December 22, 2009 · 3:40 pm

The Church of England vs The Eighth Commandment

Was greatly amused this morning by reading a story in the Independant (yes I was that bored), about a C of E vicar who said that in cases of extreme poverty and desperation, it is morally right for a starving man to shop-lift from a supermarket in order to feed himself. To back his argument up, he pointed out that the way the UK treats poor people is so bad (or at best, inefficient), and the fact that God’s love for the poor is more important than anything else, that a little case of breaking the Eighth Commandment is excusable.

I note that this Vicar only said it was morally right to steal from large businesses. Ironically, he did not say anything about it being right to steal from Churches! After all, let’s face it – who has done more to leach money out of the poor and keep them in subjugation: Sainsbury’s or the Church of England???

Methinks this Vicar is being a bit of a NIMBY. He thinks it is ok for an indigent to steal from a supermarket, but heaven help the same person who nips in to his place and half-inches the candlesticks!

Leave a comment

Filed under Comment

Tagged as , , , , , ,

December 22, 2009 · 3:30 pm

Have Yourselves an Esoteric Christmas

Christ’s birthday is celebrated by Christians on December 25th, but is widely believed by theologians that this is a purely nominal date – Jesus was probably born at some other time in the year (assuming He existed in the first place). Why then has December 25th been picked for the date of Christmas?

One rather superficial answer which has been bandied about so much it has become a cliché is that it is apparently the same day as when the Persian god Mithras was born. This a lot of neo-pagans trot out, smugly thinking that Christianity is just an agglomeration of other religions’ feast days.

Guys! There is just as much proof that Mithras was born on December 25th as Jesus was! I.e. none whatsoever. The priests of the Mithraic religion chose December 25th for much the same reasons as Christians later did for Jesus – not because it was his actual birthday, but because the date itself has symbolic significance.

We are getting closer to the truth when we note that Yule – the Winter Solstice – occurs two to three days before Christmas. So why is not Christmas celebrated actually on the Solstice itself? In ancient times people did not have calculators, or telescopes, or accurate time-pieces. They were not able to work out the precise moment the Sun turns north again, and they had to rely on the evidence of their five senses. The reason December 25th was chosen arbitrarily is that it is the first day after the Winter Solstice when the increase in the amount of daylight can be noticed. Thus it was quite natural for ancient people of all religions to hold Solstitial celebrations on the 25th rather than the technical Solstice a few days beforehand.

The question then arises: why did Christians choose the feast of the Winter Solstice as Christ’s birthday, as opposed to, say, one of the other Pagan feast-days? The answer is that it can be explained astrologically. When the date for Christmas was set, it was well known that human gestation lasted 9 months. Therefore, the question asked was not “When would Christ have been born?” but “When would He have been conceived?”

Counting back from Christmas Day, we get to March 25th or thereabouts – which is known in the Christian Church as “Lady Day” or the Feast of the Annunciation. Obviously it is the approximate date of the Vernal Equinox (March 23rd), and, dare I say it, would actually have been the date that ancient peoples would have celebrated the Equinox, for much the same reasons that the Winter Solstice would have been celebrated on December 25th – i.e. “Lady Day” would be the first day on which the length of the day was noticeably longer than the night-time.

“Lady Day” (or the Vernal Equinox) being the day when Christ was conceived is significant because it is when the Sun enters Aries – a very appropriate zodiacal sign, as it brings to mind Jesus’ associations with “the Lamb of God”.

But more than this, Aries is the sign of Cardinal Fire. Now as Qabalists know, Fire is represented in the Hebrew alphabet by Shin, which shares the same gematria as “Ruach Elohim”, the “spirit of God” – or Holy Spirit. It is for this reason that the letter Shin is commonly used to represent the idea of Spirit in certain qabalistic words and phrases: e.g. YHVH (God) + Sh (Holy Spirit) = YHShVH (Yeheshuah i.e.
Jesus).

Now again, some commentators mistakenly confuse the Vernal Equinox with Easter, thinking that because they occur so close to one another they must be the same. However, this is not the case. Easter is specifically not the feast of the Equinox – it marks the first Full Moon after the Equinox. There is a bloody good reason why the Luna influence is important. Easter would have been the symbolic date that Mary first realised she really was pregnant. So once again, we have people celebrating events not on the technical day on which they are calculated to have occurred, but on the first occasion thereafter when it was possible to ascertain by non-technical means.

Therefore, the date of Christ’s conception was determined fit in with the Equinox (or Easter) because:
• Easter is the Christian celebration of the Dying God being reborn (like the Sun), and is thus a celebration of new life being brought to the Earth;
• The Sun entering Aries signifies the rousing to action of the Holy Spirit / Ruach Elohim, through its associations with Fire. Moreover, because this happens contemporaneously with Easter, the implication is that it is the Holy Spirit which is responsible for the new life in spring time;
• Hence it is appropriate that Mary the Mother of God, via the Holy Spirit, should conceive at the time of the Vernal Equinox, which itself is associated therewith: the idea of the ecclesiast being that the Holy Spirit creates new life in the Earth, and in Mary herself.

Or to put it another way, Jesus’ conception was figured as taking place around the same time of year as, many years later, He would die and be reborn. So not only is it inevitable that Jesus should be thought of as being born on December 25th, but also that the time of His death and resurrection is thought of occurring roundabout Easter time.

3 Comments

Filed under Religion

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

December 10, 2009 · 5:08 pm

Alex is still committed to World Peace!

Further to my blog-post in October, it appears that Barack Obama having angered everyone else at getting the Nobel Prize for just 11 days work, is now angering the Norwegians as well – by trying to spend as little time in their country as possible. Talk about ingratitude!

I would just like to make it clear to the people of Norway that if you awarded me the Nobel Peace Prize, I, unlike certain Presidents of the USA I could mention, would just love to have lunch with King Harald and to attend all the other jollies you put on. And of course, I am willing to do it for a slightly lower bribe than you backhanded to Obama ahem I mean I don’t care so much about the prize-money. JEG ELSKER NORGE!!! 🙂

Leave a comment

Filed under Comment

Tagged as , , , ,

November 30, 2009 · 5:01 pm

Psychic Self Defence for Footballers (and the rest of us).

Cristiano Ronaldo, Read Madrid footballer and Portuguese international has apparently been cursed by a Voodoo priest with the intention of ending his career. Pepe, the Voodoo priest in question (presumably no relation to the Real Madrid number three), claims that he is not doing it because he has a thing against Real Madrid or Ronaldo personally, but because he has been paid good-money to do so. Well, you can’t fault the man’s ethics!

But the real question is who hired Pepe to work this evil magick? Journalists have come up with a short-list of likely suspects. They have narrowed it down to Ronaldo’s ex-girlfriends, and several million Barcelona / Man City / England / etc fans.

“But Alex,” I hallucinate that I hear you say, “can you not provide some magical help or advice for those of us who might find ourselves caught in the same situation? Even if we don’t play for Real Madrid?” Why certainly! Here is my quick guide to Psychic Self-Defence.

By far the most lucid and sensible account of the subject is the book of the same name by Dion Fortune. Unfortunately, from the cases I myself have heard about, this book is obviously far too sensible for anyone to take any notice of! Basically, Dion’s gist is this: at least 90% or more of cases of alleged psychic attack are in fact nothing of the sort – instead they are far more likely to be either imaginary or symptomatic of a psychoneurotic condition (or worse).

Hence the first step in warding off a perceived magical or psychic attack is to seriously consider whether it might not be as bad you first thought. I have heard from people who claimed that they were being attacked and cursed and hexed right left and centre – and then casually admit that they had been hospitalised for schizophrenia in the past, and not make any connection between the two.

So let us assume that you have been able to dismiss every possible mundane explanation for the run of misfortune you are experiencing, and suspect that it may well indeed be a psychic attack? What then? The simple answer is that just as a psychic attack starts from somebody else’s mind, so a good psychic defence starts from your own. You basically have to fervently Will that you are protected, and it is so. There are a number of methods which facilitate this.

Essentially by visualising a magical barrier surrounding oneself, and concentrating on the idea that it will protect you from malicious influences, this has the effect of actually repelling such forces. The most famous method of forming such a magical barrier is the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, which was originally devised by the Golden Dawn.

The casting of the circle in Wicca is itself a circle of protection which protects all the participants whilst they are taking part in a particular ritual.

In his book, Auras: What They Are and How To Read Them, the author Joseph Ostrom describes several Aura meditations which are effectively protection rituals. For example, visualising oneself in a gold-metallic aura: this not only protects from unwanted external influences, but also energises and perks up the individual thus protected.

There are many other such protection rituals which are based upon the same principal e.g. the meditation on the Cloak in Martinism, numerous variations on the Pentagram ritual itself, etc. One important fact is that these rituals not only protect from external malign forces but also close down ones own psychic sensitivities if one has negligently left them open.

Leave a comment

Filed under Comment

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

November 28, 2009 · 12:52 pm

Stop press: more aliens!

You have got to admire a country who have named their capital city after the Gnostic concept of redemptive wisdom. Since writing the blog entry which precedes this one, I have uncovered this new story: apparently government scientists in Bulgaria are already in contact with extraterrestrial beings. Personally I think these scientists are the victims of a practical joke by one of my colleagues in the occult community. Naming no names, but if these aliens start telling the scientists to stop using Apple Macs and switch to Windows-based systems instead, you will know what I am talking about 😉

Leave a comment

Filed under Comment

Tagged as , , , ,

November 28, 2009 · 12:42 pm

Aliens & Magick

The Vatican apparently is now interested in astrobiology, i.e. life among the stars. This has set many tongues wagging, with commentators pointing out that if life does exist on other planets, this would go against a literal interpretation of the Bible. I do not think this will be too much of a problem, as the Catholic Church has not let its magisterium be constrained by something so inconvenient as actually reading the source text up to now.

However – never mind about what happens with regards to Christianity when life on other planets is confirmed: more importantly, how will this affect the Qabalah?

A Tree of Life Crop Circle which has been photoshopped by some teenager *cough* I mean created by an alien who knows about Athanasius Kircher.

The Tree of Life
I have heard some people argue that the Qabalah is in fact a universal principle, given that there have been instances on earth of Crop Circles in the form of the Tree of Life. (Strange how our alien brethren approve of the Kircher version of the Tree of Life, as opposed to, say, the Lurianic version!) Now the Sepher Yetzirah makes great mention of the fact that the Qabalah is based on the number ten, not nine, ten, not eleven. But… what kind of Qabalah would an alien with a different number of fingers to us humans have come up with?

Now some people, still pointing to the crop circles as proof, have tried to argue that the number ten is a universal principle which has nothing to do with the number of fingers that we have. However: the evidence is in Sepher Yetzirah that the magic number ten is indeed associated with our fingers, as Qabalistic attributions are given thereto: moreover, it attaches importance to being able to form letters of the Hebrew alphabet with ones fingers. This incidentally is how Leonard Nimoy devised the Vulcan Salute. It is actually the sign a Cohen makes as he is giving the valedictory blessing in a synagogue (it actually represents the letter Shin).

Most authorities are of the opinion that we use a decimal system as opposed to any other simply because we have ten fingers – because they are our first counting tools. I therefore say this. If aliens have a version of the Qabalah and the Tree of Life, it will be based not on Ten sephiroth, but on whatever number-base they happen to use – i.e. which is most likely to be the number of fingers they have, if indeed they have fingers.

Astrology
The most popular forms of Astrology present on Earth are by their very nature Geocentric. The constellations are the way that the stars appear from Earth, and the belt of the Zodiac is defined by the route which the Sun – our Sun – takes through the heavens.

However, if Aliens had their own version of Astrology, firstly it would not be Geocentric; secondly it would be based on a completely different Sun and set of planets; and thirdly there would be no correlation to our constellations whatsoever, as their own would appear to be completely different. The only feature of our astrology which might feature in their version would be the fact that our Sun might be visible from their own solar system. This is significant because the development of Astrology on our own planet has been governed by attaching importance to that which is most visible (the Sun, the Moon), and then defining the rest of the system in relation to that. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Alien Astrologers would only attach importance to the objects which are most noticeable from their own home planet(s), which could mean that if our Sun is in what is to them a relatively obscure part of their sky, it may not enter into their consideration at all.

This is somewhat by the by, though, as I predict that Earth Astrology is soon going to be refuted according to its own logic. This has nothing to do with astronomy purporting to have refuted it already. I shall explain: Earth Astrology relies on a given birth / event / etc having a time, date and place somewhere on the planet’s surface, because the key to the Horoscope is the Ascendant, the sign which is on the horizon at the time for which the chart is drawn.

However, the higher one is above the ground, the more fluid the concept of the horizon becomes, until when one has left the Earth altogether, it ceases to have any meaning. Thus – at some point in the future, there is going to be a human being born in outer space, and when that happens, it will be impossible to draw up a horoscope for that person. Therefore I say that at that point conventional astrology will have to be abolished, because there will be at least one person alive to whom it cannot apply.

There is such a thing as Heliocentric astrology, although because of the peculiarities of the heliocentric system it is not suitable for dealing with the kind of issues for which geocentric astrology is currently used. However, even Heliocentric astrology is going to be refuted when the first human being is born outside our solar system. Which brings me back to Alien Astrology – if aliens do exist in other solar systems, then we cannot apply our astrology to them.

The Age of Aquarius
Finally, I shall just like to briefly mention this: the whole idea of cosmic ages is another geocentric notion which is going to go the same way as geocentric astrology. Now, as noted above, I predict that astrology is going to be refuted when at least one human being is born in outer space. Reason suggests that this is going to be sometime in the next hundred or two hundred years. The Age of Aquarius is due to begin in the next hundred or two hundred years – at approximately the same time that the whole concept of the Age of Aquarius will be refuted according to the logic of Astrology. Irony of ironies! Were I a superstitious man I would be inclined to say that the birth of the first human in space will be the actual event that signifies the Age of Aquarius. In any case the challenge of the next great aeon will be to move away from a human-centric, ego-centric, notion of mysticism and to evolve a more cosmological outlook.

4 Comments

Filed under Comment

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

November 13, 2009 · 9:52 pm

Square Dealings

Folks, I have a confession to make: I am on the level. What is more, in this blog post I am going to reveal some of the deepest darkest secrets of Freemasonry. Now the first thing that everyone who does not know anything else about the Craft knows is that Masonry has something to do with “funny handshakes.” These funny handshakes are technically known as “modes of recognition” and are supposedly the most secret bits of the masonic rituals which true Masons will always refuse to divulge even if the rest of Masonry is publicly discussed.

The fact that most of the handshakes are described on the internet somewhere if you search hard enough on Google is beside the point.

Now I am going to reveal something which no Mason has hitherto said on a public forum. So if you hear that I have been brutally murdered like one of Jack the Ripper’s victims or been found hanging underneath Blackfriars Bridge or died as a result of a bizarre accident at a cricket match, you know the reason. The gripping revelation is this:

The traditional modes of recognition are no longer in use: instead there is a new and completely different way of telling a brother by day or by night.

Yes, I shit ye not, there is a method now in use at lodge meetings and meetings of appendant bodies for telling if someone is a real Mason or not. And I am goint to reveal it to you! It is this: you go up to a bloke you suspect of being a Mason and say:

“Have you read the new Dan Brown book? It’s really rather good!”

OK I am joshing somewhat. But the fact of the matter is that up and down Great Queen Street and the various other masonic venues in London, the current talk is that The Lost Symbol is actually the greatest advert for Masonry in a long time: it actually depicts Masons as heroes. Not that it is an accurate description of Masonry at all: Brown has deliberately played hard and loose with the details, presumably to make it more exciting.

I was watching a programme on British TV “Channel 5” in which there were some lurid descriptions of American Freemasonry, whilst UGLE’s own Director of Communications, John Hammill, appeared defending the Craft. Reading through the credits at the end, I noticed that one of the masons interviewed in the programme was the executive producer thereof, and the production company was called “Three Degree Productions.” Oh ho!

I want to clear up some ambiguities which I feel have arisen, certainly amongst people I have spoken to. Firstly, this whole business of  there being 33 degrees … there are in fact only three degrees in Craft Freemasonry, the supposed other 30 being worked by an appendant or side order known as the “Ancient and Accepted Rite,” or as it is more colloquially known in Britain, Rose-Croix. Now get this: the supreme authority for Freemasonry is not the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree of the Ancient & Accepted Rite, it is the United Grand Lodge of England – the reason being that the former has bound itself to source all its members from Craft lodges. You see the point here? The A&AR may work more degrees than the Craft, but it is only the Craft who work the three most important ones.

In any event, the A&AR do not work all 33 degrees. The first three are not worked at all – they are left to Craft Masonry. Of the remainder, the A&AR work only five degrees, the rest being conferred in name-only.

Another cannard that pops up regularly is some idea that Freemasons are somehow involved in a giant conspiracy. The fact of the matter is that there is no mechanism in Freemasonry which would allow such a conspiracy to operate. One of the reasons why Masonry has survived so long is that subject to a token amount of supervision, individual lodges are treated with a great deal of independence by United Grand Lodge. However the flipside to this independence is that just as the central hierarchy does not generally interfere with individual lodges, so the lodges are not in a position to interfere with the central hierarchy. Hence, the mere fact of joining a lodge is not going to increase one’s influence in the new world order.

It is conceivable that a mason could eventually use his connections to achieve some influence: however, if he did that much networking, he would not need Masonry to do so.

According to my personal research, there are at least two forms of corrupt networking which are far more sinister than Freemasonry, but these are seldom mentioned by the chattering classes. The reason I think is because Freemasonry has all the glamour – the rituals, the regalia, the nice big Art Deco grade 2 listed building on Great Queen Street – it attracts all the attention!

Far more serious in the conspiracy stakes is the Old-Boy Network. It is quite easy to get into Freemasonry, so long as you have a belief in a Supreme Being, but the OBN and the “old-school tie” are by their very nature exclusive. I seem to recall that many years ago the OBN got more publicity than it does now, but that was before Stephen Knight came up with his Jack The Ripper: The Final Solution. How one badly written conspiracy theory can affect public perception!

But by far the most insidious conspiracy in the world today is neither Masonry nor the OBN. It is quite simply a matter of sniffing cocaine with the right people in the right toilets. This is especially so in some of the more glamorous industries which appeal to young and creative types.

Leave a comment

Filed under Rant

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

November 2, 2009 · 8:12 pm

Creative Visualisation in the internet age

In what is quite clearly a shameless attempt to get pictures of scantily clad women into the Daily Telegraph, this august publication has published a review of weird and whacky 2010 calendars. But one of far the most interesting ones was one which did not resort to such cheap thrills at all, but was an attempt at humour: the 2010 Credit Crunch Calendar. This alliteratively-titled work features pictures of Britons (not) coping with the current recession, e.g. pictures of boarded-up branches of Woolworths, people going on staycations in Birmingham, etc. The idea being that it is meant to show that Britons can laugh in the face of adversity.

I say interesting, because it suddenly struck me that this was in fact a good example of how not to create a 2010 Calendar. I shall explain.

Several years ago I read The Cosmic Ordering Service by Barbel Mohr. It consisted of one page of sound, practical advice. Unfortunately the book itself was 112 pages long. Nevertheless, not to be completely underwhelmed by this publication, I have myself tried cosmic ordering in the past, based on the little amount of advice there is in the original book and have found some success with it. My attempts consist of – every January 1st – instead of making New Year’s Resolutions, I cosmically order what I want to achieve in the year ahead. Which brings me back to the subject of Calendars.

There is a common practice nowadays for people to create their own Calendars to give to others as Christmas presents: for example, a Calendar consisting of a set of family photographs to give to relatives. More to the point, there are an increasing number of resources availabe which are making it easier for people to do so, and also easier for them to make better quality items. For example: lulu.com. So here is my idea: instead of creating a calendar to give to your friends and relations as presents, why not create your own Cosmic-Ordering calendar for yourself?

Write out a list of twelve things you want to achieve in 2010 – one for each month – and then find or create a picture which visually represents each of your objectives. Do this now – do not wait for January 1st 2010, because by then it will be too late. Once you have assembled your list of 12 objectives and corresponding pictures, head on over to some site like lulu or if you are feeling adventurous and have access to a good quality printer and desktop publishing software, have a go yourself. Whichever way you decide, it should be of quality sufficient enough to impress you.

Once it is printed out and ready, try to spend some quality time next New Year’s Day contemplating gratitude to the Universe generally and its inhabitants in particular for all good fortune and blessings which have come to you in the past. Then, once you are in the mood, review each of the twelve objectives you are setting yourself, visualising the corresponding picture and mentally describing in words what it is you want to happen – and when you want it to happen by. You must be utterly convinced – at both a Conscious and Unconscious level – that you deserve all the success for which you are visualising / cosmically ordering – otherwise this exercise will not work. You can thenceforth use the calendar normally, displaying it somewhere where you will see it often.

The great thing about creating your own calendar in this way is that you can tailor it to your own personal aspirations. If you tried to make do with a commercially produced one, you would have to put up with affirmations which are only very general in character – which would thus lessen its importance for you.

This is why I thought the so-called 2010 Credit Crunch Calendar was such a bad idea. Instead of showing a load of pictures of Britain in recession, how much better it would have been to have twelve pictures of how we would like Britain to become in the forthcoming year – because maybe then we can all make it happen.

3 Comments

Filed under Supernatural

Tagged as , , , , , ,

October 29, 2009 · 7:43 pm

Voodoo Practitioner to become next Prime Minister?

In the news today I note that serial comeback-queen and Voodoo practitioner Peter Mandelson is attempting to become Prime Minister of the UK. Mandelson, as a life peer, is currently barred from standing in the House of Commons, under centuries old rules that say that members of one chamber in our bi-cameral system cannot simultaneously become a member of the other as well.

However, a bill is currently before Parliament which if passed would theoretically allow Life Peers to give up their peerage and thus become eligible to stand in the House of Commons. By convention, the Prime Minister of the UK has been a member of the Commons for the last one hundred years, when the then King refused to appoint a peer as PM saying it was more appropriate in modern times that he should come from the elected chamber, as opposed to the unelected Lords.

Should this bill allowing Life Peers to resign their peerage be passed? Quite probably yes. The House of Lords is an out-dated institution, destined for eventual oblivion: both main political parties are supposedly committed to its wholesale reform. It makes sense to allow its members to give up their peerages so that they can stand in an elected chamber – after all, in a few years’ time they are not going to have a chamber of their own. Moreover, one of the important disadvantages of the House of Lords is that it entrenches the notion of patronage in British politics. The majority of hereditary peers having been banned from the Lords back in the nineties, the chamber is now dominated by those who owe their seat there to the patronage of the current Government. Opposition parties are allowed to have a certain number of working peers appointed, but basically it is the Government who controls who becomes a peer and thus become a member of the Lords. Any measure that gets rid of appointees and replaces them with elected politicians must surely make Parliament more democratic.

Should, however, Mandelson himself become Prime Minister – even if it until no longer than next July? Let’s look at the record of this man:

July 1997 – Appointed Minister without Portfolio on Labour winning the general election. Given responsibility for the “Millennium Dome.” His management of the dome came in for constant criticism – Stephen Bayley, an adviser who was forced to quit by Mandelson, stated with unwitting irony: “If Mandy went down to a voodoo sacrifice in Brixton tonight, he’d come back tomorrow saying, `We must have voodoo sacrifices in the Dome’.”

July 1998 – promoted to Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

December 1998 – resigned as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry over a scandal involving an interest free loan which he had received.

October 1999 – Mandelson’s boyfriend contacts Brazilian “Voodoo” * priest Jose Lima Da Silva (aka “Zezinho”) to get rid of one of his arch-rivals, Charlie Whelan. Mandelson himself adds a short note to the letter. Eight days later he returns to government as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

*Technically it is not “Voodoo” but “Candomble” – a Brazilian practice which shares enough similarities to the former for a typical British journalist to confuse the two.

February 2000 – Charlie Whelan resigns from his political career – but goes on to forge a new career in the media.

January 2001 – Mandelson resigns again after he tried to do a favour for one of the Hinduja brothers – businessmen who were then under investigation for involvement in the Bofors scandal. Coincidentally the Hindujas were principal sponsors of one part of the Millennium Dome (qv).

March 2001 – Zezinho sells his story to the Mail on Sunday. It is implied that Mandelson and his boyfriend had met Zezinho in person sometime prior to October 1999, as it was alleged that they had been present at a ceremony in Brazil where a chicken was slaughtered.

2004 – Mandelson resigns from British politics altogether to become a European Commissioner.

2008 – retires from the European Commission and becomes a Life Peer, member of the House of Lords, and Business Secretary.

June 2009 – receives additional appointments as First Secretary of State (an honorary title), and Lord President of the Council (i.e. of the Privy Council – this position is usually given to the Leader of the House of Lords).

October 2009 – alleged to be contemplating wanting to return to the House of Commons and perhaps become Prime Minister.

So what we have here is a politician who resigned twice from senior Government positions in shady circumstances, yet somehow manages to keep coming back. Perhaps supernatural forces are calling him back to power – despite Mandelson’s best effort to scupper his own political career!

In Haiti, there is a practice of fetishizing politicians who have achieved temporal power, such as the President of the United States, on the basis that they must have some “pizzazz” about them to achieve what they have done. It strikes me though that if any recent British politician deserves that kind of veneration, it would be Tony Blair, not Mandelson. After all, Blair had a solid ten years as Prime Minister and was fairly successful at it. Mandelson’s career on the other hand has been decidedly volatile and haphazard – hardly what one would call prime ministerial.

In my opinion, Mandelson’s biggest fault is not that he practiced black magick – but that he practiced black magick so badly.

1 Comment

Filed under Comment

Tagged as , ,

October 26, 2009 · 7:43 pm

… but then we shall see face to face.

John Dee, the famous Elizabethan Mathematician, Scholar and Occultist, continues to exercise a powerful hold over the British imagination. So much so that British newspaper The Guardian this weekend featured a nice article this weekend about Dee’s “Shewstone” or black-obsidian disc with which he got Edmund Kelly to skry all the wonders of what we nowadays call Enochian Magic.

The article in question was about a new exhibition at the Tate St Ives (Cornwall, not Cambridgeshire) about magic and modernity. This proved to be somewhat ironic as according to the article, the exhibition neither featured the work of a modern magic practitioner, nor did it feature John Dee’s Shewstone. Ah well, serves me right for reading such a miserable excuse for a paper. Back to The Daily Telegraph for me in future!

But this got me thinking that I should take this opportunity to write a blog piece about Dark Mirrors and their use in magic generally.

A “dark mirror” or Speculum (not to be confused with the medical instrument of the same name) is not so much a conventional mirror but a black shiny surface in which one’s reflection may be perceived. It is used in magic for evocations.

Now a number of magicians seem to think that when performing an evocation, the spirit somehow materialises within the Triangle of Art out of thin air – but a survey of both classic magic texts and modern sources suggests that this is not the case. A great many texts suggest that the object of evocation is to make a given spirit appear in some sort of skrying medium: the most famous example of which would be the classic Crystal Ball.

However a number of other media have also been described as being used – e.g. Dee’s black-obsidian disc, or a bowl of water (a technique favoured by the Ancient Egyptians) or a small quantity of black ink held in the palm of one’s hand. Anything in fact which is black and shiny.

Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825 – 1875) advocated the use of dark mirrors for skrying purposes. He recommended using two sheets of glass, one flat and the other (the skrying surface) concave: the space between the two sheets of glass was to be filled with black ink. Randolph also wrote down practical instructions for getting started in dark-mirror skrying. (See his book Sexual Magic).

Eliphas Lévi (1810 – 1875) famously attempted to evoke the spirit of Appolonius of Tyana into a mirror. Technically he succeeded (he claimed that an apparition of Appolonius appeared) but for all the good it did him he might have just as well tried reading the tea-leaves.

Franz Bardon (1909 – 1958) in his book Initiation Into Hermetics also describes how to create magic mirrors for the purpose of skrying. According to Bardon there are several methods – such a mirror can be made from an actual mirror or glass bowl, a concave glass disc (such as can be obtained from clock-makers), or bowl which has been made by oneself out of plaster-of-paris. Knowledge of what Bardon calls “fluid condensers” – substances which attract magical influences in a kind of very simplified alchemy – is necessary to render the mirror effective. Once prepared – and assuming that one undergoes all of the other steps required for magical training – the magic mirror can be used for skrying the various planes of existence, contacting dead people, contacting magical entities, and numerous other magical effects.

The most famous practitioner of dark-mirror skrying today is Carroll “Poke” Runyon, founder of the Ordo Templi Astarte. Runyon has stated that he re-discovered the practice all by himself in the early seventies, and uses it to contact the seventy-two spirits of the Goetia of the Lesser Key of Solomon (whilst using a crystal ball for contacting angelic beings). See The Magick of Solomon.

What is being observed when one looks into a dark mirror? The reductionist-materialist would say that it is merely a dim reflection of oneself. However, in every case of evocation with which I am familiar, the magician does not just sit down in front of the object, but prepares himself with a great deal of magic ritual, which involves concentration and entering into an ecstatic or visionary state of consciousness. Runyon for example explicitly states that both raja yoga and self-hypnosis are necessary requisites for proper skrying in the dark mirror. Therefore although the physical cause of the apparition is the dim reflection of the skryer, what the skryer perceives is in fact the sum total of the influences at work on his or her mind at that particular moment, due to the magical ceremony in progress.

There is a description of a dark mirror skrying operation in my novel which I do not recommend readers carry out literally – it is meant to be the direct opposite of what a normal respectable magician would do in real life. On the other hand it is meant to convey an authentic flavour of what a vile, degenerate luciferian ceremony would consist.

Finally I should point out that several magicians claim that it is not necessary to “see” a spirit in order to evoke it properly. Lon Milo Duquette for example has claimed success with Goetic operations, but readily admits that when he evokes a spirit he feels its presence rather than seeing it. In Chaos Magick, an evocation refers to evoking the effects of a magical force to physical manifestation, not necessarily to evoking a visible appearance of the force itself.

Leave a comment

Filed under Comment, Supernatural, The Magus

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,