Category: Yesod

Ensouling the Rituals

I’ve been thinking about the path from Yesod to Malkuth.

The 32nd Path, the Universe, Tau, is where manifestation happens.

For anything to exist in the physical world, it has to first be fully formed in the astral world, and then it must be ‘ensouled’ by bringing it into the physical.

While re-reading Dion Fortune’s excellent work “The Mystical Qabalah,” I found insight in a passage in the chapter on Malkuth. Paraphrasing, she said, many magicians miss this key step in their ritual work, ensouling the astral images and bringing them down into manifestation.

Isn’t that the biggest problem that magicians deal with? Working on the astral plane, and seeing no results – it is disheartening, and cultivates doubt, an enemy to manifestation and magic.

There needs to be a physical component, Fortune said, which ‘ensouls’ the ritual. Having a ritual purely on the astral plane will not bring about significant changes in the Kingdom, but if we use a physical symbol to channel the idea into manifestation – a gesture, a stone, a crystal, etc – then we provide a physical channel for the astral energies to flow through.

I applied this principle to my latest ritual work. In the mornings, facing the rising sun from the top of my mountain, I have gone through a series of rituals:

  • Qabalistic Cross
  • LBRP
  • Archangel Michael invocation
  • Chakra opening and chanting
  • Pattern on the Trestleboard
  • The Middle Pillar

This last ritual has provided me plenty of advancement over the past two months. When I added a physical component, this advancement increased.

By simply moving my hands in the directions where I feel the light moving, during the Three Circumambulations, the light became much stronger on the astral plane, where I imagined it. I do not know (or care) if it has manifested on the physical plane, although I doubt it. The physical gesture was enough to ‘ensoul’ the ritual, creating a stronger aura of light over my astral form.

Perhaps if I was attempting to create a physical light, this physical ensouling of the ritual would have a physical effect. An experiment for another time.

On Evil.

The simple answer is, I don’t believe it exists.

As the storytelling goes, anyway. The concept of a dark villain, who wants to destroy because his heart is black; the fantastical Lord Sauron, who wishes destruction of all that is good; I don’t believe in these things.

That’s not to say they don’t exist, I suppose. In the context of our apprenticeship conversation, we are talking about cosmic forces; and there are many of these that are beyond my ken.

Keeping this in mind, I have a suspicion that spiritual forces that others interpret as malevolent are merely ambivalent to our own codes of morality. I once heard a Balinese mask described this way; with the big bulging eyes, and the pointed teeth, all of these masks impersonate deities in this way, because this is how the teeth of the most beautiful woman in the world would look…to a shrimp.

Evil, as we tend do define it, entails an uber-malevolence that is motiveless. Sentient beings – and even non-sentient beings – all have motives. When our motives come into conflict, that is where we create division, where we call one good and the other bad, one dark and one light. We often create villains in storytelling because we need a foil to the hero, who is the proof of the characteristic we are trying to embody. Unless the villain is given his own motives beyond ‘destroy, harm, undo all that is good’ then he is a shallow foil, and featureless in all real aspects.

I did a thesis on the Hero – Victim – Villain relationship once. (Masters in Physical Theater, and all.) These are the three main characters in traditional melodrama. They all serve their core roles. In good stories, the villain and the hero could be defined based solely on perspective. They both have agendas, they both can be brave or cowardly, strong or weak, powerful or impoverished, depending on the story; however, they both act decisively to attain their goals.

The only identifiable difference between a hero and a villain, when all else is torn away, is in their treatment of the Victim. Heroes protect and save the Victim. Villains take advantage of, and harm, the innocent.

Evil, then, in mortal affairs, could be distilled to this essence; harming others who have done you no wrong and cannot defend themselves. Witches have an easy edict to remind people of the Google maxim, ‘don’t be evil’: ‘An it harm none, do what ye will.’ For if it harms none, there can be no evil in it.

A protagonist in an interesting story could be faced with a moral complication, as in the fable of the hero who has the chance to kill Hitler as a baby. Kill an innocent child, and save thousands. What is the noble act? What would be evil? Which victim do you save?

These convolutions only obscure the fact that villains are heroes with an agenda opposing that of the audience’s moral bias, and heroes share the moral bias. Forgive me for interpreting this question theatrically, but that’s where my training comes from, and for many deep questions this is the thinking to which I revert.

To take a step up in perspective, from the cosmic perspective, I know we must eventually tread into the Qlippoth. I have avoided this subject in my studies, for the same reason I have avoided invocation; I don’t like to go into places like that unprepared, and I don’t know that I would ever like to go unless absolutely necessary.

Not because I fear evil, but because upon the right scale, against certain other entities I am nothing more…than a shrimp.