The Magister 1

by Marcus Katz

  The Prism of Light (3)

  The Worker is the Workshop [Practicus/Hod]

  By Our Work We Are Worked

  In this fourth title we turn our attention to the ‘mental’ developmental areas of the system, such as the concept of Will in Crowley’s Thelema. I will use this to compare with other teachers such as Gurdjieff, Bennett, Orage, and Steiner, showing how mental exercises are intrinsic to the syllabus.

  In this book I will also bring in the work of contemporary Chaos Magick, as a hook to an analysis of modern science, cosmology and mathematics where that work has informed modern magick. I will look specifically at how initiation can be modelled with Catastrophe Theory, and how fluid dynamics provides a picture of kabbalah of use to the magician.

  In terms of context I will show how the ‘New Thought’ movement provided a precursor to magick, and then its later upsurge as the ‘New Age’ movement. The work of NLP will be shown to be of relevance to the Gnostic aspects of contemporary magick, which I will illustrate with a range of modern films and books.

  The nature of the oaths of each grade will be explored in one chapter.

  I will also provide practical exercises to work with time and fit these into the context of Liber Resh and ritual generally, from the prior titles, and as a foundation for work in following the titles.

  In Volume 3 we will cover time-work and retro-temporal engineering in magick.

  The Portal and the Veil (4)

  The Workshop is Hidden in the Worker [Philosophus]

  By Our Work We Are Taught

  In this fifth title, ahead of our major work to follow in the sixth (which deals with the Holy Guardian Angel, or HGA), we will conclude our laying out of the initiatory schema with a detailed breakdown of the system of the A∴A∴, Crowley’s ‘self-initiatory’ order. I will also list the ‘powers’ of each grade in a modern format, and the dangers at each stage – the first time that this will have been presented in a contemporary and accessible (i.e. practical and down-to-earth) manner.

  A chapter will cover the nature of the ‘Portal’, the ‘Veil of Paroketh’ and how these feature in the initiatory progress of the Adept.

  The practice of prayer will be taught, particularly the constant prayer method. This will be contextualised with regard to the tradition and other systems such as mantra practice.

  Volume 4 will cover teachings on active contemplative work.

  The Angel in the Workshop (5)

  The Angel Enters the Workshop [Adeptus Minor]

  By Our Work We Are Converted

  This sixth title will bring together all that has been presented in the preceding titles and change the context for the following books. It will describe the work known as the Abramelin Operation and the nature of the HGA.

  It will contextualise this work in terms of the other great ‘crises’ of the tradition, namely the ‘Dweller on the Threshold’ (addressed in Volume 2) and the ‘Crossing of the Abyss’ (in Volume 9).

  I will bridge from my published journal of the operation, After the Angel, and provide more material and context for the HGA, particularly exploring questions that have arisen from that work, such as the difference between the ‘Higher Self’, the ‘Augoeodies’ and the HGA. At least two chapters will cover my teachings on Enochian magic.

  In the practical section of this book, a new version of Liber Resh will be given (i.e. the Hymnodia) and the Bornless Ritual fully explained.

  Volume 5 will present for the first time new Enochian work and angelic teaching.

  The Sanctuary of Fire (6)

  The Workshop is the Teacher [Adeptus Major]

  By Our Work We Are Completed

  In a wide-ranging survey, we will see how various authors have attempted to create their own ‘reality’ based upon their experiences, and how such a task is perfectly fitted to the initiatory scheme at this grade. We will look at how we can learn from working to such a model. I will work from a multitude of sources ranging from Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis to John Fowles’ The Aristos, William Butler Yeats’ Vision, Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice, Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Bokonism’ in Cat’s Cradle, etc.

  We will also look in more detail at the nature of the Aeons as a practical cosmology for society and the individual. This will show how the Aeons were brought into contemporary practice through Levi, then Crowley, based upon even earlier (Christian) models. I will also cover the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.[100]

  Volume 6 will explore further the Aeons.

  The Chapel of Devotion (7)

  The Worker Leaves the Workshop [Adeptus Exemptus]

  By Our Work We Are Devoted

  In this book I will cover the nature of the Secret Masters and use this to present the work of H.P. Blavatsky. We will also return to the work of those followers of Dion Fortune who advanced the idea of ‘fully contacted’ magical societies.

  I will explore the idea of magical societies, their structure and relevance to contemporary practice. This will include a large and comprehensive overview of many lesser known magical groups including the Aurum Solis, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and so forth – deriving from my research.

  In the practical section of this title we will cover devotional rituals such as Liber Astarte and examine the relationship of the practitioner to the divine.

  I will also present for the first time a ritual entitled ‘The Rebel in the Soul’ and at least two chapters on Ancient Egyptian belief and practice and its role in Western magickal practice.

  Volume 7 will provide researchers and practitioners a large catalogue of esoteric orders and their practices.

  The Temple of Night (8)

  The Workshop is No More [Master of the Temple]

  By Our Work We Are Removed

  In this book we will examine the spiritual/religious aspects of the tradition, working with the lives of St. Bonaventure, St. John, St. Theresa, Rushwin Mershwin, etc.

  We will also look at Western practitioners who have embraced Eastern practices such as Da Free John, Irina Tweedie and Paul Brunton. We will also introduce the work of Bernadette Roberts, which will be concluded in the eleventh book.

  We will deal with the ‘passage’ of the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ as the ‘Crossing of the Abyss’ in the tradition. I will present a chapter on Chronozon, the ‘demon of the Abyss’ and the work of Kenneth Grant.

  In Volume 8 we will compare Western mysticism and magick.

  The Quarry of Souls (9)

  The Worker Builds the Workshop [Magus]

  By Our Work We Are Created

  In this penultimate work we will return to magical practice and I will present the ‘initiated’ view of magick, investigating why The Secret doesn’t work, the nature of ‘energised enthusiasm’, sex magick, and working without ‘lust of result’. We will also return to the concept of the Secret Masters and see them for the first time in a totally new light. I will give a chapter on a-temporal magick and how this accords with recent scientific discoveries on the nature of time and reverse engineering the past. I will illustrate this section with real practical examples from my own work and return to the very first ‘spell’ I performed, mentioned in Volume 1.

  In Volume 9 we will demonstrate how to build your universe.

  The Point of the Light (10)

  The Workshop is the Worker [Ipsissimus]

  By Our Work We Are

  In this final title we will present the tradition as a valid and comprehensive spiritual path for contemporary Western society. We will see how it leads to the self-same experiences and realisations as any of the major movements and how it is specifically geared to Western life. I will conclude my presentation of Bernadette Roberts and other Western spiritual teachers particularly dealing with the transcendent experience. As much as possible, I will compare and contrast these with Eastern teachings, using the work of Ken Wilbur and others.

  In particular, we will look at the spiritual poetry of Aleister Crowley and ‘The Man of Understanding’ by D
a Free John as statements of the completion of the path offered by this tradition.

  The eleventh volume serves as a conclusion which sets this tradition in the context of contemporary spiritual practice.

  We will now look at the Herald which opens the mysteries of The Magister.

  THE HERALD OF EVERLASTING DAY

  After the Golden Dawn comes the Everlasting Day.

  This series of The Magister is in part homage to The Equinox, an epic journal created by the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley in the early 1900s. Before we begin, we will reveal some of the mysteries in the symbolic Herald which accompanies The Magister. This explanation can be skipped by those who wish to enter straight through into the first hall of the work without pausing to view the decorative entrance. Although, as with many such features of the mystery school teachings, you may miss something of great import, even in your first step, only to later have to return in order to gain an essential key.

  When Aleister Crowley published the first volume of The Equinox in March 1909, the upper cover was illustrated – as was the frontispiece of the deluxe subscriber’s edition – with a coat of arms design. Whilst we appear to have no record of the artist, the symbolism of this illustration is precise and could only have come from Crowley him- self. In it the theme of The Equinox is graphically illustrated; Crowley later wrote, in 1943, some 34 years later, that The Equinox was to be a “Rosetta Stone” in which he was tasked by the Masters to “preserve the Sacred Tradition” against a “planet-wide catastrophe” as the “New Aeon” superseded the old.[101]

  This was the essential message Crowley had received in Cairo, in 1904, five years prior to the publication of The Equinox and 10 years before the first of the two world wars that brought about such a catastrophe. That catastrophe – if we assume an average lifespan of 52 years in 1914, an average age of a soldier of 26, and an estimated 16 million dead during conflict – robbed our species of 416 million years of human life, in four short years, not counting the lost potential offspring of those whom perished.

  Crowley had seen himself as a herald of the new age, as in his private notebook, ‘Invocation of Hoor’, he wrote in 1904, “G.D. to be destroyed, i.e. publish its history and its papers.”[102] This was an allusion to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, at that time the repository of a vast synthesis of esoteric knowledge, in which Crowley had been immersed.

  The Golden Dawn had a tradition of changing ‘stations’ at the equinox, with a ritual marking a new (or renewed) Hierophant and a changing of role holders in the temple.[103] We will see later how this derived from ‘Eastern’-inspired fringe Freemasonic orders such as the Sat B’hai. A key element of this administrative changeover (which the ritual discloses has higher echoes in the upper worlds) is the change of password – the Hierophant asks the Kerux to “proclaim the EQUINOX and announce that the pass-word is abrogated.”[104] It was this tradition which Crowley usurped with his publication.

  [ILLUS. Equinox Herald]

  It is also this word abrogated (meaning to repeal by authority a law that has been previously established) that provides the nature of the usurpation, for Crowley wrote in Liber Al, The Book of the Law, “Abrogate are all rituals, all ordeals, all words and signs. Ra-Hoor-Khuit hath taken his seat in the East at the Equinox of the Gods.”[105] The notion of the magician finding a ‘higher authority’ or ‘inner planes contact’ was one taken across from theosophy and the bridge-head from which many occult wars were – and to this day, still – fought. Crowley had gone to Egypt (ostensibly on honeymoon) to find his own inner planes contact, trumping the more sedentary members of the Golden Dawn.

  This re-statement of authority was carried into the heraldic device of The Equinox which depicts a shield on which are a Sun and rose cross. These symbolise the Golden Dawn and the Rosy Cross, the outer and inner orders. The shield is then topped with a crest composed of the eye in the triangle, the symbol of Crowley’s own inner order, the A∴A∴ (Argenteum Astrum or silver star).

  The central motifs are flanked as columns by the red ram of Aries and the green robed lady of Libra, bearing scales and sword. These symbolise the Spring and Autumn equinox. The motto (technically, in heraldry, in the Scottish position) is “THE METHOD OF SCIENCE” with a banner below completing “THE AIM OF RELIGION.” In the title piece, the herald is surrounded by the text “The Official Organ of the A∴A∴” and “The Review of Scientific Illuminism.”

  Crowley provides in this key image his statement of revolution. The Aeons themselves are changing, time is accelerating and the old order is dead – not just the magical order of the Golden Dawn, but the previous order of humanity itself, moving in 2,000 year cycles. This image, stark and simple, is a powerful metaphor of total change – through usurpation, individuation, through war and horror.

  In the case of The Magister, representing the Order of Everlasting Day, we chose to re-vision the heraldic device in a contemporary manner whilst retaining much of the layout of The Equinox version. We also chose to centre the design on the nature of the initiatory work itself rather than the orders into which that work is organised. Furthermore, we decided to bridge from Christian – and recognisable – tropes such as the Garden of Eden and the Angelic forms. As these have much earlier precedents, it is to be hoped that viewers will connect to the antiquity of the traditional devices.

  The first point of note in the Herald of Everlasting Day is that the whole is under the aegis of Maat.[106] This ancient Egyptian goddess bears the ostrich feather, as she is representative of divine order and measurement. Rather than judgement, we fall under the rule of universal order, which weighs everything in its scales.[107] It is to this divine order that even the gods must fall, and is ultimately the ordering of the light and the field in which the Sun arises.[108] The Hall of Maat is our interior representation of the universe, “entering which one comes directly before that which nourishes the divine in oneself. To the extent that one has transformed one’s nature so that it is brought into alignment with the essential divine core of oneself, becoming conscious of having entered the presence of Maat must feel like a homecoming.”[109]

  We will return to Maat when we discuss the Aeons in this volume. It should also be seen that Maat is the ‘distant goddess’ whose emissary is Thoth, lord of magick and bearer of the word of creation. It is magick – Thoth - which mediates the divine harmony – Maat – in the universe.[110]

  [ILLUS . The Herald of Everlasting Day – symbolic version]

  The Pyramid

  The pyramid has been used to denote the antiquity of the initiatory mystery systems for many centuries and through the 1700s we have writings attesting to their mystical grandeur and function as temples for “the Being who filled the universe full of light.” This Egyptomania, of which there have been a number of waves, informed much of the Rosicrucian, Freemasonic and theosophical teachings, leading to their synthesis in the Golden Dawn.[111] Here, in the Herald of the Everlasting Day, it represents tradition and memory, and the mystery of time. The pyramid of fire also plays an important role in the symbolism of the Tarot of the Secret Dawn.

  Finally, it is also an acknowledgement of the kitsch marketing value of Egyptian relics, as in this poster for the Order of the Magi by Olney H. Richmond, c. 1892.[112]

  [ILLUS . ORDER OF THE MAGI, POSTER FOR OLNEY H. RICHMOND (1844-1920)]

  The Salamander Vessel

  In the centre of the Herald we have the shield, upon which is emblazoned what we term the ‘Alembic of the Salamander and His Son’. The Alembic “represents a conscious, purposeful, contained activity”[113] and presents us the Magnum Opus, the ‘Great Work’ in symbolic form. It is the shield which identifies us in the warfare for our soul and our storming of the gates of heaven. We see the salamander as the dry male and red seed of the work, the part of the soul which burns and is “conceived by fire, nursed by fire and perfected by fire.”[114] It is the primary seed which we put through the process of calcination which is covered by the fo
llowing volume of this present work. Above the salamander – who gives birth to a son through the fiery purgation – arises a single white rose, aflame with pale light. It bears two leaves and six outer petals, symbolising Tiphareth, the centre of the Tree of Life, upon which the rose burns. It is an image to which we will return in The Fool card of the Union Deck of the Tarot of Everlasting Day.

  Above the rose, sealing the vessel, which is a “soul, with no leak at the seams,” is a crown.[115] The crown – which is a triple crown – signifies Kether, the top of the Tree. It bears a single pearl in its apex, the ‘pearl of great price’.

  As a whole, the Alembic of the Salamander and His Son announces the nature of the initiatory work, as a process of fiery creation and activity, from which arises the rose of perfect simplicity, forming in the stillness and quietness of secrecy.[116]

  The Millrinds

  The three millrind symbols on the shield are known as fer de molines. In a variety of shapes, these are common charges for European heraldry.[117] They represent ‘divination’ and are an iron support which holds the weight of a runner stone (the upper stone) in a mill wheel. This brings to mind the grinding process of the initiatory system, where the grains of belief are ground into increasingly finer particles before being blown away like chaff in the Abyss.[118]

  The Angels of Night and D ay

  The supporters of the Heraldic device are two angels, a common motif in blazonry, such as that used in the arms of Nuremberg engraved by Durer in 1521.[119] The angels are of the Sun and Moon – day and night – and we see that the solar angel presents a joyful aspect whilst the lunar angel is contemplative, even sombre. This denotes that the divine is present at all times and in all states.