Ritual intensifiers

A well constructed ritual is thorough and congruent in all of its aspects and in its action on the mind and body. That is, each element of the ritual, although performing an individual task, is ultimately functioning toward whatever the single purpose of the operation happens to be. If something is not functioning toward that purpose, it is not only superfluous, but probably an impediment to your will. However, there is an enormous amount of flexibility in deciding what will accomplish a particular purpose. All five types of invocation discussed in Chapter 9 can be used, if one so chooses, to invoke the same god. And, of course, there is an enormous variety of forms within each type.

If you have been persistent in practicing these exercises, you are probably now fairly familiar with the action of the Lesser Pentagram Ritual. You may have noticed that the ritual has a particular effect on consciousness, whatever that experience for you might be. Let's examine some of the components of the Lesser Pentagram Ritual:

" Barbarous Words": One of the first things you came up against in learning the L.P.R. was the fact that these words were in Hebrew! Some of you may be fluent readers of Hebrew, but I am going to assume that most readers of this book, in English as it is, are not. Even if you have studied the meanings of these words, they remain unfamiliar sounds which are not associated with anything commonplace. This has an effect much like classical conditioning (The difference between you and Pavlov's dog, I hope, is that you are conditioning yourself. Tlis has been through a decision, I fervently pray, of your own free will.); you can learn to associate that sound with only the intent and experience of the particular ritual. Also the unusual sounds of the foreign words tend to send the conscious mind on a transderivational search, to borrow a term from the psycholinguists. That is, the conscious mind (or left hemisphere, if you like that metaphor) becomes engaged in the task of finding some meaning(s) for these sounds, just as a random inkblot can send the mind off on a variety of different imaginings. This tends to overload the language abilities of the conscious mind and to facilitate concentration on only the task of the moment. Some experiments I did a few years ago involved exposing some willing subjects, who were fairly ignorant of ritual technology, to some fairly complex rituals which contained absolutely no English words. About half of the participants in each session temporarily lost a good portion of their language abilities. This posed some difficulties for me, since what I really wanted from them was a description of their experiences, but it provided me with some insight into this function of the barbarous words.

Circles and circular movement: Turning your point of view, if only to imagine a circle around you, seems to have a physiological effect on the inner ear (Or so I was told by a physician whom I once taught the Lesser Pentagram Ritual.). The inner ear is very much responsible for your sense, of balance and orientation (From orient, the East.)The slow turning to each quarter in the L.P.R. has the effect of increasing your sense of orientation. However, some other rituals make use of rapid circumambulation, spinning or spiral dancing to produce a sense of exhilaration or ecstasy. There is also symbolic value in the shape of a circle or spiral. Traditional magick holds that a clockwise motion, called deosil, is useful for invoking, while a counterclockwise direction, or widdershins, is useful for banishing. Some Thelemic rituals, however, work from the inside out and therefore reverse these directions.

Active Imagination: Yes, we've already discussed this up and down, but I think a few quick additions and summations are in order. The more sensory modes that are involved (seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting/smelling), the more intense and complete the experience. Again we are providing as much, if not more, information than the conscious mind is used to handling, and this has the effect of occupying the conscious mind to the point of stilling internal dialogue and, hopefully, disconnecting some cultural conditioning. It also has, if pursued with strong intent, the ability to open perception to the here-and-now (which, if your active imagination is strong enough, you will be participating with intimately). All of these methods of occupying the conscious mind can allow greater possibilities for unconscious revelation.

Energy Flow / Expansion: This is most obviously represented in the L.P.R. by the Qabalistic Cross which opens and closes the ritual (points 5 - 10). By effort of will, we are drawing in " imaginary" energy through the top of the head, and bringing it down to infinity. The flow of this (imaginary?) energy is driven by the vibratory words, and by the full breathing necessary for proper vibration. Breathwork to stimulate the flow of " energy" or the " aura" is common to a number of different systems, including yoga, Rebirthing and Reichian work. Feel free to experiment with this: perform the ritual with varying degrees of fullness of breath, from most full to very shallow, and record your results. The energy that forms the Qabalistic cross also connects the magickian to infinity in four directions, making the magickian very much a part of everything around hir. This symbolically (and practically) expands the consciousness to something larger, more powerful than it was.

Symmetry: To help maintain the symbolism and actuality of unity of purpose, everything in a ritual is generally performed in a very symmetrical manner. If you have a pentagram on one side, you place one on the other side. The result of a ritual will reflect the symbolism of the ritual; if balance is maintained throughout, when the result comes, it too can be balanced.

Polarities: The resolution of opposite or complementary qualities has a strong psychological effect. This happens (along with various other phenomena) during the " archangel" part of the L.P.R. The consciousness of the magickian is divided up into four neat parcels, then allowed to remix in a " balanced" way. This becomes even more striking when stripped down to a single opposite pair. The Nuit-Hadit-Ra Hoor Khuit exercise works with some of this. You can experiment further by developing two polar qualities (love-hate, hot-cold, right brain-left brain) with the techniques that you used in the " resources" exercise, sending them off from yourself to opposite ends of your ritual space, then allowing them to remix (of course, you can do this with appropriate banishing and consecration). (See Antero Alli's All Rites Reversed for some good polarity exercises.)

Congruence: Also called " Personal Power". At the risk of repeating myself: keep everything within your ritual area, and in your ritual itself, in absolute accordance, harmony, and service to your intent. This applies to " set" as well as to " setting."

Some other ritual intensifiers not fully explored in the Lesser Pentagram Ritual include:

Music / Poetry / Dance: The ability of music, poetry, or dance to exalt the mind, to produce states of ecstasy, or to invoke a specific idea, is probably well known. Appropriate background music may be chosen to accentuate parts of a ritual. I recommend something without lyrics, unless the lyrics are something congruent with your intent, an invocation in themselves. If you are a musician, it is quite effective to play something yourself, again as long as it is congruent with your intent. As for poetry, every magickian can practice the art of writing hir own invocations. You needn't be Swinburne or Crowley to do this, just keep everything you write or say, again, congruent with your intent. Dancing appears in quite a few rituals, even in some, like wedding receptions, that everyone may be familiar with. It appears in the shamanic traditions of many different cultures. A dance ritual can be as free-form as a reggae concert or as highly structured as ballet.

Physical warm-up: The mind is generally more at ease after a little light exercise. The exertion and increased heart rate/breathing tend to oxygenate the blood, relax muscles, etc. I often use a routine of hathayoga asanas before beginning my magickal practice. My experience has been that the looser the spine, and the more relaxed the musculature, the more freely the " magickal energy" tends to flow.

Activation: A general rule in invocation is that anything that exalts the mind and the senses can be of use to the ritual. A great number of different techniques can be used to jog the mind from its day-to-day consciousness. As long as these techniques are used with ritual intent, and do not become daily habits without meaning, they can be quite useful in providing states in which the usual cultural conditioning is disengaged. Some of the techniques already discussed (particulary music, dance and meditation) can be used, as well as such brain-changers as drugs, tantric (I do not recommend the use of drugs without prior mastery of ritual art, the science of set and setting. As for hathayoga, it will not produce a very remarkable altered state unless you have practiced it assiduously for some time - but then it can be very powerful.) sexual practices, hathayoga and brain machines. Some of these will be discussed in depth in the next chapter. A safe, effective activation, technique that I sometimes use in the workshop setting involves a simple method of self-hypnosis, used near the end of the ritual to clear out any remnants of ordinary consciousness and allow the results of invocation to flow freely from the unconscious.

EXERCISE #14

This exercise is an open-ended, self-referential kind of ritual, designed to help integrate understanding of ritual intensifiers and the way that rituals are framed. It is a ritual to learn ritual art.

1. Intent: (The following is recited before entering the ritual area. This is phrased for group work; feel free to make changes as necessary. Participants can alternate reading the lines, or each have one or two lines to say, depending on many people are in the circle. You can also use this ritual as a framework for developing your own content).