On beginning your first practice

You need to start planning and doing a first magical practice. It will take a while for the practice to get going, as I add bits to it in response to your feedback and pace. For now you need to think about when to start the practice, perhaps a special auspicious date. The initial practice needs to be kept at for about twelve months, allowing say up to an hour a day, where possible, so it shouldn't interfere too much with your livelihood. You need a space, say the corner of a bedroom, to set aside for this. I've enclosed a document which may also clarify some ideas. When you're ready I send the guidance notes on the nature of the practice, which is fairly straightforward and revolved around the magical elements.

1. All is one

Whatever style of Magick you choose to work in, for example ritual Magick, Thelema or Tantra, the basics will be similar in most important details.

2. Be enthusiastic

After choosing a magical name, taking an oath and receiving your first initiation from your outer guide or guru, what then? Prepare to begin the regular practice of Magick. When you start out you are keen and can think seriously about a daily practice without becoming discouraged. Take advantage of this time - it is special. But it's also worth wearing a special ring, piece of jewellery, etc, that will constantly remind you of who you are even in the hustle and bustle of work, home life, etc

3. There is never a good time for Magick

Begin by preparing an physical altar or shrine. Do not cut corners and do not be over ambitious. One of the basic axioms of Magick is that there is never a good time to do it. If you wait for an imagined perfect time, the demons of chaos will probably ensure that it never comes. Similarly, do not wait until you can build the temple of your dreams. Be content with a corner of your bedroom, this is what most of us use and it is perfectly adequate. It has the advantage that after a late night practice you can sleep near your altar, often a stimulus for interesting and relevant dreams.

Please let your teacher or sumitra know when you will acttually begin your practice. Perhaps this could be on or near the new moon, which will give you something to write about if you decide to submit a diary summary as recommended in the subsidiary paper on the magical diary,

4. The Altar should delight

A personal magical altar should be a delight to behold. Keep things simple and aesthetically pleasing. For starting out, you need only a very few things. The basic altar has on it symbols of the five elements. Candles or lamps for fire, a cup for water, incense and burner for smell, a plate or pentacle for earth, a bell for spirit. Try to put aside any doubts you have about the need to have these things actually there. You will come to see these doubts as just another kind of conditioning that you need to work through.

Optional things for your altar are perhaps a special knife or wand to point with when doing an invocation. At this stage a finger does just as well. A wand you make now may not please you in a years time but you will nevertheless have great difficulty abandoning it. To avoid this problem, why not do without a wand until you really feel the need for one - perhaps you never will. Other useful things include a robe or cloak (black cotton is the most widely used variety). Robes and cloaks work well for standing up rituals, but for sitting down, of which there is a fair amount in Magick, they can be a bit restrictive. If your room is well heated then going naked might be an option, otherwise comfortable leggings or yoga trousers might be better. One last recommendation, try using real incense, which is burnt on self lighting charcoal. Clouds of incense have long been used by magicians as an alternative to the ancient animal sacrifice. Real incense is more expensive, but much more potent than joss sticks. Ask about reputable magical incense suppliers or details about how you can make your own - as with anything there are good and bad suppliers of such things. (suggested reading Dave Lee's Magical Incenses (1993).

5. Inflame yourself

Do something to quicken the energy in your body. Go to a local yoga, dance or martial arts class solely for this purpose.

6. Invoke Often

Set a time for the start of your first magical practice. You should aim to do about 30 minutes once a day for the next year. The thirty minutes will gradually creep up to one hour, the optimum length for a magical practice. You may say, 'why set a limit' - the answer is that there seems to be a natural limit to ones endurance of magical consciousness. But more importantly, experience suggest that when one gets near the end of a practice, as measured by clock or better still an hour-glass, things start to happen. The ebbing of time acts as a catalyst and often the most interesting states occur for these few privileged moments.

7. 'Posture should be easy and comfortable'

Spend some time perfecting a posture for sitting quietly and without fidgeting for up to 30 minutes. For many people this is surprisingly difficult. Westerners especially are used to sitting on chairs and the open hipped postures of yoga can be very uncomfortable at first because the muscles are so stiff. Ignore Crowley's advice on this. If I see you I can demonstrate some simple sitting techniques. You need a cushion (for cross legged posture) or a 'sadhu seat' for kneeling (dragon postures.) The Yoga Sutras II.46 says that a posture should be 'steady and easy' i.e. natural. Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita recommends using soft straw or hide as a cushion, there is no need for masochism. If you are very stiff you may need a couple of weeks to perfect your posture - and Magick may be out of the question whilst doing it. Try listening to music, watching telly or reading until you can do 30 minutes without dying of agony.

8. Restraints and disciplines

Before doing your practice, resolve any difficulties that are likely to intrude during your temple time. Settle any arguments where possible. Remove the phone from the hook a little before you start. Stop watching TV and reduce any other extraneous stimulation. Do not have a full stomach, but neither need you be starving. A glass of milk can sometimes be useful.

9. Nothing In, nothing out.

On important feature of ritual is the way is dramatises and makes sense of symbols and myths. The dialogue between a symbol and its instantiation in a ritual is one of the sources of magical knowledge. But you must submerge yourself in a chosen symbol system in order for the dialogue to take place - to have something to work with. Study the mythology of your chosen style of Magick, Paganism is polytheistic - the absolute true cannot be known directly - it must be represented by symbols - usually by a pantheon of gods and spirits. Get to know this symbolism. Your should be familiar with astrology and the tarot at the very least.

10. Making sacred space

Now you are ready to start a regular magical practice. Open your temple. Centre yourself for a few moments then do a banishing ritual. Either the well-known pentagram rite as described in many books for instance Crowley's Magick or Israel Regardie's Middle Pillar. Or, if your are in a Tantrik mode, then do the Tantrik banishing ritual from Tantra Magick. Listen to how other do it and incorporate any variations that seem useful to you into your version of it. There is no need to slavishly follow a formula just because it was written in a book - even if the author is as famous as Crowley. All useful rituals evolved over time. Really do the ritual, standing and making the gestures and vibrating the divine names with enthusiasm. The first few times you may be just 'walking through', to get familiar with the gestures and sounds. When you can dispense with the book and really let rip, you should feel a noticeable difference - you have created a sacred space.

There are several elements in any good banishing ritual.

i. Statement of purpose.

You need to begin every ritual with one of these, before you even start banishing. You can use a ritual for all sorts of things: to get information, to create a result in the physical world, for initiation, for inspiration, etc. At this stage you are focussing mainly on the banishing and on the elemental guardians which are a part of that banishing so you would say something like 'I [your name] perform this rite because it is my will to gain the knowledge of the elemental guardians of my temple, and to learn to create sacred space.'

ii. There is always a part of you which doesn't want to perform the rite!

In the tantrik banishing I always think about this when I am saying the words 'I salute the line of innumerable naths' - the idea is that I am calling upon them to bear witness to the rite and to assist me to carry it out fully, and I am acknowledging the fact that there are parts of my psyche that aren't yet completely attuned to my Will yet.

iii. Raising power.

At the beginning of the banishing whether you're performing the tantric banishing or the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram you need to raise power. It's worth jumping around, stretching, etc, before you start to work to become more aware of your bodily energy, and as you cast the protective circle around you breathe deeply from your belly and imagine that you are drawing up the energy from the centre of your earth and, as you chant 'Om' three times, imagine the earth energy flowing out through your breath and forming the shimmering protective circle. Vibrate the 'Om's very loudly! This is very important.

iv. Evocation of the guardians of the directions

In Tantra Magick, the ritual describes the four sets of guardians of each direction. As you evoke them, I think again you need to put some energy into that evocation: visualizing them isn't enough at first, in my view. Later when you have more contact with them they will tell you their names and you can vibrate these sounds as you evoke them; for now, I suggest you chant 'Om Namo Shiva-ya' ('blessings to the name of Shiva') at each quarter. When you visualize them try not to just imagine what they look like but use all your senses - for air, imagine the rushing wind; for fire imagine the warmth, sound, and smell of fire and the taste of smoke in your throat. More about this later.

v. Closing of the temple

At the end of the ritual, it is important that you
(a) earth the energy you have raised in the rite by crouching down with your hands on the ground and feeling the energy flowing out of you back into the earth. Failing to earth it can make you irritable and cause magickal indigestion! Ensure at this stage that you are breathing through your belly again - become fully aware of your body.
(b) absorb the guardians of the directions again (imagine them approaching you and absorb them into you), and (c) give any spirits entrapped by your working license to depart, saying something like:

'[clap or bell or loud noise] I hearby release any spirits entrapped by this working. May you return to your abodes and habitations with my blessings and thanks. To those unable or unwilling to depart, I command you, in the name of the Goddess Shoshita, to depart now [another loud noise!]' Shoshita is the goddess of leftovers (see the description of the 'opening rite' of Tantra Magick) who will also absorb excess energies.

Thats more or less the end of the first section. It may take you a while to absorb and prespare all the of the above and be ready to move on. However if you do get this far and want a few useful preliminary exercise here are some suggestions, although the actual tankhem practice is quite different.

11. Use the time

The opening of the temple and banishing take about five to ten minutes. Closing, which must never be neglected, takes a few minutes. So what to do with the time in between? Well, when you are ready I will give you some ideas on a regular practice to do in this space. But for the time being here is a fall-back practice. Most magicians, whatever their style, have a natural limit on the amount of time they can concentrate in a ritual. Their mental stamina may well develop and grow, but everyone on occasion experiences a premature shutdown of transmission. If you are mediating with a group, you can't just get up and have a cigarette. You have to wait until everyone has finished. Or even if you are alone, its a good idea to keep sitting until the time period is complete. Sometimes time plays a trick, seemingly bending back over upon itself, so that the most appropriate vision for the ritual comes in a flash right at the beginning, and then nothing more. In all of these circumstances one needs a fall-back basic meditation to fill the time. I am lucky enough to be able to do a Buddhist meditation called 'just sitting' - remarkably similar to the void-mind type practice described by Crowley in his Eight Lectures on Yoga and elsewhere. I find it wonderfully refreshing and can sit for a long time in void mind state.

Making the mind empty is more difficult than it seems and it is usual to get into the practice by counting breaths. Sit in your asana and begin counting your breaths, taking as your marker the 'in' breath - i.e. in (1), out; in (2), out; etc. until you reach ten, then begin again. If you loose count, simply go back to number one. Focus on either the movement outwards of the stomach with each in-breath or the coolness of the in breath as it passes through your nostrils. After counting for about 10 minutes, switch attention to the out breath i.e. in, out (1); in out (2); etc. If you get through ten minutes of that, switch attention to the in and the out breath i.e. count in - out (1); in, out (2); etc. If you can go on for another ten minutes, focus for a while on the bridge of your nose as you breath in and out, not consciously counting. And finally, for the last ten minutes focus on nothing at all - void mind. If you do all that, then you have been sitting for about 50 minutes, and with banishing and closing, the magic hour is almost done. If you try it and are concerned about getting the timing right, then pre record a tape with a gentle bell at ten minute intervals. In Buddhist monasteries, one of the monks chimes a special bell at the required interval.

However, if this sounds too bare and you prefer something with which to occupy your mind, then visualise one of the following, as it suites you: If you find visualisation difficult, then lets talk about it. I really recommend reading some of the chapters in Jan Fries' book Visual Magick, which has some sound advice on getting this ability going.

Sit in your asana in front of your altar and visualise one of the following:
a) the first hexagram of the I Ching i.e. six horizontal unbroken lines. It represent six dragons rising up to heaven and is therefore a symbol of humanities highest aspiration for transcendental knowledge.
b) or visualise the lingam (phallus) of Shiva with a trident marked upon it
c) or visualise a seven pointed star, in its centre is a diagram of the sun and moon conjoined. There is no need to imagine these images in a very static form. For instance, you could visualise yourself drawing the I Ching hexagram on an object or on someone forehead, anything to get a clear image in your mind.

13. Astral Temple

You will not have to do these meditations very long. In the next document I will introduce you to the astral temple. Before I finish consider what you think the purpose of ritual might be. Cover up the last few lines of this paper so you can think about it before reading what I have written.

Ritual, and I include here trance, has two sides (maybe more.). One side is definitely the process by which the magician makes his or herself receptive or open to something outside of themselves. The second is the calling or invocation of that for which you have made yourself receptive.

Now go to discussion topic 'What is magick'


If you would like discuss further some of the ideas above,
before moving then you can do so by email here