NMR ISSUE 13

Astrological Forecast 13
Belief and Magic
Chiron Key to Higher Consciousness
Collective Integrity Conduits
Consummation of Joy
Demeter and Persephone
Editorial 13
I am She
Letters 13
Longhorn
Magick and the Law
Metaphysics of the Gulf War
Selenite
Tarot 101
The Adepts
The Channel
The Goddess Is…
The Oldest Magick
The Witch's Corner
Tower of Myth
Where are the Rituals

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Where are the Rituals?

Donald Michael Kraig

It is surprising to some that ceremonial magicians do not write up scads of rituals to perform. This is a question that many Pagans have of ceremonial magicians. Some Pagans spend a good deal of time creating new rituals or trying to recreate old ones. Virtually every book, magazine or newsletter on Paganism has a new ritual or two (or many more) in it. Certainly, one would think, many ceremonial magicians are as creative as Pagans and have a wide base of material to draw on. Yet, when you look at the articles by magicians (including my own) that appear in magazines there are very few rituals. Instead you get theory, philosophy, theology, metaphysics, etc.

Their main reason for this is that the very nature of ceremonial magick limits what can be shared. There are three basic types of rituals: Those of adoration of deity (religious rituals), those that request of a deity (magickal rituals) and those that follow the rule of deity (natural magick). Most ceremonial magicians are not involved with natural magick—working specifically with herbs, plants, stones, etc. Those rituals that approach religiosity per se are usually part of initiation rituals and are used only within a select group. No magician is going to break vows by sharing an initiation ritual of a group that he or she is active in.

This leaves us with magickal rituals per se. For centuries, ceremonial magicians have used the cookbook" method of magick. This method involves filling in blanks left in a basic ritual. Look at such classic books as the Lesser Key of Solomon and Greater Key of Solomon. They have a few basic rituals with spots left open for the entities you wish to evoke. The same is true of the rituals for consecrating your magickal tools as given in such books as The Golden Dawn and my Modern Magick.

But fill-in rituals are always incomplete. Otherwise you would constantly be having the stupid scenes one often sees in movies where somebody reads an old book and some ugly, demonic beastie with glow-in-the-dark eyes and super-slime drool pops up out of nowhere. Ridiculous! These rituals leave out the vital information necessary to achieve the magickal goal. This, most importantly, includes the ability to manifest and control psychic energy. Supposedly, by the time one has mastered this ability, one is familiar with the basics of ceremonial magick. Thus, you can write, Banish, Evoke Isis, request magickal desire, send energy, Banish" and a trained ceremonial magician will know what to do from those simple instructions without needing full details.

The ceremonial magician assumes that a reader will be familiar with ceremonial magick. A Pagan writer, however, knowing that there are so many variations of Paganism out there, cannot make the assumption that the reader is familiar with the author's system/tradition. The Pagan will write out the full ritual—in detail.

The result of this is twofold. First, a wide and beautiful panoply of Pagan rituals for all purposes are available. More appear every day. Second, there are an increasing number of poorly imitative ceremonial magick rituals. I have recently seen a variety of rituals written to improve" those of the Golden Dawn. At best they are a mere joining of Golden Dawn rituals with Crowlean expressions, at worst they are bad rituals.

By bad I do not mean that they are evil. Rather, rituals need to inspire the soul, thrill the unconscious and cause the heart to soar, in some way lifting the participant to higher levels of spirituality. Some of the work of the Golden Dawn and of Crowley does this—some does not. To give an example of the difference: Look in the book The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic by Regardie and published by Falcon. I believe the original Golden Dawn initiation rituals were magnificent. The variations given by Waite, which are wordy and cerebral, move the rituals out of being experiential and into the realm of isn't that interesting." Rituals, especially initiation rituals, should be meant initially for experience, not for analysis. Waite appealed to the conscious mind rather than the heart and soul. It is in that way that his rituals fail.

So, because I do not claim the quality of the Golden Dawn or of Crowley or of many of the excellent Pagan writers, I seldom write new rituals for articles I do. Also (unlike some writers who claim to be ceremonial magicians), I would not give out rituals that I had not tested without clearly stating that to be the case.

If you are looking to my articles, or to the articles of any ceremonial magician, to become an adept, you will only become one of what Regardie used to call the inepti. Instead, I would urge you first to study such books such as those by Regardie, Crowley, Butler, Mathers, Grey, Knight, Fortune, Grant, King, Achad, Bonewitz and others. For it is through training in a system, dedication and, most importantly, practice, practice, practice that one becomes a ceremonial magician, not through reading articles in a magazine.

Why, then, do I write for magazines such as this one? To entice, to inspire, to anger, to question, to get people (I hope) asking questions about life and the meaning of reality and possibly move onto a spiritual path. And when people tell me they have found a home in Wicca, Thelema, the Golden Dawn or some other spiritual system—including, possibly, a newfound rediscovery of their birth religion—then I know that articles like this have served their purpose.