The work on my forthcoming book (working title, presently: "Pagan Magic; Esoteric Spiritual Technique for Polytheists") continues, though not at the pace I might like. As a bit of proof-of-life I offer this chapter-section on developing a personal schedule of spiritual work.
The Order of
Work
• Development of the hidden powers within Pagan spiritual practice requires
diligent effort over an extended time. Of course some techniques can be tried
immediately, and simple worship and meditation begin their effects immediately.
More advanced techniques, like those of any discipline, require committed self-training
and applied effort. The magician is a spiritual artisan, the shrine is the
workshop, and magic is the product. Only practice, and learned skill carefully
applied, can move the student from apprenticeship to journeywork to mastery.
•
Many traditional polytheistic magical systems have been taught in controlled
circumstances. This was often a ‘school’ of students surrounding a master, in
which daily work and focus were maintained by a master-servant relationship. In
more ‘civilized’ Pagan places monasteries grew up in which occult students
could be supported in detailed temple ritual, long-term retreats and group
ceremony. In either case the student of magic participated in a formal regimen
of study and practice that led to both skill in spiritual arts and earned
recognition of skill.
•
One of the hallmarks of the medieval grimoire tradition of magic is its
insistence on the development of spiritual power through basic ‘religious’
rites. Daily prayers, purifications, attendance at rites and the receiving of
the church’s traditional blessings were all major sources of the magician’s
power. Many ritual tools are made with the aid of priestly rites.
It seems to me that it would not
have been different in Pagan days. Taking advantage of the spiritual power of
local temples, the blessings of the public sacrifices, etc. would have been a
basic part of the magician’s work. What can be difficult for modern
practitioners to understand, perhaps, is that in both the medieval grimoirist’s work and the Pagan sorcerer’s magic was
directly integrated into the religious work of their cultures. Certainly we
may call the former ‘heretical’, and some Hellenes would have said the same of
the latter, but both depended on the workings of their mainstream cults to
empower magic.
•
In our modern times, many Pagans seeking occult skills are simply unwilling to
resort to the rites and customs of the Roman Church. “High Church” occult
styles, such as the post-Masonic orders (three sash minimum…) are often bound
around with oaths of secrecy, and also sometimes modeled on monotheistic and
medieval theologies that deter Pagans. Public Pagan temple rites are difficult
to find (though no longer impossible). A solitary modern student of magic must,
essentially, devise and conduct their own personal temple, as well as a magic
school or monastery. The invocations, offerings, power-exercises and spells
that are part of the traditional arsenal of the Pagan magician must be derived
from books, digested in thoughtful analysis, arranged (whether written-out or
re-written) for practical performance, practiced until performance is competent
and, finally, set into a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly cycle of magical and
spiritual rites and practices. In short, the Pagan magician begins by
functioning as the priest of their own temple.
• The Daily
Sequence:
Common modern life will prevent many from devoting more than a maintenance
level of effort to daily offerings and works. If one chooses a simple morning
prayer or invocation, supported with a simple offering and short moment of meditation,
then that can be enough. It should be said that there can be a difference
between common daily work and more specific preparations for major magical
rites. The latter may be well-served by added invocations, offerings and
trances proper to the intention at hand.
A simple Daily Work routine might
include simple morning salute/offerings, Ancestor prayer and meal offering, and
bedtime prayer. Additional offerings for special principles could include
special daily offerings to a god or spirit one means to invoke, as well as
meditations or workings meant to reinforce the magician’s integrity and
spiritual power. As a magician’s work advances they will almost certainly find
themselves developing a personal ‘constellation’ of gods and spirits, unique to
their own altar. Making the proper offerings to these in the proper times will
become a part of daily work for many.
• Weekly or
Monthly Sequence: Regular
performance of more detailed ritual is valuable for the building of personal
magical power. This provides a chance to build ritual skills, work useful
spells for personal growth and gain and build relationship with the Gods and
Spirits.
Weekly work is a matter of personal
choice. Those who must keep their daily schedule short and simple (usually in
service of their work and family duties) may find a weekly hour (or day…) at
the shrine a useful way to develop their work. For those working with family a
weekly rite is a chance to involve the whole clan in one’s magic in a way that
will simply become the ‘way we do things’ to the kids, and build powerful
mental consensus in the mage. If family or those who are not actively training
for magic are involved such rites can be kept simple, with the mage quietly
working the Inner patterns to activate them for their goals.
Perhaps the most traditional clock
for timing monthly work is the moon. Certainly Neopagan methods have tended to
imitate the Wiccan pattern of meeting at the Full Moon – it is both the most
obvious of the moon’s phases and often the best night to be outdoors. World
polytheist systems have a variety of lore-sets about the moon’s phases and
stories. For now I will talk about how I have used the moon to time magical and
religious rites.
The moon’s magical power is
associated with its phase, and the amount of its light. The two primary phases
of the moon are the Waxing (from the first visible crescent until the end of
Full Moon) and the Waning (from the end of Full Moon through the Dark Moon
days). In European lore these are universally understood to affect life, work
and luck. The waxing moon stimulates growth and gain, while the waning moons
retards it. On a far-too-simple level these are sometimes perceived as ‘positive
and negative’ times, but this is so only in the most literal sense. Much good
can be done under the waning moon, to retard the growth of disease or reduce
the influence of an irritant.
Within the twenty-eight day turning
of the moon are several moments of traditional magical power. Workings that
hope to use the moons power to grow a result can choose the early phase of the
waxing moon, when one has many days of waxing power to draw on. The very first
visible crescent is good for this, but can be hard to spot. Druid tradition has
emphasized the ‘sixth night’ of the waxing moon – roughly the end of the first
quarter – as a night when the growth power of the waxing moon is both
well-established and still growing, making it a good time for many kinds of
magical working. Of course the full moon is the legendary height of magical
power. As the crest of the moon’s growth, it is a time when one wishes to grasp
and use the force of the wave’s top – to work for things that manifest
immediately. I think it is for this reason that the full moon is the time of
the Witch’s Sabbath – the summoning of gods and spirits is especially proper at
that time. The Full Moon’s power of manifestation makes it a fine time to invoke
and assemble the ‘constellation of worship’ of whatever is included in one’s
home cult, maintain one’s offerings, and receive their conversation and
blessing. This is essentially the ‘esbat’ of the witches.
Finally, many cultural systems
assign symbols or names to each of the
lunar months, and those can be of use in designing an annual ‘retreat’
of rituals with specific focuses.
Astrological symbols for the passages of the sun and moon can also provide
symbols on which to focus a sequence of rites. This can allow a set of cultural
symbols to be more completely expressed and understood, and provide a powerful
set of blessings.
Seasonal or
Annual Sequence:
I have already written about the traditional Year-cult, and its eight-fold
expression in Neopagan ways. Those working a specific ethnic reconstruction
will choose how to adapt the seasonal and calendrical rites of the past to
modern times. Such work is off-topic for this instruction in magic, and is yet
another instance in which I must recommend detailed additional reading. Learning
the lore of whatever cultural form you pursue can only deepen and clarify your
magic.
High Day rites (as we Druids have
come to call the larger annual ritual occasions) present an opportunity to
create and arrange ritual on a scale larger than home-shrine work. Attunement
of the personal spirit to the tides of the great wheel of seasons, the Gods and
Spirits who dance through them, and the Blessings conveyed by each are sources
of personal magical authority and respect among the spirits. Incidentally,
these notions apply whether one is working the Neopagan Eightfold Wheel, the
seasonal cycle of ancient Athens (so different from the Anglo-German north), or
the annual saints’-calendar of the Roman Church.
If one is able to present rites for
friends or community then elements of theater, development of performance
persona, etc can all be useful to practical magic. In a later chapter we will
discuss using occult techniques to strengthen the effects of public seasonal
rites, but the ritual skills developed for effective public ritual also
strengthen one’s personal magical authority and power.
All of this structure can be allowed to
develop organically inside a magician’s practice. For a certain sort of student
(such as myself) the tendency to begin by getting a blank book and pre-writing
the outline of such practices will be nearly irresistible. There is value in
that work (and a version of my own version of the work is provided here in the
Rituals section) but I advise you not to postpone beginning simple daily or
weekly work until you have everything ‘just right’. Your understanding will
grow with experimentation and work, and pre-writing may serve to constrain your
choices. It is inevitable that you will outgrow your first efforts, and some
students are hampered by a sense of loyalty to their own writing that restricts
experimentation. I might humbly suggest beginning with another’s printed
scripts and rites, such as those presented here. One need feel no special
loyalty to those when the time comes to change or abandon them.
In keeping with Celtic patterns of sacred number, the primary division of the
calendrical year is into two – the light half and the dark half, summer and
winter. These two great halves are ‘hinged’ upon the two great feast days of
Bealtainne and Samhain. Both of those days are thus spaces Between major
categories. Samhain is neither summer nor winter. These great moments of
between-ness recur in Celtic story as times when spirits and mortals cross
between worlds, when visions are seen, and great deeds are done. They naturally
become times when modern Celtic Pagans and magicians seek to gather and express
magical power. In such seasons the magician (and, from the Other side, the
spirits) can more readily part the Mist, can see the turnings in the Forest,
can pass through the thinned Veil.
