It’s that time of year again when Black Metal bands think its really kewl to release new albums – yes it is 6/6 day, or Great Beast Day as I have “antichristened” it. No doubt at around 6pm local time wherever you are, expect to see a lot of tweets on Twitter about Satan and what not.
666 is of course most famous from Revelation 13:18, whence comes its popularity in modern culture, from eschatology to horror novels & films (e.g. The Omen), rock music, etc. Aleister Crowley famously dubbed himself “The Great Beast 666” – partly out of re-action against his religious upbringing, but also to assert the Humanistic nature of Thelemic spirituality, i.e. as far as Crowley was concerned, the number of the Beast was not just the number of a particular man, but of Man generally.
Other writers (e.g. Rudolf Steiner) have identified the Great Beast as a being called “Sorath” – whose name in Hebrew Gematria (Samekh + Vau + Resh + Tau) enumerates to 666. This presents a tiny problem for ceremonial magicians (or at least the ones who claim not to be Satanists). According to Henry Cornelius Agrippa, the Intelligences and Spirits of the various Planets all have names whose gematria is associated with the Magic Square of the planet. The magic square of the Sun is a 6*6 grid containing the numbers 1 to 36. Each row adds up to 111, whilst the total for the whole grid – the 36th triangle number in other words – is 666. The Intelligence of the Sun is “Nakhiel,” the gematria of which is 111, whilst the Spirit is (you’ve guessed it) Sorath – for the gematric reasons stated previously. Hence when magicians perform a Qabalistic ceremony to invoke the forces of the Sun, e.g. to perform an evocation or consecrate a talisman, etc, they will wind up calling on Sorath. Magicians who purport to be of the right-hand path justify this by saying the only do so after first invoking all the divine and angelic Solar beings first, so that nasty old Sorath is not running wild, but is safely under control of the forces of light.
I am not alleging hypocrisy of any kind … too much … but this rationalisation starts to break down when it comes to practising the art of Geomancy. As far as the Golden Dawn is concerned, geomancers are encouraged to invoke a “Geomantic spirit” of the planet which most pertains to the question which they are attempting to answer. These Geomantic spirits are the same as the planetary spirits listed by Agrippa – so when a Geomancer attempts a Solar question, they will again find themselves calling upon Sorath – only this time they are not told to invoke the superior divine and angelic names first.
There are three possible conclusions to be drawn – magicians of the Golden Dawn are really closet devil-worshippers; writers like Rudolf Steiner did not know what they were talking about; or that St John the Divine was a git for mucking up an otherwise nice safe magical system. 😉
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, on Amazon Kindle. The print-edition will be available through Amazon shortly, although it’s available on 
in 2009 and continued by 
in 2010. It is a supernatural tale of murder, black magick, and international conspiracy set in contemporary England (and elsewhere), and is 
which involve invoking Hermes, the Greek equivalent of Mercury. Indeed, one of my most fondly-remembered money spells involved me 
Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner 
“San Quentin, May You Rot and Burn In Hell.”
Is there a link between the Man In Black and the "Black Man" of traditional witchcraft sabbats? Of course not, I just made it up to get traffic!
Alas for Wiccans currently residing in California’s correctional system! It appears that a court has ruled that the state is not obliged to employ a Wiccan chaplain to minister to their needs. So says a number of news sources including, e.g. Courthouse News Service.
However, examining the story in detail it appears the truth is more complex – in fact most of the news sources seem to have misreported the judgement, for the sake of coming up with a lurid headline. What appears to have happened is that an enterprising Wiccan (not incarcerated), observing that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not currently employ a Wiccan chaplain, and the fact that there are 598 prisoners designated as “Wiccan” currently languishing in jail, sued the prison service for not employing him as a chaplain on the grounds that it breached the prisoners’ rights.
The court however recognised him for being a chancer, and pointed out that it would be for the prisoners to sue to vindicate their own rights – he did not have standing to do so himself. Hence he was not entitled to sue himself.
This has variously been summarised in the headlines as “California Prisons Don’t Have to Subsidize Wicca” but in fact the court ruling established no such thing. The court only ruled on a technicality – i.e. that one particular person was not entitled to sue – but not the general principle, which remains undecided – until Wiccan prisoners themselves sue the CDCR, which may yet happen.
Incidentally, I note that the Court has adopted a definition of Wicca which diverges from what most witches would recognise, to wit:
In other words, the Court conflates “Wiccan” with “Pagan.” I am guessing that the reality of the situation in California is that those prisoners who have been labelled “Wiccan” are in fact members of different pagan traditions who have been bundled together under an arbitrary (and technically inaccurate) blanket tradition. In that sense it is unfortunate but probably wise for CDCR not to appoint a “Wiccan Chaplain,” as only one such Chaplain would not be able to cater to the spiritual needs of all the different pagan prisoners.
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