Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 4)

3. You would then préparé your Place of Working accordingly. In an orange circle you would draw an eight-pointed star of yellow, at whose points you would place eight lamps. The Sigil of the Spirit (which is to be found in Cornélius Agrippa and other books) you would draw in the four colours with such other devices as your expérience may suggest. 4. And so on. We cannot here enter at length into ail the necessary préparations ; and the student will find them fully set forth in the proper books, of which the “Goetia” is perhaps the best example. These rituals need not be slavishly imitated; on the contrary, the student should do nothing the object of which he does not understand; also, if he hâve any capacity whatever, he will find his own crude rituals more effective than the highly polished ones of other people. The general purpose of ail this préparation is as follows: 5. Since the student is a man surrounded by material objects, if it be his wish to master one particular idea, he must make every material object about him directly suggest that idea. Thus, in the ritual quoted, if his glance fail upon the lights, their number suggests Mercury j he smells the perfurnes, and again Mercury is brought to his mind. In other words the whole magical apparatus and ritual is a complex System of mnemonics. (The importance of these lies principally in the fact that particular sets of images that the student may meet in his wanderings correspond to particular lineal figures, divine names, etc. and are controlled by them. As to the possibility of producing results external to the mind of the seer (objective in the ordinal y common sense acceptation of the term) we are here silent.) 6. There are three important practices connected with ail forms of cérémonial (and the two Methods which later we shall describe). These are: (1) Assumption of God-forms. (2) Vibration of Divine Names. (3) Rituals of “Banishing” and “Invoking”. These, at least, should be completely mastered before the dangerous Methods of Chapter V and VI are attempted. 377 —