Some further thoughts have arisen about why the Second Opening was deemed a failure by ole GENGHY himself: ” . . . [the openings] I constructed for the Second and Third Degree turned out to be poorly conceived and ineffective.”

I don’t consider them ineffective but like them.

First of all, the second opening relies upon calling up the dark forces as the anthropomorphised form of the Old Testament titans of evil, the Dukes of Edom. Edom was a country to the south of Israel whose inhabitants were considered related to the the Israelites in that both nations were supposedly descended from the sons of Isaac, Israel from Jacob and Edom from Esau.

In the magical theory of the Cabala — and much of this is in the Zohar, which should be known, and it is slippery for women and it ricochets around in old Jewish souls — the Edomite kings were considered archetypes of the imperfect and unbalanced level of creation that precedes the perfected one, Esau being the unbalanced and Jacob the balanced.

I have a naive and fun-filled blog post on Jacob and Esau that takes a more human stance to the whole situation of these brothers: https://buildingtheunderworld.com/2019/11/18/the-torah-jacob-and-esau/

Those of us who have worked in ceremonial magick will recognize this. The first wave of energy, ideation, and impulse that comes in after an evocation is generally destructive. The second wave corrects the first and seeks a reasonable course of action for the desired end. Often, if you just sit it out and don’t do stupid things, the end will simply materialize, especially if working with Jake Stratton-Kent’s materials often and wonderfully.

I have done many stupid things in the first wave — the power was so intense and it was never explained to me reasonably. It is only just now, after six years of frequent evocation, that I am starting to learn to manage this energy.

It is a man magic and full of tricks of biopsychology. A woman working it faces considerable facepalm. At the same time, so much destructive energy work has accreted to this magick over the centuries that it is very difficult for a man not to be cruel. So I think it evens out in the end.

The Dukes of Edom are considered blood relatives of the Children of Israel. That is crucial to understanding what goes wrong with ceremonial magick. It is partly the energy of one’s family, lovers, friends, business associates, lodge mates, etc., that, if not reckoned with or actively equilibrated, can wreak havoc in the Tree of Life.

When I was studying the Mayan world in Guatemala, anthropologists reminded us that every indigenous language has a word referring to its own people that means something like “the real human beings” and another for the folks living five miles down the road that means something like “chicken lice” or “bat dung” or gentiles. That is where we are with the Kabbalah.

I don’t like to blame anyone for their energy. It is not just. I hold them only to their actions.

But in psychism of this magnitude, their fundamental attitudes, thoughts, ideas, opinions, and spirituality have a great effect on the magician and the magick. Thus it is critical to try to help, heal, and basically upshift anyone whose image appears to you — even if long in the past. Many should be blocked!

For this, a witchcraft addendum is more reasonable especially when female. Light a candle, power an altar of healing, uncrossing or prosperity, pray a psalm for that person on a regular basis — even the dead can be healed. A pile of energy work is how this needs to go. A lot would have gone better for me if I had known what it means when I see or hear someone in spirit relative to an evocation.

At the very least, a perpetual light understood to augment the work of the temple does much to resolve problems.

This is not spelled out in Hermetics and would do much to assist in the success of these old magicks. But masculine magick works differently in thought as well, and perhaps a man cannot write the Solomonic witch’s CRAFT. My two cents.

After the Dukes of Edom are conceptualized as the first wave of power, the perfected second wave is conceptualized as equilibrated by the Cross of the Elements — an energy configuration that is also basically a crossroad, albeit a Greek one — preparatory to opening the Portal to the realm of spirit in order to bind a spirit of magick.

I will discuss the quarters later. They are very important to the old style of wizarding which is so little in use because people today do not use the body as in former times. People today are sedentary so their magick is sedentary.

It is wonderful that when I asked for a job that would enable me to do the magick, the Solomonic spirit OROBAS in Norse power got me a promising position in manual labor. Other positions followed, and always much work on the GRAVEYARD SHIFT. There is a reason for this moniker.

It was THE OLD BOY who suggested that I cross it up in the first place. In some ways, it has constructed a European witchcraft more than anything else. Why not have Charlotte’s Web?

The entire operation of the Second Opening — which should be available to any serious practitioner of this magic — for it was the first edition and not the second that the author himself performed — is designed to construct or “bind” a spirit.

What is a spirit of western art magick?

I would say that it is an energy “actor” or role in an interactive play with the magician that can create change in conformance with will.

The human mind creates human forms — “anthorpomorphizes” — so the creation of a human form for a magical spell is how a human would relate to things.

An imaginary playmate, if you will.

A spirit of western art magick thus bound was designed to be able to communicate with a variety of other beings, humans living, ghosts, past lives, animals, segments of plants, land, other dimensional beings. This may not work today, but it perhaps did in earlier epochs. There is much evidence of similar ideation in hoodoo at least, with the use of plants, pieces of animals, and other concerns. If a spirit is worked with intensely over a long period of time, it can, in the end — so the theory goes — achieve an immortality similar to that of incarnating into flesh. Thus spirits like to be worked with.

The kinds of spirits that are bound in Circles of Power are supposed to be those of the elements and planets, and these perhaps can be constructed, but they are not nearly as powerful or as vivacious before as after the magician begins to work in a dedicated spirit-binding magick that is commonly practiced, though I would recommend constant work with the magical Cabala so as not to lose your shirt.

The most commonly practiced magick of spirit-binding in this style is The Lesser Key of Solomon. Once you have started that great wisdom world, then the spirits of this magick get bound more easily and more readily and the whole thing comes alive better. This is what we think of as wizarding, and the bandits of the new sorcery have conveniently parroted the updated arguments of the Inquisition against it — while also not — even as they lined their pockets.

But those are risky spirits to bind, as we have seen from my experience. Told as commanded and I looking like a fool.

I speculate that the spirits of ceremonial magick can be interacted with in many ways by the practitioners of the new vision magick, and while I do not know much about it, I do “hear” many of their responses.

That our dream world is dim albeit stately, while theirs is bright. That it disobeys the rules by causing people to look like themselves instead of African characters of the opposite gender. That it works with animals forbidden to them. That the sociocultural level is lower in general — and who works with the body but the poor? That Judaism is different in and about it.

ALE IS INVOLVED.

I am able to catch brief glances of a vision world on special occasions and receive messages.

Perhaps someday our worlds can click in greater ways, though I do not wish to use drugs to cause that to happen, to compromise my work with theirs, or to drain another magician for vision I cannot otherwise afford. I hope that they can learn to power with the body in Hermetic ritual, perhaps even to jump the fence and become ceremonial magicians in the body and not just in skrying with entheogens.

Here is a lovely article about the Dukes of Edam and the Rivers in Paradise, both of which are use in the magickal manual: http://timothyscott.com.au/Assets/pdfs/Edom_Eden.pdf