May | 2013 | The Blog of Baphomet

Drawing is a skill which most of us would be familiar with as occultists. Spare and Dali amongst others were accomplished at the task.

So the question arises, how important is the skill of drawing to the practice of the occult?

Looking at history, it is interesting to see at what lengths various religious and political institutions went to suppress and persecute ‘the left’. For example, left handed behavior was strongly discouraged along with creativity and free-thinking. Yet sadly, given their agenda and taking into account the insights provided by neurobiology, they were certainly on to something.

Going Spare

It is generally understood that the profile of our nervous system is determined by what traits we inherit and what we DO. Drawing on a regular basis changes our nervous system, much like meditation. Often there is a belief that you can either draw or you can’t but this is as non-sensical as saying you can’t run because you’re not an athlete. In addition, many people are discouraged from drawing because they don’t make money from the skill, likewise just because you can meditate doesn’t mean you have to make money from it.

Drawing, like meditation, promotes dominance in various parts of the nervous system which are conducive to magick and discouraged by day-to-day activity.

Approaching the Skill of Drawing

The skill of drawing can be divided into three processes:

Random or Automated Drawing
Observational Drawing
Constructive Drawing

The first process would be familiar to anyone who has read Spare or Jan Fries work. You start by drawing aimlessly and produce images un-intentionally. If the skill is used for an intended purpose the intent is applied sub-consciously through sigils.

The second process involves simply copying an image in any degree of precision. This process relies heavily on concentration and the trance-state produced can be likened to the magical-trances outlined in Liber Null.

Thirdly, constructive drawing involves the construction of images with conscious intent. This process relies heavily on the artists “symbol system”.

The second and third processes can be differentiated by understanding that in the second process, the artist is drawing a pineapple, while looking at the pineapple but not thinking about ‘the pineapple’. The artist is focused on the lines which differentiate color, light and shadow. In the third process, the artist would draw a representation, symbol or map of a pineapple without looking at a pineapple (assuming they know what one looks like).

Drawing promotes mental qualities useful to the magician and can provide another valuable avenue to self-discovery.

Further Reading

Edwards, B. (1999) Drawing On The Right Side of The Brain (Rev. And Exp. Ed.)
Rose, C. (2006) The International Review of Neurobiology Vol. 74: The Neurobiology of Painting.
Loomis, A. Successful Drawing.
Dodson, B. (2007) Keys To Drawing With Imagination.
Fries, J. (1992) Visual Magick.

Frater Prospectus

I was recently on top a hill, sitting within a ring of low trees and gorse bushes. The sky over head a classic spring fracture of white clouds, bright blue and sweeping skeins of rain. I’d chosen to invoke an ally, a particular spirit to help in a little practice that I call ‘changing perspectives’.

The process is simple, something I learnt spontaneously as a child. One begins by laying down, focusing on the breath and getting comfortable. On a warm day one might sink into a little sleep and that’s fine. The trick is, on waking to keep the gaze low. Open the eyes, roll onto your belly and look at the earth.

Titanic structures in miniature

There they are, all the little creeping things, the growers, the flourishers, tiny lives which, looked at the right way, take place around huge citadels. In this case the ‘huge citadels’ are bracken fronds. They are around twelve inches long, tipped with unfurling, fractal heads, spirals curled up against spirals, curled up against spirals… They are huge, at least for the tiny lives that pass below. What is the smallest one I can see with the naked eye? I watch a translucent aphid pace the great length of a grass stem.

Letting my gaze rise a little I can see the bracken stems, marching out across the grey-brown matting of last years growth that carpets the ground. Between these proud green towers creatures hum, and buzz and flutter. The bright sun catches their wings and they shine. Fat rain drops, left by one of the recent showers, glint like futurist windows on stalks and leaves.

Now looking higher, towards the gigantic towering trees and birds, great flapping dinosaurs intent on devastating the insect nation. And higher still until my eyes are following the patterns at the leading edge of clouds, and a tiny black mote which is a hawk soaring. I watch it circling upwards until it is lost into the phosphenes of my vision as the bright sun erupts from behind a cloud.

The sun dazzles with its brightness. I bring to mind the fact that I’m on a planet, resting on the side of the earth currently pointing towards a star. And that star is one of countless billons in our galaxy.

Then I open my attention as wide as a can, try to take in everything, to know and feel that I live in a universe whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere found. And that the ‘I’ which I am can travel through these perspectival changes, and is ceaslessly arising as the awareness of all things, from the subatomic to the galactic.

Letting go of these imaginings and settling back to baseline. Allowing the cognative flexibility created by the practice to gently fade into the on-going flow of awareness. Breath, smile.

To conclude this practice I normally recommend some light food and tea eg