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But neither by the natural use of His abilities, though they have made Him famous through the whole world,
nor by the utmost might of his Magick, is He able to acquire material wealth beyond the minimum necessary
to keep Him alive and at work. It is in vain that He protests that not He but the Work is in need of money; He
is barred by the strict letter of His Oath to give all that He hath for His magical Attainment.
Yet more awful is the doom that He hath invoked upon Himself in renouncing His right as a man to enjoy the
Love of those whom He loves with passion so selfless, so pure, and so intense in return for the power so to love
Mankind that He be chosen to utter the Word of the Aeon for their sake, His reward universal abhorrence,
bodily torment, mental despair, and moral paralysis.
Yet He, who hath power over Death, with breath to call back health, with a touch to beckon life, He must
watch His own child waste away month by month, aware that His Art may not anywise avail, who hath sold
the signet ring of his personal profit to buy him a plain gold band for the felon finger of his bride, that worn
widow, the World!
CHAPTER XV
I
OF THE INVOCATION
In the straightforward or Protestant system of Magick there is very little to add to what has already been
said. The Magician addresses a direct petition to the Being invoked. But the secret of success in invocation has
not hitherto been disclosed. It is an exceedingly simple one. It is practically of no importance whatever that
the invocation should be right . There are a thousand different ways of compassing the end proposed, so far
as external things are concerned. The whole secret may be summarised in these four words: Enflame thyself
in praying.
This is Qabalistically expressed in the old Formula: Domine noster, audi tuo servo! kyrie Christe! O Christe!
The mind must be exalted until it loses consciousness of self. The Magician must be carried forward blindly by
a force which, though in him and of him, is by no means that which he in his normal state of consciousness
calls I. Just as the poet, the lover, the artist, is carried out of himself in a creative frenzy, so must it be for the
Magician.
It is impossible to lay down rules for the obtaining of this special stimulus. To one the mystery of the whole
ceremony may appeal; another may be moved by the strangeness of the words, even by the fact that the
barbarous names are unintelligible to him. Some times in the course of a ceremony the true meaning of
some barbarous name that has hitherto baffled his analysis may flash upon him, luminous and splendid, so that
he is caught up unto orgasm. The smell of a particular incense may excite him effectively, or perhaps the
physical ecstasy of the magick dance.
Every Magician must compose his ceremony in such a manner as to produce a dramatic cilmax. At the
moment when the excitement becomes ungovernable, when then the whole conscious being of the Magician
undergoes a spiritual spasm, at that moment must he utter the supreme adjuration.
One very effective method is to stop short, by a supreme effort of will, again and again, on the very brink of
that spasm, until a time arrives when the idea of exercising that will fails to occur
This forgetfulness must be complete; it is fatal to try to let oneself go consciously.
. Inhibition is no longer possible or even thinkable, and the whole being of the Magician, no minutest atom
saying nay, is irresistibly flung forth. In blinding light, amid the roar of ten thousand thunders, the Union of
God and man is consummated.
If the Magician is still seen standing in the Circle, quietly pursuing his invocations, it is that all the conscious
part of him has become detached from the true ego which lies behind that normal consciousness. But the
circle is wholly filled with that divine essence; all else is but an accident and an illusion.
The subsequent invocations, the gradual development and materialization of the force, require no effort. It is
one great mistake of the beginner to concentrate his force upon the actual stated purpose of the ceremony.
This mistake is the most frequent cause of failures in invocation.
A corollary of this Theorem is that the Magician soon discards evocation almost altogether only rare
circumstances demand any action what ever on the material plane. The Magician devotes himself entirely to
the invocation of a god; and as soon as his balance approaches perfection he ceases to invoke any partial god;
only that god vertically above him is in his path. And so a man who perhaps took up Magick merely with the
idea of acquiring knowledge, love, or wealth, finds himself irrevocably committed to the performance of The
Great Work.
It will now be apparent that there is no distinction between magick and meditation except of the most
arbitrary and accidental kind.
There is the general metaphysical antithesis that Magick is the Art of the Will-to-Live, Mysticism of the Will-to-
Die; but Truth comes bubbling to my brim; Life and Death are one to Him! .
II
Beside these open methods thee are also a number of mental methods of Invocation, of which we may give
three.
The first method concerns the so-called astral body. The Magician should practise the formation of this body
as recommended in Liber O, and learn to rise on the planes according to the instruction given in the same
book, though limiting his rising to the particular symbol whose God he wishes to invoke.
The second is to recite a mantra suitable to the God.
The third is the assumption of the form of the God by transmuting the astral body into His shape. This last
method is really essential to all proper invocation, and cannot be too sedulously practised.
There are many other devices to aid invocation, so many that it is impossible to enumerate them; and the
Magician will be wise to busy himself in inventing new ones.
We will give one example.
Suppose the Supreme Invocation to consist of 20 to 30 barbarous names, let him imagine these names to
occupy sections of a vertical column, each double the length of the preceding one; and let him imagine that
his consciousness ascends the column with each name. The mere multiplication will then produce a feeling of
awe and bewilderment which is the proper forerunner of exstasy.
In the essay Energized Enthusiasm in No. IX, Vol. I of the Equinox
The earliest and truest Christians used what is in all essentials this method. See Fragments of a Faith Forgotten
by G.R.S.Mead, Esq. B. A., pp. 80-81.
There is a real connexion between what the vulgar call blasphemy and what they call immorality, in the fact that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl exclamation.htw.pl
But neither by the natural use of His abilities, though they have made Him famous through the whole world,
nor by the utmost might of his Magick, is He able to acquire material wealth beyond the minimum necessary
to keep Him alive and at work. It is in vain that He protests that not He but the Work is in need of money; He
is barred by the strict letter of His Oath to give all that He hath for His magical Attainment.
Yet more awful is the doom that He hath invoked upon Himself in renouncing His right as a man to enjoy the
Love of those whom He loves with passion so selfless, so pure, and so intense in return for the power so to love
Mankind that He be chosen to utter the Word of the Aeon for their sake, His reward universal abhorrence,
bodily torment, mental despair, and moral paralysis.
Yet He, who hath power over Death, with breath to call back health, with a touch to beckon life, He must
watch His own child waste away month by month, aware that His Art may not anywise avail, who hath sold
the signet ring of his personal profit to buy him a plain gold band for the felon finger of his bride, that worn
widow, the World!
CHAPTER XV
I
OF THE INVOCATION
In the straightforward or Protestant system of Magick there is very little to add to what has already been
said. The Magician addresses a direct petition to the Being invoked. But the secret of success in invocation has
not hitherto been disclosed. It is an exceedingly simple one. It is practically of no importance whatever that
the invocation should be right . There are a thousand different ways of compassing the end proposed, so far
as external things are concerned. The whole secret may be summarised in these four words: Enflame thyself
in praying.
This is Qabalistically expressed in the old Formula: Domine noster, audi tuo servo! kyrie Christe! O Christe!
The mind must be exalted until it loses consciousness of self. The Magician must be carried forward blindly by
a force which, though in him and of him, is by no means that which he in his normal state of consciousness
calls I. Just as the poet, the lover, the artist, is carried out of himself in a creative frenzy, so must it be for the
Magician.
It is impossible to lay down rules for the obtaining of this special stimulus. To one the mystery of the whole
ceremony may appeal; another may be moved by the strangeness of the words, even by the fact that the
barbarous names are unintelligible to him. Some times in the course of a ceremony the true meaning of
some barbarous name that has hitherto baffled his analysis may flash upon him, luminous and splendid, so that
he is caught up unto orgasm. The smell of a particular incense may excite him effectively, or perhaps the
physical ecstasy of the magick dance.
Every Magician must compose his ceremony in such a manner as to produce a dramatic cilmax. At the
moment when the excitement becomes ungovernable, when then the whole conscious being of the Magician
undergoes a spiritual spasm, at that moment must he utter the supreme adjuration.
One very effective method is to stop short, by a supreme effort of will, again and again, on the very brink of
that spasm, until a time arrives when the idea of exercising that will fails to occur
This forgetfulness must be complete; it is fatal to try to let oneself go consciously.
. Inhibition is no longer possible or even thinkable, and the whole being of the Magician, no minutest atom
saying nay, is irresistibly flung forth. In blinding light, amid the roar of ten thousand thunders, the Union of
God and man is consummated.
If the Magician is still seen standing in the Circle, quietly pursuing his invocations, it is that all the conscious
part of him has become detached from the true ego which lies behind that normal consciousness. But the
circle is wholly filled with that divine essence; all else is but an accident and an illusion.
The subsequent invocations, the gradual development and materialization of the force, require no effort. It is
one great mistake of the beginner to concentrate his force upon the actual stated purpose of the ceremony.
This mistake is the most frequent cause of failures in invocation.
A corollary of this Theorem is that the Magician soon discards evocation almost altogether only rare
circumstances demand any action what ever on the material plane. The Magician devotes himself entirely to
the invocation of a god; and as soon as his balance approaches perfection he ceases to invoke any partial god;
only that god vertically above him is in his path. And so a man who perhaps took up Magick merely with the
idea of acquiring knowledge, love, or wealth, finds himself irrevocably committed to the performance of The
Great Work.
It will now be apparent that there is no distinction between magick and meditation except of the most
arbitrary and accidental kind.
There is the general metaphysical antithesis that Magick is the Art of the Will-to-Live, Mysticism of the Will-to-
Die; but Truth comes bubbling to my brim; Life and Death are one to Him! .
II
Beside these open methods thee are also a number of mental methods of Invocation, of which we may give
three.
The first method concerns the so-called astral body. The Magician should practise the formation of this body
as recommended in Liber O, and learn to rise on the planes according to the instruction given in the same
book, though limiting his rising to the particular symbol whose God he wishes to invoke.
The second is to recite a mantra suitable to the God.
The third is the assumption of the form of the God by transmuting the astral body into His shape. This last
method is really essential to all proper invocation, and cannot be too sedulously practised.
There are many other devices to aid invocation, so many that it is impossible to enumerate them; and the
Magician will be wise to busy himself in inventing new ones.
We will give one example.
Suppose the Supreme Invocation to consist of 20 to 30 barbarous names, let him imagine these names to
occupy sections of a vertical column, each double the length of the preceding one; and let him imagine that
his consciousness ascends the column with each name. The mere multiplication will then produce a feeling of
awe and bewilderment which is the proper forerunner of exstasy.
In the essay Energized Enthusiasm in No. IX, Vol. I of the Equinox
The earliest and truest Christians used what is in all essentials this method. See Fragments of a Faith Forgotten
by G.R.S.Mead, Esq. B. A., pp. 80-81.
There is a real connexion between what the vulgar call blasphemy and what they call immorality, in the fact that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]