iotbis – Illuminates of Thanateros- British Isles Section

The Insubordinate

Chaos magicians in general don’t like their magical life to be controlled by anyone. Yet the little pond of occultism is crammed with wannabe Big Fish; Mages, Grand Masters and Ipsissimi just gagging to tame us to bridle and bit for their own purposes which could make them anything from benign tyrant to barking mad cult leader.

The IOT was never going to be just another magical order: we are the cats you cannot herd. So how do we keep things organised while safeguarding our personal autonomy within our Pact? Or, as it’s mostly asked, how does a Chaos Order work?

One of the answers is the Insubordinate. This role is a mainstay of the Pact’s anti-authoritarian way of doing things but is by definition pretty alien to the majority of occulture. If you haven’t read the definitive account in the Book of the Pact, here’s a link: https://iotbritishisles.com/the-book-of-the-pact/. Let’s see what it says:

A repeated phrase in The Book is “Criticism in the Pact flows from the bottom to the top.” Just as there’s nobody to tell you what to think or believe, there’s nobody wagging their finger at you telling you you’re doing it wrong. This is the complete opposite of authority-led groups. Nevertheless, we have ‘leaders,’people ‘at the top.’ And so the role of Insubordinate was devised to keep them in check.

“Every Magister Templi, Adept, Magus, and Section Head, is assigned an Insubordinate … elected by Initiates and Neophytes.” They don’t get to choose somebody compliant: they get an Insubordinate foisted on them who is nobody’s pet.

“It is the task of the Insubordinate to ensure that the Magister Templi, Section Head, Adept or Magus does not neglect their personal magical progress and that they carry out their tasks well. There are different ways to fulfill the duties of the Insubordinate.

They may convey criticism with the loutishness of the Jester, making everything appear ridiculous,
or inquire with the Fool’s naivety about issues that are unclear.
Taking the role of Chaplain, the Insubordinate may point out personal weaknesses and blind spots of the recipient of the insubordination,
acting as Confessor they may receive reports on personal developments, as Inquisitor they may raise an objection to decisions.”

Accountability is the name of the game here. The Insubordinate is not just some personal assistant or PR rep. They proactively take the poor hierarchical figure to task where necessary, and may be as searching and uncompromising as they like. The German term for the Insubordinate is ‘Querulant.’ Says it all.

“These five roles of the Insubordinate consist of the following tasks.

Ensure that all explanations, speeches and teachings are clear to everyone and criticize those, which are not, and demand their clarification. Thus, the Fool’s task is to simulate ignorance where others pretend understanding.
Convey criticism with a certain easiness and impertinence. Thus the duty of the Jester is to take something appear ridiculous which others would like to diplomatically overlook.
Point out personal weaknesses and blind spots. Thus it is the responsibility of the Chaplain to handle personal issues in an impartial manner.
Receive reports on personal magical development without commenting on them. Thus it is the task of the Confessor to offer protection from laziness and self-satisfaction.
Hold the right to veto any instruction and to inform a Magus, the Section Head or the Council of the Magi about its exercise. Thus it is the Inquisitor’s duty to prevent the abuse of position.

Predominantly the Insubordinate will conduct their official business with the Recipient of their insubordination in private. It may be advisable for the Recipient to inform their Insubordinate about any controversial events beforehand in order to prevent the exercise of a veto in public.”

That veto. The unstoppable power to say ‘No!’ to what a higher grade proposes, with no comeback. This is a powerful tool for undercutting authoritarianism.

Furthermore, the Insubordinate may use their role on behalf of any other member who feels a need to criticise, especially those who might not feel comfortable presenting their criticism themselves. The Insubordinate’s intervention gives them anonymity and shields them from any possible reprisals.

How’s a megalomaniac supposed to operate under these conditions? Thanks to the Insubordinates, not at all.

AEPALIZAGE!

the Kite

The Bee, the Bluebells and the Buddha

by Soror Brigantia

In my workplace we have a chillout room, where people can go if they are upset, stressed or need a moment away from the hustle and bustle. It’s a beautiful room set up with relaxation in mind.

When I first arrived at this workplace there was one thing however that spoiled the effect of this room for me. In the room was a poster depicting the Buddha on top of a mountain, surrounded by lush vegetation, with the caption “When you reach the top of the Mountain keep climbing.”

I hated that poster, partly because it does not make sense. When one has reached the top of a mountain how can you climb any further? What are you supposed to climb on? The clouds? Secondly when I have achieved a goal that’s been difficult I don’t keep climbing, I take a moment to feel smug about what I have achieved, take a day off relax and to remember to feel good about myself. I did it, I achieved my objective, now I can chill. I’m not going to keep climbing; I’m going to take a break.

I felt exhausted just looking at that poster, and needless to say the poster is no more, it is an ex poster. For me it summed up everything that is wrong in our culture, the constant drive to achieve and do, the constant striving due to an underlying belief that we are only valuable when we are doing things and achieving. This is one of the beliefs that underpin a capitalist society and makes the wheels of industry turn- we must work because what are we without it, what value do we have? For me this negative message was summed up in this poster, all bound up in New Age wrapping and definitely not what Buddhism is actually about. Capitalism pretending to be Buddhism.

Since the lockdown began while my working life is busier than it was prior to the crisis. And my personal life is different. There are no more magical outings, no in-person temple meetings, no occult conferences, no pubs, restaurants etc. Outside the working environment there is little for me to do, work towards, organise or strive for. Over the Easter holiday I found that I was bored and not feeling that great about myself on account of not having achieved anything with this time. Then I remembered this awful poster and saw that while I may see through the capitalist belief systems I am in fact just as bought into them as anyone else.

Having had that realisation I went and sat by the front steps and watched the bees. They were very enthusiastic about gathering pollen from the bluebells and I sat and watched. Firstly I watched without judgement, and then I meditated on how the bees enable life to continue and how all things relate to all things. I watched them for hours. Then I saw how important it is to just stop and watch and listen, as we miss so much of what’s really happening around us when we are too busy to notice all the interlocking and interconnected workings of Baphomet.

Since that day I have slowed right down. I still do things if they need doing but I do them more slowly, focusing more on the process and less on the end result, and I enjoy doing the tasks a lot more as a result. It feels that my life outside work has become a meditation as I spend more time watching and listening to the sights and sounds of nature around me. I am no longer feeling that I must be achieving to be valuable.

I can sit and listen and be at peace.

Soror Brigantia 739

The Great Magical Lockdown

We’ve been in lockdown for weeks now, hiding from each other so as not to spread the lethal disease. At least we’re still breathing. Already there may have been people we know who haven’t been so lucky. Our own responses are ranging from happy productivity for the natural hermits to cabin fever for many of the rest, with the added nagging worry of where the money’s going to come from for this. And as the social distancing precautions begin to slip, cracks are appearing in the solidarity of lockdown, as more people get fed up with it and decide that breathing’s not that important anyway.

We magicians might be among those asking themselves ‘Am I doing enough during this enforced leisure time?’ assuming, of course, that we’re not among the quietly heroic essential workers risking their lives so that we can have anything from medical care to sliced bread.

So what are we doing with this unwanted gift of time? Me, I’m writing a book. Woo, go me. Some of us are cracking on with some intensive/extensive practice, the Great Magical Retreat. And some of us are fraying at the edges. Or maybe all of the above.

In general, I try to keep a balance between structure and license. I get up, I do the daily stuff, from hygiene and housework to meditation and magic. Structure, see. However, I also feel free to miss something out, to not get much done today, to feel like shit if I feel like shit, dialling down the expectations in order to remove that Work Ethic pressure to produce. License.

Structure and license, then, moderating each other (more or less) so that neither runs off with your marbles. The ancients called it Temperance.

I maintain a fairly positive attitude of gratitude. This isn’t a matter of airbrushing the unpleasant bits out of my experience, although it has meant that I use the antisocial media less than I did before lockdown in order to screw down the toxic demands to be outraged and afraid. As magicians we should be filtering the bullshit as standard practice, but it’s more important than usual right now.

Instead, I voice aloud my thankfulness for particular things in my day: this meal, that weather, this moment of quiet joy. The voicing aloud seems to make the difference: try it. I’m not saying pray to anything, just acknowledge that you’re glad that whatever-it-is is here right now.

My meditations include the all-inclusive contemplation of my immediate surroundings, my own experience and present state of mind, accepting all, letting all blow past, fixating on nothing.

I’m lucky enough to have a household of people, but I miss the Bunburys, the periodic disappearances from the respectable world to do disrespectable things among disrespectable people. Y’know, occultists. But we have internet chat. It’s a poor substitute, but better Prosecco than no wine at all. So I make a little time to chat with my family and friends, and most of all, my tribe.

I feel very lucky to have the Pact. Right now our Section has weekly online ritual meetings and catchup, which fulfils my definition of the Pact as “a group of free individuals who agree to act together in each others’ interests” with group magic as the mode. Group magic is only the tip of the iceberg of our magical practice, but the fellowship of the members is truly extraordinary. Dave Lee has described it as a sangha, the Buddhist term for the community of fellow-travellers on the Great Way, which I’ve not noticed anyone else but myself using until Dave. I’ve argued for years that a magical community is the second most important aid to remaining sane in the wacky world of wizardry, as you can read from that first link above. (the first most important thing? Your own bullshit detector, natch). It’s a privilege to be part of such a tribe. If you have one, you can’t do better than to connect up to them as close as you can under the circumstances, even if you’re not suffering from the isolation as much as many. It’s a collective sanity thing, and it’s not just about yours.

I hope you find these suggestions encouraging and useful. Stay well. Choyofaque!

The Kite

Kawa Pohr: the IOT’s Healing Servitor

By Dave Lee & Peter Mastin

Part 1 – The History

Back in 1993, my IOT group made a healing servitor. I imagine most readers of this blog will be familiar with the idea of a servitor, but just in case, it’s a helper spirit, generally one you put together earlier, that does something specific for you. This entity was more than the usual small servitor right from its inception. We gave it more pure chaos, so that it has more degrees of freedom, is capable of making more elaborate decisions. Thus it belongs to that curious class of entities that is more than a servitor but not as complex and autonomous as a god/dess. I’ll just refer to it as a spirit.

Such spirits are formed from group magic – in other words, they are egregore spirits. We have a few examples of such spirits in the IOT, most of which have been, or will be, loosed on the wider world at some stage. One such is IZAWA – a spirit whose remit is to support the psychedelic gnosis. This has been brought gradually into the wider world via the Breaking Convention conference and other non-IOT events.

The healing spirit has been through a number of changes. When we first made it, it didn’t even have a name and sigil, but it always had the added chaos. It was made to be capable of healing at any level, because it’s equipped with heuristic ‘expert software’ concerning human existence, so it evaluates what you need and then turns itself into whatever will provide that.

It was made collectively in 1993, and had already created another dimension to itself by 1994, as I learned when I scried it that year. It had acquired a home, a pyramid of green laser light at the bottom of an ocean trench. It had generated for itself a massive and ancient prehistory, upping its dramatic glamour considerably, and this is always a good thing with spirits. I was not the only member who detected its new form – I had a report from someone a long way away who saw much the same as I did.

In 1995, it was named, by another group. Around a large octagonal altar, we called it and scried for its name and sigil. It is called KAWA POHR.

It was definitely evolving now. On more than one occasion, non-members have detected its presence, quite often behind some degree of disguise, which the spirit judged would appeal to the recipient and make the healing work better.

In 1997 it was released to the wider magical world, in the course of a series of intense workings against the HIV virus. A group called Temple T, led by Peter Mastin, installed a huge industrial sized version of KAWA POHR under the dance floor at a London venue called Turnmills. This was the home of Warriors, a gay dance club. The idea was to use the intense collective energy of the music, dancing, chemognoses and sexual energy that pervaded the dancefloor. Temple T had a trigger track of the KAWA POHR mantra embedded in the playlist at some point in the evening and sigils in some lights. Before the club opened, we would perform a ritual on the dancefloor, then reappear at the end of the night in robes to complete the working. So involvement with the club was quite extensive and depended on the cooperation of the club promoters. A significant number of deep remissions were reported, including massive increases in T-lymphocyte levels, and a remission of Kaposi’s Sarcoma (For some more on Temple T see this interview with Peter Mastin in Fortean Times).

The pathworking instructions for the original servitor are in my book Chaotopia!, but here is the full ‘suite’ of pathworkings.

Part 2: The Pathworkings

Version 1: For work on yourself and your group

Close your eyes. Consider what you need from this session.

It is twilight. You are on a beach, whipped by a wind of spray, with the sea crashing nearby. The light is fading rapidly.

You become aware of a slow throb, a heartbeat pulse of infrasound. The heartbeat still sounds in your mind … Gradually, you begin to make out syllables, dim echoes of a word … Begin to vibrate this heartbeat sound out loud “… munumm munumm …” the sound builds to a mantra “… munumm munumm munumm munumm munumm …”

As you look out to sea, you detect a faint shimmering light under the surface of the water.

The light brightens, flashing with faint colours. A circle of flickering lights plays over the sea, like a slice of an aurora. Call the servitor’s name: “KAWA POHR, KAWA POHR …”

Suddenly a massive wobbly sphere bursts out of the sea and hovers in the air. It is milky-white, with flashes of octarine, yellow, green and pink. It heads straight for you, and envelops you. You sink into it, until you are completely enclosed in it. Around you writhe sentient swathes of coloured lights, harmonizing and strengthening.

This may be as far as you need to go…

Version 2: A deeper healing experience

You find yourself borne aloft in the sphere, over the ocean. The servitor sinks into the water, taking you with it. Down, down you dive, the waters darker and darker, into the dark heart of the ocean, into the depths. There is no light down here, only the light from the servitor itself.

Let your vision penetrate the sea … down, down into oceanic silence … down, down into a dark stillness where distant light flickers and throbs. As you continue to sink, you see a faint light … there is something down here, and you are heading straight for it. A greenish glow fills your vision, and suddenly the object becomes clear: a trapezoid, a truncated pyramid, made of solid ocean-green light edged with metallic purple. This is another phase of KAWA POHR, this is its home, this is the place you come to for deep healing. The sphere enters the trapezoid, and you see the interior, a maze of shifting green light, shimmering underwater radiance, that penetrates you cells and revitalises you, teaches you how to heal yourself.

Version 3: Sending KAWA POHR to someone far away

Work Version 1 up to where the sphere appears above the sea.

Tell KAWA POHR whom you are sending it to, and what needs doing.

Now prepare to launch the servitor into the aethers. If you are in a group, join hands in a circle. We will launch the servitor up and out of our auric space at the end of the countdown, with a great outbreath, a surge of voice. Resume the mantra, feeding power to the servitor “… munumm munumm munumm …”

Continue the mantra

“………10…………9………….8……..7… 6…… 5……. 4……….3……2……….1…………. NOW!”

Dave Lee is the author of several books, including Chaotopia, Bright From the Well and Life Force: Sensed Energy in Breathwork, Psychedelia and Chaos Magick. Visit his website and sign up for his newsletter.

Evocation of Kawa Pohr from the Illuminates of Thanateros

I Believe in Miracles

by Soror Brigantia

Coming out is always a difficult process, whatever it is that you’re coming out as. Going against the expectations of your society, against the pressure of your peers and all expectations that there may be. It’s difficult to admit that there is something about you that is different. It’s especially difficult if what you’re coming out as is not cool, not well thought of and seen mostly as a stupid piece of crap.

I have come out in all sorts of ways over the years and what has been difficult, the most challenging thing to admit to not just to the world and to myself that … my favourite magical paradigm is … disco. Yes, disco. Not heavy metal not black metal, not punk, not dance. Disco!! And I don’t know anyone who would admit to liking this form of art, but go to any night club and see what happens when a disco track is being played. I think I’m not the only not so secret lover of disco. And OK it ain’t Mozart; I see no complex equations within the sounds of the disco notes … but it is the most overwhelmingly optimistic sound I’ve heard and it fills my soul.

And I also like Titania’s Little Book of Spells by the way. Since I’m coming out I may as well say it- the books are furry and pink and purple and I love them and I see nothing wrong in that.

So where did my love of disco emerge? When I did I realise that this was the sound for me? It came about due to my deep love of magick, magick for its own sake, magick for the pure joy of doing it. There are always several layers of statements of intent within my rituals and more often than not hidden in the main statement of intent is a secondary statement of intent. While I call it secondary often it is the most important statement of intent which is “to experience Joy while doing this Ritual.” It’s through this experience of the joy of magick that the disco paradigm emerged and took hold of me.

How it came about is that a group of friends and I regularly meet up to practice magical rituals, to share and swap techniques and we chose to have a number of sessions around certain themes. We could not help but see the overwhelming similarity between the great God Baphomet and John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. From this we felt that we would do an evening of disco magick and would boogie – boogie – boogie with the gods in good ol’ disco style.

I was working with the voodoo paradigm at the time so I undertook a great work which I called Disco Voodoo, calling upon the Lwa via song, selecting the disco tracks that I felt most summed up the qualities of the spirits. And it rocked!! The voodoo spirits loved the disco music and manifested more strongly than they ever had to me before and I knew I had found my crossroad, my gateway in to the spirits of voodoo.

But why disco? Why did the Lwa respond so effectively to this music? There are many reasons; one reason is that disco music is very much about being alive, and full of metaphors and symbols about the things that we do to create life. The highly sexualised lyrics and rhythm of the music combined with the love of life that only the dead can feel led to a merging of life and death and love and loss into a single paradigm that can be described as Thanateros.

During that temple meeting Disco Voodoo also known as Makossa Voodoo took form and is developing into a complex system of spirits some of African origin some of which are Welsh connected to my local area all of whom are called up by a number of sacred chants from the disco paradigm.

The Open Circle

The Illuminates of Thanateros recently held an Open Circle in South Wales, with an assortment of magicians both inside and outside the IOT. We’ve been doing this for some years now, increasingly replacing the elaborate conference-style events of old with pop-up magical gatherings and semi-open circles.

Yes, semi-open. This means that non-IOT magicians join us for the shenanigans. This further means that in the interests of our oaths of confidentiality, any IOT members are made known as such only with their express permission, even within the Circle. However, just because you don’t ‘out’ other members doesn’t mean that you yourself can’t go public as a member of the IOT. That’s for secret societies, which we are not.

All of this breaks the mould set by more traditional magical organizations, but it’s an exciting development within an Order whose mission is, quite simply, to encourage and facilitate the practice of chaos magic in groups, thereby enabling wider access to magical culture in our society – Aepalizage! – as we like to say.

While the network may be the new shape of magical orders, the Circle is still how the magic happens: people getting together and doing the thing. Not that you can’t do magic on your own: of course you can. But the accumulated magical skill and experience plus the undeniable social proof effect of being amongst colleagues gives each magician a powerful platform from which to work great magic, magic often unavailable to the loner.

Every group that’s met regularly and kept good records – yes, even an informal Circle benefits from keeping a magical diary – every group can confirm that the magical results really go with a swing when we all pitch in together. That, after all, is why we in the IOT also describe ourselves as a Pact; a group of free individuals who agree to act together in each others’ interests, in contrast to an hierarchical Order.

So we got together and did the thing in Swansea, South Wales, a sort of planned ‘bring-a-ritual’ party. After a keynote address and ritual by Soror Brigantia 739 we swung into a parade of excellent magical work. No, I won’t tell you without permission what we did; what goes on in the Circle stays in the Circle. If you want to know, join in next time. Or maybe even set something up yourself; just find some others.

And then, of course, there’s us.

Frater Kaitŵm.625, the Kite, 2º Adept IOT, British Isles Section Head

His website, The Kite’s Cradle

Remembering Harriet Tubman

by Soror Brigantia

In occult circles and within occult literature we hear a great deal about people who make outstanding contributions to magical practice. There are, for example, countless blogs and publications regarding the fantastic work undertaken by Aleister Crowley, Edward Kelly, John Dee and Austin Osman Spare — to name just a few.

While the contributions of these men cannot be undervalued, the lack of a female role model can leave many female practitioners of the occult wondering where their place is in all of this and where are the female occultists. It’s my opinion that the female role models are there, such as Dion Fortune. It’s just that they don’t get as much ‘air time’ as the men. For me personally one outstanding example of a female magical practitioner is Harriet Tubman.

Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross in the 1820’s and was born into slavery. A remarkable woman, she liberated herself from the bonds of slavery and fled to Pennsylvania. Not content with this she made several trips back south to liberate other Afro Americans held in bondage. She even risked recapture by going back to Dorchester County – where she had been held in slavery – to free others.

She became one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad and one of the most unusual. Few Underground Railroad conductors would conduct their people all the way from plantation to freedom. Most of the time they would work as a team with different conductors picking up the escapees at different stages of their journey. Feeling a sense of responsibility towards the people she had freed Tubman would take them on the whole route.

Due to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 it become legal for bounty hunters to cross into a free state and recapture escapees. Tubman took her charges all the way to Canada to ensure their continual freedom after escaping. Most conductors would only lead 2 or 3 escapees; Tubman made a speciality of conducting larger groups of sometimes up to 25 people. This was dangerous work. Most conductors who did take their charges for the whole of the journey were white men and were therefore protected in some measure by this status. Tubman was a black woman and an escapee herself making this work more dangerous for her.

However, unlike many of the men who did this work Tubman was never caught. She had an innate sense of strategy and knew her terrain well – for she was also a Hoodoo woman, a practitioner of Conjure. She is famous for her Christian faith as in those days it was not uncommon for a Hoodoo practitioner to also be a Christian. She could hear the voice of god who would tell her what lay ahead on the course she was travelling on the Underground Railroad and she would change direction if she was told that danger lay ahead.

During the civil war she worked as a nurse for the Union and a considerable amount of her nursing was aiding soldiers who had contacted contagious diseases. Tubman of course never contracted those diseases herself. As she was a Hoodoo woman and knew the herbs and plants and their medical properties she was able to take measures to protect herself. Due to her advanced ability as a strategist she also worked more directly for the army and led a raid during which 750 Afro Americans achieved their liberty. She truly earned her nickname of ‘the General.’

After the war she worked for civil rights for women and Afro-Americans. When she saw that older Afro-Americans with poor health were not able to obtain the health care they needed she used all her financial resources to establish housing for them where they could receive this care.

Harriet Tubman was a very practical woman who used her Hoodoo and conjure skills in a very real way to achieve very real results within the realm of civil liberties and for that I applaud her. What better role model could there be?

See more at http://www.harriet-tubman.org/

Enochian Aethyrs in the Temple

In Liber Null and Psychonaut is the ‘Mass of Chaos B’ and in its invocation of Baphomet it is asserted that (S)he lives in the First and Highest Aethyr, which is LIL. This gave me the idea to share a technique that our coven developed and refined over 5 years with which to explore the Enochian Aethyrs with a temple gathering.

Some time ago I set myself the task of learning of by heart the Call of the 30 Aethyrs. This took me a number of weeks as I have a memory like a sieve. I then set about constructing a complete Enochian ritual with which to accomplish my mission. My first attempts at opening the Aethyrs and exploring them were of mixed success. It felt that I managed to open the doors a little bit and peek-in. Part of the problem is my lack of clairvoyance. However, there was some success; I did get some good visions and I began to have some kind of a map forming in my mind.

To delve deeper I learned the Call in English and would then say the Key first in English and then in Enochian. This did actually open a whole new dimension to this work as getting to know what the Call says puts a great deal of context into this magic and helps set the tone. It is well known that the Call has a very apocalyptic feel to it and within it there are layers of meaning and a complex dialogue between several entities.

My second mission into the Aethyrs did bring back more information. There can be quite a dogmatic perspective on what you are supposed to experience in each Aethyr and magicians of a particular school can get quite irritated if your experience does not accurately tally with that found in The Vision and the Voice. My view on this is that you are really exploring your own arcana and not that of Therion. I found a certain commonality but a huge and interesting divergence. My most stunning and for me interesting departure was finding St Peter in the Abyss and not Choronzon as the Guardian.

By far my greatest success with working the Aethyrs has always been within a temple setting with other magicians. Our coven had spectacular success opening the Aires. Our first attempt culminated in us exploring an extremely vivid cyclopean underwater city complete with buildings and a temple at its centre. Another time we explored Spare’s ‘atavistic resurgence’ via the Enochian Aethyrs and travelled down the evolutionary ladder with the aim of reaching an all embracing simplicity or a primal ancestor. We saw some hooded figures unveiling themselves in a cave-chamber deep underground to reveal what I would describe as caricatures of ourselves: I woke up with these words in Enochian the next morning and I had to look them up in my dictionary: ‘behold the face of your God’!

The method that I came to call ‘spontaneous pathworking’ is really very simple and is as follows:

After creating a sacred space using preferably an Enochian Watchtowers ritual and some cleansing of the participants and a strong invocation, the Call of the 30 Aethyrs is intoned in English and then in Enochian.

At a temple gathering I truncated the ritual a bit as I was a bit nervous about presenting it but it worked perfectly well. I used my strong Enochian Circle ritual and my Enochian ‘Bornless Ritual.’ I made sure to include a cleansing ceremony which ‘Dr Chaos’ from our coven accomplished by using a rattle to clear the aura of each participant in turn.

I placed my rather large obsidian ball on the altar with us forming a circle around it and kept it veiled until everyone was ‘cleansed’ and waiting with a little bit of anticipation and curiosity.

I explained to everyone the method: I would intone the key and then we would pass round a narrative with a squeeze of the hand to the person to one’s left: simple. I would start with for example: ‘I see an entrance to a cave in front of us, we enter and we can now see torch-lit steps leading steeply downwards in a spiral’ etc. When done I would then squeeze the hand of the person to my left and they would continue and quite often a very rich narrative would unfold with several complete circuits round all of the participants.

The result was really very good! I think that we came up with a vision of LIL: ‘The First and Highest’ Aethyr which was rich and vibrant and could easily rival anything within The Vision and the Voice. I could tell that some people were much more clairvoyant than others and could sense a rising and falling of quality which was fine as long as the narrative kept on being passed round. When we finally opened our eyes I was pleased and proud to see that people had a similar expression on their faces as if they had just got off a rollercoaster.

Frater Ananael 252

Tales of Magic by Dave Lee (11th Instalment)

Tales of Magic 11: The Temple at the Squat

In Summer 1978 I moved into a house in Leeds where a friend was living. It was a peculiar arrangement – my friend had started living there as a rent-paying tenant, but the landlord had apparently gone missing over a year before. So it was called a squat, but could easily be thought of as a rented property with nonexistent arrears collection.

I was there till November 1980, so it was the home setting for much of my early magical history.

It was a corner house, a big Victorian terrace with 5 bedrooms and two rooms downstairs. And in poor repair; the electricity supply for instance was a standing joke, in particular a cluster of wires from a presumed older wiring job which hung down just above head height in the hallway. On more than one occasion, my housemate warned people ‘Mind out, it’s the home ECT kit.’ Then one night, convinced they weren’t live, he grabbed the wires and pulled them down, blowing the fuses in a circuit we hadn’t known was still connected to the mains.

This was the time during which I started going to the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. As well as browsing the books and enjoying the dark atmosphere exuded by the mixture of mysterious objects on display, I loved the smell, which wasn’t quite like anything I’d encountered before. I’ve always been fascinated by smells, and the aroma of the SA was another face of the mysteries to explore. The source of that complex aroma was the immense variety of aromatics – essential oils, perfume blends and herbs, and the dozens of ready-made incenses. Joss sticks had soared in popularity in my youth, and had been part of my life for years; only once, at the 1971 Glastonbury Fair, had I smelled proper ritual incense, the sort that is mostly resins with added herbs and oils, the sort that needs to be burned on hot charcoal. I was transported; this was something completely new. This was the Real Stuff, the genuine article for an aromatics fiend. Now, in the SA, I was being given the opportunity to choose from a vast selection of just this type of incense. I bought a packet of Venus and a roll of charcoal.

When I got back to my room at the squat, I was like a kid with a new toy. I lit a sputtering charcoal disc and sprinkled on it a little of the Venus incense. While I was contemplating the gorgeous smelling smoke, my girlfriend came round. There was a knock at the door, then another. Three lovely women, the other two of whom had come round to look for other people in the house, were now in my room. This pleasant little synchronicity convinced me of the importance of magical incense.

Another magician moved in. The magical atmosphere of the house thickened up. The weirdness extended to the plumbing. I’ve written elsewhere (in Bright From the Well https://mandrake.uk.net/bright-from-the-well-northern-tales-in-the-modern-world/) of the unpleasant vibe we started to notice on the ground floor, and how my girlfriend and I attempted to overcome it with the energy of sex magic, and how that exciting but ill-judged working was closely followed by a water pipe bursting and flooding the cellar.

I managed a few summer months in the front downstairs room then another housemate moved out and I took over his room, which was upstairs, warmer and drier. We cleared my enormous old room out and made it into a temple where we meditated or did Qabalistic pathworkings, or used a Pentagram rite to ‘open the Quarters’ and just explore magical spaces. After Sorcerer’s Apprentice coffee mornings, we often invited people back for sessions in our temple. On one of those occasions, we hosted Mike and Marian from Southampton, two magicians who were working with their own unique blend of Qabalistic, Enochian and I Ching astral doorways. In our humble temple, they led a combined Opening of the Quarters. It was the first time I had been so electrified by ceremonial magic. As Mike vibrated the Enochian words over my head, I felt as if I was being filled with radiant, structured energy. I had discovered a new magical experience, and wanted more.

Tales of Magic by Dave Lee: (10th Instalment)

Tales of Magic Part 10: The Further Adventures of the LUUOS

I mentioned earlier in ToM the LUUOS and its star-studded lineup of speakers. The LUUOS went thro various incarnations: the prototype Occult Group (1976/7) based round Amado’s followers, the full LUUOS (1978-87-ish), then finally a collaboration with the music society The Black Lodge, which eventually absorbed it. The Black Lodge people got their occultism from Goth album covers and the more sophisticated ideas from Temple of Psychic Youth material. I recall one of their organizers getting a tattoo of ‘93’ done. His mate asked him what it was about. He replied ‘I shall have to find out some day.’

But before the rot set in there were a few years of excellent regular events. One night, PD Brown, Ray Sherwin and I gave a rambling seminar about chaos magic, which was recorded and issued as a cassette tape called ‘The Chaos Current’. (I can’t find a link for any current edition of this). I first met PD on the Leeds-Sheffield bus. I was visiting my girlfriend, he his coven, as it turned out. He was sitting across the aisle of the bus from me. I could see he was reading a book entitled ‘The Book of Shadows.’ At some point he looked over and saw that I was reading ‘Liber Null’. The bus had to wait for half an hour in Barnsley to wait for another driver, so we two magical strangers went for a drink. Not long after, PD came up with the idea of a virtual magical working with an audio soundtrack, a fairly rare idea back then. He wrote and recorded ‘The Chaochamber’ and sold it as a cassette tape (currently available as a CD. (Not to be confused with the audio item ‘The Chaosphere’, by the Sorcerer’s Apprentice): https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Magick-Audio-CDs-Chaochamber/dp/1935150499)

I started making incenses for magic in 1978 (see the forthcoming episode The Temple in the Squat) and PD asked me to make one for the Chaochamber. My first thought was: but there aren’t any attributions for Chaos! So I thought about the imagery that PD was conjuring.. the flight deck of an ethership in etherspace… and made a blend of some of the most alien and high-tech smelling perfumes I could find.

Later in the LUUOS timeline, we had a visit from Lionel Snell. He gave a great talk, taking us into magical thinking via elegant scepticism, and we treated him to a slap-up curry in the Arndale Centre afterwards. It was a Friday night in central Leeds, so it was a bit lively. One chap at a nearby table conceived a drunken fixation on Lionel, yelling, ‘Eyup Neil Kinnock!’ Lionel was amused, and unfailingly polite as the man crawled across the floor and grinned up at him.

We also hosted giant of the Northern magic world, Ian Read, who taught us a good deal about the core ideas of the runes. We were opened up to the wonders of ancient landscape magic by Brian Larkman’s fascinating talk on ‘the Illuminated Stones of Ilkley Moor’.

Typhonian Ken Cox gave a talk on Starting High Magick, and another on Monsters. Arch-Typhonian Michael Staley gave one on the Book of the Law. Mogg Morgan spoke about breaking gender boundaries in sexual magic, and Andrew Stenson introduced the AMOOKOS Tantric lineage.

Later, there was the infamous Freya Aswynn, proudly proclaiming in front of a poster about a remember-Kristallnacht event that the night in question was her birthday.

This tale will continue in a later episode about the end of the LUUOS and the Era of Zines.