pact – Illuminates of Thanateros- British Isles Section

“This Is My Will”

by Soror Brigantia

Developing a magical will has never been an issue for me. Stubborn and determined to the core; formulating a goal, planning the process of achieving said goal, executing the plan and achieving the goal at the end has been a natural process for me.

This has been surprising for some folks that I have met throughout my life, who thought that being introverted meant being weak and took it upon themselves to foolishly attempt to bully me into a course of action that I did not want to take. However nothing will persuade me into doing something I do not want, immovable as a mountain and as stubborn as Balaam’s ass … I would not be moved!

If my heart is set on something I will achieve it by hook or by crook. If I find that a door is closed unto me then I will either get a battering ram and smash the door to smithereens or will take the side route and find a way around the door, perhaps through a side gate that’s been left unlocked. I have always found a way. If a person gets in my way, well, that only encourages me to work harder for the goal and makes the victory all the more sweet.

This has served me well in the sense that I have met all the goals that I had as a child and have had awesome experiences – seen things and done things that go beyond what would have been expected for me as a child. I have also gone beyond my own expectations of myself as a direct result of my experiences within the Illuminates of Thanateros and have done things I would not have done otherwise and have been all the better for it. I have used a combination of magical and non-magical means to build for myself the life that I wanted.

However this determined carpe diem nature has also led to a feeling of tension or stress within my self; the type of tension that any completer/ achiever has I guess. Sometimes I enjoy the fight and sometimes I don’t but it does feel like a fight on occasions.

Due to the pandemic however I have experimented with a different way of doing things. Maybe this is because the keyworking I was doing made my working life busier than it usually is. Sometimes the pandemic stress impacts on my cognitive functioning and just getting through the pandemic successfully is all one can manage. Maybe it’s because I am getting into a time of life where I want to chill more and no longer feel the need to be so goal driven.

Lately I have been experimenting with working more with the energy that is there and making that work for me. Instead of battering down the closed door I am now finding a different door one that is open and working with that as opposed to aggressively focusing on the locked one. Working with the Tao and finding the path that is obstacle free and making that work for me is a gentler way of working with my magical will.

I don’t always achieve exactly what I want with this method, I achieve something else which is of equal value with the knowledge that aggressively achieving is not always necessary. There are other ways to live.

This has led to my now having more than one way of working with my magical will. I can choose to work gently with the energy that presents to me but I can still take a battering ram when I want to. Flexibility is the key.

Soror Brigantia is a Magus of the Pact and a former British Isles Section Head

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

Dave Lee’s Tales of Magic (15th Instalment)

The I Ching Astral Doorways II

After Hexagram 8, Pi / Union, the work fell apart. Basically, each of us needed to do a lot of work on our own emotional stuff. This will probably be familiar to anyone who has worked with an initiatic (as distinct from a purely pragmatic-sorcerous) approach to magic: you take yourself up into higher consciousness a lot, you will likely find there is a lot more grunt-work than you thought when you come down. So we decided to do the work individually at our own pace. My sequence got as far as 12, P’i, Standstill. Which was pretty apt; I never resumed the work, nor did my co-workers.

THURS 19TH NOV. 1981: CHING GATE 12: P’I, STANDSTILL

Through rapidly to meet a guide tall and kingly, in purple and wearing a sword. He has long red hair and beard and dark grey eyes. I am reminded of my Grey King experience of about a year ago, so I vibrate the Godname of Kether. White radiance washes through him; his eyes have turned green, and he smiles faintly.

“It is good that you are cautious. You have come to a place where night and day cleave together, and many strange currents cross.”

The garden is diamond-shaped, the long axis east-west, in small stone pieces in a tight mosaic of shades of green, spiralling about a rectangular pool with steps leading into dark water. In the east is a throne of purple-grey rock with armrests carved as lion’s heads inlaid with silver. Two standing stones delimit the short axis of the garden, which stands on a high rocky hilltop. It is just into dusk.

“P’i is the axis about which revolve the cycles of night and day, yin and yang. You have come to the yin garden of this axis.”

I notice that the guide wears about his neck a Maltese cross of double-headed axe blades on a cord of plaited straw.

“Standstill is alertness through the dangerous time of change. You may prepare by bathing in the pool.”

I do so; the water is hot, from a deep mineral spring, sulphurous, and draws out impurities through my skin. When I emerge the air smells of cinnamon. It is getting dark.

I look at the strange arrangement of standing stones; the guide says, “Under different conditions their position is changed, to the long axis or elsewhere. Much about the harmonization of earth-currents may be learned from this hexagram.”

It is dark now, in the dark too of the moon, and billions of stars seem to race overhead as we whirl through space. They seem to point to a distant mountain-top, where stands the garden of Chien, the Creative.

We constructed rituals using the eight trigrams, which had dragon-spirits that Mike had contacted. As with the ritual described in Temple in the Squat, our Summer Rite in 1981 also involved Qabalistic Archangels and Enochian names – the God-names and Kings of the quarter positions and other Enochian spirit names.

The work was very poorly grounded. The following year, 1982, I took the I Ching work with me on my European travels. This was not a good time. The following item is where I tried to use an astral gate for some useful advice, but instead had an extraordinary vision amidst personal disaster.

MARDI 17TH AOUT: Opened I Ching gate in the Cathedral here, in the Goddess chapel.

—— ——

— — — —

—— ——

—— — —

— — ——

A landscape, hills, green, shading to distant ochre-red round-toped hills by a lake. My guide is purple, cerise, an intellectual, a diplomat in demeanour conceals a warrior in spirit, tight-belted over his lush shirt, hands me a sword which I raise aloft, it becomes a curve of brilliant white light reaching over the lake: lake, sword are one in a circle of brilliance, a furnace of truth through which I step into the ‘interior of colour’, the heart of every jewel, I am tasting the beauty of atomic matrices, so peaceful yet so alive it is here, magenta green yellow, then the core itself, a black double-pyramidal diamond absorbing all light. I hold it, identify with it, become an infinite web of black and white cuboidal atomic webs through which speaks pure intelligence:

“You have outgrown many levels of symbolism and reached the heart, the shores of the life/death duality. I need tell you no more in this accustomed way. You will return to your world through the heart of this net; take this” – a nine-pointed snowflake star mandala with 3D sigils in its core. It reaches my throat chakra, and it burns and is heavy. No, I will not carry it, it is too heavy. “You have gone thro this illusion of power too, sacrificed the lesser for the greater.”

I returned, flashing almost instantaneously through the symbols.

I left my silver neck-chain here in sacrificial gnosis.

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.

Dave Lee’s Tales of Magic (14th Instalment)

The I Ching Astral Doorways I

I mentioned above that at the start of my magical career my development was split into two apparently distinct directions – Pete Carroll’s chaos magic, and a more traditional, psychism-based thread that aimed at full initiation, at some degree of awakening. This latter thread continued the rather mystical development I’d started in some of the better of my teenage acid trips.

These two threads did not need to be as separate as that – the sceptical, meta-view pragmatism of chaos magic could be applied with tremendous success to mysticism, just as it had been applied to magic. This did eventually happen, and partly by my own efforts in writing Chaotopia! many years later, and the work of Julian Vayne, Nikki Wyrd, Alan Chapman and others who brought a healthy scepticism to mystical matters but did not throw out the baby of luminous vision with the bathwater of religious ideology. This took years; the original, 1978 chaos magic was very much a product of Pete Carroll’s own view of magic, which is strongly anti-awakening.

So while I was taking active part in chaos workings out in East Morton (see the last two episodes), I was also working with another group, who were less impressed with the chaos magic approach, because of this lack of mystical perspective. This group included friends whom I’d first met through the early LUUOS, and the work we did was inspired by the Phoenix Light Lodge, which was run by Mike and Marian, whose working at my Leeds squat I described above.

A theme which ran through much of this work was astral doorways, especially involving the I Ching* hexagrams. The experiences we had would stimulate a rich dream life. In turn, this dreamscape was dotted with conflict. Some of these astral battles were inherited from Mike’s previous work with a very dangerous and unbalanced wizard called Ian, but most of them were magical dramatizations of personal issues.

I wrote things like:

SAT 4TH JULY 1981: Did we really see a hexagram on a flag in the park today? Certainly the bottom half – the Abyss Trigrams…!

We mixed the I Ching into aura work:

SUN 5TH JULY: Pranayama, LF WITH TRIGRAMS:

Very balanced sensations. Brought fountain up thro central Trigrams.

At some stage we decided to ‘gate’ all the hexagrams, in the usual order, and write a book about it. To unify the style of the visions, we made an intention to channel some kind of garden for each of the hexagrams, as a locale for the vision. The book never happened. Here is an example:

TUES 6TH OCT 1981: CHING GATE 2: K’UN, THE RECEPTIVE

Into temple without delay, and then rapidly through gate. Stepped onto a lawn of succulent dark green creepers with violet flowers. Guide was a woman, medium height, with a strong high-cheekboned face, clear steady grey eyes, black hair swept back from her face, robed in bright yellow with yellow sash. She welcomed me, showing a gold ring with a large bright emerald, to the garden, which was a terrace, ending at the downhill side with a white marble balustrade, each column finished with stylized lions’ heads. On the other side of the valley are rolling hills, shadowed depths of green, and in the distance mountain peaks with winter sunlight reflecting from their snowy caps.

There are no paths in this garden, but a set of steps at each end of the balustrade, edged with rambling roses. The lady walks down the farther one, and I the near one, down to the next level of the garden, where we sit on a bench of granite beneath an ancient elm whose gnarled and black roots reach up to the seat and beneath it. ‘See’ she says ‘how different he is from you, yet you both exist in this immense earth’. The sun seems still in the sky; it is late afternoon and winter, but not cold. The sky is the blue nearest white, pure crystal radiance, and my heart is at rest in this timeless garden. ‘Now let us see motion’ she says, and a swallow wheels against a backdrop of eternal now. Once again the garden is a node of stillness.

We return to the temple door. She gives me a word, not, I think, her name: ‘Shua’; a feather falls to the ground as I re-enter the Temple. I am reminded of Lorca’s lines: ‘ There is a bitter root/ and the world has a thousand terraces’.

*We used the Wilhelm translation, mostly, the one with Carl Jung’s intro in the front. The name was spelled I Ching, rather than the Legge version’s Yi Khing.

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/

Healing Meditation

by Soror Brigantia

One of my core magical skills is within the healing arts and I have spent many years studying various healing magicks along with the practical skills of massage and reflexology. Along the way I have studied with a huge variety of people and engaged in many different types of healing systems. There is one thing that most of the complementary therapy arts have in common is in the value of meditation. I have adapted my own style of meditation for alleviating stress which I have found useful on many occasions.

The meditation starts by creating the right type of healing space, too often I’ve been healing rituals done in draughty community centres, churches and halls where a portable heater, some throw cushions and some banners with colourful designs can be added to promote a more relaxed atmosphere. An altar to your favourite healing deities is helpful and in the centre of the circle should be a single candle plus some quartz crystals to amplify the energies.

This is almost a word by word transcript of the meditation that I like to use, it can be adapted to suit different circumstances.

The Meditation

Find a comfortable position and relax keep you’re back straight and relax all parts of your body. Now allow your mind to settle and take some normal breaths focusing your mind on the rising and falling of your chest.

Now I want you to breathe in a healing breath and imagine/think/feel that you are breathing in healing light. This healing light can be any colour you choose as long as it is one that is healing for you. When you breathe out I want you to imagine/ think/ feel that you are breathing out all of the energy that you no longer need in the form of black smoke. Now breathe in through your nose the healing energy and now breathe out of your arse. That’s right breathe out all your negative energy from your arse.

So breathe in through your nose, out through your arse, in through your nose, out through your arse. That’s right. And when you breathe out through your arse I’d like you to softy say this mantra to yourself “shit happens”.

That’s right. In through your nose out through your arse: shit happens; in through your nose out through your arse: shit happens. And as you start to feel more comfortable with the fact that shit sometimes just happens I’d like you to consider the wise sages of old and their advice “sometimes there is a mountain, and then there is no mountain, and then there is a mountain and then no mountains. So it is with your shit in your life, sometimes there is a mountain sometimes no mountain, shit happens. So breathe in with your nose and out through your arse: shit happens, in through your nose out through your arse: shit happens.

I’d now like you to consider the Tarot card, the Wheel of Fortune. Sometimes you’re on top of the wheel, sometimes below and sometimes to the side; so it is with the shit in your life, shit comes and shit goes, shit comes and shit goes. Breathe in through your nose, out through your arse, in through your nose and out through your arse, in through your nose out through your arse, that’s right sometimes shit just happens.

And when your experiencing stress in your life you can use this meditation to help you relax and to know that surely as shit appears it disappears: shit comes and shit goes; so its okay to have some shit in your life. It is after all nothing that can’t be resolved by good plumbing and some antibacterial wash. In through your nose and out through your arse, shit happens.

And if there is someone in your life who is giving you their shit you can teach them this meditation and tell them simply to “blow it out of their arse.” In through your nose, out through your arse. That’s right.

Now I’d like you to slowly open your eyes and come back to the room confident that sometimes shit just happens.

This meditation is best led with a serious expression and all the trappings of a New Age Temple.

Soror Brigantia is the current head of the British Isles Section of the Illuminates of Thanateros.

For those deficient in irony, let it be noted that Levity is not the same as ineffectuality. This technique yields results. (ed)

Ridden by the Horse

Ffynone Mari with chaostar and rain bonnet

Soror Brigantia and I took my Mari Lwyd for a canter at the Chepstow Wassail and Mari Lwyd Festival. If you have no idea about the growing Welsh revival of custom of cavorting in public with a horse’s skull here’s a very good outline of the Mari Lwyd tradition.

Bearing a Mari Lwyd is more like wearing a mask than operating a puppet. To me that makes it Invocation rather than Evocation in the usual chaos magic senses. Invocation may be identified by the extent to which another presence seems to displace your own at the controls and exhibit behaviours out of character for yourself. And what do you call the person under the horse? I can’t even use the common Voodoo term ‘the horse,’ because, well, you see? So I’m going with ‘bearer’ for now.

One or two Mari bearers had confirmed to me that they could feel an overshadowing presence of a properly woken Mari. I had all day to check this out, and yes. My Ostler for the day, Soror Brigantia, spoke afterwards of feeling like I’d been away all day and she’d been left with the Mari. I found it confusing and difficult to carry on a human conversation while under the horse, and managed only the briefest social interactions.

However Ffynone Mari turned out to be quite in demand with the littluns and made herself available for having her muzzle patted and stroked. It all sounds very cutesy until you realise you’ve been normalising contact with death and the Otherworld in a society in screaming denial about both.

The high point of the Festival is a meeting at Chepstow bridge, where three paradigms come together. First was the massed cavalry of Mari Lwyds, 34 on this outing: a record set earlier in the day during the Mari Lwyd Pageant, a beauty contest for horse skulls in sheets. Picture it. Next were the Border Morris and various Morris platoons, faces blackened (eat it, social justice warriors: it’s a traditional way to preserve anonymity in these parts, and nothing to do with American racism); and the Wassailers, whose big moment earlier had been waking up the apple trees in order to ensure a good harvest this year with the Old English greeting Was hál! — ‘Be Well!’ which we toasted with mulled cider, welcome in the damp cold of the day.

The night-time clash at the bridge was a noisy, rival supporters sort of affair, and then, as they always report, ‘peace broke out,’ and we all headed back into town together to drink and make merry.

It should be no surprise to a chaos magician to see such a cluster of paradigms playing nicely together. The mutual appreciation was obvious. Lessons to be learned there. But enough of the worthy and meaningful stuff: suffice to say a good time was had by all, especially by Ffynone Mari.

Invocation of the Mari Lwyd

Kite

Dave Lee’s Tales of Magic (13th Instalment)

THE END OF THE FIRST IOT GROUP

The membership of the Group was variable, with a core of Pete Carroll, myself and a couple of others, with other people sometimes recruited at Sorcerer’s Apprentice coffee mornings. Meetings all took place in East Morton, at Ray Sherwin’s place, from where we walked out into Sunnydale. This is a beautiful, wooded valley with a lake and ruined buildings, on the edge of Ilkley Moor. It was possible to get from Leeds to East Morton, where Ray Sherwin lived, by getting on the 93 bus from near the University into town, then an intermediate step, then the 666 bus from Bradford. Ray often encouraged raw, first time visitors with no local knowledge to do so, for obvious qabalistic reasons, even though there were much easier ways to get there.

One early meeting shows the style we were developing. I learned the Bornless One from a photocopy I’d taken from the Appendices in Crowley’s Magick. I was the invoking priest, and we were using the Bornless One as a consciousness-raising working, as a preliminary to the main parts of the evening’s work. Chaos Mass B, the nearest thing the IOT ever had to an official ritual, didn’t exist yet: we needed a consciousness-raising ritual and we were making things up as we went.

One of the later people to join asked for and got a full-scale initiation working, tied up in the woods while various things went on around him, including our hurling sigils at him. Here’s a bit of my diary entry, where I record what was at the time ‘the closest bit of astral clairvoyance I’ve ever done!’:

SAT 30TH MAY: Last Nt: IOT Group Meeting:

I saw, during our projections at the Candidate, this:

Pete actually projected the following:

The Group closed at a rite on Beltaine 1982, when a copper Pantacle for the future development of the IOT was buried in a wood. This pantacle was dedicated to the female influence in the IOT; we had worked out that one thing that kept women away from magical orders was the tired old Masonic structures of most of them, so we determined to find a new direction. I wrote the following Four Goddesses working and sacrificed the energy I’d loaded into a carved Goddess figurine.

SAT 1ST MAY: I.O.T. MAY EVE RITE

1. Simon’s banishing

2. PD’s delivery of Mass of Chaos, followed by consecration of wine and sugar, whilst Caryn recited Hymn to Pan.

3. PD administers sacrament

4. Pete Banishes Baphomet

5. PD presents the Disc of the Summer to Caryn, flanked by Anjie, Janet, Christine.

6. My invocation of Goddesses: ‘To thee be the Kingdom of Earth, all power and mercy’. Opening the 4 Q’s in the names of the Watchtowers. Taking of the Necklace and invocation to each Quarter:

‘Ishtar, bringer of light and inspiration, renew us

Sekhmet, in whose loins is kindled the heat of summer, renew us

Hekhet, mistress of birth, death and cycles

In the Unifying name of Woman, who is known as BABALON, may the Order of the IOT be renewed’

In the Name of Chaos, I release the power trapped in this instrument, for the use of the Order’. Star of Chaos above fire, plunge Necklace into fire.

Repeat Cross, return to place in circle.

7. Christine takes us through the Dragon movements

8. Circle dance, chanting ‘Hekas Hekas Este Bebeloi’ with Caryn in centre with Disc.

9. Caryn consecrates Disc and Ointment. The Disc is buried at the Site.

10. Chris and Janet banish and close.

Afterwards, we used Pete’s belladonna ointment again. It worked a bit – I didn’t get any OOB or lucid dreams, but the most extraordinarily compressed visions while awake – regular crystalline geometries, intricate plant forms, then places, rooms, a railway station and so on until these slowed and I went to sleep.

That group only met about 5 or 6 times in 18 months. It was an early stage of the IOT, the first experiment in a new approach to group magic.

Dave Lee’s Tales of Magic (12th Instalment)

Tales of Magic Part 12: The First UK IOT Group’s First Meetings

Liber Null was a revelation. Here was an attitude to the Mysteries that did not reject the things science had discovered about how the material world works but neither did it approach that world with the dull, prison-planet mentality of scientism. Nor did it place years of tedious theoretical training in the way of doing actual practical magic.

And ‘Sorceries of Tao and Zos’ – it all sounded so romantic!

I met Pete Carroll in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice on one of the aforementioned coffee mornings. He’d come back from his world travels, in the course of which he’d founded the first IOT Temple, The Church of Chaos, in Sydney, Australia, with one Frater Vegtan. Pete referred to it as the ‘IOT in style’. Judging by the stories he told, this meant some elegant public rituals and some serious partying. The Church apparently ran for about 6 months in 1980, leaving no succession.

Pete moved to East Morton, the village where Ray Sherwin lived. The Yorkshire group was the next IOT group, and the first in the British Isles.

The group started in late 1980, and ran till May 1982. The theme for the first working was perhaps an odd choice – an astral sabbat – but it was to try out Pete’s home made belladonna ointment. His previous experiment with belladonna had not gone well. He made some into jam, and he and his friend kept sampling it, making that classic naïve-drug-taker mistake of thinking ‘Oh, it’s over an hour now, and nothing’s happened, let’s have some more.’ On the basis of that experiment, Pete’s wife summed up belladonna as ‘Good for a night in the intensive care unit.’

The idea was we would find a site to visit in dream, go home and rub the ointment on ourselves, dream and meet up. Here’s part of my diary entry for when we went to get a feel for the site in East Morton:

SAT 15TH NOV: PREP. OF SABBAT SITE:

PD, Anjie, Ray, Pete Carroll and me. Foundations under the grass, left from Morton’s better days, before the (local) flood. We dowsed the site. Got feel of it for Sabbat, returned to centre and placed blood and spit beneath centre stone as homing beacon.

Stood facing east and dedicated whole working to Higher Self.

The actual working was a week later.

SAT 22ND NOV: THE SABBAT NIGHT (00.00 onwards, PD’s place)

Moon incense, violet robe, dog skull, one candle.

Anointed forearms, forehead, thighs with belladonna flying ointment: ‘This ointment is the key of night/ unlocks the eyes of dream / I go in cloak of Dark Mother / … Let the wings of dream unfold / and cast me on the night to place prepared’

SHADDAI EL CHAI!

A few pranayama cycles, retaining breaths.

After maybe ¼ hour, abrupt changes: in and out of tiny dream sequences … visualized the Sabbat site from a remarkable number of different perspectives.

Slept for 8 hrs. Dreams of normal vividness and no special interest. Woke fine and refreshed!

This was disappointing, but a worthwhile belladonna experiment. Tropane alkaloids are notoriously capricious, with a disturbingly low ratio of effective dose-to-lethal-dose, and I never felt like trying again with a larger amount. I’m more of a tryptamines man myself.