It's been several years now that I have been researching on the history of magic in the German speaking countries. It all began with the simple question of how our tradition of Western Magic looked before the time of the GD - especially in Germany, a country where much of their work was published only much later and which was once home to the Rosicrucians movement. The in-depth study On the Order of the Asiatic Brethren which I shared in five parts in mid-2014 was a first result of this research. It focusses an often overlooked strand of our tradition in the 18th century (...)
Read MoreIt's almost been six months since my last post. I can't tell you how much I missed this place and how much I am looking forward to getting back in touch with you over the coming weeks. Like for many of us, 2014 was full of the gods' tough love for me. With all the best intention, they sometimes forget how fragile we are? But then I guess, the only way hard lessons are learned is head on?
Read More(...) what I had misunderstood is what the term ‘work’ actually stands for. The Latin word ‘producere’ can be translated literally as to ‘bring forth’ or ‘draw out’. So in my simple Western mind ‘work’ was something that flowed from the inside outwards. From intend to action and from action to result. I understood work as the process of achieving a state of change by means of applying ourselves to the world. May it be through the help of our hands, of our minds or words. Whatever interface between us and the world we choose to use, work was an active noun, the opposite of death almost, and altogether a pretty safe sign for being alive.
Read MoreShould magical training come for free? I guess that’s a question we all come across at some point. Whenever people dip their toes into anything ‘spiritual’ correlations to financial interests or dependencies can easily turn problematic. Or do they? I recall asking exactly that question to my first teacher during the early days of my own training. He looked at me quite startled and had a very straight forward view on this subject. Here is what he said.
Read More'What becomes important in the end only, should create the beginning: The magical awakening! Book-spectre and ritual-larvae otherwise find a welcome sacrifice in any student, and associations will begin to serve nothing but the life force-hungry group egregore as well as their own leaders - most of which ultimately live on the breadline themselves and keep above water by offering pseudo-positive thinking, knowledge and imagining of various configurations. The history of magic has proven it over many centuries - what comes out at the end is mostly wasted and precious life time, without having enriched one’s own life or the world. The institutionalising of magic is a delicate matter indeed.' -- Walter Ogris
Read MoreOver the last months Josephine McCarthy and I have been working quietly on a project we called 'Quareia'. This Medieval Latin term refers to 'a place where stones are squared'. It seemed a fitting metaphor for a place where also we are shaped and born as magicians. And that is what Quareia is meant to become: a new and completely open magical school - without fees, structures of hierarchy or imbalances of power between students and teachers. A place to be shaped for every magical practitioner who is searching for a new way of learning, integrating and practicing magic. All the way from beginner to adepthood.
Read More(...) General theories about the nature of the being Choronzon are completely meaningless. By following them you are just led further away from what needs exploring. All they do is to put another label on top of an existing one - and thus seal away the actual experience even further. — I’d like to hope that for Crowley Choronzon wasn’t a label - but a living seal that expressed and summarised his personal experiences in the Abyss. It was the ‘you’ that he encountered on his journey into this darkest of places. If we really have to, then I’d encourage all of us to find our own Choronzon, our own ‘you’s as we explore the magical realm.
Read More"Magic and training? Are these two not contradictory and incompatible concepts? Are the two terms not mutually exclusive? Can you be trained in something that according to the general conception and representation is a discipline of self-responsibility, of active self-awareness and thus a process of self-knowledge par excellence, that defies any specified instructions or even preconceptions?" -- Agrippa
Read MoreWhenever the topic of magical titles or grades comes up I felt pretty divided. On the one hand I couldn't care less about symbols of hierarchy invented by humans and labeled onto other humans. At the same time, the way my mind worked for the first decade of magical training I really needed something that acted as milestones to map out the magical path I was following. At IMBOLC we used the classical 10° system mapped onto the Tree of Life. I remember the first three years, practicing daily for at least an hour and probably having done about 16 practical and theoretical exams before I was granted the grade 1°=10 Zelator... -- So what does it mean to me today, if someone calls me an Adept? Is this a title I should accept or refuse?
Read MoreJosephine and I have been collaborating on various magical projects for several years now. A side effect of this partnership is that I receive wonderful lessons from a true adept and she gets a brick wall to bang her head against. Or almost. At least it's fair to say that initially our approaches to magic were diametrically opposed: Josephine teaching a very organic, though incredibly pragmatic approach to visionary magic - and me having just emerged from more than a decade of rigorously structured ritual work and occult philosophic studies. So when we first met it could have easily been the perfect clash of paradigms. Yet, it turned out to be the opposite.
Read MoreIt's been five years since a close friend and I entered into the 'Arbatel Cycle' in 2009 and decided to complete all seven stages of this ritual work. Since then a lot has happened and step by step I have added detailed ritual accounts for each rite completed on this site. With one more ritual remaining and a few significant spirit-induced crises behind me, I decided to write a slightly longer introduction to this work. It is both because it has turned into a significant part of my magical life - and because I am beginning to see its limitations, costs and imbalances clearer and clearer.
Read MoreOver the course of our exploration into the history and teachings of the order we were able to identify a few clear lines of transmission that came together and were united within their teaching. Especially important to identifying these lineages were the works of Gershom Scholem, Karl R.H. Frick and Jakob Katz. The below synopsis represents a highly simplified overview on the most important influences on the documented teachings of the Asiatic Brethren (...)
Read MoreLet’s begin by calling out that anything we are about to hear in this chapter we were never meant to hear. The Asiatic Brethren were founded in 1781; in 1701 the 15 year old maidservant Dorothee Tretschlaff had been the last victim of a German witch-trial and was beheaded in public. Of course 80 years later the executive power of the Catholic Church had further diminished and the struggle for the Age of Enlightenment had captured large parts of society. (...) So naturally we have to assume that the Asiatic Brethren took according precautions. The most obvious and secure of which obviously would have been to establish two streams of transmission: one in writing, and a second, more closely guarded of individual oral instructions.
Read MoreLike any good occult order the AB strived to provide a founding myth leading back into an ancient lineage. This was particularly important as we see highlighted in the order’s name, the aim was to establish a particularly strong connection to Asian occult traditions. The term ‘Asia’ in this context, however, is a vague reference to Asia-Minor. Thus it indicates a tradition that doesn’t stem from the European mainland, but from the Orient instead. Secondly, the term aimed to function as a name-tag which in the 18th century marked a tradition that was equally - or possibly more - ancient than the established Roman Catholic and Jewish orthodoxy.
Read MoreThis is the second chapter in our exploration of the order of the Asiatic Brethren. During the first chapter we undertook an excursus into Sabbatianism. However, in order to prove a direct influence of Sabbatai’s teachings on the Asiatic Brethren, we still need to bridge more than hundred years from Sabbatai’s death in 1676 to the founding year of the order in 1781. A second, maybe even more magical excursus on our Western Mystery tradition will therefore lead the way and quite easily guide us over this bridge.
Read MoreSo what is it that makes this short-lived order stand out from the crowd of other secret societies of its time? Why has it been hailed - rightly or wrongly so - to be one of the critical forerunners of the Golden Dawn and many its descendants - as well as to be an influential force on so many of our ancestors such as Eliphas Levi, Papus, P.B. Randolph, Frederick Hockley or Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie?
Read MoreIn spring of the same year Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa was born - 1486 - a mysterious scholar, forgotten by the Western Magical tradition and remembered only by academic history, explained the key concepts of Jewish Kabbala to a young Italian philosopher and squire. The latter was called Pico della Mirandola and became world-renowned as the founding father of Christian Kabbala and remembered until today as a pivotal force in the emergence of Renaissance philosophy and Hermetic magic. The former, however, vanished with little traces into the mists of our Western occult memory...
Read MoreHere is what I think I missed to call out in the previous post on faith - and what Hanegraaf’s wonderful chapter helped me realise: As a gnostic you are faced with the essential fact that all of your faith’s ties to the past need to cease to exist - for any true experience to come to life. Walking the path of the gnostic takes courage more than anything. Because what it takes is exactly what the Neoplatonist Porphyri had suspected: Each one of us needs to ‘cut out for themselves a new kind of track in a pathless desert’.
Read MoreWhenever life turns truly practical and concrete all scientific knowledge and ratio begin to fade into the background. What takes the limelight instead is a Pandora’s Box: What is inside nobody will ever know. All we know is it is a box that will be eternally closed to the hands of knowledge and science. Yet, we also know the very same box will open almost effortlessly to the touch of faith. At the same time nothing can be said about the inside of this box objectively, yet it presents its content devotedly to the subjective view of our senses...
Read MoreLet’s begin with a very simple thought: There is a man inside of us and a man outside of us. Both of these men are not us. The one outside of us is marked by our skin, the bones and blood and nerves we are clothed into. He - or she - is what the Gnostics called the living grave. Nothing could be more misjudging of its possible power and beauty and divine alignment. The man inside of us on the other hand often remains buried and un-contacted until the day the man outside of us dies.
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