Contents

Editorial 3

Acknowledgments 5

Disclaimer - Risks of Magic: please read! 6

The Risks of Magic 7

Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Symbolic Tables 12
The Lesser Magic System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Sample Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Lesser vs. High Magic 19

Basic Distinctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Initiation and egregores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

2
Editorial
By Jaden F. Ward
When you discuss with someone, you can guess his feelings by the ob-
servation of his facial mimics, of the tone of his voice, and the vocabulary
he uses. However, when you do so, you are not ”inside” his head! Using a
different vocabulary, his feelings are the prototypes, the source of his behav-
ior. The behavior is the manifestation of these prototypes. Another example
would be road signs: they indicate (manifest) the existence of a material
place (commercial center, hospital, etc...) that the driver cannot directly see
- but they are not the place itself! From these metaphors, one needs to add
only one concept to obtain the theory of manifestation: when one speaks
about magic, if one moves the road sign, then the hospital will disappear.
And indeed, if one wishes to destroy a building using magic, destroying the
material road signs would be a valid symbolic act - however, this would not
harm the physical hospital, but its ”subtle” representation. But, what the
hell do we mean by changing the subtle representation of this building?
Let me detail the concept of manifestation a little more. Manifestation is
one of the core metaphysical theories of magic (be it lesser or high magic).
The idea, simply expressed, is as follows: the material world is the manifes-
tation of more subtle, less perceptible, prototype worlds. Magic is a method
exploiting the mechanisms of these subtle planes, which are mostly symbolic.
When one changes these prototype planes, their material manifestation is al-
tered; and vice-versa. This has two implications:
1. If one observes a mechanism in the manifested (material) plane, then
it means there is a counterpart in the subtle planes - this is the base
of astrology. And, off course, we are not interested about the influence
of the planets themselves (they are also just manifested rocks), but
about the prototypes behind these planetary manifestations. We will
see later that for each of these prototypes several manifestations exist
(including, but not limited to, the planets).
2. If one uses appropriate symbols, tuned to the structure of the subtle
(immaterial) planes, he will induce changes both in the subtle and
manifested planes. This bi-directional effect is resumed in the Emerald
Tablet as ”all that stands above is similar to what lies below”.
Concerning the subtle planes themselves, their metaphysical description is
out of the scope of our topic. One should just remember that they are usually

3
represented for more convenience as discontinuous with the material planes
(hence, supernatural) - they could be seen as Russian dolls for instance.
However this discontinuity is wrong in principle: their true structures are
rather like those of fractal curves (with embedded dimensions, in our world
there is nothing ”supernatural”).

4
Acknowledgments
Editor: Jaden F. Ward

Editorial committee: The Stone of Ollerus

First draft: Jaden F. Ward

Proofreading: Kokuyoh Morisawa, Aspen

Artworks: Jaden F. Ward

General content and discussions: meeting of the Stone of Ollerus,

Januray 5th , 2009
see our website: http://www.meetup.com/Stone-of-Ollerus/

Publication: Stone of Ollerus - publishing (webzine)

Tokyo, Japan Stone of Ollerus - publishing

May 21st , 2009
All articles are copyright of the authors.

5
Disclaimer - Risks of Magic

6
The Risks of Magic

By Jaden F. Ward

Theory
Would you let a child play football with a nuclear warhead? This is what
using magic without proper preparation looks like - who is ready to blow
himself up? We will discuss here about the dangers of magic, and how we can
reduce these dangers. As a first preliminary disclaimer, I will just mention
that if you disagree with the following guidelines and refuse to use them, I
will not be held responsible for the consequences of your acts. You will be
alone when you will face Nemesis.
There are a few risks inherent to the very nature of magic, that you must
be aware of before trying to play with it. They could be summarized in a
few famous sentences:

• Money can’t buy happiness.

• The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

• Be careful what you wish for.

We will see below some more details about these three sentences.
Last but not least, the practice of lesser magic puts you in contact with the
subtle planes. After a while, you might notice changes in your interactions
with reality, and acquire some abilities going beyond the level of lesser magic
- your interaction with higher planes grants you an intuitive (but partial)
access to high magic. This is out of the scope of today’s meeting, but in simple
terms, high magic is even more dangerous than lesser magic. Therefore,

7
unless you are truly aware of what you are doing, and prepared to face the
consequences. . . Do not use it!

Money can’t buy happiness

Most people are attracted by magic because they want to realize their desires,
wether it be money, lust, revenge, control of their environment, or simply
power. Realizing desires is not usually good - one has to learn the distinction
between his true will, and his earthly desires. A simple example would be the
main character of the movie Citizen Kane. A child who lost his childhood
realizes all his desires and becomes a journalism and finance magnate, and
ends his life in a crazily opulent property. . . But never finds what he truly
wished for: the carefreeness of his lost childhood! Our desires are usually the
manifestation of spiritual limitations - and one would always be better off
overcoming these limitations, rather than reinforcing them. On the spiritual
plane, these limitations are usually termed as “larvae” or “astral larvae”.
It is said that the practice of magic can easily lead to the reinforcement of
such entities: when you use magic to run after your desires you just feed
them, and they grow bigger. In order to avoid feeding larvas, magic should
be directed towards higher (non material) goals. To give an example, if one
wishes for a better job, it would be much more proficient to use magic in
order to dissolve the larva preventing him from getting the job; rather than
using magic to obtain directly the job, which would create a new larva (or
feed an existing one) whose sole purpose is to obtain promotions.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

What about helping others? Some of you might have read the Wiccan ”three-
fold law” motto. . . They believe that when magic is used to help someone,
they get back three times what they gave (and conversely when they harm).
It seems nice, but this view of the world is too simplistic. The first problem
is that giving is not always good per se. Let us see one example: someone
wants to help a friend quit smoking. He uses a magical ritual to remove the
need for smoking, and obtains a perfect success: within a week his friend is
cured of his need for tobacco and nicotine. But two weeks later, the very
same friend becomes alcoholic. . . Who can guess why? This is pretty obvious:

8
smoking is a psychological kickstand, a necessary equilibrium for a weakness,
without which he was no longer able to survive. In this case, it would have
been much better to remove the weakness of this person. In other words,
the magic targeted the symptom, but not the cause (the manifestation, i.e.
smoking, but not the astral larva causing it).

Be careful what you wish for

It should now be obvious that magic should always be applied in order to
change the cause, and not the symptom. This is, however, not sufficient. The
second missing statement on the Wiccan three-fold law is the mechanism
of magic explaining why we should always avoid harmful effects (such as
cursing) and violent effects (e.g. earthquakes); and need to be extremely
cautious with the desired effect. To put things simply, the structure of the
world of desire (yetzirah, or the astral plane) which is manipulated in lesser
magic is similar to the internet: everything is linked one to another. This
leads to several consequences:
• Changing a detail will change everything. In other words, magic has
secondary effects, on everything that relates with its target - including
to a large extent the spell caster (so if you try to kill someone using
dark magic, be prepared to get harmed).
• The second problem with such a structure is that when you disturb it,
it automatically seeks for a new equilibrium. So, if you use magic to
create huge size effects, the consequences can be dramatic.
• However, to obtain such large effects high magic is usually necessary
(large effects tend to breach causality).
• The last problem (corollary of the previous one) is that magic will
always use the simplest path, i.e. the one that disturbs minimally the
reality. The first consequence is that if you successfully use magic to
become rich, it is rather likely that your whole family will die to bring
you an inheritance (the simplest solution). The second consequence is
that if you use magic to be cured of a cancer it would be stupid to stop
your chemotherapy (because chemotherapy is the simplest solution -
magic will increase your survival rate when you take those pills from
60% to 90%, but if you do not swallow the pill. . . ).

9
Guidelines
Now that you now the risks, we can see a few guidelines to avoid them:

1. When you use magic, target results in the astral plane, and not in their
manifestations,

2. Use very precise symbols to channel your ritual properly,

3. Do not use spells in an area that your mind cannot cope with (do not
use something too destabilizing for your mind),

4. Try to minimize the induced imbalance (do not use something too
destabilizing for reality),

5. Do not use spells to go against the divine planes (see thereafter lesser
vs. high magic),

6. Never use spells to feed larvae (egregores are usually the exception, see
below lesser vs. high magic).

7. Do not use magic to harm, unless the punishment is fair. Who are you
to judge anyway?

8. As a generalization of the previous rule, never use magic to affect the

material world or obtain a material result, unless you have a clear and
equilibrated understanding of the meaning of what you are doing,

9. Always write down your ritual and test it using scrying techniques
before usage (for instance using Tarot, clairvoyance, or with whatever
method you are familiar),

10. Should you teach magic to someone, unless you have clearly explained
the above points, you will share with him the consequences of his deeds
(because you will remain symbolically connected every time he will use
what you have taught). Hence, always teach the limits before teaching
the methods. If you fail to follow this last warning, you commit one
of the worst spiritual crime, hubris (or hybris), and you will pay the
consequences (facing Nemesis together with your student).

10
Discussion
Q1: What is the problem with mental health?

Could you give an example of how magic could destabilize a mind?

E1: Human mind is fragile.

Human mind is structured to cope only with experiences that match pre-
vio9us experiences. Usually, when something contradictory is experienced,
the mind tries to ignore the new information with an obtuse generalization.
This process, cognitive dissonance, is necessary to maintain an internal bal-
ance. Magic provides tremendous psychological experiences, and the mind
cannot shut down the incoming flow of information. New experiences, espe-
cially those of high magic, should be approached very progressively. Imagine
what would happen if a materialist saw the evocation of an entity to visible
appearance? His conception of the material reality might collapse, and he
would become crazy. Actually, in the legends surrounding Cogliostro (Joseph
Balsamo), the story is told of an aristocrat who went crazy after seeing a
ghost that Balsamo evoked.
Furthermore, generally speaking, if you use magic through the guidance
of an unbalanced emotional-self (or ego), you end up reinforcing this unbal-
ance. So for instance, if you are afraid of your own death, do not try to play
with necromancy, you would end up crazy. Similarly, people with psychiatric
alienations such as schizophrenia or severe delusions are not encouraged to
practice magic, which could worsen their pathology.

11
Symbolic Tables

by Jaden F. Ward

The Lesser Magic System

Lesser magic uses symbolic tables in order to tune the concentration of will of
the mage to a specific force. Several systems exist, generally inspired by man-
ifested items (as all that stands above is similar to what lies below) organized
in a completed (hence equilibrated) system: 4 or 5 elemental classification
(such as Dee’s Enochian system, F. Bardon’s system, or the geomantic evoca-
tions), 5 agents (Taoist magic), 7 planets (medieval magic and astrology), 36
arcs of 10 degrees (the decans), 72 arcs of 5 degrees (the schemhamphorash).
I will present here symbolic tables of the planetary system, first because
it is the most famous, second because it is both simple (72 items is too
much!) and flexible (it can be used for almost all styles of magic, including
high magic). The symbols are presented depending on their tradition of
origin (medieval = Agrippa , OTO = Crowley and Regardie , AS = Denning
and Philips ), for each planet. When some common elements are found
between the traditions, they are written in bold. The difference between
these systems, and means to select the most appropriate for your work, are
detailed in the next section.
Planetary aspects (the purpose of each of the seven forces) can be stud-
ied through mythology, but I provide here a simplified list if need be: -
Moon: astral plane itself, astral travel, dreams, illusions, creation. - Mars:
action, judgment and law, punishment, regulation, strength, war and mar-
tial arts. - Mercury: knowledge, symbols, teaching and learning. - Jupiter:
wisdom, paternity, authority. - Venus: charisma, love, friendship, but also
sexual attraction. - Saturn: death, usually the planet of curses, but also

12
karma and awakening. - Sun: harmony, victory. The seven planets cor-
respond to the seven days of the week (so a work dedicated to Mercury
should be performed on Wednesday, one for the Moon on Monday); and they
also correspond to the Roman/Greek mythic gods, and to the last seven
Sephirah of the Tree of Life (in reverse order starting from the 9th Sephirah
to the 3rd: Moon=Yesod, Mercury=Hod, Venus=Netzah, Sun=Tiphereth,
Mars=Geburah, Jupiter=Chesed, and Binah=Saturn).

Sample Tables

Discussion
Q1: How were the symbolic tables decided?

Someone had to decide on these symbolic relationships. If one day some-

one decide that the proper representation of the planet Mercury is a banana,
is it considered valid? If not, what distinguish these tables from an impro-

13
14
15
vised symbology?

E1: There are three answers.

1. Philosophically: a purely philosophical approach is correct, if the philoso-

pher is strongly attuned with the divine planes. If not, it is not philos-
ophy but poetry.
2. Signatures: from the signatures of the divine symbols into material
elements. For instance, the sunflower turns towards the sun, hence it
is a sun symbol. This is the method of Agrippa, but as the previous
method, the interpretation of the symbol depends on the connection
with the divine planes. . .
3. Experimental: one select an element, and through trial and error,
checks for what works well or not. This is however impossible without
proper training, and judging the result is not so easy. This approach,
if passed down through generations of mages, becomes a tradition.
In the end, it all narrows down to the idea of egregores. When an experi-
mental approach forms a tradition, it becomes part of an egregore (generally
by alteration, or linking, to a pre-existing one). And because an egregore is
necessary for the two first aspects in order to be attuned to the divine planes,
it becomes a closed loop:
• Initiates of a tradition would be able to change their symbolic tables.
but they will usually not undergo such a complex task unless necessary.
• Profanes will need more than one human life to develop their own table.
Unless they have a very inspired character, they will have a hard time
doing it.
This could be summarized as a traditionist/reconstructivist opposition. A
traditionist has the tools but do not have any interest in using them, whereas
a reconstructivist does not have proper tools but wants to work! Finally, one
has to remember that different egregores have different sensibilities to the
three approaches (so depending on the tradition you would study, experience
or philosophy will have a different contributions for the construction of sym-
bolic tables).

16
Q2: Do you mean that Greek and Roman gods are the same?

Mars and Ares seem to be very different from the religious perspective. They
had different temples, and were worshipped with different prayers. How is it
possible that we can use similar symbolism to channel the forces they control.

A2: Depends on your interpretation level.

Remember that in magical working, the astrological interpretation and the

mythological ones inter-penetrates: magic is a mysticism, not a religion with
an established dogma! Consequently, the forces of the seven planets are sym-
bolic, and should not be taken as an exegesis. Magic works with symbolism,
not with dogma, and the purpose of symbolism is to provide a map in order
to explore the spiritual realms. But the map should not be confused with
the truth! Note also that the symbolism can be adapted depending on the
pantheon. For instance, in AS symbolism, the Nard substance is used only
when evoking Hermes Psychopompe.

Q2: Could you give an example of use of these tables?

This is a lot of information. How is this practically used?

A2: The invisibility ring.

In medieval magic, there is a pretty famous method to create an invisibility

ring. It is based on the sacrifice of a weasel whose eye is inserted into a
ring, on which is engraved words of power associated with Mercury. Placing
the eye inside your palm makes you invisible, and you become again visible
when reversing the ring’s position. This is off course a tool of lesser magic, so
the “invisibility” effect is more based on discretion and some kind of astral
hypnosis rather than truly making rays of light pass through your body.
Before any of the reader goes to catch and sacrifice a poor weasel, he
would be advised to check on the table for symbolic equivalents. The table
gives the symbolic meaning of the weasel: it is a Mercury symbol - and the
eye obviously refers to vision and invisibility. A true initiate could easily
replace these symbols by something more appropriate and less bloody. . .

17
 This is one usually ignored strength of symbolic tables: once you know
the symbolism behind a ritual, you can adapt it using tools more readily
available. By comparing tables, you can adapt a ritual from another tradition
to your own (to do so, you also need to respect the core ritual structure of
your tradition - for instance in Aurum Solis, the House of Sacrifice).

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Lesser vs. High Magic

by Jaden F. Ward

Basic Distinctions
What distinguishes lesser and high magic, is that lesser magic uses the usual
world’s laws, while high magic creates these laws. You can have a good
representation of how the world works by looking at the crowd in Shibuya
at the Hachiko Square exit. When the signal becomes green, hundreds of
people run to cross the street - yet no one gets hurt. This miracle comes
for a simple mechanism of convergence, and the simplest path for everyone
is chosen; which can be represented as the solution of a multi-dimensional
equation. If the light was to remain constantly green, then some stable traits
would start to appear. The idea is the same with the law of causality: the
reality is somehow stable, with constant traits. These constant traits exist
because of an interacting equilibrium between all the existing forces. Lesser
magic respects this equilibrium. High magic disrupts this equilibrium, in
order to find a new one: in other words, it “re-writes” the laws of nature
in a certain locality. The problem is that usually, the ability to rewrite the
laws of nature is attributed to high-degree beings: bodhisattvas, pagan gods,
saints/archangels, etc Unless you belong to one of these “clubs”, you cannot
attempt to do it. Here is below a table of the level of power you can reach
with both lesser and high magics.
So, if you do not hold a “god club member’s card”, how can you rewrite
the laws of nature? Here comes the concept of high magic. The idea is that
you will ask the “god club members” to work for you. Unfortunately, they
will only obey to people who:

19
 • Speak to them appropriately, with rituals that they like to hear. This
is called theurgy.

• Ask for something that would not go against the “god club” goals.
One who do not respect these conditions usually faces what is termed
as the “threshold warden” (sometimes also termed “threshold dragon”)
- which is a force of re-equilibration who tends to make the mage “pay”
for his acts of ubris.

As an example, in the Greco-Roman mythology, this warden is the goddess

Nemesis; in the Kabbalah it would be the archangel of Geburah.
From the first condition you can deduce that high magic leaves much less
freedom to the practitioner regarding its style. For instance, if you intend to
evoke the power of a Greek god, you will have to use a Greek ritual (most
probably using the orphic rites). If you intend to evoke a Judeo-Christian
archangel, you will need Judeo-Christian Kabbalistic names of power. And
you need to use rituals that were revealed by the very same entities, usually
old rituals dating back to antiquity (you cannot improvise or use your own
inspiration - unless your inspiration comes from the same divine planes).
From the second condition, you can guess that there are two solutions:
either you obtain a ”god worshipper club member card”, or you must be
blessed. This means that high magic is only accessible to people who have
received an esoteric initiation (they are club members) or to people with a
very developed spirituality (for instance, those who meditate in average more

20
than 6-8 hours per day). As people rarely belong to the second group, let
me introduce the concept of initiation.

Initiation and egregores

Initiation is a process where an initiate attempts to use a high magic ritual
to change the nature of the applicant. The initiate himself received a similar
initiation, with a lineage coming back to original spiritual guides. Theoret-
ically, the original guide was a workaholic saint who meditated around 14
hours per day, could speak directly with the Almighty God Creator, and
thus did receive his own initiation directly from the divine planes. This is
however mythological: usually, a direct chain of initiates can not be traced
up to this first guide - in reality, the true force comes from a disincarnate
being (call it spirit, thought form, energy, or force if you like) called an egre-
gore. The term comes from the book of Enoch, but similar concepts could be
found in Greco-Roman mythology (the Titan Prometheus is a good equiv-
alent). These beings are guides of mankind, and establish a link between
the material planes and the divine ones. The purpose of initiation is that
someone, who is in contact with an egregore, grants acces to the egregore to
someone who is not. The mythical “original initiate” is hence very likely a
mythological representation of the egregore itself. The mythological aspect
has an operative necessity, as it gathers energy and symbolically links the
tradition with the attributes of this first mythological guide, so somehow the
myth is “true” in the subtle planes.
Some authors present the idea of self-initiation. The idea is to get in
contact with an egregore without having to go through the ordeals of esoteric
societies. This can be very helpful to isolated seekers. Unfortunately, there
are stringent limitations to such self initiations:
1. Most of the self-initiation rituals were created by humans - whereas
the rituals should have been created being taken from a preexisting
egregore. Take a great care, and look carefully at the method, does it
involve chanting New Age songs on New Age music? Then this is not
self-initiation, but self-delusion!

2. Avoiding the ordeals means that you avoid most of the training (as
most of the teachings are oral). Did you really think initiates bother
to go through these ordeals just for fun?

21
 3. You may become acknowledged by the egregore, but if you do not have
access to the rituals, of what use would it be? For instance, a huge
amount of material about the Golden Dawn or the Aurum Solis was
published. However, much more unpublished material exist, and, off
course what was not published is the most powerful: publishing rituals
means they become desecrated, and consequently lose much of their
egregoric potency. This is the reason why usually lesser magic is easier
to find than high magic (you will find published lesser magic rituals
with high magic’s theory, but rarely complete and effective high magic
rituals).

4. Most of the high magic rituals are group operations. Belonging to a

group of initiates creates the necessary social organization which can re-
cruit peer mages for a magical operation, especially for the reason that
you need them to be initiated. If you gather a group of self-initiated
persons, belonging to the same egregore. . . Then what is different from
joining an esoteric society? Probably that you are just wasting your
time!

Let we define more precisely some aspects of egregores with a few sen-
tences. First, the positive points:

• They are spiritual guides, and often provide guidance through dreams,
signs, etc.

• They grant access to high magic, without needing to be a “super-

human”. After a while, using their guidance, you are supposed to
become some kind of a super-human.

• They have a role of protection, as they prevent attacks from the thresh-
old dragons, but also because they protect initiates from astral larvas1 .

• They are (mostly) positive beings.

Now, the dark side:

• They are unperfected, like human beings. This means that initiation
is only a first step.
1
as defined in Manifestationem Volume 1 Issue 2

22
 • Concerning the spiritual path, they will only bring the initiate to the
door of heaven, and he will have to do the last step himself. If he fails,
the initiate falls (this is the abysmal fall, described as the main risk
of the left-hand spiritual path) and the egregore partially shares the
initiate’s corruption.

• Corollary to the previous aspect, my intuition is that powerful egregores

are ALL corrupted to some degree; hence you should always keep some
precautions when dealing with them (avoid performing magic when it
feeds their corruptions). They help us to get to the last step, because we
return them the favor (if we succeed in the last step, they get purified).
In other words, egregores guide humans, because they raise this way
some spiritual guides who can in turn guide them.
Finally, one should note that high magic effect can sometimes be ex-
ceptionally observed without the intervention of an egregore, in a “normal”
human being. This tends to happen more often for those who practice lesser
magic, and the context is usually one of high necessity (for instance when
one’s life is in danger, or when it corresponds to one’s destiny).

Discussion
Q1: Do I have to join an initiatic society in oredr to use magic?

It seems like it is a necessary step to join an esoteric society which will

grant access to an egregore.

E1: Not exactly.

You only need an egregore to perform high magic (theurgy), not if you only
care about lesser magic (sorcery). But obviously, the scope of lesser magic
is limited, and does not constitute a complete spiritual path. To the best of
my knowledge, a truly effective self initiation has never been published - but
who knows, someone may develop something worth in the future? Regard-
less, a true self-initiation would not be very cost effective regarding spiritual
progress.
Despite the fact that initiation is useful, some initiatic societies can be
maladapted to your spiritual progress as some follow positive gnosis, some

23
other negative gnosis, etc. Many different sensibilities exist. Some societies
are exclusive and will forbid you from frequenting other groups. Further-
more, some pretender “initiatic” societies are hollow or even misguided. Use
discretion if you intend to join a group. And obviously, avoid groups charg-
ing prohibitive costs, forcing you to participate in grouped sex rituals, and
requesting you to cut all ties with you family and friends: these are cults,
not occult societies.

24