steve dee | The Blog of Baphomet

In a recent interview that I did about Chaos Magic and Gnosticism, the interviewer was keen to understand more about the process of ritual creativity that Chaos magicians often engage in. For me personally I am engaged in an on-going journey of exploration, research and poetic inspiration as I seek to make deeper sense of the material that I’m digging into.

Anyhow, I thought I’d provide a recent example of such ritual practice that probably gives you a feel for how we go about such work. Such ritual outlines are not meant to be prescriptive; rather they are serving suggestions to inspire your own innovation and creativity.

The purpose of this ritual was to creative a ritual environment in which the concept of divine wisdom could be explored via the Gnostic figure of Sophia. Via the use of both poetry and meditative technologies, we were seeking new insight regarding holy wisdom and a sense of deep listening as to how future work should proceed.

Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars

Opening with singing bowl rung in the 8 directions.

“We begin in Silence and Space

The realm of the Pleroma

The marriage of Darkness and Light.”

8 Breaths taken together.

“In the pregnant space of reflection

Wisdom is born

Glowing deep blue against the blackness

Silver Star points glow

As the holy Aeon descends

And gives birth to life.

Selah

20 minutes Mindfulness practice – using awareness of the breath as an anchor for awareness and gently surrendering thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations as they arise.

“Wisdom makes manifest

An outflowing of the multiple and the complex

The Craftsman makes the World

Soul glows and breaths:

“I was sent forth from the power,

and I have come to those who reflect upon me,

and I have been found among those who seek after me.

Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,

and you hearers, hear me.

You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves.

And do not banish me from your sight.

And do not make your voice hate me, nor your hearing.

Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or any time. Be on your guard!

Do not be ignorant of me.

For I am the first and the last.

I am the honored one and the scorned one.

I am the whore and the holy one.

I am the wife and the virgin.

I am the mother and the daughter.

I am the members of my mother.

I am the barren one

and many are her sons.

I am she whose wedding is great,

and I have not taken a husband.

I am the midwife and she who does not bear.

I am the solace of my labour pains.

I am the bride and the bridegroom,

and it is my husband who begot me.

I am the mother of my father

and the sister of my husband

and he is my offspring…..

I am the silence that is incomprehensible

and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.

I am the voice whose sound is manifold

and the word whose appearance is multiple.

I am the utterance of my name.”

(Excerpt from Thunder Perfect Mind.)

Trance drumming.

During this ritual we had three drummers all using the technique outlined by Michael Harner, where trance is induced through the use of a consistent drum beat of around 200 beats per minute.

After the trance period and drumming ceases the following words are spoken:

“The many forms beget Joy

But also the forgetting of our original face,

We give thanks for these moments of stillness and remembering!

Wisdom calls:

“Does not wisdom call out?
Does not understanding raise her voice?
²At the highest point along the way,
where the paths meet, she takes her stand;
³beside the gate leading into the city,
at the entrance, she cries aloud:
⁴“To you, O people, I call out;
I raise my voice to all humanity.
⁵You who are simple, gain prudence;
you who are foolish, set your hearts on it.
⁶Listen, for I have trustworthy things to say;
I open my lips to speak what is right.
⁷My mouth speaks what is true,
for my lips detest wickedness.
⁸All the words of my mouth are just;
none of them is crooked or perverse.
⁹To the discerning all of them are right;
they are upright to those who have found knowledge.
¹⁰Choose my instruction instead of silver,
knowledge rather than choice gold,”

(Proverbs 8 1-10.)

Close with three bells.

In my recent post I mentioned the concept of ‘soul making’. This notion appears in a number of contexts. One of the earliest is in the Ireanean theodicy inspired by the work of Saint Irenaeus, the second-century philosopher and theologian. The Ireanean view is that creation happens in two stages. This process requires the existence of suffering and evil, making the world something akin to schoolroom for the soul. The creation of a soul is the work of humans, their aspiration being to become perfect and like God.

Soul Brother

This ritual grows out of a desire to explore these ideas, concepts related to the tension between the (theoretical Platonic) perfect creation and the (apparently) flawed world of the Demiurge. Through this meditation, this trance and these words we have a space to encounter imperfection, suffering, pleasure and those other abstractions that so fascinated the ancient Gnostics.

Soul making also appears as an important concept in the work of psychologist and Jungian analyst James Hillman. The Wikipedia entry for Hillman nicely summarises this:

The poetic basis of mind places psychological activities in the realm of images. It seeks to explore images rather than explain them. Within this is the idea that by re-working images, that is giving them attention and shaping and forming them until they are clear as possible then a therapeutic process which Hillman calls “soul making” takes place. Hillman equates the psyche with the soul and seeks to set out a psychology based without shame in art and culture. The goal is draw soul into the world via the creative acts of the individual, not excluded [from] it in the name of social order. The potential for soul making is revealed by psychic images to which a person is drawn and apprehends in a meaningful way. Indeed the act of being drawn to and looking deeper at the images presented creates meaning – that is, soul.

Thus this ceremony is an encounter with this Gnostic ‘realm of images’ and, critically through drumming, emphasising the encounter as a somatic as well as intellectual event. This is Gnosticism but one that includes, rather than rejects, the world of the flesh. Fathoming suffering and the vicissitudes of life not as the result of a Fall from grace but perhaps as a necessary proving ground for the unfolding of a divine Self.

For the Gnostics, our relationship with our body has not always been an easy one. The problems of pain and impermanence that played such a central role in the development of Gnostic dualism, most likely originated in their experience of the body within the natural world. In previous posts we spent time thinking about how theodicy, or the problem of evil, contributed to the evolution of Gnostic cosmologies. If disease and death demonstrated the imperfection of the demiurge’s realm, then it would seem likely that the strategies of either asceticism or antinomian excess were evidence of a potentially hostile attitude towards the body.

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?

While we may concede that many Gnostics viewed the divine pneumatic spark as being trapped within the material realm, as contemporary magical practitioners exploring what we might learn from them, I believe that it is wise to pay attention to what they did as much as what they may have believed. Often the ‘lived experience’ of what people actually did can help us gain insights into the complex relationship that they had with apparently straightforward ideas.

Dance like the Pleroma’s watching

In the Gnostic scripture “The Acts of John” we have a really interesting description of ritual dance and liturgy that is alleged to have taken place during the last supper:

So he commanded us to make a circle, holding one another’s hands, and he himself stood in the middle…..

I will pipe, dance all of you! Amen….

An eightfold power is singing with us. Amen

The whole universe takes part in the dancing. Amen

He who does not dance, does not know what is being done. Amen.

The Acts of John Section 94-95.

Some scholars believe that this is most likely a ritual text that was part of the style of worship employed by the Johannite community. In seeking to fathom the myth of incarnation, it is hardly surprising that we are met with the possibility of Jesus and the apostles using their bodies to move, both in celebration, and to dissipate the mounting tension of what was to come.

It may seem like a somewhat obvious point to make, but generally as human beings the realisations and ecstasies of the mind and heart bubble over into these bodies we inhabit. Personally I would question the true depth of any revelation that did not impact upon all dimensions of our being.

Even if we chose to limit our attention to phenomena within the Christian tradition, we can consider traditions such as those of the Shakers and the Pentecostals, and the role that movement and dance had as people sought to express a form of gnostic experience that moves through and beyond intellectual insight alone.

As someone exploring the Gnostic material through the less orthodox route of a Chaos Magically inspired form of Witchcraft, I find that dance and improvised movement have been highly beneficial in helping me process what might be going on:

“One of my personal routes to accessing such gnosis has been through the use of dance and shaking states. In seeking to loosen the tensions and defenses that often get located in what Wilhelm Reich described as “body armour”; I often have a sense of a deeper instinctive knowing emerging in and through the body. When I move in response to the music my self-consciousness slowly melts away. This type of “shape-shifting” may well relate to the way in which the body allows us to process aspects of the self that the conscious mind struggles to make sense of. Interesting research is beginning to explore this territory, and it may be the “darker” more instinctive drivers of the early or “reptilian” brain get processed more effectively when we actively engage the body. As I dance I often feel that in my messy embodiment, I am making sense of my early and deepest drives (for more on this see “The Compassionate Mind” by Paul Gilbert and Peter Levine’s work on trauma).” SD, What We Find Ourselves Doing…

For those interested in exploring this territory further I would recommend Bradford Keeney’s book “Shaking Medicine”. Also worth checking out is Alkistis Dimech’s site which provides a brilliant example of a contemporary magician making use of dance and movement.

Ritual Space

The very act of ritual speaks to and through our bodies via symbol and movement, set within space and time. By making use of colour, light and sound we engage the senses, and vibrate words through our flesh. Even the most apparently dualistic Gnostics made use of baptisms and the Eucharist as a way to bring God into the body. Rarely do we rely on cognition alone, rather we anchor experience through the sensual. Perhaps part of the answer lies in bringing a greater degree of awareness to what we experience in the body?

The type of alchemical process that I’m seeking to describe at a microcosmic level is similar in many ways to the dynamic interaction that occurs between the Pleroma, Sophia and the demiurge within Gnostic mythology. However much the Gnostic myths might highlight the dilemmas experienced by inhabiting human form, we must also remain mindful to the reality of a sensual ritual praxis that provided a more creative and lateral approach to exploring how the mysteries of the divine might be experienced right here and right now. Often the rich theatre of a ritual and the items on an altar reveal as much about a tradition’s theology as does a ‘scriptural’ text.

Hopefully such reflections will link in nicely with the third part of this practice series which will look at working with the heart within a Gnostic context.