Ingenium - Alchemy of the Magical Mind

PREFACE

THIS is a book about human qualities. Tendering to the risk and likelihood that these do not exist in the plural, it is a book about the human quality.

The human being is a person composed of myriads of non-human persons. Much of this book is devoted to explaining this idea and putting it into practice. It is not a new idea but neither an old one. It is a timeless discovery. One that does not need to be handed forward in time from one human to another. Instead, it’s a discovery that wants to be pulled out of your own flesh, that wants to be drunken from your own blood, inhaled from the surface of your own skin. It is a quintessentially sensual discovery. Or so I hope to show in this book.

Now, who are these non-human persons that make up the human person?

Many bees together form a hive. In a single season, thousands of bees die, thousand new ones are born, and during winter their colony is reduced to a small bundle of survivors keeping each other alive on their own body heat. Yet the hive always remains a hive. Its mutability is the source of its stability; its resistance to committing to a single form, or even to repeating itself once, is the secret of its cyclical life. As we shall see, such a mode of being cuts quite close to the human quality.

However, in another respect, these persons that constitute the human person are quite different from bees. Because they do not represent or descend from a singular species. They are legion. In this regard we will fare better by comparing humans to a forest, a lake, or a mountainside: That is, to a topography that forms the habitat for a multitude of different species, and that, by offering itself as a dwelling, becomes itself.

Some of the persons that make up the human person are tiny fragments, hardly holding a consciousness of their own. Others are rousing and unruly, fully fledged consciousness-organs in themselves, ready to pull our minds, our hearts and hands into constant assimilation. Some of these persons or consciousnesses have been with us from birth, others we have picked up along the way.

Yet, the common denominator amongst all of these persons is that they are not us. They are a whole world, a microcosm that has been implanted in us. Or, more correctly, I should say that we ourselves have been implanted into. But none of these persons constitute what I would like to term the human quality.

That is a truly marvellous thing about humans: life can cut away at them, take away from them, make them bleed, shatter them, and reduce them to fragments of what they once used to be. And yet, life cannot reduce their quality of being human. Humans have a wolf under their skin and you can kill that wolf. Humans have a hare under their skin and you can kill that hare. Humans hold dreams, bonds, vows, memories under their skin and you can take them all away. And yet, you have reduced nothing of their mysterious quality of being human.

Catching a glimpse of this most elusive being, the human, has been one of the deepest mysteries since the emergence of our species. This book is an invitation, to seek it out and see it.

It’s the irony of our current civilisation that we have to come together in a book on Magic—a subject considered most peripheral to modern human society—to rediscover what might actually be at the heart of the human quality. Perhaps we are a species that has forgotten itself? Or perhaps we are simply gifted far beyond what we know to take responsibility for? This book aims to show pathways to discover your personal answer.

Now the journey of this book will deliberately labyrinthine. The reason being that in all things natural, the straight line is always a trap.

This journey will lead us to a new appreciation of what the path and function of the magical adept might be. It will guide us into the rough topography of Radical Otherness, where we will find the offer to perceive the world without value judgment, to let it come into its own and speak genuinely in its voice of otherness. For only when we have listened can we respond with purpose. From there, our journey will take us into a mystical cave where we will discover a black door, a mirrored door, one that is waiting to be unlocked. In the presence of these doors, magical tools are waiting to be touched by us and to be made our own again. And, in the midst of the depths of our expedition, we will find ourselves again in the cherished presence of Paracelsus. That man whom we have already encountered in Holy Heretics (SCARLET IMPRINT, 2022). He is patiently waiting on the pages of this book for us: to take us by the hand again, as Virgil took Dante by the hand, and to lead us deeper into the mystery of being human.

It is also from Paracelsus that I took the title of this book. The root of the word ingenium is taken from the Greek γίγνομαι, and the Latin gigno, which translates as to bring forth as a fruit of myself, or more generally as born or begotten. Traditionally, ingenium then was read as the gifts that were begotten to us from birth, the seeds that were placed inside the soil of our selves. As we will see, Paracelsus has a lot to say about these.

I place this book into your hands, therefore, steeped in Paracelsian spirit: in the hope that it will assist you in placing good seeds into yourself and in bringing forth good fruits of yourself. In the hope that it will assist you in learning how to give the wolf what is of the wolves, and the hare what is of the hares, and the human what is of the humans.

LVX,

Frater Acher

May the serpent bite its tail.

CHAPTER I

The Way of the Adept

The Glorious Wisdom [i.e. Mahakala] will display his terrifying form, extremely ferocious, eagerly wrathful, black in colour, scowling intensely and baring his fangs, and the hostile beings will be liberated. It is not meant to harm those beings, but rather to relieve them of suffering and establish them in freedom. When parents discipline their children, it is for their children’s welfare, not their own. Likewise, to benefit sentient beings, you must be unblemished by the stain of self-interest, son.

Gods and demons are thus not distinguished based on their form, and it is even difficult to distinguish them based on their behaviour. There are those who behave nicely and are pleasing to behold but are demonic in harming the mind. And there are ugly, frightening, dangerous beings who act as gods in terms of benefit. Nonhuman, malicious, wicked beings, if they like us, act as gods to assist in creating conducive conditions for achieving enlightenment. Since demons act as gods, they are called god-demons. You should know that there is not a separate essence of a god or a demon—they are the same.¹

INTRODUCTION

WE NEED TO ANTHROPOLOGIZE TH E WEST: SHOW HOW EXOTIC ITS CONSTITUTION OF REALITY HAS BEEN.²

THE FOLLOWING is an exposition on the Way of the Adept, and how the Western Tradition of Magic has lost its roots in nature and the spirit realm. ³ We will exemplify our points by analysis of the Four Demon Kings as they appear in the tradition of Solomonic Magic.

Before we begin, however, we should clarify the position and premise that inform our approach. When writing about magic in the 21st century it is often expected to carefully consider and select a distinct audience for which the material is then arranged and presented: for historians, scientists or practitioners. Regrettably, I haven’t given up the delusion yet that I might write for all three audiences. Mainly that is for two reasons: one, personally I enjoy reading, learning from and exploring all three paradigms equally; thus I am not sure why my writing should need to be more one-dimensional than my reading. Secondly, and more importantly, if the spirit realm has the same ontological reality (or lack thereof) as the human realm does, all three lenses should be able to contribute valid and mutually enriching aspects of research to our better understanding of it.

Let me expound on the second point further, as it is often not stressed enough and yet essential to understanding the nature of magic. The same scientific forces that first laid magic to rest in the evidence vault of history, have now placed the enlightened world-view of the axiomatic cause and effect dominion right next to it. Chaos theory and quantum mechanics, amongst many other young and emerging faculties, have abundantly proven that if only we zoom out far enough into either macro- or microcosm, all of our Newtonian certainties will fade away. If we follow the scientific path of logic through to the end, we suddenly see: our human, physical senses as well as our cognitive minds are the real magicians. They keep us entangled in an illusion that seems entirely self-generated, they conjure up continuous first-hand experiences that at best have brittle ontological status, and they do it in such a magical manner that exorcising i. e. banishing them, breaking away from under their spell seems absolutely impossible.

Now this is where we have to place the tip of our knife to slice through the artificial division between historic, scientific and practical perspectives on magic. Knowing that we are caught in a game doesn’t make said game less relevant. A simulation remains our reality unless we have found a way to free ourselves from it for good. At least for the foreseeable future, no human being will free themselves from their cognitive mind and physical senses without eradicating themselves in the process as well.

Let’s illustrate this by a few simple examples. Knowing that traffic rules are just standard agreements among fellow humans, without any ontological reality of their own, does not change the impact we will feel when entering the roundabout the wrong way. The crash and destruction to our car and body will still feel incredibly ontologically relevant. Equally, while sitting down at the dentist’s for a root canal treatment, the knowledge that the signal to arrive in our brain is merely a chemical reaction will numb none of its real intensity. Virtual, abstract knowledge has incredibly little leverage over the overpowering presence of first-hand reality. Despite how hard we try to separate our lives from our physical senses by burying ourselves in artificial, virtual worlds—in the real life, mind does not rule over matter. And the question of what is ontologically real is only of peripheral interest compared to what holds relevance over the experience of our lives.

From my first twenty years of active practice in magic, this seems to be the point most often misunderstood. Magic is a science and art that operates with and through lived reality, not abstract ontology. Again, allow me to illustrate this. The fact that the sun does not revolve around the earth matters nothing to the fact that we all see the sun rise in the east every morning. I can see the sun revolve around the sky, my body experiences the change in its altitude and in intensity of its rays. Thus, astrology operates on the logic of a lived experience. The twelve houses, the decans, the head and tail of the dragon are real in the same way as traffic rules are. With the only difference that traffic rules represent human-to-human agreements, whereas astrology represents creation-to-human agreements. We might get lucky to evolve or change the former; we will always remain subject to the latter.

Intellectual insight, even divine gnosis—as cognitively pure and satisfying as they can be—hold very feeble power over incarnated substance. Experience is made of flesh, and bones, and blood, and kisses and cuts. The elements are the ultimate illusion, and yet they are also the ultimate womb, and we all live inside it. Quantum mechanics may prove the illusion of the lived experience. And yet, its findings change nothing in regard to the experiential relevance of a divorce, a dislocated back, or a disabled child.

The matrix matters; and magic offers one of the most elegant and impactful pathways for travelling within it. The inhabitants of the spirit realm—in their myriad species of deities, demons, jinns, angelic beings etc.—when viewed within such a paradigm, hold the exact same level of ontological reality as our human bodies do. They may not be entirely real, but real enough to care about.

THE WAY OF THE ADEPT

(PART I)

In helping and serving, we have the right attitude toward both the exalted beings whom we call the elder siblings and the masters of wisdom, and the lower beings in the elemental, mineral and animal kingdoms.⁴

THE way of the adept is the way of unconditional aid . The word unconditional is used here in particular in regard to incarnated ego or false empathy on the side of the adept. For the experienced magician to work as an adept they have to become a mature carrier of the divine flame. No longer under the yoke of wanting to prove their own self-efficacy, they are ready to work in service. Having learned how to balance the triangle of healing between its three corner-points of creation , maintenance and destruction , the adept turns themselves into an agent of steadfastness through work with humans, spirits, and the land.

Within the work of the adept the essential steps are no different from any mundane doctor. In a merely idealised progression, they focus on diagnosis, therapy, and cure. These terms are easy to voice and yet very hard to accomplish. Quite alike to Einstein’s famous axiom (If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.) the majority of the adept’s work consists in getting to know and staying in tune with the enlivened topography they are an integral part of. Knowing the lay of the land, its various realms of spirits, their intersection points with the human realm, the varying modes and methods of communication and mutual influence between the two, and then knowing how to travel, to tune and transform these marks the essence of their craft. The art of unconditional aid in such a sense is equally rooted in deeply pragmatic operating skills as well as in the resolute wisdom, hard-earned from first-hand experienced, when not to apply these.

Any adept is tasked to remain highly agile and to work upon themselves for the entire duration of their lifetime. Mostly this presents a necessity of survival in the reality they find themselves in rather than a noble gesture of elitist sublimation. Each intervention the experienced magician decides to take upon the vast weave of spirits and creation, sends ripples (or sometimes shock-waves) into many directions, and most certainly back into their own physiology and psychology.

Adepts are only human. The quality of their inner and outer disposition defines the foundations as well as the circumference of their craft and potency. Adepts get sick, stumble, fall, are surprised by fate, lose loved ones and go through divorces. And yet, when in conscious communion with the spirits they collaborate with, they have access to sources of power that are not available to humans under the circumstances of ordinary life.

Besides their magical skills, the adept’s work essentially depends on a broad toolkit of robust mental skills. Understanding, diverting or disabling the venoms that impose the need for outside aid on spirits or humans, is not a job that can be done while wearing rose-coloured glasses. Rather an essential part of the adept’s toolkit consists in the critical examination of uncomfortable truths, as well as the encounter with forces that operate dislocated from their intended space of agency.

Many magicians are not up to that task. Which is why the present description might read rather foreign to people who are well accustomed to the modern magical community. Instead of genuine adepts, students of Western Magic are more likely to come across egotists, narcissists, megalomaniacs, daydreamers, alcoholics, addicts, and many colourful combinations of these. The number of magicians who bluff their way through life is and always has been impressive. Such professionals are much better versed in taking money for nothing, than turning nothing into something.

Magic is not a profession, it does not render a regular income and by its very essence was never meant to do so. As members of Western consumer societies this is a critical paradox we have to understand. Magical skills—especially if elevated to the level of an adept—are the kind of capabilities that cost an extravagant amount of effort and energy to build up, yet are never meant to be subjected to economic restraints. The comparison to an intimate relationship might help. One can spend a lifetime of hard work on fostering and growing a vibrant relationship with a partner, they are even likely to build remarkable life-skills along the way, and yet the relationship will immediately collapse and turn into nothing if it were to be commercialised. Similarly, magical skills are often a secondary gain, a byproduct of much more intentional and important endeavours. Slowly over time, one may turn themselves into an adept by offering unconditional aid; one will definitely cease to be an adept by advertising it.

Most adepts are born with a strong disposition for their work and many might have preferred to be rid of it in hindsight. This complex craft requires lifelong work and dedication yet does not produce any income or livelihood. Thus, many advanced practitioners are forced to lead a double life. They are engineers, retailers, craftsmen, architects, mothers, fathers, factory workers etc. They are mundane members of their local communities; and yet, when someone comes to ask for help, they work as adepts.

This might be another modern misunderstanding. Adepts do not strut about coercing demons as if they were on a stroll through an exotic zoo, they do not abuse spirits for juvenile power-games, and neither do they mistake magic for just another way of getting their adrenaline kicks, nor as a tool for constructing a seemingly uncanny and unique identity. Adepts understand the means of their work as a sacred art and the aim of their work as a positive contribution to the world around them. In this essential sense, the idea of an adept equally describes someone with particular capabilities, as well as with a particular attitude towards life. Neither of these two aspects are more or less important than the other. Skills alone are nothing without the character carrying them, and vice versa.

The way of the adept always leads back to nature, or reversely branches out from it and retains deep roots in it. Modern academia has precious little to contribute when it comes to moving forward on one’s magical path. Neither is academia known to make people street-smart and teach essential life skills (which could be the case according to e.g. an interdisciplinary or even Humboldt’s ideal of education), nor is modern academia known to build character. A low level of formal education, therefore, will not get in the way of the magician, let alone the adept. Reversely, life experience as well as an intimate understanding of nature are essential requisites for the skilled handling of this craft. Understanding nature, in this context, refers to having filled one’s cup of lived experience within nature. Specifically, it refers to the initiations and teachings we receive from nature through its spirits, demons, and manifold life forms.

Magic stands at the beginning of human culture. Walking the magician’s way, therefore, means preserving and renewing this gift, as well as offering unconditional aid to the spirits who uphold it from their end.

In some parts of the world, the knowledge and practice of this craft has remained relatively intact over many centuries. For example, we find traditions of Nepalese shamans that reach back hundreds of years within the same valley and family.⁵ Here, the community has integrated this craft and its practitioners into its culture, its collective memory and active habitus. In such locations, while not without social tensions or deformations of practice either, we can still encounter lived and unbroken traditions. For most of the Western Hemisphere this is unfortunately not true. Two specific pitfalls therefore apply to the way of the magician in the West.

The first one would be to import and overlay a carbon copy of foreign practices into one’s own country. I.e. a practitioner of traditional Nepalese shamanism in e. g. Switzerland or Norway, will rock up against an array of problems, unless they adopt their practices to local circumstances. This is not because said Nepalese shamanism does not operate effectively, but precisely because it does. A craft of working with living spirits needs tuning to the specific spirittopography within which it is being brought to life. Different species and beings reside in a Norwegian fjord versus a Nepalese valley versus an African river delta. As mentioned above, the way of the magician always begins and branches out from nature. Nature in this context does not refer to a metaphor or abstract concept, but to the very land each practitioner eats, sleeps, works and dreams upon. The very words nature just as well as land in such sense include the sky above them and the chthonic depth below them; they indicate broad realms with multiple layers of reality stored within them, not a patch of soil fenced off by a garden wall.

In light of this, Western practitioners indeed can take great benefits from seeking to understand other cultures and their intact spirit traditions. In fact, the tools of intercultural and anthropological studies are among the most undervalued and underappreciated resources in regards to restoring a living spirit practice in the Western Hemisphere. However, the lessons we can take from places where the way of the adept has not been buried in the blood of two millennia of so-called Christian heretics, are precisely that: lessons, not handbooks. References, tips and clues can be taken aplenty from non-indigenous cults to where we live; their formulas, rituals, and bodies of orthodoxy though require severe caution before being transplanted from one continent to another.

The second pitfall unfortunately doesn’t make things easier for the modern practitioner. It consists of relying blindly on the remnants of what is left in the West as an authentic spirit tradition: the Medieval and Early Modern grimoires, the restorative efforts of Johannes Trithemius and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, the influence of the early Rosicrucian thinkers, and then the avalanche of 17th and 18th century occult orders and lodges. With the exceptions of Agrippa and Paracelsus, few of these sources are offering a coherent and broadly anchored system of applied magic. Quite the contrary: most of them presume the operator already has strong foundations in such a coherent system of practice, and then plant themselves next to this implicitly assumed body of practical knowledge.⁶

The questionable state of the Western Magical Tradition becomes especially obvious when we examine its non-existent relation to nature. Western Magic’s natural roots in folk magic have long been eradicated by Protestant and Catholic influences, since the early 18th century its genuine spirit has been poisoned by the twin-forces of Enlightenment and Industrialisation, while the final blow was dealt by the emergence of Psychology and its subjective internalisation of all magical forces.

It would be foolish to expect that adhering menially and uncritically to the instructions of these torn up palimpsests of what once might have been a genuine tradition of spirit-work in the West would somehow magically revive this now long-lost heritage. While many important lessons can be taken from the theoretical and practical study of the Late Medieval grimoires, such an approach in isolation will fail to reanimate Western Magic beyond the scenery of historic re-enactment role-plays.

The literary Ariadne thread that was supposed to guide us through this labyrinth has long since been torn. What remains as a guiding aid are the spirits themselves.

THE

UPROOTED TRADITION

¶ THE FOUR DEMON KINGS

¶ THE FOUR KINGS IN ANCIENT PRACTICE/CATCHING THE WIND

¶ THE FOUR KINGS IN THE HYGROMANTEIA

IN TIBETAN magic we encounter a class of spirits called sadak ( sa bdag =earth-lord or earth-owner), powerful chthonic rulers who are identified with local areas. These beings consider the earth and ground of a specific location as their own body and self. Interferences with the natural landscape— i.e. the agricultural processes of clearing out, digging up or ploughing, just as much as the architectural processes of building shelters, houses, or temples—easily become violations of these spirits. By cutting the soil, it is the body of the sadak that is cut up and mutilated. Thus, they are readily incensed and known to attempt to kill or chase away their human invaders. Each sadak has many spirit companions who are differentiated by a lower rank and yet not by individual names, thus indicating the sadak’s hive nature. ⁷ We also hear of the earth-lords’ female counterparts (bstan ma=earth-women) who often appear in groups of twelve and whose character is meant to be slightly more protective and less malignant or wrathful. ⁸ Furthermore, we know of sadaks that have formed alliances with the people living on their land. In these cases, they can even turn into household deities and accept offerings made to their dwelling place in a large stone placed behind the communal hearth. ⁹

The idea of the ‘genius loci’, of the spirit of a particular place, is an ancient topos amongst most pagan traditions. Due to the spirits inhabiting them, we hear of holy and haunted places. The Greek gods dwell atop Mount Olympus, and the underworld is not an abstract idea but a reality with physical entrance points through caves, pits, and rivers. In conscious reduction one could argue that it was only the Roman temple that made the genius loci portable, mobile in a sense.

What the Western Tradition have lost since the late Graeco-Roman period is the understanding that Earth itself is the ultimate womb of all things created.