The Book of Magick Power
Page 21
Venus: Love, Passion, Aesthetics, Nurture
Sun: Beauty, Harmony, Balance, Wholeness
Mars: Justice, Strength, Force, Violence
Jupiter: Generosity, Abundance, Leadership, Vision
Saturn: Structure, Limitation, Seriousness, Responsibility
For magical purposes, these energies can be used for the following things as well as much more:
Moon: increasing imagination, improving instinct, connecting with the subconscious, altering and developing emotion, connecting with the astral world, developing clairvoyance, enhancing dreams, getting sound sleep, working with the sea.
Mercury: developing reason, improving communication, becoming more logical, gaining hidden knowledge, success in examinations and tests, safety and speed in travel, success in business, improving writing, getting into and succeeding in school, learning science or medicine or mathematics, developing the mind, self-improvement in general, understanding statistics or calculations or systems
Venus: gaining love, creating desire, improving and developing aesthetics, becoming more nurturing, enhancing beauty, increasing pleasure, appreciating and creating art, creating luxury, enhancing femininity
Sun: Creating harmony, improving balance, establishing and/or understanding wholeness, developing friendships, improving health and vitality, regaining youth and beauty, finding peace, experiencing illumination, obtaining windfalls of money, divine power
Mars: bringing justice to a situation, developing strength and passion, applying force, understanding and directing violent urges, enhancing energy, creating or stopping war or warlike thoughts, using aggression, developing courage, winning in competitions, improving in athletics, enhancing masculinity
Jupiter: Increasing generosity, creating and understanding abundance, developing leadership skills, becoming a visionary thinker, receiving favors, acquiring influence and prestige, acquiring wealth, solving legal issues, getting good luck, personal expansion
Saturn: understanding and creating structures, overcoming or creating limitations, developing responsibility, becoming more serious, understanding reincarnation, understanding death, receiving inheritances, extending life
In doing your spell work with the planetary and elemental energies, you will want to create an appropriate atmosphere. The best way to do this is by using objects and visualizations that are congruent with the energies. There are hundreds of traditional correspondences. You can research and find appropriate incense, geometric shapes, gemstones, plants, names of gods, and a multitude of other things. Here are a couple of correspondences that you might find useful, particularly in the case of incense:
Planet Shape Incense
Saturn Triangle Myrrh
Jupiter Square Cedar
Mars Pentagram Tobacco (Red Pepper or hot scents)
Sun Hexagram Frankincense
Venus Septagram Benzoin
Mercury Octagram Sandalwood
Moon Enneagram Camphor
Element Shape Incense
Fire Red Triangle Cinnamon
Water Silver Crescent Cedar
Air Blue Circle Sandalwood
Earth Yellow Square Myrrh
I'm not going to spend more time on these things, because one of the easiest and most effective ways to create an appropriate atmosphere for working with these energies is through the use of color. But feel free to use any you desire, or add more from other correspondences you find on your own.
The effect of color on consciousness is instant and automatic. You have doubtless already experienced this from your work in other chapters. But by building up the colors in your imagination, along with the appropriate archetypal idea behind the energies of the planets or the elements, you will be instantly bringing its power into your consciousness and your magical circle. In other words, if you imagine a red glow filling your circle, while you also imagine the qualities of heat, dryness and expansion, you will be tapping into the spiritual energies of fire. It's that simple. Once you have established this connection, you will be able to direct that energy however you like, or contact the spiritual entities of fire.
When working with the four elements, the following colors are the traditional ones used by most magicians:
Fire: red or red-orange
Water: blue or blue-green
Air: yellow or blue
Earth: green, black or brown
When working with the planets, these colors are traditional:
Saturn: black or violet
Jupiter: blue or violet
Mars: red
Sun: yellow or gold
Venus: green
Mercury: orange or mixed colors
Moon: violet, blue or silver
You can of course use whatever colors you like in your practice, but these are the traditional colors that have been used for centuries. These colors should be built up powerfully in your imagination to form the general atmosphere of your working, but you can also use appropriately colored cloths and candles in your work area, if you have these things available. You will certainly not want to have a lot of unrelated colors in your working space, as these will be distracting.
Exercise 74 – Creating Magical Atmospheres
Time Required: 15 to 20 minutes
This simple exercise will allow you to easily tap into the forces of the elements and the planets from deep in your unconscious and thus from the universe. In this exercise, you will draw the appropriate energy into your circle, but you could also use this technique to charge a room or your house with the energy, so that its force permeates the area for whatever purpose you like. You can also use a generalized energy such as vital power, or general magick force, simply using white light or blue-white light instead of one of the planetary or elemental forces.
Again, this is rather similar to a New Hermetics technique, but I have attempted to simplify it even further, so that you can use it easily within your magical work in this book. This also shows an example of how to apply New Hermetics techniques in a ritual setting.
If you are using elemental energies, you can face the appropriate direction in your workroom or temple. Air would be the East, Fire the South, Water the West, and Earth the North. For the planetary energies, you may direct yourself toward the area in the heavens where the planets currently are, or you could simply orient yourself toward the east, where the planets rise, or else generally above your head.
1. Consult with your subconscious using the pendulum.
2. Get into the Alpha state using your anchor.
3. Do opening preparations, including any combination of purification, consecration, chakra opening, Kundalini arousing breaths, circle casting and the pentagram ritual.
4. Imagine the energy you will be invoking as being all around the protective sphere of your circle in a diluted but all encompassing form. In this form it is mixed with all other energies. However, isolate this particular energy by imagining an appropriate color.
5. Begin to concentrate this energy before you, or above your head being drawn into the light of your superconscious area. See it accumulating as a cloud of appropriate color, focusing on the specific nature of the force you are accumulating. (In other words, if you are drawing in Water energy, focus on Coldness, Wetness, and Contraction, while if you are drawing in Jupiterean energy, focus on Generosity, Abundance, Leadership, and Vision)
6. Create an opening in your protective sphere, and imagine the appropriate energy filling this opening. (This can be done with the pentagrams or hexagrams that we will discuss shortly).
7. As you breathe, begin to draw this energy into you, feeling and visualizing the energy moving into your body from above. Fill yourself with this energy until you feel you could nearly burst. Experience this energy palpably, visibly in the appropriate color inside your physical body.
8. Express to this energy what specific purpose it will serve, and how long it will remain in effect.
9. Send the energy out of your solar plexus beginning to turn i
n a clockwise spiral through your personal circle and sphere.
10. Continue to repeat this process until you experience that the space is fully charged. You will know when you have fully charged the area, because you will feel the power and see it clearly with your third eye, ands perhaps somewhat with your physical eyes as well.
11. Close the opening in your protective sphere.
12. You can now conduct whatever work you will.
13. Return to normal awareness.
14. Take some real outward actions toward getting results in whatever you have just projected, knowing that you are going to succeed. Don’t omit this last step.
You can also charge spaces at a distance. You would simply draw in the appropriate energy as above, and then send it all to the distant location, visualizing this location becoming permeated with this energy. You could use this to positively influence your work environment, a room, a house, a town, or cause change anywhere you desire. Of course the larger the effect, the larger the amount of energy you will need to collect.
PENTAGRAMS, HEXAGRAMS AND
SACRED GEOMETRY
The “Greater Rituals” of the Pentagram and Hexagram are part of our magical inheritance from the 19th century occult group The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. They have been reprinted in so many books that I was almost going to skip them as a topic in this already crowded manual. However, they have a useful function within your magical work, so I thought I had better give them a little space. Besides, I have a few unique viewpoints that you will hopefully find helpful in understanding and using these techniques.
In the Order instructions given out by the Golden Dawn, pentagrams are supposed to be drawn in a specific way to invoke and banish elemental energies, and hexagrams to invoke and banish the energies of the planets. It is said that when you trace the symbols carefully in the air, “From each re-entering angle… issueth a ray, representing a radiation from the Divine.”[1] This is the only explanation offered by the Order for exactly what these symbols are for, and why you should use them. This has always seemed a strange statement, and one that explains very little.
The pentagram is generally considered a symbol representing the microcosm, or humankind, and that the upright pentagram shows the triumph in humans of spirit over the elements. Humans can control the elements through spirit, and this symbol is a representation of that. If you look at Diagram Twelve you will see the attribution of an element to each of the points of the pentagram, with the element of spirit at the topmost point. However it is still unclear exactly what is meant by the ray that “issueth forth,” from each re-entering angle.
However, when you begin to explore sacred geometry, you quickly discover that within the geometry of the pentagram there is an interesting ratio known as “phi” or “the golden mean.” This is depicted in Diagram Nine.
A rectangle created with this ratio, called a “golden rectangle” can infinitely reproduce itself, larger or smaller, making the geometry for a “golden spiral.” This is depicted in Diagram Ten. This spiral measurement can be found all through nature, creating seashells, weather patterns, air resistance and the spiral form of galaxies. This geometry also plays out in the growth of plants and the expansive reproduction in all life forms.[2]
So, the pentagram is representative on a symbolic level with the dynamic forces that create the universe. This is very congruent with its nature as ruler of the elemental forces. But looking at geometry, we can also understand the power
of the pentagram in a whole new way. I’m not sure if this was on the minds of the magicians who began to use it, but it immensely helps me to empower the pentagram with a whole new level of influence. When we trace a pentagram in the air, with the intention of making use of a force, we are creating a massive geometric progression of power and manifestation that can dramatically influence the universe through our spirit. This power expands outward or inward with the force of all of nature’s expansive and contractive processes. Perhaps this is after all what the Golden Dawn document is referring to by this “ray” from the divine.
The hexagram on the other hand, consists of two separate equilateral triangles, facing opposite directions. This is said to represent the macrocosm, or greater universe, as opposed to the microcosm of mankind. It also shows our relationship to the universe, the upward pointing triangle representing our aspiration to understanding, and the downward pointing triangle representing the flow of understanding from the divine.
Geometrically, the hexagram represents perfection in form and structure. It is stable and economically uses space to perfection. The structure of honeycombs uses this geometry to maximize the amount of available spots for honey storage without wasting any space. If you place equally sized spheres next to one another they will naturally take on hexagram patterns.
So, in using this shape in our rituals to invoke planetary energies, we are emphasizing perfect harmony, balance and structure, the very laws through which the universe maintains equilibrium.[1]
Each of the points on the pentagram and the hexagram are assigned correspondences from Hermetic and Qabalistic tradition, and it is through the relations of these correspondences when we trace the shapes that the specific energies are invoked. Further symbols of the elements and planets, as well as holy names have been assigned for invoking each of the forces as well. We will get more into this as we discuss each ritual in turn.
These rituals are of course not strictly necessary for basic magical work, the simple exercise for accumulating magical atmospheres will work just fine in most cases. However, these special, ritualized shapes form an excellent method of testing the validity of contacts with spiritual entities that you will learn about in a later chapter. This testing method works best when you are familiar with these techniques, and have already used them a few times. It is for this reason that I am providing these techniques to you now, and suggest that you use them regularly in your magical work.
In the following exercises, you are going to be asked to “vibrate” appropriate divine names in portions of the rituals. This is really a simple matter, and you have already done it in the previous pentagram ritual. You imagine the name in shimmering white letters in your heart from the white light above you as you inhale, and as you exhale, you say the name slowly and melodiously causing a vibration as you imagine the white light letters going out with your breath. This creates a powerful magical effect, transforming your speech into magical projection. If you are going to be using the Hebrew formulae, imagining the Hebrew letters themselves would be ideal.
There are also signs or gestures associated with each of the elements. These are not strictly necessary and I’m not going to go into their use. If you are familiar with them you can add them to these exercises if you wish.
Exercise 75 - Greater Pentagram Ritual for Invoking Elemental Energy
Time Required: 2 to 5 minutes
This ritual is extremely easy to perform, and really can be done in a manner very similar to the Creating Magical Atmospheres technique. Here are the directions for which point you begin to trace each of the pentagrams in invoking the elements, along with the appropriate symbols to place in the middle of your pentagrams, and the associated divine names:
With all of the divine names, you could also simply state the name of the element, or the purpose you are calling it for, in other words:
At the end of your ritual, you will need to banish the energies, reversing the energy. These are the banishing pentagrams:
However, before tracing the elemental pentagrams, you are supposed to invoke the ruling element of Spirit, using the following pentagrams:
When invoking Water or Earth, you use the Passive spirit pentagram. When invoking Fire or Air you use the Active Spirit Pentagrams. At the end of your Ritual, you will use the banishing Spirit pentagrams, which are:
1. Consult with your subconscious using the pendulum.
2. Get into the Alpha state using your anchor.
3. Do opening preparatio
ns, including any combination of purification, consecration, chakra opening, Kundalini arousing breaths, circle casting and the pentagram ritual.
4. Face the appropriate direction in your workspace, and trace the corresponding Invoking Spirit Pentagram, drawing it in the air largely and clearly, using the same technique as in the earlier pentagram ritual, while vibrating the appropriate magick word. As you trace the wheel of spirit in the center of the pentagram, you vibrate the second magick word.
5. Imagine the energy you will be invoking as you face the appropriate direction in your workspace. (If you have used the earlier pentagram ritual, you will already have visualized the element in its appropriate direction.
6. Begin to concentrate this energy before you, See it accumulating as a cloud of appropriate color, focusing on the specific nature of the force you are accumulating. (In other words, if you are drawing in Water energy, focus on Coldness, Wetness, and Contraction etc.)
7. Trace the Invoking Pentagram of the element, drawing it in the air largely and clearly, using the same technique as in the earlier pentagram ritual, while vibrating the appropriate magick word. As you trace the appropriate symbol in the center of the pentagram, you vibrate the second magick word.