Thus, for instance, any sort of advertising or
propaganda is an application of WM, though neither
users nor targets may [and probably wouldn’t]
employ that term.
2. Black Magic
a. Lesser
Lesser Black Magic (LBM) involves no
autohypnosis or conditioning of the mind to make it
112 Crowley, Aleister, Magick, pages #151-284. LaVey, Anton,
The Satanic Bible, pages #110-152; The Satanic Rituals, pages
#15-27.
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receptive to induced imagery. Thus, unlike WM, it is
not an exercise in self-deception. Rather it is a
deliberate and conscious effort to force the mind
outward - to identify the mix of NL governing a
situation of concern, as well as the SUs of any
humans involved, and then to devise and activate
adjustments towards the magician’s desired
outcome.
As you can see, this has absolutely nothing to
do with chanting Hebraic gibberish from medieval
grimoires. Leave that to White Magicians to
entertain and scare themselves.
So true, effective LBM is an exhaustively-
analytical process - more exacting than profane
academic research because there is no allowance for
taboos, sacred cows, or other “political correctness”.
If the objective is to be realized, all factors
constituting it must fall into place.
Thus the fairytale image of LBM being an easy
shortcut to a desired OU change is anything but the
truth. The reason that LBM is more powerful than
“ordinary” plans or solutions is precisely because of
its thoroughness: it leaves nothing out, no margin
for error, no “fudge factor”.
Nor is this as unrealistic as one might suppose.
All you need do is look around you at the number of
unsolved or inadequately-solved problems, both at
the personal and the social scales, to see how easy it
is to identify the flaws resulting from “selective
inattention”.
An unpalatable but inevitable corollary to LBM
is what Anton LaVey called the “balance factor”,
which simply means not to set practically-
unattainable goals. Be a magician within your
intelligence, competence, and resources - all of
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which are of course subject to strengthening with
personal discipline and experience. 113
Another popular myth is that BM is a ritual
action, in a ritual chamber. As again may be
deduced from the above, ritualism is not a
requirement, though, as discussed below, it may
play an important and effective part.
Remember too that in LBM you are not
attempting to accomplish “miracles”, e.g. the
suspension or violation of NL. Rather you are
changing the mix of NL to change the situation of
concern.
But even more importantly, remember that it is
not the OU you are attempting to change; it is the
existing, dominant CSU. This was one of the key
messages of George Orwell’s 1984, and the one most
readers miss.
b. History, or
“Reality Control”
The Party said that Oceania had never been
in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew
that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as
short a time as four years ago. But where did that
knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness,
which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if
all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed
- if all records told the same tale - then the lie
passed into history and became truth. “Who
113 Ca. 2011 I decided that I’d had enough of the epidemic of
physical warfare afflicting the planet. I therefore developed
and published the solution of MindWar (2012, 1016). The
methodology and strategy therein are practical, needing only
resolve by national & supranational actors, which I further
addressed in FindFar (2017). The only indeterminant is the
mushrooming PhysWar time-pressure. But MW & FF would
have been impossible absent professional expertise in Political
Science, governmental political/military affairs, & LBM.
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controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls
the future; who controls the present controls the
past.” And yet the past, though of its nature
alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was
It was quite simple. All that was needed was an
unending series of victories over your own
memory. “Reality control” they called it; in
Newspeak “doublethink”. 114
“History” is something we can count on as a
standard of morality, as hard evidence of truth, as
bedrock amidst our whirling contemporary
environment of uncertainties, right?
Wrong. Historical accounts are written by
human beings with widely-varying backgrounds,
perspectives, motives, and paychecks. Even given
perfect, immediate access to all information about
an event, no two people will describe it, or its
significance, in the same way. And in historical
research there is almost never access to all relevant
information to begin with.
Daniel J. Boorstin is Librarian of Congress
Emeritus, and is a distinguished scholar and Pulitzer
Prize winner who has authored many superb
historical analyses. In his Hidden History he
proposes several laws that shape what we know as
“history”:115
(1) The Law of the Survival of the
Unread
There is a natural and inevitable
tendency toward the destruction and
114 Orwell, George, 1984. New York: Signet Books, 1949, page
#32.
115 Boorstin, Daniel J., Hidden History: Exploring Our Secret
Past. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
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disappearance of documents most
widely used; therefore there is an
inverse relationship between the
probability of a document surviving and
its value as evidence of the daily life of
the age from which it survives.
(2) Survival of the Durable and That
Which is neither Removed nor
Displaced
Tombs, burial objects, mummies,
temples, churches, and pyramids tend to
skew our view of the past. They give a
prominence to religion in the relics of
the past which it may not actually have
had in the lives people lived.
(3) Survival of the Collected and the
Protected
= What goes in government files. We
emphasize political history and
government in the life of the past partly
because governments keep records while
families and other informal groups
seldom do.
(4) Survival of Objects Which are not
Used or Which Have a High
Intrinsic Value
It is not only in printed matter that
rarity and scarcity induce survival.
T r e a s u r e d o r h o a r d e d a r t i f a c t s
frequently survive where commonly-
used, more representative ones do not.
(5) Survival of the Academically
Classifiable and the Dignified
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Teachers teach the subjects in which
they have been instructed.
(6) Survival of Documents which
Pertain to Controversies
What often passes for the history of a
practice, belief, or institution is more
accurately the history of controversies
about it.
(7) Survival of the Self-Serving: The
Psycho-Pathology of Diarists and
Letter-Writers
Historians are urged to seek records by
participants in events, preferably those
made at the time or soon thereafter.
Such are often self-serving and
egotistical at the expense of objectivity.
(8) Survival of the Victorious Point of
View: The Success Bias
If an invention, trend, or point of view
prevailed, it and its proponents are
assumed to be representative rather
than failed or minority alternatives.
(9) Survival of the Epiphenomenal
People often write and read books
because they cannot personally
experience what is described. It is often
uncertain whether a writer is recording
or escaping an experience.
(10) Knowledge Survives and will be
accumulated over Time, but
Ignorance Disappears
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The mind of the modern historian has
access to the accumulated knowledge
and experience of the ages since the
period of the past he is trying to
recapture, but for this reason he cannot
see reality as the people of that time saw
it.
What are the implications of this for the Black
Magician? It means that:
• All of the historical sources you consult are
incomplete, inaccurate, biased, and/or incompetent
to some degree.
•• You yourself are in the grip of tacit
prejudices and presuppositions which you have
never questioned or even acknowledged as anything
to be questioned.
You can compensate for these blind spots &
biases by first becoming aware of them, then seeking
out information & sources to evaluate them.
c.
Stage Magic
In both the Church of Satan & Temple of Set, I
have always recommended “stage magic” (SM) as a
superb education & experience for aspiring Black
Magicians.
You may think of SM as mere frivolous
entertainment. It is anything but that: the art &
science of detecting & manipulating an audience’s
CSU, to the extent that they believe the OU NL to
have been “miraculously” violated. This is exactly
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what LBM involves in progressively larger and more
serious situations.
A d d i t i o n a l l y S M i s i n d e e d h a r m l e s s
entertainment, which is fun for both magician &
audience. 116 Indeed if you become skilled enough,
you may even turn it into an additional paid
profession. At the very least you can expect many
more invitations to parties!
What are these LBM skills that SM teaches and
exercises? Here’s a list:
• Either control of the environment
or adaptation of the magic to it. Only
the simplest “table tricks” of magic can be
d o n e w i t h o u t r e g a r d t o t h e i r
surroundings. For most illusions to be
effective, the complete environment in
which they are activated must be
controlled: lighting, absence or presence
of external noise, intentional distractions
from close attention, audience alertness
and receptiveness. While an illusion is
intended to appear spontaneous, it
frequently requires careful advance
preparation out of view of the eventual
audience.
• Establishment of the magician’s
dominant relationship. The magician
displays a persona - dress, assertive
speech, body language, pressured pace,
116 Unfortunately there have been instances of SM being used
for financial/publicity fraud, from spoon-bending to “remote
viewing”. The SM profession emphatically condemns this, its
most famous exposer being James Randi; cf. his Flim-Flam &
related investigations.
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eye contact - designed to seize and hold
the attention of the audience, as well as to
gradually but inexorably replace their
wills and judgment of reality with his own.
[This is particularly essential to
hypnotism.]
• D i c t a t i o n o f t h e a p p l i c a b l e
elements. The magician identifies to the
audience what objects, locations, and/or
procedures are important and essential,
r e s t r i c t i n g t h e p r o b l e m t o t h e i r
interaction exclusively. The consequence
of this is that an object’s behavior which
might seem unremarkable or contrived
against ordinary backgrounds or points of
reference becomes surprising and
inexplicable in this artificial environment.
• Definition of the variables. An object
or procedure may be used in any number
of ways, but the magician defines them so
as to limit these ways to only those which
make possible and reinforce the illusion.
• Instruction of behavior. Audience
participation is desirable, since going
through motions to supposedly produce
the illusion suggests to the audience that
it is somewhat responsible for it, thus
encouraging belief in it.
• Limitation of possibilities. As he
controls all of the object(s) and
procedure(s) variables, the magician can
force the outcome of the illusion into one
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w h i c h t h e e qu a l l y - p re d e t e rm i n e d
alternatives appear to highlight as
miraculous.
• Channeling of expectations. Once in
control of both the elements of the illusion
and the audience’s perceptions and
willpower, the magician instructs the
audience in what the possible outcomes of
the illusion can be. It is now “impossible”
for the objects or procedures to function
in any other way, nor for the audience to
devise or consider one.
• Interpretation of the result. Once the
illusion is produced, the magician makes
it clear to the audience what it “obviously”
signifies. As in his initial establishment of
control over the audience, he now
implants - though announcement,
emotional surprise/satisfaction, and body
l a n g u a g e - t h e i r p r e s u m e d l y
“spontaneous” reaction.
• R e i n f o r c e m e n t o f c o n t r o l l e d
perceptions. As necessary to establish
the performed illusion firmly in “reality”,
the magician follows it up with as many
s u p p o r t i n g d e v i c e s a n d c r e a t e d
impressions as are necessary.
Beyond these basics LBM is particularly
concerned with the magical discipline of
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mentalism. 117 This involves diversion of audience
perceptions and interpretations towards a different
interpretation of their own thought processes than
the one which they would naturally experience. This
is accomplished both through the above-listed
techniques of magic and supporting assistants and/
or devices.
d. Greater
LBM is a tool to examine and control the OU.
Greater Black Magic (GBM) is the corresponding
tool to investigate, comprehend, and control SUs.
As discussed in “Lucifer”, SUs are created by
the power of each individual consciousness (MS).
Even the most “uninitiated” human subconsciously
generates one, which he believes to be the OU; it is
actually only his limited perception & interpretation
of the OU.
If he is sufficiently intelligent, and experiences
adequate education and/or initiation, he may
consciously begin to replace or augment his
“stimulus/response” SU with a deliberate, conscious
one. At about the same point he may become aware
of an sensitive to the various CSUs used to
indoctrinate and control him. He may retain [or be
forced to retain] some of these, while modifying or
completely rejecting others.
LBM is locked to the OU & NL, so there is little
danger of the magician’s loss of mental coherence.
With GBM the risks are far greater, because the
individual is operating completely within one or
117 Not to be confused with the clinical psychological or
philosophical definitions of “mentalism”.
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more SUs, with the license of the Black Flame/Gift
of Set to create/modify/destroy any of them at will.
The initial aspect of this danger is that the
magician may attempt to exercise such divine
prerogatives before fully comprehending himself,
e.g. discovering, exploring, and becoming fluent
with at least the first six MS emanations.