Illustrations
Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me;
I called on God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.
I preferred her to scepters and thrones,
and I accounted wealth as nothing in comparison with her.
(7:7–8; cf. Prov 3:13–18)
For righteousness is immortal.
But the ungodly by their words and deeds summoned death;
considering him a friend, they pined away
and made a covenant with him,
because they are fit to belong to his company. (1:15–16; cf. Ps 1; Prov 1–9)
I called on God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.
I preferred her to scepters and thrones,
and I accounted wealth as nothing in comparison with her.
(7:7–8; cf. Prov 3:13–18)
For righteousness is immortal.
But the ungodly by their words and deeds summoned death;
considering him a friend, they pined away
and made a covenant with him,
because they are fit to belong to his company. (1:15–16; cf. Ps 1; Prov 1–9)
Illustrations from 210, Triangular Book of St. Germain
Goethe's Faust opens with the mage contemplating the qabalistic, geometric design of the Macrocosm:
What jubilation bursts out of this sight
Into my senses--now I feel it flowing,
Youthful, a sacred fountain of delight,
Through every nerve, my veins are glowing.
Was it a god that made these symbols be
That sooth my feverish unrest,
Filling with joy my anxious breast,
And with mysterious potency
Make nature's hidden powers around me, manifest? Am I a god? Light grows this page--
In these pure lines my eye can see
Creative nature spread in front of me.
But now I grasp the meaning of the sage:
"The realm of spirits is not far away;
Your mind is closed, your heart is dead.
Rise student, bathe without dismay
In heaven's dawn your mortal head." (He contemplates the symbol.) All weaves itself into the whole,
Each living in the other's soul.
How heaven's powers climb up and descend.
Passing the golden pails from hand to hand!
Bliss-scented, they are winging
Through sky and earth--their singing
Is ringing through the world.
What jubilation bursts out of this sight
Into my senses--now I feel it flowing,
Youthful, a sacred fountain of delight,
Through every nerve, my veins are glowing.
Was it a god that made these symbols be
That sooth my feverish unrest,
Filling with joy my anxious breast,
And with mysterious potency
Make nature's hidden powers around me, manifest? Am I a god? Light grows this page--
In these pure lines my eye can see
Creative nature spread in front of me.
But now I grasp the meaning of the sage:
"The realm of spirits is not far away;
Your mind is closed, your heart is dead.
Rise student, bathe without dismay
In heaven's dawn your mortal head." (He contemplates the symbol.) All weaves itself into the whole,
Each living in the other's soul.
How heaven's powers climb up and descend.
Passing the golden pails from hand to hand!
Bliss-scented, they are winging
Through sky and earth--their singing
Is ringing through the world.
The Qabalah means literally “to receive” and is often exclusively understood to relate to Hebrew traditions, which only influenced Western magic directly from the mid 1400s. In fact a lot of Kabbalistic ideas used by Western magicians came from the Neoplatonists, and even earlier traditions, so provides an unbroken link to the archaic roots of Western magic, in which neither Judaism or Christianity are essential elements. Creating your own rituals on a Qabalistic schema is not a new idea. Cornelius Agrippa, the great Renaissance Magician, to whom we all owe so much for synthesising the best practices of Magic right back into Hellenistic Egypt, shows how to devise “Sigils” — representational images used in ritual or sympathetic magic as a focus for summoning angels, demons, or spirits — from scratch.
Making a ritual work takes natural ability and a form with which your nature resonates. Once I know the intent of the Magic. We can use the Qaballa to translate words into numbers, then numbers into the graphical and phonetic components of Sigils, including the incantation to be used. A table of “Correspondences” shows the focusing external factors — the colors; the astrological influences; the forms of dress (for example, jewellery); and for healing, the parts of the body, and so on. These can then be put together into a ritual to communicate with the spirits. Qabalah provides the principle behind the form to be used.
“Grimoires”, conjuring books, go back to the Middle Age and earlier but cannot be worked by rote. They come in many editions, stretching back centuries, but none are complete. They are very workable systems and very straightforward, although they have a dark reputation, which is not entirely deserved, and provide you with incantations, magical descriptions and lists of spirits.
It is commonly assumed that you must go back and find an old book which has survived, and use existing rituals or cobble one together solely from surviving materials. Although valuable initially this approach is stifling if adhered to too long, and ignores the fact that these old rites were based on some kind of symbolic language which could be used creatively.
It is important to do everything right — such as finding exactly the right points of the lunar cycle to work to and the right time of day. It is possible to get results from quite amateurish efforts, which is why the practice is dangerous and should be avoided by the merely curious. The spirits you are summoning have long memories, some say to the time of creation itself, so may recognise elements of even a badly cooked up ritual. One difficulty is that the spirits you summon may not be those you intend and you could then be in for a nasty shock.
Making a ritual work takes natural ability and a form with which your nature resonates. Once I know the intent of the Magic. We can use the Qaballa to translate words into numbers, then numbers into the graphical and phonetic components of Sigils, including the incantation to be used. A table of “Correspondences” shows the focusing external factors — the colors; the astrological influences; the forms of dress (for example, jewellery); and for healing, the parts of the body, and so on. These can then be put together into a ritual to communicate with the spirits. Qabalah provides the principle behind the form to be used.
“Grimoires”, conjuring books, go back to the Middle Age and earlier but cannot be worked by rote. They come in many editions, stretching back centuries, but none are complete. They are very workable systems and very straightforward, although they have a dark reputation, which is not entirely deserved, and provide you with incantations, magical descriptions and lists of spirits.
It is commonly assumed that you must go back and find an old book which has survived, and use existing rituals or cobble one together solely from surviving materials. Although valuable initially this approach is stifling if adhered to too long, and ignores the fact that these old rites were based on some kind of symbolic language which could be used creatively.
It is important to do everything right — such as finding exactly the right points of the lunar cycle to work to and the right time of day. It is possible to get results from quite amateurish efforts, which is why the practice is dangerous and should be avoided by the merely curious. The spirits you are summoning have long memories, some say to the time of creation itself, so may recognise elements of even a badly cooked up ritual. One difficulty is that the spirits you summon may not be those you intend and you could then be in for a nasty shock.
Copyright © 2010-2015 Iona Miller, All Rights Reserved.
[email protected]
Copyright © 2010-2015 Iona Miller, All Rights Reserved.
[email protected]
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site may contains some copyrighted material which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding and knowledge through educational issues. This constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
The owners and publishers of these pages wish to state that the material presented here that is the product of our research is offered with the caveat that the reader ought always to research on their own. We invite the reader to share in our Seeking of Truth by reading with an Open, but skeptical mind. We constantly seek to validate and/or refine what we understand to be either possible or probable or both. We do this in the sincere hope that all of mankind will benefit, if not now, then at some point in one of our probable futures. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner
[email protected]
Copyright © 2010-2015 Iona Miller, All Rights Reserved.
[email protected]
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site may contains some copyrighted material which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding and knowledge through educational issues. This constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
The owners and publishers of these pages wish to state that the material presented here that is the product of our research is offered with the caveat that the reader ought always to research on their own. We invite the reader to share in our Seeking of Truth by reading with an Open, but skeptical mind. We constantly seek to validate and/or refine what we understand to be either possible or probable or both. We do this in the sincere hope that all of mankind will benefit, if not now, then at some point in one of our probable futures. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner