Therefore it is not enough to feel blind trust in and enthusiasm for Setian concepts of reality
One must know how those concepts came to be formulated as being most probably true. He must
understand the reasoning behind each proposition. Initiation implies not just knowing how but
also knowing why.
The second distinctive characteristic of the Temple of Set is its utilitarian approach to
White Magic (WM) and Lesser Black Magic (LBM). The former, embracing all conventional
religions and occultisms, is assessed simply as fraud and/or self-delusion. The Temple of Set has
no self-appointed mission to cure the mass of humanity of fraud or delusion, so we ignore White
Magicians as courteously as possible.
Chapter #19’s discussion of LBM illustrated that many social and scientific techniques used
casually, ignorantly, or inexpertly by the rest of society are utilized by the Black Magician to
realize his immediate goals in the OU. Further that mastery of LBM does not come quickly or
easily, and that it is by no means a substitute for cooperation with society’s accepted rules of
competition, survival, and prosperity. It is a specialized technique for use in situations which
appear to be ideally suited to it, and it is generally used as an enhancement to more ordinary
techniques already in play.
Many of those who encountered the Temple of Set’s predecessor institution, the Church of
Satan, were confused by the Satanic Bible’s approach to magic. First, in the “Book of Satan”, it
scorned all belief systems and reduced all gods and demons to simple fantasies and
psychological crutches. But then, in the subsequent Books of “Lucifer”, “Belial”, and “Leviathan”,
it promised satisfaction in return for appealing to various demons through ritual. The public
apology for this seeming inconsistency was that rituals are mere psychodrama: play-acting for
emotional gratification. But the reality was that the rituals were performed with complete
seriousness throughout all the Grottos of the Church, and that they in fact yielded the results
they promised, at least to some degree.
The Satanic Priesthood gradually concluded that, although the mythological imagery of
such ritual might be prima facie inaccurate and inconsistent, the particular type of mental and
willful concentration achieved during ritual did in fact exert an effect upon both the celebrant
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and the OU. To the celebrant it seemed that, as his concentration and projection of will
increased, the normal barriers of space and time began to recede. The celebrant’s SU appeared to
force its way into the OU in a limited, focused fashion.
What this meant for the fledgling Satanist was an experience of the “blurring of reality”. It
was often disturbing and distressing, just as the experience of hallucination or schizophrenia can
be disturbing and distressing. A ritual working differed from psychosis, however, in that the
magician’s own mental coherence - his sense of identity and ability to organize his thought -
remained unimpaired. He knew precisely what was happening: where each universe began and
the other one ended, what he wished to do, and how to increase, decrease, or halt the interaction.
As the Satanist became increasingly familiar with the sensations of ritual magic, his fear of
it would disappear and he would become proficient at creating precisely the blend of universes
desired. The need for OU props (a physical ritual chamber) to create a suitably dramatic
atmosphere lessened, as did the need for texts, incantations, and scripts. Ultimately a threshold
would be reached where the experience and exercise of ritual became a completely fluent one for
the magician, who could now blend his SU with the OU and accomplish changes in it as
delicately as a skilled surgeon might wield a scalpel.
An individual’s SU, to be sure, is extremely fluid. It may closely resemble the OU, or it may
become bizarre and fantastic. Many clinical schizophrenics are simply those who have lost the
ability to distinguish the SU from the OU, and who in some cases are at the mercy of “runaway”
SU mental imagery.
Clinical schizophrenia is usually involuntary - the result of a physically diseased or injured
brain, or of extraordinary psychological stress. A danger of ritual magic is that the experience
the two universes may be neglected or abandoned, resulting in an uncontrolled blending process.
The magician is still in control of his will, but he is unable to accurately distinguish the elements
of the OU from those of his SU. He makes mistakes, which appear in his SU as inexplicable
abortions of his previously effective desires and creations. Ultimately he may lose all control of
his consciousness, becoming a paranoiac and/or a megalomaniac.
The old myth that you will endanger your soul if you dare to experiment with Black Magic
thus has more than a grain of truth in it. Not because some fiend in red tights is going to drag
you down to Dante’s Inferno in punishment for your blasphemy, but rather because you are
now exercising your mind in the deliberate conception and construction of its own
external frames of reference. If you do this with prudence, intelligence, and sensitivity, the
result will be a more excellent state of being (= initiation). If you do it impulsively or carelessly,
the result could be disastrous.
The Temple of Set thus repeats the warning in its introductory literature: Black Magic is
dangerous. LBM is dangerous because it can tempt the individual to unethical abuse of its
techniques, while GBM is dangerous because its practice makes possible the destruction of the
perspectives of the rational consciousness. Extreme care must be taken when experimenting
with either discipline. And so to the specific subject of this chapter:
Greater Black Magic (GBM) is the causing of change to occur in the SU in
accordance with the will. This change in the SU may cause a similar and
harmonious change in the OU.
Examine this definition. A deliberate effort is made to alter one’s subjective frame of
reference, so that a thing which used to be conceptualized one way is now conceptualized in
another. A distasteful situation may be adjusted to produce a favorable outcome; a live enemy
may be adjusted to be neutralized or nonexistent; a desire of any sort may be realized or
dispelled.
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Magical manuals from the medieval grimoires to the Satanic Bible have discussed the use
of imagery as an aid to this process. Perhaps the most stereotypical example of this is the
sticking of pins into a wax effigy to cause harm [the origin of the quip “stick it to him/her”]. In
Walt Disney’s Dumbo the little elephant was given a feather to hold with his trunk. He was told
that it was a magic feather which would enable him to fly - and he did so by flapping his ears.
When he eventually lost the feather, he started to fall, until he was told that the feather was
really nothing more than an ordinary feather. As soon as he realized that he was the source of
the “magic”, he flapped his ears again and regained altitude.
Photographs, wax images, talismans, music, fires, swords, statues, and indeed entire ritual
chambers have no more intrinsic magic in
them than Dumbo’s feather. Their effectiveness in
magic, again like that feather, comes from their significance to the magician. If he grants
them certain powers in his SU - if he credits them with atmospheres, auras, curses, or blessings -
they will assuredly have them. They will possess these qualities absolutely in the SU.
Once this occurs, the phenomenon of the magical link (ML) between the SU and OU will
transfer a portion of the quality to the items’ objective mass. The potency and endurance of the
transfer depends upon the skill and willpower of the consecrating magician, the scope of the
working, the amount of distortion in the OU attempted, and a wide variety of physical and
environmental factors which may range from sunspot activity to a sore toe which intrudes upon
the magician’s concentration. Perception and activation of the imbued qualities by another
magician will similarly depend upon the skill and willpower which he brings to bear upon such
objects.
The implications of this principle are fascinating. Among other things it explains why
sophisticated magical workings based on a variety of different gods or pantheons have worked. It
makes no difference whether the gods be socially generated (like those of ancient Greece) or
personally created (like those of H.P. Lovecraft). It makes no difference whether the Enochian
Keys be phrased in honor of YHVH (as in John Dee’s diaries), in honor of Satan (as in the
Satanic Bible), or in honor of Set (as in the Word of Set). Accusations of heresy, blasphemy, and/
or inauthenticity - whether historically justified or not - are simply barking up the wrong tree
from a magical standpoint.
Another implication of the operational principle of GBM is that there is a large amount of it
“loose” in the OU by individuals who are generating it without calling it by that name and
without even realizing what they are doing. Every time we have an “objective impression” of
something possessing a quality which its physical characteristics do not substantiate, we are
sampling the results of a GBM operation on the OU.
To take a few common examples: Snakes and rats are usually thought to be sneaky and evil,
birds and cats beautiful; smog and sludge unnatural, trees and flowers natural. Many SUs agree
upon and reinforce such interpretations, and in the OU it becomes increasingly difficult to
identify the phenomenon in question without the subjectively-imposed “overlay”. [Such overlays
may also be called “biases”, “prejudices”, or “points of perspective”.]
We are thus the victims of a worldwide GBM epidemic which has manifest itself as political
ideologies, artistic æsthetics, advertising, social morality, etc. We cannot honestly say that we
“live” in the OU, but rather in a crazy-quilt of SU overlays on the OU. The first thing the
magician must do is realize this; the second thing he must do is attempt to see and understand
the actual OU through all the layers. The third thing he must do is attempt to change parts of the
OU carefully and precisely through his own magical workings, both LBM and GBM.
The “unconscious” GBM of profane society works because of sheer mass, as a herd of
buffalo will break through a fence that would easily stop any one of them. At the same time this
profane effort is chaotic, unreliable, and ultimately random in its consequences.
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Attempts to control such massive social forces have been made by many political and
religious leaders throughout history. All have failed in whole or in part, even when the illusion of
control could be created. The individual Black Magician cannot change the OU through raw
force; his is only a single, isolate will. He does possess, however, an understanding of how GBM
works and the consequent ability to narrow his use of it to a precise, directed focus. It is this
focus that enables his workings to succeed.
If you have never undertaken GBM Workings before, some of the preconditions for them
may strike you as unnecessary, even adolescent. Be patient, and you will come to see why they
are not.
You may think that you possess great powers of imagination, particularly if you have some
skill at art, music, writing, or similar form of creative expression. Consider, however, that your
soul - which communicates with the OU through your brain - constantly receives reinforcement
of OU reality through your five physical senses. This reinforcement tends to act as a kind of
“shock absorber” to your mind, cushioning and compensating for all ideas that do not
correspond to OU parameters.
What you will be doing in a formal GBM working is to change the signals which are received
by your five senses, bringing them into synchronization with the concept on which you intend to
focus. Thus you prepare for a working by constructing an artificial environment in the OU most
closely attuned to it: a ritual chamber.
There is no “official” design, nor required contents for a Setian ritual chamber. Our Reading
List exemplifies how widely our interests vary, and a working emphasizing any one category of
that List [or any other concept] would require appropriate accouterments.
Thus a “classic Black Mass” in the most decadent tradition of Gothic horror novels might
recreate the atmosphere of a gloomy, medieval crypt. A ritual utilizing spacial/dimensional
concepts might make use of odd, Expressionistic angles, optical illusions, mirrored or irregular
lighting effects, and atonal or inharmonious sound effects. Workings concerned with space may
take place under the starry sky in a desert, where the absence of reflected light from cities reveals
the cosmos in all its glory ... or in planetariums, observatories, or astrophysics laboratories.
The more care you take to find or create the proper environment, the more potent the
working itself will be. This is not just because a more elaborate ritual chamber is more exciting
and evocative, but also because the very act of preparing it and anticipating the working
contributes to the momentum of the working proper.
The “ritual chamber” is not merely the room or open area in which you operate. The
concept extends to everything apart from your self - including your physical body. You must be
in good health, or sufficiently in control of your mental state of being not to allow physical
maladies to intrude upon your concentration during the working. You must be awake and alert.
You must be visibly [to others, if it is a group working] and mindfully [to yourself] clothed and/
or costumed as appropriate. Your goal is to exclude all sensations which clash with the focus of
the working, and to reinforce all sensations which enhance that focus.
Address all five of the physical senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. At the very
least, take steps to ensure that no distracting sensation intrudes. As you become increasingly
familiar with GBM, you will become more expert at creating environments to facilitate it. Do not
expect to get everything exactly right the first time. And, of course, there may be circumstances
rather beyond your complete control, such as mechanical background noise in urban areas - or
crickets in rural ones!
You have prepared yourself and your ritual chamber. It is the appropriate time of day or
night [or you have blocked out all sensory inputs dictating
the time], and your invited assistants
and/or fellow magicians are present. You are ready to commence the working itself.
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You may use a full script or an outline, or you may proceed extemporaneously. Each has
advantages: the script for formality and a sense of historical accuracy, extemporaneous speech
for its sincerity and spontaneity, and an outline for a blending of both. Make your decision not
on some assumption of what you “ought” to do, but rather on the basis of what feels right to
you. You might use the text of a 4,000-year-old Egyptian incantation - but you may wish to
change two words in it. Do so! Use a pre-prepared selection of gods and/or dæmons, or create
some new ones yourself. Neither type is “inauthentic”. Gods exist as they are evoked to
meaningful existence by the individual psyche.
Every thought, statement, and action during the working should be directed towards its
object. If your preparations have been thorough, you will find that you can attain far greater
concentration - and maintain it for a longer span of [objective or subjective] time - than you
suspect. Following the ritual you should not be surprised to feel correspondingly exhausted and
drained of energy.
It is not uncommon for a magician to find himself carried away by a ritual he is doing. The
experience is so impressive, so wonderful, so overwhelming that he becomes transfixed by it
both during and following the working. There is a very simple rule of thumb which should be
applied in situations such as this, and it is: Bear in mind that the ritual itself is/was a
personal, SU experience. If you wish to impress other magicians with it, you must translate
that experience into a form that is comprehensible and meaningful to them. If you succeed, they
will share your interest and enthusiasm, at least to a degree. If they are not interested or
enthusiastic, do not condemn them for it. Either you have not explained it carefully enough to do
justice to it, or it simply isn’t as relevant to their SUs as it is to yours. If you become
antagonistic or resentful, you will accomplish nothing save to lessen your stature in their eyes.
As discussed in Chapter #19, human beings are accustomed to projecting particular
pictures of themselves into others’ SUs. This is a common LBM phenomenon. In GBM the