Austin Osman Spare
Aleister Crowley
and the technical procedures of spells and servitors?
Have you declared yourself enlightened?
Damn your weak philosophies.
Either give up now, tear off those adept's stripes that you once won and join the New-Agers, or pick up that wand and let's see half a dozen tight sigils
launched with full gnosis before dawn."
Pete Carroll, Psybermagick
However, in contrast to this mystical tone, here we affirm that as magicians, we do sorceries. If as mystical gods in drag we edit our beliefs in order to disillusion ourselves of the shared fantasy, then as sorcerers we edit our beliefs in order to make this shared fantasy more to our liking. When we are hungry, we do not waste our precious time whinging about our hunger, nor do we sit in our room and proclaim ourselves Master of Mealtime and Lord of the Lunch, nor do we dribble over a menu. We go and eat. No further justification required.
Moreover, sorcery has another useful function. We can monitor the results of our sorcery rather better than we can our mysticism. We can delude ourselves rotten about our place in the universe, but when we enchant for a specific change, identifiable in the consensus fantasy as well as in our own private ones, we can show that it either did happen or it didn’t. No space for bullshit. We write our intention down, we specify how we’ll know we’ve got it, and we get on with it. Later we note our results.
Now sorcery requires the same action as our mysticism, the editing of our beliefs. So it follows that if our sorcery sucks, in all likelihood so does our mysticism. In properly planned, executed and documented sorcery we have an early warning system for the beginnings of delusion. And bugger off all those Lords of the Universe who couldn’t enchant a turd from their bums, no matter how full of shit.
SOME NOTES ON RITUAL
Ritual, whether we employ just a simple mindless activity or a full-blown psychodrama, helps to give our sorcery a sense of occasion and engages us at some deeper level than the ordinary state of mind. And such worthwhile activity requires preparation. The warm-up exercises of magic, the mental rehearsal, the provision of any equipment, space and time, all help to maximise our effectiveness. We do this on the understanding that Proper Prior Preparation and Practice Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. So go for it.
We have already noted the usefulnesss of stating, even writing down (seems very important) the intention of our sorcery. We describe it vividly as we can, in terms of what we really want, rather than what we don’t want. We can visualise our intention fulfilled, see it, hear what we would hear, feel it, walk through it. Then we can symbolise, sigilise or whatever.
We choose a worthy goal, something we won’t be having second thoughts about later, otherwise those second thoughts will blow it for us. We choose an attainable goal. We won’t fly like Superman no matter how shit hot our magic powers.
We enter the ritual, attending to what we’re doing, heading for one of two kinds of state of mind. The one involves getting worked up into a right state, with sweating, heavy breathing, exhaustion and so forth. The other involves … well, drifting off. Just so long as at some level we get around to what we intend.
Whether we visualise etc the goal itself or a symbolic representation of it, when we’ve had enough and gone far enough ‘out of it’ we act as though it has already come to pass, perhaps with a form of words such as ‘and so it is done.’ Then laugh, blow raspberries, pack up and forget about it. Really. If it preys on your mind it’ll manifest in your mind only. You don’t pull the leaves of seedlings to get them to grow, you leave the buggers alone.
Last thing: Whatever we enchant for, we do something about it ourselves. If you want to win the lottery, you’ve totally got to buy a ticket. The gods help those who help themselves.
And so it is done
