Saturday, January 31, 2015
Tri-Order statement
Oh, one last thing, a statement from the three Orders of the Voudon Gnostic Continuum. THanks to the Heads of these organizations for permission to post this notice. I think it clears up the relationships of these organizations quite well.
Mastering Lucky Hoodoo Part 1: The Core Elements
So now that I have established what the LHG is and it's place in occult lore as a stand alone element of the larger Voudon Gnostic Workbook I want to get into the actual use of the LHG as a system of spiritual development and I will refer to the practices of the grimoires in a very broad manner. This part will address Lessons 1-3, & 6 as the easier to digest elements of the LHG with part 2 covering the missing lessons that prove more difficult to many readers interested or who have read this particular work.
As I established in the prelude to this series, the LHG is very much a grimoire in the classical tradition as opposed the modern tradition. That said it is also thoroughly modern in how it approaches magick and isn't a rehash of previously published material. At first glance it is a course in candle magick at its most basic level. This is very, very far from the truth.
Each lesson is about 3 pages long and a total of 10 lessons in this practice. While a part of the VGW it is completely standalone. The chapters appear to cover very small areas but actually have a broad application and myriad uses when one has developed a strong foundation in these practices and supplemented it with other materials such as an understanding of astrology and color magick or if you are lucky enough, the Monstery of Seven Rays coursework. It is the foundation of what can be a very rich system of magick even without the M7R materials. It can also be supplemented wonderfully with the works of Kat Yronwode or Orion Foxwood's wonderful The Candle & The Crossroads as well as the classic grimoires.
I want to emphasize something though. The LHG does not initiate one into the Voudon Gnostic Continuum of which Michael Bertiaux is the Hierophant. It uses the broad term of hoodoo and not Voudon, Gnostic Voudon or Esoteric Voudon. You aren't forging a link with the families of spirits that were handed down to Dr. Bertiaux through the Jean-maine family, but with a very broad category of spirits that he calls the Hoo and the Doo spirits, the spirit of the Dead and the Seas. When one gets to lesson 3, the basic request ritual of LHG, we come into a contact with the Elemental spirits of Earth (yellow), Water (Blue), Air (Green) and Fire (Red). They're never identified as such in the little book themselves but it is very clear to students of the M7R and readers of David Beth's Voudon Gnosis.
So as we can see we have contacted the spirits of the dead and the four elements. In traditional grimoire magick and the Renaissance sourebooks like Agrippa, are necessary to earth & manifest our requests. The spirits of the dead and the elemental spirits are the easiest to contact. In Qabalah the spirits of the dead are the Nepheshim, the lowest aspect of the Qabalistic Soul of Man and the survival instinct. People who have attended my lecture on Psychic Attack & Defense will note that I refer to the Nephesh as the Psychic Censor, the piece of ourselves that most fears initiation and change, the part being disciplined and the Princess of the YHVH formulae. This is the part of us that is initiated through the four worlds and set upon the Throne of the Mother. This relates directly to the LHG.
The spirits of the dead linger as Nepheshim, always around us. These are our ancestors, our family as well as people who were important to us that are no longer here. They are also the spirits of our chain initiation in whatever tradition we are initiated! At least those no longer with us. The dedication ritual itself is a feeding of these ancestor spirits because we take the time to speak to them, to acknowledge them and interact with them as time goes by and we become more adept at Lucky Hoodoo. These are also the local spirits, the Genii Loci of where ever we live. This ritual forms the foundation of Lucky Hoodoo practices, it is the most basic ritual.
In this dedication ritual we offer them water, placed on our altar is a nice, clean glass and charged through the prayers of the ritual with strong intent. The more we do the ritual and learn the words, the deeper they go into our hearts and the more sincere the words become and the more potent the water becomes, drawing more spirits to us and charging the water. After the prayers to the spirits we drink the water, taking their essence into us. This practice continues in the basic request ritual when we bring the four elemental powers into the practice.
The request ritual described in lesson 2 is where we see the grimoire opening up a bit. We find that while we had a black and a blue candle on the altar before, representing the Dead and the Sea, we now add the other 3 elements. The black candle operates as the intermediary to the four elements. While the candle is lit last in the ritual itself, it is its presence that ties the altar space together by virtue of its presence in the center and the veve that rests beneath it. Black is a very special color in the Voudon Gnostic Continuum and it does, here, tie into that larger work but still exists outside of the VGC. These lessons were written from Bertiaux's system and to exist independent of it at the same time. Black is spirit and space. See why it ties to the dead?
So far I have been going from lesson 1 to lesson 2 and this won't always go in direct order because it is with lesson 3 that we find the next key to the system as a whole.
Lesson 3 covers 4 methods of Mind-Power development. Dream Power, Spiritual Prayer, Holy Houses and Shadow Stuff. These four methods are the actual foundation upon which the whole system hinges. Using them in conjunction with the ritual forms and each other as presented in this book we open up & clear our channels to these other dimensional beings.
With the dream method the spirits come to us in our dreams and teach us. Admittedly many of us do not remember our dreams so as deceptively simple this practice is, it is difficult for many people I Have discussed this topic with. The answer is as simple as the practice itself. Keep a dream journal and write in it every day, whether you remember or NOT! Just write something. Eventually you will remember your dreams every day and can note important elements.
Spiritual prayer, as described in the book, is silent, as in with thought, talking to the spirits about what ails ya. Here we get into a very key part of the system and of all grimoire systems! Wait... what?!?
Grab your Abramelin. Read the process. One of the key elements of Abramelin is to confess your sins. With the Silent prayer, you are talking to the spirits in a very honest manner, in the same way as opening up to your HGA in the Abramelin you are again, clearing channels. The spirits learn your inner heart and it is a purifying process. It helps in inducing a cathartic state where you get things off your chest and learn about yourself, similar to therapy. One day you will find the spirits talk back and not in the "oh fuck, I had a schizophrenic break" sense.
You confess so much, and I don't mean confess as in "oh my god, I am a horrible fucking person" confession, that when it all comes out it opens a channel and the mind becomes attuned to the spirits.
Also, while this isn't grimoire style stuff, remember how all those cheesy 80s and 90s how to books all advised us to "build an astral temple brick by brick"? Yeah you know, you did it for MONTHS and I guaran-damn-tee you have no idea why you did that do you? Well the Holy House method is similar but not the same thing. The Holy House method is astral projection to the spirits plane in order to learn from them. With the prayer technique we get into a more involved conversation. We see the spirits we are talking to and see them you will! Development of the imagination will be key to this system as we see a glimpse of in lesson 2 but will come in play very soon. The first method, prayer, leads to the second method which if fed by the Dream method.
The fourth method not yet discussed about this lesson is probably, in my opinion, the most important, especially once you start using this grimoire in conjunction with the M7R materials. Students of the M7R will see, fairly early, what this method can really do. I am talking about the Shadow method, or shadow bath. With the shadow bath, after washing, you light a single candle or a black/blue light and while naked you begin to run the hands around the body without touching the body, washing over the body with the shadow, or the forces represented by the black candle in the center of the altar, spirit, space & mind! See what I was saying about that black candle? MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
So in one lesson we cover a large part of any magical work. The astral temple, cleansing the aura, and clearing channels to the other side.
Now I am going to jump to lesson 6 and will get back to lesson 4 & 5 in my next post.
Lesson 6 is about Possession, good versus bad possession. This isn't about full blown horseman possession either. It is about good luck versus bad luck and gets into, in a very deep way, the animist world view and the Goes element of the practice.
Remember how I said we are always surrounded by the spirits? That's good and bad spirits. They cling to us and feed on us. The shadow bath helps with this but this lesson does a lot more. This lesson is... a banishing ritual. No, not an Elburp. The Elburp school of thought renders a space, a circular space, inert, neither positive, nor negative. Lesson 6 though is a different critter.
Lesson 6 talks about the positive and negative influences and how to remove the negative spirits that cling to us like barnacles while we go about our daily lives without realizing. In bad possession we have more negative spirits than positive spirits because we have allowed them to possess us by dwelling on our problems, our bad luck in work and love, and they become an obsession. They feed on that shit. These are the murderers and thieves of the spiritual world, nepheshim that need negative emotions to feed and stay around. Nepheshim can, without feeding, linger for about 6 months or so, getting weaker as time goes by without "food". They latch onto us and enforce those negative emotions, allowing us to obsess over them and giving them more to feed on.
Well here is your chance to say "get tha fuck outta here!". The short prayer that MB gives here is a pushing away of the Negative forces and an invitation to the positive ones, that they can come and partake of our successes in our lives and also enforces the position of the Lucky Hoodoo that as long as you serve me, I will serve you because with disciplined practice, the Lucky Hoodoo keeps the lesson going not just to himself but the spirits around him! As he works with the spirits he develops a relationship with these "possessing" spirits as well. There is a reason that this lesson comes later in the LHG though, because first we had to become aware of the spirits in the first place and develop a relationship as we had started doing in lesson 1-3.
Now let's put these lessons together to develop a daily spiritual practice.
First, we shower or bathe in our chosen manner. While in the shower or bath, speak to the spirits in the best way you know how. Tell them in silent prayer that you are about to do a ritual for them to feed them and to help you & your work which in turn helps them.
Take a candle in the bathroom with you if it has no windows because when you do the shadow bath you want as much darkness as possible. If you have windows in the bathroom or your bedroom that's ok. I suggest the bathroom because most do not have windows and that allows for a lot of darkness. I've digressed. Perform the shadow bath after drying yourself. Just glide your fingers through your aura and mentally reach out to the spirits and try to feel their mind power travelling between the tips of your fingers and the skin of your body. I feel a tingly sensation when I do this and feel even cleaner. Now put on your robes, clothes, etc. and go to where you do ritual work and sit down and take a moment to enter into a deeper relaxed state, reaching out with the mind, opening the channels and say the prayers taught in lesson 6. You open your mind so that the negative spirits definitely know you mean business and run away.
Do you see what this is? It is the opening of any Solomonic style ceremony. It is the purification of the Priest/Operator/Magician/Master before he begins the operation proper. Students of the M7R can add to this full thing in interesting ways that further deepens the whole process on an ascending/descending lattice.
Now we begin the ritual "proper". I suggest, highly suggest, that if you are working with the LHG, that the dedication ritual become a daily ritual when you aren't making requests or some of the other operations presented in the LHG. Light the candles, opening the pathways for the spirits of the Dead and Seas and say the prayers. You get to the meditation portion and then open up with the Holy House Method and talk to them, telling them about your life, visit with them, learn from them and what they have to offer to you. In this way you develop a deeper & deeper connection to the spirits which is tantamount to success in any operation you will do not just in the LHG but later work in other areas. I'm working on the notes for a post about that soon enough, don't worry. This focused work also further charges our water offering as they partake of it through the conversation, infusing it with their power so that when we consume it to close out the ritual we have both gotten more out of the whole experience. Also when done, immediately note what the spirit told you. Always thank them as well.
You won't always get a lesson from the spirits, but the idea is to develop a relationship with them because the whole of Voudon and Hoodoo is a work of mutual service. You serve them and they serve you in a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship.
While cultivating this relationship we are able to then more effectively use the other lessons of the LHG.
This is also the key being discovered by the modern grimoire revival, that working with the spirits, developing a relationship, giving them offerings, helps to strengthen the magick that is being worked. All of this serves to not only purify us, but also to purify them with purify here meaning to energize. When using the basic request ritual follow the same formula as the dedication ritual using lessons 3 & 6.
Next post I will discuss the practical elements of the LHG, the Contraite, Controlling Minds, Ojic bath houses and Atuas abound! But not tonight, I got to keep some juice for other projects.
As I established in the prelude to this series, the LHG is very much a grimoire in the classical tradition as opposed the modern tradition. That said it is also thoroughly modern in how it approaches magick and isn't a rehash of previously published material. At first glance it is a course in candle magick at its most basic level. This is very, very far from the truth.
Each lesson is about 3 pages long and a total of 10 lessons in this practice. While a part of the VGW it is completely standalone. The chapters appear to cover very small areas but actually have a broad application and myriad uses when one has developed a strong foundation in these practices and supplemented it with other materials such as an understanding of astrology and color magick or if you are lucky enough, the Monstery of Seven Rays coursework. It is the foundation of what can be a very rich system of magick even without the M7R materials. It can also be supplemented wonderfully with the works of Kat Yronwode or Orion Foxwood's wonderful The Candle & The Crossroads as well as the classic grimoires.
I want to emphasize something though. The LHG does not initiate one into the Voudon Gnostic Continuum of which Michael Bertiaux is the Hierophant. It uses the broad term of hoodoo and not Voudon, Gnostic Voudon or Esoteric Voudon. You aren't forging a link with the families of spirits that were handed down to Dr. Bertiaux through the Jean-maine family, but with a very broad category of spirits that he calls the Hoo and the Doo spirits, the spirit of the Dead and the Seas. When one gets to lesson 3, the basic request ritual of LHG, we come into a contact with the Elemental spirits of Earth (yellow), Water (Blue), Air (Green) and Fire (Red). They're never identified as such in the little book themselves but it is very clear to students of the M7R and readers of David Beth's Voudon Gnosis.
So as we can see we have contacted the spirits of the dead and the four elements. In traditional grimoire magick and the Renaissance sourebooks like Agrippa, are necessary to earth & manifest our requests. The spirits of the dead and the elemental spirits are the easiest to contact. In Qabalah the spirits of the dead are the Nepheshim, the lowest aspect of the Qabalistic Soul of Man and the survival instinct. People who have attended my lecture on Psychic Attack & Defense will note that I refer to the Nephesh as the Psychic Censor, the piece of ourselves that most fears initiation and change, the part being disciplined and the Princess of the YHVH formulae. This is the part of us that is initiated through the four worlds and set upon the Throne of the Mother. This relates directly to the LHG.
The spirits of the dead linger as Nepheshim, always around us. These are our ancestors, our family as well as people who were important to us that are no longer here. They are also the spirits of our chain initiation in whatever tradition we are initiated! At least those no longer with us. The dedication ritual itself is a feeding of these ancestor spirits because we take the time to speak to them, to acknowledge them and interact with them as time goes by and we become more adept at Lucky Hoodoo. These are also the local spirits, the Genii Loci of where ever we live. This ritual forms the foundation of Lucky Hoodoo practices, it is the most basic ritual.
In this dedication ritual we offer them water, placed on our altar is a nice, clean glass and charged through the prayers of the ritual with strong intent. The more we do the ritual and learn the words, the deeper they go into our hearts and the more sincere the words become and the more potent the water becomes, drawing more spirits to us and charging the water. After the prayers to the spirits we drink the water, taking their essence into us. This practice continues in the basic request ritual when we bring the four elemental powers into the practice.
The request ritual described in lesson 2 is where we see the grimoire opening up a bit. We find that while we had a black and a blue candle on the altar before, representing the Dead and the Sea, we now add the other 3 elements. The black candle operates as the intermediary to the four elements. While the candle is lit last in the ritual itself, it is its presence that ties the altar space together by virtue of its presence in the center and the veve that rests beneath it. Black is a very special color in the Voudon Gnostic Continuum and it does, here, tie into that larger work but still exists outside of the VGC. These lessons were written from Bertiaux's system and to exist independent of it at the same time. Black is spirit and space. See why it ties to the dead?
So far I have been going from lesson 1 to lesson 2 and this won't always go in direct order because it is with lesson 3 that we find the next key to the system as a whole.
Lesson 3 covers 4 methods of Mind-Power development. Dream Power, Spiritual Prayer, Holy Houses and Shadow Stuff. These four methods are the actual foundation upon which the whole system hinges. Using them in conjunction with the ritual forms and each other as presented in this book we open up & clear our channels to these other dimensional beings.
With the dream method the spirits come to us in our dreams and teach us. Admittedly many of us do not remember our dreams so as deceptively simple this practice is, it is difficult for many people I Have discussed this topic with. The answer is as simple as the practice itself. Keep a dream journal and write in it every day, whether you remember or NOT! Just write something. Eventually you will remember your dreams every day and can note important elements.
Spiritual prayer, as described in the book, is silent, as in with thought, talking to the spirits about what ails ya. Here we get into a very key part of the system and of all grimoire systems! Wait... what?!?
Grab your Abramelin. Read the process. One of the key elements of Abramelin is to confess your sins. With the Silent prayer, you are talking to the spirits in a very honest manner, in the same way as opening up to your HGA in the Abramelin you are again, clearing channels. The spirits learn your inner heart and it is a purifying process. It helps in inducing a cathartic state where you get things off your chest and learn about yourself, similar to therapy. One day you will find the spirits talk back and not in the "oh fuck, I had a schizophrenic break" sense.
You confess so much, and I don't mean confess as in "oh my god, I am a horrible fucking person" confession, that when it all comes out it opens a channel and the mind becomes attuned to the spirits.
Also, while this isn't grimoire style stuff, remember how all those cheesy 80s and 90s how to books all advised us to "build an astral temple brick by brick"? Yeah you know, you did it for MONTHS and I guaran-damn-tee you have no idea why you did that do you? Well the Holy House method is similar but not the same thing. The Holy House method is astral projection to the spirits plane in order to learn from them. With the prayer technique we get into a more involved conversation. We see the spirits we are talking to and see them you will! Development of the imagination will be key to this system as we see a glimpse of in lesson 2 but will come in play very soon. The first method, prayer, leads to the second method which if fed by the Dream method.
The fourth method not yet discussed about this lesson is probably, in my opinion, the most important, especially once you start using this grimoire in conjunction with the M7R materials. Students of the M7R will see, fairly early, what this method can really do. I am talking about the Shadow method, or shadow bath. With the shadow bath, after washing, you light a single candle or a black/blue light and while naked you begin to run the hands around the body without touching the body, washing over the body with the shadow, or the forces represented by the black candle in the center of the altar, spirit, space & mind! See what I was saying about that black candle? MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
So in one lesson we cover a large part of any magical work. The astral temple, cleansing the aura, and clearing channels to the other side.
Now I am going to jump to lesson 6 and will get back to lesson 4 & 5 in my next post.
Lesson 6 is about Possession, good versus bad possession. This isn't about full blown horseman possession either. It is about good luck versus bad luck and gets into, in a very deep way, the animist world view and the Goes element of the practice.
Remember how I said we are always surrounded by the spirits? That's good and bad spirits. They cling to us and feed on us. The shadow bath helps with this but this lesson does a lot more. This lesson is... a banishing ritual. No, not an Elburp. The Elburp school of thought renders a space, a circular space, inert, neither positive, nor negative. Lesson 6 though is a different critter.
Lesson 6 talks about the positive and negative influences and how to remove the negative spirits that cling to us like barnacles while we go about our daily lives without realizing. In bad possession we have more negative spirits than positive spirits because we have allowed them to possess us by dwelling on our problems, our bad luck in work and love, and they become an obsession. They feed on that shit. These are the murderers and thieves of the spiritual world, nepheshim that need negative emotions to feed and stay around. Nepheshim can, without feeding, linger for about 6 months or so, getting weaker as time goes by without "food". They latch onto us and enforce those negative emotions, allowing us to obsess over them and giving them more to feed on.
Well here is your chance to say "get tha fuck outta here!". The short prayer that MB gives here is a pushing away of the Negative forces and an invitation to the positive ones, that they can come and partake of our successes in our lives and also enforces the position of the Lucky Hoodoo that as long as you serve me, I will serve you because with disciplined practice, the Lucky Hoodoo keeps the lesson going not just to himself but the spirits around him! As he works with the spirits he develops a relationship with these "possessing" spirits as well. There is a reason that this lesson comes later in the LHG though, because first we had to become aware of the spirits in the first place and develop a relationship as we had started doing in lesson 1-3.
Now let's put these lessons together to develop a daily spiritual practice.
First, we shower or bathe in our chosen manner. While in the shower or bath, speak to the spirits in the best way you know how. Tell them in silent prayer that you are about to do a ritual for them to feed them and to help you & your work which in turn helps them.
Take a candle in the bathroom with you if it has no windows because when you do the shadow bath you want as much darkness as possible. If you have windows in the bathroom or your bedroom that's ok. I suggest the bathroom because most do not have windows and that allows for a lot of darkness. I've digressed. Perform the shadow bath after drying yourself. Just glide your fingers through your aura and mentally reach out to the spirits and try to feel their mind power travelling between the tips of your fingers and the skin of your body. I feel a tingly sensation when I do this and feel even cleaner. Now put on your robes, clothes, etc. and go to where you do ritual work and sit down and take a moment to enter into a deeper relaxed state, reaching out with the mind, opening the channels and say the prayers taught in lesson 6. You open your mind so that the negative spirits definitely know you mean business and run away.
Do you see what this is? It is the opening of any Solomonic style ceremony. It is the purification of the Priest/Operator/Magician/Master before he begins the operation proper. Students of the M7R can add to this full thing in interesting ways that further deepens the whole process on an ascending/descending lattice.
Now we begin the ritual "proper". I suggest, highly suggest, that if you are working with the LHG, that the dedication ritual become a daily ritual when you aren't making requests or some of the other operations presented in the LHG. Light the candles, opening the pathways for the spirits of the Dead and Seas and say the prayers. You get to the meditation portion and then open up with the Holy House Method and talk to them, telling them about your life, visit with them, learn from them and what they have to offer to you. In this way you develop a deeper & deeper connection to the spirits which is tantamount to success in any operation you will do not just in the LHG but later work in other areas. I'm working on the notes for a post about that soon enough, don't worry. This focused work also further charges our water offering as they partake of it through the conversation, infusing it with their power so that when we consume it to close out the ritual we have both gotten more out of the whole experience. Also when done, immediately note what the spirit told you. Always thank them as well.
You won't always get a lesson from the spirits, but the idea is to develop a relationship with them because the whole of Voudon and Hoodoo is a work of mutual service. You serve them and they serve you in a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship.
While cultivating this relationship we are able to then more effectively use the other lessons of the LHG.
This is also the key being discovered by the modern grimoire revival, that working with the spirits, developing a relationship, giving them offerings, helps to strengthen the magick that is being worked. All of this serves to not only purify us, but also to purify them with purify here meaning to energize. When using the basic request ritual follow the same formula as the dedication ritual using lessons 3 & 6.
Next post I will discuss the practical elements of the LHG, the Contraite, Controlling Minds, Ojic bath houses and Atuas abound! But not tonight, I got to keep some juice for other projects.
Mastering Lucky Hoodoo! Prelude: What is going on in this weird little book?
I've tried a few times to write this post at the request of a few correspondents interested in Voudon Gnosis. Each time I hit a mental road block. It is too long, too descriptive etc. Sometimes it was regurgitative bile that I wouldn't put on a facebook post! So after several months and promises, I write this for You Sylph and Mr. Plisken!
First things first and this is most important: while How to Become a Big Lucky Hoodoo, or the LHG, is part of the Voudon Gnostic Workbook, it does not initiate one into the Voudon Gnostic Continuum of Rev. Michael Bertiaux. What it does do is bring you to the attention of the Hoodoo spirits. Bertiaux refers to them as the spirits of the dead & the sea but essentially these are the local spirits where you live and their power goes back in a chain to the most ancient civilizations including Atlantis.
*Gasp*
*Horror*
*Shock*
"Did he just say... Atlantis???"
Yes, yes I did. It is right there in the first lesson.
"Absurd! Preposterous! He shall face our ridicule and obnoxious taunting!"
And I retort: why is this such an absurd notion when one looks at the classical grimoires? The classics are filled with mythology and absurdities! Claims of making flying carpets, turning an item instantly into gold and other such matters that were they taken literally everybody would be using them and we'd have an economic collapse from all the gold turds people would be making! Mythologies? Is Atlantis anymore preposterous than the Bible?
No, what we have here in critics of Bertiaux's work is a double standard. While on the one hand we are expected to accept that in order to work the classics we have to enact a shift in consciousness so that we feel, literally and completely, that the mythologies of these grimoires is absolute Truth, with a capital T.
The matter with Bertiaux's work though is people look at it and think "Oh my god, this is insane, what madness possessed this man?" and write it off as fantasy on the part of the author.
There is reason for that and it boils down to three things.
1. The Golden Dawn
2. Traditional Voodoo
3. Southern Rootwork/Conjure/Hoodoo practices
I will now address each in their turn.
1. The Golden Dawn
The pollution of HOGD style teaching befowls the whole of the western tradition. Yes my language is strong in saying this and there is a reason. First I will clarify that I, as readers of my blog are well aware, come from a background in the branches of the A:.A:. and so I have lots of experience with Golden Dawn derived magical practices going back for twenty years. I had the same "banish, banish, banish" mentality that many of those practitioners develop due to the lack of understanding of the original GD instructions on the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram. I was immersed in that style of magick. It hinders my development in the Monastery of 7 Rays to this day as I break down that style of thought.
But why do I call it a pollution?
Aleister Crowley is probably the most influential magician of the 20th century, almost closely by Austin Osman Spare, with his influence on Chaos Magick as well as Kenneth Grant & his followers and then a distant third being Franz Bardon. Crowley was steeped in the Golden Dawn and his work became the stone upon which all magical traditions developed from his time until the modern era. Reading the rituals of Gardnerian Witchcraft you see corrupted quotes from Liber XV The Gnostic Mass forming the corpus of the body. Crowley's influence on post 1920s magick is thick, reaching into Chaos Magic, Wicca, Ogdoadic traditions and even the rewrites of ancient grimoires for modern users.
On top of that was the Golden Dawn attitude that the grimoires were filled with blinds, didn't work or were the blackest of black magick. Many modern magicians don't look into them as anything more than collections of spirits to choose for their own "low magick" operations to get new girlfriends, riches and other mundane concerns that I dare not criticize.
While some modern traditions are more embracing of the grimoires, very few try to operate them as written, writing their own "code" in order to run those "operating systems". Read that sentence again and you'll see another pollution of the Golden Dawn.
"Wait, what do you mean?"
AHA! What I mean is the unintentional influence that underscores the Golden Dawn: Israel Regardie. Regardie latched onto Crowley's introductory essay in his edition of the Goetia, "An Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic". Regardie underscored the idea of magick as a sort of therapeutic practice and used psychological models to explain the processes of magick. This extended to every form of magick that one can operate rather than just the initiatic/alchemical processes that the psyche of the magician undergoes. Spirits became fully aspects of the shadow or unconscious mind etc. tearing the heart of Spirit out of magick. While this isn't a true Golden Dawnism, Regardie was the single biggest source for Golden Dawn revival orders into the 00s when other authors, not taught by Regardie began to write and restore elements to the tradition more true to the source.
But the damage was done. I want to note, as I have said on this blog in the past, that I don't think Regardie is the devil. Right now his work is going underground but I feel in a decade or so there will be a revival of interest in his work as the barnacles of his former influence are shaken off and his work is reappraised as Regardie as opposed to sourcework for the Golden Dawn tradition.
What Regardie's influence led to though, in the overall sense, was extrapolation of his models into all aspects of magick. Rituals and spirits became "programs" etc, But I have digressed.
The Golden Dawn derived traditions have become so pervasive that in the modern magician, most of us raised up on Kraig's Modern Magick (an excellent manual by the way), that when we see something so foreign to that style of magick, it is rejected outright. This goes for people who learned magick in Wicca, Thelema and similar schools such as BOTA, FLO, & SOL. Lucky Hoodoo bares no resemblance to these systems. But it does bare resemblance to something and I will reveal that when I get to the end of this post, and that will reveal a key.
2. Traditional Voodoo
Traditional Voodoo is a modern concept, an attempt to homogenize the practices of Voodoo into a practice that can be packaged and sold. It has certain formulae & ways to do things and in that attempt to homogenize they have tried to present voodoo in such a way that any ritual you go to called Voodoo will look the same. Like a Big Mac. Yum.
Lots of people in the last twenty years, especially since Louis Martinie published the beautiful artwork of Sallie Ann Glassman in his New Orleans Voodoo Tarot, people have sought out voodoo training, travelling to New Orleans and Haiti looking for teachers and a lot of these teachers have seen a chance to make some money. People have been going to Haiti, spending a week or so there and returned as fully initiated "houngans & mambos"! They learn a ritual structure and then return to the states and write these wonderfully compatible books on Voodoo Love Magic and Voodoo Money Spells and when they see the Voudon Gnostic Workbook they cry foul.
"That ain't Voodoo!"
I'll have a post on how the line of thinking that all it takes is a ritual in order to be a priest soon enough!
One thing Lou says in his wonderful book is that Voodoo is inclusive, not exclusive. Voodoo absorbs what is around it, it adapts but these homogenizers want to package and sell voodoo and the soul of Voodoo cries for release from this enslavement. I can get into why so many people are travelling to Haiti in a different post but there is something going on there and it reveals some issues with elements of the modern western mystery tradition.
The VGW bares little resemblance to this "traditional voodoo" either.
3. Southern Rootwork/Conjure/Traditional Hoodoo practices.
Hoodoo is an almost entirely American tradition. A mix of Native American, African and grimoire magick, hoodoo came into being in the South. While some will want you to think is it the provenance of the African American, belonging to their culture and damn you white people for stealing it, Hoodoo was as much a white man's magick as it was a black man's.
Hoodoo is a broad term. It covers folk magick in various locations and no set structure. Much of it is superstition and herbal or root medicines. Some elements can be traced to Ireland, some to African practices and some to Native American practices. Like America, Hoodoo is a melting pot of folk practices finding a fusion in a new world.
The practices of hoodoo are loose and broad. People swapped practices and ideas between each other for decades, creating a uniquely American lore. From Europe came the grimoires and in particular the Sixth & Seventh Books of Moses. Talismans were popular, drawing them on paper and anointing them with oils consecrated to different ideas was a rule. Catalogues of oils, candles and herbal concoctions were a norm in Southern culture, creating a rich tradition.
From place to place though you'd not find the same practices because Hoodoo wasn't ritual forms like we find in the grimoires or Golden Dawn traditions. This is where the Sixth & Seventh Books come in. Grimoires like that famous one would often contain practices in Psalmery, or the uses of Psalms as spells and using them in conjunction to charge their talismans.
Nowadays we have this wonderful movement to collate the hoodoo traditions for a modern audience. Occult authors are integrating elements of hoodoo and African Tribal Religions into their practices with the grimoires to some beautiful effect. I think that these authors & the traditional grimoirists, have fallen into a key to the grimoires and how to use them. That's another post.
But in relation to the VGW, again, Hoodoo bares little resemblance to the system or teachings presented in there in spite of the How to Become a Lucky Hoodoo portion of the book. Hoodoo practitioners have been more "forgiving" than the Golden Dawn derivatives and "Traditional" Voodoo practitioners. Some have even adopted Bertiaux's Lucky Hoodoo techniques or pirated them to sell as their own! But to the cursory examiner & hoodoo "purists"... "THIS ISN'T HOODOO!". I can hear the screeching old bitch now, like a deadite in an Evil Dead film!
So what is the Lucky Hoodoo Grimoire (my term for the system) really like? What is going on here? Why are all these people screeching like gulls over a garbage trawl??
The LHG is most similar to the source work of not just the Golden Dawn but also Hoodoo. It's right there in the title I give to that section as a short hand reference. LUcky Hoodoo is most like the classic grimoires of the pre-Golden Dawn period of magical lore. Contained in these pages is a grimoire as complete as the now popular "The Art of Drawing Spirits Into Crystals" by the Abbot Johannis Trithemius of Spannheim, tutor of Cornelius Agrippa and whose little grimoire has been popularized by Rufus Opus and Frater Ashan Chassan F:.NF:.
The LHG is a simple little book that teaches us how to contact and communicate with spirits. These spirits, as I said in my preamble, are the spirits of the dead as well as, when we get into the "basic request ritual" the elements. The book contains a complete cosmology and system of spiritual development like the best of the grimoires. If one were to step outside of the idea of the modern traditions of the GD and Voodoo one would see that plain as day.
The LHG offers us a complete system of Sorcery to effect the same results, often in a more direct way than the European grimoires. With the practices contained therein we open up the channels to these spirits of the dead, as Bertiaux identifies two schools of spirits, the dead sorcerors of Atlantis, as being the power behind the grimoire. This is no more absurd than the grimoires claiming to be the "keys used/written by Solomon" or some similar mythological figure.
As a system of working with the spirits of the dead the LHG also harkens back to the Goes of southern Europe, who worked with the dead and the origin of the word "goetia". For more detail on this check out Jake Stratton Kent's Geosophia from Scarlet Imprint. As a system of magick it aslo harkens to grimoires like the Goetia, Key of Solomon, etc. and this is a key to understanding and seeing what the system really packs in it.
First things first and this is most important: while How to Become a Big Lucky Hoodoo, or the LHG, is part of the Voudon Gnostic Workbook, it does not initiate one into the Voudon Gnostic Continuum of Rev. Michael Bertiaux. What it does do is bring you to the attention of the Hoodoo spirits. Bertiaux refers to them as the spirits of the dead & the sea but essentially these are the local spirits where you live and their power goes back in a chain to the most ancient civilizations including Atlantis.
*Gasp*
*Horror*
*Shock*
"Did he just say... Atlantis???"
Yes, yes I did. It is right there in the first lesson.
"Absurd! Preposterous! He shall face our ridicule and obnoxious taunting!"
And I retort: why is this such an absurd notion when one looks at the classical grimoires? The classics are filled with mythology and absurdities! Claims of making flying carpets, turning an item instantly into gold and other such matters that were they taken literally everybody would be using them and we'd have an economic collapse from all the gold turds people would be making! Mythologies? Is Atlantis anymore preposterous than the Bible?
No, what we have here in critics of Bertiaux's work is a double standard. While on the one hand we are expected to accept that in order to work the classics we have to enact a shift in consciousness so that we feel, literally and completely, that the mythologies of these grimoires is absolute Truth, with a capital T.
The matter with Bertiaux's work though is people look at it and think "Oh my god, this is insane, what madness possessed this man?" and write it off as fantasy on the part of the author.
There is reason for that and it boils down to three things.
1. The Golden Dawn
2. Traditional Voodoo
3. Southern Rootwork/Conjure/Hoodoo practices
I will now address each in their turn.
1. The Golden Dawn
The pollution of HOGD style teaching befowls the whole of the western tradition. Yes my language is strong in saying this and there is a reason. First I will clarify that I, as readers of my blog are well aware, come from a background in the branches of the A:.A:. and so I have lots of experience with Golden Dawn derived magical practices going back for twenty years. I had the same "banish, banish, banish" mentality that many of those practitioners develop due to the lack of understanding of the original GD instructions on the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram. I was immersed in that style of magick. It hinders my development in the Monastery of 7 Rays to this day as I break down that style of thought.
But why do I call it a pollution?
Aleister Crowley is probably the most influential magician of the 20th century, almost closely by Austin Osman Spare, with his influence on Chaos Magick as well as Kenneth Grant & his followers and then a distant third being Franz Bardon. Crowley was steeped in the Golden Dawn and his work became the stone upon which all magical traditions developed from his time until the modern era. Reading the rituals of Gardnerian Witchcraft you see corrupted quotes from Liber XV The Gnostic Mass forming the corpus of the body. Crowley's influence on post 1920s magick is thick, reaching into Chaos Magic, Wicca, Ogdoadic traditions and even the rewrites of ancient grimoires for modern users.
On top of that was the Golden Dawn attitude that the grimoires were filled with blinds, didn't work or were the blackest of black magick. Many modern magicians don't look into them as anything more than collections of spirits to choose for their own "low magick" operations to get new girlfriends, riches and other mundane concerns that I dare not criticize.
While some modern traditions are more embracing of the grimoires, very few try to operate them as written, writing their own "code" in order to run those "operating systems". Read that sentence again and you'll see another pollution of the Golden Dawn.
"Wait, what do you mean?"
AHA! What I mean is the unintentional influence that underscores the Golden Dawn: Israel Regardie. Regardie latched onto Crowley's introductory essay in his edition of the Goetia, "An Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic". Regardie underscored the idea of magick as a sort of therapeutic practice and used psychological models to explain the processes of magick. This extended to every form of magick that one can operate rather than just the initiatic/alchemical processes that the psyche of the magician undergoes. Spirits became fully aspects of the shadow or unconscious mind etc. tearing the heart of Spirit out of magick. While this isn't a true Golden Dawnism, Regardie was the single biggest source for Golden Dawn revival orders into the 00s when other authors, not taught by Regardie began to write and restore elements to the tradition more true to the source.
But the damage was done. I want to note, as I have said on this blog in the past, that I don't think Regardie is the devil. Right now his work is going underground but I feel in a decade or so there will be a revival of interest in his work as the barnacles of his former influence are shaken off and his work is reappraised as Regardie as opposed to sourcework for the Golden Dawn tradition.
What Regardie's influence led to though, in the overall sense, was extrapolation of his models into all aspects of magick. Rituals and spirits became "programs" etc, But I have digressed.
The Golden Dawn derived traditions have become so pervasive that in the modern magician, most of us raised up on Kraig's Modern Magick (an excellent manual by the way), that when we see something so foreign to that style of magick, it is rejected outright. This goes for people who learned magick in Wicca, Thelema and similar schools such as BOTA, FLO, & SOL. Lucky Hoodoo bares no resemblance to these systems. But it does bare resemblance to something and I will reveal that when I get to the end of this post, and that will reveal a key.
2. Traditional Voodoo
Traditional Voodoo is a modern concept, an attempt to homogenize the practices of Voodoo into a practice that can be packaged and sold. It has certain formulae & ways to do things and in that attempt to homogenize they have tried to present voodoo in such a way that any ritual you go to called Voodoo will look the same. Like a Big Mac. Yum.
Lots of people in the last twenty years, especially since Louis Martinie published the beautiful artwork of Sallie Ann Glassman in his New Orleans Voodoo Tarot, people have sought out voodoo training, travelling to New Orleans and Haiti looking for teachers and a lot of these teachers have seen a chance to make some money. People have been going to Haiti, spending a week or so there and returned as fully initiated "houngans & mambos"! They learn a ritual structure and then return to the states and write these wonderfully compatible books on Voodoo Love Magic and Voodoo Money Spells and when they see the Voudon Gnostic Workbook they cry foul.
"That ain't Voodoo!"
I'll have a post on how the line of thinking that all it takes is a ritual in order to be a priest soon enough!
One thing Lou says in his wonderful book is that Voodoo is inclusive, not exclusive. Voodoo absorbs what is around it, it adapts but these homogenizers want to package and sell voodoo and the soul of Voodoo cries for release from this enslavement. I can get into why so many people are travelling to Haiti in a different post but there is something going on there and it reveals some issues with elements of the modern western mystery tradition.
The VGW bares little resemblance to this "traditional voodoo" either.
3. Southern Rootwork/Conjure/Traditional Hoodoo practices.
Hoodoo is an almost entirely American tradition. A mix of Native American, African and grimoire magick, hoodoo came into being in the South. While some will want you to think is it the provenance of the African American, belonging to their culture and damn you white people for stealing it, Hoodoo was as much a white man's magick as it was a black man's.
Hoodoo is a broad term. It covers folk magick in various locations and no set structure. Much of it is superstition and herbal or root medicines. Some elements can be traced to Ireland, some to African practices and some to Native American practices. Like America, Hoodoo is a melting pot of folk practices finding a fusion in a new world.
The practices of hoodoo are loose and broad. People swapped practices and ideas between each other for decades, creating a uniquely American lore. From Europe came the grimoires and in particular the Sixth & Seventh Books of Moses. Talismans were popular, drawing them on paper and anointing them with oils consecrated to different ideas was a rule. Catalogues of oils, candles and herbal concoctions were a norm in Southern culture, creating a rich tradition.
From place to place though you'd not find the same practices because Hoodoo wasn't ritual forms like we find in the grimoires or Golden Dawn traditions. This is where the Sixth & Seventh Books come in. Grimoires like that famous one would often contain practices in Psalmery, or the uses of Psalms as spells and using them in conjunction to charge their talismans.
Nowadays we have this wonderful movement to collate the hoodoo traditions for a modern audience. Occult authors are integrating elements of hoodoo and African Tribal Religions into their practices with the grimoires to some beautiful effect. I think that these authors & the traditional grimoirists, have fallen into a key to the grimoires and how to use them. That's another post.
But in relation to the VGW, again, Hoodoo bares little resemblance to the system or teachings presented in there in spite of the How to Become a Lucky Hoodoo portion of the book. Hoodoo practitioners have been more "forgiving" than the Golden Dawn derivatives and "Traditional" Voodoo practitioners. Some have even adopted Bertiaux's Lucky Hoodoo techniques or pirated them to sell as their own! But to the cursory examiner & hoodoo "purists"... "THIS ISN'T HOODOO!". I can hear the screeching old bitch now, like a deadite in an Evil Dead film!
So what is the Lucky Hoodoo Grimoire (my term for the system) really like? What is going on here? Why are all these people screeching like gulls over a garbage trawl??
The LHG is most similar to the source work of not just the Golden Dawn but also Hoodoo. It's right there in the title I give to that section as a short hand reference. LUcky Hoodoo is most like the classic grimoires of the pre-Golden Dawn period of magical lore. Contained in these pages is a grimoire as complete as the now popular "The Art of Drawing Spirits Into Crystals" by the Abbot Johannis Trithemius of Spannheim, tutor of Cornelius Agrippa and whose little grimoire has been popularized by Rufus Opus and Frater Ashan Chassan F:.NF:.
The LHG is a simple little book that teaches us how to contact and communicate with spirits. These spirits, as I said in my preamble, are the spirits of the dead as well as, when we get into the "basic request ritual" the elements. The book contains a complete cosmology and system of spiritual development like the best of the grimoires. If one were to step outside of the idea of the modern traditions of the GD and Voodoo one would see that plain as day.
The LHG offers us a complete system of Sorcery to effect the same results, often in a more direct way than the European grimoires. With the practices contained therein we open up the channels to these spirits of the dead, as Bertiaux identifies two schools of spirits, the dead sorcerors of Atlantis, as being the power behind the grimoire. This is no more absurd than the grimoires claiming to be the "keys used/written by Solomon" or some similar mythological figure.
As a system of working with the spirits of the dead the LHG also harkens back to the Goes of southern Europe, who worked with the dead and the origin of the word "goetia". For more detail on this check out Jake Stratton Kent's Geosophia from Scarlet Imprint. As a system of magick it aslo harkens to grimoires like the Goetia, Key of Solomon, etc. and this is a key to understanding and seeing what the system really packs in it.
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