THE Rockwax Foundation

Author: Colin

  • Seth and the 1970s Road to Space

    By Duncan Fleming

    I recently wrote about the idea of the Hidden Masters, the flourishing of the Theosophical Society, and the many different places people can find spiritual authority. As well as receiving teaching from living, incarnated ‘masters’, there is the ancient tradition of entering a trance and acting as a ‘medium’ to channel the words of a non-physical entity.

    So, fast-forwarding about 100 years, to the 1970s, it is interesting to look at what had happened to the New Age spiritual tradition. Again, it was set apart from mainstream religion and mainstream science. We are no longer in a time when it is commonplace to attend séances, but it is still not unusual for people to believe in ghosts, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, spontaneous human combustion and myriad weird shit. Think big coffee-table books of the unexplained. Under the hood, people still believed in lots of uncanny, spooky stuff. It is after the 1960s and the hippy movement. Many Eastern spiritual ideas are mainstream. It is normal for people to ask what star sign you are as a chat-up line. People talk about good and bad karma.

    There is also an immense arrogance, a conceit among some people who believe their particular New Age spirituality is the pinnacle of human evolution. I came across this chart from the mid-1970s, which purports to show the self-actualised Californian, beneficiary of the teachings of enlightened channellers, on the way to becoming post-terrestrial. It is the self-perfection fantasy of the entitled, on the genetic runway to space and beyond, to become interstellar planetary beings.

    Chart from 1970s showing spiritual evolution

     

    The great conceit of that fantasy is that it rests on an extremely crude and oversimplified idea of evolution. Africa is the hunter-gatherer person. And then you’ve got another wave of evolution, Southeast Asia, the tool-making person, who, bless them, can make pots and spears and stuff. And then the caste person in India, and all those naive and rather stupid monotheistic feudal people, who might be in Europe. But then America, because America’s where it’s at, you’ve got the socialised people, and then you’ve got the self-indulgent person (so there’s a little bit of self-hatred, a touch of self-loathing). So, as in older thought, there’s an idea of cosmic evolution and a vast hierarchical system, but it is now overtly racist. Although the seeds of that existed in some of the dubious racial evolution theories of Theosophy.

    It is certainly true that when people have genuine spiritual experiences, they feel part of a web of being that’s connected, purposeful, and has a sense of direction and growth. They feel they are going somewhere, that things will eventually get better, and that things are not arbitrary. But there is also a tendency to place whatever group one belongs to at the centre and the pinnacle of development. There may be a pole-star vision of where they will develop next, but they are at the vanguard of current human development.

    Then, as now, there remained traditional initiatory systems and broadly pagan communities, alongside a much looser New Age community. People who don’t want to commit to initiatory systems, and who don’t want to recreate a rustic, nature-based lifestyle, and who are happier mooching about in a city apartment. But they’ve still got a Will to a System, a desire to make sense of the ineffable. And what do they look for beyond acid trips and sci-fi novels?

    A notable example is the Seth Material. Jane Roberts and her husband, Robert Butts, began experimenting with ESP and Ouija boards in 1963. The material emerged from these early experiments, but it really blossomed publicly in the 1970s. Roberts was a pleasant and unassuming woman, and she found she naturally slipped into a deep trance and began speaking. She wasn’t someone who had particularly trained in this, or who was particularly witchy. It was those times, so she went with it. And her husband, being a very meticulous guy, dutifully transcribed everything that came from her mouth.

    The material they were receiving was really interesting. It began with different characters coming and going, and then a character kept returning. The quality of the teaching that came through this character was far more purposeful, coherent, and multi-faceted than they were used to. This character was called Seth.

    Paperback of Seth Speaks by Jane Roberts

     

    They published this material, and it became quite a phenomenon. There are many volumes of Seth material. They devoted the rest of their lives to conducting and transcribing these sessions. I think it is the most coherent and fully formed example of channelled works from that era.

    What is interesting about the Seth Material is that, if we are to take Jane Roberts at her word, she did not possess an encyclopaedic knowledge of esoteric philosophy. Yet the material presents a fully formed cosmology and epistemology, and it is internally consistent.

    The Seth Material is an example of hard idealism. Although it is internally consistent, it requires a substantial reimagining of the building blocks of reality to make sense of it. In this sense, it is not unusual, but it is quite pronounced. Many spiritual traditions treat consciousness as primary. Conscious awareness is seen as the space in which everything manifests. The world that seems to be ‘out there’ is understood to be an illusion: a trick of the mind. Time, space, and matter are regarded as transformations within consciousness. In this view, the statement ‘the universe is happening in me’ is taken literally, not just poetically.

    This is, of course, opposed to models that treat consciousness as an epiphenomenon, a by-product of complex brains, in which ‘I am happening in the universe’ is taken literally. It is not a minor difference. These outlooks sit at opposite ends of a spectrum: one prioritising the mind, the other prioritising matter. They meet only if the framing is altered.

    Seth was very clear about having had many human incarnations, having been a teacher, and having been physically incarnated at some point. This brings us back to the point that the only value in channelled or received works is the quality of the teaching someone receives, not the supposed authority of the source. Is it someone just writing thousands of pages of drivel about what life was like on Atlantis? (I’m looking at you, Charles Leadbeater.) Does it lead to any genuine developmental progress? And these personalities would also have to be reached and contacted. The amount of dedication required makes communicating such teachings an extremely demanding career, but it is one of the courses available.

    Anyway, I don’t have a big point to make, except to say that 70s New Age spirituality was, at its worst, queasy and repellent, and at its best, quite fascinating and inspiring.

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  • Enough is Enough

    Some animals eat until they are full and then just stop. They don’t take more than they need. Maybe they evolved in an environment where there was always enough food, so it was advantageous to have an internal gauge of satiety to avoid taking in too much. Other animals keep eating and eating, as though they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. They eat more than they need to keep a reserve of energy in case food becomes scarce or sporadic.

    Humans are somewhere in between, and we can vary widely along this scale. We can graze or binge, and many people do both.

    Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hiëronymus Bosch

    Economies that rely on continuous growth and increasing consumption have long been criticised. Most of us understand that greed is NOT good and that too much can become too much. But our collective understanding of what is sufficient for us is less well established. Some environmental researchers have tried to identify a safe and healthy band of sufficiency between the minimum societies need to survive and flourish, and the point at which overconsumption becomes dysfunctional. It turns out that this is a really hard thing to figure out.

    I was struck by something I read by in Black Paths and Green Cathedrals.

    “define your own ‘enough’. Not society’s version, not what the adverts tell you, not the ‘success’ sold to you in magazines, but your personal, soul-deep enough.”

    I think this gets to the heart of the problem. We have to figure out our own sense of sufficiency as an antidote to dangerous overconsumption. It doesn’t seem to be entirely innate, and it’s certainly not always instinctive for us to stop taking more than we need.

    Addiction is a good example. Although it’s not easy and some people have to call on the help of a higher power, some forms of addiction can be completely turned off – like turning off the water in your house at the mains tap if there’s a leak. This is because you really don’t need certain addictive things in your life at all. They are not a wholesome aspect of human life. You don’t need to gamble, you don’t need to smoke crack. So it is possible to completely cut these things out of your life, and after an initial crisis, life can return to balance.

    Of course, with certain substances like alcohol or benzos, it can be more complicated than that. If your body is very used to them, you may be physically dependent, and stopping abruptly can be very dangerous. Even then, it is possible to undertake a managed withdrawal, turning the mains tap off slowly rather than all at once, and eventually eliminating that substance from your life completely if needs be.

    Sometimes it’s not as straightforward as switching off the mains, fixing the leak, then turning the supply back on. If you have been properly addicted to something, you may have permanently altered your nervous system to the extent that returning to safe use is difficult or impossible. At the very least, there may be a significant risk in trying to return to casual use. Some people have to go round the Wheel of Fortune many times before they accept this. The grooves and channels remain, and if you let the substance back in, things can unravel quite quickly. In those cases, complete abstinence may be the answer.

    But other forms of addiction are not so simple. Eating is the obvious example, and sex probably belongs in the same category. These are natural drives and aspects of a healthy human life. You tend to make yourself unwell if you try to abstain completely, certainly in the case of food. As Dion Fortune observed, it is better to have a perverted will than a repressed will.

    With this sort of addictive behaviour, the problem is not solved by elimination. The challenge is to stay within a zone of ‘sufficiency’ – recognising when enough is enough. We need to maintain awareness of our level of use within the cognitive loop and recognise our own green, amber, and red zones. Green is fine. Amber is a warning to be careful. Red is too much.

    In the Sphere of Foundation, or Yesod, on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, there is a traditional association with this idea of sufficiency. There is a sense that, behind the scenes, reality is weaving itself together in mysterious ways that provide us with what we need. There is an obligation to trust in the sufficiency and self-righting nature of existence, and to cultivate awareness of the deeper reality that underpins physical life.

    Foundation is like the stream flowing from the river that nourishes the Garden of Eden. To experience Foundation fully, we must trust that we will receive what we need without grasping for it.

    A lot of compulsive consumption stems from anxiety. We worry that we won’t be able to cope with situations, feelings, or even the present moment without the external thing. Another drink. Another purchase. Another helping. Another distraction. We become convinced that we need it. But of course we can cope.

    Perhaps defining ‘enough’ is ultimately an act of trust. Trust that there will be enough. Trust that we are enough. And trust that we can let go of things that once seemed indispensable without losing ourselves in the process.

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  • Who are the Hidden Masters?

    The late 19th century was a really wild time. Spiritualism had been on the rise since the 1850s. The edges of knowledge were shifting at remarkable speed. There were astonishing developments in science and a burgeoning industrial revolution, with amazing new technology. The first frontiers of psychology were being explored. It would have felt like a great time to be genuinely inquisitive and open-minded about the mysteries of existence – that there was still a great deal left to learn.

    In this climate, it was completely mainstream to believe in, or at least to be open-minded and inquisitive about, ghosts, spirits, and psychic phenomena. There were sceptics, but exploring these things was not considered anti-scientific. There were many séances and mediums, and there was extensive investigation of the paranormal. It was just a part of Victorian culture.

    The idea of hidden ‘Masters’ entered Western esotericism as a popular notion largely through the claims of Helena Blavatsky, one of the co-founders and the principal initiatrix of the Theosophical Society.

    Helena Blavatsky

    Spiritual authority has got to come from somewhere. It doesn’t just come out of a vacuum. In a society where it was normal for people to believe in spirits and angels, there was enormous variety in where leaders of religious and spiritual communities got their ideas from. So the idea of a network of living, hidden masters was not the most ‘out there’ notion by any stretch.

    Blavatsky didn’t invent the idea of hidden masters out of nowhere, but she did make it much more of a coherent, synthesised idea. Eastern traditions already had long-established ideas about people thought to have reached an unusually high level of spiritual knowledge or power, often believed to live apart from ordinary society. The West also had notions of secret adepts and hidden brotherhoods, for example in the hermetic and Rosicrucian traditions, with figures like the Comte de Saint-Germain said to live for hundreds of years. There were also very old ideas that all religions contained fragments of one original, ancient and universal wisdom – sometimes attributed to Atlantis or other ancient civilisations.

    But what was quite novel about Blavatsky was rolling all this together into one coherent system. That there was an invisible hierarchy of super-advanced humans working behind the scenes to advance civilisation along spiritual lines – these secret leaders as a system, a network.

    So the idea of hidden masters was really amplified and clarified by the early Theosophical Society, as articulated by Blavatsky. They were not the only group to claim authority from living, highly adept individuals. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, had the idea of semi-mythical Secret Chiefs – not easily encountered, except by the visible heads of the order – and similarly, it was this prime access, this direct channel, that gave the outward leaders of the organisation their authority.

    In the Theosophical Society, these Hidden Masters were called Mahatmas – and they were thought of as ‘masters’ in the same way that a teacher in a school would be. They were masters not because of hierarchy in itself, but because they could teach you about spiritual reality. And they were described as being joined together in an inner fraternity that was guiding human evolution throughout history. The world was thought of as being guided by an inner government, an order called the ‘Great White Brotherhood’ overseeing the long development of life and consciousness. ‘White’ was meant in the sense of spiritual light rather than racially White, and indeed the majority of the Masters were considered to be from India and Tibet, etc. (Although undeniably there were some questionable ideas of racial evolution too).

    One was said to communicate with these masters only rarely through physical meetings. It wasn’t unheard of to meet them in person, but most of the time there would be psychic contact, via a trance state in which one would receive information from them. There was also more extraordinary contact via precipitated or materialised letters that would physically arrive, though they would arrive via a mysterious aethyric process, rather than being delivered by the equivalent of the Royal Mail. As you might expect, questions about the authenticity of these precipitated letters became highly controversial.

    Everything about Helena Blavatsky was extraordinary. If we are to take her at her own word, before co-founding the Theosophical Society, she had led a very enigmatic life. She’d been like a bareback circus stunt horse rider. She had travelled the world and had been one of the few independent women to go to Tibet. She’d had a lot of adventures.

    It was also not unusual in that heyday of spiritualism for people to make a precarious living by holding private séances for wealthy people. There would have been considerable pressure on those who performed to produce spectacular evidence. The redoubtable practitioner Daniel Dunglas Home would put on astonishing shows, where trumpets might materialise in the air and play music, or rise high into the air, carried aloft by invisible entities. Of course, cynics would say it was very good stage magic – but there was an expectation that a ‘powerful’ medium or clairvoyant would be able to materialise unusual phenomena, such as plumes of ectoplasm from the mouth or nose. So there would inevitably have been considerable pressure on Blavatsky to prove she was in touch with a powerful spiritual current and to produce some of these phenomena.

    So those were the waters she was swimming in. It’s worth looking a little more into what she meant by a Mahatma or a hidden teacher. This is a quote from The Theosophist from 1884:

    “A MAHATMA is a personage, who, by special training and education, has evolved those higher faculties and has attained that spiritual knowledge, which ordinary humanity will acquire after passing through numberless series of reincarnations during the process of cosmic evolution, provided, of course, that they do not go, in the meanwhile, against the purposes of Nature and thus bring on their own annihilation.”

    Blavatsky said that from her childhood onwards, she was in contact with a tall Indian gentleman, Master Morya, who protected her. He saved her from a terrible horse riding accident as a teenager. She reported having a physical encounter with Master Morya when she would have been around 20 years old in London during the Great Exhibition of 1851, where he was visiting as part of the Nepal contingent. She approached him because she recognised him from her dreams, but he brushed her aside. However, he met her the next day in a London park, and he told her, for all her shortcomings, she was the best available person to bring his wisdom tradition to the West. So at this point she devoted her life to this mission. She was then put in touch with other Hidden Masters, who never gave their real names publicly.

    Not all the hidden Masters supported the idea of starting the Theosophical Society – many of them thought it would fail because it was open to all, rather than selecting the elite. Indeed, the Masters would often berate Blavatsky and others. Koot Hoomi, a prolific communicator, criticised Blavatsky in a letter, saying that by attributing to them phenomena of the most childish nature, she had lowered them in the public estimation. Sinnett, another co-founder of the Theosophical Society, was very intrigued by the purported letters and began a correspondence via Blavatsky. All the letters from Koot Hoomi to Sinnett have been published and are in the British Museum, but Sinnett’s side of the correspondence is now lost. The letters themselves are, apparently, quite physically odd at a microscopic level.

    The Mahatma Letters book

    Whilst the teaching of the Theosophical Society was enormously influential, it was still very controversial and divisive. The Society for Psychical Research at the time concluded that Blavatsky was a fraud, although their investigation would not be considered robust by modern standards.

    Whether or not the hidden Masters are real, they functioned as a kind of mythic organising principle for the ideas of theosophy. And yet they were considered human – they had a normal(ish) lifespan and personality quirks – and were also thought of as rare blossoms on an evolutionary tree. But it was possible for any human being to do work on themselves and elevate themselves to that level.

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  • The Abramelin Method

    Duncan Fleming

    The instruction to develop a personal connection with one’s Holy Guardian Angel is a fundamental part of the Tradition. Highly relevant to this work is a grimoire, or book of magic, possibly dating from the 15th century, titled The Book of Abramelin. It recounts the author’s travels from Europe to the Middle East in search of true magic and his eventual encounter with a wise teacher named Abramelin, who showed him the powerful initiatory method described in the book.

    This method has become established as a blueprint for establishing contact with the Holy Guardian Angel. The method described in the book is an extended spiritual retreat. Not everyone who attempts the Abramelin operation will succeed, and there are no guarantees that simply following the instructions will lead to the knowledge and conversation of one’s Holy Guardian Angel. The text itself states that success depends primarily on the sincerity of intention. The practice involves entering a partial, and then progressively more complete, state of seclusion over a period of months.

    Photo of two books of Abramelin translation in English

     

    In the best available translation of The Book of Abramelin, this process lasts eighteen months. For many years, however, the only widely available version described a six-month operation, and so the shorter form has been used by many practitioners. This seclusion is not a form of self-punishment; it is undertaken because being around other people tends to keep us the same. People naturally chatter and engage in small talk. Simply performing the necessary interactions of work, social, and daily tasks can be a distraction and hinder the process of inner change. The everyday world can add weight and gravity that slow this process down. Therefore, genuinely entering retreat can serve as a catalyst for personal transformation. But, of course, isolation for its own sake is neither a healthy purpose nor a positive aim in itself.

    Another practical consideration of the Abramelin method is that it is best to begin the operation in the spring. This is because, symbolically, spring marks the start of new endeavours and the astrological year, and because our bodies tend to be happier in the warmer months, surrounded by blooming life and the fertility of nature, making it an ideal time to begin. And so the process becomes gradually more demanding. The operation begins with regular prayer, devotional discipline, and moral restraint, alongside the preparation of oneself and one’s environment for sacred work. Periods of withdrawal and solitude increase over time, as do requirements concerning cleanliness, simplicity of diet, and sexual continence. Specific prayers are performed at set times, and certain sacred objects are prepared according to instruction. As the operation progresses, the practitioner moves toward near-complete seclusion, with the whole of daily life ordered around prayer and consecration. After several months, the work culminates in an intense and sustained state of ritual focus, in which ordinary activities are subordinated to the single aim of attaining knowledge and conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel.

    In the Abramelin operation, contact with the Holy Guardian Angel is not the final step. Following this, the operator is required to evoke various unredeemed spirits and compel their obedience, not by personal force but by the authority of the Angel. This act is presented as a necessary integration of the work, establishing proper order among the human soul, the divine intermediary, and the lower spiritual forces. Only after this submission is achieved can the operation be considered complete, at which point the practitioner is said to have secured a stable condition of spiritual governance intended to guide their conduct and magical practice for the remainder of their life.

    The redoubtable magus Aleister Crowley attempted the Abramelin ritual. He began his preparations in London and then decided to continue the process in Scotland. He purchased Boleskine House on the shores of Loch Ness for this very purpose. Whether or not he eventually succeeded in attaining the knowledge and conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel using a different approach later on, he abandoned this particular Abramelin operation partway through. And this was someone who was wealthy and, by all accounts, fully dedicated to the Work of being a ritual magician. So, despite his faults, if anyone were likely to complete the Abramelin process, it would be him. Yet, he did not manage to pull it off, at least in this attempt.

    So, I apologise to Abramelin enthusiasts if I sound facetious. I genuinely respect and admire those who have followed this method as closely as possible in its traditional form. My point is that the further we move from the 15th century, the more challenging it becomes to follow the Abramelin procedure in a purely traditional way. While it is not impossible, and some have done so and continue to teach others, it may not be the right path for everyone seeking to establish a lasting connection with their Holy Guardian Angel.

    So what remains? Some aspects of the Abramelin method may be genuinely useful, while others are likely to create unnecessary difficulties for many people. Most practitioners must still contend with ordinary obligations. We may have families, caring responsibilities, and the need to work in order to support ourselves. Although the author of The Book of Abramelin reports undertaking the operation during the first year of marriage, and notes that his first child was born early in the process, he also appears to have had servants, independent means, and the capacity to set aside business and social duties for an extended period. For most people, this level of material and social support is simply not available. The apparent alternative is radical withdrawal: a life of near-total simplicity, isolation, and renunciation. Yet this brings its own complications. Anyone who has undertaken even a short meditation retreat will know how quickly physical discomfort and practical concerns can dominate attention when basic needs are not adequately met. Romantic images of living in the woods or subsisting close to nature tend to overlook the skills, resilience, and preparation such a life requires. Without these, the demands of survival are likely to overwhelm the very contemplative focus the retreat is intended to cultivate.

    There are, of course, other ways of approaching the Holy Guardian Angel which can be fitted more easily into ordinary life, and these may be more suitable for some people. The Abramelin method is important, and there is much that can be learned from it, but perhaps it is best seen as the climbing-Everest version of a much wider tradition. It takes one particular approach to an extreme, demanding an extraordinary level of time, solitude and dedication. That doesn’t make the other approaches less valid, and for most people there may be more practical ways of developing the same kind of relationship while still having to live an ordinary life.

    For a deeper exploration of this subject, see the video below:

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  • Where Does ‘Magical Power’ Come From?

    By Duncan Fleming

    One abiding idea in esoteric tradition is that initiates can draw on secret or hidden sources of power, making them more powerful than ordinary people. Sometimes these sources of power are ancient and atavistic, sometimes they are from unknown realms, and sometimes they are drawn directly from spirits.

    It’s an appealing idea, but it warrants some investigation. Sometimes it can be romantic and fanciful. Whilst there are branches of magic concerned with drawing power from demonic entities, this is, at least in some of the more developed traditions, less about making pacts with demons than about bringing them under a higher spiritual authority. In the Book of Abramelin, for example, after establishing knowledge and conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel, the magician is instructed to summon and bring various unredeemed spirits to heel. The text is quite explicit that these unredeemed spirits are to serve under divine authority, rather than being treated as authorities or sources of power in themselves. Except in the grimmest of grimoires, you don’t just form pacts with them. That would be like taking out a payday loan with a dodgy company, and it would come back to bite you very quickly. Although I have been in a room with Goetic magicians who say they have done this, their accounts sound too cosy, too much like encounters with friendly familiar spirits, to me, to link what they are doing with the older grimoire accounts. Whatever they are in touch with, it doesn’t really seem like the same thing.

    As I understand it, all power ultimately comes from the Nothingness at the centre of the Crown of Unity, and this is where we all draw our spiritual sustenance. An influential Kabbalistic book, “Sha’arei Orah” (“Gates of Light”), written by Joseph Gikatilla in the late 13th century, describes the Spheres of the Tree of Life as palaces filled with treasures, freely accessible to those with good intentions who know where to look. It explains that the Divine is open to everyone and that ever-flowing blessings and favour fall like manna for the righteous. But just as we need to plug our electrical devices into sockets where the power has been stepped down through substations, rather than plugging straight into the National Grid, we also need to draw our spiritual sustenance through vessels, recognising they are tributaries from the original source of Power. We can, for practical purposes, make use of naturally occurring but invisible forces and the beings associated with them.

    Gikatilla, Joseph ben Abraham. Portae Lucis: Hec est porta Tetragrammaton iusti intrabunt per eam. Translated from Hebrew by Paulus Ricius. Augsburg: Johann Miller, 1516. Title-page woodcut.

     

    Gikatilla, Joseph ben Abraham. Portae Lucis: Hec est porta Tetragrammaton iusti intrabunt per eam. Translated from Hebrew by Paulus Ricius. Augsburg: Johann Miller, 1516. Title-page woodcut.

    By way of an analogy, if a law-abiding citizen living in Britain wanted help after being the victim of a crime, they wouldn’t usually ask the King directly. They would ask the police, who represent the authority of the Crown. In the same way, in most magical traditions, some of the technical knowledge concerns understanding how the hierarchical system operates and knowing at what level and with which entities to interact to get things done.

    And, of course, in different traditions, the hierarchy tends to mirror the worldly hierarchy of the society from which the magical tradition arises. If you have to bribe officials in the material world, you might need to do the same on the inner planes. So there is also a requirement not to become corrupted by dealing with power and its agents.

    The seventh of the “Ten Commandments”, as given in the Book of Exodus, chapter 20, prohibits adultery. In Kabbalah, this commandment is usually associated with the seventh Sephirah on the Tree of Life, Netzach, meaning Victory.

    Whilst adultery is typically understood as having sex with someone other than the person you are married to, the principle could be extended to betraying any kind of committed relationship, including deep friendships, or any kind of committed monogamous or ethical non-monogamous sexual relationship. Relationships are our lifeline. When we distort the flow of connection with other people, we distort our participation in life itself.

    In this sense, it may be useful to think of adultery as adulteration: polluting or distorting the waters of life. The Sphere of Victory is linked in humans to our emotions, feelings, and desires. When they flow healthily, they sustain our commitment to relationships and nourish our bonds with others. When they become polluted or adulterated, they turn corrosive, poisoning the waters of life and destroying our relationships.

    At a deeper level, Victory is linked to the experience of everlastingness and endurance. When we connect with this Sphere, we encounter a current that is always flowing. It may flow in different directions, but it remains constant in essence. It endures longer than any passing impulse of desire or fear. It is the great ocean of Life that connects us to every other living creature.

    There is also a highly developed set of theories within the Western Esoteric Tradition about how thought forms are generated and acquire a kind of independent existence on the inner planes. They acquire a lasting resonance that can affect the environment of the people who create them, wittingly or unwittingly.

    These thought forms can range from simple shapes to complex entities. Because we have a limitless capacity to conjure images, thought and emotion act upon subtle matter, shaping forms animated by elemental essence. These semi-conscious beings are associated with the qualities of the four classical elements of Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. They could be thought of like hermit crabs inhabiting empty shells. The thought form provides the structure, and the elemental essence inhabits it.

     

    Diagram from First Principles of Theosophy by C. Jinarajadasa, 1944. “In the diagram, the black signs represent pains, griefs and worries respectively, and the white symbolise ideals, inspirations, joys and comforts”

    From this perspective, our desires and preoccupations are not inconsequential. They make thought forms, which can persist and become revivified by their host, thereby affecting the astral environment and, subsequently, events in the physical world. This is like the Kabbalistic idea that our thoughts create hosts of good and bad angels.

    There are also, in the Tradition, entities that operate parasitically or deceptively, usually by offering access, at a cost, to what is already freely available from a purer source, in order to draw energy through themselves and thereby sustain their own existence, unless they too are caught up in a similar chain of corruption. Such practice is both polluted and polluting, like drinking from puddles when a fountain of pure spring water is freely available.

    There is a saying that if a service is free, you are the product. This is as true in magic as in the marketplace.

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  • Making Magical Tapestries

    Duncan Fleming

    When I was young, I encountered the familiar image of the Tree of Life in my studies. I felt a sudden, intense sense of recognition, experienced strange tunnel vision, and fell in love with it at first sight. To better understand the Tree of Life, I wove a multicoloured tapestry that took months to complete, and it still hangs on my wall. With each stitch, I thought more about this tree and its ten Spheres. I still gaze at this image, and it always reveals more. A symbol is not just a sign that points to something else — it embodies and channels the reality it represents.

    Tapestry of the Tree of Life by Duncan Fleming

     

    To begin making the tapestry, I set out the basic Tree of Life diagram on graph paper, with each square representing a single stitch. Although the design was, to an extent, pixelated, the organic fuzziness of the woollen yarn softened the edges, and some of the blockiness was overcome.

    I used the colours commonly accepted as the main colours for the Spheres of the Tree of Life. Colours possess inherent qualities and occult correspondences. In the Tradition, each Sphere on the Tree of Life is associated with specific colours that, when used intentionally in ritual or meditation, powerfully evoke the qualities of that Sphere. Each of the Four Worlds: Emanation, Creation, Formation, and Action, has its own set of colour associations for the ten Spheres. However, in most practical work, the colours attributed to the World of Creation, the archetypal realm of ‘Briah’, are usually employed.

    With ongoing use, these colour associations can come to feel instinctively obvious, to the point that it is easy to forget they are symbolic conventions rather than universal truths. It might seem natural that Loving-Kindness is blue and Strength is red, but colour perception is cultural. In some ancient texts, colours that we now clearly distinguish, such as blue and green, appear to have been grouped under a single term. This makes it difficult to retroactively apply our own categories to earlier or different times, as if they shared a universal meaning.

    The only liberties I took with the ‘Briah’ colours were to replace Yellow with Gold, as I happened to find some pleasing golden wool, and to simplify the colours assigned to the Sphere of Malkuth, or Kingdom, at the base of the Tree of Life. These are usually given as four colours, representing the four elements. Citrine, a yellowish-green shade representing Air. Olive, a dark greenish-brown shade representing Water. Russet, a reddish-brown, rusty shade representing the element of Fire; and Black, representing the element of Earth. I simplified this to a single earthy Brown colour.

    For the background, I chose shades of green in a simple repeating pattern that echoed the spheres and paths of the Tree of Life, while also recalling old tapestries, somehow geometric yet organic. I recall it took me a long time to get this right, and until I started to see the pattern emerge in real stitches, I was still unsure whether it would work.

    I should add that I did this in my late teens, and making tapestries is not an activity typically associated with teenagers, certainly not male teenagers. But I was enjoying newfound sobriety, getting into ritual and meditation, and didn’t have much money at the time. My partner, who was generally accepting of my eccentricities, found it odd. Although it was, in some ways, a sustained meditation, I would listen to music or keep company while doing this – it was not a totally isolating activity. However, I couldn’t watch TV or films at the same time. I discovered I needed to pay close attention to hand-eye coordination and to what was essentially making a digital copy of a diagram of ‘bits’, but with organic stitches. I was performing the role of a colour printer, in slow motion.

    I did, of course, also make a few mistakes along the way, which required tedious unpicking. The biggest mistake, which you can see if you look closely, is that I didn’t get enough wool in one go for the whole of the green background. And when I ran out and went to get some more, it was impossible to get exactly the right shade, just a very close match – so this is slightly visible.

    I was heartened years later to learn of what may be an urban myth – according to folklore, traditional hand-quilters intentionally sewed a ‘humility block’ upside down or deliberately used a mismatched fabric colour to avoid showing pride in perfection. Similar legends exist in other crafts, such as the ‘spirit bead’ in some Native American beadwork or deliberate flaws in Persian rugs. This may be nonsense, but it is comforting – although, of course, my mistake was not deliberate.

    Many years later, in fact when I reached the age of fifty, it felt like time to create another tapestry. Again, I spent a long time working on the design. I went through many variations. In the end, I made a very simple design, a yellow knotted Seal of Solomon inside a circle, with a violet iris-coloured eye in the centre. Again, for the background I used a similar organic green repeating geometric pattern. Initially, I wanted to have the four holy living creatures rendered around the circle, but every attempt I made to render them in simple stitches looked too simple and blocky – like 8-bit video game sprites – I really did try, though.

     

    What struck me about doing a big tapestry for a second time was how long it takes. It was, after all, made with at least ten thousand individual stitches. When I did the first tapestry, I felt like I had all the time in the world – the only thing I had to do was turn in the occasional essay and attend lectures and seminars. At the age of fifty, I was right in the middle of life, with a demanding day job, a family, friends to see, things to do, places to be. It made me slow down and luxuriate in the process, rather than race to the finish. I am pleased with the final result. It hangs in the corridor of our house, so it’s the first thing people see when they visit. It is a kind of shield and a standard. Maybe I’ll make another one, the last tapestry, in another 30 years or so, if I am still alive and my fingers and brain work well enough

    completed Seal of Solomon tapestry by Duncan Fleming

     

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  • The Palm Tree of Deborah

    By Duncan Fleming

    The Palm Tree of Deborah, written in the mid-sixteenth century, is a short book by the Kabbalah teacher Moses Cordovero. He was a prolific writer, and his massive treatise on Kabbalah, Pardes Rimonim, or The Orchard of Pomegranates, runs to several volumes in the English edition I have (Providence University). As far as I am aware, publication of this particular translation was never completed. I have four volumes of it, comprising parts 1-12, which are still very interesting, and I have made copious notes.

    My edition of The Palm Tree of Deborah was translated from the Hebrew, with an introduction and notes, by Louis Jacobs, and was first published by Vallentine, Mitchell and Co. in 1960. Cordovero clearly liked tree and fruit names for his books. In some ways, it is a very fresh and clear book. In others, it is very alien.

    At the beginning, there is an analysis of the secret qualities of the human body. Various parts are godlike and embody a positive attribute. Like the Zohar, which presents anthropomorphic parts of God, including the beard and nostrils, each of which holds a particular quality, the body forms a functional, organic whole in which all the parts work together, like the Tree of Life. In The Palm Tree of Deborah, this is mirrored in the microcosm of the human body. By recognising these qualities in our own bodies, assuming, of course, that the body in question is male, we encounter the principle of ‘as above, so below’. Cordovero is good at systematising and clearly setting out what is implicit in the Zohar.

    The main part of the book systematically examines how a person can cultivate the positive qualities of the ten Sephirot of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. All these sections are framed around the question: How should a person train themselves to acquire the qualities of a particular Sephirah?

    To connect with Keter, the Crown, one must cultivate humility and overcome pride. Cordovero’s three balms against pride come remarkably close to self-hatred: self-abasement, disgust at one’s eating and excrement, and learning to welcome harsh criticism from others. This is tough. There is a tendency in traditional Kabbalah, as in many mystical traditions, towards a love-hate relationship with one’s own creaturehood. On the one hand, the body was made by God, so it should be sanctified. On the other, it has repellent inclinations that need to be whipped into shape. The body, the mind, and the general inclination of human nature are not considered acceptable in themselves. They need to be sanctified and corrected. This is more than sin in the sense of getting things wrong and making mistakes. It is a suspicion that our basic nature is inherently corrupt.

    In the later Western esoteric tradition, obedience and humility are presented as virtues of Chesed, or Loving Kindness, as antidotes to the vices of excess – Bigotry, Gluttony, Hypocrisy, and Tyranny. However, this attribution also makes sense in the context of overcoming self-pride arising from identification with the middle pillar.

    For Cordovero, the positive attributes of Chokhmah, or Wisdom, are acquired through appreciation of all created things. Even animals to be slaughtered for food deserve a clean blade and an easy death. There is no repugnant animal. Coming immediately after the section on self-abasement, this is jarring.

    Binah, or Understanding, is acquired through repentance. Binah sanctifies judgement, elevating it beyond simple retribution. When we mend our ways, punishment is mitigated and removed. This is the secret of the Jubilee, when debts are written off, and of the fiftieth gate.

    ‘Do not think there is no hope for you because you belong to the evil side. This is false. Behold, if you do well you can root yourself in the secret of Repentance, removing yourself to that place, according to the secret of the good that is rooted there. For the root of every Supernal bitterness is sweet and he could have entered by way of the root to become good.’ (p. 88)

    For Cordovero, we are to acquire the quality of Chesed, or Lovingkindness, through an attitude of service and acts of benevolence. This is straightforward.

    Cordovero says that to connect with the positive attributes of Gevurah, or Strength, the evil inclination must not be excited. It should be bound and tied down so that it is not incited to any bodily act. However, a man is allowed to have a nice house and nice things for his wife’s sake, provided they are not for his own gratification but to adorn the Shekhinah.

    The quality of Tiferet, or Beauty, is found in the study of the Torah, but one must be careful not to become proud because of the Torah’s words. If a teacher proudly exalts himself over his pupils, Beauty raises itself above Netzach and Hod (Victory and Glory), since they are the pupils of Beauty. If the teacher is kindly disposed towards them, blessings can flow from Beauty into these two Sephirot.

    I take this to mean that Tiferet can bring harmony and balance to the emotions and intellect. It is the opposite of an aloof sense of being a pure soul, somehow above ordinary human qualities. It overcomes the schism created by spiritual pride. Rather than trying to remove itself from these apparently lower inclinations, the soul meets them on their own level and becomes a teacher to them.

    Cordovero goes on to say that the same applies to feeling superior to a beggar, which causes Beauty to raise itself above Foundation and prevents its influence from flowing into Foundation. Finally, raising oneself above others because of one’s knowledge of the Torah cuts Beauty off from Malkut, or Kingdom. A person should instead be pleasantly disposed towards all creatures and behave civilly towards them. If he calls them asses, he brings them down into the shells, the Klippot.

    Netzach, Hod, and Yesod (Victory, Glory and Foundation) are treated together in The Palm Tree of Deborah. A person should provide sustenance, teaching, and material help to students of the Torah. They should not disparage or weaken them, but give them aid and support. They should also be prepared to learn from everyone and everything. The Torah cannot be learned from a single teacher alone. Be a pupil of all.

    In the context of connecting with the positive attributes of Yesod, or Foundation, one must also guard against thoughts that lead to sin and avoid speaking obscenely. This passage emphasises sexual chastity, including the instruction that a man should not have an erection unless it is for sex with his wife in a sanctified setting. The utmost care must be taken to guard against sexual imaginings. Interestingly, a symbolic name for Foundation is given as ‘Peace’, I suspect in the sense of freedom from turmoil and anguish, by trusting in the sustenance of the Foundation, rather than from any illusion of security.

    To acquire the quality of Malkhut, or Kingdom, Cordovero says a person should behave constantly as a beggar standing before the Creator in supplication. They should consider none of their possessions truly their own and regard themselves as exiled because the Shekhinah (Holy Presence) is exiled. They should deliberately separate themselves from house and home, undergo privations, fear the Great King, and behave in such a way that the Shekhinah cleaves to them. In fact, Cordovero and his group, as we understand it, would go on devotional sojourns away from their families and routinely dress in white and travel together to welcome in the Shekhinah on the Sabbath evening.

    And so – there is some very useful content in The Palm Tree of Deborah. Cordovero presents a traditional theurgic approach: by emulating the positive qualities of the Divine, we can cleave to and draw closer to the Divine. For me, the most useful and resonant aspect is his method of connecting with the Sephirot of the Supernal Triad – Crown, Wisdom and Understanding – because these are often treated as purely metaphysical properties in the Western esoteric tradition, with less emphasis on how we can connect with them, since they are beyond ordinary human Knowledge (Da’at). At the same time, the very intimacy of Cordovero’s advice highlights the stark contrast between his worldview and our modern attitude towards the body and creaturehood. His attitude can seem body-hating and troubling from a modern perspective, whereas, for all our sins, we tend to have a greater acceptance of our bodily nature and are less disgusted by our physicality. There is much here to think about, and I recommend reading The Palm Tree of Deborah if you come across a copy.

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  • On making incense

    By Duncan Fleming

    Beyond luxuriating in pleasant fragrances, certain aromatic resins, herbs, oils, and other ingredients are traditionally associated with aspects of the Divine. Incense burned on charcoal can purify space, evoke particular energies, and improve focus during ritual. Our sense of smell evokes deep memories and can more readily bring us back to a previous state of consciousness, especially when the same scents are used repeatedly in a particular context.

    Good Sephirotic incense blends are hard to find. Trevor Jones made excellent incense, sold in Glastonbury, and Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Leeds also produced interesting Sephirotic blends – perhaps they still do. Towards the end of the twentieth century, I was advised to write to the reclusive Margaret Bruce, who had largely retired but was still supplying her remarkable incense by post to existing customers. I bought several of her ‘Qabalah’ blends, which I used for many years in personal practice and group work. (See The Magick and Mystery of Maurice/Margaret Bruce by for a fantastic account of her life and work.)

    Margaret Bruce ‘Qabalah’ incense

    What is remarkable is that these incense blends retained both their fragrance and their potency for decades. Margaret Bruce extolled the virtue of leaving her incense to steep for several years, on the basis that incense blends, like whisky or wine, improved with age. Sadly, when she died, her recipes appear to have been lost to the mists of time. I have concluded, with independent advice, that her blends were exceptionally complex and could not be reproduced in practice.

    Like the ashes of the Red Heifer, once they are gone, they are gone forever. So the only thing to do was start again from first principles. In much the same way that it is usually better to make your own magical tools, even if they are not as slick or professionally finished as something bought off the shelf, they benefit from having been crafted by you. The process of making them is a magical act of will in itself, and I think the same is true of incense.

    Crafting your own incense for ritual use does require careful observation, patience, and plenty of trial and error. It is as much a practical craft as a symbolic one, and understanding how aromatic materials behave in real-world conditions is essential to using them effectively.

    A word of warning about traditional correspondences. Biblical, Agrippa, and Crowley’s 777, etc., all provide useful hints, but they shouldn’t always be taken as definitive recipes. Sometimes the exact botanical or animal product referred to is uncertain. Sometimes it may no longer exist, or only a particular plant strain produces the aromatic extract originally intended.

    Take Dittany of Crete, for example, traditionally associated with the Sephirah Malkuth. It is an aromatic herb, but when burned it just smells like a bonfire. It’s pretty much unusable in incense, except in the tiniest pinch, simply out of respect for the correspondence. It does, though, produce a great deal of thick smoke, and there may be some association with making spirits visible in the rising plumes. Personally, I think that connection is tenuous, as there are other, much better-smelling substances that produce just as much smoke.

    More Dittany of Crete than I will ever need

    When I first started making incense, I accumulated quite a collection of books. They were a useful starting point, but I would take many of the published recipes for Sephirotic incense with a huge pinch of salt. Some books contain hundreds of formulas, and one has to wonder whether the author has really spent time testing each one. It is all too easy to throw together an incense by following correspondences that make sense on paper, but does it actually smell good? I have tried some that were theoretically right but, in practice, were really horrible.

    There’s also a temptation to think that the rarer and more exotic the ingredients, the more profound the result will be, which I don’t think is true. Every ingredient has a cost, not just financial. Frankincense, myrrh, and other resins are the dried tears of wounded trees, sometimes sourced from war-torn regions. The quality of ingredients varies enormously, though there can be a certain amount of snobbery, as though only one impossibly rare variety will do. It is also worth remembering that some aromatic substances simply do not agree with everyone. Not necessarily because of full allergies, but because of unusual physical reactions. They might make some people sneeze or make their eyes sore. That is not what we want during group work.

    Some traditional incenses also use animal products such as ambergris, produced by sperm whales, and musk. I once accidentally bought a small amount of castoreum for a recipe before discovering it comes from beavers’ scent glands. It is certainly very pungent and adds a persistent animal note to a blend, but I won’t be buying it again.

    Asafoetida is another interesting ingredient. On its own, it smells repugnant, but in tiny quantities it seems to work like MSG in cooking, adding a punch that brings out the other ingredients. Traditionally, it is associated with dispelling unwanted or unredeemed spirits, and you can tell why when you use too much.

    Finding ingredients is so much easier now than when I first began, thanks to internet shopping, although there is still no substitute for buying them in person if you can. Being able to see and smell the raw materials before buying them tells you a great deal. My favourite place remains Star Child in Glastonbury, which consistently stocks good-quality raw ingredients. I have used their individual ingredients for years, although I have much less experience with their pre-mixed incense blends.

    I’m particularly interested in Sephirotic incense, since Kabbalah is central to my working tradition. They are not exactly the same as the planetary correspondences associated with the Sephiroth, although there is some overlap. I have been working towards creating a set of Sephirotic incense recipes, and this is what I have learned.

    The aromatic gum forms the foundation. Essential oils, herbs, spices, or seeds may be included, but the main body of the incense will usually consist of one of the principal resins: frankincense, myrrh, opoponax, and so on. In practice, there is often surprisingly little essential oil or herb in the finished blend.

    Incense blend

    Like a liquid perfume, blended incense benefits from having top, middle, and base notes. The brighter top notes usually come from essential oils, but they also disappear first when heated. As a general rule, the longer a blend is left to mature, the more thoroughly the oils combine with the other ingredients and the more gradually they are released, rather than simply burning off in the first few seconds. You can also, to some extent, control how quickly the incense burns by adjusting the size of the resin pieces and degree of grinding for other ingredients. Crushing them more finely with a pestle and mortar increases the combustible surface area and alters both how the fragrance develops and how quickly it burns.

    Whenever I make a new blend, I prepare very small test batches, no more than a teaspoon in total, and burn them on a single charcoal disc. I take notes, adjust the proportions, and try again. It sometimes takes half a dozen attempts, or more, before I arrive at something practical, pleasing, and genuinely evocative of the Sphere it is intended to represent.

    There is also the more complex question of how the individual Sephirotic incenses work when combined together. Ideally, they should harmonise when used in pairs or triads. I want them to chime together like different instruments in a piece of music, complementing rather than competing with one another. No single fragrance should dominate the others.

    I am by no means an expert. I can only share what basic practical experience has taught me. Use your hands and your nose, and experiment – a lot. Trust your senses and your intuition. Keep a notebook and fill it with observations, however strange they may seem. Record what ingredients smell like when they burn, because this is often very different from how they smell at room temperature. Sometimes the most wonderfully fragrant materials become acrid on charcoal, while ingredients that hardly smell at all before burning become quite extraordinary. Adapt and keep refining. Incense making is much more an art than a science. Use your incense as often as you can in ritual. It will gradually become associated with particular states of consciousness, and years later a familiar fragrance can transport you straight back to where you were before.

  • Dr. John Dee’s Actions with Spirits

    How I dislike that title. It relegates the principal author of the spirit actions – I mean of course Edward Kelly – to the role of a ventriloquist’s dummy.

    I am in the middle of one of my periodic reviews of Dee and Kelly. I do this every decade or so. The two principal subjects (plus the revolving cast of spirits) become more and more interesting with the passage of time … as I bring a wizened experience, failing memory, and robust common sense to bear on the raw matter. Expect more posts.

    The raw matter is spread across various manuscripts in the Sloane Collection of the British Library, and the Cotton manuscripts in the British Museum. It is tempting to seek access the originals, but Dee’s handwriting was famously crabbed, and they have been exhaustively studied by people like Christopher Whitby, Meric Causabon, Donald Tyson, Joseph Peterson, Deborah Harkness, Aaron Leitch, and a host of others who will probably not forgive me for not including them in this list. There is an abundance of quality secondary material to work with.

    There are two principal sources. The largest was compiled by Meric Casaubon and published in 1659 as A True and Faithful Relation … I am fortunate to own a facsimile copy. It is available online in several forms, but I would recommend the original at archive.org:

    https://archive.org/details/truefaithfulrela00deej/mode/2up

    The second portion was relatively unknown for many centuries. This was the portion rescued and copied by Elias Ashmole after adventures involving a secret compartment and pies – proper Enid Blyton stuff. There are two important transcriptions by Christopher Whitby and Joseph Peterson. I was curious to know about the differences and asked Gemini:

    Yes, the transcription of Dr. John Dee’s angelic diaries edited by Joseph Peterson (published as Mysteriorum Libri Quinque / John Dee’s Five Books of Mystery) heavily overlaps with the transcription published by Christopher Whitby in his work John Dee’s Actions with Spirits: 22 December 1581 to 23 May 1583.

    Source Material Overlap

    • The Same Manuscript: Both Peterson and Whitby based their transcriptions directly on the same primary source document: British Library, MS Sloane 3188, which contains Dee’s original handwritten records of his spiritual conferences and angelic scrying sessions with Edward Kelley and Barnabas Saul.
    • Chronological Scope: Both works cover the crucial early period of Dee’s angelic workings from December 22, 1581, to May 23, 1583, capturing the foundational material for what is modernly known as Enochian magic.

    Differences in Presentation and Focus

    Joseph Peterson’s Edition: First published in 2003 (and expanded later), Peterson’s edition aims to make the material accessible as a practical and historical sourcebook, building upon earlier independent transcriptions (such as Adam McLean’s 1985 formatting of Peterson’s work) while incorporating fresh translations of Latin passages, footnotes, and annotations.

    Christopher Whitby’s Edition: Originally a 1981 PhD thesis and published in two volumes in 1988, Whitby’s work provides a comprehensive, literal academic transcription of the entire Sloane MS 3188 manuscript alongside extensive historical and textual commentary.

    A copy of Whitby’s original thesis can be found online. Peterson’s Misteriorum Liber Quinque is currently available on archive.org.

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  • The High Priestess

    I was going through some files and discovered this image I made last year (for no particular reason). No, it isn’t AI. I use 3D modelling and physically-based rendering, so it is a kind of virtual photography.

    In the past I have attempted to use AI for images. It works when you want a stereotype image or you aren’t too fussy about the details. Ask it to make an image where it has very few patterns or templates to draw upon and it will produce an image where some parts are polished and other parts are incoherent. I wanted an image of Clotho spinning beneath the Moon (another traditional image found in Tarot) and ChatGPT clearly knew nothing about spinning. The biggest brain in the galaxy didn’t know how to spin a thread. I gave up. (Nice drapes though).

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