Mixing Thelemic and Traditional Rituals
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Greetings to the forum!
My wife and I have been performing magick for the past few months and I’d appreciate some advice on a particular problem I’m having in continuing our magickal practices.
We’ve been following the ‘Modern Magick’ book by Donald Michael Kraig, supplemented by Rodney Orpheus’ ‘Abrahadabra’ and David Shoemaker’s ‘Living Thelema.’
I have been practising the Star Ruby while my wife has been practising the Nu Sphere Ritual from Rodney Orpheus’ book, which is a Thelemic version of the LBRP.
The next step we’re going to take is to learn a hexagram ritual and here we have the problem. I am unsure as to which hexagram ritual to use. We want to perform as much ‘Thelemic’ magick as possible, as opposed to the traditional Golden Dawn path. I’ve been using the search facility here to do some research and know that traditional rituals like the LBRP and the LBRH can still be used by Thelemic magicians.
But it okay to mix the two? Thelemic rituals and traditional rituals?
For example, my wife does the Nu Sphere Ritual, which is a Thelemic LBRP. In this ritual, the attributions for Air and Earth change from the traditional, based on the same thinking behind Liber Reguli. So it’s North=Air and East=Earth instead of the traditional North=Earth and East=Air. The Magician is, in effect, ‘upside down.’
So after doing the Nu Sphere Ritual, with these attributions and all the Thelemic imagery, is it okay to then go on to do the traditional LBRH? Is it okay to sort of switch between the two systems?
Or in my case, can I do the Star Ruby and then the traditional LBRH as my daily ‘hygiene’ rituals, or any of the other hexagram rituals. Should we both perhaps stay with our Thelemic banishing rituals and learn the Star Sapphire as our hexagram ritual? Although, from what I read the SS doesn’t fulfil the same purpose as the LBRH, it’s invoking and not banishing, so would it better for daily practice to do a Thelemic banishing ritual and then the traditional LBRH?
Oh and as an additional query: my wife is left-handed so, for example, puts here left finger to her mouth in the Sign of Silence, draws pentagrams with her left hand etc. Is this okay or it is considered preferable to try and use the right hand during ritual?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
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Hey there SoF. Welcome to HeruRaHa!
I have an answer for you but I don't think you're going to like it. If you've only been practicing for a few months and you have this many questions, you're probably not ready to start hexagrams. I say this from the perspective of someone who has been working with the Pentagram Rituals for just over a year and a half and am only now starting to feel like I've cracked the nut and really getting some juice out of them. Which is not to say that you and your wife might have gotten there already but, well... the nature of your questions suggest that you probably haven't.
The basic underlying structure of the Pentagram focuses on equilibrating the Elements within your microcosm; the Hexagram, based on my limited understanding of it, focuses on the planets of the Macrocosm. I can't give you specific advice on what that means or how to best use it because I'm not there yet but I can tell you that if you try to work the Macrocosm before your Microcosm is fully balanced on all five points of the Pentagram, the least that will happen is that you'll waste your time and effort. Very possibly, your work will throw yourself further out of true by wrestling with the big forces before the center is stabilized.
The best suggestion I can give is to find a copy of Israel Regardie's "One Year Manual" and take it to heart. Get yourself toned up on everything in that book. This might take more than a year but it should take at least that long.
As to right hand vs. left, there is symbolic significance to the active right pillar and the passive/receptive left pillar of the Tree. But, if you're working alone, you'll have to determine for yourselves if that's a deciding factor.
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
What Gnosomai said. Also...
The LBRP is better for general daily practice than the Star Ruby. And it's not un-Thelemic. The prophet of Thelema never abandoned it (LBRP).
@SoF said
"But it okay to mix the two? Thelemic rituals and traditional rituals?"
That presumes that traditional rituals can't be Thelemic. But...
"Or in my case, can I do the Star Ruby and then the traditional LBRH as my daily ‘hygiene’ rituals, or any of the other hexagram rituals."
I wouldn't mix them. But I'd use the LBRP anyway. (With "Aiwass" at the heart center.
)As a worthy mental exercise I'd suggest thinking what does the Star Ruby has that is more Thelemic than the LBRP.
Love is the law, love under will.
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I'll start by referring you to the two great answers above. What follows is merely supplemental, practically marginalia, to those.
@SoF said
"We’ve been following the ‘Modern Magick’ book by Donald Michael Kraig, supplemented by Rodney Orpheus’ ‘Abrahadabra’ and David Shoemaker’s ‘Living Thelema.’"
FWIW, my own Pearls of Wisdom might answer a ton of questions you have right about now, including some of the areas you're asking about in this post.
"The next step we’re going to take is to learn a hexagram ritual and here we have the problem. I am unsure as to which hexagram ritual to use."
Mostly I refer to the answers above. It was this question, though, that had me thinking you might want to get Pearls because it addresses this question in a slightly lengthy, more nuanced way than is appropriate for a forum post.
"But it okay to mix the two? Thelemic rituals and traditional rituals?"
In the sense that the rest of your post seems to mean this question... particularly as part of a larger working that has many parts, or as part of a layered personal practice, I'd say (in addition to what Gno wrote) that your work needs to have a certain esthetic and its own feng shui. You're the only judge of that part of it (and your esthetic may be somehow similar to, and somehow divergent from, your wife's). All the parts have to fit together proportionately and esthetically and, the further you move into the Work, the more you will feel the lack of this esthetic.
The parts need to feed the whole and find their right, harmonious place in the whole. That's a matter of esthetics, i.e., of the essence of Tifereth.
It's not that there are hard rules like, "Just use the Star Ruby and Star Sapphire together, don't mix them with the LRP and LRH." Nonetheless, over time, most people end up making the choice to create and follow rules similar to this because it strikes in them a sense of connection and relationship between the different parts of what they are doing.
Then again, after years or decades of building to a deep harmony, the next stage of the work may come from discordance, from needing to "get out of this town and to break something," of knocking down walls to see, from the inside, whether you can make the house bigger. That's the time you probably will rage against harmony and balance. That's cool, too. Right formula for the right working, right?
"So after doing the Nu Sphere Ritual, with these attributions and all the Thelemic imagery, is it okay to then go on to do the traditional LBRH? Is it okay to sort of switch between the two systems?"
Do you have a set apart temple, or are you converting the living room etc.? Does each of you completely banish when you're done so that there is no trace of what was done in there previously? This is a hygiene issue. Also, if you take your magick seriously, you are locking such things as spatial orientations of assigned principles into your own psyche, your aura, and your environment. These are real things, not some shifting fantasy of the moment. I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I've given you a principle to think about.
"Oh and as an additional query: my wife is left-handed so, for example, puts here left finger to her mouth in the Sign of Silence, draws pentagrams with her left hand etc. Is this okay or it is considered preferable to try and use the right hand during ritual?"
No problem. All of these scripts were written in a time when aberrations like left-handed people were forcibly treated for their deformity early in life to become proper, decent right-handed people with nary to show for it but a persistent stutter. "Right hand" in the rituals means "dominant hand, your hand of power."
There are polarity (astral and neurological) differences between left and right no matter what hand is your dominant hand. Left-handed and right-handed people alike have the left hand as lunar and the right hand as solar. But left-handed people have lived with this all their lives, so don't worry about it. Left-handers know that they are the only folks who spend most of their time in their right mind, as neurologists have now confirmed
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Many thanks to Gnosomai, Patrick and Jim for your detailed and most definitely helpful replies.
I think the problem perhaps is that I've been trying to run before I could walk. I'm fairly new to the magickal world in general so I'm getting grounded in the basics (the elements, the Zodiac, Tarot, Qabalah etc.). It all seems to make sense but then I'll read something like two of the elements changing direction in the Nu Sphere Ritual and possibly the Star Ruby as well (although there seems to be some debate as to the position of the elements in this ritual). After a lot or research I think I understand why this is but this sort of stuff is perhaps of a more advanced level than I'm presently at.
We've both been following the 'Modern Magick' book so we've decided to got back to that for now, doing the LBRP etc. and getting good grounding in the basics and then once we're okay with this, then perhaps look again at rituals like the Star Ruby, Star Sapphire etc.
It's interesting what Jim was saying about aesthetics. as my wife tried substituting the LBRP for the Nu Sphere straight off and when she did it, it didn't go well at all. She said it threw her completely 'off balance' and she felt like she was back at square one again, magickally. So she's decided to continue doing the the Nu Sphere in the morning and practice the LBRP in the evening so she can get to know it and be comfortable with it and then gradually incorporate the LBRP as her main banishing ritual. So far, this has been working well for her.
So many thanks again to you guys for your help. We both now feel happier and more confident about moving ahead in our magickal careers.
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@SoF said
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It's interesting what Jim was saying about aesthetics. as my wife tried substituting the LBRP for the Nu Sphere straight off and when she did it, it didn't go well at all. She said it threw her completely 'off balance' and she felt like she was back at square one again, magically."Yep, that'll happen.
The fact that she actually felt off balance is a good sign that she's doing something right.There's a great article or two in In The Continuum and/or Black Pearl that go into some detail about the pentagram rituals. I'm not in front of my computer at the moment but, next time I am, I'll track it/them down for you. They really helped start my gears turning in the right direction towards unlocking the ritual and kicking it up a notch.