("Part II")
OF THE CHARGE TO THE
SPIRIT WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE
CONSTRAINTS AND CURSES
OCCASIONALLY NECESSARY
I
On the appearance of the spirit, or the manifestation of
the force in the talisman which is being consecrated, it is necessary to
bind it by an Oath or Charge. A spirit should be made to lay its
hand visibly on the weapon by whose might it has been evoked, and to "swear
obedience and faith to Him that liveth and triumpheth, that regneth above
him in His palaces as the Balance of Righteousness and Truth" by the names
used in the evocation.
It is then only necessary to formulate the Oath or Charge
in language harmonious with the previously announced purpose of the operation.
The precaution indicated is not to let oneself sink into
one's humanity while the weapon is extended beyond the Circle. Were
the force to flow from it to you instead of from you to it, you would be
infallibly blasted, or, at the least, become the slave of the spirit.
At no moment is it more important that the Divine Force
should not only fill, but radiate from, the aura of the Magician.
II
Occasionally it may happen that the spirit is recalcitrant,
and refuses to appear.
Let the Magician consider the cause of such disobedience!
{133}
It may be that the place or time is wrong. One cannot
easily evoke water-spirits in the Sahara, or salamanders in the English
Lake District. Hismael will not readily appear when Jupiter is below
the horizon.<> In order to counteract a natural deficiency of
this sort, one would have to supply a sufficient quantity of the proper
kind of material. One cannot make bricks without straw.
With regard to invocations of the Gods, such considerations
do not apply. The Gods are beyond most material conditions.
It is necessary to fill the "heart" and "mind" with the proper basis for
manifestation. The higher the nature of the God, the more true this
is. The Holy Guardian Angel has always the necessary basis.
His manifestation depends solely on the readiness of the Aspirant, and
all magical ceremonies used in that invocation are merely intended to prepare
that Aspirant; not in any way to attract or influence Him. It is
His constant and eternal Will<> to become one with the Aspirant, and
the moment the conditions of the latter make it possible, That Bridal is
consummated.
III
The obstinacy of a spirit (or the inertial of a talisman)
usually implies a defect in invocation. The spirit cannot resist
even for a moment the constraint of his Intelligence, when that Intelligence
is working in accordance with the Will of the Angel, Archangel {134} and
God above him. It is therefore better to repeat the Invocations than
to proceed at once to curses.
The Magician should also consider<> whether the evocation
be in truth a necessary part of the Karma of the Universe, as he has stated
in his own Oath (See Cap. XVI, I). For if this be a delusion, success
is impossible. It will then be best to go back to the beginning,
and recapitulate with greater intensity and power of analysis the Oath
and the Invocations. And this may be done thrice.
But if this be satisfactorily accomplished, and the spirit
be yet disobedient, the implication is that some hostile force is at work
to hinder the operation. It will then become advisable to discover
the nature of that force, and to attack and destroy it. This makes
the ceremony more useful than ever to the Magician, who may thereby be
led to unveil a black magical gang whose existence he had not hitherto
suspected.
His need to check the vampiring of a lady in Paris by a sorceress
once led FRATER PERDURABO to the discovery of a very powerful body of black
magicians, which whom he was obliged to war for nearly 10 years before
their ruin was complete and irremediable as it now is.
Such a discovery will not necessarily impede the ceremony.
A general curse may be pronounced against the forces hindering the operation
(for "ex hypothesi" no divine force can be interfering) and having thus
temporarily dislodged them --- for the power of the God invoked will suffice
for this purpose --- one may proceed with a certain asperity to conjure
the spirit, for that he has done ill to bend before the conjurations of
the Black Brothers.
Indeed, some demons are of a nature such that they only understand
curses, are not amenable to courteous command: ---
"a slave
Whom stripes may move, not kindness."
Finally, as a last resource, one may burn the Sigil of
the {135} Spirit in a black box with stinking substances, all having been
properly prepared beforehand, and the magical links properly made, so that
he is really tortured by the Operation.<>
This is a rare event, however. Only once in the
whole of his magical career was FRATER PERDURABO driven to so harsh a measure.
IV
In this connexion, beware of too ready a compliance on
the part of the spirit. If some Black Lodge has got wind of your
operation, it may send the spirit, full of hypocritical submission, to
destroy you. Such a spirit will probably pronounce the oath amiss,
or in some way seek to avoid his obligations.
It is a dangerous trick, though, for the Black Lodge to
play; for if the spirit come properly under your control, it will be forced
to disclose the transaction, and the current will return to the Black Lodge
with fulminating force. The liars will be in the power of their own
lie; their own slaves will rise up and put them into bondage. The
wicked fall into the pit that they themselves digged.
And so perish all the King's enemies!
V
The charge to the spirit is usually embodied, except in
works of pure evocation, which after all are comparatively rare, in some
kind of talisman. In a certain sense, the talisman is the Charge
expressed in hieroglyphics. Yet, every object soever is a talisman,
for the definition of a talisman is: something upon which an act of will
(that is, of Magick) has been performed in order to fit it for a purpose.
Repeated acts of will in respect of {136} any object consecrate it without
further ado. One knows what miracles can be done with one's favourite
mashie! One has used the mashie again and again, one's love for it
growing in proportion to one's success with it, and that success again
made more certain and complete by the effect of this "love under will",
which one bestows upon it by using it.
It is, of course, very important to keep such an abject
away from the contact of the profane. It is instinctive not to let
another person use one's fishing rod or one's gun. It is not that
they could do any harm in a material sense. It is the feeling that
one's use of these things has consecrated them to one's self.
Of course, the outstanding example of all such talismans is the
wife. A wife may be defined as an object specially prepared for taking
the stamp of one's creative will. This is an example of a very complicated
magical operation, extending over centuries. But, theoretically,
it is just an ordinary case of talismanic magick. It is for this
reason that so much trouble has been taken to prevent a wife having contact
with the profane; or, at least, to try to prevent her.
Readers of the Bible will remember that Absalom publicly
adopted David's wives and concubines on the roof of the palace, in order
to signify that he had succeeded in breaking his father's magical power.
Now, there are a great many talismans in this world which
are being left lying about in a most reprehensibly careless manner.
Such are the objects of popular adoration, as ikons, and idols. But,
it is actually true that a great deal of real magical Force is locked up
in such things; consequently, by destroying these sacred symbols, you can
overcome magically the people who adore them.
It is not at all irrational to fight for one's flag, provided
that the flag is an object which really means something to somebody.
Similarly, with the most widely spread and most devotedly worshipped talisman
of all, money, you can evidently break the magical will of a worshipper
of money by taking his money away from him, or by destroying its value
in some way or another. But, in the case of money, general experience
tells us that there is very little of it lying about loose. In this
case, above all, {137} people have recognised its talismanic virtue, that
is to say, its power as an instrument of the will.
But with many ikons and images, it is easy to steal their
virtue. This can be done sometimes on a tremendous scale, as, for
example, when all the images of Isis and Horus, or similar mother-child
combinations, were appropriated wholesale by the Christians. The
miracle is, however, of a somewhat dangerous type, as in this case, where
enlightenment has come through the researches of archaeologists.
It has been shown that the so-called images of Mary and Jesus are really
nothing but imitations of those of Isis and Horus. Honesty is the
best policy in Magick as in other lines of life.