Low Magick Read online

  From his high horse of spiritual piety, the high magician looks down upon low magicians who, in order to accomplish their nefarious ends, stand ready and willing to proffer their reprobate souls to the evil spirits in exchange for the fleeting power to be naughty—to harm an enemy, bewitch a neighbor’s cow, or bed an otherwise unwilling partner.

  There are many people in the world today (magicians and non-magicians alike) who believe quite literally that the above arrangement is the only spiritual game plan in town. It is certainly their right to do so; after all, for many of us this God/devil, heaven/hell, angel/demon morality play is the familiar foundation upon which the perversely comfortable “faith of our fathers” was built.

  While I certainly do not wish to offend anyone’s sincere spiritual beliefs (and I hold my hand up and swear, “Some of my best friends are Chrislemews!”), I must, however, be honest. I do not believe in such an all-good anthropomorphic god. Neither do I believe in an all-evil anthropomorphic devil. I don’t believe in a heaven where I’ll be rewarded for believing correctly or a hell where I’ll be punished for my unbelief. In fact, I believe there is something terribly wrong and spiritually toxic with this entire picture—dangerously and tragically wrong—a wrongness that has plagued the Western psyche for millennia; a primitive and superstitious phantasm of the mind; a nightmare that has infected the human soul with the virus of fear and self-loathing; a cancerous curse that demands that every man, woman, and child surrender to the great lie that would make us believe that our very humanness makes us unclean and damned in the eyes of a wrathful deity.

  Does my rejection of a too-literal interpretation of the scriptural worldview of the Chrislemews make me an atheist? For those who adhere too tightly to their doctrines, I guess it does—but it certainly does not from my point of view.10 I most ardently believe in (indeed, I worship) a supreme consciousness that is the ultimate source of all manifest and unmanifest existence. I believe that you and I and every other monad of existence are components of the supreme consciousness. My morality (if you insist on calling it that) is based on my conviction that the ultimate nature of this super-existence is transcendently Good—a Good we can never adequately define with our words or understand with our meat brains—a Good so all-comprehensively infinite that there can be nothing outside of itself—not even nothing.

  There can be no opposite of this great Good. The Goodness of supreme existence is spelled with the largest capital “G” imaginable. I call it the:

  “Great G.”

  (There I go again, making up words. Well … get used to it, because I’m going to use this one a lot!)

  This Great G swallows up the concept of duality. It neutralizes all concepts that remain so small that it is possible for them to have opposites—ideas such as a god who is so small and incomplete that there is an outside-of-himself where a pesky devil can go running around causing trouble; ideas such as darkness and light; good little goods and evil little evils; little highs and little lows.

  Perhaps the brains of our ancestors were not developed enough to grasp the idea of the Great Goodness of supreme existence. After all, in the ages when the Chrislemew and proto-Chrislemew doctrines were invented, our minds were yet unexpanded and unburdened by thoughts of gravity, or the speed of light, or the rotation of the Earth or its orbit of the sun, or black holes, or the nature of space-time. Perhaps back then it was impossible for us to wrap our minds around a reality that didn’t spring solely from the primitive fear-based motivations of reward and punishment, pain and pleasure. Perhaps then—but not any longer!

  After nearly forty years of magical study and practice, I’ve come to the conclusion that magick is magick. It is a spiritual art form by which we collect and direct a natural and neutral force whose source is the supreme intelligence—the supreme consciousness. In the right hands and under the right circumstances, the application of magick can be creative or destructive, helpful or harmful. It is not the magick is that is good or evil, or high or low—it is the magician.

  No matter how pious and virtuous one may believe oneself to be—no matter how seemingly altruistic one’s motives—no matter how precise and eloquently one executes the invocations to enlist the favor of God and the services of his angels, a magician who has not yet grasped this big picture and achieved a significant measure of spiritual maturity, mental stability, and purity of heart is not yet equipped to recognize relative good from relative evil. Like a marksman firing a powerful weapon in the dark, the naïve or superstitious magician is incapable of accurately hitting the mark or determining what magical actions will or will not be in his or her best interests. Conversely, if the magician is in touch with the Great G, there is no devil too evil, no angel too fallen, no demon too foul to be redeemed and pressed into the service of the Great Work.

  And so, at the very beginning of my little book, I hereby confess that my title is a facetious and mischievous blind. It is with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek that I use the term “Low Magick” to describe the magical operations that follow. However, please don’t think that by using the term I am being silly for silliness sake.

  Many years ago, as a naïve and desperate young magician, I evoked Orobas, a demon from the Goetia,11 for the purpose of turning around my impoverished and chaotic life circumstances—to save my family, to provide materially for my wife and child, and to give me the emotional stability to pursue the Great Work. In my naïve and inexperienced mind, it was an act of black magick—an encounter with the devil himself that I was prepared to perform against my teacher’s wishes. In fact, when I told her I had become so desperate that I intended to go through with it, she flatly forbade it. When I asked her if she had ever performed such an operation, she said, “Certainly not! That’s low magick.”

  In an act of magical disobedience, I did it anyway. I knew I had to. I had to succeed because the consequences of failure at that point in my life were unthinkable. I was fearful and clumsy. The operation almost immediately turned into a terrifying and traumatic comedy of errors that more resembled an industrial accident and a nervous breakdown than a magical ceremony. The climax of the ceremony was a life-and-death confrontation and struggle with the real demon responsible for my miserable situation—me.

  The whole crazy business seemed to pull out of my guts the very worst in me—my worst fears—the worst aspects of my character—my worst insecurities and feelings of shame and guilt. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was exactly what was supposed to be happening. That’s what Solomonic magick is all about. The worst in me was my problem. The worst in me was the demon. When it finally dawned on me that I had successfully evoked the demon, and I had the worst of me trapped in that magick Triangle, I had no alternative but to harness and redirect its monstrous power and give it new marching orders. From then on, that particular demon would be working for me rather than against me.

  I’ll spare you the details,12 but suffice to say within minutes of concluding my bumbling act of low magick, a dramatic event occurred that set into motion a chain of events that, with breathtaking speed, accomplished everything I asked Orobas to deliver. But the real miracle was not the magical quid pro quo of a demon bent to obedience by the will of a magician, but the miracle of a magician who had redeemed a better demon of his nature. When the fiasco was over, I was a different person—a person who would save his family, provide materially for his wife and his child, and in the days and months and years ahead, clutch onto just enough emotional stability to pursue the Great Work.

  In the first sentence of this chapter, I referred to Eliphas Lévi as “the great nineteenth-century esotericist.” I did not call him a magician. Even though Monsieur Lévi is universally lauded as the father of modern high magick, he was not a practicing magician. He was a brilliant scholar, a holy man, a teacher, and a magical philosopher, but, with the exception of one curious necromantic experiment that he confessed was not at all successful, he d
id not practice magick.

  I do practice magick. In fact, I now view my entire life, waking and sleeping, to be a continuous magical operation. And so, gentle reader, for the duration of this book, the stories I shall tell of magical operations that I have actually done rather than just read about, performed rather than just discussed, experienced rather than just fantasized, and executed rather than merely mused upon—I will affectionately and unapologetically call acts of “low magick.”

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  4 Aleister Crowley, Collected Works, Orpheus. Vol. III (Homewood, IL: Yogi Publications, 1978), 217.

  5 Eliphas Lévi (1810–1875), pseudonym of Alphonse Louis Constant. Dogme et ritual de la haute magie was first published in 1854. Published most recently as Transcendental Magic, translated by A. E. Waite (York Beach, ME: Weiser Books, 2001).

  6 Founded in 1888, the Order of the Golden Dawn was arguably the most influential magical society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Aleister Crowley joined in 1898 and would soon become the catalyst in the events that would bring about the Order’s destruction. The basic degree structure of the Golden Dawn would serve as the model for Crowley’s own magical order, the AA

  7 Ibid.

  8 See my book Angels, Demons & Gods of the New Millennium (York Beach, ME: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1997), 156.

  9 Unfortunately, for the Christian born without “grace,” right belief or good behavior in life will not be enough to save him or her from the dreadful flames of eternal hell. Sorry.

  10 After all, I can’t be an atheist. I’m a Freemason!

  11 The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King. Translated into the English Tongue by a Dead Hand and Adorned with Divers Other Matter Germane Delightful to the Wise, the Whole Edited, Verified, Introduced and Commented by Aleister Crowley. Most recent edition with engraved illustrations of the spirits by M. L. Breton and foreword by Hymenaeus Beta (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1996). Known as the Lesser Key of Solomon, it is the First Book of the Lemegeton (c. 1687). Translated by S. L. MacGregor Mathers (the “Dead Hand” referred to in the full title above). From the British Library Sloane Manuscripts nos. 2731 and 3648.

  12 I describe this incident in greater detail in several other places in my previously published works, especially My Life with the Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician (York Beach, ME: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1999).

  two

  The Formula of Solomon

  Give therefore to thy servant an understanding heart to

  judge thy people and to discern between good and bad?

  First Kings, chapter 3, verse 913

  It may seem odd to you that I, as a man who more or less rejects the historicity of the Bible and most, if not all, of the Chrislemew view of spiritual reality, should spend my time praying to God, conjuring spirits, summoning demons, and communing with angels. Make no mistake, I do indeed believe in the magical reality of gods, archangels, angels, spirits, and demons, and for the purpose of some particular magical operations, I even embrace (albeit temporarily) the concept of a heaven filled with angels of high intelligence, and a hell filled with legions of dangerous demons. In fact, because I actually work with these characters in practical ways, they present to me a far greater reality than they do for the average Chrislemew who simply tucks these concepts away in a corner of his or her brain where fanciful religious abstractions are stored.

  As you will soon see, several of the stories in this book deal with my experiences with Solomonic magick or Goetia. Goetia is often vilified as the most striking example of low magick. Please understand right now that I do not intend to burden you with another rehash or a tiresome reprint of the text Goetia14 with its seventy-two spirits and the traditional procedures used to conjure them. (There is a glut of books already on the market if that is what you need.) Rather, I hope by means of simple anecdotes and illustrations to gently acquaint you with the dynamics of this kind of magick—why it sometimes works, and why it sometimes doesn’t. Moreover, it is my hope that when you have finished reading this little book, you will have a greater understanding of the sublime spiritual formula that underlies this kind of magical practice—a formula, when properly applied, that promises to the tenacious and courageous magician a greater measure of personal health, happiness, and enlightenment.

  The formula of Solomonic magick is very simple and uses the character of King Solomon as the mythological archetype of the ideal magician. There are many stories and traditions about Solomon that come from sources other than the Bible. An important part of the mythology of Freemasonry revolves around a peculiar story of King Solomon and the building of his magnificent temple—a story that is not found in the Bible. The Koran, the Talmud, and Ethiopian scriptures also abound with colorful tales of the great magician king who, because of his special relationship with God and his mastery of magick, could talk with animals, fly through the air on a magick carpet, and effect all manner of works and wonders, including his ability to enlist a labor force of demons and evil spirits to build the great Temple of God.

  The likelihood that the biblical King Solomon probably never existed in empirical history should be of no concern to modern magicians, because the “formula” for doing this kind of magick isn’t an aspect or product of history or religion but of the mythology and traditions that are attached to Solomon’s name. The magical myth goes something like this:

  When Solomon became king, his first job was to build a temple worthy to house the presence of the True and Living God Most High, something his father, David, hadn’t been able to do. Before beginning the project, Solomon paused and thought things over and wisely came to the conclusion that he couldn’t undertake such an important task without the blessing and guiding intelligence of God. In prayer, Solomon didn’t ask for money or building materials or contractors; he simply asked for an “understanding heart.”

  How cool was that! It impressed God so much that Solomon was granted his request and given everything else to boot, including the divine secrets of how to magically summon the evil spirits of the world and (diverting them from their natural preoccupation with mischief) compel them to work for the good guys and help build the great temple.

  On the surface, this spiritual worldview appears to be at odds with the Chrislemew doctrines we discussed in the preceding chapter. We’ve got God up above, and we’ve got demons down below, but it appears that’s where the similarity ends. In fact, the whole format of Solomonic magick appears to be an incongruous mixture of high and low magick. The key to understanding this paradox lies with the person of Solomon himself.

  Solomon represents a new kind of human being—a person who has broken free of the old ways of looking at God and our place in creation—a person whose consciousness has expanded beyond the prison universe of good gods and evil devils—a person who grasps the concept of a supreme consciousness so absolute that all forces and powers of creation (even those that to others appear evil and destructive) are pressed into service of the Great G Goodness.

  A true “Solomon” confidently knows his or her place in this new understanding of the divine scheme of things. A true Solomon is a proactive full citizen of both heaven and hell. A true Solomon is, in fact, encouraged by the Great G God Almighty to conjure the devils and put them to work doing good things!

  Are you confused? Don’t be. You’ve just learned a fundamental secret of magick, and if you can free yourself from the old Chrislemew way of looking at things, you are well on the way to becoming a true Solomon yourself. Let me put it in less romantic terms.

  The nature of existence is consciousness. We are conscious beings, each of us an integral part of the whole consciousness enchilada. There are levels of consciousness (and realities) above the one in which we normally function, and there are levels of consciousness below. As yogis, mystics, and adept magicians can att
est, we can access the higher levels of consciousness in meditation or under other extraordinary circumstances. In those altered states we not only realize the oneness of the supreme consciousness, we become the oneness of the supreme consciousness. Ultimately, this transcendent state is our true and natural state of being, our true self; it is who we really are. It is the “heaven” where we dwell when we have fulfilled our adventures pretending we are somehow disconnected from the supreme consciousness. Our ascent into higher consciousness is Solomon’s prayer to God—Solomon going up to be in the presence of Deity.

  However, because most of us have not yet played out our adventures of dreaming we are separate entities, we can abide these exalted states for only fleeting seconds before once again descending to the middle-muddled world of the rational mind, which in turn is supported by the “infernal” world of matter and energy at the lowest end of the consciousness scale. It is a place where the blind forces of nature (if left uncontrolled and undirected) happily discharge their wild energy in explosive flashes that surge through the streets and sewers of our souls along the paths of least resistance. From our narrow, middle-world perspective, these blind forces appear to be destructive and evil. However, when they are harnessed and directed by an intelligence that is in tune with the highest levels of consciousness, they are transformed into organized units of the constructive power—loyal servants dutifully grunting and straining to perform all the heavy lifting in the universe. These are the demons who build the Temple of God—demons Solomon draws up from hell so he might bind them to work under his enlightened and organized direction.

  For the magician, archangels, angels, spirits, intelligences, and demons are merely colorful metaphors for the cascading hierarchy of all the natural forces and energies of the universe. This is the secret of Solomon. Once we’ve really pounded it into our heads, we recognize that we, too, have our unique place in the universe. Proactively operating halfway between the above and the below, we are poised to connect with and become charged by forces of the stratum of consciousness above us so that we may connect with, master, and direct the forces in the stratum beneath us.