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Post by Admin on May 13, 2021 21:07:09 GMT
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Post by Admin on May 14, 2021 22:26:10 GMT
Gateways Through Light and Shadow: A True Relation of What Transpired Between Frater Ashen Chassan, His Scryer Benn mac Stiofán and the Spirits by Bryan Garner (Author), Ashen Frater Chassan (Author) Gateways Through Light and Shadow is the second book by Bryan Garner, known to his fellow ceremonial magicians as Frater Ashen Chassan, and in it we are again offered the illuminating opportunity to observe and learn from a practicing magus engaged in his Work. Once more he offers instruction in the processes of grimoric ceremonial magic and shares the insights he has gained from his ongoing research and operations. However, what may be most extraordinary about Gateways is that it allows us access to the detailed magical journal records of the communications received by Ashen Chassan and his gifted scryer, Benn mac Stiofán, during the evocations of such profound Spiritual beings as the seven Planetary Archangels, the seven Olympic Planetary Spirits, the four Spirit Kings of the Cardinal Directions, and the Supercelestial Angels Sandalphon and Metatron. Gateways Through Light and Shadow is illustrated throughout with two-color line art of the talismanic magical implements used in the evocations, including sigils, seals, lamens, pentacles, and magic circles, along with new implements created by the magician under the guidance of the Archangels, as well as new portraits of the evoked Spirits. "This book is a major contribution to the study and practice of Western ceremonial ritual magic. This is a book that no serious practitioner of magic should be without." —from the Foreword by Dr. Stephen Skinner www.youtube.com/watch?v=99uFkqTcUcU
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Post by Admin on May 16, 2021 16:33:50 GMT
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Post by Admin on May 16, 2021 19:13:27 GMT
And now to something entirely different: Thanks to the inspiration by Jake Stratton-Kent, Frater Acher has taken an in-depth view at James Blish's occult novella Black Easter (1968). Depending on your preference the book can be an action-packed ride through Medieval Grimoire Magic, or a parable on the essential lessons modern-day magic is confronted with... Enjoy this fresh Paralibrum review, hot off the press! #JakeStrattonKent #JamesBlish #BlackEaster #dayafterjudgement #paralibrum #bibliophile #occulture #bookreview #frateracher www.paralibrum.com/reviews/black-easter
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Post by Admin on May 18, 2021 17:41:37 GMT
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Post by Admin on May 18, 2021 17:59:58 GMT
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Post by Admin on May 22, 2021 11:37:37 GMT
Why are women becoming witches? Humans have always turned to magic when they feel powerless BY SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB unherd.com/2021/05/why-are-women-becoming-witches/Seattle-based Bri Luna, aka @thehoodwitch, has 472,000 followers on Instagram. On her website, thehoodwitch.com, her profile picture shows an attractive young woman wearing a black dress that reveals both tattooed cleavage and one tattooed thigh, holding a crystal ball in a ring-bedecked hand. The image is fiercely sexual and deliberately powerful, but this is a power that is linked to magic, which, she says, is open to all who choose to claim it: “The universe is vast, and we need as many healing information sources as possible. It is time for us to awaken and tap into the deepest parts of ourselves and into the natural magic that is offered to us by this very planet we inhabit.” Bri Luna is a magical influencer, whose posts appeal to the increasing number of people — especially young women — who self-identify as witches, and who account for the 6.8 million Instagram posts with the hashtag #witchesofinstagram. It’s clear that many of those posting use it simply to attract attention to their hot Goth selfies; to interior design ideas with not-much-of-a-twist — “Last Minute Beltane Ideas … place a bouquet of fresh flowers in your home. Light a red (passion) and a white candle (purity) [sic]. Decorate your home with ribbons and flowers…”; or to promises of a miracle — “Any Finger That will like this will never lack of money” (though they may lack of grammar). On TikTok, witches are even more popular: witchtokboy, who offers spells and curses, has had 8.2 million likes and offers bookings. But it’s not just a digital phenomenon — Taylor Swift’s latest album, Evermore, has seen witches welcome her to their tribe. In the last few years, witchcraft manuals, such as Ariel Gore’s 2019 Hexing the Patriarchy: 26 Potions, Spells and Magical Elixirs to Embolden the Resistance, have been published in number and sold well. Gore writes that “magic has always been a weapon of the disenfranchised” and promises to teach her readers how to make “salt scrubs to wash away patriarchal bullshit” and “mix potions to run abusive liars out of town.” Elsewhere, self-identifying witches have become political, like the protestors in Boston in August 2017 who dressed as witches and carried signs saying, “Witches against White Supremacy”, “Hex White Supremacy”, “Good Night Alt-Right”, and — note the acronym — “We Interrupt Those Choosing Hate”. Some of this has been taken very seriously: when, in February 2017, Michael Hughes posted online “A Spell to Bind Trump and All Those Who Abet Him” and urged other witches to join him in casting it, Christian Trump supporters put out urgent calls for prayer and fasting to counter the spell. Having studied the witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries, I find this resurgence both fascinating and a little disturbing. Historically, people turned to magic when things felt uncertain or inexplicable. They were more likely to accuse their neighbours of witchcraft in times when money was tight or disease was rife. And while men could be and were accused of witchcraft, in most places in Europe women made up the vast majority of those who were prosecuted and executed as witches, because women were perceived to be innately weaker and more sinful than men, and so more easily tempted by the Devil. In a culture fixated on fecundity, older women were especially vulnerable to accusation, because the witch was seen as infertile, an anti-mother. Above all, it was the idea of magical, diabolical power being used by the socially powerless that made witches especially scary. In today’s world, when money is tight, disease is rife and many people feel politically impotent, the resurgence of witchcraft among young women is both a mark of powerlessness and an attempt to reclaim power. Professor Ronald Hutton suggests that the word “witch” was once used as a kind of smear campaign for all types of folk magicians. Many names that were originally insults — Protestant, suffragette, sans-culotte, queer — have been reclaimed, and that seems to be happening again as, for many modern sorceresses, “witch” has become a synonym of “feminist”. Much of the identification comes from seeing the history of the witch-hunts as a story of female oppression. Modern-day witch Gabriela Herstik told Sabat Magazine that “Witchcraft is feminism, it’s inherently political. It’s always been about the outside, about the woman who doesn’t do what the church or patriarchy wants.” She is echoed by April Graham, whose sweep is even broader: “A Witch is somebody who stands against patriarchy and everything that is currently wrong with our society and any society throughout the ages.” By that definition, we could all be witches — which may, indeed, be the point; Luna says, “Every woman is a Witch.” Witchcraft, then, has been repackaged as a kind of female empowerment. Erica Feldman, the proprietor of HausWitch shop in Salem, Massachusetts, says that for her the initials WITCH stand for “Woman In Total Control of Herself”. Deborah Blake, author of Modern Witchcraft: Goddess Empowerment for the Kick-Ass Woman (2020) gives away her stance in the title, but adds that “Many women are feeling frustrated, frightened, triggered, and down-right furious with the current social and political environment, but also feel powerless to create positive change … Witchcraft can give them both a sense of personal empowerment and a number of goddesses through whom they can channel those feelings in healthy and productive ways.”
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Post by Admin on May 26, 2021 13:38:45 GMT
Magic helped us in pandemics before, and it can again psyche.co/ideas/magic-helped-us-in-pandemics-before-and-it-can-againHumans often appear to react irrationally in the face of disease, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown. Many cling to religion or become superstitious. Others become fatalistic. In times of plague and trauma, we moderns seek to protect ourselves with prayers, charms, sigils and spells as much as any medieval peasant. That a surgical mask is hygienic doesn’t make it any less of a magical symbol. But perhaps magic – particularly plague magic – isn’t so irrational. Have humans always pursued the occult arts because they actually work, at least sometimes? Despite the often blood-soaked history of the use of the term ‘magic’, we must remember that Western history is filled with thinkers who have defended its honour as good natural science – a tried-and-true technology for harnessing interactions between minds and bodies, human and otherwise. And their empirical claims were never tested more than during the centuries of plague. During the previous millennium, the biggest boom in the practice of magic coincided with the Black Death in the mid-14th century. It was the deadliest pandemic in human history, killing as much as half the population of Asia, Africa and Europe – around 200 million souls. It caused major social and political transformations in the process: slaves, raiders and mystics became kings, and new empires were founded on predictions of the end of time. Plague isn’t merely a medieval curse, either; the bacterium responsible, Yersinia pestis, is very much still with us, genetically unchanged. The Islamic world, my own area of focus as a historian of science and empire, was hit particularly hard by the plague – termed ta‘un in Arabic, meaning ‘smiter’. There, it helped give rise to what I call the ‘occult-scientific revolution’, where various occult sciences – astrology, alchemy, kabbalah, geomancy, dream interpretation – became an important basis for empire more than ever before. The ability to predict the future with divination, then change it with magic, was of obvious political, military and economic interest, and associated with Alexander the Great in particular. Western Europe saw a parallel upsurge of occultism – much of it from Arabic sources – which we now call the Renaissance. The scientific revolution that followed continued the same trend: historians now admit that saints of science such as Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton were likewise raving occultists. Medicine, too, was often classified and practised as an occult science among premodern Muslim, Jewish and Christian physicians. Many considered it alchemy’s sister, both sciences being predicated on the harnessing of cosmic correspondences and natural sympathies to restore elemental equilibrium in the human body – the definition of health. Techniques for life-extension were also central to the alchemical quest. The sweeping physical and sociopolitical imbalances wrought by plague were accordingly answered by an upsurge in medicine, occult and otherwise. The Ottoman empire is a prime example of just such a sociobiological transformation. It controlled increasingly large areas of Asia, Europe and North Africa between the 14th and 20th centuries, and plague persisted there for its entire duration. In the name of public health, the Ottoman state sought to purge cities of both physical and moral contaminants, including prostitutes, beggars, illegal immigrants, criminals, bachelors and bachelorettes. While we haven’t gone so far as to outlaw bachelorhood, the effect of our own pandemic is comparable: 2020 and 2021 saw a ramping up of state control, too. Not unlike their modern counterparts in epidemiology and public health, the authors of the most important Ottoman plague treatises were leading scholars striving to combat this existential threat to state and society. They presented plague as a social problem, a disease of the body politic, just as much as an environmental problem. Unlike those of today’s experts, however, their manuals were often emphatically magical.
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Post by Admin on May 26, 2021 16:28:35 GMT
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Post by Admin on May 26, 2021 16:34:48 GMT
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Post by Admin on May 28, 2021 14:34:18 GMT
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Post by Admin on May 28, 2021 14:36:51 GMT
Magic, White and Black - The Science on Finite and Infinite Life - Containing Practical Hints for Students of Occultism
This vintage book contains a fascinating treatise on the subject of magic by Franz Hartmann (1838 - 1912), who was a German theosophist, doctor, geomancer, occultist, writer, and astrologer. In this volume, Hartmann maintains that 'magic' is not a supernatural concept outside of the realms of science or nature, but that it is the undeniable force behind all things responsible for the growing of a seed into a tree or a child into a man. This fascinating volume will appeal to those with an interest in magic or the occult, and it would make for a worthy addition to allied collections. Contents include: "Description Of The Frontispiece", "Preface To The Third Edition", "Preface", "Preface To The Sixth Edition", "Preface To", "The Seventh Edition", "Introduction the Ideal", "The Real and the Unreal", "Form", "Life", "Harmony", "Illusion", "Consciousness", "Death", "Transformations", "Creation", "Light", etc. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with the original text and artwork.
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Post by Admin on May 31, 2021 13:59:28 GMT
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Post by Admin on May 31, 2021 18:41:55 GMT
What Is Black Magic?
More or less since the beginning of the modern occult movement, every magician has defined him or herself as a white magician. It was popularized in particular with Madame Blavatsky, founder of theosophy, who more or less defined those parts of magic which were favorable to her as “white magic,” and those which were unfavorable to her as “black magic,” obviously placing herself firmly upon the white magic end of the spectrum.
Even Aleister Crowley, who was as antinomian as they come, still defined himself as a white magician walking upon the right-hand path. This, despite the fact that he very clearly falls under the definition of the left-hand path. He defined a black magician, or what he called a “black brother,” as one who refuses or is unable to cross the abyss of the Tree of Life, in order to permanently annihilate the ego. He believed all magic should be in service to the “great work,” which was to (1) attain the knowledge and conversation of one’s Holy Guardian Angel, and (2) to then cross the abyss, resulting in the annihilation of ego.
Why does black magic have such a bad rap? Mostly, it is because so-called “white magicians” simply need something to feel better than, against which to compare themselves. Especially in a society so overrun with Christianity and its respective morality, white magicians like to have something to point to and say, “See, we are the respectable magicians. At least we aren’t like that.” Unfortunately, their ideas of “black magic” are generally caricatures of the real thing.
A small part of it, too, may be that some black magicians revel in the antinomian thrill of being cast in such a negative light, so they are happy to let those rumors go unchallenged. The majority, though, you will find are quite respectable individuals, and have no interest in putting up some false facade. Even Satanists, though they can quite enjoy mocking those who deserve to be mocked, and challenging the status quo, will make it quite clear where they stand and what their values are (hint: it’s not “evil”). So, after all that, what is black magic?
Let’s start with the simple definition, and branch out from there. ''Black Magic is the Willful confounding and alteration of the universal laws of the Cosmos. Essentially, black magic is to use one’s will to cause change in the objective universe. Not very scary, right? Why is it so black?
Well, the quoted definition above holds the key. Remember that to the average person, order is safe and familiar, and altering or “confounding” that order is on the level of blasphemy. So every time you perform black magic, thereby altering the natural order of the objective universe, you are doing what Set did, what Prometheus did, what Satan did, and many other examples besides. You are following in the steps of the archetypal “Prince of Darkness”, just on a far smaller scale.
You might ask, “But isn’t this what any magician claims to do?” And that’s the oddity. White magicians live in this sort of perpetual contradiction. They are constantly imposing their will upon the objective universe, and yet in the same breath claiming they wish to merge with that objective universe.
That’s why Crowley said that all magic should just be for the purpose of the attainment of the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. All else was black magic. Quite true, but how many magicians really adhere to that?
You might also ask, “But what about curses? Isn’t there dark magic out there?” Magic is defined by the intent of the magician. If your intention is to impose your will upon the objective universe, it’s black magic. If your intention is to merge with the All, then it’s white magic. Every black magician has his or her own ethical code. If they choose to perform a curse, that’s their choice. They are (hopefully) willing to deal with any consequences. I’m not speaking of karma: I don’t think many black magicians believe in the concept of karma. We are our own final authority. We choose what magic we will or will not perform. Article written by Co-Creation author Brandon Olivares Dark Art. “the black” by Jerry Scott
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Post by Admin on Jun 4, 2021 18:43:30 GMT
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