Pathways as mythology
As most of you know, the Greeks didn't just present their populace with gods and goddesses to believe in. They had a mythology that was a history of the interactions of the gods and goddesses. The twenty-two paths on the Tree of Life is the story of the interactions between the gods and goddesses on the Tree. So, when you work a path, you are told a mythological story about the gods' and goddess' interaction on that path just like the stories in Greek mythology. The twenty-two paths and the mythological stories are like 22 archetypal situations that the gods and goddesses get themselves into. This provides a structure for the archetypal situations human beings find themselves in. For as has been said "As above so below". "Above" refers to the gods and goddesses, "below" refers to human stories.
The three pillars on the Tree
There are three pillars on the Tree, representing the three methods for altering states of consciousness. The left-hand pillar is the path of structure covering Saturn, Mars and Mercury. The right-hand path is the pillar of dynamics - Uranus, Jupiter and Venus. The middle-path is the pillar of balance: Neptune, Pluto, the Sun, the Moon and the Earth.
The left-hand path is the path of celestial, high magic practiced by upper-middle-class magicians of the Renaissance like Ficino and Giordano Bruno, Robert Fludd, John Dee and many others including the followers of the Golden Dawn at the end of the 19th century. The right-hand path is the "earth-magic" path", most associated with wiccans, which reached some working-class women. This has been called "kitchen magic" by Starhawk. Both the left and the right-hand paths are methods of altering states of consciousness through the saturation of the senses, the imagination and the emotions. The middle path is a mystical, not a magical path. Its way is to empty the senses, imagination and the emotions. This is the path of meditation, fasting and sensory deprivation. Mystics like Saint Teresa or Jakob B????hme are examples in the West, as are yogis of the East.
Casting a magickal circle
You begin by stepping into a magickal circle of your own construction. You can mark it up with letters and symbols that you could create with thick cloth and that can be taped down on the floor. I actually used permanent magic markers directly on our garage floor, which we transformed into an art and writing studio for me. The magical circle contains the four elements, the four seasons, and all the planets that surround the circle. The actual magickal operation involves the saturation of the senses with the music, incense, colored lights, candles, herbs, metals and dance that corresponds to the goddess upon whom you are calling. The intention is to lose yourself in the mythological stories that go with the gods and goddesses you invoke. The purpose is to build up a sensual memory for each goddess and god. You use them to build up strength to bring forward the goddess or god within yourself in dealing with the life problems that correspond to their domain. This is done through the use of the arts - journal writing, written self-affirmation and art-work - drawing, sculpting and mask-making.
Regularizing the ritual
Each of the spheres has a set of correspondences, including a day of the week, specific stones, metals, animals, herbs and music. In performing magical rituals, I bring down the planets from the sky metaphorically into my magical circle so that I can work on my psychological problems. I would work the Tree as a psychological "tune-up" every week or two. If I wanted to work on a particular psychological problem, I would metaphorically evoke the planet under which the department of the problem falls. If I wanted a "tune-up" through the mythological stories, I would work each of the 22 paths. What I used to do is work one path every two weeks so it would take me 44 weeks to go through all the paths. Both the work in the planets and the paths took me about 90 minutes and I worked them once a week (not that different from therapy, but in my opinion much more imaginative and creative).
Psychological explanations of magickal work
- Opening up access to the unconscious - the gods and goddesses within - including emotions, senses, imagination, dreams and fantasies.
- Objectifying my relationship between conscious and unconscious in a concrete form (writing poetry, stories, drawing, mask-making and sculpture) representing the problem I am are working on.
- Dialoging between the god, goddess and path and my individual psychology.
- Putting the results of the dialogue into action with an effort that strives to overcome the problem in real life.
- Integrating and internalizing the results of that action into my psychology, hopefully building confidence.
Steps in the Magical procedure
- Identify the problem you want to work on and write it in a sentence in your magical notebook
- Identify your strengths and problems in order to strategize how to solve the problem.
- Set up an "atmosphere" for the goddess or god in whose province the problem resides, including the appropriate candles, colored lights, mythological drawing, appropriate metal, appropriate stone, appropriate animals (perhaps small sculpture) appropriate robe, herbs, music and movement (dance, gestures).
- Review a story about the path or sphere - there are books for this including The Shining Paths by Dolores Ashcroft- Nowicki.
- Take a guided visualization journey with a CD. The book Magical States of Consciousness by Denning and Phillips is good for this.
- Review the relationship between the strengths and weaknesses of the gods and goddesses and your own strengths and weaknesses.
- Objectify the problem and solution in some kind of concrete form using poetry, music, drawings, masks and sculpture.
- Write a self-affirmation that goes with how you'd like to be, which is drawn from the mythological story. Write the self-affirmation 5 minutes every day for twenty-one days.
- Identify what action steps need to be taken each week to deal with the problem.
- Record your reaction to the journey in your magical journal.
- Bring the ritual to closure through food, drink and dance and put away all atmospheric props.
I've given you an example of how an individual could create an altered state of consciousness. There are neopagan groups all over the country that do versions of these rituals, either with the Tree or Life or some other symbolic system and they do it collectively. See Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler for examples of this. Some of these folks are political anarchists. Marxian socialists badly need to incorporate something like these rituals for our social and psychological health, especially in these dark times. Otherwise, we will be left behind - as we have been for two centuries by religion, nationalism and sports.
OBJECTIONS AND REBUTTAL
Some of you Marxists especially in the United States might think these rituals are ludicrous on an individual level, let alone performing them in groups. Are you going to lead the workers in these rituals? "Over my dead body" you might say. Well, your dead body just may be trampled to death for masses of people are interested in magick. With any luck, the workers are going to lead you. Most of humanity is thrilled by this pageantry if it is organized well. The fact is that the Catholic Church is still drawing working-class people in despite its anti-working-class history, its murderous persecution throughout history and its record of child abuse. We must learn from the Catholics, just like the Catholics learned from the pagans.
Many materialists and Marxists may be afraid of the reification of imagery and the danger of believing these rituals literally change reality instead of only our psychological states. Sorry, but the answer to reification is not some ascetic denial as the protestants tried to do. The answer is to have rituals, song, music and dance that are not superstitious. A magickal practice that we have, not a practice that has us.
CONCLUSION
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