You Are the Light: Inspiring Your Magical Community.

These are the notes of the talk ‘You are the Light: Inspiring Your Magical Community’ given by an IOT member at the Festival of Lights, Swansea, 2016.

What follows has basically been a pep talk to myself, brought to you in the hope that you find it useful too. The context of this talk is how we can each contribute to growing a magical community where we are. Some will want to stay at a greater distance, some will want to be deeply involved, but all are in their own way a part of our magical community.

We live in a broken culture. Everything about it screams to us that we are nothing but meat robots, designed by the random banging of particles and conditioned by forces outside our control. We are led to believe that everything we know is wrong and and everything is going to kill us.

Apparently, what we should do about this is blindly believe the experts who tell us all this, put ourselves in the hands of the authorities who pay those experts, and tranquilise ourselves and each other with light entertainment and shopping. Oh, and hand over our money quietly and regularly.

It’s rubbish, isn’t it? It’s no way to live. And it’s a travesty of how we ought to be living.

As pagans, occultists, ‘spiritual’ people and so forth we know better. Whatever our individual beliefs we each know that we are not pointless puppets and that this mad sorry-go-round that is our society is in need of that dimension which we might call the divine, the holistic, the spiritual, the Mystery, whatever you call it.

Unfortunately, on a day-to-day basis, it can be hard for us to hang onto our sense of the Mystery etc. etc.. We are bombarded and indoctrinated in our very homes by television, social media and news media and essentially panicked into doing nothing about it. We have war after inexplicable war, reports of weather becoming unsteadily more extreme, health scares, scapegoating of minorities, oh and brace yourselves folks because it looks like we’re heading for another worldwide recession. You won’t hear that on the BBC.

We bolster our morale with our sense of Mystery etc. etc., only to have the boffins of the culture deride us for fantasising like children. As a result we often doubt ourselves and our beliefs and what they mean in our lives. It’s too easy to lose your pagan spirituality down a dark, dark hole. And if we struggle on alone against this constant pressure, we can either buckle and conform and backslide into being just another consumer, or we can drive ourselves into a mental breakdown trying to deal with it all. Marvellous choice: depression or psychosis.

A grim fightback is not an option. Mostly because grim is not an option: that’s no way to go through life. If we find ourselves down a dark hole, what we need is some light.

So where does it come from, this light? In this Festival of Lights, what’s going to keep us lit up? Society at large wants us to always look to someone else, but society at large is ignorant and broken, so we’re not going with that.

1. Expect Light: let there be light. This time of year confidently expects and welcomes the increasing daylight and the rising of the sap. Change happens because people’s expectations are raised. Look around and see the possibilities, and see where change is beginning to bud.

We see some of the signs of the times: the broken materialist culture and its deadening effect on the spirit; the worsening unfairness of inequality and its deadly consequences for the have-nots; runaway consumerism and its destruction of cultures, species and climate. But we also see people rising up against these things, drawing on values that can’t be claimed by the banks, with vision that can’t be bought and sold, expecting and insisting that things change for the better.

So, reflect on your expectations. Can you imagine what it would be like for things to be different? If so, why not come to expect them to be so?

2. Be the Light that you want to see in the world. Thanks Ghandhi. It’s not the government, it’s not some charity, it’s not some wealthy benefactor, nor some guru or expert. It’s you. Every man and woman is a star, said Aleister Crowley. Every person is indeed a star. Inspire others with your own example of being the Light. Be the pagan you want to see in the world.

2a. To do so, develop your path. And your skills. Find in walking your personal path the motivation, the reasons, the inspiration to be That Pagan. Your path, whatever it is, has all you need. Wring it out, get all you can from it.

2b. In magic, we notice that if you want a spell to work you have to muck in and help. As Herakles told the cart-driver who’d gone into a ditch: put your shoulder to the wheel and I’ll help, but if you won’t help yourself you’re on your own. Exam success = spellcasting for it + doing the revision. The Warrior’s Call – magic – the sigil plus activism – it’s boots on the ground make the trucks turn around. By doing something practical, you are investing yourself in your magical act. You are part of the magic you cast. When you use magic to solve a problem, expect to be part of the solution. Therefore seek to contribute.

3. It’s not ‘me’: it’s We. The stars don’t shine alone. Although each is a tiny pinprick of light at a vast distance, together they create an awesome spectacle in the sky. For tens of thousands of years our ancestors have looked up at the stars and seen in their patterns and movements a divine order which they then sought to bring down to earth so that they could enter into union with the heavenly pattern, as above, so below. Individually we’re not much, but together we are the magnificence of heaven, inspiring all who live under the sky.

3a. Solidarity. Leave no-one out. A bit like the Buddhist boddhisattva vow not to get off the Wheel of Rebirth until all beings are liberated. Likewise, we are to accept each other, include each other, help each other along. And it’s hard to do, acting in solidarity with people with whom you deeply disagree. But we need to commit to this aspect of the project or it won’t come off.

In fact, pagans are very good at playing together nicely, compared to the different denominations of the mainstream religions. But we should be the last people in the world to refuse to have anything to do with someone because of religious or spiritual differences. In fact, I would recommend that we do everything we can to step beyond our cosy little circles of people who disagree with us and play in with others, without trying to change them. I would say that anyone, whoever they are, who wishes to be our allies in this should be welcomed as such.

3b. Nobody’s indispensable. Social work, charity work, voluntary organizations all create burnout. The people in them see so much need and they overextend to do the most they can. Inevitably, they make themselves indispensable to the effort, which means that when they burn out and drop out the whole effort falls apart without them.

3c. Be generous. Share the information, share the resources, share the decisions, share the limelight. Share the effort. Many hands make Light work.

Recap: Expect meaningful pagan living to be a powerful social force in our community, Be That Pagan, seek to contribute, in solidarity with each other and welcoming to others. Don’t be afraid to reach out and to share. After all, you are the Light.

On Considering the History of the IOT

Soror Brigantia

Over the years, I have seen on social media, blogs and YouTube several discussions relating to the history of the IOT. These vary in quality, some being very good and others less so.

One thing they appear to have in common is that they are produced by people who have either no or tenuous links to the IOT, and the research is conducted mainly through other articles accessed via the internet. It’s my opinion that any discussion that over relies on information gleaned from the internet which does not include book research and fieldwork to be essentially flawed. As we all know, because it’s on the internet that does not mean it’s accurate, and there may be some essential information that will not be included.

In relation to the IOT while there are some books that will give information there are not many and therefore, I would consider fieldwork to be an essential component of any research conducted into this magical order. Putting it plainly: if you want to know what happened in the IOT, ask the membership.

I would point to this video made by someone who was there when the IOT was born to be the most accurate account as well as Dave’s series on the history of the IOT on this blog.

Dave’s work can be seen at Chaotopia! – Dave Lee’s Chaotopia!

Most internet discussions focus on an event which I like to call the ‘Ice Magick Argument,’ often referred to as a ‘war.’ I personally cannot comment on the ins and out of what happened with this as it happened so long ago before I had joined the IOT.

Most histories of the IOT given by people who have never been members tend to finish with The Ice Magick Argument and little attention is paid to any history that occurred after that event or how the IOT is today. The IOT is a group that is constantly evolving and changing and due to this development, the IOT that exists today will have some differences to the IOT of five years ago. Occasionally I see discussions on social media involving people who say they were members 10 years ago or so whose opinions may have historical value, but due to the continual evolving nature of the IOT bear little resemblance to how the order is today.

The PACT will also mean different things to different people. One person’s experience of it may be very different to another’s, as individual development and expression is encouraged within the order.

On the BIS YouTube account, youtube.com/c/IOTBIS we have started a series of personal accounts of how individuals joined the IOT which gives a more up to date flavour of the IOT by showcasing these individual journeys within the PACT. As the IOT encourages its membership towards personal autonomy and finding their own magical style it is hoped that these videos will give a hint of the diverse experience of PACT members and a more accurate snapshot in time of how the British Isles Section operates during the time the video was made.

(This is the opinion of Soror Brigantia and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of everyone in the IOT)

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

How to Sell Your Soul

Experiments in Spirit Evocation by Frater Ananael

’’If there is no God or Devil, no Heaven or Hell, and if the place we go to when we forsake our physical bodies is merely a ‘sea of memory’ in constant flux, then would it not be better to ‘make a deal’ and know exactly what you’ll become and where you will go when you die, or persist with the constant fear and anxiety of an uncertain fate..(?)” Denerah Erzebet (The Rites of Astaroth)

Over the last year I made several attempts at spirit evocation using a Goetia type formula with mixed success. I tend to take the position that the demons listed in the grimoires are neither ‘evil’ nor ‘good.’ The rituals were performed by myself as well as in group settings. Some of the summonings seemed to set off a series of events whilst others seemed to not culminate when they were supposed to with the most intense visual experiences occurring at unscheduled times. The format I used was to summon the demon into a cauldron that would be placed at the centre of a circle of magicians with a triangle of art around it and a protective circle around that: cleansings would precede and follow each ritual. Incense was burnt inside the vessel in an incense burner placed over the sigil.

The first temple summoning of a Goetia entity was Ashtaroth. I like to use very unorthodox methods in my magic with a particular leaning towards the trappings of traditional witchcraft. So in this ritual I used a small dutch-pot with Ashtaroth’s sigil in chalk at the base. The dutch pot is a particularly useful tool in witchcraft, lending itself to all sorts of sorcery; it appears very much like a traditional cauldron but with a flat floor it lends itself well to having sigils drawn inside it.

We had another magician present who did a brilliant Lesser Banishing RItual of the Pentagram and after a relatively short summoning we did some connected breath-work: breathing deeply we chanted ‘Ashtaroth’ on our outbreath. We kept this up for 20 minutes. This ritual was reasonably intense but without any major effects during the summoning.

I myself have experience of Ashtaroth through my work with Exu Rei das sete Encruzilhadas, a powerful spirit who will intervene on the physical plane especially if etiquette is not properly observed, with a penchant for cigars and rum. A series of synchronicities did unfold in parallel with a Soror who was making offerings at the Crossroads for Lucifer in identical fashion to how I did for Exu: both entities being associated with Venus as the Morning Star. A Tarot ritual preceding this did point out to me that paths would cross with this person in no uncertain terms- it did in the familiar challenging ways that I have come to expect when working with Exu.

The second conjuration was out in the country with a group of magicians and it was Asmodeus this time. I brought my dutch pot and the ritual was preceded by a thorough cleansing ritual performed by a very competent magician and he did it in the manner as set out in the grimoires. I used the Asmodeus prayer from Spare’s Grimoire of Zos, bowdlerising it somewhat as I could not imagine this temple indulging in an evening of fornication. This time we used the connected breath-work again chanting ‘Asmoday’ on the outbreath. This was followed by the ‘spontaneous path-working’ method that we devised where a vision would be passed around the circle with a squeeze of the hand, each participant adding to it. The ritual completed at exactly the stroke of midnight and we had some insightful visions.

For my third demonic conjuration I would break-away from traditional goetia-type work altogether and loosely follow the ritual as outlined in a book called The Rites of Astaroth. This would be considered a dangerous rite which culminates in trading one’s soul to gain favour with this demon. In principle I would have no objections to trading my soul to Astaroth: is it not the case that practically every religion requires its adherents to dedicate their soul to the object of their adoration anyway but dressed up in different words?

I made a few adjustments but the rite is performed from the full moon to the new moon in a very left-hand path fashion. I made offerings of my own blood on each day of the rite and made a point of learning the conjuration from Grimorium Verum off by heart: mastering it by the day of the actual rite. The blood offerings were astoundingly powerful! I had ordered a sigil that was laser-branded onto wood and that I was wearing around my neck. I pricked my finger each day that I conjured Astaroth using sterile diabetic lances and anointed this talisman. There is something very primal and potent about letting your own blood, even if it is only such a tiny amount. The discomfort, the psychic link and the vital energy all help strengthen the magic. This was a revelation to me!

I did want to get in touch with the author to have some insight on the magician’s state of sanity after having completed the rite and by a strange coincidence I made her acquaintance on Facebook! I timed it so that I could have the weekend off on a river-boat. The climax of the ritual would be to summon Astaroth as a demoness or entity of the opposite gender and to consummate the ceremony sexually. Astaroth is historically associated with Astarte and Ishtar and mentioned in the Bible as such, so it makes perfect sense in this context. My feeling throughout was that Astaroth is female or at least gender-fluid.

I do much of my magic whilst working at my job as a gardener. Michael Bertiaux discussed the fact that many of the African slaves would do their sorcery whilst labouring in the fields in his Voudon Gnostic Workbook and I took my inspiration from this. I use the time that I do monotonous work to also do magic or to learn lines off by heart. During the time that led up to the ritual when I was learning the conjuration, Ashtaroth seemed to manifest very intensely. This would in retrospect have been the correct time to have consummated the ritual as outlined in the book but I wanted to keep to the schedule. I had intense visions and instructions on how to draw up a pact and what should be included.

The encounter had a very erotic flavour of the type associated with incubus/succubus phenomena documented in the witchcraft trials. I also had an intense dream that I had impregnated a black woman who would have our baby and it was going to be called Cressida. I had no idea what the significance of the name was until I researched it. Cressida was the daughter of the seer Calchas in Greek mythology. The book has a ritual for creating a magical child and it seemed that I was on my way of having done so already. The name has become a word of power for me with some weird effects when I intone it. When I say the name I feel like a female spirit superimposes its body astrally over mine.

When the actual day of the ritual arrived I headed out of London with my shamanic drum and a sacrament expecting a night of drumming and conjuring. I did actually draw up a pact with clauses to ensure that I get to know Astaroth a lot better before commending my soul to her. The ritual itself ended up being unspectacular. I was not ready for an all night session of drumming so I decided to keep the sacrament for another day in the future – maybe after my nine-month pact comes round. I intoned the conjuration that I had learnt 108 times and did a good amount of drumming. Astaroth did hear me and I have come away from this rite with a new method of magic that I will be experimenting with based on my experience with The Rites of Astaroth.

The book The Rites of Astaroth is available from Draco Press

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: (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.

Enhancing Your Portfolio: Facts and Fictions

A magician shares this with entrepreneurs: see the world and change the world. And just like an entrepreneur, if your endeavours are not profitable you are in the shit.

Your portfolio of investments, comprised of actions and beliefs, should serve to better you. Profit you. Develop you. Enhance your life. Improve your experience. Allow you to do more. You get the idea. Investments which do not perform should be cut.

Why the business talk? Because the world provides performance feedback: profit, loss, expense; capacity, resistance, and you will gain from using it. If your actions are not delivering desired results, change them. You owe no loyalty to weak investments and weak returns on those investments. Feedback can be grounded in what is true regardless of your opinion of it.

Example: if your eating habit neglects certain key acquisitions required for high level performance, hampering your efforts in other spheres of life, then your eating habit needs to change. Say you eat raw greens exclusively. You’re getting vitamins and minerals but no macros. Your body shrivels up. This makes you sad. Literally. And weak. Literally. You change your eating habit. You add in macros. You feel happy. You grow strong. Your portfolio has improved. Your life has improved.

However, a purely factual approach is not enough. We seem to need the addition of personal meaning. This is expressed in the artworks we create, the quests we undertake, the stories we tell with our rituals of symbolic actions, and with the narratives of our lives.

Best practice demands both facts and fictions. Without our fictions we risk living in a meaningless universe. Without facts we live in fantasy, with no anchor to the real, and suffer the consequences for it.

Reality does not care about our superstitions. Those that value falsely pay the cost and those that value truthfully reap the reward. It is incumbent then upon the magician to familiarise oneself with and engage with and put into practice both the active acquisition of new facts upon which to base decisions and the active acquisition of new and greater degrees of skill through which to better perform one’s will.

(Frater Tarod, from Chaos Streams 01)

Tales of Magic by Dave Lee (4th instalment)

Tales of Magic 7: The SA Coffee mornings

It was there I met Ray Sherwin and later Pete Carroll. Other luminaries include the remarkable Richard Bartle-Birtelli, a gentleman who illustrated that magicians didn’t have to be in their 20s. This was a man who’d survived the 2^nd World War and ended up living in Dewsbury in West Yorkshire and teaching art. At that time I’d never met a magician who had survived so long and was still doing magic. He came and gave a talk at the LUUOS.

Other interesting characters included a pair of young magicians from Batley. One of them told us how he’d grown out of armed robbery into Qabalistic magic, and his friend described meditations in which he saw ‘visions’ of his motorbike. We started calling them the Batley Visionary Society.

In October 1978 I started keeping a magical diary. One of my first entries described my consecration of a robe I’d made. I took the first bus to Ilkley and walked up onto the moor, along a ravine called Spicey Gill and washed the robe in a stream at first light. I was rewarded with the sight of a great big dragonfly hovering over the stream as I finished, its wings iridescing in the morning light.

Tales of Magic 8: Lucidity

Starting keeping a magical diary pushed my identity firmly into ‘magician’ mode. Things started happening. In November I met a new lover who turned my life upside down. She was a natural magician, resistant to ‘book-learning’, but with astonishingly accurate clairvoyance and an intuitive grasp of energy-magic. For some miracles I experienced with her, check out Bright From the Well and Life Force.

At this time I took on a magical idea which is popular with magical beginners: the Astral Battle. These usually occurred on the edge of sleep, and were often terrifying, but with a triumphant quality. That triumph emerged from the radical freedom of dream lucidity; the conflict had pushed me to overcome the division between waking and sleeping. Sometimes I woke up knowing I’d just uttered some magical words to overcome my assailant.

I was determined to develop this dream-lucidity, initially because I wanted out-of-body experiences. Finally, I got one. Here’s the diary entry:

“Before going to bed, smoked a little hash. Then did some cycles of pranayama. This felt very intense.

For the first time ever, I was able to keep a watch on my going to sleep, and I exteriorised! I was suddenly right out of the house, floating over the street outside, looking downwards. The shock was so great I returned to my body.

I let myself fall asleep with that watchfulness again… and managed it once more: a moment when I was hovering in the bedroom.”

The book mentioned above, Bright From the Well, is available from Mandrake Press.

Life Force is available here.

In the Circle with Heroes of Practice

“Personally I’m privileged to be on excellent terms with folk from many traditions; druids, Setians, native shamans, Initiates of the Ordo Templi Orientis, Freemasons, radical Goddess feminists and others. I’ve met many fabulous people in the magical culture I inhabit, and I’ve found a very high density of fabulousness within the IOT.

When I stand in a circle with these people and look around at my Brothers, Sisters and Sators I am amazed. It’s like being in a graphic novel. Here are these heroes of practice, each one with amazing abilities. We are an assembly of archetypal forces. In part this is a consequence of my relationship, over many years, with these other magicians and I’m sure members of many other esoteric groups get a similar buzz at their gatherings. For me the people of the IOT provide a wonderful community of research, experiment, morphing ‘tradition’, fellowship, support and of course laughter.

While a few people stay with the process for many years there are many, many more who come into the IOT, benefit from that space, and who move on to pastures new. There are many occultists out there who have been members of the IOT and have encountered a new style or approach in that setting, and then go on to pursue that in more depth outside of the Pact setting. There are some who return years later to the IOT circle, bringing with them the experiences they have gained. The Pact acts as an experimental space, ideal for people who have come to some kind of spiritual and/or personal crossroads, and for many it is pivotal in their journey of Illumination.”

(Julian Vayne, Chaos Streams 01, from the Introduction)

Get the book here

The Drunken Prophet

Reading around voodoo I discovered Exu & the Quimbanda of Night and Fire by Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold (Scarlet Imprint). One working, the ritual of the drunken prophet (pp. 123-124 in the hardback edition), caught my attention.

The ritual is an oracular work that calls for lighting a candle to the spirit you wish to work with then going to a “spit and sawdust” pub, buying drinks for the person you have identified as the prophet of your spirit and putting your question to them.

As Quimbanda was not calling me I decided to work the oracle with a deity that I already have a relationship with. As a keen home brewer of wines, mead and beer, every time I make a batch various rituals are performed and the task dedicated to Dionysus, famous for his links to fermented brews. Moreover, one of his abilities is as an oracle,

So, after a ritual bath with frankincense, orange and patchouli oils I donned only the best party clothes for such a Great God as this and spoke the following words:

Hail Dionysus God of the harvest, the dual formed god of two mothers

God of life, God of death spanning the Heavens and the Underworld

Bull formed, two horned synthesis of opposites

The roaring one, the silent one, within extreme states of being

God of pandemonium and ecstatic trance

The dramatic one master of the mysteries of comedy and tragedy

God of prophesy and initiation

who travels throughout all realms of being

God of many faces who travels to all places, wanderer

God of the Starry Light

The god who holds the bees sacred

God of honey, god of wine, god of Ivy, myrtle, fennel, figs and pine

God of all natural things

Bull headed lion snake

the goat is your greatest enemy and your greatest friend.

Ivy bearer god of visions

God of the wilds god of the hunt

Great God of the nocturnal Sun, the cool one who carries flames of fire

Shape shifter, multi-dimensional one lord of necromancy

of many incarnations

The God who is the most and the least manifest.

Dionysus who was born in the cave of the leather sack

Grower of vines

The fierce one who is the source of joy to mortals

God of orgasmic rites who inspires creativity and ecstatic madness

Father of wine and mead lover of Ariadne, son of Zeus

Torch bearer, light bringing star of mysteries

God of the Earth friend of Demeter

Underworld guide

who resides in the highest mountains and in the deepest caves

Water God that dwells in the oceans

The spirit of the universe

giving shape and form to all manifest existence

Fire breather, lover of man, lover of woman

The masculine feminine one lord of the thunderbolt axe

God of fermentation and ageing, Beloved of maenads and satyrs

Lord of the goat song, who hydrates the Earth

God of transition and liberation

The serpent with a thousand heads

who eats raw meat and who is vegetarian

The womanly manly god of orgia

The furious inspirer of erotic ecstasy

Blesser of unions who rejoices at the rise of Sirius

Lover of torch light processions

He who was boiled in a cooking pot who bursts forth in a miraculous emergence of wine

God of creation, God of Destruction. God of life God of death

Hail Dionysus.

Evocation of Dionysus (video has some strobe effects)

I asked Dionysus to send me some advice for the following year, then went out and partied. And what a party it was. Some of the friends accompanying me were magicians and I think they knew that I was up to something (mostly because I’m usually up to something).

Most of my life in order to “get on” and do well I’ve needed to hide parts of myself that I considered a bit too hot to handle in certain situations. The advice from my prophet was that there was no longer any need to hide my weirdness. This was no longer serving me and that I would “get on” better if I allowed my creativity to flow.

Hail Dionysus and may your cup of Awen always flow.

Soror Brigantia

Evocation of Dionysus (without strobe effects)