Beware of PGM money making scams making monkeys of you

by Nick Farrell - 0

After years of being ignored by occultists, the Greek Magical Papyri have become fashionable, but have equally attracted the interest of money-making scammers. Unfortunately, such types appear uninterested in the magical techniques in PGM and more about making money from magically dumbed-down products. It was bought to my attention that a new age "prosperity box" is selling for $250 without shipping. It has been repositioned by its maker and given some PGM marketing to help it shift at that price. For those who came in late, prosperity boxes are a New Age magical tool where a box (typically covered with Jupiter sigils) is fed with money and makes the magician rich. Whether it works or not is irrelevant; no prosperity box

The weirdness of Populus

by Nick Farrell - 0

The geomantic symbol of Populus is perplexing for geomancers because of the effects it has on the court.  Until Christopher Cattan penned The Geomancie in 1591 there was a body of thought which said that if Populus was the Judge you should ignore the reading (something Cattan acknowledged). Cattan disagreed and included it among not only his charts but also his sample readings.  Modern geomancers, at least in Europe have followed this but seem to find it difficult to extract a meaning behind Populus as a Judge.  Some say it is an indication that nothing is happening. Others insist it causes delays. When we look at the meanings that Cattan gives to a Populus judge, something clearer emerges.  Like the moon, Populus

More on Cattan’s judges

by Nick Farrell - 0

I realised that some of the court tables that Cattan gave out in his The Geomancie book are wrong either by design or accident. My theory is that he realised that lazy people would just look at the tables rather than see his rather clever theories for calculating the court. The theories were that the Judge always tells you if the situation is going to be good, bad or meh. If the judge agrees with the right witness the answer is yes and if he agrees with the left witness the answer is no. While it seems straightforward, it is not as the section on the court does not cover what Cattan means by “agreement.” Fortunately, if we read the whole

Cattan’s Geomancy Court

by Nick Farrell - 0

The 16th-century French soldier Christopher Cattan is hugely important when looking at Geomancy. His book The Geomancie codified the astrological meaning of Geomancy for hundreds of years. But, unfortunately, his book has been largely ignored by many modern geomancers who are more influenced by shortened forms developed by Crowley, Regardie and Franz Hartman. After finishing Star and Stone, which develops Geomancy into a modern framework (including looking at Cattan), I noticed Cattan's interpretation of the Left and Right Witness and Judge (the court) were different from modern geomancers. If followed, this would give different results to a reading. Cattan was not interested in chart perfection (or rotating the chart) and considered that the court was vital to getting a "yes" or "no"

Real and Toxic magicians

by Nick Farrell - 7

And so another Facebook war has broken out -- this time between Aaron Leitch and Alison Chicosky.  For those not in the know, Leitch is a highly trained Golden Dawn magician who has published several books and focuses mainly on the Solomonic tradition. Chicosky appears to be a self-trained witch who makes expensive Solomonic  talismans, bills herself as a PGM scholar and claims her magic “always works.” You might see her or her followers on Reddit touting her abilities. Chicosky hit the headlines recently by claiming that Leitch was a “toxic leader” because he blocked her on (his) Facebook, a group in which she had been a member for four years. She claimed it was “because I asked [Leitch] a question

Pat Zalewski signs up to Lord Manticore House

by Nick Farrell - 0

Noted Golden Dawn writer Pat Zalewski has signed up to Lord Manticore House to publish an exclusive second edition of his Secret Inner Order Teachings of the Golden Dawn. Lord Manticore House is a 21st-century author-driven print-on-demand publishing house for occult and esoteric titles. It has a unique vision in that it specialises in advanced magical books, non-commercial titles or books that have been abandoned by commercial publishers and are challenging to find. When it was first released, Secret Inner Order Teachings of the Golden Dawn was a significant addition to the Golden Dawn corpus and made available second-order Golden Dawn magic material which was unavailable to those who at that point considered Israel Regardie as the only source of Golden Dawn magical material. The

Star and Stone is out

by Nick Farrell - 2

Astrological Geomancy was once the mainstay of the Western Mystery Tradition as a form of divination only matched by Astrology. For centuries, court magicians used Geomancy to advise the crowned heads of Europe on matters related to war, marriages, foreign and economic policy. Most of the top magicians of the Renaissance and Cunning people used Geomancy as a quicker and more easy-to-use form of divination. Sadly, Geomancy, along with Astrology, fell from widespread use in the 19th century. While Astrology was restored to prominence and modernised in the 20th century, its Geomancy council remained an esoteric curiosity. Even within the 20th century, magical groups like the Golden Dawn and Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) rarely enthusiastically embraced Geomancy. The feeling was that

Mathers Last Secret gets 10th anniversary edition

by Nick Farrell - 5

The second edition of Mathers Last Secret is out ten years after the first edition was released. For those not in the know,  Mathers Last Secret contained all the rituals and teachings of Sam Mather's AO temple in London which was run by the sex magician Dr Edmund William Berridge. The temple was formed after the schism with the Order of the Golden Dawn and was briefly the spiritual home of Alistair Crowley. The material was collected by a member of the group and kept until his death, where they were mislabeled and end up in a Wiccan museum. The book is important because it contains the actual rituals of the AO which turned out to be surprisingly close to the original

Behold: The Art and Practice of Gematria by Bethsheba Ashe

by Nick Farrell - 1

Gematria is a little like Geomancy in that it is a side of the Western Mystery Tradition which has fallen from favour mostly because it requires students to think. If you look at the 19th and Early 20th centuries, magicians were fascinated by number codes and using them to solve spiritual questions. This was possible because, before the development of Arabic numerals, letters like Greek and Hebrew meant numbers and were used instead. To the Hebrews, who saw the letters of their alphabet as sacred and created by God, it meant that texts could be interpreted through the meanings of their numbers. Of course, this led to huge abuse and murders of the text to get meanings that were suitable for

The difference between visualisation and invoking

by Nick Farrell - 2

With the rise of New Age thought, the concept of visualisation has taken prominence within magic which it does not completely deserve. One of the Facebook groups I was involved with had someone who insisted that there was no need to do all this messy innovation and set up physical circles with expensive equipment, all you need to do is visualise. In some ways he was correct. There is a long tradition of using visualisation in magic and some in the Western Mystery Tradition have walked away from physical work in favour of techniques such as pathworking and inner work. In other ways, he was wrong, because like most things in an argument of extremes, both dualities are correct and the truth

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