by Marcus Katz
Then, again wishing to ascend the seven steps and to behold the seven mortifications and, as it happened, one day only did I ascend the way. Retracing my steps, I thereupon ascended the way many times. And on returning, I could not find the way, and becoming discouraged, not seeing how to get out, I fell asleep.
And I saw in my sleep a certain little man, a barber, wearing a red robe and royal garments, and he stood outside of the place of the mortifications and said, “What are you doing, Man?”
I said to him, “I stand here because I have missed every road and am lost.”
He said, “Follow me”.
And going out, I followed him. And being near to the place of the mortifications, I saw the little barber man leading me and he cast into the place of the mortifications and his whole body was consumed by fire.
Seeing this, I fled and trembled from the fear and I woke and said to myself, “What is this that I have seen?” And again I took thought and determined that this barber man is the man of copper. It is necessary for the first step to throw him into the place of the mortifications. My soul again desired to ascend – the third step also. And again, alone, I went along the way, and as I drew near the place of the mortifications, again I got lost, losing sight of the path, and stood, out of my mind.
And again I saw an old man of hair so white my eyes were blinded by the whiteness. His name was Agathodaemon. And the white old man, turning, looked on me for a whole hour.
And I asked him, “Show me the right way.”
He did not turn toward me but hastened to go on the right way. And going and coming in this manner he quickly affected the altar. As I went up to the altar I saw the white old man. He was cast into the mortifications. O Creator-gods of celestial natures – straightaway the flames took him up entire, which is a terrible story, my brother.
For from the great energy of the mortifications his eyes became full with blood.
And I questioned him saying, “Why do you lie there?”
And he opened his mouth and said, “I am the man of lead and I am withstanding an intolerable force.”
And then I woke out of fear and sought in myself the cause of this fact. And again I reflected and said to myself, “I understand well that thus must one cast out the lead – truly the vision is concerning the combination of liquids.”
And again I knew the theophany and again the sacred altar and I saw a certain priest clothed in white celebrating those same terrible mysteries and I said, “Who is this?”
And answering he said to me, “This is the priest of the Adytum. He wishes to put blood into the bodies, to make the eyes clear, and to raise up the dead.”
And again I fell asleep for a while and while I was mounting the fourth step I saw one with a sword in his hand coming out of the east. And I saw another behind him, holding a disk, white and shining and beautiful to behold. And it was called the meridian of the Sun and I approached the place of the mortifications and the one who held the sword said to me, “Cut off his head and sacrifice his meat and muscles part by part so that first the flesh may be boiled according to the method and that he might then suffer the mortifications.”
And waking, I said, “I understand well that these matters concern the liquids of the art of the metals.”
And the one who held the sword said, “You have fulfilled the seven steps beneath.”
And the other said at the same time as the casting out of the lead by all the liquids, “The Work is completed.”[136]
The Seven Steps Contemplation
In the Vision of Zosimos, we see key roles being enacted by a variety of figures, namely the Priest Ion, the copper man, the red-robed barber, and Agathodaemon. We also see key processes being carried out at different stages of the vision. There are also fragments of teaching which are directly given by the figures in their speeches and symbolically given by their actions.
You may wish to contemplate how this series progresses and, more importantly, take it as a reflection of your magical and spiritual progress. You may also choose to relate this tale to any transformative or significant event in your own personal history or current life.
For example, you might take the process of grief, moving house, the start of a new relationship, a journey abroad, or any other significant event, which you can then perceive through the deeper pattern alluded to within the vision.
This type of contemplation provides a means of mapping our living experience to deeper archetypal patterns. In doing so, we come to practice our method of correspondence, creating ever-increasing connections in our world-view. We hence move towards a comprehensive, consistent and congruent state of unity, rather than simply adding more and more discrete items of separation.
Such mappings also provide meta-models of experience that are flexible in application. This should lead to an increasing ability to recognise patterns and predict behaviour in any system, whether it be a relationship, a company, a queue, or a crowd on the stock exchange or soccer pitch. If the learning is not useful, it should not be distracting – it is true that by our works we are known.
The magician should come to lead an increasingly successful life if these models are useful; maybe not to the extent of a fulfilment of all worldly desires – knowing the context of such things is not a key driver in their attainment – but certainly the strength and wisdom should manifest to meet all events with a thorough appreciation of consequence and an ability to take action.
Optional Dream Practices
The most direct route into the mundus imaginalis and an appropriate technique to start to develop over the Crucible work is that of dream-work. We give here two techniques to recall dreams and work towards lucid dreaming. The recording of dreams is a useful adjunct to your magical journal – a practice which is commenced during the first month of the Crucible Club.
The Fountain of Morpheus (An Initiated Method of Dream Recall)
As you approach sleep, begin to visualise an elaborate garden of labyrinthine design. Proceed in your imagination to the centre of this garden, taking time to feel the evening breeze, inhale the perfumes of the closing flowers, hear the call of nightingales as the Sun begins to set, touch the overhanging leaves of the bowing trees, and see the evening sky darken in hue.
At the centre of this garden at last come to a fountain of intricate design, drawing water from some hidden depth, splashing and playing in streams and jets on marble dishes. Find a seat against the edge of the pool into which this fountain flows so that you can watch the individual globes of water as they fall in slow and precise patterns across your gaze.
Notice that in each globe a nascent dream is being born – images swirling in moving crystal reflections. As you drift into sleep, find in one particular globe of water the dream you feel opening and fall into it, allowing yourself to enjoy the unfolding scenes, seeing what you would see, hearing what you would hear, feeling what you would feel in that very scene.
If sleep does not find you immediately, you may choose to emerge from one globe of water to another, enjoying wholly different and various environments as your unconscious ingenuity provides.
Know that when you awake you will leave these flowing beads of water to return briefly to the seat by the fountain of Morpheus so that you may recall your experiences before fully awakening.
The practice of this meditation sequence prior to sleep, allied to the positioning of a notebook and pen by the sleeping space, will greatly improve dream recall and the vividness of dreams. It may also be used as a precursor to lucid dreaming experimentation.
Hand Observation for Lucid Dreaming
The first step in learning to lucid dream is to observe one’s hands in activity prior to taking to one’s bed of an evening. Spend 10 minutes as you attend to your boudoir, noticing your hands in motion. Then rest and sleep as per your normal habit. Repeat this for several days with intention, and you may notice your sleep pattern changing or becoming disrupted with occasional waking starts during the night. This is when yo
u observe your hands in your dreaming state and, due to the anchoring of your sight to your attention, you are brought to full awareness, awakening you.
For a further three or four nights, add into your routine a certain sense of gentle curiosity. That is, start to idly wonder if what you are seeing as you ready for bed is in your awake state or your asleep state. Is it usual for the light switch to be there on the wall, the giraffe in the corner, and so forth? Remain unattached but curious – cultivate a certain sense of bemusement.
If this works for you, you will suddenly find yourself in a dream-state, observing your own hands, whilst maintaining a certain curiosity that does not awaken you physically. You are now lucid dreaming.
After a few false starts and sudden awakenings from this state, you will be able to maintain it long enough to look around, and lucidly interact with your dream environment.
The Dream Journal: Liber Somniorum
Record any results in your regular magickal journal, or you may wish to open a new Liber Somniorum (Book of the Dreamers) to maintain that as a separate record. I recommend a Jungian approach to dream interpretation, allied to an understanding of correspondence. The advantage of working with systems of correspondence is that they are then utilised by the unconscious processes as means of communication. It becomes the case that kabbalists have kabbalistic dreams, and tarot students have dreams involving the figures on the cards.
In this section we have started to look at the importance of imagination in our work. This relates to the sephirah of Yesod on the Tree of Life, which corresponds to The Moon. There are many other methods of visualisation, contemplation, imagination, and reflection, but a good foundation is to commence with dream recall and dream-work.
Given contemplations on such powerful texts as the Emerald Tablet and the Vision of Zosimos, you will find your creative and imaginative realms being engaged far more vibrantly and ecstatically than mundane life usually allows.
The Magical Name
“... at this bar you leave your name and assume another to be known only within our walls. Brethren and Sisters of Thelema, you know this novice; give her a name.”
W. Besant and J. Rice, The Monks of Thelema. [137]
The magickal name is an underrated magical tool, as powerful as the altar, wand or pentacle in defining our Will. In a sense, it is also an oath of aspiration; a naming of the rung on the ladder and our best guess at the next rung up. It should always be the highest ambition or aim we possess, stated in the most succinct manner. As an oath the taking of a magical name is also a contract with one’s angel, albeit one not reciprocated in the first grades. So we make it to ourselves and then we try to live up to it, slowly moving our centre from our given name to our inner name – our true and magical name.
We take a magical name at each grade, representing the 10 unique states and our personal experience and expression of our encounter with these states.
The magical name should produce a strain on our being as a result of its ambition. Crowley likened this (when writing about the oath) as grasping a snake, previously safely asleep in the Sun. Once we have grasped it, we awaken it and must then engage in a constant battle with it, grasping it ever tighter, lest it escape and bite us. The temptations and distractions we face in everyday life are like the snake, as Crowley goes on to say:
We have all of us these tendencies [ego ideas, inhibitions, points of view, temptations] latent in us; of most of them we might remain unconscious all our lives – unless they were awakened by our Magick. They lie in ambush. And every one must be awakened, and every one must be destroyed. Everyone who signs the oath of the Probationer is stirring up a hornets’ nest. A man has only to affirm his conscious aspiration; and the enemy is upon him.[138]
The Purpose and Nature of the Magickal Name
We choose a magickal name to accomplish a range of results:
1. An act of self-determination;
2. A reflection of our inner nature;
3. A statement of our aim/s;
4. An acknowledgement that we are an evolving identity;
5. An initiation into the tradition.
The name can be a name or a motto. It is usually translated into another language, often classical, such as Latin or Greek. It can also be translated into Hebrew or Gaelic, for example, if you identify strongly with another culture.[139]
The magickal name is often then abbreviated as an acronym of the full name or motto. This is partially for secrecy, partially for elitism and partially because it is how it has been done before.
The magickal name should be chosen after considering your primary aim in pursuing this avenue of enquiry. Why are you working magickally? What’s the point? What is it that you are looking for? What is it that you truly desire? What is it that you think is ultimately true about your relationship to universe? What is your highest ideal or value? If you were stripped down to the core, what would be the last sentence?
The name or motto can, of course, be entirely unrealistic and idealised. However, it is best stated in the positive; rather than ‘I Seek to Escape Darkness’, perhaps better, ‘I Seek to Enter into Light’.
The gematria (Hebrew / kabbalistic numerology) of the name may have relevance, or the correspondence of the letters to tarot cards, or even the shape of the letters of the acronym themselves may have meaning. In one case, Aleister Crowley saw the initials of his motto, V.V.V.V.V., as being the ‘footprints of a camel’. This had profound significance to his image of the grade he was working within.
In a sense, this process of choosing a magickal name is modelled on the Tree of Life by the path of The Last Judgement, the tarot card on the path between Hod and Malkuth. The pillar of form descends into Malkuth, the Kingdom, corresponding to Assiah, the World of Action, with every decision and action. This determines what follows, and is always a last judgement, as time appears to move forwards from each decision.
The difficulty in choosing a name, or the ease, is a symptom of your relationship to universe in the context of making decisions. It reflects your ability to function in a changing world by fixing a point, being content that it will serve you, and working with it. This is the trumpet call of The Last Judgement, being played time and time again in life.
In one esoteric workbook, you did not get to choose a name until your fourth month of practice, as it is seen therein that you are presenting that name to the inner plane Adeptii, who “have strict ideas about how those entering their service should conduct themselves.”[140] We would not dare to disagree on this point.
Salutations, Forms and Greetings
The common form in many Western esoteric orders is to refer to fellow members as ‘brothers’ or ‘sisters’. This is done under the Latin, ‘brother’ being ‘frater’ and ‘sister’ being ‘soror’. From at least the 9th century, liturgy in the church utilised the phrase, “Orate, fraters et sorores,” meaning, “pray, brethren and sisters.” Some authors state that the usage is ‘from ancient times’, part of the ‘mystery schools’ or used secretly by ‘Rosicrucians’, but it has a far more common heritage and has been used openly in magical orders for some time. [141]
To address a fellow brother or sister, one uses the Latin word for ‘dear’, being ‘care’ (male) or ‘cara’ (female). Thus, for ‘dear brother’, ‘Care Frater’, or ‘dear sister’, ‘Cara Soror’.
If you know the magickal name of the member, then you can use this following the ‘frater’ or ‘soror’, for example, ‘Care Frater F.P.’
The various plural forms for addressing ‘dear brothers’, ‘dear sisters’ or ‘dear brothers and sisters’ are as follows:
Cari Fratres; Carae Sorores;
Cari Fratres et Sorores; Carae Sorores et Fratres.
A few variations of this favoured by groups as diverse as AMORC and the O.T.O., Freemasons and even Wiccans or Chaos magicians include:
Avete (or Valete) literally ‘be healthy’, but generally used as ‘hello’;
Ave, similar, meaning
‘goodbye’.
That means that you could start an email, lecture or letter to the whole order with the rather cumbersome “Avete, Cari Fratres et Sorores!” or greet another member of the order whose magickal name you know with “Avete, Cara Soror D.O.”
Formal Framing in the Order of Everlasting Day
Within the Crucible work, as an Outer Court of the Order of Everlasting Day, and within the full apprenticeship, we utilise two ‘framing’ sentences when we communicate, to remind ourselves of the important principles of our work. These frames are also used when I deliver lectures, whether they be to an esoteric or academic audience, publically or privately. They set the scene for a more considered communication.
If you wish to adopt a formal framing of communication within the Work, the simplest one is to sign off your communication with:
In the Great Work, Frater / Soror [your magickal name].
That reminds you, and the recipient, that the communication is within the context of the work that you are mutually embarked upon.
The alternative full framing for the Outer Court and apprenticeship work is to commence all communication with:
By our Work we are changed.
And to sign off all communication with:
The Worker is hidden in the workshop.
This reminds us that all our work and communication is to serve the process of self-development, understanding and change, and is not merely idle gossip or ego-serving delivery. It also reminds us that we are working on ourselves, not on others, and need not demonstrate any change other than that which occurs naturally within our work.