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I know many rituals are lengthy, and ideally we memorize everything before actually doing a ritual. The Bornless Ritual is a prime example.
But does failure to a ritual necessarily fail just because you're reading the ritual from your ritual diary while you are doing the ritual?
Even reading the slightest portion (SRP) or looking at a particular energy flow diagram (LRH)?
If the attention is primarily on the physical world, the ritualist may not give enough attention to the inner planes where the essence of the work proceeds.
Such a ritualist may be at risk from adverse currents and entities
I know many rituals are lengthy, and ideally we memorize everything before actually doing a ritual. The Bornless Ritual is a prime example.
But does failure to a ritual necessarily fail just because you're reading the ritual from your ritual diary while you are doing the ritual?
Even reading the slightest portion (SRP) or looking at a particular energy flow diagram (LRH)?
Depends largely on the ritual. Some rituals are primarily verbal, such as the headless rite. Rituals like that can actually benefit, in my experience, from being read from a properly consecrated book. Others are almost purely visualization and gestures, which should definitely be memorized beforehand.
is the meal a failure because you read the recipe while cooking? Of course not! In fact, it often guarantees success!
The nature of a ritual is that you will do it many many times. After cooking a meal hundreds of times, you probably don’t really need the recipe and that’s when you begin to embellish the dish and make it yours. Eventually, you probably won’t need to rely on the book while performing the ritual. THAT is when you can truly focus on the inner work. This is the point of doing ritual magic.
My advice: use the book until you’re comfortable with it. Once it’s rote, ditch the book.
But better to have the book in the beginning and check your form than to have to unlearn an error years later.
Plus all the movies and art show magicians looking cool with their grimoire in one hand and a wand in the other.
I record the rituals and listen to them as one way of learning them. Sometimes I listen to the recordings while I do the ritual. Some may find this distracting. I have used this method successfully.
This is really smart and... sounds like weightlifting advice actually
If you practice without the book, and you're making mistakes, you're practicing how to do it wrong
Depending on the book and the ritual, you could potentially just write out bullet points
Like in Nick Farrell's version of the LRP, the godnames you vibrate at the quarters are AIO, OIA, OAI, AOI (with IAO) at the end. I have a scrap of paper with just those written on it, because that's the bit I trip up over
Even if need a reminder for everything right now, there's still probably filler instructions you could cut. And a piece of paper is less unweildy and you don't have to hold it open at the right page.
On the other hand, a piece of paper is definitely less cool than holding a grimoire
It sounds like there's at least one kind of hexagram I haven't heard of
I know the unicursal hexagram and the one with all the annoying triangles, and Crowley has the the Nature Hexagram and the Holy Hexagram -
Is the one with all the annoying triangles the Four Forms? In that case, which one is the traditional GD one?
(I don't really care about the labels, I just like hearing about different versions of the classics, and am not sure which one is the one I don't know here)
Don't worry about it! I figured it would be in Lyam Thomas Christopher's book and had a look. A version of the elemental/supreme/greater pentagram, but yeah with those extra phrases in, that would definitely be tricky to remember off the bat
Memory is tied to gesture - actors can often remember a forgotten line if they just move to the place on the stage where they were supposed to say it - so you'd be shooting yourself in the foot to try and rote memorise it without running through the actions as well
I don’t think reading from your ritual outline guarantees failure as long as you can stay focused on what you are doing and not what you are reading.
When I begin to learn a new ritual I do it in steps.
I at first read and study all the steps. Then I transfer it to my ritual book in my own words in a short hand abbreviated way that I can quickly reference later.
Then I start doing practice walk throughs.
I basically do the ritual without being concerned about messing up and will have the book or my notes in hands and will be focusing to commit it to memory as I’m doing it.
The first few walkthroughs I’m focusing on strictly the words and physical gestures and the visualizations of what I’m ‘drawing’.
Then in subsequent walkthroughs I focus on the visualizations that are usually left out of the books. These are things like extra details and sensory images and focusing on the energies you are invoking and building up and circulating and sending into something our sending out etc.
I’ll also continue memorizing from my books and notes outside of ritual until I’ve got it.
Eventually though it all clicks and I have it memorized and can then do the ritual completely by memory without having to think about it or have doubts.
I can then focus solely on the work of the ritual itself.
Books are cumbersome. Print or manually type out the ritual(s) you wish to perform. I prefer the latter since 1) the act of typing encourages you to read word for word, letter by letter, and 2) you can format the page(s) and rearrange things if necessary. Copy and paste from electronic books to printable files can be done too. The act of reading, understanding and working with the text reinforces the learning process. You can make notes in the margins of your printed or typed pages, something you might not want to do in your books.
Invoking the Four Powers of Earth is from the book "Kabalah, Magic, and the Great Work of Self-Transformation" by Lyam Thomas Christopher.
It's essentially a LIRP starting at the south, with a phrase said at each quarter after trading the glyph of the Kerub of your grade in the center of the pentagram. After you complete your circle, you give your grade sign and a closing salutation with the grade godnames and the words of the Qabalistic Cross in English. Then you turn West and do your Middle Pillar, turn north and do your Zelator meditation and body in Assiah, the. Turn east and repeat the LBRP. It differs slightly from grade to grade, I can only speak for the Zelator grade for now.
The LRH I use is the old standard Star of David, using Ararita and the God-Name, in the case of Saturn, YHVH-ELOHIM.
I tried the unicursal but it didn't click with me. I may have to unlearn what 8m doing and learn his method.
The question is basically, "what is divine light?" in a ritual context I've never had a problem with these before but I was thinking through some cosmology stuff today and it suddenly stopped making sense* So in the hexagram ritual (and star sapphire I think) you literally say "let the divine...
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My bad, you do in fact in the LRH say "Let the Divine Light Descend!", near the end of the ritual, after Analysis of the Keyword.
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Upon further investigation, Christopher does not mention it until Portal, which appears to be yet another blind.
Kraig mentions it in Modern Magick, yet he uses the Four Forms method starting in Air grade.
Regardie uses the "tradtional" or "Star of David" forms for all seven planets, yet also refers to Let The Divine Light Descend after the formulation and analysis of the keyword, as Kraig does, while Christopher does not.
The unicursal/Crowley form is used by Christopher, while not used with Kraig or Regardie.
So I must learn and use all three forms. As I am working with all three, and two books simultaneously, nay, make that three.
In Christophers Invoking LRP, the Invoking the Four Powers of Earth, a phrase is said after invoking the pentagram flow in green and the taurus kerub in black in the center. This is what I have to memorize. And this changes with each grade, so it is in my best interest to memorize them all right now, so that in Portal the only ones I will have to memorize are the Rose Cross Ritual and the Opening/Closing by Watchtower.
In fact, since working three books simultaneously, I might as well memorize them all.
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Kraig has minor (very minor) nvariations from Kraig. Regardies material we are referred to constantly by Christopher, so might as well work all three.
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After all, its just three variations of the LRH and a LIRP Im talking about.
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I have noticed that I try to memorize the directions for circled rose crosses, pentagrams, and hexagrams invoking or banishing.
I've tried to memorize phrases for a ritual or two, but if I fail at first, I do a default invoking.
