Halloween Time!

I love secular Halloween, with its tropes of zombies and witchcraft and demons and other supernatural Hollywood fun. I do my best to separate it from the reverent and arcane holy day of Samhain, but I enjoy indulging in it's fun. So this month we'll be seeing reviews and stuff on horror and weird-occult themes. We'll start with the reviews below. Next I think we'll do a review of other occult Yog-Sothothery. There's rather more of it than there used to be, even aside from Tyson's work.

Have a spooky season!

Necronomicons Aplenty

A Review of the Donald Tyson Necronomicon Material

Thanks to the work of occultist Donald Tyson in recent years, there is a much longer list of items with ‘Necronomicon’ branded across them than previously. Unlike several of the previous efforts, Tyson’s items are not presented as hoaxes, or provided with spooky back-stories about vanished manuscripts or forgotten traditions. Instead Tyson plainly says that he has taken the forms and tropes of HP Lovecraft’s fictional mythos and used them both to write new occult fiction and in an effort to create usable occult methods. At least, that’s where he has ended up. The earlier efforts in the series are much more plainly horror tales, using real occult history and ideas to present images of the kind of ‘forbidden rites’ that HPL only hints at.

Donald Tyson is a thoughtful and experienced occultist. He is producing valuable scholastic work in his editions of Agrippa, and his pop magic titles are often unique and interesting, firmly founded on classic magical art. He has also shown a real streak of interest in the macabre, in his publication of the remarkable oddity ‘Liber Lilith’. One would hope to see some interesting and useful occult weirdness in Tyson’s take on Yog-Sothothery. Does he succeed? Sort of.
There are five items in Tyson’s Mythos material:
• Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred
This was the first, and still my favorite, of the lot. The whole idea of ‘the Llewellyn Necronomicon’ was just too funny in the first place, but seeing Tyson’s name on it gave me some hope. In this case I wasn’t disappointed.

Lovecraft’s description of the Necronomicon changed over the course of his tales. His original imagining seems to have placed it as a kind of combination of a book of wonder-tales (if dark and evil wonder-tales) a la the Arabian Nights, and a travelogue and description account rather like Herodotus. In this case the difference between Alhazred (Lovecraft’s fictitious author) and Herodotus is that the Mad Arab finds the Hideous Reality behind the apparent myths and customs of mortals – the material that becomes the so-called Cthulhu Mythos. Later, as Lovecraft investigated a little actual occultism, the descriptions started to resemble the medieval grimoires. Most of the fakes and hoaxes called the Necronomicon have focused on the grimoire version, providing lists of gods and spirits, texts of rites and conjurings, etc.

Tyson’s Necronomicon harks back to the earlier version. He opens with a straight narrative, presented as Abdul Alhazred’s account of his youth, his fate and his subsequent wanderings across the early-medieval middle eastern world. He plainly and directly uses Mythos names and descriptions, referring directly to Leng, R’lyeh, Yuggoth, Cthulhu etc. He ases the Middle Eastern settings well, introducing the ‘ghuls’ as combined Arabic and Lovecraftian beings, and taking us beneath the pyramids for some tasty sorcery. Throughout the text are sprinkled bits of arcane lore and ritual, sigils, signs and incantations, including Tyson’s take on just what an Elder Sign might be.

Tyson also begins as he intends to continue, presenting the core of the cults of the Great Old Ones as a kind of anti-cosmic Gnosticism. In this interpretation, the GOO represent the return of the universe (or the ‘world’) to its pre-manifest state, an end to suffering and joy, to filth and pomp. This is scary (cosmic-aly horrific, in fact) to ‘normal’ awareness, which can only perceive the destruction of the body and the mind. The cosmic devourers come to return all to the stomach of eternity… spooky, kids…

This has been covered in a very sophisticated way by biblical scholar and leader of the Cthulhu Prayer Breakfasts Robert M. Price, and by author Richard L Tierny. (Do read Drums of Chaos, for the best depiction of Jesus as Wilbur Whateley ever…). In my opinion Tyson manages nothing so interesting. He will spend the next books developing this theme, to, I’m sorry to say, little effect.
However I did enjoy the atmosphere and imagination of this book. Tyson does have a feel for Lovecraft, and for the nasty end of sorcery. I found myself experiencing several real chills through his images and ideas. For this and for its clear difference from any other Necronomicon pastiche, I give this volume pretty high marks.
• Alhazred: Author of the Necronomicon
This book is an expansion of elements of the narrative in the Necronomicon. Unlike that book, which pretends to be Lovecraft’s famous book, this is plainly a novel. As far as I can tell it is material that Tyson found himself inspired to write having completed his first book in the series. In general there’s simply too much of it, and not enough plot. There are various attempts at ‘wonder stories’ and horror vignettes, but it just doesn’t succeed half as well as the first book, which is half as long.
• The Necronomicon Tarot

Tyson is a learned occultist, and while he has never written extensively on the tarot, he certainly knows his way around. In this deck he applies recent tarot motifs to the Mythos, with mixed results.
The kit is pretty nice. Sturdy box that holds the items well, deck, book and weird-ish veil bag. As usual, Llewellyn’s art and production standards are high.
However I wasn’t satisfied by the art itself. It’s certainly well-executed, with full-color paintings for each card.
In general I think the art has a rushed feel to it, with less detail than one might hope for. The frames and backs of the cards have some nice, detailed work – too bad they didn’t give the artist time for the same in the images themselves. As it is, the art in general isn’t as good as a good Mythos card-game card. In fact I was most reminded of the illustrations in a role-playing manual, which disappointed me. A Mythos tarot is a chance to show the Lovecraftian figures in a hieratic, occulty mode, and that’s lost entirely here.
As you might expect, I agree with some of Tyson’s attributions of the mythos figures to the trumps, and disagree with others. In order to get 22 images, Tyson draws on the quasi-Egyptian-Babylonian setting of his Necronomicon, and specific new monsters/gods from those books. So we find Bast and Amun, and the Beast of Babylon. Some trumps become chances for some pretty cool Mythos illos – such as the Lovers as a marriage between a Deep One and his human bride, or Strength as a battle between a flying crinoid Elder Thing and a rebellious shoggoth. Others simply fail to achieve any hint of Lovecraftian cosmic scariness, like Azathoth as a fat lumpy flute-player for the Fool. Some images are incomprehensible without the context of the earlier book, such as the ‘Well of the Seraph’ for the Hanged Man. Of course some exposition is provided in the hefty book that comes in the set.

Allow me to just be annoyed at Cthulhu as ‘the Devil’, and that without even a nod to the form of the original card. The Dreaming One could have looked cool squatting like Baphomet, one arm up, one down, with a deep one and a human chained at his feet. But no…

The suit cards are arranged to tell a Mythos type tale as they proceed. Wands are a tale of ill-fated Atlantean commerce with the Deep Ones. Cups are an Egyptian tale of love and the gods. Swords tell a Middle-Eastern tale of violence and plotting, and Disks display sorcerers and magicians in a tale of necromancy (along with Tyson’s version of the Elder Sign). These are all moderately successful, and produce images that mostly support the traditional interpretations of the cards.

All in all this is a nice piece of occult Lovecraftiana. As a tarot deck, I think it’s too off-kilter to be of much use for divination, and just wouldn’t do meditations or other occult work with these symbols. Like the whole series apart from the first book, I think it fails to be either spooky or disturbing enough to capture Lovecraft’s essence, but Mythos fans will enjoy some of it.

• The Grimoire of the NecronomiconThe series began with two plainly fictional treatments. The tarot then crosses between fictional work and traditional occultism. Here Tyson undertakes a book of formal ritual based on Mythos tropes.

We talked about the Mythos as Gnosticism, and here we see it fully employed. The introduction proclaims, in the voice of Tyson’s Mythos cultist, “…the great work of the Old Ones (is) the cleansing of this world that will alone restore her purity, and allow her elevation back to her former high estate, from which she fell into this pit, where she is ceaselessly defiled by life.” This is, to me, just the sort of scary-weird idea that informs some kinds of world spirituality. In the hands of some systems, like the aghoris of India, it gets pretty spooky indeed. Unfortunately Tyson then runs, it seems, up against Llewellyn’s editorial policies. He simply can’t recommend the eating of hallucinogenic spiders or the use of corpses in worship and magic in a Llewellyn practical book, and is forced to fall back into much more prosaic symbols.

Like several occultists before him, Tyson attempts to fit the Great Old Ones (affectionately called the GOO) into the pattern of the seven classical planets. This is how he arranges it:
Azathoth: Sun
Nyarlathotep: Mercury
Yig: Saturn
Shub-Nigurath: Venus
Cthulhu: Mars
Dagon (and Hydra): Moon
Yog-Sothoth: This should leave Jupiter for ol’ Yog, but the text mentions Caput and Cauda Draconis, along with the sun, again. However in the later rites given for the days of the week Yog-Sothoth is worked on Thursday, so that’s clearly what the author meant.

One of Tyson’s nicer innovations is the notion of the Twelve Idiot Gods who dance around Azathoth who, in his madness, has become the demiurge. These he attributes to the zodiacal signs, providing names and sigils allowing them to be summoned for practical magical work.

In fact sigils and arcane glyphs are provided for all the GOO and other beings. For these Tyson uses the glyph system that he teaches in his book “Familiar Spirits”. Each English letter is represented by a simple geometric form, and the letters of the spirit’s name are then arranged to create glyphs and sigils. This all works pretty well, although the very straight-line art used in the text robs the glyphs of any sense of creepiness.

Tyson makes an effort to make the ritual system seem unique. The temple is a seven-station circle, with each planet and GOO arranges with a ‘standing stone’ and its ritual symbol. The oddest part are seven metal ‘keys’ – simple geometric shapes made of iron or brass that are struck on the stones to produce invocatory tones. The book goes so far as to propose the form and structure of a magical “Order of the Old Ones” no doubt in an attempt to capture some of the ‘strange cults’ element of the Mythos.

The actual ritual work, after plenty of build-up, is pretty slight. There is a seven-day round of rites to invoke and offer to the GOO. There is also rather an odd section giving advice for working with each of the Old Ones. Amusingly, Tyson claims to provide the Long Chant, the invocation to open the Gates of Yog-Sothoth which was sought by Wilbur Whateley in “The Dunwich Horror”. He has constructed an Enochian incantation with content based on his Gnostic ideas that might be sufficiently spooky given a nicely established atmosphere.

The Grimoire of the Necronomicon just doesn’t have the requisite atmosphere to be very interesting in a Cthulhu Mythos context. I can only hope that the spiritual ideas in it don’t get traction among occultists, since I find the ‘darkly shining world’ to be much more holy and interesting than some imagined pleroma. If these books ever get a re-edit, it would be cool to see the first volume bound together with this one, creating a Necronomicon that covers all the Lovecraftian bases.

• The Gates of the Necronomicon: A Workbook of MagicIn the process of doing all this Lovecraftian writing, we must assume that Tyson read a lot of HPL, and a lot about HPL. In this volume he dumps his files, providing lists and descriptions of Mythos gods and monsters, human characters, earthly places and fictional/mythic locales. Each category gets a pretty detailed treatment, and Tyson has plainly both read extensively and thought geekishly deeply about each one. All of this is set into a vague ritual and symbolic format of thirteen gates into an unnamed and suggestive Arabian city. Each gate is provided with a stellar correspondence, sigils and key symbols, but they only seem to open up into this cyclopedia of Cthulhu Mythos lore.

In my opinion this book has zero value to those working on a Mythos occultism. Fans of the mythos may find Tyson’s insights and descriptions useful, but the job has been done better, in my opinion, by Dan Harms.

So that’s the list. Does any of this amount to a serious contribution to occultism or Mythos literature? Maybe. The first volume is really a nice attempt to capture a certain atmosphere, but later books have a knock-off feel to them. The good news is that Tyson hasn’t stopped writing good pop occultism as well as doing useful occult scholarship .
Personally, I hope he gets HPL out of his system, and produces more of the sort of evocative occult horror of his Liber Lilith.

As a final preachment, I’d encourage even the geekiest fanboy occultist (and it doesn’t get much geekier than me…) not to waste their time with Cthulhu occultism. First of all, Chaos Magic doctrines aside, fiction is simply not the same thing as myth, and the two cannot be effectively interchanged, except for the most short-term and shallow goals. Secondly, while occultists can try their best to make something mystical and Gnostic out of HPL’s ideas (and they are his ideas, fictions invented by one man’s (or at most a few people’s) imagination) the system was never made coherent by lovecraft or his imitators. In fact there was a general agreement that it shouldn't be made coherent, but rather left indeterminate and vague. Thus, efforts to make it clear enough to actually do magic with are generally doomed to fail at capturing the Lovecraftian atmosphere. I suggest finding a real Mythos, and leaving Cthulhu and his lot in the land of entertainment, along with Tolkein's elves.

Paid Clergy

I found this article on Rob's Magick Blog to be interesting. I have generally always rejected the idea that "A witch (mage, etc) is born, not made." Magical power may derive in some measure from innate talent, but it is much more immediately based on practice and developed skill.
One thing I found odd was the assertion that folks who advocate for paid professional priesthood in Paganism rely on the 'magic is innate' argument. Having never once heard an advocate for paid clergy use it, I was puzzled. Read the original post and my primary reply at the above link.

You will also see Rob's reply to my post. Rather than fill up his comments box, I thought I'd get a little mileage out of it here, and post my reply to his reply. Rob's snipped comment is in bold italic:

I’ve seen the idea of innate ability get thrown around a lot in regards to paid clergy. After all, what other criteria could we use to figure out who should get to be paid clergy.

Well, as I said, training, qualification and skill are the criteria I support for who might work as full-time clergy. While talent (or ‘innate ability’) is useful for developing those things, it isn’t the only requirement, or even the primary one. Commitment, focus and devotion to the work count for much more and, of course, we would want the most committed and devoted folks to become paid priest/esses.

I’d wager that most people who are involved with the magical community would love to leave their jobs and get paid to focus on their spirituality full time, even if it does mean helping out the community. I’d also wager that most people who enter a system, be it Paganism or Ceremonial Magic or anything else, expect that if they stay with it they will eventually be in a position of leadership, either running a group, founding a group, involved with the leadership of a group, or teaching their own students.
I think it’s naïve to say that most magical students expect to become leaders. The need to be willing to rebel against common spiritual paradigms in order to even take up magic may mean that a higher percentage of magicians would be interested in that, but my experience is that many – maybe most – practitioners would never willingly take up the task of being a congregational leader and teacher. Note the percentage of solitaries in every magical system - the assumption is not that students will become leaders.

I’d also wager most people would also (wish they could) leave their jobs to be a full-time musician or portrait painter or whatever art-form they practice. The fact is, most practitioners of magic or of arts will not have the temperament to do it.
Even that wager may well be a stretch. There are lots – lots – of people for whom standing before a group of 100 people and performing (whether on the fiddle or as a ritual leader) is about as attractive as an amputation. As a public performer and a public priest, I find lots of folks who plainly say that they are glad someone else is willing to do it, because they wouldn’t even if they could.

You also have to remember that most people enter Pagan religions to explore their spiritual growth and for personal empowerment. A paid clergy system allows for the clergy to explore their spiritual growth and be empowered, but it doesn’t provide this for everyone else. In fact it takes it away from them.

I don’t see why that’s so. The task of full-time Pagan clergy would be to teach and support their membership in how to establish and operate their personal spiritual practice, as well as providing powerful and moving group worship and spiritual experience.
In ADF (where we are working toward full-time clergy) we encourage each and every member to take up the work at home. We teach meditation, home ritual, study and experimentation. In addition we encourage members to come together for group worship and other practice. We are training clergy to be skilled in supporting students as they develop their personal practice, and to have the skills to create and manage good group ritual. All of that serves to educate and empower members, rather than the opposite.

There is nothing I’d like to see more than hundreds of thousands of powerful and capable magicians. And I think that anyone eager to grow spiritually should not only be allowed to do so, but encouraged to do so by both giving them good information and forcing them to take care of their spiritual problems themselves instead of doing it for them.
Yes, that’s what paid Pagan clergy should do. There’s no reason why they wouldn’t.
Now, whether it’s really wiser to ‘force them to take care of problems themselves’ is debatable. Lots can be learned by watching a skilled practitioner take care of a problem the first time or two. Would you encourage folks to work out their own electrical wiring problems rather than call a skilled practitioner?

But most importantly with paid clergy, no one wants to pay for it. There are very few people who believe that paid Pagan clergy would add anything to the community that would be worth a livable wage.
In other magical religions pro clergy are common. In the African Traditional ways some clergy are full-time, some part-time. Most all charge for their services on a fee-for-service basis, and many of the upper ranks live as priests on the proceeds of their ‘house’. In those cases their students are learning magic, moving through the ‘grades’ of training, and generally being as empowered as they wish to be.
Pagan folks have an aversion to putting our money for their religious work, based on a confused ideological perception of corruption in institutionalized churches. My own hope is that Paganism will grow institutions that transcend their founders, and to do that requires financial resources. I agree that it is on those who seek that to provide services to devise ‘products’ that folks will pay for. That’s a matter of desiring to do so, and having the skill to do so. Give us a few more years.

That’s why paid clergy is such an uphill battle. If they were providing an invaluable service to the community, people would gladly pay for it.
Again, that’s rather a naïve assumption. People don’t gladly pay for their music and movies – in fact they’ll gladly steal them.

In fact the clergy could charge for it. But they don’t.
And they don’t primarily because of an ideological attitude among Pagans, *not* because the effort and skill they bring to the work has no value.

Back At It

Okey Doke, fellow weirdos, the retrograde has ended and I am actually writing again. I have done rather a lot of staring and, well, staring at the work to be done over the last weeks, but now I have actually finished the ritual content for the Eighth Moon of the system, as well as finally (I do believe) and effectively reorganizing the outline Ninth Moon is begun, and soonish done.

You can expect to see stuff coming up here much more regularly, as I finish the several essays I have cooking. I won't be posting much detail from the final two months of rites from the Nine Moons, but there will be plenty of other stuff.

Thanks for your patience, and here's a tid-bit:

The Charm of the Worlds

In the work of trance and contemplation that I call the Nineteen Working, the student is led through a series of visualizations meant to progressively create the Pagan cosmos model in and around the meditating Druid. Inside that vision the Druid then expands awareness and experiences a glimpse (or more) of a sense of oneness with all manifest existence.
This practice has several goals. First it opens and harmonizes the individual mind, providing a sense of scale concerning the individual and the cosmos. Second it allows the human magician to experience a bit of the awareness with which the Gods see the worlds – the non-local oceanic experience of existence. In practical work with spirits, my opinion is that being able to produce this state, and drawing the spirits into it, creates a sense of awe and authority for the magician. When the magician can produce in herself the sort of Unity that defines the awareness of the Gods, she gains status and power among the spirits.
If you have been working the Nineteen Working regularly, you will be growing more and more adept at producing this expanded awareness. As with most spiritual practices, that which has been learned in a ‘long form’ can then be worked in a shorter form, in which the entire work is recapitulated in a convenient, focused exercise.
The target state could be described in a trance such that below. I don’t know whether I’d recite the description aloud – it’s rather redundant with the charm. I prefer to simply establish the state through memory and trance, and then affirm/confirm it with the charm. Here’s the set:

I am seated in the Center of Worlds, and my Da Fein is enshrined in my heart. I am like the World Tree, with my roots in the Underworld and my branches in the Heavens. The Waters and the Light flow through me and shine in me. Around me are arrayed the Three Realms – Land, Sea and Sky, and these, and the heavens and the deeps, and even my own Da Fein are all made of the Nine Elements, the flesh of the Mother of All. Into this all-pattern, I extend my awareness. As I am aware of my face, I am aware of the lights of the sky. As I am aware of my flesh and bone, of the beating of my blood, I am aware of the stone and soil and sea. As I am aware of my breath, I am aware of the wind. My mind stops paying attention to my little shape of flesh, as my spirit opens into the greater Worlds of which I am merely a small part. As my awareness expands, my attention leaves my body, and I say:

The Worlds are in me, and I am in the Worlds
The Spirit in me is the Spirit in the worlds.
I am One with the World Tree, in the Sacred Center.
With the Two Powers in me
With the Three Realms surrounding me,
And the Cauldron of Wonder within me.
I reach into the Four Airts in wisdom and magic, strength and life
And my substance is the very substance of the worlds,
Nine things in one, and one thing in many.
The Worlds are in me, and I am in the Worlds
The Spirit in me is the Spirit in the worlds.

Altars and Shrines. A New Start

Jason Miller has been blogging about his ongoing process with his home shrines and altars. Now Jason’s a diligent practitioner, including to doing teaching and magic-for hire, so he does need some gear and some space. However his recent post is about his choice to pare down his permanent home-shrines in favor of doing as-needed work. I must suspect it’s all about real life, Jason’s new twins (wit and strength to them) being a major influence on his choice.

I suppose it’s all about phase of life. Me, I’m eagerly awaiting the departure of our adult daughter from the house. She’s been a fine room-mate but I do covet a corner where I can establish a larger working shrine, and pull a chair into open space to practice. We’ve gotten by with out nice bedroom shrine for the last couple years. In fact we’ve done some pretty cool work there, including ADF’s clergy practice. If we needed more work-top space, a handy tray-table could be purified and worked.

I want more space for specific small God and Spirit shrines, and a way to sit comfortably, not on a bed, before the shrine. I think I’ll take a corner of the room, and run shelves up the walls, with a big surface at the bottom. This should lead to improved opportunity for trancework and theurgy, as will having the place to ourselves. All stage of life… if there’s any advantage to getting older, it should be more access to resources and more freedom to use one’s time and effort as one pleases.

Keep an eye out for pics of the new library/temple as it shapes up this winter. Also, expect at least another post even later today. Damned if I’ll have a month with just one or two posts ; )

Catching Up on Meditation Instruction

Ya know, I've rewritten instructions for a basic course in meditation, mental discipline and trance so many times, but I seem to have missed a basic element that I actually use personally all the time. Students complain regularly about the effort of 'silent' meditation, focusing on no particular thing but just letting the mind flow and become calm. Many such students can benefit from this form, in which a specific focus is chosen. The focus can have actual idea content to 'meditate on' during the work.

I know some teachers hold that only one sort of method - the silent sort - is 'really' meditation. That's all too doctrinal for me, and contemplation meditation of this sort may be a fine way for students to get used to sitting silently doing only mental activity.

In any case, this is catch-up, and will end up in the new month 1 of the Nine Moons. I *am* getting back to work... expect more stuff soon...

Contemplation Meditation
In Contemplation Meditation you choose a specific pattern or symbol as the focus of your attention. In many cases the symbol – such as the Hallows, or the image of a God – may be physically present. It is also common to contemplate a mental construct image. You visualize, imagine or conceive the symbol in your mind, and observe it as if it were in front of you.
In this exercise the goal is similar to Open Meditation. You intend to keep the symbol always the entire focus of your attention. You may find your mind ‘thinking about’ the symbol – your task is to return attention directly to the object of Contemplation, without attachment to the flow of consideration about it. In this way we hope to allow the reality of the symbol to enter our awareness directly, and deeply. There is always time to think about these matters – meditation is a time set aside for other mental goals.
The technique of Contemplation is core to most of the higher-end of ritual and magical trance. As you work your way through ritual the ability to address each action with a whole and focused mind, to experience each thing for its unique power, is key to effective results. You learn to be in the presence of the Gods themselves, while maintaining the Peace and Power of your own Center.

Three Primary Contemplations
1: The Two Powers. You will develop the ability to easily bring the Two into your awareness, and you can then use their flow and circulation as the object of Contemplation. Set the circulation to turning in yourself, and allow your breath to keep the flow as you turn the focus of your attention to the feel and experience of the Two. Without attached consideration, allow yourself to observe the flow and shine, at peace. Each time you find yourself following a ‘train of thought’, simply return your attention to the continuing flow of the Two. Finish with balance and a blessing.
2: The Hallows. In this you will meditate with open eyes, focusing your attention on your fully operative Hallows of ritual. You will sit before your shrine or ritual arrangement, with the Fire lit, the Well blessed and the tree and all cleansed with Fire and Water. You allow your gaze to fall on the whole pattern of your ritual tools and symbols, experiencing their form and meaning without attachment to any flow of thought. Finish with balance and a blessing.
3: Nature Contemplation. This practice is described in the Dedicant’s work, but it should certainly be part of your regular practice. Find a place where you can observe a bit of nature, preferably with no visible thing obviously made by humans. You might choose a specific great tree, or a stream or other water, or any natural spot, but it is good to practice this also in more ordinary natural settings. You find a seat and with your Peace and Power on you allow the reality of the place to be the object of your contemplation, without attachment to idea or emotion, to beauty or ill. Finish with balance and a blessing.

The Practice
The Shrine is set with an object for contemplation – a symbolic card or image, a deity, flame, or the Three Hallows themselves. This technique can be applied to music as well, though music may be more inductive to reverie than to concentration. Contemplation can also be fixed on a phrase or an envisioned image, but to begin it is best to contemplate a material object.
1: Basic Trance: The Blood, Breath and Bone Exercise
• Stand or be seated firmly, spine erect, arms able to relax.
• Take three Complete Breaths and continue to breathe.
• Become aware of your body, where you are supported on the ground by your firm bones. Be aware of your bones, holding you upright as you feel your flesh relax.
• Continue to breathe fully, and focus attention on the sound of the breath. Concentrate inward, listening only to the sound of your breath.
• Turn your attention inward, and hear and feel the beating of blood in your veins. Feel the subtle pulse, as your breath flows and your bones uphold you.
• Continue this pattern as you open your eyes. Allow yourself to remain relaxed, focusing only on your Blood, Breath and Bone.
• Recite this charm:
Bone uphold me
Breath inspire me
Blood sustain me
In this holy work.

• Return to silent breathing and listening within.

From this state there are two basic kinds of meditation with which to begin your work. Ritual actions can also be performed, while maintaining Basic Trance state. In this case we continue to:

2: Meditation
• Continue your basic trance, settling peacefully into blood, breath and bone.
• Open your eyes, and bring your gaze gently upon the object of your contemplation.
• Allow your gaze to focus on the object of contemplation, and only on that object, concentrating your attention to that single object or symbol. Just as in Open Meditation you focused on your breath, allowing all thought to flow by ungrasped, so in Contemplation Meditation you focus your attention on a powerful symbol, and allow only considerations and perceptions of that symbol to fill your mind.
• First always return to the material form of the object, its real presence. From there you may carefully open to ideas concerning the object. This will inevitably lead to associated thought. Whenever that happens, simply return your awareness to the visible (or audible) form of the object.
• The goal is to extend the periods in which your awareness is wholly occupied by a single object, especially one with spiritual or symbolic meaning.
• When the time is sufficient, close your eyes and return to basic trance, then close.

3: Closing
• Always end the session of meditation formally, with the recitation of a closing charm and/or other formal gesture.
The blessings of the Holy Ones be on me and mine
My blessings on all beings, with peace on thee and thine
The Fire, the Well, the Sacred Tree
Flow and Flame and Grow in me
Thus do I remember the work of the Wise.