Low Magick Read online

  For the magician, the energy flow of the Solomonic formula moves perpetually upward. The magician’s consciousness rises to connect with the divine consciousness (earth up to heaven) to become attuned with the divine perfection; and the demon is made to rise up (hell up to earth) to become controlled and directed by the magician. From the demon’s point of view, the magician is God, and as long as the magician’s link with the “above” is true and sure, so too is the demon’s link with the magician.

  The reason this kind of low magick has earned such an evil reputation is because we so often hear of the terrible consequences to the life and sanity of the magician who violates this simple upward-flowing formula. I speak specifically of cases where in the course of the operation the spirit convinces the magician to strike some sort of bargain—a quid pro quo, perhaps a gift or sacrifice in exchange for service. “I’ll bring you a nice shiny penny … but you’ve got to kill the vicar!” Ask any Solomonic magician; he or she will most likely tell you the first thing a spirit will attempt to extract from you is a bargain of some kind, or an amendment to your original request. It is also the last thing you should consider doing.

  In all fairness to the poor infernal spirit, such haggling is a perfectly understandable characteristic of its unredeemed nature to try to negotiate itself free from your control. After all, it’s been doing that in one way or another your entire life—otherwise you wouldn’t be lacking the specific thing the spirit can provide you!

  But what if the formula is breached? What happens if, instead of raising the spirit up to the magician’s level, the magician descends to the demon’s level? Shouldn’t a competent magician be able to handle that?

  My answer is yes. A competent magician, a true Solomon, can handle that, but one must question his or her motives for setting out to do so. Is the object of the operation to cause some change to occur in hell? Or is the object of the operation to cause some change to occur in the magician’s life here on earth? If the answer is the latter (and I can’t imagine it being otherwise), then it is probably wisest to bring the demon up to where its work is to be done, rather than casting oneself down to the hell of status quo where the spirit lounges comfortably in your screwed-up life-as-usual. The worker’s daily labor is done on the factory floor, not at the union hall.

  A year or two ago, a young man wrote me a letter asking if there was some way for him to use a black mirror or other magical method so that he might actually visit the realm where the Goetic entities dwell. I was in an odd mood, so I wrote him the following response, which I hope he took in the spirit it was intended:

  Dear (name withheld),

  A partial answer to your question would be another question; that is … “What makes you think you are not already visiting the realm where the Goetic spirits dwell?”

  I’m not kidding. If you wish to explore the realm where some of these fragments of consciousness dwell, I suggest that tonight, as an experiment, you go visit the sleaziest saloon in the roughest part of town about an hour before closing. Every untamed manifestation of the denizens of your Nephesh15 (the real spirits of your Goetia) will be poised to appear before your eyes.

  Buy them a round of drinks. They will toast you. Join them in their libations. Keep drinking and talking with them until you start to think their crude and bigoted jokes are really funny and you begin to actually agree with their views of politics and religion. Breathe in the infernal incense of the cigarette smoke. Inhale the sacred perfume of body odor, spilled beer, and urinal cakes. Become one with the consciousness of the room. There! You are visiting hell on earth.

  Granted, you might have the magician’s presence of mind (Ruach)16 to jot down some names and phone numbers and thus arrange to have one of these beasties meet you tomorrow in the sober light of day so that you might hire him or her to mow your lawn, paint your house, or clean your septic tank. On the other hand, you could surrender your Ruach completely and stumble home with one of your new Goetic friends for the prospect of a vomit-covered stab at intimacy (and then wake up in the morning to find yourself robbed, infected, or worse, looking every bit the demon yourself).

  And so my friend, to answer your question specifically and on a practical level, yes, it is possible to visit the realm where the Goetic spirits dwell, and you won’t need an expensive black obsidian mirror to do it. Choose the seal17 of the Goetic spirit you wish to visit. Draw it carefully on a tiny piece of paper. Take it with you to that saloon tonight at midnight and swallow it with your first strong drink.

  Bon voyage!

  The formal technique of Solomonic magick is simple, almost intuitive. First, I need to have an “object of my operation,” a change I wish to effect in my life, e.g., “I want Mary, the girl next door, to fall in love with me.”

  I start by creating a circle of sacred space in a convenient area of my home or garden. I draw out a triangle on the floor before my circle and do whatever I think necessary to contact and invoke the blessing and presence of the Great G in the likeness and character of the deity of my choice. (I will discuss the importance of invocation and the choice of one’s deity in later chapters.) Once I am confident that my motives are in harmony with the divine order and that I am the living representative of the Great G, I use that authority to summon a demon from the “infernal regions” into the magick Triangle. Once the demon appears (either tangibly or in my mind’s eye), I give it its marching orders: “Cause Mary to fall in love with me.” Then I set it loose to do my bidding.

  Sounds corny and melodramatic, doesn’t it? It is corny and melodramatic! It’s supposed to be corny and melodramatic. That’s the romance and charm of the Solomonic magick art form. But it is easy to perform, and if all the factors of the formula are in place, it will work. However, it is likely to work in ways you might not expect.

  In the case of our example, let’s not forget that Mary has a divine—and potentially omnipotent—Will of her own. Unless she somehow recognizes the cosmic correctness of falling in love with me—unless she cooperates in this operation, I’m going to remain eternally snubbed. It is likely that Mary is not in love with me because I’m currently not the kind of person Mary is ready to fall in love with. It’s not Mary who will have to change, it’s me. If it is truly my Will to be Mary’s lover, I will have to be transformed into the kind of person with whom Mary falls in love.

  Chances are, in the days and weeks following my evocation—in the ordinary course of my life—under circumstances that might appear to have nothing to do with my magical operation—I will be called upon to seriously play the part of a magician, and to play that part well. As a matter of fact, it is likely that (as the result of my Goetic evocation) I will find myself involved in some kind of adventurous struggle.

  I’ve often said that the only thing I can change with magick is myself. I believe that. Whatever changes I wish to effect with magick, the first and only thing that will be directly changed by my magical operation will be me. Once I am changed, then the new changed me will then somehow affect or attract the desired object of my operation. However, we seldom know in advance what changes we’ll need to undergo to become that new person. Furthermore, it is a cold hard fact of life that change often comes as the result of trauma. Perhaps Mary is the kind of girl who can only fall in love with a blind man, or an amputee, or a Republican.

  Funny thing about demons. If you’re a Solomon, they make wonderful employees. But if you’re not, they make terrible bosses. They are easy to call up. They run amok in our lives as the frenzied menagerie of our own uncontrolled and undirected energies. When we willfully put one to work for us, we are in essence saying to the cosmos of consciousness, “I will conquer and redeem this demon from hell, and the battle will take the form of a character-building adventure. The adventure will transform the demon into a loyal and worthy employee, and transform me into a new and different person—a masterful person—the kind of person the object of my magical operation happens to—the kind of person Mary falls in love with.”

  So bring it on, the magician shouts. Let the adventure begin!

  The Magician18

  O Lord, deliver me from hell’s great fear and gloom!

  Loose thou my spirit from the larvae of the tomb!

  I seek them in their dread abodes without affright:

  On them will I impose my will, the law of light.

  I bid the night conceive the glittering hemisphere.

  Arise, O sun, arise! O moon, shine white & clear!

  I seek them in their dread abodes without affright:

  On them will I impose my will, the law of light.

  Their faces and their shapes are terrible and strange.

  These devils by my might to angels I will change.

  These nameless horrors I address without affright:

  On them will I impose my will, the law of light.

  These are the phantoms pale of mine astonied view,

  Yet none but I their blasted beauty can renew;

  For to the abyss of hell I plunge without affright:

  On them will I impose my will, the law of light.

  [contents]

  13 The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts. Translated from Aramaic by George M. Lamsa (Philadelphia, PA: A.J. Holman Company, 1967), 378.

  14 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 (Inverness, Scotland: Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth, Boleskine, Foyers, 1904). Known as the Lesser Key of Solomo
n, 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. Most recent edition with engraved illustrations of the spirits by M. L. Breton and foreword by Hymenaeus Beta (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1996).

  15 According to Qabalists, the Nephesh (animal soul) is the lowest of the four parts of the human soul. Above the Nephesh is the Ruach (the intellect), above that, the Neshamah (soul intuition), then, at the top, the Chiah (life force).

  16 Ibid.

  17 See chapter 13.

  18 The Magician, translated from Eliphas Lévi’s version of the famous hymn. See chapter VII of my book Angels, Demons & Gods of the New Millennium (York Beach, ME: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1997), 151–166.

  three

  The Law of Attraction,

  the Power of Intent &

  My Date with Linda Kaufman

  Intent is the mechanics through which spirit

  transforms itself into material reality.

  Deepak Chopra,

  The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire

  In the last few years, we’ve heard a lot about the Law of Attraction and the Power of Intent. At the risk of being shunned and ridiculed by the more hard-core wizards of the occult community, I have to confess my deep and abiding respect for the works of Louise Hay, Deepak Chopra, and Dr. Wayne Dyer, among others, for bringing to a wider audience of seekers the fundamental secrets of true magick in ways that are understandable and acceptable to people of all spiritual backgrounds.

  Perhaps you don’t think that such fluffy New Age pundits could actually be tossing around the supreme secret of the ages on public television sandwiched between cooking shows and reruns of Masterpiece Theatre … but they are! Magick may be the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will, but the mechanism of that Will can be at least partially described by the single word “intent.”

  Magical theory suggests that everything in the universe is the product of intent. I wouldn’t dare to attempt to prove this vast and unprovable statement (and gods forbid I would dare open the absurd “intelligent design” can of imaginary worms). I will, however, not hesitate to point out how many things in our shared reality—objects, inventions, events, ideas, religious and political movements, even our view of time—can demonstrably be the direct and unambiguous products of intention. Take this book as an example:

  It is my intent to communicate a few of my thoughts and experiences concerning magick to as many people as possible; it is also my intent to earn some money in order to help keep a roof over my head, and sustain a modicum of self-respect for myself and my family as I look to the fast-approaching years of my dotage.19

  It is my publisher’s intent (among other things) to provide a quality literary product in such a manner as to make the maximum profit from the minimum expenditure, and to provide information and entertainment to the book-buying public (especially those individuals whose interests are in harmony with the publisher’s philosophies and interests). Furthermore, it is the publisher’s intent to keep his or her family of employees, subcontractors, printers, distributors, suppliers, etc., gainfully employed and contributing to the intended support and well-being of their families, communities, etc.

  As the reader (I am assuming), it is your intent (among other things) to enrich your life with the knowledge and ideas presented in this book, and to use this information and insight for your own intended applications.

  Magical intent has much in common with what we normally associate with the concept of willpower. It is, however, something much greater than the teeth-gritting power of concentration to force something to happen that was otherwise not going to happen. Magical intent is more a matter “seeing” what you truly want so clearly that your vision (indeed, your love of the vision) creates a living entity. Faced with the birth of this new cosmic citizen on the creative plane, the universe has no alternative but to rearrange conditions on the material plane to accommodate the complete manifestation of this now-inevitable object or event.

  You may find this hard to believe, but I learned the secret power of magical intent when I was six years old. The inspiration for my operation was my kindergarten classmate, Linda Kaufman. She was the most beautiful girl at George Washington Carver Elementary School in Lakewood, California. I always arranged to sit near her for rhythm band and finger painting. She seemed to enjoy my antics, especially my sophisticated ability to bark like sea lion. I also had the pity factor working for me because the first few months of my kindergarten year I was forced by a serious hip condition to walk with the aid of crutches.20

  I was insanely in love with her and each night as I lay in bed I fantasized how I would take her to the movies on a real grown-up date. I correct myself: It was not a fantasy. It was a vision of a perfect moment of love—a perfect vision of love given—and of love received.

  For months I rehearsed the scene in my imagination. I would be dressed in a suit and tie. I would somehow drive to her house and pick her up. I’d meet her parents. Her father would invite me into his den and offer me a cocktail (like they drank on the television show, Topper). Then Linda would appear in a pretty new dress and we’d drive off to the movie theatre. I’d buy us some popcorn. We’d find seats near the front and share our popcorn and giggle. Then, when the lights went down and the film began, she would take my arm (because I’d be too shy and polite to do it myself) and put it around her shoulders, and she and I would snuggle close for the whole movie.

  It was a lovely dream, and I was determined to make it happen. During Christmas vacation in 1954, I approached my mother in the kitchen and told her I wanted to take Linda Kaufman to the movies. I ordered her to call Linda’s parents “right now” and arrange everything. It was a bold move. I was conjuring a dangerous demon. My mother could be unpredictably violent and cruelly abusive. It was such an odd little demand, however, that I think it took her completely off balance. I didn’t have the slightest doubt that she would obey my command. She stared at me for a moment, then picked up the phone and called Linda’s mother. They laughed and gossiped for what seemed like hours. When she hung up, it was a done deal.

  New Year’s Day 1955 was a Sunday—the perfect day for Linda and me to see the new biblical epic, The Silver Chalice.21 Mom and my older brother Marc (he and his date would be our chaperones) waited in the car while I, dressed smartly in my Sunday school sports jacket and clip-on tie, knocked on the door of the Kaufman residence. Her dad answered and invited me into his den and told me to sit down.

  “Would you like something to drink?”

  I couldn’t believe this was happening. He poured us each a heavy highball glass of ginger ale and ice. I’d never tasted ginger ale before. Was this a cocktail? Linda soon appeared with her mother and spun around to show off her new dress. I was sure the ginger ale was taking effect. Everything, almost to the last detail, was happening exactly as I envisioned—and it didn’t stop there.

  At the theater, with my brother and his date following discreetly behind us, I bought popcorn and Linda and I found our seats near the front. We giggled and munched, and when the lights dimmed and the big Warner Brothers shield beamed at us from the silver screen, Linda Kaufman, my goddess, the love of my life, grabbed my arm and put it around her shoulders, where it remained locked in sweaty, painful ecstasy for the next two hours and twenty-two minutes.

  At that moment, I knew that my mind, my dreams had the power to make things happen. I knew there was some kind of living intelligence that hears the yearnings of my heart—a being—a god with the power to bring into reality anything I imagine—anything I intend. However, it would take me the better part of the next fifty years to understand that the nature of that power is Love, and that without that vital ingredient in the recipe, my magick would always fall short of perfection.