The Magister 1

by Marcus Katz

  [93] Wilbur, K. The Spectrum of Consciousness. Quest Books: Wheaton, 1979; Beck, D.E. & Cowan, C.C. Spiral Dynamics. Blackwell Publishing: Malden, 1996.

  [94] Yates, F.A. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. Paladin: St. Albans, 1975.

  [95] The student is advised to commence with Faivre, A. Access to Western Esotericism. State University of New York Press: New York, 1994; von Stuckrad, K. Western Esotericism. Equinox Press: London, 2005; Hanegraaff, W. J. New Age Religion and Western Culture. Brill: Leiden, 1996; Owen, A. The Place of Enchantment. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2004; and Bogdan, H. Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation. State University of New York Press: Albany, 2007. A thorough examination of how ‘tainted terminologies’ – such as ‘occult’, ‘magic’ and ‘superstition’ – have come about, and the interface between the ‘academy’ and the ‘esoteric’ world can be found in Hanegraaff, W.J. Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2012.

  [96] For an orientation to academic approaches to paganism, see Adler, M. Drawing Down the Moon. Beacon Press: Boston, 1986; Hutton, R. The Triumph of the Moon. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1999; Clifton, C.S. Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America. Alta Mira Press: Oxford, 2006; and Harvey, G. Contemporary Paganism. New York University Press: New York, 1997.

  [97] Guénon, R. Perspectives of Initiation. Sophia Perennis: Hillsdale, 2004; and Initiation and Spiritual Realization. Sophia Perennis: Hillsdale, 2004.

  [98] ESSWE Newsletter, Spring 2012, Volume 3, Number 1. See www.esswe.org [last accessed 28 June 2012].

  [99] Used with permission. The music of Machinae Supremacy is described by the band as carrying “a vibe of self-confidence, enlightenment and encouragement for people to take control of their own lives.” See http://www.machinaesupremacy.com [last accessed 27 November 2012].

  [100] de Chardin, P.T. The Phenomenon of Man. Harper & Row: London, 1961, is a fundamental book to begin exploring notions of human spiritual evolution, and was a big influence on many later writers.

  [101] Crowley, A. Magick Without Tears. Falcon Press: Phoenix, 1982, p.457.

  [102] Crowley’s private notebook, labelled ‘Invocation of Hoor’, 1904 [Yorke Collection]. Also published in Churton, T. Aleister Crowley: The Biography, Watkins: London, 2011, p.101.

  [103] Zalewski, P. & Zaleswki, C. The Equinox and Solstice Ceremonies of the Golden Dawn. Llewellyn: St. Paul, 1992.

  [104] The Golden Dawn. Llewellyn: St. Paul, 1989, p.248.

  [105] Crowley, A. Liber Al, I.49.

  [106] It is also Maat who presides over our Temple corresponding to Kether – see later section.

  [107] Lurker, M. The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson: London, 1980, p.78; Hart, G. A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, n.d., pp.116-117; Wilkinson, R.H. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson: London, 2003, p.150-1, where Maat is seen as the nourishment of the Gods.

  [108] Shorter, A.W. The Egyptian Gods. Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1937, p.105.

  [109] Naydler, J. Temple of the Cosmos: The Ancient Egyptian Experience of the Sacred. Inner Traditions International: Rochester, 1996, p.264.

  [110] Hornung, E. The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West. Cornell University Press: Ithaca & London, 2001, pp.8-9.

  [111] See also Navratilova, H. Egyptian Revival in Bohemia, 1850-1920. Set Out: Prague, 2003; Iversen, E. The Myth of Egypt and Its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition. Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1993; Rice, M. Egypt’s Legacy: The Archetypes of Western Civilization 3000-30 BC. Routledge: London, 1997; and Quirke, S. Ancient Egyptian Religion. British Museum Press: London, 1992.

  [112] Richmond, O. Temple Lectures. Fyfe: Chicago, 1892, p.197. Richmond writes “The ‘Star of the East’ once more rises to guide the mystic traveller upon his way; while the light of the rising sun guilds the pyramids of Egypt with a Golden Light.”

  [113] Henderson, J.L. & Sherwood, D.N. Transformation of the Psyche: The Symbolic Alchemy of the Splendor Solis. Routledge: Hove, 2003, p.110.

  [114] Abraham, L. A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1988, p.176.

  [115] Peter Gabriel, ‘Mercy Street’, on So (1986): “She pictures the broken glass, she pictures the steam / She pictures a soul / With no leak at the seam.” This song is based on the work on poet Anne Sexton, specifically the poem, ‘45 Mercy Street’. The number 45 is of significance in kabbalah, as is the word ‘mercy’ which is the literal translation of Chesed on the Tree of Life. Listen also to ‘The Two Trees’ by Loreena McKennitt, based on the poem by Yeats.

  [116] See also Adam Mclean, ‘The Alchemical Vessel as Symbol of the Soul’, http://www.levity. com/alchemy/vessel.html [last accessed 22 June 2012].

  [117] Fox-Davies, A.C. The Complete Guide to Heraldry. Wordsworth: Ware, 1996, p.293.

  [118] See ‘Liber Cheth vel Vallum Abiegni, CLVI’, verse 6: “And the angels shall lay thy dust in the City of the Pyramids, and the name thereof shall be no more” in Crowley, A. The Holy Books of Thelema. Samuel Weiser: York Beach, 1983, p.101.

  [119] Slater, S. The Complete Book of Heraldry. Anness Publishing: London, 2002, p.64.

  [120] Regardie, I. Golden Dawn. Llewellyn: St. Paul, 1989, p.74.

  [121] Private correspondence with Birkbeck, L., author of Understanding the Future. Watkins: London, 2008.

  [122] Lovecraft, H.P. ‘The Nameless City’ in The Lurking Fear and Other Stories. Panther: London, 1964, p.72. We will return to Lovecraft in a further volume. See Joshi, S.T. A Subtle Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft. Wildside Press: Berkeley Heights, 1999; Primal Sources. Hippocampus Press: New York, 2003; Joshi, S.T. & Schultz, D.E. An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopaedia. Hippocampus Press: New York, 2001; particularly pp.50-55 on Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos and his own thoughts on his ‘Yog-Sothothery’ pseudo-mythology. See also Evans, D. The History of British Magick after Crowley. Hidden Publishing: London, 2007, for a thread of discussion on the influence of Lovecraft’s work on both Anton LaVey and Kenneth Grant.

  [123] See Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed. Dover: New York, 1956, pp.171-189 on the eternity of the universe. Also ‘The contemplation of eternity maketh the soul immortal’ by Thomas Traherne (c. 1636-1674) in Grant, P. A Dazzling Darkness: An Anthology of Western Mysticism. Fount: London, 1985, pp.322-332.

  [124] It is beyond this present volume to go into the history of the Bavarian Illuminati and their later re-casting as a popularist fiction of an über-brotherhood, suffice to say that we will look at this conceptualisation – and that of the Secret Masters – towards the final volumes of The Magister.

  [125] See Zimbardo, P. & Boyd, J. The Time Paradox: Using the New Psychology of Time to your Advantage. Rider: London, 2008; James, T. & Woodsmall, W. Time Line Therapy and the Basis of Personality. Meta Publications: 1998; Libet, B. Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness. Harvard University Press: London, 2004; and Damasio, A.R. The Feeling of What Happens. William Heinemann: London, 2000.

  [126] Plato, Timaeus. Dent: London, 1965, pp.30-31.

  [127] See Chapter 10, ‘The Miraculous Fish: Symbol of the Self ’ in Clarke, R.B. An Order Outside of Time: A Jungian View of the Higher Self from Egypt to Christ. Hampton Roads: Charlottesville, 2005.

  [128] A multi-mapping of the I-Ching onto Aeonic timeframes has been conducted by McKenna, T. in, for example, The Invisible Landscape. HarperCollins: New York, 1993, and True Visions and the Archaic Revival. MJF Books: New York, 1993. A similar cross-cultural temporal map is provided in Arguelles, J. Earth Ascending. Bear and Company, 1988.

  [129] A useful overview of human development to this point of time can be found in Harari, Y. N., Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. London: Vintage Books, 2011.

  [130] See Frater Aurum Nostrum Non Vulgi, ‘The Place of the Ma’at Current in Modern Magick’ in Thaneteros, Issue
4.

  [131] Reeves, M. Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future. SPCK: London, 1976. See also http:// www.centrostudigioachimiti.it/Benvenuti/benvenutieng.asp for the full diagrams of Joachim.

  [132] Corbin, H. En Islam Iranien: Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, Tome IV: L’Ecole d’Ispahan L’Ecole Shaykhie – Le Douzieme Imam, Gallimard, Bib. Des Idees: 1973, p.448.

  [133] de Chardin, T. Le Millieu Divin. William Collins Sons: London, 1964, p.150.

  [134] McKenna, T. Re-Evolution (1992) at http://deoxy.org/t_re-evo.htm [last accessed 27 June 2012].

  [135] Waite, A.E. ‘At The End of Things’ in The Collected Poems of Arthur Edward Waite. William Rider & Son, Ltd: London, 1914, p.21.

  [136] See Bain, D., Goodwin, T. & Katz, M. A New Dawn for Tarot. Forge Press: Keswick, 2013, for this and more than 50 previously unpublished tarot-related images from the original Golden Dawn archives.

  [137] Cirlot, J.E. A Dictionary of Symbols. Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1962, p.103.

  [138] Reeves, N. Ancient Egypt: The Great Discoveries, a Year-by-Year Chronicle. Thames & Hudson: London, 2000, pp.160-166.

  [139] Crowley, A. Liber Al, II.5.

  [140] Grant, K. Outside the Circles of Time. Frederick Muller Ltd: London, 1980.

  [141] Grant, K. Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God. Frederick Muller: London, 1976, pp.53-58.

  [142] Other accounts of an arising global consciousness include Bloom, H. Global Brain. John Wiley & Sons: New York, 2000, and Stock, G. Metaman. Bantam Press: London, 1993.

  [143] There are many indications of visions of a global consciousness, and a new form of society based upon what might be called an open-source culture, such as Wells, H.G. ‘Human Life in the Coming World Community’ in The Open Conspiracy and Other Writings. Waterlow and Sons: London, 1933, pp.92-93: “A time will come when men will sit with history before them or with some old newspaper before them and ask incredulously, ‘Was there ever such a world?’”

  [144] Sendivogius. Treatise on Sulpher. Cologne, 1613. For an article examining Rosicrucian connections to Sendivogius, see also:

  http://www.levity.com/alchemy/sendi.html [last accessed 28 November 2012].

  [145] Nema, Cincinnati Journal of Ceremonial Magick, Volume 1, Issue 5.

  [146] Nema, ‘Feast of the Hive’, Cincinatti Journal of Ceremonial Magick.

  [147] Lancaster, B. The Elements of Judaism. Element: Shaftesbury, 1993, p.33.

  [148] Daleth, ‘ICOM and the Future Society’, Meridian. ICOM: Summer 1998. ICOM was a group of eclectic English magicians formed in the 1990s, the name being the deliberately tongue-in-cheek Illuminated Congregation of Melchizedek. Their work is partially revealed in Katz, M. The Zodiacal Rituals. Forge Press: Keswick, 2008, and was tangential to the Maat current work. They were likely amongst the first magical groups to take advantage of the newly created Internet, inhabiting early bulletin board systems (BBS) and performing the world’s first ‘virtual ritual’ in a nascent 3D environment called ActiveWorlds, which is now the oldest VR still in existence.

  [149] Nema, Maat Magick. Samuel Weiser: York Beach, 1995; The Way of Mystery. Llewellyn: St. Paul, 2003; The Priesthood: Parameters and Responsibilities. Black Moon: Cincinnati, 1985; ‘A Measure of Maat’ and ‘Liber Pennae Praenumbra’, in British Journal of Maat, Volume 1, Number 1. Ordo Occultus Dea: Cheshire, 1982.

  [150] There are at least two fictional accounts of what life might be like if we were all immediately interconnected with each other as a species, both for the positive and negative: McQuay, M. The Nexus. Headline: London, 1989, and Emtsev, M. & Parnov, E. World Soul. Macmillan: New York, 1978.

  [151] Barrett, F. The Magus: A Complete System of Occult Philosophy. The Citadel Press: Secaucus, N.J., 1980.

  [152] Crowley, A. 777 & Other Kabbalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley. Samuel Weiser, Inc.: York Beach, 1982.

  [153] Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Llewellyn Publications: St. Paul, 1998.

  [154] Sheldrake, R. A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation. Icon Books: London, 2012.

  [155] Fowles, J. The Aristos. Pan Books: London, 1968, pp.22-23.

  [156] Drury, N. The Path of the Chameleon: Man’s Encounter with the Gods and Magic. Nevillle Spearman: Jersey, 1973, p.13.

  [157] Bubba Free John. The Knee of Listening. Dawn Horse Press: Middleton, 1978, p.269.

  [158] Crowley, A. The Book of Thoth. Samuel Weiser: York Beach, 1985, p.73.

  [159] Copenhaver, B.P. Hermetica. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1992, pp.5-6.

  [160] Williams, J. Winning with Witchcraft. Finbarr: 1986.

  [161] Roberts, B. The Experience of No-Self. Shamballa: Boston & London, 1982, pp.193-195.

  [162] Carroll, P. Psychonaut. Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Leeds, n.d., pp.53-58.

  [163] See Woodcock, A. & Davis, M. Catastrophe Theory. Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1980, and to a lesser extent, Gladwell, M. The Tipping Point. Little, Brown and Company: London, 2000.

  [164] Nott, C.S. Teachings of Gurdjieff. Arkana: London, 1990.

  [165] In Mark Braham, ‘The Protector of Humanity’, a talk given to the Arcane School Conference, London, June 1987, we hear “to deny hierarchisation is to deny existence” and “hierarchy is the accompaniment of evolution.”

  [166] A short story by Dick, P.K. ‘The Exit Door Leads In’, originally written for Rolling Stone College Papers (1979) and republished in Carr, T. Best Science Fiction of the Year #9. Ballantine Books: London, 1980.

  [167] Jung, C.G. Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 5. Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1967, xxvi: “The time [being aged 36] is a critical one, for it marks the beginning of the second half of life, when a metanoia, a mental transformation, not infrequently occurs.”

  [168] Voss, A. Marsilio Ficino. North Atlantic Books: Berkeley, 2006, pp.1-2.

  [169] New translation provided courtesy of Dr. Peter Forshaw, Centre for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam.

  [170] Katz, M. & Goodwin, T. Abiding in the Sanctuary. Forge Press: Keswick, 2011.

  [171] See Morrison, G. ‘Pop Magic!’ in Metzger, R. (editor). Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult. Disinformation Company: New York, 2003, p.21. A hypersigil is a creative act, such as writing, usually extended over a long series, intended as a magical sigil which changes its author and the lives of the author and readers. One example is when the author Alan Moore had the lead character, John Constantine, from his graphic novel series, Hellblazer, appear to him in his real life – a scene he then drew back into the graphic novel. The extended use of observation of tarot symbols can also function as a hypersigil, particularly when crowdsourced or represented on a social media network such as Facebook. Participants generate their own content, are influenced by the images of archetypal patterns presented by others, and this re-contextualises their own perception, creating a feedback loop or hypersigil. Participants in our own (non-explained) experiments of this nature often report, without any suggestion, synchronicity or strange events such as people coming back into their lives from their past, or significant life changes, etc. The hypersigil concept is a radical new form of co-creative and collaborative magick and our Order has been using it for two years with fascinating results.

  [172] Frater Achad. The Egyptian Revival. Samuel Weiser: New York, 1973; an extended com- mentary on the Appendix to Chapter 2 in Q.B.L. or The Bride’s Reception. Samuel Weiser: New York, 1974, and Gray, W.G. Qabalistic Concepts. Samuel Weiser: York Beach, 1997, pp.213-232.

  [173] One of the most important lines in the Golden Dawn Neophyte initiation ritual.

  [174] 1 Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see through a glass, darkly.”

  [175] Edinger, E.F. Anatomy of the Psyche. Open Court: Chicago and La Salle, 1994, pp.17-45.

  [176] This section was first published in Katz, M. & Goodwin, T. Tarot Inspire. Forge Press: Keswick, 2011, and is here given in modified form for completeness.

&n
bsp; [177] Gilbert, T. Messages from the Archetypes. White Cloud Press: Ashland, 2004.

  [178] Compton, M. Archetypes on the Tree of Life: The Tarot as Pathwork. Llewellyn: St. Paul, 1991.

  [179] MacGregor-Mathers, S.L. The Kabbalah Unveiled. Routledge Kegan & Paul: London, 1981, pp.20-21.

  [180] Gray, E. Mastering the Tarot. New American Library: New York, 1971, p.26 & p.69.