The Book of Results by RAY SHERWIN.pdf

THE BOOK OF RESULTS

by RAY SHERWIN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD

CHAPTER ONE

THE BOOK OF RESULTS

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

AN EXAMPLE RITUAL

CHAPTER FOUR

ACTION SIGILS

THE DRUID’S KNOT

THE CRIME BEFORE TIME

THESSALONIUS LOYOLA

FOREWORD

This interesting contribution to the practise and theory of sigils certainly deserves a fourth

publication. In it you will find some ingenious refinements of the practices and principles

developed by the great English Mage Austin Osman Spare. This book is basically a

practical extension kit to the now classic sigil technique which also helpfully resumes the

original in plain language.

With a refreshing severity Sherwin reminds us that demons are very real personal

blindspots which the aspiring magician can and should overcome with a daily regime of

willed magical and material activity. On the non-reductionist side of the coin he shows

how the basic sleight of mind techniques of sigilisation can be expanded into full rituals

complete with banishing techniques, mantras and dervish whirling, to create longer and

more powerful rites.

Sherwin discusses the theory of sigils and presents the basic mechanism, uncovered by

Spare, explaining the entire range of seemingly bizarre analogical procedures of the old

spell books at a stroke. This insight is a landmark in the history of magical thought. One

can always tell the difference between those magicians who have understood it and those

who have not. The Caltrop of Chaos banishing ritual is a useful addition to the chaoist’s

magical repertoire despite its reference to the now contentious big-bang theory. Similarly,

the apparent singularity of Self in Sherwin’s model may well raise a chaoist eyebrow or

two and provoke more debate and research on this topic.

The group ritual for a collective abstract sigil attracts my attention as it seems to

transcend the limitation to a single operator of the classical sigil technique. It will

doubtless form the basis for some challenging experiments amongst groups of many

persuasions.

This is, above all, a book of accessible, practical technique. Buy it, study it, and use it.

The ratio of practising magicians to collectors of magical books is probably 1:100.

Hopefully this book will help to rectify the situation.

Pete Carroll.

CHAPTER ONE

Since the Book of Results was first issued in 1978 sigilisation has become a popular, if

somewhat underrated, approach to certain types of sorcery. Within my personal attitude

towards magick sigilisation figures very largely but hardly at all in isolation since its

success relies heavily on other aspects of the art magical. It is perhaps best, at the outset

of this short book, to assume an overview in order to appreciate the relative importance of

sigils (from my point of view) before examining their construction and use in detail.

I have always been suspicious of the guru system and of magical hierarchies. To avoid

entering into a lengthy argumentation on this point suffice it to say that in my experience

magical orders which have a tendency towards this type of heresy, for whatever given

reasons, always militate against the individual in favour of the order, especially when

conflict arises but also, insidiously, as a matter of course. Since magick is an individualist

pursuit the individual must always be of paramount importance and anyone who denies

this is looking for profit or power or does not know any better.

It is always wise to listen to what other people have to say but decisions must be made

and action taken according to comfort, pleasure and effectiveness after individual

experimentation has taken place. Keeping oneself at the centre of one’s magical activity,

rather than following the peculiarities which someone else has found to be useful, also

helps to keep one wary of picking up dogmas accidentally and treating them as personal

truths.

This is the only way to realise that beliefs are not permanent concepts but changeable

commodities which can be managed by the magician (and others) and manipulated to his

benefit. When asked “What do you believe?”, the magician, speaking from the central

stillness of himself, should be able to reply, in all honesty, “I believe nothing”. With such

a blank slate at his disposal the magician can then adopt and discard beliefs as he sees fit.

I worked many of the techniques useful for attaining this condition into my translation of

The Golden Verses of Pythagoras which was included in The Theatre of Magic . The basis

of the scheme is autopsy or strict and systematic self-enquiry.

There are two basic types of magical technique, one which gets you into your head and

the other which gets you out of it. In some cases, whirling for example, either effect can

be achieved according to the magician’s intention. Drumming, drug-induced trance and

some forms of mantra are gnostic techniques which also come into this category. Those

techniques which inhibit the body, asana, sensory deprivation and so on, are best suited

for looking inwards while those which tend to excite the body are most useful for

projecting dynamically outwards.

The mystic might have a great deal to say about the evident duality of this. I have nothing

further to add except that the individual should experiment with as many techniques as he

can find or invent in order to immediately discard those which are obviously not suitable,

for whatever reason. He can then concentrate his attention on the mastery of the

remaining techniques. Daily excercises in technique need not be performed in magical

mood and there is something to be said for treating such excercises as one might treat

callisthenics or the more practical forms of body yoga. Once a technique has been

mastered it can then be used confidently during ritual magick as such. The magician who

attempts to use unperfected technique during ritual work does so at his peril. At best his

ritual will be ineffective. Less optimistically, he may leave the temple feeling more

foolish than when he entered, a positive regression, in his development best avoided.

I would recommend anyone who is just starting to use methods of this sort to set up a

daily regime, a programme combining strictness and pleasure. A detailed written record

helps to keep perspective and is an invaluable aid in helping to bridge the gap between

performance and capacity, that is, between present ability and personal expectation. In

other disciplines, yoga for example, one practices every day and with each practice the

body responds by becoming more flexible. One’s mind, however, is more subtle than

one’s body. The only reasons for not being able to adopt a yoga posture are inherant

physical inability or the stiffness of joint which can, with practice, be relaxed. But there

are all kinds of reasons for not achieving good results in other areas of one’s life and it is

the conquest of these which is called ‘Magick’.

There are no new methods in magick, merely rearrangements and refinements of old

ones. The self-integration process of driving out neuroses through meditation and

abreaction is the same method in essence as would be used to drive the self on to greater

things. The word ‘evolution’ has been ‘new-aged’ to death in this context but it remains

the best word that we have.

Man is a lazy creature of habit. Laziness may indeed have been one of the major reasons

for his evolution so far, encouraging him, as it must have done, to find easier ways for

survival than the conditions in which he found himself allowed. Habit, even in complex

activities, reduces the amount of concentration required for the execution of a task. The

simple expedient of the grasping thumb would have necessitated a great deal of

concentration at the time when such a facility began to develop, as would the

development of three- dimensional vision and the beginnings of coherent thought and

language. In ancient times it would have been the individuals most capable of using these

new developments who would have been looked upon as magicians - the ones who could

run quickly, produce tools with greater precision or bring together their observation and

skill to produce ideographs - yet they would be quickly emulated by those whose faculties

were only slightly less developed. The ones who were not physically and mentally

capable did not survive.

On the grand scale activities like grasping with the thumb and seeing three-dimensionally

became habitual. We certainly do not need to think about them and in the latter case it is

supremely difficult to reverse the process and see everything on a flat plane.

Habit reduces the degree of concentration necessary for the performance of any task and

in so doing releases the faculty of concentration for application in other areas and it is

this, now almost unused faculty, unused because it is no longer called upon for the

maintenance of the organism, which provides the key to the scheme of magick which I

have found most useful. Here we have a reservoir of potential concentration which is not

being used. Because he is a lazy creature of habit man prefers comfort to adventure, stasis

to motion in both the physical and mental sense. Only the greatest minds break out of this

stasis to produce something new, vital and essential. For the vast majority, who can only

see their own capabilities during rare moments of unusual lucidity, life goes on as normal,

the supreme being rejected in favour of the habitual.

Traditionally the magician forced himself to do those things which his personality

decreed would wait until tomorrow. This method failed because it relied on the

imposition of new habits, albeit self-imposed rather than arbitrary ones, without stating its

aims.

It has been said that there is a censorship mechanism which prevents us from performing

to capacity. Whether this mechanism is seen as a function of the Holy Guardian Angel, as

a natural and necessary mental barrier or, as some have seen it, as the work of demons or

aliens resident in the mind, it is clearly an objective of the magician to bypass or destroy

it. The magician must map his consciousness from within, wearing down the censorship

mechanism proportionately to the increase in his self-knowledge until it no longer

interferes with his overall strategy.

The first tactic towards this end is a catalogue of activities. There are many reasons why

we do things - indeed we sometimes find it amusing to do something for no reason at all.

The magician must analyse every action he makes and satisfactorily explain to himself the

reason for each action until his mind begins to clear through the increase in licit activity

and the dropping out of illicit activity. At that point he would be performing willed and

necessary actions ( licit ) and not bending to the accretions of habit or appetite. The

possible reasons for the performance or omission of any activity are several:-

1. NECESSITY: Health, welfare, income, evolution/development. This last category can

be misleading. Activities such as reading or making whatever could be classified under

the heading of development. The magician should be ruthless in analysing them.

2.HAB1T: Smoking is an obvious example. Leaving aside the question of health which

does not apply to all habitual actions it is necessary only to identify habitual activities.

These might then be subdivided into habits which interfere with category 1 functions and

those which do not. In either case the magician should desist from their performance.

3.APPETITE: This includes eating, drinking, sex, drug abuse and any activity whose

only result is to stimulate the organism in some way spurious to the needs of necessity or

nature.

4.FEAR: That is, fear of the consequences should certain actions not be performed.

5.LAZINESS: Any of the categories listed above could also belong to this category, even

income. The man who uses mundane work as an excuse not to do those things he really

needs to do is a clerk who will never become an Einstein.

6.UNSELFASSUREDNESS: “I will not prepare a meal because I am not a good cook”.

Forced into the situation any man can become a Robinson Crusoe. “I am not a good

telepath” is insufficient reason not to try - and perhaps succeed.

7.TIME MEASURING: Activities which serve only to amuse until a time when more

important activities can be performed.

Further reasons might be listed as a) bravado, b) pride, c) anxiety to please, d) ambition -

usually a conditioned or self-conditioned reflex which serves no other purpose than the

fulfilment of b or c, e) the herd complex (doing as others do) and f) stimulus—response.

The observation and critical analysis of one’s actions is of paramount importance but this

cannot be done in a vacuum. For the magician, skilled as he is in the methods of

conjuration and sigilisation, the easiest way to become acquainted with and to destroy the

subtle tricks of the mind which prevent him from working to capacity is to personify them

as demons, each with its own name and sigil.

To be charitable towards the practitioner of traditional magick, it may be that when he

evoked Behemoth, demon of the delights of the belly, and then banished him he was

attempting to understand his own gross appetites and thereby to rid himself of them. But

even if this were the case an operation of such an isolated nature would have had little or

no permanent effect on him. In any case there is little benefit in identifying with a demon

of someone else’s creation since that notion is sure to manifest in different ways for

different individuals or in some cases not at all.

A number of morning meditations produces a list of categories of action as illustrated

above. Licit activities, those listed under 1 need not be personified but all the others

should be named and provided with a sigil. The names and sigils may be totally arbitrary

or could be arrived at through word-association or similar methods.

Having identified these demons the magician must then settle down to observing their

action which, in itself, may negate the effects of some of them. In order to destroy the

more irrepressable of them, however, he needs to adopt a daily regime, a cycle of actions

which not only aids his analysis of them but also provides supplementary activities to

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