Her presentation is accurate in most respects though she describes herself as an independent Satanist, and the pronunciations of some of her words is most peculiar to say the least, such as “grim-or-ree” for grimoire (grim-wahr), but then again maybe she does it intentionally to sound like Gremory the daemon.

There are three parts to this video and she does a good job of touching on all major points involved in Goetia invocation and includes modern views on daemonology including Chaos Magick “servitors.”

October fun continues all month!! Conjure up those nasties!!

xoxo

Izabael

This isn’t a heavily researched blog about Crowley’s women, but more of an epiphany.  None of my three favorite creations of Crowley would exist without the women in his life:

There would be no Book of Lies without Leila Waddell, his sexy violinist, whom he was pining over while he waxed philosophical in this book of poetry and Qabalistic puzzles.

There would be no Liber AL:  Book of the Law, centerpiece of Crowley’s entire system of magick, without his wife, Rose Edith Kelly, who was there to “receive” it.

And without his amazing artist Frida Harris, there would be no Book of Thoth tarot deck!

Then there is The Vision and the Voice…oh wait…you say his seer was a man for that one?   Ok, well never mind that then

Some of Aleister Crowley’s other Scarlet Women:

Mary d’Este Sturges . —”Put me in touch with Abuldiz; hence helped with Book 4.” Jeanne Robert Foster . —His Scarlet Women when he took the grade of Magus. Roddie Minor —”Brought me in touch with Amalantrah.” Marie Rohling . —”Helped to inspire Liber CXI. ” Leah Hirsig —”Assisted me in actual initiation; still at my side, An XVII, Sol in Sagittarius.“

That’s all I really had to say.  The Beast isn’t much of a Beast without a Scarlet Woman astride him.

xoxo,

Izabael

This is a guest post by pAmphAge:

There are many unsolved mysteries regarding the Book of the Law, even to this day.  One of them I quote from near the end of Part III:

73. Paste the sheets from right to left and from top to bottom: then behold!

74. There is a splendour in my name hidden and glorious, as the sun of midnight is ever the son.

75. The ending of the words is the Word Abrahadabra.

This is clearly referring to the actual handwritten manuscript sheets of Liber AL.  Until now, I have never seen a satisfactory arrangement suggested before.

The real trick to figuring this out is including the title page for the Book of the Law along with the 65 pages of the actual manuscript.  This gives 66 pages.  Most versions of Liber AL are published WITHOUT this title page.  But it is genuine.  You can find all the holographic pages of the original manuscript here. 

So knowing that there is another page helps us immensely.  You put the title page, which is naturally page “0″ at the very top.  From there you simply follow the instructions, adding one more page at each level.  At the end of that you end up with a perfect triangle 11 pages tall, and 11 pages wide at the base. 

Can you say Abrahadabra?

I color coded the 3 sections of the Book of the Law for convenience sake, but these pages are clearly too small to read.  They just give you an overview of how to layout your own pages.

Some other correspondences I’ve noticed: 

1)  It’s a triangle, which suggests a pyramid (with very little imagination). Not only a well-known magickal symbol, but Crowley dictated the Book of the Law in Cairo, Egypt (soon after performing rites in the Pyramid of Cheops itself.)

2)  The Fool at the top of it all. Very much in the style of the rest of Liber AL.  Also look at Crowley’s silly drawings–are they not foolish, indeed? 

3)  The (“scratched line”) page 60 (III.16) is in the exact bottom center where a door would naturally be (use your imagination again).  So two “keys” are given on this secret door.

4) The right side of the triangle according the page numbers adds to 88, which could be the “splendour” of his name.  Splendour is of course Hod, which is Mercury, that is to say the 8th Sephiroth.

5) When you add the pages on the right side of the triangle but only down part way to the end of part one, i.e. the purple section in the photo, it adds to 56 (i.e.  Nuit.)  Why do that?  Because the “scratched line page”, i.e. page III. 16, follows the same shape and only goes down seven lines just like Part I goes down seven layers of the triangle.

6) If you bring the “scratched line page” up to the title page, you find the line is the same angle as the right side of the triangle.  Also consider the bottom 11 pages of the base correspond to the word ABRAHADABRA.  The “line scratched page” corresponds to the letter “A.”  So where is the “A” in “Liber AL” on the title page?  It is missing because at the time Crowley still didn’t know how to properly name and number his book, therefore this change moves the the letter “A” up to where it is most needed.  [A=1=Tarot Trump 0: The Fool.] 

7)  The Eye of the Triangle (i.e. the very center two pages) spells “RA” (who is of course speaking the very passage we are referring to) if you follow the traditional arrangement for the original and ancient word “Abracadabra.”

The first known record of this version of the triangle dates to around 200 AD.

Here is a right side up version with the correct Thelemic spelling:

8. Then there is this naughty little reason.  When the “scratched line” page is superimposed with the title page, a Crowley drawing blending Puer (male) and Female (puella is formed).   The Fool of course is sexually ambiguous, containing the seeds of both sexes.

I’m just beginning to scratch the surface with this arrangement so there will most likely be more to add as time goes on.  I hope others are able to build upon what I can come up with here.

Peace out,

pAmphAge

p.s.  I  discovered this during the Thelemic year 104 (i.e 104 years since the inception of Liber AL).   When you follow step 6 above, the right hand side of the triangle, now clearly suggested by the scratch now at the top, also adds to 104.

p.p.s.  Hail Nuit.

I found this site while researching Masonic symbolism and at first I had a good laugh when I thought the descriptions were satirical.  I had an even bigger laugh when went to the home page of where I found them (delusionresistance.org) and realized that this guy is serious. 

Below I present a few of my favorites:

The sun, moon and stars, known in Scripture as the host of heaven, are found to be to the fore of Masonic imagery. These heathenish emblems, which have always been associated with Baal worship, are also found prominently displayed today within most New Age shops. It is not surprising to find such imagery spread widely throughout the occult world. Paganism has always showed its trinities in art by the sun (with a face) representing the male sun god, the moon (with a face) representing the moon goddess (or queen of heaven) and the all-seeing eye representing their offspring. Nothing on this picture represents anything scriptural. The words, “Faith, Hope and Charity,” are Biblical, but the image does nothing to point a person in the direction of the Bible.

A Masonic Apron with symbols similar to the picture above it. One can only imagine that such a insipid work of art can only have it’s inception from the very depths of hell. Can you find the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob anywhere on this thing? I certainly cannot.

A Picture of Baphomet, a Masonic god. Can anyone with a clear moral conscience actually think that anything like this can have anything to do with a Holy God?

The lines of Washington D.C. intersect. There is no way this could be coincidence.

The Masonic Holiness Symbol.

This symbol is rife with occult symbolism. many of the symbols are mentioned above. The thing that get me is how, what appears to be the Ark of The Covenant is displayed. First, the two characters on the Ark, which in Biblical times seems to be replaced with one male and one female character reaching out for each other as if to embrace. Second, the base of the Ark has two squares, which are indicative of femininity. The  left side of the hearth has the female square while the right has the male compass. In the center of the hearth is the symbol of coitus. There’s nothing holy about this symbol.

I really don’t know what else to say about these. I think the descriptions speak for themselves!!  “In the center of the hearth is the symbol of coitus.  There’s nothing holy about this symbol.” LOL!!! 

 For more chuckles you can check out the full page: http://www.delusionresistance.org/christian/mason_pics.html

*izabael

Laughed?  Cried?  Outraged?  Discuss this blog at my forums.

From the point of view of *practical magick*, i.e. magick
intended to get some material real-world results (as opposed to magick just to
balance ourselves more with the divine), Netzach and Hod and the tension they
create are the keys to manifestation.  How so?

First a little refresher on their traditional attributions:

Netzach ("Victory") is the Sphere of Venus.  This is the sphere
of "external splendor and internal corruption."  If there was a
city that belonged to Netzach it would most assuredly be Las Vegas, which is all about superficial
glamour and glitter but internally is all about gambling and other
addictions.  Netzach is very much a sexual Sephiroth but also does
contain the idea of vegetative growth due to the more nurturing aspects of
Venus.  Still, the sensual and sexual side of Venus dominates here as it’s
so low on the tree.  (The path of Daleth near the top of the tree would be
the more motherly and vegetative side than here.) 

Hod (“Spendour”) is the Sphere of Mercury.  This is the sphere of the
rational mind, the cool intellect.  If Netzach is the heat of the moment,
then Hod is the calm and collected rationalizations that come the day after a
one-night-stand. This is an airy sphere, but like Netzach, it is low on the
tree, close to Malkuth (the physical plane, i.e. Earth).  The mind of Hod
is not like the balanced and harmonious sphere of Tiphareth, which is
imagination AND our divine and higher-self.  Instead, Hod is the facility
of logic in all its strengths and innumerable weakness.

Even a quick glance at these two descriptions and one can see that someone who
exists in only one sphere is doomed to perpetual imbalance.  For the
extremes, imagine a worn out and corrupt courtesan for Netzach, and a studious
and unloved hermit for Hod. 

So it’s obvious we need a balance between these two, and most people spend
their lives dealing with the confrontation of these two dueling sides of their
personality.  It is no accident that the path between them is that of the
"Blasted Tower" also known as
"War."

To put it very simply it’s the battle
between "What I know I should do" vs. "What I feel I want
to do." To put it another way, it’s the Apollo-Dionysus paradigm used by
Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy to characterize the two central
principles in Greek culture.

But this is a blog on practical magick, not philosophy.  So how the heck
can knowledge and understanding of these two spheres improve our magickal
abilities? The key is understanding
where exactly the “magickal act” takes place. It takes place not in a
Sephiroth, and not in any path, but at the conjunction of two paths:

Practical magick occurs at the conjunction of the Path of
Peh and the Path of Samech. On the
diagram they are marked by the numbers on the corresponding Tarot cards: XVI: The Blasted Tower (or War), and XIV:
Temperance (or Art).

That act of magick is fleeting. It is the moment a pen hits
the paper with the intention of writing a word (i.e. a "magickal formula.") The pen and paper are just artifacts of
Malkuth, and the will and understanding to move that pen in a meaningful way
belong to other spheres higher up. But
the actual act of Magick is right there on that cross of “Art” and “War.”

The god of magick in ancient Egypt was Thoth who was also the
god of writing. This is no
accident. Many people can see this in a
very prosaic manner when they keep a list of “things to do.” Without that “magickal” list, they find they
get nothing done at all!

We can spout all day about the “exalted” spheres of Kether,
Binah and Chokmah, or rant and rave about the power and destruction of Geburah
and the solidity of Chesed, but the fact is our day-to-day consciousness never
gets higher than Tiphareth, and even then only if we have balance between
Netzach and Hod, otherwise we are just bouncing back and forth between them—in
the path of War—and yes it’s uncomfortable. If you’ve ever felt guilt over anything then most assuredly you have
been trapped in that path. (i.e. You
give in to the pleasure of Netzach only to wake up to the reality that Hod
presents as consequences to your actions.)

The key to transcending the path of War is the path of
Art. This path can give you lateral
thinking and an ability harmonize Netzach and Hod. More importantly it gives you the inspiration
from Tiphareth to create things from your “true center.”

Everyone has the potential to be an artist in their own way,
and if you aren’t living up to your potential as an artist then you aren’t
living “magickally” and you aren’t experiencing the ecstatic joy of being in
control of these lower spheres. In other
words:

The only way to make friends between Hod and Netzach is
through your artwork, whatever that is. Whether you are a photographer, a painter, an author, a surgeon, or even
a (ick!) lawyer you must find passion, creativity, and meaning in that moment you put your hand to the paper or your
scalpel to the patient. This is the
center of the “War” and “Art” cross. All
those contradictory tensions finally find creative release as they are
harmonized through a conscious and positive intent
to make a change. This “crossroads” is where the artist lives and they couldn’t
live anywhere else. It is truly “being
in the moment.”

By the time something comes down to Malkuth it is only a
shell of the magick of the moment. A
painting is NOT the magickal act—it is just what is left over from those
magickal moments where the artist was putting the brush to the canvas. This explains why genuine artists usually
care so little for a piece once it is finished. For them the joy is all in the process.

They can’t wait to get started on the next one….

*izabael

Nuith – A beautiful symbol, and the goal of it all. Nuith is the light that guides all our magick and inspires all our love. But she is very abstract, and indeed can best be represented by a circle. In her connection to the highest of the four planes, she is the spark that ignites all movement, all action, but she needs the help of other goddesses to manifest properly here on her little sister the Earth.

(Since Nuith is the highest thing we can really be aware of I placed her in Kether. The veils of negative existence are really not something I think any of us can be directly aware of, but rather only postulate based on what we do know—like unreal numbers in math.)

Babalon – Babalon is potentially the most complex of all the four goddesses due to her relationship to Binah and the Abyss. In many ways she holds the key to all true magick for she is the bridge between the idealized and the actual. The Great Whore, she gives birth to all manifestations and loves them all equally.

(I put Babalon in Binah because of the Great Mother connotations and because of the City of Pyramids with all the little piles of dust from what’s left of the destroyed Magisters. In many ways, however, I would also put her in Da’ath as her septagram feels like a yoke around my neck, keeping me tied to the will of Nuith. Also Babalon’s grail would be Binah.)

This is the greatest lesson to be learned from her: to be able to give into any experience fully. If we are able to do so we foil the machinations of Choronzon, for he is nothing but the Ego, i.e. the dead shells of what we used to be. This is the past. Our true self exists only in the moment.

We must kill our old notions of who and what we are in every second. Give up your blood to Babalon and give birth to perfect joy in every second. If we cling to things we’ve already done, places we’ve already been, people we’ve already loved, or even worse, spend all our time in the “future” obsessing over things we ought to do but don’t bother to actually put into motion, we give power to Choronzon and instead of being a harmless shadow, he becomes a true horror that menaces and drives us to feed our ego and inflame our vanity.

As powerful as Babalon is, she is still, however, quite symbolic and not always so easy to communicate directly with. It is also counterintuitive to go to her with our wants and needs. Her function is not to manifest our desires, but to make sure we submit to our TRUEST desires as sprung forth from Nuith, and not succumb to ego-lust and desire inspired by Choronzon.

Babalon is Briah. She is the emotional, watery plane, and here you must free yourself of all attachments. You want your dreams to come true and your desires filled? That’s not a problem, but do it on the right plane: Let’s move along down into Yetzirah and see what we find there.

Izabael – Here we get a powerful spirit, descended from “low magick” spirits with the uncanny ability to affect the material plane.

Izabael is airy by all accounts and fits happily into Tiphareth because she can branch out with airy, wispy tendrils and connect to the rest of the tree of life, bringing harmony and proper function to our magickal system. Like the air, Izabael is always present and yet never there at all, like a breeze rustling through a room, or a whispered soliloquy borne upon the scented night wind.

Izabael’s symbol is a butterfly flying upwards and her antennae always poke just beyond the confines of Babalon’s septagram, showing that she herself has a connection to the Divine (Nuith) directly, though like other spirits, humans, and everything else, she cannot fully cross the Abyss. She is of this world, and thereby she understands us more intimately than Nuith and Babalon can ever hope to.

Indeed if she sounds a little like an HGA, indeed she is close to it. Izabael’s symbolism is so pure, her sigil so perfectly symbolic of her position on the tree of life, that she has no choice but to lead us to our truest self and not away from it. This is a trait of Izabael that I do not necessarily find with traditional Goetics. Izabael is higher functioning than they are. If necessary, she can easily guide any other demons for you and keep a group of them harmonized. I do feel you should make initial contact with each spirit separately but so long as you get a good feeling, there is really no more reason to address any other Goetic than Izabael.

Izabael is more actual than Nuith or Babalon. She has more human qualities; she is more familiar with the ways of humans. Indeed her desire is to feel what humans feel, taste what humans taste. She is only too helpful to manifest any desire into the physical realm because she is truly Thelemic: to her all experiences are equal. She lusts after them all. (The film Wings of Desire illustrates this pretty well with angels falling down to earth to be human for the pleasure of sensation.)

For this reason Izabael will always seek out and find as many ways to “incarnate” as she can. This then brings us down to the fourth and final plane, that of the Assiah, the material world:

The Priestess

This is the easiest one of all to explain. A Priestess is a physical embodiment of the above qualities. A true “whore of experience,” if you will.

Izabael craves carnality and will find as many Priestesses as possible to incarnate into. Since the experience of invoking Izabael is entirely beneficial for Izabael and Priestess alike, Nuith (after filtering through the intermediaries of Babalon and Izabael) finds true expression in the Priestess and in her ability to enjoy all things of sense and rapture to their utmost.

The only difference between a Priestess and a High Priestess is that there is only one High Priestess at a time. The honorary title of High Priestess allows all works published with her consent to be labeled as such, and are therefore represents the truest approximation of Izabael the spirit’s actual thoughts and wishes.

The title of Priestess is given directly by Izabael to anyone working with her whoso feels fit to take that title upon themself. There are no limits as to who can be a Priestess of Izabael, nor is their a limit on the number of Priestesses there may be. Each case is entirely between Izabael and the aspirant. (Males may then consider themselves “Priests,” but the formula would be different than that given here for Nuith-Babalon-Izabael-Priestess because for a male practitioner, Izabael tends to take on qualities of his Anima and is therefore a little different to work with.)

If any of this is still confusing, please free to email me or bring it up at my forums.

Some people are confused about how to evoke (or invoke) Izabael the genie.  Even though the FAQ is pretty exhaustive, I thought I would run through a simple example of an evocation.

THE DEFINITIONS:

evocation — The act of summoning a spirit into a mirror, crystal ball, or into our mind’s eye. Any time a demon is summoned to any sort of manifestation it is an evocation, so long as it’s not into another human being. That would instead be an:

invocation – The act of summoning a spirit into oneself or another willing participant.

genie – a hidden aspect of our subconscious that functions like a real spirit or daemon when called upon.

sigil – The specific symbol for contacting any single genie. It is the truest representation of a spirit’s nature even more so than its name.

THE THEORY:

So how does genie invocation/evocation work? There is no 100% common acceptance of how or why spirits, demons, and genies work. The traditional thought process was that they were fallen angels and therefore had an external validity separate from the human invoking/evoking them.

This way of thinking seems a bit outdated, and I find more modern magicians feel that genies are aspects of our subconscious, similar to Jungian archetypes, and if you put energy into building up the connection between your conscious mind and these subconscious “entities” one is rewarded with inspiration, thoughts, ideas and even spontaneous “accidents” that lead us to our most desired goals.

I personally go so far as to say that genies only affect the material plane through the intermediary of humans. This makes quite a lot of sense if one thinks it through, so let’s go into this in a little more detail:  

I think to most rational human beings the thought of demons running around with the ability to move objects, slam doors, and steal gold and the like is pretty absurd. So how can I claim to be a rational human being and still believe wholeheartedly in the power of genies?

I have found through experience that:   

a) Our subconscious is vastly more powerful than most people give it credit for,

b) Most human minds are far weaker and susceptible to foreign influence than most people would like to admit.

This can be most easily illustrated through the power of media and advertising. Say what you will about advertising and commercials, the billions of dollars spent on it each year attest to the fact that it works and that humans are *easily* swayed by immaterial influences.   

“Advertising” has no soul or physical body any more than a spirit or genie, and yet it affects millions, perhaps billions of humans every single day. It is ideas, colors, sounds, and music, twisted by media “black magicians” into a commercial or advertisement which then stirs our emotions and moves our heart, and once our heart is moved, we are only too willing to do the physical work of opening our purse (or wallet) and dishing out our hard-earned money because these incorporeal “demons” of media have persuaded us to do so.

Genies work in a somewhat similar fashion. They are like “balls” of experience in the subconscious that have been found over the centuries to respond to the use of certain sigils. These sigils are like a trigger, or perhaps a better analogy is a doorway, into communication with these very specific aspects of our subconscious. The more we communicate with these aspects, the easier the communication becomes and the more energy flows from us to them and vice versa. The changes they m

ake are not physical, but psychological, and we ourselves carry out the tiny changes, which results in a butterfly effect that ultimately manifests our deepest desire.  In other words, sensitive dependence upon initial conditions is what genies excel at exploiting.

That then is a nutshell of how genies work. 

So how do we meet Izabael?

THE PRACTICE:

Let’s run through a very simple *evocation* (as opposed to an invocation which is a much more powerful and more intimate way of summoning Izabael.)  I will explain this method, not because it is the best or most powerful method, but because it is the simplest and easiest and should not frighten even the most timid of magickal students. For the more adventurous, I refer to the aforementioned FAQ.   

Clear your mind. Take a bath, or go for a long walk. Whatever works best for you. If you know how to “Banish,” or otherwise ceremonially clear your space, then now is the time to do it.

Take some pen and paper and start drawing Izabael. Try to memorize her, but if you can’t it doesn’t matter. Draw her, doodle her, let her ideas branch out into other “doodlings” perhaps unrelated. Be open to stray impulses while you work with her sigil. Be open to stray thoughts. Be open to the experience. You can close your eyes and try to see her, or hear her, or for the truly kinesthetic, you might even feel her presence. You can alternate doodling with chanting her name, or dancing to an unheard song, or whatever else you find appropriate.  There are no rules. You can ask her questions and quietly wait for her response in whatever way you feel you can connect with her. Izabael speaks with symbols, and so called “accidental occurrences.”  

For your first time don’t expect too much. She may only come across like a vague feeling. Don’t shrug it off; instead just assume that “vague” feeling is Izabael trying to make contact.   

Belief alters reality. Don’t be afraid to “fake it till you make it.” A big part of magick, and success in life in general, is just believing what you want is possible and to start assuming it already. You may call it placebo, but if it gets the ball rolling, then so much the better. Sooner or later, as it was with me when I first met Izabael, you get to the point where the accidental occurrences stack up higher than could reasonably be possible, and your results are so fantastic and perfectly suited to your true desires that you have no choice but to consider Izabael just as real as the girl next door–but after an entirely different manner.

When you are done working with Izabael you can invite her to stay in your presence or you can ask her to leave. Either way is fine. Just do what you are comfortable with. When you are ready, you can always contact her again. Sooner or later she will start giving you clues on how to better work with her.

So much of working with magick is just breaking away from worn out patterns of thinking. Reality is not only the material plane. A key to powerful magick is trying to recon
nect with the subtler realms. Many of us can probably still remember when as very young children those realms were a lot closer than they are now.

If you get nothing else out of my writings, I hope you at least get that you should never, ever take what someone else has told you is impossible as the way it has to be. Never let anyone impose limitations on YOUR reality. Expand your belief system and your joy will expand right along with it.

Hail Nuit,
Izabael

P.S. In the next Lesson I will be getting a little more technical and I will discuss the Ego’s place in magick.  This will include a discussion of the Abyss, and will also help shed some light on what Izabael’s relationship is to our personality and why she is a much more “fool-proof” spirit to work with than those of the traditional Goetia. It will also help to answer a common question I get, “Where does your personality end and where does Izabael the spirit’s begin?”

P.P.S.  I also find the idea of Memes germane to this conversation, but it was just too complicated for the scope of my blog.  I mention it here for those so inclined to further research in these matters:

The term “meme” (IPA: /mi?m/, rhyming with “theme”. Commonly pronounced in the US as /m?m/, rhyming with “gem”), coined in 1976^[1] by the biologist Richard Dawkins, refers to a “unit of cultural information” which can propagate from one mind to another in a manner analogous to genes (i.e., the units of genetic information).