What Are My Thoughts On Ritual Magick?
Channel: Rev Jonathan Barlow Gee
Date: 2023-07-05

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9. What are your thoughts on ritual magic ?. 

First we should distinguish between “ritual magic” proper and simple “routine” - which some consider a “ritualistic” (compulsive) form of “household magic.” Intentionally habitual repetition yields clairvoyance that can be honed for accuracy. But practicing traditional “ritual magic” is slightly more involved than Crowley’s slogan, “every act is a magical act” might imply. Crowley specified “every act” as “magic” because he identified “magic” with the “will,” and he reckoned, one “canst not but do as thou wilt.” Of course, magic is often associated with trickery, such as the “will” of the individual getting “duped” into indentured service (to any “higher power”). So if “magic” includes “routine” but is not excluded to it, what more is there? If “magic” is merely “trickery” why do magi practice it when they are alone? Traditional “ritual magic” involves drawing a circle (and sometimes a triangle just outside of it) and sitting down inside this circle until one begins to hallucinate (usually by attempting to “creatively visualize” a non-corporeal “intelligence” into the “triangle of summoning”). Once (IF!) one can convince themselves this hallucination is real, they may interact with it, command its obedience (in the name of god) and make “pacts” with it to accomplish certain goals you set for it. This technique produces mixed results - sometimes it accomplishes the user’s goals, but it almost always drives the practitioner insane; usually, the more effective their art, the more “insane” they will seem compared to “polite society.” So most ritual magicians are social outcasts and oftentimes solitary practitioners. There are clubs that practice certain types of ritual magic, such as Freemasonry, the OTO, etc. but these all cost the magician the certainty in their personal willpower and the actual, psychological efficacy of magic that comes with solitary craft. Solitary magic, likewise, maybe done in public (that is, it maybe that an individual is in the altered mind-state one enters when doing “ritual magic” while in a group of other people who, themselves, may or may not be “on the same trip” as the individual ritual magician); this is extremely dangerous, not for the life of the magician themself nor for the safety of the other people around, but for the continuum of the cosmos itself. The ultimate goal of ritual magic is manifestation (the materialization of an object with mass out of “thin air” or from the ether, etc.) and manifestation is a definite bypassing of (otherwise strictly chronological) cause-and-effect, if not also a direct violation of the universal law of entropy. Insofar as “ritual magic” does work to yield (otherwise impossible) results, it risks ripping apart the fabric of reality itself by doing so. Most modern ritual magic practitioners do not realize this, and so use this arcane method haphazardly and without regard; this is much the same way as most people alive today knowing how to drive a car, but far fewer knowing how to tune one’s engine so as to reduce its rate of producing pollution.