While people mistakenly believe the new-age pseudoscientific mishmash which is the Kybalion is hermetic, few have looked at Corpus Hermetica to work out what the real Hermetic Principles are. There are far more than seven but here are 11 which I produced, without too much effort (there are many more). 1.      God is One Thing which is unknowable and having built creation within itself. If anything is a division, then it is only an illusion. It contains within itself everything. If in doubt remember that everything is One Thing.  This has a huge impact on those looking for dualities such as Good and Evil for if such dualities are real, they are illusions within God.  So if we can’t know God

The Hermetic tradition is all about Thoth and so words are really important.  However collections of words called stories have a life of their own and and important too. In my novel “When a Tree Falls,” I wrote this about stories, mostly as a joke. However, like many things in that book, it was all true. “It is a secret known only to journalists, novelists, and storytellers that there are only fourteen unique stories in the world. These archetypal stories come from one source. The names, places and material facts of the story might change throughout history, but always the essence is the same. Even stories that twist and turn until you are not sure what the outcome will be will

The idea that Daemons are partly human-made and partly divine appears to have hacked off those who are religious or that believe that Ancient texts do not support the idea. My goal in making these ideas available is to show how magic works, why it does not, and how it is different from religion. To briefly recap, a human cannot connect directly to an invoked spiritual force and unconsciously creates a messenger or Daemon for it based on their perception. The nature and power of the Daemon depend on the human’s ability to tune their ideas to that aspect of the divine force. Humans often mistake their Daemon for divine energy. This happens naturally in religion and is why some of

There is a magical process of connecting to a god, any god, which is nearly scientific and has been a feature of religion without ever being mentioned -- a Daemon. In “Making Imagination” I said that all gods exist but are reflections of a central divine unity which divides itself into seven (or nine) different functions or rays. These functions are given masks by humans which give a Divine form for acting with that human. Organised religion is where humans agree on some of the general nature of these forms and sets common rules but even within that umbrella each person sees their God slightly differently. Pagans were clear on the difference between these masks and the real gods behind them. A

Most modern magical systems feature the use of elements Fire, Water, Air, and Earth without really understanding why. Coupled with the neo-Platonic idea of emanation, which sees creation as the result of an emanation from simplicity to complexity, we appear to have missed something. Yet elements are part of most much even when modern science has rejected them for something better. Neo-Platonism, as seen in the Western occultists’ Cabbalah, makes sense in many ways and has much in common with ancient thought. Life starts from a point, becomes a line and then a triangle, and from a divine triad, the rest of the universe is created ending with the four elements in Malkuth. This serves to create a universe which is

People have been asking me when my “Pagan Abramelin” is coming out for about three years now. The PGM based system with its nod to the Picatrix (and the Golden Dawn)  in finally in its official print run and is packed full of different pagan magical techniques which are designed to contact your Higher Genius. From the back: The Western Mystery Tradition is based on a bedrock of pagan magic, yet too many important developments are over-influenced by post-pagan Judeo-Christian-Islamic dogma. One of these is the concentrated "storming of the gates of heaven" technique known as the Abramelin system, in which the magician attempts to contact a spirit called the Holy Guardian Angel after an intense six- or 18-month programme. In Helios Unbound,

Anyone who has read my book Beyond the Sun will be aware of the importance Rudolf Steiner had to the early Whare Ra and Robert Felkin. Felkin needed Steiner’s Rosicrucian links to provide him with the authority to operate.  Mathers had obtained mythical links to the European Rosicrucian movement which apparently gave him the rights to work higher-level grades within the AO.  Felkin matched this with his meetings with Steiner who had connections to the Rosicrucian orders derived from Alois Mailander. Felkin also obtained “processes” from Steiner (which were exercises) and the “link” ritual which effectively gave him a connection to the Mailander-inspired Rosicrucian movement. However, it has been bought to my attention that various Steiner anthro masonic groups, who also look

For several years there has been an issue for me about writing authentic invocations in the Ancient Greek style.  Going through the Greek Magical Papyri there would appear to be a formula but it has become a little corrupted due to mixing with Egyptian and Hebrew formula.  While there is nothing wrong with using the PGM invocations, this is a little limiting. What I want is a traditional formula which can be used to write my own invocations. Fortunately, academia has managed just that. According to Ljuba Merlina Bortolani’s Magical Hymns from Roman Egypt invocations generally follow a three-fold pattern.  This pattern might be “taken as read” as some of the PGM spells might lack different levels because the copyist could not