Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick
My second book project was to resurrect the Pyramid of Powers and to present a more advanced approach to magical tech than DGRM. It was given the title Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick, and it is the largest body of published work by me so far. I had wanted to use the chapters and rituals not covered in the DGRM to give my reading public a more neutral magical system that could be used to construct a personal magical system. That was my sole purpose for writing books back in those days. I wanted to give to my reading public the magical tech and tools to build their own basic system of magic. I believed that if I could make that an attractive approach then perhaps it would also attract individuals to become members of our order, the E.S.S.G.
I wanted to publish the Pyramid of Powers, but a number of chapters had been used in my book DGRM, so I couldn't see just publishing that material again. All those chapters that had been used in that book now had to be rewritten with new material. I researched and wrote new chapters with a more advanced approach regarding magical practices. For instance, instead of the more simpler approach to personal mental discipline and meditation that I had used in my first book, I extended that lore by including an approach to using the training material in Franz Bardon’s book Initiation into Hermetics since I had very much treasured and used the exercises contained in that book at various times.
That approach was what I used to develop the chapter on Mind Control (book 1, chapter 5). I also used this approach when rewriting all three books, and since the writing style was of a previous and poor quality, it required a lot of work to make these books as readable as the first one already published. My live-in girlfriend (who I later happily married) had the unfortunate task of acting as the primary editor for these books. Some of the chapters were so poorly written that she had quite a task to help me rewrite those sections so that they informed the reader instead of confusing them. She helped to make my writing more accessible and easier to grasp, and that had to happen to each of the three books before they could even go to press.
Since the Pyramid of Powers was broken into three volumes, I had decided to publish it as three separate books. The first book went into print in 2008, then the second in 2009, and finally, the third in 2010. What originally seemed like a good idea to publish the revised Pyramid of Powers in three separate books turned out to be a bad idea, since it was difficult to keep all three books listed in Amazon and elsewhere. Later on, we consolidated the three separate volumes into one omnibus edition (2013), which is how it looks today.
The omnibus edition contains all three volumes of Frater Barrabbas's acclaimed Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick series; a comprehensive work on how to create a personal magickal system.
While suitable for readers already having a few years experience with magick, the series is also ideal for diligent practitioners of any level who seek to develop a complete, customized magickal system.
Volume 1's Foundation establishes the basic practices and sets the magician on the path to knowledge and experience. Volume 2's Grimoire is based upon a set of nine rituals used to build up a complete Wiccan or Pagan ritual magick regimen, including elemental magick within a seasonal and monthly periodic cycle, and volume 3's The Greater Key presents a system of correspondences that the magician builds up with his or her own personalized symbology.
Together, these volumes present a thorough and enlightening system that will enrich the magickal lives of any dedicated practitioner.
The three-fold structure of the MARM volumes is based on the requirements of the basic semi-experienced student. The first approach is to establish a foundation of knowledge that will make the rituals comprehensible to the reader. The foundation would include the topical areas of four elements, ritual structures of magical power, mental discipline or mind control, magical topology, magical ritual structures, ritual performance, transformative initiation, and the five mysteries of light and darkness, life and death. Everything that a practitioner might need to know and understand before attempting to master the actual rituals was included in this first volume.
The second volume was the presentation of the nine rituals that made up this system of magic. All of the rituals presented in that book were spiritually neutral, with predetermined gaps and blanks that are meant to be filled in when the student embarks on the path of developing their own personal system of magic. What I was proposing to my readers was that they could and should learn how to write their own rituals, using the basic templates that I provided in my book.
Additionally, my approach to magical tech was to use a set of rituals to build ritual workings, so those rituals could be reused in other magical workings. This was a kind of modular approach to working magic, where some of the elements of the ritual would be customized to align the working to a specific kind of magical power for a specific material objective. This is the methodology that is used in the magical order the E.S.S.G. All of the ritual workings consist of basic ritual structures that are pulled together with some elective attributes to build a specific magical working for a specific purpose.
These are the nine rituals representing the basic body of modular and reusable rites that are used to build the ritual workings of a basic magical practice. Let me list them here, and as you can see, there are few more than the 7 used in the book DGRM.
1. Consecration of the Magick Temple
2. Consecration of the Magick Grove
3. Pyramid of Power rituals (used to invoke one of the 40 Qualified Powers)
4. Rose Ankh Vortex ritual
5. Gate of Transformation
6. Assumption of the Grail Spirit
7. Ritual of the Lunar Mysteries
8. Ritual of the Solar Mysteries
9. Prefect Initiation Ritual
In addition, there were also rituals for tool (hallows) consecration, a divination vortex, mystery rite of the higher self and an elemental invocation rite. There were also chapters to outline the concourse of forces for the Qualified Powers, explain the quality and issues with godhead assumption and how to approach a transformative self initiation. The chapter that examined the foibles and profundities of godhead assumption (book 2, chapter 12) was probably one of the real gems in this volume, but the whole book with its nine rituals was something unique and highly useful amongst the books on ritual magic.
The third volume was the key that would guide the practitioner in developing a set of tables of correspondences that would be used to customize the body of rituals so that they would represent the spiritual and magical perspective of the practitioner. The whole purpose of these three volumes was to instruct the practitioner into how to develop and deploy their own personal system of magic. In this volume I went over all nine rituals and showed where and how to modify them to produce a more personalized magical rite. The basic set of ritual thus customized would act as the basic foundation for further magical experimentation and developing ever more effective and complex magical lore.
This book, then, is for someone who already has a basic level of magical knowledge and experience and who wants to develop their own magical system. This, then, is the first step of the magical system builder, and once such an approach to ritual magic is understood then it only whets the appetite for further development.
Yet further progress would require the ritual magician to research more advanced methods of working magic, to explore the mechanisms for a fully developed magical system working with elementals, then talismans, evocation and finally the more advanced systems of Enochian magic of the Nephilim, Sacramental Theurgy, Tessarenoi, Abramelin Lunar rite, Archaeomancy, Talismantic Portae Lucis, and the Heptarchical (7-fold Stellar) Hierophantic Mysteries. That list represents what has been already developed in the grimoire of the Order of the Gnostic Star.
