physical universe of the natural neteru as well.
It is the ka that, through the ab, enters the
natural universe through “identity gates” such as
pictures or statues of the individual, or utterance of
the individual’s name(s) (the ren), as well as
through conducive locales such as temples and
geological & architectural anomalies.
While the ba may, particularly posthumously,
lose awareness of itself through the paradoxical
expansion of that consciousness into its entire
perceptive field, the ka remains immortally finite,
distinct, and otherness-separate. Thus in an
expressive, active sense it becomes the externally-
identifiable individual beyond physical death.
Nowhere is the ka better illustrated than in
initiate Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars.
Film treatments of this work, such as Hammer’s
Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb and the more
recent The Awakening, have done it a grotesque
disservice. In Stoker’s original text it is in no sense a
horror story, but rather a fascinating and romantic
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mystery: Who was Tera of ancient Egypt, this
marvelous sorceress-queen who took with her to her
tomb only a ruby scarab inscribed with the
constellation of the Thigh of Set (our “Great Bear”)
and the hieroglyphs mer (love) and men ab
(patience)? Listen to the words of the woman of our
own era with whose ka Tera came gently to merge:
I can see her in her loneliness and in the
silence of her mighty pride, dreaming her own
dream of things far different from those around
her. Of some other land, far away under the
canopy of the silent night, lit by the cool, beautiful
light of the stars. A land under that Northern star,
whence blew the sweet winds that cooled the
feverish desert air. A land of wholesome greenery,
far, far away. Where were no scheming and
malignant priesthood; whose ideas were to lead to
power through gloomy temples and more gloomy
caverns of the dead, through an endless ritual of
death! A land where love was not base, but a divine
possession of the soul! Where there might be some
one kindred spirit which could speak to hers
through mortal lips like her own; whose being
could merge with hers in a sweet communion of
soul to soul, even as their breaths could mingle in
the ambient air! I know the feeling, for I have
shared it myself. I may speak of it now, since the
blessing has come into my own life. I may speak of
it since it enables me to interpret the feelings, the
very longing soul, of that sweet and lovely Queen,
so different from her surroundings, so high above
her time! Whose nature, put into a word, could
control the forces of the Under World; and the
name of whose aspiration, though but graven on a
star-lit jewel, could command all the powers in the
Pantheon of the High Gods. And in the realisation
of that dream she will surely be content to rest!
In Love and Patience we are taught the secret
of true immortality - not the repulsive reanimation
of corpses ( anastasis nekron) of Christianity, nor
the vague confusion of reincarnationists - but the
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infinite radiance of one’s MS by its most magnificent
expression, and with a serene transcendence of
natural time.
The last two emanations are unique in that
they must arise from the individual, and require
initiate consciousness to do so, per the formula
Xepera Xeper Xeperu (“I Have Come Into Being and
Created That Which Has Come Into Being.”).
7. Sekhem
The neter-emanation. While the term
sekhem is ordinarily translated as “power”, this is
misleading, because it is power in a very rarified
sense - that emanating from the neteru themselves.
For this reason it is also described as “the power of
the stars” through which the neteru manifest in the
natural universe. The sekhem combines with the ab
(as, in effect, a temple within one’s consciousness),
to draw down the essence of one or more adored
neteru to indwell therein.
Activation of the sekhem has another effect:
every incidence infuses the Initiate with more of the
neter invoked, to the cumulative degree that the
Initiate’s personality becomes accented by the
neter’s: seeing as that neter sees, speaking as that
neter would speak, acting as that neter would act.
Hence it is the sekhem which makes possible, and
ultimately consecrates priesthood of a neter in the
individual so aligned. Once this transformation has
taken place, it cannot be undone; at most it may be
sublimated or repressed, but only at great cost to the
priest’s or priestess’ very sanity.
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8. Akh
The star-emanation. Beyond the priesthood
of the sekhem is the akh, in which the Initiate rises
to the company of the neteru as one of their essence,
i f n o t o f t h e m a b s o l u t e l y . S u c h o n e i s
indistinguishable from the actual neteru except by
the neteru themselves. Such a mode of existence
departs completely from all concern with physical
displacement within natural-universal references or
boundaries, manifestation, or action, and affects
otherness only by the radiance of its presence. While
it does not destroy any of the other emanations, it
permeates all of them, such that henceforth they all
exist in conformity and concert with it.
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III
Belial
Gloria Terrae
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“Of a Neophyte, and How the Black Art Was
Revealed unto Him by the Fiend Asmoel”
- Aubrey Beardsley, 1893
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14: Magic
A. The Magician
It is the curse and the blessing of humanity to
exist simultaneously in two worlds: that of the
tangible real and that of the intangible ethereal.
Unlike all other animals we are not content
with physical life’s sensations; despite sober
argument and methodical science we never quite
believe that “this is all there is” to our existence. We
are drawn, some gently, as in fantasy and dream,
some more insistently and passionately, to -
something else, something greater, something that
lifts our being and our significance clear out of
nature, far beyond the realms of atoms and
molecules: an magnificent mælstrom of gods and
daemons for whom “reality” is but a poor crutch for
brutes on the periphery of their much larger
universe.
If the mystic is content to dream about this
other universe and the artist to convey glimpses of it
in music, paint, or pen, it is the passion of the
magician to intera
ct with it. The magician seeks to
draw its presence and power into the lesser world, to
change that world by its touch.
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The magician fumbles at this. There are no
ordinary tools Here that he can reliably apply There,
and the great rays of the gods that flow so inexorably
and thrillingly through “nature” are just as elusive.
They are to be glimpsed out of the corner of one’s
eye, unexpectedly. The magician struggles to fashion
new and different tools for control which he, in his
semblance as sentient, natural man-beast, can use
reliably and repeatedly, as one would a wrench or
hammer.
To non-magicians his efforts may appear
bewildering, even foolish. They are illogical. They
don’t make sense. They are but “melted into thin
air”. Perhaps they are even harmful in that they
entice others into the same useless folly, draining
energy which might better be put to serious,
practical labor. The magician may thus find himself
ignored as an irrelevant eccentric, perhaps even
ostracized as someone dangerously insane.
Yet he continues with his great work, his search
for tools. Sometimes he thinks he has indeed found
or fashioned just such a different kind of wrench or
hammer, and he writes down descriptions of it and
instructions for its use. Sometimes other magicians,
in their quest for tools, come across what he has
written and try his ideas for themselves. And
sometimes they indeed seem to work, and so
another brick has been added to the bridge between
Here and There. Let us now examine, and perhaps
venture out upon that bridge.
The Temple of Set defines magic according to
two general categories: White and Black. These
have precise meanings which may quite different
from the way the terms are casually used by
nonSetians. To begin with, neither category is
inherently “good” or “evil”; the categories
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encompass techniques only. Either may be used for
intentionally or unintentionally beneficial or
harmful purposes.
B. Definition
Individual humans find themselves juxtaposed
to the Objective Universe (OU) as created and
Natural Law (NL)-ordered by the neteru, and a
variable number of Subjective Universes (SU)
created by oneself and/or other discrete intellects.
Magic consists of the language and tools by
which an individual renders either type of universe
intelligible and is thus able to methodically interact
with and influence it.
Such language & tools may be considered as a
continuum: a sliding-scale: When widely-known and
generally-accepted [particularly pertinent to the
OU], they are called “science”. The more obscure
and unknown are called “magic”.
As we have seen, academic science seeks to
discover and codify the “how” of NL science; it
regards the “why” as undiscoverable because it is
metaphysical.
Religions are such because they propose to
understand and explain metaphysics. And as we
have also seen, all but the Satanic/Setian do so
ineffectively, on the basis of baseless myths and
vague, tautological argument. Their magic thus
amounts to more- or less-elaborate self-deception,
and is herein defined as White Magic (WM).
Actual, functional magic prerequires the
realization and acceptance of the individual as an
entity and discrete intelligence external to OU & SU;
a D5 being. It is this premise which both
materialism and conventional religion fear to
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acknowledge or accept. This is the true reason they
both fear “5D language & tools”, which they [and
we] call Black Magic (BM). The difference,
obviously, is that Black Magicians do not fear them,
and indeed actively pursue and apply them.
Also different from popular superstition and
stereotype: There is no morality inherent in
either WM or BM. They are tools only, and any
moral values, motives, decisions come from the user
of the tool, not the tool itself. So WM can be used
nefariously and BM benignly. [Morality & ethics in
magic are treated in detail later.]
It is axiomatic in conventional religions that
the OU as created and ordered by El reflects his
prejudices, e.g. “morality”. Therefore WM is good
and acceptable insofar as it panders to El and does
not insult him. Religious-ritualized WM is
accordingly called “prayer”, along with ceremonies
which glorify the supposed moral aspect of El.
Accordingly WM is useful only within the limits
of prayer and glorification. Anything beyond that
would be an insult to, a usurpation of El and thus
blasphemy.
As you’ve probably figured out by now, the
Satanic Bible’s purpose is first to explain the reality,
the actuality of the OU/SU environments and the
phenomenon & distinction of independent
humanity, which was done in “Lucifer”.
This next section, “Belial”, is an introduction to
BM and its application. Assuming, in other words,
that you now understand what Satanism really is,
this is where you learn what you can do with it.
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C. Universal Language
1.
The structure and mechanisms - NL - of the OU
are omnipresent and immutable. Thus NL need only
be discovered, established through repetition (the
“laboratory method”), codified, and used: science.
Appropriately the language of science is fixed,
structured, sufficiently tied to OU phenomena that it
shares their phenomenological consistency and
reliability: mathematics, chemistry, physics, etc.
Non-scientific language can be and is used to
dialogue and speculate concerning the OU. In
“respectable, academicing” settings, however, effort
is made not to venture far afield from known,
scientific laws and theories accepted as laws.
2. Subjective
To the extent that SUs are constructed
reasonably and rationally, the tools of science and
the language of logic can be applied therein as well,
somewhat less reliably than in the OU, of course.
But SUs can also differ extraordinarily from
OU “reality”, and as they do, their tools and
language stray commensurately from science and
logic.
At the imaginative and creative extreme of
fantasy, the language and tools depart completely as
well; now they exist in a reality of their own. This is
the realm of magic.
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Defined in this specific context and application,
magic is “the art and science of causing change in
accordance with will” 109.
Within the completely malleable SU it is
equally fl
uid and free, simply providing a means for
displaying, discussing, and enjoying the creative
infinite. Friedrich Nietzsche referred to this as “the
building of horizons” [beyond the known], and in
the visual arts of the Decadents, Surrealists,
Expressionists, and Art Deco Modernists it finds its
visual sensory extreme, as in literature with the
poetry of Clark Ashton Smith110 and James
Thomson111, and the prose of Lord Dunsany, Edgar
Allan Poe, H. Rider Haggard, Jules Verne, Bram
Stoker, Abraham Merritt, and H.P. Lovecraft.
Dwelling and wandering amidst such pure
fantasia, magic is “completely at home”: an artistic
and sensual interpretation and accentuation of its
surroundings. And indeed as such, no more
remarkable than an artist’s paintbrush.
D. Tools
1.
White Magic
Conventional religious ritual is a device for
autohypnosis of the celebrant and varying degrees of
mass-hypnosis for the audience. The mechanical
liturgies have a relaxing, dulling effect upon the
mind, placing it in the ( alpha-wave) mood most
109 Aleister Crowley’s famous definition.
110 Cf. “The Hashish-Eater, or The Apocalypse of Evil”.
111 Cf. “The City of Dreadful Night”.
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receptive to the conditioning (i.e. the sermon or
other main body of the ritual).
WM is a highly-concentrated form of such
ritual. The practitioner seeks a focus of his
awareness and powers of concentration via an
extreme degree of autohypnosis. The technique may
be used simply for meditation or entertainment
through mental imagery (“astral projection”). Or it
may be used to focus the will towards a desired end -
a cure, curse, etc. To accomplish this, the magician
envisions a god or dæmon with the power to achieve
the goal, then concentrates his will into an appeal.
The god or dæmon then carries out the appeal, more
or less effectively - depending upon the strength of
the magician’s conviction of its power as a
functioning entity. 112
From a LHP perspective, all conventional
religious, and RHP “occult” ritualism falls under the
heading of WM. Intrinsically it is inauthentic and
impotent. Its power derives rather from what it gets
people to believe and do when it is used as a
psychological individual- or mass-control device.