts, the idea being that you light the candle at seven different times, each time burning off a different part. Knob candles are typically used for week long spells. Part of the ritual is performed every day over a seven day period and the candle is lit and one knob is burned. At the end of the seventh day the ritual is complete. Typically this extra attention will make spells much stronger and much more successful.

Black Candles: If candle color is important to you, black candles can be very hard to get. Magic stores are the only places that stock them year round, and they often charge more for their black candles, meanwhile their normal candles are already over-priced. From late August through the end of October is the only time of year that normal stores stock black candles, so it’s a good idea to stock up for the entire year during these two months. It’s also a good time to buy orange candles (which are also usually difficult to find).

Other things to get for your candles

Lighter: I recommend getting one of the long plastic lighters that are used for lighting grills. They’re cheap and easy to find and are great for lighting candles. Cigarette lighters don’t work very well because they’re made to be lit for only a short period of time and to be held upright. Many times a candle’s wick can take a while to light, and a disposable cigarette lighter will heat up pretty fast, burning your hand. Likewise a cigarette lighter is meant to be held upright. When you go to light a candle with it usually you’ll need to hold the lighter at a downward angle. This causes the flame to come up and burn your hand.

I do not recommend using matches in spellwork and ritual. The reason being, if you work with fire elementals they can hide in an unlit match and lay dormant for a very long time. You probably won’t even notice they’re hiding in there until you light the match. With a fire elemental inside the entire match can become engulfed within the flame and burn your finger almost as soon as it is lit. Then you panic and try to blow out the flame, but the flame’s too strong and blowing on it won’t put it out. But the bottom part of the match, which is on fire too, is weaker than it should be and weaker than the top part, and when you blow on it you can snap the top half of the match off from the bottom. Now you have a ball of fire hurling across the room until it hits the wall and lands behind the very heavy entertainment center. Then you have to frantically pull things off the entertainment center and move it so you can put out the fire behind it before it does too much damage. If you think this is too specific to be hypothetical, you’re right. I’m speaking from experience. Matches are a bad idea.

Candle Holder: Metal and wood candle holders are best. Which you choose is really a matter of personal taste. Metal holds energy better but wood will absorb it better. If you’d like to get a better idea of the specific properties of metal and wood I talk about them in greater detail in the articles dealing with Knives and Swords and Wands and Staves.

However glass candle holders are not the best choice. Glass is very fragile, and when you put lots of energy into it, it can vibrate a bit. When a glass candle holder is regularly used, sooner or later a spell is cast that is so powerful it breaks the candle holder.

Candle Snuffer: Basic candle safety rules suggest using a candle snuffer. Blowing out a candle causes it to burn unevenly when it is relit.

When working magic a candle snuffer becomes even more important. Magical spells can do weird things to flames. Lots of practitioners develop the ability to manipulate fire, at least to a small degree, and make flames do things they shouldn’t. Lastly fire elementals can cause flames to get very high or move and jump in strange ways. In all of these cases it’s not the brightest idea to put your face close to the flame to blow it out. In some of the worst cases practitioners have had fire elementals force the flame into their mouth while they were trying to blow out the candle.

Of course it’s very rare that anyone suffers any kind of injury from blowing out candles. Most of the time nothing bad happens. Still candle snuffers are cheap and easy to use, and many practitioners (myself included) consider it a worthwhile fire safety practice.

Hurricane Glass: Hurricane glass is a piece of glass, usually shaped like an upside down vase, that you put a candle inside. You use hurricane glass when you want to light a candle inside of a draft, either from your air vents or a fan or an open window.

Dressing Cloth: A dressing cloth is a piece of cloth you use to dress a candle with oil. Generally you can use each corner to dress four different candles with one cloth, but the cloth needs to be washed after every use. These things end up being a pain to clean all the time. Most of the time I usually just use paper towel.

Dressing Oils: If you use unscented candles, you can buy oils to dress your candle with. Generally we use oils that are either associated with the type of spell we are casting, or we use oils that are associated with specific elements or gods. As a general rule, the associations for the various oils are the same as the associations for the various incenses. Just about any scent of oil can be found as an incense, and vice-versa.

Remember that essential oils are pure oils, and they need to be diluted before use. Also be careful because some disreputable companies sell already diluted fragrance oils with brand names that include the word essential, so make sure you read the small print on the bottle.

Herbs: You can make your own oil out of herbs. I plan to go into more detail on how to do this in a future post (it’s quite simple actually). Whenever you burn herbs, even as an oil around a candle, you need to be sure that you know everything about the herb you’re burning, what its effects on people are, and specifically what effect it may have on you or anyone else in your home. Even if a particular herb is normally safe, you can still have a potentially fatal allergic reaction to it.

Dressing a Candle

Dressing a candle is rubbing oil (or some other substance, like say blood) on the candle with a cloth. A lot of people prefer to charge a candle with energy while they are dressing it (for most people this makes charging the candle easier), but not everybody does this. You take your cloth and dab oil on to it. If you plan to use the cloth for more than one candle, then you would dab only one corner of the cloth. You either start at the top or the bottom, and you move the cloth around the candle in a spiral motion. Typically if you’re going down you go clockwise, if you’re going up you go counter-clockwise. Dressing a candle downward symbolizes putting something into the candle, like charging it with energy. Dressing a candle upward symbolizes something coming out of the candle (typically when it will be burned later in the ritual), like the energy the candle has been charged with being released into the room. You can also dress a candle downward, and then dress it upward, in order to symbolize something going into the candle and then coming out later on.

Candle Energy Manipulation Tips and Tricks

-One commonly used candle charging trick is to put your hand over a candle and push energy out of your fingertips into the top of the candle. While doing this move your hand in a clockwise motion over the candle. Moving your hand in a counter-clockwise motion meanwhile will discharge the energy.

Remember when you work with screws that have normal threads on them, screwing it clockwise will make it go into the hole, and screwing it counter-clockwise will make it come out. It’s a process that seeps into our brains (unless your the sort of person who routinely uses screws with left-handed threads) and we associate clockwise with going in and counter-clockwise with coming out. Also because they’re opposite motions, most of us will subconsciously come to the logical conclusion that they should have opposite effects and one should undo what the other one does.

-A lot of practitioners use specifically colored candles to help with energy manipulation. I’m going to go into more detail about this later with a post on the relationship between color and energy. It’s not as important to candle magic as some people make it out to be. Cheap candle dyes are a relatively recent invention, as is the popularity of color coded candle magic.

If there is any doubt about color, white candles will work with just about any spell. White is a blank color. All it will do is magnify the power of the spell and help push whatever is within it outward into the universe.

Candle Safety

Many magicians are very bad with fire safety. You should probably buy a fire extinguisher prior to doing any candle magic, because if you practice magic there’s a 95% chance you’re the kind of person who will set their home on fire once a month or more.

Sometimes because of magical practices we have to do things which go against general candle safety rules. We might have to let a candle burn for many hours, and we won’t be available to watch it for this entire period. We might have to light two candles right next to each other. We may put nails or other objects into the candles (note that I am not suggesting anyone do these things. These are all unsafe candle practices that no one should do. Do them at your own risk, you may burn down your home).

A lot of magic fires are due to a lack of common sense though. Don’t light candles near walls or curtains. Always use candle holders. Don’t light a dozen or more candles right next to each other. Don’t light candles in the middle of a breeze or draft. Keep flammable liquids (including Bacardi 151) away from candles. Don’t wear loose fitting clothing or robes to ritual, or if you do keep a good distance between yourself and all lit candles. Only use stable candle holders that won’t fall down when lightly tapped. If you’re saying ‘duh’ to all of these suggestions, congratulations, you’re in the top 20th percentile of all magical practitioners.

I’d also like to reiterate my other suggestions, which are specifically in regard to magical candles. Don’t use matches (because fire elementals can hide in them) and buy a candle snuffer.

This is far from an all inclusive candle fire safety list. I’d suggest extensive online and offline reading on the subject before working with candles. Granted most people in the world, by the time their parents let them use a match or lighter, know enough about candle fire safety to light a candle. However since you practice magic, I’m assuming (based on general trends) that you are not one of these people, and have no clue how to light a candle without setting yourself and home on fire.

Lanterns

Finally we get to lanterns, and by lanterns I mean oil based lanterns that have a flame. Electric lanterns, like electric candles, aren’t all that useful in ritual work.

Lanterns are cool magical tools, but most people don’t use them. In a lot of ways they serve the same purpose as candles. The main advantage to using a lantern is that a candle is disposable and lanterns are reusable. Every time we use a magical tool, it becomes more powerful and stronger. Candles we only get to use once. Likewise if we invest the time and energy into charging and enchanting a candle, once the spell is over with the candle is gone. But if we do this with a lantern, after the spell we still have a charged and enchanted lantern.

The main disadvantage to lanterns is that they aren’t disposable. One of the reasons why candles are so useful in ritual work is because the burn up. The candle, and anything we’ve put inside of it, goes out into the spiritual realm of the universe. If we put a thought into our lantern (using the same method we would with a candle), we now have to set our lantern on fire in order to send that thought into the universe (at which point we no longer have a lantern, and they cost more money than candles). So what a lantern can do is actually quite limited, which is why so few people use them.

Lanterns can be used as sources of energy during a ritual. The flame provides a constant source of energy. Meanwhile most lanterns are metal, and metal is very good at holding a charge. If there is glass on the lantern, that can be used to amplify the energy. As the lantern is used more it becomes more powerful, and it can send out more energy when lit. A good lantern, when lit, can fill a room with strong energy.

You could, if you wanted to, enchant the lantern so that produces a specific type of energy when lit. The lantern needs to be compatible with the type of energy you want it to produce. If you continually charged the lantern with that kind of energy again and again, eventually it should naturally produce only that kind of energy. If you’re a little more advanced with energy manipulation, while you’re charging the lantern you can go into it and change it’s bias so it only produces that specific type of energy. This is just a quicker method of doing the same thing.

Some reasons why you might want to enchant a lantern like this: You can give the lantern a generally favorable energy, like joy or love or calm, and you can light it when you have company in order to promote a better ambience and mood. If there’s a specific energy you prefer working with when you do your rituals you can set up your lantern to produce this type of energy for your rituals. You can also make the lantern more active. If the lantern had an aggressive and purifying energy, for instance, it could then be lit as an attack when cleaning a house of unwanted spirits. There’s actually quite a bit you can do with a lantern by modifying its energy.

You could also enchant the lantern with a thought or message so that every time it is lit, it blasts that thought into the minds of everyone near by. This really isn’t all that useful though, mainly because the message would be so specific that the lantern would probably be useless most of the time.

Tools: Wooden Wands, Staves, and the Qualities of Different Woods

Section 1: Deals with how to use wands and staves in magical practices, and is meant to aid those who don’t know what a wand does or how to use it.
Section 2: Deals with the different qualities of various common woods, and is meant to aid those who want the correspondences of different woods.

Types of Wands

There are basically three types of wands that are of use to us as magicians. The first type, and the most important, are wooden wands, which will be dealt with in this article. There is a second type which is a piece of crystal in the shape of a wand, known as a crystal wand or energy wand. These are generally associated with the new age movement and are very useful. Lastly there’s a type of wand that is hand made by putting gemstones and herbs inside of a hollow pipe. I’ll discuss these types of wands in future articles. There are other types of wands, most notably a metal wand, which some stores are now selling. These things are next to useless and a waste of money. You’re better off with either a wooden wand or a knife.

How to Use a Wand

Wands are one of the magician’s five elemental tools and are fire associative. Wood is great at quickly absorbing and easily working with large amounts of energy, and so wands are used to manipulate large amounts of energy easily. Note the following exercises assume at least a passing understanding of how to manipulate energy. Without this understanding your results will not be as impressive.

Soak and Radiate: This is not really an exercise. Just a comment about the nature of a wand. If you watch a wand you’ll notice that, all on its own, it will very easily soak up some of the energy around it. You’ll also notice that the wood will radiate this energy from it, as if it is slowly leaking out. This is the nature of wood and how it reacts with energy and why it is so good at manipulating energy as it does.

Moving Energy: Moving energy is easy enough. If you can find it in the room you can easily wave your hand to move it, or swirl it around, or whatever (you don’t even need a hand, but these things are always easier with physical aids). Now try these same exercises with your wand. You’ll notice you’re moving a much larger amount of energy around, and you’ll be doing it a lot easier than if you just used your hand.

Pulling Energy into the Wand: Put each hand on opposite ends of the wand and hold it horizontally at chest level. Now concentrate on pulling nearby energy towards yourself and into the wand. You should notice the wand works kind of like a magnet pulling in whatever stray energy may be around.

Raising Energy (Method One): This is the same as the previous method, except this time try to pull energy from more than just the surrounding area. You can also try pulling energy from out of the ground. You’ll notice you’ll pull a lot of energy into the area very quickly.

Raising Energy (Method Two): Pretty much the same as the last method, except instead you hold the wand in one hand and move the wand in an upward motion. This is typically the preferred method for raising energy from the ground. You can also prance around the room doing this because, um, some people like that sort of stuff. Not me! But some people.

Energizing (Screw Method): Swirl the wand over an object or person in a clockwise motion to push the nearby energy into it. Swirl counterclockwise to drain.

Directing energy: This is pretty much the same as moving energy. Hold the wand vertically and move your arm down until it is at a ninety degree angle with your body. All free energy should now rush towards whatever is being pointed at. Unless the energy is specifically charged for an act, this is generally an attack. You throw enough energy at a barrier and it will break. You throw enough energy at something living and you will kill it. It helps if the energy is aggressive and malicious, but an aggressive and malicious intent is usually enough to do it.

All of these methods are more dependent on will and intent than anything else. The motions are only meant to help focus the mind and one’s intent through physical action.

Staves

Staves work much the same as wands. They’re pretty much just really big wands. Anything you can do with a wand, you can do with a staff. The advantage of having a wand is that it is easier to carry around to rituals, it’s easier to store several of them, they’re easier to charge on an alter, they are cheaper and easier to make, and some woods can not be made into staves.

Staves have several advantages. For starters, they’re more inconspicuous, if you have a small, modest staff. If you have a ten foot tall staff with feathers and bells hanging off it, no it’s not inconspicuous. If you have a cane-like walking stick, you just use a cane to walk.

Staves are also bigger. Technically this means, all things being equal in regards to wood types and enchantments, they should be able to move larger amounts of energy. It’d be very rare though, with a properly enchanted wand, to hit a point where you felt you needed more and a staff would make much of a difference.

Also, being bigger, staves can hold larger charge for longer. This is actually the biggest advantage the staff has. Wood radiates energy, and so the charge is always disappearing. The more energy that enters a piece of wood, the quicker it will radiate out. A staff can hold a lot more energy though, so a staff will keep its charge much longer.

Because of this, and the ease of carrying it around as a walking stick, many people like to take staves to places with large amounts or unique energy in order to charge them. Properly done, this can result in a very powerful and highly charged tool when used in ritual.

Adding Gemstones to Your Wand

A lot of people like to attach gemstones to a wooden wand. Whether or not to do this is up to the practitioner and largely a matter of preference. A gemstone will hold a charge much better than wood, and so it can be used as a battery for the wand. Gemstones also amplify energy (meaning the energy coming off the wand will be increased). A gemstone may make it easier to manipulate and shape energy in a finer, less broad, way. And finally a gemstone will taint the wands energy to that of the gemstone. The exact taint is dependent on the type of gemstone used, and is beyond the scope of this article.

On the downside the gemstone will have its own personality (which you much be compatible with, in addition to that of the wood), and a gemstone will have a particular taint on the wand’s energy (which the wand ideally should be compatible with).

The Personality of Wood

Remember that wood was once a living thing, and as such each plant had its own personality, and that personality is going to carry on to the wood itself. That’s why it’s important to be sure that you are compatible with a particular wand or staff.

The Qualities of Wood

Broadly speaking, different types of wood have certain inherent qualities, and these will effect how any wooden magical tools made from them operate. Listed below are some of the most common, and also some of the most useful, types of wood you’ll find in magical tools and their general qualities:

Apple – Apple is associated with love and fertility, and is good for utilizing love and sexual energies. It works well with all sorts of love spells, lust spells, marriage spells, and fertility spells. Apple is compatible with deities of love, sex, desire, and courtship.

Ash – Ash is fire associative. All wands are fire associative, but ash is doubly so. Ash makes a very good battle wand. Its best use is for direct attacks against people and entities. It also does pretty well with death curses and with destroying crops (not really that useful in this day and age though). Because of its combative nature, it’s also good at most kinds of protection magick, like casting wards and barriers. Properly enchanted, ash can also do well in aiding all kinds of creativity. Ash is compatible to deities who are fire associative and deities of warriors and battle (Mars, Aries, Athena, Tyr).

Bay Laurel – The bay laurel is sacred to Apollo and is generally associated with immortality, eternal youth, the regeneration of youth, and healing.

Elder – Elder wood is very good at finding and absorbing negative energies. For this reason most people will find Elder, at best, difficult to work with in any kind of magick that doesn’t involve harm, vengeance, or cursing. Elder is also a very alive and vengeful type of tree, and Elder wood should never be taken off of a tree without permission from the tree, otherwise you may have to deal with the wrath of the tree. Elder wood will often work as a ward by itself, either because entities fear the elder wood, or because they fear that which is powerful enough to control the elder wood.

Elm – Earth associative, Elm is the opposite of Ash.

Hawthorn – A fae associative wood (and surprise, you can make alcohol from it). Like oak, this is an otherworldly wood, which makes it somewhat useful for evocations, but keep in mind that it comes from fae realms and generally connects to fae realms. Hawthorn is best for magick dealing directly with fae. Fae-kin may also find the wand very compatible. The wood’s nature may also make it a good choice for fae-like endeavours. Cutting down or otherwise destroying a Hawthorn tree that fae have laid claim to will often times make them angry and vengeful.

Hazel – Air associative. Hazel is a wood of wisdom and intelligence. Because of this, in spiritual work, many see hazel wands as a general good all-purpose wand.

Holly – Holly is associated with order and is sacred to Saturn. Generally holly won’t make a very good wand or staff. It tends to work against most magick since it is geared for balancing things, setting things right, and putting things in the boundaries that they are meant to be in. People who have strong ties to Saturn and are used to utilizing order magick might be able to find some value in a holly wand, but most people won’t get much use out of it. It would do very well for binding spells, closing portals, de-enchanting an area, and cleaning up magical messes. Items made out of holly can be very useful, especially when properly enchanted. They can help with achieving balance and order. If you find your life is in disarray, if you’re emotionally unhinged, or if you have major metaphysical issues in your home, holly can help to fix this. It can also help protect against certain kinds of spells and supernatural threats. Fae also don’t like holly and sometimes they can be driven away by it. Generally holly will try to push things out of an atypical, metaphysical, imbalanced or chaotic situation and move it towards a typical, mundane, balanced, and ordered situation. It promotes calm and peace.

Maple – Generally a wood of protection.

Oak – Oak is an ancient tree, the species is older than this world. Oak does not originate here, it originates in other worlds, and as such it acts as a sort of anchor to these worlds and their magicks. Because of this oak is a very powerful magical wood. Groves of oak trees are a preferred place for ritual because the area is anchored into other worlds. Oak also works very well when used to move through worlds (either going out via astral projection, shadowwalking, or dreaming) or bringing things in through evocation. Oak is also associated with lightning and is sacred to all lightning associated gods (Zeus, Thor).

Pine – A good wood for spells involving youth, the slowing of age and decay, immortality, and strength (when defined as resistance). Also a good all purpose wand for spells involving practical matters.

Poplar – Some confusingly think that poplar is good for protection spells, when in fact it’s that items made from the wood make excellent guardians. Your poplar wand isn’t so much going to be good at casting protection spells as it is going to be good at protecting you from attacks while you carry it.

Rowan – Rowan is an excellent absorber of energy. This makes the wood superior in all kinds of protection spells. In fact just having Rowan wood on your person may be enough to completely absorb all of the energy from a hostile spell. Likewise Rowan can absorb the radiant energy from the area and from dead spirits and stray entities, rendering them harmless and invisible. Properly enchanting and using Rowan wood will magnify (and if done right filter) its absorption abilities making it more effective in these endeavors. Also due to its very high sensitivity in regards to absorbing energy they make superior dowsing rods.

Sandalwood – Sandalwood is a divine wood. It is associated with divinity, the gods, and all matters of a higher spiritual nature. Sandalwood is also an endangered and protected species, and there is a much greater demand for the wood than supply. Because of this most sandalwood is not true sandalwood, but of a related species.

Walnut – Walnut is another fire associative wood. It’s a strong wood and it’s associated with destruction. Because of this it makes a good battle wand. It differs a bit from ash though. Ash is actually associated with the battle and is good for fighting, preferable to walnut in that regard. Walnut just destroys things really well, which is always good in a fight. If you just want to destroy your enemies and leave a path of massive destruction in your wake, go with walnut. It would also work well with spells of mass destruction and death. I believe walnut may also be useful with glamour spells, and a wand used for that would be very interesting.

Willow – Willow is water associative. It’s good for both healing spells and cleansing spells. It’s also good for exorcising spirits (which is technically a cleansing spell). This makes Willow an excellent choice for besoms and brooms. In actuality what Willow is good at is washing away that which is bad, improper, or old and bringing forth that which is new or a renewal. It is because of this that willow is sometimes associated with bringing the dead to their final resting place, however willow’s association is with exercising the dead and the resulting renewal, not with the land of the dead or with death energy. Willow can also work well with death spells under very limited circumstances. Due to willow’s nature of getting rid of that which is bad, improper, or old there are some legends that the tree will uproot itself and seek out and kill travelers.

(European) Yew – First off, make sure you get European Yew and not Pacific Yew (which is more common in North America). Yew is associated with the dead and the land of the dead. Yew is very good at utilizing death energy (this is the energy of the dead, not energy that kills). It’s also good for bringing forth and controlling the dead. Yew is compatible with most Chthonic deities.

The Sigils of Thomas Pendragon

This is a heads up that my friend Tom has been working on channeling and transcribing a series of 84 sigils (28 sigils of the Ether, 28 of the Abyss, and 28 of Earth), these are not only beautiful, but full of symbolic meaning (some of it which is hidden and has never been published) and they’re all very powerful. Right now Tom is printing them for everyone to see and hopes to eventually publish them with some sort of scheme that will allow others to use and expand upon the work in their own publications. He’s also working on commentary for all the sigils which will incorporate his own work and experiences with them.

The binding sigil was one that really struck me because it contained a symbol which I routinely use as part of a binding spell (now that it is given away, I’ll be posting it shortly). I’ve never actually told anyone the methodology of the spell, especially Tom since I use it against him when he tries to get in magical shenanigans when I’m driving him places.

 

 

 

The Short History of the Sigils

Part One: Alagon.

Sometime before I met Tom, while he was living in Florida, he managed to open a lot of stuff up at once and happened upon an entity which called itself Alagon that took an interest in him. Tom began channeling the gospel of Alagon and distributing it to others. He managed to find several other people who knew of Alagon and his work. Alagon meanwhile was causing Tom headaches and some bleeding from his head. Others who worked with Alagon had the same problems, and some apparently died of aneurysm. At the time the true nature of Alagon wasn’t known. Tom was still in contact with Alagon when he moved to Las Vegas, and a local magician, Bon Necron, managed to break Alagon from Tom and partially bind him. Later Tom would give me some of Alagon’s gospel to look over, and reading it I did come into contact with Alagon and suffered a severe headache from it. The true nature of Alagon wouldn’t be known for some time.

Part Two: Adiemus

Adiemus was the magical name of a practitioner, who is sometimes also referred to as the Baron, who was active up until his death somewhere around 1920. He was a very powerful practitioner who had access to quite a bit of information and claims to have known and disliked Allister Crowley. Since his death he’s been in contact with prospective students, although his brutal and violent teaching methods typically lead his students to a gory death if they advance too far into his studies. Some of his knowledge and teachings are openly traded within some circles of the community, and stories of his unfortunate past students are out there. Adiemus had a very strong connection to Persephone and had dealt largely with interdimensional travel, astral projection, and dream walking. Tom had come across some pieces of information on Adiemus throughout his travels.

Tom eventually gave me the information he had concerning Adiemus as a curiosity to work with. I don’t intend to speak for Adiemus, and to be honest I think he might be a little off-put by me, but he has taken an interest of sorts in me. Like him a have a very strong connection to Persephone, so that may have something to do with it. Over the years I’ve gained information from Adiemus, and that is where I first learned of the gates and what Alagon, like Adiemus, truly was.

From Adiemus I learned that there were 28 gates of this world. The gates had long ago been sealed, and each gate belonged to some god. However it was an impossibility to close the gates since things must be allowed to pass through for the survivability of the world, and so unto each gate was given a guardian. This guardian, when they ascended into the gate, would gain all of the knowledge and power of the gate, and all those who had been a part of it before them. But this was only a temporary, and detestable, job. Each guardian had the power to seek out there successor, so they could move on, although in doing so they give up the knowledge and power of the gate.

In order to take a gate, a person needs to have a strong connection to the god to which the gate belongs. They also need to seek out the current guardian and undergo their trials and prove themselves worthy of the gate. Finally they need to be fully informed about what the gate is, what guardianship entails, and that it is a trap, and then still choose of their own will to take the gate.

Adiemus is the last person to take his gate, the gate of Persephone. Alagon is the name of the an older entity which guarded its gate, although it has now gone through seven or eight guardians since, but it regards itself as being all that has come before it.

Part III: Phillip

Several weeks ago after a failed magical experiment me and Tom were screwing around with automatic writing when Tom happened upon a magician known has Phillip who had some cool sigils. After talking to him for some time, Phillip claimed to know about several more sigils (the 28 sigils of the ether) and agreed to show them to Tom. Very quickly Tom managed to figure out how to retrieve the sigils without Phillip’s aid. He also happened upon knowledge of other sigils. First the 28 sigils of the Abyss. And then the 28 sigils of Earth, which he reckoned to be the gates that Adiemus and Alagon are connected into.

For a couple of weeks now Tom has been feverishly working on completing the ether sigils and his commentary on them. He then hopes to do the Abyss and Earth sigils.

 

A Simple Binding

Now that Tom has taken to figuring out and publishing one of my defensive maneuvers, I may as well tell the world and let others work with it.

This is a simple binding spell. Binding in this term is a spell that is meant to limit the magical ability of another practitioner. There are three ways to go about binding someone. You can internalize their magick within themselves so they can’t effect the world outside (this is the most simplest form, and it has the added advantage that the practitioner may not notice it). You can largely restrict the amount of energy they are allowed to produce and tap into thus rendering them unable to utilize magick (this renders the magician even more powerless but they’ll notice the spell right away, and it is rather difficult to pull of). Or you can completely bind them so they have no higher connection, no access to magical ability, and no way to cast any kind of spell (this is a complete binding and by far the most powerful and effective, although it generally requires quite a bit of work).

This type of binding is the first kind. This is a very good and effective binding because, despite being very simple to undo, it’s very strong and very deceptive in its nature, often times tricking the victim into fruitlessly expelling time and energy.

To cast the binding we draw the crossed symbol and place it upon the victim. It’s enough to draw the sigil in the air with our finger and then move it on top of the victim. The entire sigil is blessed by Saturn, who is a god of boundaries and rules and order, but Saturn’s power is only put at the point where the two lines cross.

Where the two lines cross is the only point where the sigil can ever be broken. Once the sigil is broken the binding is broken. Since Saturn’s power is only where the lines cross, the rest of the sigil will seem weak to an experienced adept who can identify it for what it is. The first instinct of the adept will be to just throw energy at the sigil until the binding is overcome and broken. However this will do nothing as throwing energy at any point other than where the lines cross won’t break the sigil, and where the lines cross are empowered by Saturn, and cannot be broken except by divine power.

To break the sigil, all that needs to happen is someone needs to grab both ends and twist them so the line uncrosses and makes a horseshoe shape. At this point the sigil will disappear and the binding will be over with. This makes it very simple for the caster to undo the binding, and the simple nature of breaking the binding is usually hard to guess.

Time Travelling Magick in Theory

Suppose we need some money, say $500. So we devise ourselves a spell that will make us super lucky so we win a small sum in the lottery. This is doable. Typically when we create and cast this spell we make it so it happens at some future point, like tomorrow or next week. But if we really wanted to we could also cast the spell so that we won the lottery yesterday or last week.

It is of course more difficult to change events that have passed than events that are yet to come (so you are better off casting your lottery spell in the future), but it’s not that much more difficult. In fact, most of the difficulty involved is due to our own ideas and perceptions about how time works, and has nothing to do with the metaphysics or the difficulty of the spell. In fact a spell cast into the past, if the practitioner is assured of their success or doesn’t know they are doing it, is not very much more difficult than a spell cast into the future.

The same way that the ideas of distance and space are largely an illusion when looked at metaphysically, so is the linear nature of time. We perceive time as constantly moving forward, as the past being a sure thing, as the future being completely changeable, and the present as being our chance to exercise free will. In reality we just happen to move forward in time at a somewhat constant rate. Things can just as easily move backwards in time. In fact this nature of time has been known to physicists for quite some time, and it’s been proven in physical experiments. We end up with only two possible realities. Either the future is already written and can’t be changed, or the past is as malleable and uncertain as the future.

Time doesn’t just move backwards either. Time, much like space, is spread out in many different directions. Most of us move through time on a single set route. We could move on completely different routes though. We could go forward or backwards, we could move from one point to another point far in the past or future, or we could go to parts of time that wouldn’t even exist on our time line. In the same way that all points of space are really in the same place, and anything in all of existence is close enough to touch if you just know how, all of time is interconnected and any point can be reached and manipulated from any other. Manipulated is a key word here. The past, the same as the future and the present, is malleable and can be changed at any time.

Take for example a manifestation spell. Suppose we’ve been looking for a book we really want. We’re about to enter a book store. We cast a manifestation spell (typically this is simple psionic magick) to make the book appear in the store. We haven’t looked in the store, we haven’t perceived what’s in the store, and so we assume we’re casting a spell into the future because, after all, by our account there is some chance the store has the book in there and we’re just increasing those odds. The same as if we were manipulating a roulette ball to make it land where we wanted to.

For some reason a lot of magicians view the universe as working like Schrodinger’s cat. Schrodinger’s cat though was an example to show a hole in theoretical physics. That cat is either alive or dead at the end of the experiment. It doesn’t exist in a transient state until you open the box. Unless, of course, the entire universe revolves around you.

In the same way that book didn’t just appear there. It was printed, and ordered, and shipped, and stocked, and all together at the very least a few weeks worth of events had to transpire in order for that book to be on that shelf the moment you walked into the store. That simple manifestation spell, unbeknownst to many magicians, actually changes the past and the events that have transpired.

So like, why can’t we go back and kill Hitler before he became Hitler?

It could be done. Hitler could die before he ever becomes Hitler. However the Nazi party will still rise in power. World War 2 will still happen. The Holocaust will still happen. Hitler won’t be the one who does it though, someone else will. You might change some of the events. When things happened, what happened, who lived and died, ect. But all of the big stuff is still going to happen.

The world seems to have its own destiny and its own path it’s following. I don’t believe this path to be unchangeable, but I believe this path to be chosen by us as a large collective and not by a single individual or even a small minority of individuals. If some event happens that would normally change the route the world is supposed to take, such as the death of Hitler, the world veers a little off course and then makes a correction. Some small events may change, but in the end everything turns out the same.

So what if I kill my own grandfather?

You’d most likely cease to exist in your current form. Your soul would probably end up in another body born around the same time. Your new life would probably be very similar to your old one. Yeah, I know you were never born now because you killed your ancestor (which makes you a dumb-ass), but your ancestor didn’t die until after you travelled back in time to kill them, which is the event that makes it that you weren’t born, so you actually were born when you killed them. Also you’ll still have accumulated your karmic debt for that lifetime including the murder of your grandfather, and it will keep as a past life that can be regressed. It seems strange, but time doesn’t move in a straight line, it’s a big open space.

So can the past be changed?

Sometimes personal changes can be made. Small changes are easy enough and can be done without a problem. Manifesting a book, getting a small amount of money, getting a girl to go out with you, ect. This is magick that, cast into the future or the past, is fairly easy to pull off. Drastic life changing events are always more difficult to get though. Making it so that you live longer, winning the lottery, getting married, and the like are typically very difficult things to do even with magick. Much like the world we have our own destiny, and we tend to move along that path that has been laid out for us. When we do veer off that path, the road seems to change around us until we’re right back on track. You might make it so you don’t die next Monday, but you end up dying next Tuesday instead. More often than not the magick fails, or the magick succeeds but then it retroactively fails. You might actually win the lottery, only to have the event erased, and then you’re left not even remembering winning the lottery.

That isn’t to say these big things can’t happen. They can. You just have to go about it differently. You have to change your destiny and then rewrite it. You may have to rewrite it for other people that are very attached to your life too. For the most part though once you change your destiny, the universe will start rewriting and work around you to put everything back into its natural order.

Noticing changes in the past.

If a magician is very aware, aware of themselves and aware of the universe around them, they can sometimes manage to remember the past how it was, not how it now is. Sometimes when things are remembered differently, it’s because they actually happened differently.

Accidental time manipulation in spellwork.

There is a common phenomena that happens during intense spell and ritual work where large amounts of time are either lost or gained. This isn’t just limited to solitary practice or situations where people may have just lost track of the time. I’ve been in a situation with two other practitioners where an hour passed in about ten minutes time (which is impossible to mistake), and the clock in the working area had only registered ten minutes passing when all the other clocks registered an hour. This is an extreme example though where it is both noticeable and provable. There are other times when it’s more subtle. It may, for instance, feel like days have past in a five hour time period.

Intentional time slowdown and speedup

One fairly simple magickal trick that some people have a good aptitude for is speeding up and slowing down time. They can make it so time passes at a much faster rate or a much slower rate.

Time travel by way of going in and out of time.

Time comes into existence in the sphere of Geburah. If you go beyond Geburah, to Chesod, the idea of time no longer exists. Chesod is a place where everything is forever and stagnant. Things don’t change, and there is nothing acting against anything to cause change. When you leave Geburah you leave the entire continuity of time. When you go back into Geburah, you can come in at any point you want to. So in this way you could travel backwards in time.

Part of the problem with this method is you aren’t taking your physical body beyond Geburah. You aren’t even taking your astral body beyond Geburah. You’re taking your mental body. So for starters, you can’t just appear in Victorian London because you weren’t born then. You could go back to after you were born, but then we come to other issues.

First is the transfer from the mental body to the astral body and then the transfer again into the physical body. This process is completely doable, and you could use it to wake up and have it be yesterday. The problem is it’s very difficult to keep your thoughts and knowledge from deteriorating between each transfer. So although you may wake up yesterday, you may not remember any of the important things you needed to know for today. You may not even have any memory of the future at all. It may come as nothing more than premonitions or deja vu.

Secondly, the above example assumes a best case scenario where the point in time you’re travelling to is a point where you’ve already managed to come together in union with your holy guardian angel. If you haven’t, then once you travel backwards your connection point between your astral and mental bodies is going to be severed. You won’t have any direct access to yourself. The only access you will have is to approach your astral and physical bodies as your mental body. If you ever had a point in the past where your Holy Guardian Angel was communicating with you and trying to give you information prior to when you became one with them, now you know how that happened.

Prosperity Magick: Why Your Money Spells Don’t Work

Very few people manage to make prosperity spells work. To some, it seems to come naturally. It can take little more than a meditation to summon forth large sums of cash. For others, complex rituals, bargains with interdimensional beings, and every other imaginable route is taken and they never see any success. It’s very easy to imagine that some people are just better geared towards certain types of magick, and that, despite ones best efforts or ability in other areas, prosperity is one area they just can’t master. However prosperity is an area that is usually approached differently than any other, and this in turn leads to the lack of success.

To begin with, most people turn to prosperity magick when they’re desperate for more money. They use it when they’re broke, when they need the money, or when they’re quality of life is below their minimum standards and, despite their best efforts, they haven’t been able to change this. This is the absolute worst time to use prosperity magick. Very few people even bother to try prosperity magick when they’re finances are on the upswing, when they’ve come into large sums of cash, and when they don’t need money and have excess cash to spare. This would be the optimal time in ones life to use prosperity magick, and if you pay attention to those that can use prosperity magick, they do it when they don’t need it.

One of the basic laws is like attracts like. A prosperous person will naturally attract prosperity towards themselves. A person with lots of money is more likely to get money. This is a fundamental law of the universe. Magick is meant to manipulate the universe to our advantage, but good luck trying to alter the very basics upon which it is founded.

Secondly when we have financial issues, and when we allow those issues to escalate to the point of desperation, we lose hope and faith. Things begin to look bleak. We don’t believe things will get better, at least not in the short run. Our attitude reflects our situation, both of which our negative. Attitude is important in magick. We need to believe that our magick and our spells will give us results, or they won’t. We need to believe that things can and will get better, that our wealth will increase, or it won’t. We need hope and faith in the future, and a bright and cheery disposition about it, and we need to think positive. All of these things are very easy to do when we have enough money coming in and we haven’t reached desperation.

Lastly people who have money are the types of people who are always working on ways to make money. They’re never satisfied with their financial situation, and they always want to improve it, even if they already have enough. They don’t waste their money. They’re willing to work to earn money. These are the types of folks the universe has deemed worthy of vast sums of wealth. These are also the types of people who, if drawn towards magick, will utilize prosperity magick during the best of times. If one wishes to be wealthy, it’s best to adapt oneself to the persona which the universe has decided should be wealthy.

It may seem as if the only way to make money with magick is to be rich. That’s not the case. Everything is subjective. There is no point where the universe deems you wealthy or poor. While it’s true that the universe cannot be altered at the most basic level, we can alter ourselves to become the type of person for which prosperity magick will work.

To begin with, we must have a positive outlook on our financial situation. We need to believe that we are financially okay and that things will get even better in the future. We don’t want to have stress or anxiety about our finances.

Secondly we need to be at least at a stable financial situation. This means taking in at least as much money as is going out, and reducing our debt to a manageable level. There are two ways to do this, increase the money coming in or decrease the money going out. This may mean getting a second or third job. This may mean cutting non-essentials out of our budget. For a lot of us this may seem like too much work or too big a sacrifice. It’s important to remember that this is a temporary situation though. Once we have ourselves financially on track and our finances are on the upswing, then we can turn to our magick to increase our income allowing us to return to a single job and buy all of the things we had to give up before.

It is however important to be financially independent during these times, being able to pay for all of ones essential needs (housing, food, bills). Getting someone else to take care of us can free up money for our budget, but it also works against us by making us a financially dependent person, thus repulsing situations that would make us financially independent and attracting situations that will leave us dependent on others.

Aresian Unbinding Spells

Listed below are two spells meant to aid the practitioner in releasing themselves from any outside interference which may be hindering their true path. In general terms a binding spell refers to a spell that seals away all or some of a practitioner’s powers, and an unbinding spell is one which undoes this. These spells are not specifically meant to deal with a binding, although they may be effective in that regard, instead they are meant to eliminate anything which may be hindering or otherwise holding back the practitioner from pursuing their passions.

These spells work through the power of the Greek god Ares, and it’s important to understand what Ares is in order to use them. Unfortunately Ares was badly slandered by Homer for a variety of reasons, and Homer’s popularity and influence among the Greeks resulted in Ares being badly slandered for ever after.

Ares is a god of the righteous in battle, of justice, of love, of vengeance, and yes there is some violence in him. It would be easiest to say that Ares’ true dominion is in being a slave to ones passions, but it would be profane to say that a god is a slave to their passions. Rather Ares has dominion over following ones passions without regard for the consequences. In that regard he is both a god of justice and vengeance, as when he murdered Halirrhotius, he is a god of passionate love, as when he pursued an affair with his brother’s wife Aphrodite, and he is a god of the warrior in battle.

Aresian Short Unbinding

The short unbinding is a simple spell meant to release the practitioner from any minor outside force which has taken to changing the true course of the practitioner and moving him away from his desires. The spell is meant to target those forces which are manipulating the practitioner against his will, albeit in minor ways, and as such is generally safe to perform whenever the practitioner believes he may have been bound to a path other than his own.

I. To begin with, construct an alter to Ares if one is not readily available.

II. Undertake all necessary preparations to spellwork and presenting yourself before a diety, including any ritualistic cleansing or bathing.

III. The ritual is best performed both alone and skyclad.

IV. If absolutely necessary, any of the first three steps may be omitted, with a mental alter to Ares being built instead of a physical one, if the situation is dire and the practitioner needs the spell cast immediately.

V. To begin, light a new candle on Ares’ alter as an offering to him.

VI. Initiate a communion with Ares. This can be done by sitting in a comfortable position, meditating, and then directing energy towards Ares’ alter while allowing energy to be directed back. Allow the energy of Ares to flow through yourself and ask permission for what is about to be performed.

VII. When ready, and while feeling the energy of Ares flowing through yourself, you may begin the actual spell work, which consists of two parts performed simultaneously, a visualization and an incantation.

VIII. Visualize your body covered in straps and chains, and the energy of Ares bursting forth from every bit of your body, breaking the chains and straps. To the best of your ability, direct the energy of Ares towards this visualization.

IX. While visualizing, recite from memory the following incantation:

Lord Ares
Lend your strength
Let each strap be unbroken
Each twine unwound
Let the true heart walk its path
Unswayed, unbound

X. Afterwards thank Ares for his aid. If possible, allow the candle to burn itself out. Otherwise it may be put out and saved for later, but the candle should only ever be burned as an offering to Ares. The alter should be left up for at least a day, if not longer, and when it is deconstructed proper care should be taken as the objects its made of are sacred to Ares.

Aresian Long Unbinding

The long unbinding is a much more drastic spell meant to release the practitioner from any force, internal or external, preventing them from following the true desire of their heart. This spell, being as it is, can have serious repercussions, and should only be used when absolutely necessary, and only after lesser methods have been tried and failed. As noted below, the fourth candle should be lit, if it is lit at all, with extreme caution. It should also be mentioned that fire exists without form, and as such is considered a link between the physical world and the spiritual or metaphysical world. The act of lighting a flame can be considered a connection between the physical and spiritual worlds.

I. Construct a proper alter to Ares if one is not readily available. Make sure that there is enough room for several candle holders.

II. Undertake all necessary preparations to spellwork and presenting yourself before a diety, including any ritualistic cleansing or bathing.

III. The ritual is to be performed skyclad and alone, or if not alone then with an object of one’s desire only and also skyclad.

IV. Initiate a communion with Ares and allow his energy to flow through you and ask for permission for what is about to be done. If with a partner, both should perform this communion. If needed, candles may be burnt in offering to Ares in order to aid in communion.

V. Place three or four candles on the alter as shown:

——-A———-A—
—–2—3—–3—–4
——-1———1–2–

(ed. note: I’m having trouble properly formatting this diagram. I’ll look into getting something better set up soon. If anyone needs this diagram to do the spell in the meantime, email me and I’ll try to help you figure it out.)
VI. When ready, and with the power of Ares flowing through you, recite the following incantation from memory (with two, both partners may recite the incantation, or one may do so as the ritual leader):

Lord Ares
Lend your strength
May all that confines the heart be destroyed

VII. It must be understood that the first candle is meant to release the practitioner from any internal restraints they may have placed on themselves which prevent them from realizing their passions fully. These restraints may have been enacted out of fear, modesty, etiquette, safety, or many other reasons. This candle is meant to make their passions swell within themselves and overcome all else.

VIII. As the first candle is lit, visualize your body being engulfed by a white flame of passion that grows from within you and overswells eventually consuming the all of your being. Recite the following incantation from memory (with two both should perform the visualization, and one or both may recite the incantation):

Let my passions be alight
A burning flame, pure and white,
And let my heart be aright

(Or for two):

Let our passions be alight,
A burning flame, pure and white,
And let our hearts be aright

IX. It must be understood that the second candle is meant to release the practitioner from any external factors that are preventing them from realizing their passions fully. These can be thought of as the forces of society. These are parts of the mundane world which are not just obstacles to achieving ones passions, but are actively working to push the practitioner away from their passions.

X. As the second candle is lit, visualize the flame that has engulfed your body bursting forth from you and consuming everything it comes in contact with. Recite the following incantation from memory (with two both should perform the visualization, and one or both may recite the incantation):

Let my body release its flame,
Let it burn through man’s domain,
And my passions, not man, shall reign

(Or for two):

Let our bodies release our flame,
Let it burn through man’s domain,
And our passions, not man, shall reign

XI. It must be understood that the third candle is meant to release the practitioner from any spiritual forces and bindings that may be preventing them from realizing their passions fully. This would include any spells, hexes, or curses cast, any magickal bindings, any spells which have effected the practitioner’s path and destiny, any pacts or deals made with any entities, and any debts owed so long as these things are contrary to or otherwise prevent the true will of the practitioner’s heart.

XII. As the third candle is lit, visualize yourself bound by ethereal straps (or hands or chains) and the energy flowing through you moving from your body into these straps and completely destroying them, leaving you naked and free of all bonds. Recite the following incantation from memory (with two both should perform the visualization, and one or both may recite the incantation):

Let all binds break
Remove all ties save fate
And return me to my natural state

(Or For Two):

Let all binds break
Remove all ties save fate
And return us to our natural state

XIII: The spell may be completed after lighting any of the four candles, and the fourth candle should be lit with extreme caution. It must be understood that the fourth candle is meant to release the practitioner from their destiny, for use in instances when the practitioner feels as if their destined path runs contrary to their desires. If this portion of the spell is successfully performed, at the point directly proceeding the spell the practitioner will no longer have a future or a destiny, only their desires, and their destiny will then be rewrit from that point. A practitioner will be unhinged from destiny for a moment prior to a new destiny being made for them. The repercussions of lighting the fourth candle are serious and most likely irreversible.

XIV: As the fourth candle is lit, visualize your body being thrown from its current place and put into a void, visualize the energy in you white and pulsing out, destroying any remaining ties you may have to anything, and destroying anything that comes near you. Recite the following incantation from memory (with two both should perform the visualization, and one or both may recite the incantation):

Remove myself from my destiny
Rewrite what is meant to be
And untie even fate from me

(Or For Two):

Remove us from our destiny
Rewrite what is meant to be
And untie even fate from we

XV: Presumably a fifth candle could be lit, supposing the proper visualization and incantations could be figured out, and this candle would allow the practitioner to transcend the laws of the universe if it were within the will of his heart, allowing for such impossibilities like immortality and gain without loss. Perhaps the past could also be rewritten via this candle, or perhaps that would require yet a sixth candle.

XVI: After the ritual the candles should be allowed to burn themselves out. If possible, the practitioner should stay and meditate until all the candles are burnt out. Alternatively the practitioner could sleep in front of the alter until all the candles are burnt out. If the ritual was performed with a partner, the two may have sex following the ritual if they both desire to, although the act would be sacred. After all is finished proper gratitude and respect should be given to Ares, and the alter should be left up for at least a day if not longer.

XVII: A final caution, make sure you know what it is you want before casting this spell.

Of Groups and Rituals

 

Most people start magick groups as a means to gain instant authority within a segment of the community without having to earn this through acts and accomplishments. That isn’t everyone though. Some start groups because they feel they are bringing something that is either needed or will be appreciate into the community. Some are just lonely and want friends. And some are morally bankrupt and have questionable ulterior motives. Regardless of the motivation for group creation, that isn’t what this article deals with.

Most of the time these groups are at least partially created for some selfish motive, and even when they aren’t the group leaders rarely try to offer what their members want.

Most people don’t want social gatherings and meet-ups that go nowhere. They already have outlets for friends and loved ones to come into their lives. Groups that offer nothing but meet-ups tend to fall apart quickly, or they develop into a small but dedicated group of friends. Initially these meet-ups were meant as a means to get to know potential members before allowing them to be initiated, and to get to know outer circle members before allowing them into inner circle activities.

Although a lot of people may show some interest in classes, in practice this doesn’t usually work out too well. To begin with, most groups don’t have teachers qualified in the subject matter, and without qualified teachers classes won’t work. Even if a group does have good teachers, most of the students probably won’t be compatible with the teacher. And most students won’t have the dedication to attend classes even under the best circumstances.

Talking to various people at these groups it’s clear that what most people want are rituals. When a new member enters a group one of their first questions is usually if the group offers rituals. When new groups form the first members usually want to know if the group leader plans on having group rituals.

A ritual is something that everyone can benefit from if it’s done correctly. Generally unless a group has strict and discriminating entrance requirements, at least 90% of its membership is going to be unable to achieve results through magick on their own. It’s important to members of this segment of the group to find an outlet for rituals so that they can fully experience their spirituality. Some neophytes may be able to achieve results on their own, but they’re also interested in exploring their spirituality and group work can be a unique experience. Initiates meanwhile can learn from rituals while at the same time having access to more power than is normally available. Even adepts, who should be well versed and able to produce results through solitary work, come out ahead getting an entire group at their disposal to utilize.

But many groups do offer rituals, and usually this isn’t enough to make the group attractive to new members. This is because most groups don’t do rituals correctly, and if a ritual isn’t being performed correctly than it has little value to most people. What follows are guidelines to performing a working group ritual. Sadly most of these should be common sense to an experienced practitioner, yet most groups will not employ these methods.

1. A ritual needs purpose – This should be a cardinal rule of any ritual, ever. A ritual is an extension of spellwork, and like spellwork it should have a purpose and work towards some end result. Most of the rituals being done by various groups have no actual purpose. Observance of a holy day is not justification for a ritual, although it would be justification for a party. Looking back at pre-Christian religions, rituals performed on holy days did have a purpose, usually something tied to that day. Likewise raising energy is not a good justification for a ritual. In a good ritual raising energy is a means to achieving some greater end, not the end itself.

With spellwork, which is typically done in solitary practice or with, at most, a handful of close practitioners, the ends are usually targeted towards the individual. With ritual work however the ends, with some few exceptions, need to benefit the entire group. When determining what purpose a ritual should work towards think about things that would generally be considered positive to most people. Examples include prosperity, good luck, fertility, and group glamors to make all members more attractive. Another good example of a ritual is to try to bring specific members or the entire group into another state of consciousness. This can mean trying to contact a divine being, channeling, mediumship, or astral projecting. There are also initiation type rituals which are meant to bring members of the group closer together through ritual, but these should be reserved for member only rituals within closed groups.

Do stay away from grandiose world accomplishments. Even a ritual composed of several hundred members isn’t going to be enough to end world hunger or war.

2. Find a private place – Rituals need to be held in private. Participants need to feel that they are safe and that they can be open with what they do. If a person feels nervous or worse humiliated it will be reflected in the results of the ritual. Meanwhile certain ritual practices, like performing skyclad and drug use (even alcohol) are forbidden in many places. Indoor rituals should be held in someone’s home, in a temple, in a private area of a magick store (ideally after closing), or in a rented space. Outdoor rituals should be held in a private backyard, secluded private property, or if on a campground far away from other campers. Public places really aren’t appropriate for holding rituals.

3. Pay attention to the day and time – Certain days hold more power to do certain things, and sometimes rituals are written to take advantage of these days. Unfortunately these days are specific and related to certain astrological phenomena, and in order to utilize them correctly the ritual needs to be performed on that day. You can’t move it to next Saturday because more people will show that day.

If your ritual begins by praising Luna or the moon, you shouldn’t be performing that ritual prior to sunset.

Planetary days and hours meanwhile are a bit iffy. It’s not a necessity that they be followed, but it helps, and not following them can result in a major hindrance. Planetary days and hours are however a whole subject unto themselves and something that needs to be looked at more in depth in a later post.

4. Know your ritual – As a ritual leader you should both know and understand the ritual completely before attempting to do it. All of your principle participants should know the ritual completely. All participants should at least know their part and what is expected of them long before performing the ritual. Everyone needs to know what they’re doing and what their intent is, and everyone needs to be on the same page. No one should be reading lines or following directions during the actual ritual.

5. Know your players and utilize them accordingly – You need to know who will be attending your ritual and what they’re capable of. The majority of the group will be their mainly to raise energy. A good ritual may be able to manipulate the energy raised or direct it to some degree. For most this is all they will be able to do, and they shouldn’t be given any greater task.

It’s the role of the stronger members to manipulate the energy, direct it, and utilize it towards the end goals of the group. They will also be responsible for evocations, protections, channeling, using themselves as conduits, and whatever other greater magical needs are necessary.

To this end you need to know what everyone is capable of. Ideally the ritual should be designed to fit the members you have and their individual strengths. You don’t want to give someone a task that they can’t possibly fulfill. If the ritual is to work with an ill-placed member then one of the other members of the ritual will have to perform that job along with their own, which will split their resources and, depending on the strength of that practitioner, may lessen the impact of the spell.

6. Keep it short – Every effort should be made to keep the actual ritual (not the prep time) as short as possible. Fifteen minutes or less is always best, although with certain types of rituals this isn’t always possible. Longer rituals tend to result in participants becoming bored and losing focus, lessening the over all impact of the ritual. At the same time raising energy and manipulating it (in other words performing magick) can be exhausting and may be difficult to sustain for extended periods of time. The ritual should seek to reach its objective as quickly as possible while all participants are still in their prime.

7. The event can be longer however – Just because the ritual is short doesn’t mean everyone has to go home right after. In fact this is probably a bad idea. People will most likely be charged and in somewhat altered states after a ritual. They should be allowed some time to cool down and also allowed access to other participants who can understand how they feel. Plan time for a general meetup post-ritual, or even a party with food and drinks.

8. Make the ritual available ahead of time – This goes along with number four. Your participants need to know the ritual and what is expected of them before hand, and they should be given all the prep time they need to get ready, which means giving them a copy of the ritual and an explanation of what’s intended to happen well in advance. At the same time participants are lending their energy and ability to the ritual, and they need to be sure that the ritual is ethically sound according to their moral and spiritual beliefs and that their deities or entities they work with aren’t being profaned by the ritual itself.

9. Disclose any objectionable material – If the ritual involves nudity, sexual contact, blood magick, drug use, evocation of deities, evocation of other entities, or anything else that may be considered objectionable or is illegal this needs to be disclosed to those planning on attending prior to arriving at the ritual.

10. Speak normally – Words have a lot of power to direct intent. However it’s the intent that matters, not what’s actually said. It doesn’t matter if you speak in old English, Latin, Egyptian, or Hebrew. And even if it did hold power, most pagans can’t speak old English or middle English anyways. They sound like a cross between Yoda and a renfair knight, and it hurts my literary senses to see the language mangled so. It is important that you know what you’re saying in ritual, and that the words flow naturally from you. You don’t want to be reading script of memorized words, you want the ideas to naturally flow from your mind into the symbolism of language as you understand it. You should feel the idea behind the words flow through you, and hopefully the other participants should understand and feel the idea too. The best way to do this is to speak in your normal dialect.

11. Don’t just say it, do it – When you say, for instance, that you want to bring forth the element of air in a ritual, it isn’t enough to just say you want to do this. You have to actually pull that element through you, and then direct it towards something. Some things can be done symbolically, but a lot of stuff you have to have some psionic ability in order to do it. Some ritual leaders don’t seem to understand this.

12. No one should break ritual – To attend the ritual is to agree to perform the ritual as it should be performed. Some minor improvisations may occur, such as a person adlibbing certain lines while keeping with the meaning and intent of the original lines, or one member covering for another member who for whatever reason, in the midst of the ritual, could not complete their given task. But for the most part the ritual should not be altered by any participant in any major way (including changing the deities or entities utilized). The offending member is attacking all participants and attempting to manipulate them beyond their will. If any major alteration occurs during the ritual the ritual should be ended as soon as possible (with all proper respects given to anything summoned forth and all raised energy properly dealt with) and the offending member should be dealt with accordingly. A ritual should never be allowed to continue after it has been altered.

13. Observers are a nuisance – This is kind of a touchy subject. For many responsible practitioners, they’d like to see a ritual performed by a group before they participate themselves. But at the same time, you don’t want people who are just watching and not participating. They add nothing, and they tend to distract participants from the ritual itself. By giving out detailed information about the ritual to all participants beforehand there is less of a need for a potential participant to watch a ritual first. If you still have some who are adamant about first observing a ritual you should plan easier specifically designed rituals for observance.

14. Protect your group – Rituals are easy prey for a lot of nasty things. People show up to rituals with the intention of vampirically draining participants, stealing the energy raised by the group, and silently manipulating the ritual to their own ends. These people need to be immediately identified, dealt with, and removed from the current ritual and banned from all future functions. This job falls mainly on the ritual leader, but stronger participants should also do their best to identify and remove these people, and the ritual leader should encourage members to report whatever they have been able to identify. This is essential to both effectively performing rituals and to protecting your participants.

Let Us Bring Some Evil Into This World (A Call to End Inaction)

Within the realm of my blog, my book, when I speak with people, when I write people through email, I’ve been rather free about the magickal information I give out. I am very much aware of the danger this information can pose to the practitioner if it’s put to use. I’ve been hurt badly in the past, and I’m no doubt at least partly responsible for injuries that have occurred to others. Still, I continue, and will continue, as I have been, offering what information I have to anyone who truly wants to learn.

There is a disgusting trend that has emerged where information is being hidden away in fear that it may be used in such a way that the practitioner is hurt. Books are being burned or otherwise taken off the market, stores refuse to carry certain titles and authors, people are being told not to read certain works because of the ideas discussed within them, and some are asking, or even demanding, that people stop teaching spellwork, astral projection, channeling, mediumship, and the like to just anyone. Meanwhile practitioners are being urged not to practice. They are being told that they aren’t strong enough or learned enough yet to protect themselves if they chose to utilize magick. In some instances practitioners are being urged to give up magick completely as it’s far too dangerous to ever be used and instead to just be a part of a neopagan religion.

Change is upon us. If you can tap the energy of this place, the vast ocean of energy that exists around us, and fall into it, and follow it a bit into the future you’ll notice that it starts to twist and turn, that it’s twisting and turning right now. We’re heading towards an apocalypse of sort, this world is going through a great change. I can feel it, my teacher felt it, my peers feel it, and almost a hundred years ago Allister Crowley felt it. This isn’t something new.

A lot of people like to talk about this change. I’ve become certain that most can’t feel it, they’re just repeating what they’ve heard from others. They have no understanding of it. A common belief is that, once this change occurs, the veils will break and we’ll all be blessed with magickal and psychic powers. Another belief is that this effect is generational, we won’t gain these powers, but our children or grandchildren or whenever this happens will be born with it.

The truth is this change isn’t something that’s going to happen. It’s happening right now, and it’s been happening for some time. Those waiting to just wake up with their magick powers one day should give up now. It isn’t happening. No new power is coming into this world. The power has always been there, and it will always be there. Having power is a matter of grasping that power which has always been there to be grasped. What has changed is an increase in opportunity.

In the 19th century Levi’s works were only available to those who could speak French. In the early 20th century translations started appearing, but these translations along with their French counterparts were still difficult to find and treasured among those who owned them. By the 1970s increased interest in the metaphysical and cheaper printing techniques meant that Levi’s works were now more widely available, assuming you knew who he was and knew of a place that sold good occult books or a good mail order company. Today Levi’s works can be found at the local bookstore, they can easily be downloaded online, and even if you don’t know who he is typing magick into a search engine along with a week studying online should lead you to him.

Nearly all of the most famous magickal and spiritual works are available online. Every year more works are translated and better translations appear (compare Mather’s Sepher Yetzirah to Kaplan’s superior translation). Finding the exact book you want isn’t much harder than typing the name into an Amazon or Ebay search, or asking your local bookstore to order it. Meanwhile inventions like the Internet, HTML, and cheaper and more efficient POD techniques make publishing and distributing ideas, techniques, theories, and teachings easier.

Right now it is easier for a neophyte to find the information they need to begin solitary practice or work towards initiation than it has been in thousands of years. It is taking less and less work to find the necessary information, and more and more the information is simply presenting itself to people, no work required. And the situation is only going to get better, or worse depending on your perspective of it. No one is going to be gifted with magickal powers. Rather we’re being gifted with a better opportunity to acquire those powers.

This world is in the process of shifting. It’s moving towards some unforeseeable end, and currently it’s ripe to be influenced. I’ve seen factions of otherworldly beings forming. They’re parties that have an interest in where this world is heading and the final outcome of these events. They will take what they can by influence and they will take what they can by force. Wars will be fought between these powers that be, actually the battles have already started, and in the end their strength will determine the fate of this world.

Humanity has been castrated and robbed of the right to determine its own destiny. They’ve taken from us our gods and angels and heroes and villains and demons and old ones, the very things that were meant to show us what we could aspire to become.

And now the world shifts, and the power long ago taken from us is offered to us again. Some believe that we’re destroying this world, that we are a parasite to it, and that it seeks to expel us. This world clings to us and I hear it pleading with us to realize our potential and again become masters of our destiny and determine this world’s fate.

We are among the elite, and we are growing. We are those that have chosen not to cower behind a higher force, but rather to throw ourselves into the universe allowing our strength, our talent, our merits, and our character to lead us to our salvation, or our damnation. We are supposed to be the strong and the powerful who walk the path to enlightenment unhindered by fear, not the cautiously weak who chose ignorance out of fear.

A time will come when these battles come near to an end, and they will have taken what can be taken by influence, and they will have taken what can be taken by force, and the victor will determine what fate befalls all of humanity, and the only hope humanity will have to determine its own fate will be to prove themselves stronger and uninfluenced and take back by force what is rightfully theres.

Inside each of us is the potential to achieve power beyond that of even the gods. Those incarnate here have a greater right to determine the fate of this world than any other entity, and with that right comes the power to claim and defend it if we chose to.

This world does not need caution. It does not need fear. This world needs strength, and it needs practitioners that are practicing and growing in power so that they may face what is yet to come against them.

Power can only be achieved through experience. Risk is an essential element of progress. Read books. Read everything. Don’t be swayed from a particular author because they have been labeled as evil or dangerous. Look at their ideas and determine for yourself their validity. And cast spells, astral project, summon things, channel, in other words practice magick. Get into fights and mix it up with entities. Yes, all of this is dangerous. Do it anyways. Don’t wait to do things because you doubt your abilities. Your abilities will only grow through experience, and doing things now is the only way to grow your abilities. Time spent waiting for your abilities to develop from an armchair will only be time wasted.

We need to walk our paths fearlessly. We need to allow ourselves to grow spiritually. We need to have confidence in our abilities and faith not in higher powers but in our own power to protect ourselves and find salvation.

When we see ourselves as weak, we become mastered by our own limitation. When we believe that we our strong, strength tends to manifest within us.

The true master teaches empowerment, not subjugation. The true master preaches of the strength of his disciples, not their weaknesses. The true master sees himself not as having ascended to a point above others, but of having reached a higher point that others will hopefully exceed.