Ritual Magic Workbook.pdf

The Ritual Magic Workbook

Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

A Practical Course of Self‐Initiation

Samuel Weiser, Inc.

York Beach, Maine

First published in 1998 by Samuel Weiser, Inc.

Box 612 York Beach, ME 03910‐0612

Acknowledgements

More than most, writers need the backup of other people. They provide encouragement, endless cups

of coffee, and a willing ear when you hit the inevitable dry period and nothing you put down on paper

looks or reads the way you see it in your head. Without the following friends and relations my life would

be a lot harder.

My husband Michael and Sonia Hackwell who took much of the office work off my hands and gave me

time to write. Emily Peach and Alan Richardson who listened with untiring ears to my ideas, even the

wildest of them, and kept my spirits up when I thought it would never get done. Anne, Laurel, Cathy,

Raffi, Jamie, Gordon and Sheila in Sydney who tried out the material, and survived!

Gary Farmer who came up with some beautiful incense recipes and allowed me to use some of them.

Mike Herivel, Nick and Chris who keep my Apple II going and always have a smile even when I call them

out and the darned thing starts to work the moment they walk into the office!

Last, but never least, to Simon Franklin whose friendship and encouragement spurs me on to try a little

harder each time. Thank you.

Foreword

You are holding in your hands the best practical introduction to the art of magic ever published. Not

'one of the best' or 'arguably the best' or 'possibly the best', but simply the best. It is lucid, down to

earth, well structured, accurate and easy to understand. It is a superb tool for the individual who wants

to understand what magic is all about not in theory, but in practice.

Dolores Ashcroft‐Nowicki, who wrote the book, is an experienced ritual magician and head of a world‐

wide esoteric fraternity/sorority. In the very earliest lessons she will force you to discuss your

motivations for magical study; and she warns, as others have warned before her, that you should not

undertake the work laid out in this book if you are depressed; nor should you mix magical training with

drugs like mescaline, or lsd, or even pot.

You will want to know why. And here I think I may be able to help you.

When I was even younger than I am today, I drove a horse and cart through those three warnings. I was

attracted to magical study without much insight into my real motivations. I began work in a depressed

state. And on one curious social occasion during training,

I smoked cannabis. Since there is always considerable entertainment in someone else's misfortune, let

me describe what happened. Then let me tell you something you will probably not be able to find

elsewhere: the reason why it happened.

First, the question of motivation. We all do things for the best possible motives, of course; and nowhere

more so than in the esoteric arts. It is relatively easy to discover that the only really acceptable excuse

for magical study is embodied in the statement I desire to know in order to serve. That was the answer I

was prompted to give to the ritual question during my own initiation. I dutifully gave it; and it was a lie.

What actually attracted me to magic was not service but power. Nothing grandiose, of course. I had no

burning ambition to rule the world or enslave hordes of beautiful women. (Well, maybe just one or two

beautiful women...) But I was undoubtedly a prey to a disease which is becoming even more prevalent

with the increasing complexity of modern society: a feeling of helplessness.

There are many reactions to such a feeling. Some people embrace political credos. Others get religion. A

few (usually male) take to beating their spouses. I turned to magic, which seemed to me to be the

ultimate antidote: for what is magic if not a secret system which promises control of damn near

everything?

You will be desolate to learn it did not work. Although I spent some nine years in daily Qabalistic training

and learned a great deal in the process, I remained Clark Kent: no amount of magical leaps into ritual

phone boxes could turn me into Superman.

Because I did not recognize my motivations at the outset (for while my pledge of service was a lie, I did

not know that either at the time) I was driven to ignore the warning on depression. I began formal

training while at a low ebb, emotionally and mentally. It was the sort of mood swing I had been through

before and I thought little of it. Such moods inevitably passed over, usually quite quickly. This one did

not. A few months into my initial magical training I had my first full nervous breakdown, which was

mercifully brief. A year and a half later, I had my second, which was not. I was soon under psychiatric

care, wondering whether to mention magic to my shrink, or whether news of what I had been up to

would persuade him to refer me to the funny farm.

In the end, I played down my esoteric involvement and we decided between us that my problem was

Oedipal. I now know it was nothing of the sort, but more of that presently.

The problem with arrogance is that it is a quality for which I have a sneaking admiration. Consequently it

plays a greater part in my character than it really should. A few years into my training, when the worst

of the psychiatric symptoms had died down, I decided I knew enough to make up my own mind about

matters like psychedelic substances.

In those prehistoric days, they were, thank God, a great deal more difficult to come by than they are

now and since I had no source for mescaline or LSD, I was forced to settle for cannabis. I expected a

relaxed and pleasant experience. What I got was a nightmare. I was dragged from my body and hurled in

and out of reality in a horrid slow pulse rhythm which, subjectively, went on forever. My spacial

perceptions were so distorted I was unable to move unaided. I did not know where I was and my

thought patterns were brutally disrupted. Objectively, the experience lasted more than seven hours. All

on a single joint!

I have no doubt any reader with experience of such things will consider the above description grossly

exaggerated or outright fiction. Or, more charitably, that I was smoking something other than cannabis.

Pot simply does not affect people this way, as even the most fervent anti‐drug campaigner will

reluctantly confirm. But that's the way it affected me — and continues to affect me even now. God

knows what I would be like on harder drugs: I have never tried them. Nor have I tried pot since. I even

stopped taking alcohol.

Experience is a great teacher, but it only teaches you the What, not the Why. Why should esoteric

training increase depression to such an extent that it will push you over the edge into neurotic

breakdown; Why should it change one's reaction to drugs to such a ludicrous degree? (I am no advocate

of drug usage, but I do recognize that the vast majority of pot smokers do not go through what I did.)

The answer to both these questions lies in the structure of the human body — specifically, the part of

the structure which falls under the heading of Esoteric Anatomy.

Interlocked with your purely physical systems, which are superbly well charted by Western medicine, is

a further highly complicated system of energy flows which are not terribly well understood in the West,

but which have been studied and categorized in the Orient for millenia — especially in India and China.

In the former, the study was integrated into Yoga. In the latter, it produced the medical techniques of

acupuncture and moxibustion.

I find the details of this energy system quite fascinating and could bore you with them for several

hundred pages given the slightest encouragement. But realistically, all you need to know at this point is

that:

1. The energy system exists.

2. It is intimately linked with (among other things) the endocrine system.

3. It is capable of manipulation. Most systems of esoteric training will sooner or later introduce you to

breath control, visualization and meditation. All three profoundly affect the energy system.

I want to be clear about this: many occult visualization exercises and most occult breathing exercises are

specifically designed to influence the energy system. But even those which are not, tend to influence it

anyway.

The most common result is simple stimulation. More energy is drawn into the system and consequently

more energy flows through it. This is generally quite good news, but not always. I've already mentioned

that the energy system is intimately linked with various physical systems. This is the reason why an

acupuncture needle in your little finger can influence the function of your heart: the needle is

controlling a portion of the energy flow which, in turn, is linked to your internal organs. It is the linkage

with the endocrine system which can cause trouble if you are depressed.

Your endocrine system is an interdependent series of tiny factories continually releasing all sorts of

chemical messengers into your bloodstream. These messengers tell your heart when to beat, aid your

digestion, control your blood pressure and, as any doctor will confirm, profoundly influence your mental

and emotional state at any given time.

Endocrine imbalance can lead to depression, a fact well known to the medical profession which

habitually uses chemical messengers of its own as treatment. But what is all too often forgotten is that

the reverse is also true. A state of depression with purely psychological origins can nonetheless lead to

endocrine imbalance.

All this is getting rather technical and I apologise for that. What it really means is that if your glands are

upset, you will get depressed; and if you are depressed, your glands will get upset. Whichever of these

two very similar states you happen to be in, any blanket stimulation of your glandular system is bad

news. It will inevitably make the depression worse; and in some cases it will make it very much worse. In

my own case, I ended up with an endocrine system so screwed up that I tilted over into nervous

breakdown.

The action of psychedelic drugs (even mild psychedelics like cannabis) on the energy system produces

results even more directly. If you study the theory of Hindu Yoga, you will find a strong tradition that at

a certain stage on the road to ultimate Enlightenment, the Yogi often develops 'powers' — interesting

psychical abilities like telepathy or trancelike changes of consciousness. Here again the energy system is

involved, for as it strengthens with Yoga practice and as the energy flows come to conform more and

more with the yogic ideal, so the practitioner's mind undergoes a change. For the energy system is

linked in two directions — to the physical, as we have already seen, and directly to the psychological.

Once you begin occult training, you begin, almost immediately, to change your own energy system. If

you then add to the change by ingesting psychedelics, it is remarkably easy to create a temporary

situation analogous to blowing a fuse. It's all a little like those medical warnings about not mixing alcohol

with certain medications.

Either one on its own is okay, but the two together interact in a way that can be downright lethal.

The further you progress with your esoteric training, the greater this problem becomes. Highly trained

adepts in the arts tend, you will find, to treat all drugs with considerable caution, including medical

staples like aspirin and socially accepted drugs like nicotine and alcohol. It isn't necessarily that they

dislike their source; it's just that they can't really handle it any more.

And having gotten all that off my chest, I now feel happier about placing Dolores' book in your anxious

hands. Just follow the safety instructions and you'll be fine.

J.H. Brennan

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: