Apprenticed to Magic

“Well Met”

The teacher introduces the apprentice to the Western Mystery Tradition by clarifying what magic actually is—the art of effecting changes in consciousness at will—and establishing that genuine vocation, ethical motivation, and willingness to follow western methods exclusively are prerequisites for training.

• Magic in the Western Tradition is defined as ’the art of effecting changes in consciousness at will,’ not oriental spectacle or yoga, and this definition rests on the unity between the microcosm (man) and macrocosm (the universe).
  • The ‘paraphernalia of ceremonial and ritual’ are only aids by which inner powers are summoned; all magic starts from within.
  • Eastern yoga is designed for eastern bodies and racial psychology; western students should use methods evolved specifically for western people.
• The student’s true motive for seeking magical training must be examined honestly, because subconscious ‘complexes’ can generate irrational impulses toward magic as compensation for resented inferiorities rather than genuine vocation.
  • True vocation is an inner urge that persists through all outer difficulty and inclines toward a balanced state of mind.
  • The admissible motive is captured in the phrase ‘I desire to know in order to serve,’ which is the motive that admits to the Mysteries.
• The teacher bears shared responsibility for any transgressions by the apprentice, which is why acceptance into training is subject not only to the teacher’s judgment but also to ratification by his own superior within the fraternity.
  • The brotherhood is affected by every admission, and the brethren have a right to be considered before a new apprentice is accepted.
  • The apprentice must give a word of honour not to mix western techniques with techniques from other systems.
• The power gained through magical training can be abused, and the temptation to misuse it for personal ends will recur at every stage; this is not theoretical but something the teacher has personally witnessed with serious consequences.
  • The ‘breaking down and rebuilding of your own soul’ is described as nothing less than the goal of the apprenticeship.
  • Mistakes by apprentices are anticipated and the worst consequences can be neutralized by those overseeing the training.

“Application Accepted”

With the apprentice formally accepted, the teacher explains the psychic link established between teacher and pupil, outlines the practical conditions for training (independence of environment, proper ‘closing down’ after meditation), and warns against escapism and the dangers of leaving the meditation state without fully returning to outer awareness.

• Magical instruction creates a real psychic link between teacher and pupil that operates at any distance because it is essentially telepathic, and this link is a two-way channel that can benefit or harm both parties depending on how the work is conducted.
  • The link is described as a ’line of light’ that to a psychic appears as such, and it will be deliberately modified near the end of training so the student can stand independently.
  • Bodily absence is no bar to telepathic rapport; the esoteric archives contain far more evidence of this than the average member of the Society for Psychical Research realizes.
• The student must cultivate independence of environment from the outset, because relying on special conditions for meditation creates mental fetters rather than the integrated personality that is the true goal of training.
  • The teacher’s own master held that proficiency was not to be hoped for until it was possible to meditate successfully while seated in the middle of Waterloo Station.
  • A hard wooden armchair is preferable to an easy chair because the mind must remain alert, not drift into comfort.
• After every meditation session the student must consciously ‘close down’ and return full attention to the outer world, because failure to do so produces gradual disco-ordination and escapism that impairs function in both the inner and outer worlds.
  • Neglecting to return to outer consciousness causes a person to ‘drift into an escapism which, instead of improving your personality, will cause you to become increasingly inefficient in both worlds.’
  • Early in training, indiscriminate psychic ‘sensing’ or ‘opening-up’ is inadvisable until the student is stabilized enough to open and close at will.
• Training follows a natural rhythm of illumination followed by ‘dryness’ and descent into the Valley of Humiliation, and the student must persevere through the dull routine without being discouraged by apparent lack of progress.
  • The ’little foxes that spoil the vines’—boredom and impatience—are the characteristic dangers of the early stages, slipping through where larger adversities would fail.
  • The term ‘dryness’ comes from the vocabulary of the mystics and applies equally to those following the magical path.

First Exercises

The teacher introduces three foundational practical disciplines—the Reverse Meditation (reviewing the day’s events backward to bypass the false ego), the three daily Salutes, and the magical diary—arguing that these mundane-seeming exercises build the essential habits of logical thought, time-sense, and honest self-observation upon which all later magical work depends.

• The student is under obedience to the Rule of the Fraternity as a system of training, not to any personality, and must never be asked to do anything conflicting with the summary of divine law: to love God wholly and one’s neighbour as oneself.
  • The student has duties both to others and to himself; neglecting personal rights in favour of others, or neglecting others in favour of personal practice, both constitute failures of discipline.
  • If the student uses disciplines as an excuse to neglect home, wife, or children, he breaks the spirit of the rule even while following its letter.
• The Reverse Meditation—reviewing each day’s events in reverse order before sleep—weakens habitual forward time-sequencing, makes self-excuse much harder, and begins dismantling the ‘false ego’ that magical training aims to destroy.
  • By observing the end-result first and working backwards, the practitioner finds it much harder to rationalize conduct in the usual ways.
  • The false ego will actively attempt to prevent the exercise, often by causing the student to fall asleep before completing it.
• The three daily Salutes—at morning, noon, and evening—serve the dual purpose of training the subconscious time-sense and regularly redirecting awareness toward the sustaining Life that pervades all manifestation.
  • Morning: ‘Hail to Thee, the Eternal Spiritual Sun, whose visible Symbol now rises in the Heavens.’
  • The Salutes effect a state of ‘Recollection’—turning the mind at stated times toward the power that orders all manifestation, independent of any specific theological framework.
• The magical diary is an essential discipline not for bolstering the ego but for building an automatic habit of careful logical thought; it must record failures honestly without excuses, and monthly reports are sent to the teacher for review.
  • Meditation subjects are chosen deliberately to be the opposite of the student’s natural inclinations, ensuring balanced training rather than lop-sided development.
  • A story of a naturalist’s pupil forced to study a single fish for hours illustrates that a month’s meditation subject contains far more material than the student initially believes.
• Two types of meditation exercise are introduced: ‘image formation’ (deliberately building composite multi-sensory mental pictures) and ‘image recollection’ (allowing latent images to rise into a cleared mental space), both of which train the visualizing faculty needed for advanced magical work.
  • Occult visualization is composite—it includes olfactory, tactile, gustatory, and sound impressions, not just visual imagery, as illustrated by building a full mental picture of Niagara Falls.
  • Professor Ernest Woods’s analogy of a fish swimming around an island rather than pressing its nose into the bank captures the circling, multi-perspectival approach to meditation required.

Posture and Breathing

The teacher provides detailed instruction in the ‘god-form’ sitting posture and a fourfold breathing exercise, grounding these practices in the physiology of the etheric body and insisting that the physical plane is not evil but the ’luminous garment of the Eternal’—a cardinal Qabalistic teaching that must condition all magical work.

• The ‘god-form’ posture—sitting upright with spine erect, feet flat, knees together, hands on knees, and nothing crossed—is the western equivalent of eastern asanas and directs the flow of etheric currents in the vital body without requiring impractical lotus positions.
  • The posture mirrors Egyptian statues of Pharaohs and should be maintained on a fairly hard wooden chair to preserve mental alertness.
  • Bad habits of meditation, like bad habits of typing, are harder to correct than to prevent; establishing correct posture from the outset saves wasted effort later.
• True relaxation is not passive slumping but a three-stage process: locating habitual involuntary tensions, learning to induce and release voluntary tensions in each part of the body, and finally achieving a poised balance between tension and relaxation that remains ready for action.
  • People habitually tense their scalp muscles without realizing it; the survey moves from the top of the head through the face, throat, chest, abdomen, and feet.
  • The mental ’trick’ of poised relaxation is like learning to balance on a bicycle—it comes suddenly after repeated attempts and then becomes automatic.
• Breathing rate and emotional state are reversibly linked—slowing the breath calms the emotions, and the fourfold breathing exercise (count of four in, two held, four out, two held empty) uses this link as a practical tool for magical work.
  • Breath must be held not by closing the mouth and tensing muscles but by keeping the ribs expanded and the throat relaxed, which prevents dangerous lung strain.
  • Students should begin with only six complete cycles and not increase without instruction, as excessive practice can disorganize the psychological machinery.
• The Qabalistic school entirely rejects the Manichean error—found in Neo-Platonic philosophy, early Christian heresy, Puritanism, and some eastern-influenced western occultism—that matter is evil; instead matter is ’the luminous garment of the Eternal,’ and the physical plane is as spiritual as any inner plane.
  • The physical plane is limiting but not evil; it compels consciousness into narrow ranges, and those with inner-plane experience may find it inferior, but it is the growing point of mental evolution.
  • Developing ‘higher consciousness’ without correlating it with waking brain-consciousness produces a blinding inrush of light that blinds rather than illuminates.
• The teacher’s personal warning against mixing western exercises with yoga breathing exercises is based on direct experience: adding an eastern pranayama exercise to his own routine produced increased psychic awareness but seriously disorganized his psychological machinery, requiring extended remedial work with his teacher.
  • The western schools have their own equivalents of Hatha Yoga teaching adapted for western physical and psychic constitutions; the abuse of a thing should not prevent wise use of it.
  • The apprentice must give their word of honour not to introduce techniques from other systems into the prescribed exercises.

Meditation

The teacher argues that the foundational work of magical meditation is the cultivation of precise observation of the outer world, because building a stock of vivid multi-sensory mental images is prerequisite to all higher visualization, and that the student must engage fully with physical-plane life rather than treat spirituality as escape from it.

• Knowledge gained through the physical senses must be developed first; the student must cultivate sharp observation in daily life—on the bus, in the street—before attempting more rarefied forms of inner perception.
  • Rather than daydreaming or reading the newspaper on the morning commute, the student should observe deliberately what the people around and the streets ahead look and sound and feel like.
  • The ‘Kim’s game’—memorizing a tray of objects—is a useful periodic check on progress in observation, though difficult for beginners.
• The physical world and mundane life must be engaged rather than escaped, because attempting to bypass the ‘battle of life’ is cowardice and futile—the disagreeable things avoided will simply have to be faced at a later point in evolution.
  • Contemplatives in Christian orders are not mere escapists but share in the world’s life ‘after another fashion’; the student’s own vocation is the Magical Path with its own discipline.
  • In the Qabalistic teaching the physical plane is equally an expression of the infinite life, so ‘inner planes’ is preferred over ‘higher planes’ to avoid the false spirit/matter dichotomy.
• The fundamental law against psychic or physical intrusion into another person’s private sphere—expressed as ‘Cursed is the man that removeth his neighbour’s landmark’—is grounded in the structure of the aura as each person’s Ring-Pass-Not, and its violation is strictly forbidden in all esoteric schools.
  • The mind is not boxed in the skull; the body is in the mind, and the aura or ‘mind field’ extends around the body like the magnetic field of a magnet.
  • Books that teach psychic influence over others for personal advantage are forbidden in the esoteric schools of both east and west.
• Students must always seek the underlying principle of any exercise rather than blindly following instructions, because the mind’s habit-forming laziness can create a ‘mental block’ that makes instructions seem incomprehensible, and such blocks must be broken through by repeated effort.
  • If a student cannot grasp the general idea behind an exercise after careful study, the fault lies with the teacher’s explanation, not with the student’s intelligence.
  • Leaving instructions to ‘incubate’ before re-reading them allows the subconscious mind to do preliminary work that makes them easier to understand on return.

The Tree of Life

The teacher introduces the Qabalistic Tree of Life as the central mandala of the Western Tradition—a ‘card-index’ of cosmic forces and inner states to be studied in Dion Fortune’s Mystical Qabalah—and explains how meditating on the ten Sephiroth in their four worlds trains the student to see all life as balanced interplay of forces, with imbalance as the root of evil.

• The Tree of Life (Otz Chiim) is defined as ’the mighty, all-embracing glyph of the universe and the soul of man,’ and its ten Sephiroth represent both the forces of the universe and the points where individual consciousness contacts those forces.
  • The twenty-two Paths between the Sephiroth represent the subjective inner world of consciousness common to both individual and planet.
  • Dion Fortune’s The Mystical Qabalah is the required textbook; the student must obtain it through whatever effort is necessary, as the task of finding it is itself a small exercise of will.
• The student must build a card-index of the ten Sephiroth and practise ‘placing on the Tree’ all daily observations, so that the symbolic system becomes an automatic reference-frame rather than a conscious act of translation.
  • The subconscious mind is a great pattern-former, but left to itself its mythology bears little relation to reality; the Tree provides it with organized ‘foundation wax’ like the sheets given to bees for building honeycomb.
  • When the association of symbols with life events becomes automatic and rises without conscious effort, the student must ensure it only happens when willed—control of the images must never be relinquished.
• Evil in the Qabalistic system is not intrinsic to any force but is defined as unbalanced force—any quality persisting too long or concentrated too intensely becomes a ‘King of Edom’ or Qlippothic activity, illustrated by the Sephirah Geburah whose destruction is good when purposeful (demolishing dilapidated houses for a new school) and evil when purposeless (vandalism).
  • “Tennyson’s line ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new, / And God fulfils Himself in many ways, / Lest one good custom should corrupt the world’ is cited as the perfect expression of this principle.” —Alfred Lord Tennyson
  • Health is defined as the balanced action of complementary forces on all levels of being, encompassing the modern medical concept of psycho-somatic treatment.
• The Tree must be studied in four worlds—Atziluth (Archetypes), Briah (Creation), Yetzirah (Formation), and Assiah (Matter)—which are not spatial layers but interpenetrating levels like different radio wavelengths, all equally present and important.
  • The Heavenly Man (Adam Kadmon)—the sum of all manifesting forces imaged as a cosmic body—is the Qabalistic symbol appearing also in Swedenborg’s illuminations and in the depths of modern psychology.
  • The ‘As above, so below’ maxim attributed to Hermes Trismegistus underlies all occult philosophy of east and west and is the basis for relating macrocosmic planetary forces to microcosmic interior stars (chakras).
• Unwise concentration on the chakras—which correspond to endocrine glands—can produce glandular imbalance, and the student must use only the regulated meditations provided rather than experimenting independently with these centres.
  • The cosmic forces experienced in these exercises are not the student’s personal powers but aspects of universal life finding expression through them, as electric current is not the property of the person who switches on the lamp.
  • Only by offering sacrifice of the personal self to the service of God and man can the cosmic power be used safely; using it through an undisciplined personality exaggerates whatever imbalance exists.

The Tree as an Indicator

Once the student has begun to see daily life automatically in terms of the Tree’s symbols, the teacher introduces the next stage: using the symbol system as an alphabet of the Mysteries—first learning to read the meters of the psychic switchboard, then forming simple words—while warning firmly against mistaking symbols for the realities they represent.

• Sephiroth that feel difficult or uncongenial in meditation are precisely those which need most attention, because their difficulty signals that the qualities they represent are out of balance in the student’s own inner make-up, likely covering repressed inhibitions.
  • Foundation work must be completed—seeing all daily happenings automatically in terms of the Tree—before the practical application of inner faculties can begin.
  • Hard work does not mean drudgery; the teacher wants to give the student a sense of the next step to sustain effort through the tedious foundational phase.
• The Tree functions as a psychic switchboard whose symbols are like meters—they indicate the presence and volume of cosmic energies but do not control them; the student must learn to read these indicators before learning to direct the forces they represent.
  • Just as a switchboard attendant must understand electrical theory before reading meters and operating switches, the student must understand the underlying philosophy before working with the symbols.
  • The symbols are the Alphabet of the Mysteries; when this alphabet is learnt, the student can begin to speak the language and make personal contact with the Tradition and those who stand behind it.
• Because the Tree’s symbols have been used by western esotericists for centuries, they are already embedded in what C. G. Jung calls the ‘collective unconscious,’ making contact with inner forces easier than if working with an entirely new system.
  • Eventually the student will learn to ‘meditate in the empty shrine’—work without images—but symbolic training is the necessary scaffolding for this imageless working.
  • The symbols themselves have no independent meaning; they are letters of an alphabet with no significance apart from what they symbolize.
• A practical visualization exercise involves building small mental plays with Tree figures—giving each figure the coloured disc of its Sephirah and the emotional tone of its force—to train the automatic association of symbols with the energies they represent.
  • Geburah is symbolized by a red disc and its magical image is a warrior; Netzach by green and a beautiful woman—these must be kept moving and emotionally vivid in the mental drama.
  • A cardboard or metal tube used to view pictures screens surrounding images and greatly sharpens the object of attention, but must not become a crutch; exercises without it must also be performed.
• The student must not draw attention to esoteric studies or openly defy the group mind of the surrounding community, but instead demonstrate the value of the training through character change visible to those around them.
  • Nature always attempts to eject foreign bodies from living organisms, and the group mind will try to do the same with anyone becoming perceptibly different—the training aims to integrate the student into the racial group mind while developing new capacities.
  • If the student finds themselves becoming irritable or emotionally disturbed, the diary entries read ‘in cold blood’ will usually reveal where the work has gone wrong.

“Fantasy Is the Ass Which Carries the Ark”

The teacher introduces image-projection—first the technique of ‘bringing in’ a detailed picture by consciously tracing the optical process inward and then reversing it, then projecting the built image onto a speculum (mirror or sand surface)—as a positive, willed discipline distinct from passive crystal-gazing or involuntary psychism.

• The voluntary projection of mental images onto an external surface is a positive, willed skill entirely distinct from ‘crystal-gazing’ (passive clairvoyance), and the student must not allow any latent psychic faculty to be activated passively through this exercise.
  • A six-year-old girl who could draw precise silhouette pictures described the process as ‘It’s easy. I think, and then I draw a line round my think’—illustrating the natural visual projection faculty that training develops.
  • Quick results obtained through passive psychism are seldom satisfactory; controlled positive psychism is taught in the magical lodges and is the proper goal.
• The ‘bringing in’ technique trains the visualizing faculty by consciously accompanying incoming images to the visual receiving centre in the brain, then reversing the process to accompany them back outward—timed with a single breath cycle and practised section by section on a detailed picture.
  • A detailed landscape with a cottage, beech wood, elderly man, and collie dog serves as an example of how to give a running analysis—including atmosphere and season—before attempting image-transfer.
  • The mind must change its point of view within the picture rather than sticking to one spot, just as the fish in Ernest Woods’s analogy swims around the island rather than pressing its nose into the bank.
• The speculum for projection—a concave black mirror made from a chemistry watch-glass painted on the convex side—should be kept as plain as possible, and the student must avoid auto-hypnosis by ensuring no eye strain occurs during use.
  • Alternative speculums include a saucer of smoothed fine sand (which allows colour symbolism from the Tree using coloured powders) and a crystal ball, though the crystal’s confusing reflections are more distracting than the mirror.
  • Success in projection typically comes suddenly after many failed attempts: some part of the picture appears in the mirror, usually a focused area corresponding to the ‘mental electric torch’ of attention.
• Psychological projection—involuntarily attributing archetypal authority to the teacher—must be distinguished from deliberate image-projection, and the student must consciously begin to withdraw the ‘Wise Old Man’ projection from the external teacher and redirect it to the inner authority within.
  • Even the inner authority must not receive absolute obedience; monitions from the inner teacher must be weighed by the outer waking consciousness because the ‘baffling and perverting carnal mesh’ colours what passes through it.
  • At a later stage the student will take a pledge not to allow control of will by another person, making independence from projection upon the teacher a formal requirement.

“The Multitude of Counsellors”

Confronted with conflicting warnings from a spiritualist friend, a medically cautious acquaintance, and a disapproving parish priest, the teacher uses each objection to clarify the nature of ’lower psychism,’ the proper place of psychic development in magical training, and the incompatibility of spiritualist methods with the western magical path.

• The ’lower psychism’ objected to by esoteric schools is the involuntary welling-up of perception through the subliminal mind—a reversion to primitive mirror-psychism still found in animals—which is not under conscious control and can lead to the personality dissociation that medical psychology warns against.
  • All psychic experience, whether ‘high’ or ’low,’ is transmitted to the waking self through the subliminal levels because the psychic centres (chakras) link with the involuntary nervous system.
  • Signs of mental trouble are usually present before a person starts psychic development; the breakdown is caused by the person’s pre-existing condition, not the system itself.
• The primary purpose of magical training is mental and spiritual unfoldment, not psychic development; psychic faculties are a means to an end, and the training will not attempt to develop the student as an involuntary psychic.
  • When psychics begin meditation work their powers often temporarily vanish due to increased cerebro-spinal activity along unfamiliar lines; if they persevere, the faculty returns in a more controlled form.
  • Mental unbalance exists in esoteric schools as much as in psychic circles, though esoteric students often loftily condemn their psychic brethren while displaying the same symptoms.
• The methods of spiritualism and magical training are incompatible: spiritualism has its legitimate place in the religious evolution of humanity, but no person can serve two masters, and the student must choose one path before training can proceed.
  • Choosing between spiritualism and magical training is framed as a test of ‘discrimination,’ described as the first essential mental virtue of the Path.
  • The teacher acknowledges that some phenomena in spiritualist materialisation séances genuinely involve discarnate people, based on personal investigation over 45 years.
• The parish priest’s condemnation, though grounded in ignorance of true magic, deserves understanding rather than anger: priests are bound by ordination vows to banish erroneous doctrine, and many have encountered genuine cases of possession in mission fields that justify wholesale caution.
  • Church ceremonies are themselves a potent form of magic, as Evelyn Underhill pointed out in her book on mysticism.
  • The magical axiom ‘Know, Will, Dare, and Keep Silent’ applies here: thank the priest, reassure him, and say nothing further—antagonistic thoughts from others can break down what the student is building.

“Going Out and Coming In”

The teacher provides step-by-step instruction for conscious astral projection using the ‘Body of Light’—a deliberately built thought-form into which consciousness and etheric substance are projected—distinguishing voluntary from involuntary projection and explaining the ‘silver cord,’ the experience of the etheric world, and the two chief dangers of the practice.

• Astral projection falls into two kinds—involuntary (done without the person’s direction, sometimes facilitated by a teacher) and voluntary (the person consciously steps out)—and the goal is the voluntary kind, which requires training but offers full conscious control.
  • A third intermediate class occurs when the power to project suddenly appears uninvited, often due to ill-health or psychic conditions, or to memories of occult training in previous lives.
  • The ‘Body of Light’ is distinct from the visible ectoplasmic materialization produced in spiritualist séances; the finer grade of etheric substance used in lodge projection is sufficient for the work required.
• The Body of Light is built as a robed thought-form whose appearance the student chooses, then projected using a breath-synchronized technique: inhaling draws earth energy up through the aura, and exhaling projects etheric energy out along a psychic cord into the standing form.
  • The teacher’s own first projected form was a figure in a deep blue cowled robe with a silver girdle and Rosicrucian cross, inspired by Marie Corelli’s novels—the teacher was mildly amused but did not object.
  • The ‘star of consciousness’—the point where the person feels themselves to be ‘I,’ usually behind the root of the nose—must be transferred into the projected form.
• The two main dangers of astral projection are physical heart strain for those with cardiac weakness, and the temptation to use the inner planes as a psychological escape from mundane difficulties, a pathological condition that the Qabalistic philosophy’s insistence on full physical-plane engagement is designed to prevent.
  • The first successful projection usually produces immediate ‘panic’ and a rapid return to the physical body like a young rabbit into its burrow; if the student can hold on, a ‘click’ or musical note anchors them on the etheric level.
  • Projection experiments should not be attempted during the waning moon, when etheric currents are unfavourable for beginners.
• Once out in the Body of Light, the student experiences the silver cord strengthening as they approach the physical body, perceives ordinary objects in a shadowless bluish light, and is never truly alone—others working on the inner planes are near to help.
  • “Marcus Aurelius is quoted: ‘We are never less alone than when we think we are alone.’” —Marcus Aurelius
  • In early experiments the student should resist visiting friends or seeking the deceased and instead focus solely on achieving stable conscious projection; travel comes later.

The Contact of Power

The teacher prepares the student for the Middle Pillar exercise by reframing the concept of morality as dynamic balance rather than taboo, and introducing the two terminal chakras (Kether above and Malkuth below) as the points through which cosmic energy must be drawn, emphasizing that these forces are neutral and must be used in service rather than for personal amplification.

• True morality is not negative prohibition (the ‘Thou shalt not’ of the Ten Commandments) but kinetic balance—the trapeze artist’s dynamic equilibrium—summed up by Christ’s positive commandments and the magical maxim ‘Equilibrium is the basis of the Great Work.’
  • The Greek maxim meden edan (‘Nothing too much’) expresses the magical attitude; the ‘Kings of Edom, the Lords of Unbalanced Force’ are the definition of evil in the Qabalistic system.
  • Aleister Crowley’s slogan ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’ echoes Augustine’s ‘Love, and do as thou wilt,’ but in practice produced misery and suffering for those who applied it without understanding what ’love’ means.
• The five stations of the Middle Pillar—Malkuth (physical sensory consciousness), Yesod (personal unconscious), Tiphareth (superconsciousness), Daath (another order of awareness), and Kether (divine spark)—correspond to the consciousness aspect of the student’s own self from body to divine centre.
  • Apprentices must not boast of contact with ’nirvanic levels’; there is ‘a Tree in every Sephirah,’ so the experience of Kether through Malkuth’s earthly veil is wonderful but not the full undistorted consciousness of a true master.
  • This warning is against hubris—the spiritual pride that arises when cosmic forces begin to flow through the personality.
• The Kether centre above the head is visualized as a sphere of pure white brilliance radiating warmth into the aura, while the Malkuth earth contact below the feet is visualized as a swirling multi-coloured sphere of citrine, russet, olive, and indigo—both must be equally established before the exercise can proceed.
  • Rubber shoes do not cut off earth magnetism unless the student makes it so by forming that intention; we are all immersed in the planetary etheric field as a fish in the ocean.
  • The forces are always pressing in; the exercise works by reducing the resistance of the personality to them, not by generating energy that isn’t already present.
• Any unwise tampering with the body’s etheric fires—especially unregulated concentration on spinal centres—risks glandular imbalance and the breakdown of a protective surface of the vital body, with consequences both physical and super-physical.
  • The vis medicatrix naturae (the healing power of nature) in medical science is identified with the co-ordinated action of etheric energies through the vital body.
  • Initial bodily discomfort as the exercise begins is due to ’locked-up’ energies being stirred; once the circuit is established these symptoms disappear and a new vitality pervades the personality.

Bringing Through the Power

The teacher gives the full sequence of Middle Pillar exercises—drawing white light from the Kether centre through Tiphareth and projecting it to Malkuth, then reversing with orange earth energy, followed by three circulation exercises wrapping light around the body—with strict warnings against supplementing these with techniques from Arthur Avalon or other systems.

• The centres must be contacted at their surface points in the aura rather than at the actual spinal column, because premature arousal of the dormant forces within the spine produces very undesirable results—this is stated as known fact from experience, not theory.
  • Daath over the throat is excluded from the first exercise because it is a terminal for a very different set of energies coming from another dimension, to be introduced only later.
  • The magical diary may be faked for a while, but when the later exercises are attempted, unestablished foundations become immediately apparent through inability to carry them out.
• The first Middle Pillar exercise circulates energy in two alternating phases: inhale draws white light from Kether down to Tiphareth then exhale projects it down through Yesod to Malkuth; next breath draws orange earth energy up from Malkuth through Yesod to Kether on the exhale—six repetitions maximum initially.
  • The student must absolutely not supplement this exercise with techniques from Arthur Avalon’s Serpent Power or similar works; doing so will result in immediate cessation of instruction and constitute failure of apprenticeship.
  • The Serpent Power and related yoga texts belong to a different system of training; mixing them disorganizes the finer forces of the self in ways the teacher has personally observed.
• Three additional circulation exercises follow: a waterfall of light descending in front and rising behind; the same sheet sent down the left side and up the right; and finally broad wrappings of light wound around the body like mummy bandages from shoulders to feet and back—each timed to the same breath cycle.
  • These exercises build rough channels through which the Crown Centre energy may pour more freely; after establishing them, the ‘sluice-gates’ may be opened at increasing pressure according to the student’s capacity.
  • The amount of energy that can be drawn is measured by the realization of the centre’s reality; without this realization acting as a check, the tremendous energy of the cosmic battery cannot be safely managed.
• The invocation used during the exercise—‘Infinite Power, Love, and Wisdom, present in all things, descend now through the most holy Gabriel and dispose and correct the designing of the representations which I have made’—restricts the contact to Yesod of Malkuth in Assiah, preventing the premature hubris that power experiences generate.
  • Tennyson’s Arthurian poem is cited in support: ‘it is quite easy to have too much of a good thing,’ as the dying King Arthur tells Sir Bedivere.
  • When the invocation is sincere, automatic regulation prevents too much cosmic energy from sweeping through the channels; dissolved mental complexes are then assimilated gradually rather than flooding consciousness.

“Woven Paces and Waving Hands”

The teacher explains the psychological and psychic rationale for ritual and ceremonial in magical lodges—arguing that objections to it are rooted in Reformation prejudice rather than reasoned analysis, and that rite builds composite thought-forms in the astral light that serve as conducting channels for inner energies while integrating participants into the group-mind.

• Objections to ritual and ceremonial are largely irrational legacies of the Reformation, inconsistently applied: those who condemn Christian vestments wear Salvation Army uniforms; those who reject Church incense cheerfully burn oriental joss-sticks; the Quakers’ deliberate avoidance of ritual constitutes its own ‘ritual of not being ritual.’
  • Ritual pervades all human life—the dining table is laid in a ritual manner, the workplace evolves routines imposed by time-and-motion studies—so the question is not whether to use ritual but which kinds.
  • Non-conformist worship is historically a truncated version of the Mass of the Catechumens, the part of the Christian Eucharist open to the unbaptized; spiritualist services derive from this non-conformist form.
• Ritual works primarily through the subconscious mind, which operates in picture images; a well-constructed rite presents archetypal images that correspond to ancient patterns in the depths of the mind, bringing those charged images nearer to the surface of the personality and effecting a change of consciousness.
  • Vestments that hide the individual face under a cowl emphasize the officiant’s impersonality; the lodge works as a unity and individual personalities must not dominate the composite rite.
  • Wearing a robe, even for personal meditation, atunes the mind to the spirit of the work through association of ideas—as childhood dress-up games demonstrate.
• When a ritual is performed ‘with intention,’ clairvoyants can observe the resulting thought-forms being built in the plastic substance of the astral light; these thought-forms are the conducting channels for the inner energies, and their secrecy protects them from being broken down by antagonistic thought-forces.
  • The secrecy of lodge working is not about concealing the general form of rituals (which have been published many times) but about protecting the specific contact of each lodge—equivalent to the notice ‘Keep out, men at work.’
  • C. G. Jung’s criticism that occult secrecy can produce guilt-complexes and a ‘cut-off’ attitude is acknowledged as a real risk, avoidable only when lodge activities are correlated with everyday life.
• Behind each lodge officer a ’telesmatic image’ or godform is built by officers and senior brethren, linking the focal points of the ritual to deeper strata of the collective unconscious and channelling those forces into the composite group thought-form.
  • True lodges do not engage in party politics—the attempt by Polish Chasidim to influence the Napoleonic wars magically is cited as an example of the historical folly of such endeavours.
  • The visualization exercises given throughout training (‘five-finger exercises’) are preparation for building these godforms; remembering this can sustain effort through the ‘dry’ periods.

“There Are Lions in the Way”

When the student reports depression and a desire to abandon training, the teacher explains that such difficulties are anticipated signs of genuine progress rather than failure, arising from the shock to the personal self as it is reshaped, and advises working with the four great seasonal tides and persevering through the ‘Dark Night of the Soul.’

• Periods of depression and temptation to abandon training are expected milestones that signal genuine engagement with the work; the parallel with a knight’s arduous preparation—page, squire, tilt-yard exercises, dull chores—is offered as a framework for understanding them as necessary instruments of reshaping.
  • The personal ‘self’ with which the student identifies is not the real centre of being; the goal is to re-centre the personality around the higher ‘Self’ (written with a capital), which always follows ’the indwelling Christ.’
  • The team spirit of the lodge—subordinating individual brilliance to collective work—is impossible if the personal self is not subjected to repeated shocks that chip away its dominance.
• Jealousy is the most common emotional ’lion’ that manifests in the lodge and is typically transferred to external relationships to avoid detection; it must be redirected rather than suppressed frontally, by cultivating keen impersonal enthusiasm for the work and actively seeking to help brethren.
  • Every vice has a corresponding virtue: jealousy contains an awareness of standards, which, redirected impersonally, becomes enthusiasm for excellence in the work as a whole.
  • Emotional disturbances that appear to come from others in the outer world are usually signs of something going wrong in the student’s own esoteric work, visible in the diary records.
• The four seasonal tides—Destruction (Winter Solstice to Vernal Equinox), Planting (Vernal Equinox to Summer Solstice), Reaping (Summer Solstice to Autumnal Equinox), and Formulation (Autumnal Equinox to Winter Solstice)—affect the esoteric student more powerfully than ordinary people, and work must be timed to their rhythms rather than fought against.
  • The Tide of Reaping requires that the harvest be gathered on the physical plane as well as inner planes; anyone who ignores this will regret it.
  • Ultimately the student must learn to swim against the tides and use their energy like a boat tacking into the wind, but this comes after learning to work with them.
• The ‘Dark Night of the Soul’—intense depression and a sense of utter failure—occurs on the magical path as well as the mystical and is caused partly by the contrast between inner illumination and mundane dullness, partly by nervous overstrain; the remedy is reducing formative work and lengthening relaxation until the natural tides swing the student clear.
  • In Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Pilgrim falls into the Slough of Despond after setting out on the heavenly journey, not before; being on the esoteric path does not exempt one from such trials.
  • The only real failure is to stop trying; getting up after each fall constitutes genuine progress even when it feels like the opposite.

“The Gates Are Open”

The teacher announces that the student has passed through the Dark Night and is now eligible for admission to the lodge, describes the nature of lodge work within a great spiritual hierarchy extending from elemental spirits to ‘Spirits before the Throne,’ and prepares the apprentice for the oath, the discipline, the grades, and the group-mind into which initiation will integrate them.

• Beyond earthly time and space there exists a Spiritual Council—the real government of the planet—comprising a great hierarchy from elemental spirits through many grades of being to mighty intelligences ‘before the Throne’; initiation introduces the student into this living chain of light.
  • All grades of this hierarchy are represented in a properly constituted lodge, including the Mighty Ones who respond to invocation and are manifest in presence-form on the inner planes.
  • The question ‘Why do you desire to enter our lodge?’ has only one admissible answer: ‘I desire to know in order to serve.’ This must be affirmed in the heart as well as on the lips, or initiation fails.
• Lodge membership integrates the student into the group-mind of the fraternity, which can swing them over dry periods and enable contact with inner forces beyond their individual capacity—but they must also learn to stand alone without that support, because the combination of teamwork and individual effort is the essence of esoteric training.
  • A thought of aspiration held strongly in the mind is supported by the group-mind and lifts the student to levels they could not reach alone; a suppressed thought of envy or distrust slowly extrudes them from the brotherhood.
  • Obedience is owed to the Rule of the fraternity, not to any officer personally; all, from those who rule to the latest apprentice, are equally bound by the same Rule.
• The lodge neophyte must accept elementary training without trying to skip ahead on the basis of prior knowledge, because the primary function of the early grades is not factual instruction but integration into the group-mind—and those who come with greater prior knowledge are subjected to this basic discipline with especial thoroughness.
  • The student must serve as ‘a hewer of wood and a drawer of water’ and take turns as doorkeeper in the temple before sitting on the Throne of the East.
  • Lodge work bears no resemblance to the lurid spectacles of occult fiction; finding oneself in such surroundings would be a signal to leave immediately.
• The Greater Mysteries lie beyond the lodge’s preliminary grades, but they can only be trodden when the ‘Kings of Unbalanced Force’ within the student’s own nature have been subdued—transforming the crude personality into the ‘polished cubic stone’ of genuine regeneration.
  • The fraternity works as the pendant of an invisible Order; all skills developed by the student must be freely offered for service, just as all the lodge’s resources are available according to grade.
  • The closing image of the teacher ruling in the East, accepting the oath beneath the everburning flame and altar light, positions the book’s letter-form as arriving at its destination: the threshold of the Mysteries.