Seeking A Mentor Options

I was wondering if anyone here teaches the system to individual students, I am new to this system but have felt a strong interest or pull if you will to get involved in it, my main problem is that I don't have any of the books and at present cannot afford to buy them, and I have read that the pdf versions have mispronunciations? In any event I would ordinarily not persue something under these circumstances but I am feeling a strong attraction to the system that I cannot explain, as I have never worked with it at all.

I have spent time with some other systems such as Initiation into Hermetics and Donald Michael Kraigs Modern Magick, and while they did give me some good theoretical insight into the world of magick, I just never felt a connection, my work under those systems just felt lifeless and clinical at times, so here I am, seeking a teacher and I will await any replies to this topic, I would also like to know why I feel such a pull toward the system practically out of nowhere if anyone can offer an explanation.

Wow. Good job helping him out guys. With all the information you just rattled off, I might just get myself a Necronomicon too. (Anyone seen the Evil Dead movies? LOL)

Maybe we should start a Necronomicon club, and decide to open this or that gate week by week and report our experiences. Might cause the end of the world, but it would be fun while it lasted...

I was also wondering what kind of bowl you guys use for the burning of offerings, do you use a clay bowl? And when you are instructed to burn bread or nettle you just use a match or lighter? Also when it comes to the offering of fresh bread do you guys just use regular loaf bread that you buy from the store or do you actually make it fresh? Sorry about all of the questions I am sure you all have answered them before many times.

Oh and I checked panpipes.com and yes they do have nettle very cheap prices, thank you for the site monkman it seems to have just about everything one would need and at great prices.

Awesome, yeah, panpipes is great in the incense/herbs/oils department.

I don't think you need to have any specific type of material for an offering bowl, though clay is inexpensive and easy to come by on ebay...factors which also probably made it a popular choice of material in ancient Sumeria. Some magical tools do use specific materials that line up with elemental or other attributions; I doubt this has anything to do with it in this case, but if you're worried clay is cheap.

Use a match or a lighter, unless one or the other bothers you too much. I started doing magick with matches because it felt more "old fashioned" and therefore authentic or something, but switched to using a lighter when I ran out of matches. There is no difference, fire is fire.

Hmmm...well...I wouldn't use a loaf of Wonder bread as an offering. Many stores have a "fresh baked" section where they sell loaves of bread for a few bucks that they baked that morning, so I would try that. Learning to bake bread is very easy though if you want to go that route. What probably matters most is that one is using a nice loaf of bread.

I would suggest sticking to whatever the book calls for. That way if things don't go the way they are supposed to, you can know that it wasn't because you didn't have the correct tools. And in some books, the various tools are specific and intended for some kind of protection. Metals and various plants, etc., have been long associated with particular uses, and substituting other materials may either produce no effects, or may altar the outcome of the ceremonies in ways you don't want.

Start altering the ceremonies after you have enough experience and knowledge with them as they are, and have had the opportunity to start inquiring of the entities involved personally how much leeway there is - and then keep in mind that they might prefer you be less protected or otherwise in charge.

A copper dagger, a copper crown, an earthen vessel (clay or stone), fresh bread (it takes very little ingredients to make bread, and it is not difficult, and you can make a small amount just for this purpose for less than a dollar per loaf), and a little bit of space is not a lot to ask. Until you get up to the need for gold and silver, most everything in the system is easily acquired. Look for sheets of copper for the dagger and the crown. You can by a rectangular sheet of 'craft' copper thick enough to use as a dagger for $20 or so online (plus a $5 metal file and a $20 set of metal sheers that you can use for other projects), and the same place will sell thinner sheets for less money that can be used to create the crown (which you can secure into a circular shape with an awl driven through in the back in three or four holes that you can use the same metal file from the dagger project to file down).

If you want to explore the system, then take the time to get the appropriate materials. If it takes a little longer to do it right, it will be worth it if you get what you want out of it.

peace

In fact I am attempting to get everything as precise as I can, however I have read some posts from various users here that suggest certain substitutions are not harmful, I cannot imagine that if I am being urged to involve myself in the system, that I would be begrudged for not having every single thing down to the most exacting detail. For example I got the idea of using a paper mache mask as the crown, from reading one of Ashnooks posts, and I understand that he is something of an authority on the system.

If what I have is not suitable and does not yield good results I will simply set the system aside until such a time that I can afford to be that precise in my workings.

I would suggest sticking to whatever the book calls for. That way if things don't go the way they are supposed to, you can know that it wasn't because you didn't have the correct tools. And in some books, the various tools are specific and intended for some kind of protection. Metals and various plants, etc., have been long associated with particular uses, and substituting other materials may either produce no effects, or may altar the outcome of the ceremonies in ways you don't want.

Start altering the ceremonies after you have enough experience and knowledge with them as they are, and have had the opportunity to start inquiring of the entities involved personally how much leeway there is - and then keep in mind that they might prefer you be less protected or otherwise in charge.

A copper dagger, a copper crown, an earthen vessel (clay or stone), fresh bread (it takes very little ingredients to make bread, and it is not difficult, and you can make a small amount just for this purpose for less than a dollar per loaf), and a little bit of space is not a lot to ask. Until you get up to the need for gold and silver, most everything in the system is easily acquired. Look for sheets of copper for the dagger and the crown. You can by a rectangular sheet of 'craft' copper thick enough to use as a dagger for $20 or so online (plus a $5 metal file and a $20 set of metal sheers that you can use for other projects), and the same place will sell thinner sheets for less money that can be used to create the crown (which you can secure into a circular shape with an awl driven through in the back in three or four holes that you can use the same metal file from the dagger project to file down).

If you want to explore the system, then take the time to get the appropriate materials. If it takes a little longer to do it right, it will be worth it if you get what you want out of it.

peace

In fact I am attempting to get everything as precise as I can, however I have read some posts from various users here that suggest certain substitutions are not harmful, I cannot imagine that if I am being urged to involve myself in the system, that I would be begrudged for not having every single thing down to the most exacting detail. For example I got the idea of using a paper mache mask as the crown, from reading one of Ashnooks posts, and I understand that he is something of an authority on the system.

If what I have is not suitable and does not yield good results I will simply set the system aside until such a time that I can afford to be that precise in my workings.

A balance needs to be struck between practicing magick according to the text and working within the boundaries of one's limitations in the modern world. Some items, like the book itself obviously, can't be done without. In other cases, it is acceptable to substitute (or even omit) the tools used in ritual.

Probably the best general rule on this is to understand the purpose of the various tools, gestures, and accessories going into a ritual; as long as the rituals remain intact, with all objects maintaining their purpose, there shouldn't be a problem.

I think the BIGGER issue here is whether or not we become too anxious that "something will go wrong" or that "we won't be doing it right" if the ritual isn't copied from the manual to a T. I would also be wrong to say that one shouldn't be careful about following the instructions, but I don't think a goal of "perfect emulation" is sufficient to ensure that the ceremonies will function as they were intended. Understanding the ritual itself is key first and foremost.

I think the BIGGER issue here is whether or not we become too anxious that "something will go wrong" or that "we won't be doing it right" if the ritual isn't copied from the manual to a T. I would also be wrong to say that one shouldn't be careful about following the instructions, but I don't think a goal of "perfect emulation" is sufficient to ensure that the ceremonies will function as they were intended. Understanding the ritual itself is key first and foremost.

I think that perhaps there is an element of cultural empathy involved as well. These rituals were, supposedly, created by summerians, or possibly babylonians depending on whose time line you're reading. These are both cultures who believed in these gods in a very real way, and did not believe that those all powerful beings would appreciate the 'effort' to execute their holy rituals properly and bestow their boon on the righteous heart who calls them. Like many cultures of the time, religion and law were the same thing. Magic as part of a religion had very specific laws and taboos to be observed, and not deviated from by a hair. It's fairly likely that if the Necronomicon text did originate in summeria, the common person is not supposed to even read it, much less use the rituals contained in it - that would be for the holy men of that age to do, and they would not have allowed just anyone to do it.

Understanding the ritual is impossible - not just difficult - if you don't dig into the culture as well, and with these cultures there's not a lot to dig into, so you have to begin looking at other surrounding cultures that we know more about, and then start understanding the mindset of the age, etc.

If you're going to approach this book as though Marduk is listening to your calls, as though Inanna really did descend into the underworld and return, as if Tiamat very well may swallow you up; that is, as a manual of spiritual AND magical practice, then treat it the way the summerians would have. That's what Marduk expects of his priests. If the cost to the individual hoping to get something from the book is an extra $100 - My goetia quest cost nearly $2000 as a comparison, this book IS a minimalist approach in the grand scheme - not just to avoid things 'going wrong' but as a way of showing the all knowing entities it is supposed to connect you to, then isn't it a little disrespectful to try it off the cuff with 'whatever I can manage' first, and then fulfill the requirements later on if that doesn't pan out?

The copper used in the dagger of inanna, for instance, was, to the summerian's, probably not just a convenient material for them - copper was precious, getting it was difficult, people DIED mining copper, and kings demanded it by the cartful to make valuable objects, religious icons, etc. Gold was reserved for actual representations of deities and the adornments of kings - because kings were considered incarnations of gods. There are virtues to copper that are considered to be reflective of it's subtle nature. A clay construct or wooden knife painted coppery red is not the same thing.

Ashnook and Edunpanna have gone through the book back to front a thousand times probably, and both consider themselves priests of Enki, both of them have walked the gates and worked with the names. Neither has much of anything to show for it, both talk a lot about crazy astral battles, tearing up people's souls, etc. I haven't met ashnook personally, but I've known a lot of occultists, some a little on the new agey side, some crystal toting hippies, and some very serious about their work. The most successful and reliable always seem to be the ones that take the culture behind the magic seriously.

If you're going to work some kind of poorly constructed magical tradition like Golden Dawn Hermetica, Chaos Magik, etc., then by all means add in and take out whatever you want, those are systems not intended to actually produce the kinds of miraculous things ancient magicians and priests expected. And you can still get something from those systems. If you're going to summon a deadly watcher, walk the gate of Inanna, and invoke one of the fifty names, you should approach the system with the kind of seriousness those things imply.

I worked the Necronomicon, it worked for me, I put it down. My experiences do not coincide with Ashnook and Edunpanna's. What I experienced with it was far from the flavor that surrounds it due to Lovecraft and the media, but was not pleasant at all in any case. The summerians and babylonians were a brutal, severe pair of cultures, and their magic and religion are equally as severe and brutal. Take that into consideration.

peace

War!

Sorry to see that you agree with Imperial Arts on the issue of materials. Apparently, the rest of us aren't doing real magick, and I laugh at that.

...and for all of your emphasis on "cultural sensitivity," I find it interesting that Sumeria and Babalon are condemned as brutal and severe peoples with an equally severe religion! I don't recall their myths being any more brutal than any other group of people. And surely you have read about the feats of civilization, including stable housing and nutrition, that reached the average man in these cultures? And what about the great works of art and the feats of learning and science that these groups were able to achieve? They were hardly savage! But oh, how the white man has learned to demonize the brutal and unknown "savage" of the other world! What a convenient blank slate for us magicians to use to project our darkest fantasies! Vagrant, I'm surprised at you, for this and for the dig at the Golden Dawn and Kaos magic, apparently some paths are better than others. Or did the ancient powerful magicians from the days of yore also look down on other groups and their gods? Actually, that's right, they did compare the power of their gods to those of other people to assure their power and superiority...and I suppose this is a necessary prerequisite as well?

I'm not convinced that the Necronomicon is an authentic document dating from the Sumerians/Babylonians in any case. Though I feel sorry for any god who can't keep up with the currency and materials of the day, requesting an old bronze dagger instead of titanium!

This post has been edited by monkman418: Jan 31 2011, 09:13 PM

Sorry to see that you agree with Imperial Arts on the issue of materials. Apparently, the rest of us aren't doing real magick, and I laugh at that.

As far as the Necronomicon goes, in the original version you are told that the 50 Names of Marduk are available for conjuration once you have entered his gate.

That would require, at the very least, that you had conjured the Watcher and passed the five previous gates. Assuming you did nothing else and were simply zipping through the system, this would take several months, and the process is described as something to require substantially more time and effort so that you acquire spells, powers, knowledge etc from each of those spheres. By the time you get to the Names, you've done quite a bit and the service of those powers are a well-earned privilege.

Compare that to the follow-up book, the Necronomicon Spellbook, in which no such instruction is given at all. The 50 Names are presented in a format it would be hard to simplify further, and the whole book seems aimed at total beginners. The idea that you might be involved in a complicated occult system is an afterthought, and the "testimonies" of the original volume are treated as the ravings of a lunatic.

So do you need to do all that work to invoke those names? No.
Are you missing an important part of the system by not doing all of the work? Yes.
Would that omission affect your results in using the names? Probably.

If you want to determine whether a difference exists between the altered form of a ceremony (this one or any other) and that of the original, IMO it makes sense to first have some experience of the original. You might be doing "real magic" otherwise in a million different ways, and it might work out very well for you, but it's not going to be the Necronomicon or give you any direct appreciation for that work. The Necronomicon might be total crap or it might indeed be "the most dangerous black book of the western world," but there's no way to speak from experience on the matter if the whole process is chopped apart, no matter what the excuse.

Coca Cola continued using the "Can't beat the real thing!" slogan long after the formula dropped its unprocessed coca leaves in 1904 and then replaced sugar with HFCS in 1980. Sure it's still a bubbly black liquid of dubious nutritious value, but it's substantially different from the original and we are not in a position to make valid comparisons without experience of those originals. This may be a poor analogy, but I hope at least you will understand that by insistence on well-managed experiments that I am not intending to proclaim that magic must be drawn precisely from ancient literature in order to be effective.

This is an excellent argument, thank you Imperial Arts.

Would that omission affect your results in using the names? Probably.

And here is the weak point (of Vilhjalmr's argument as well). If one called upon one of the names of Marduk and received precisely those material results that were asked for, how would you even measure those results against anything that would be achieved by the "proper background"?

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If you want to determine whether a difference exists between the altered form of a ceremony (this one or any other) and that of the original, IMO it makes sense to first have some experience of the original. You might be doing "real magic" otherwise in a million different ways, and it might work out very well for you, but it's not going to be the Necronomicon or give you any direct appreciation for that work. The Necronomicon might be total crap or it might indeed be "the most dangerous black book of the western world," but there's no way to speak from experience on the matter if the whole process is chopped apart, no matter what the excuse.

If a person gets the results sought by using parts of a chopped-up Necronomicon, it still seems important for you to make an assertion that it is "not" the Necronomicon, or that those results pail in comparison to the original. Why? You can say that such a procedure uses only parts of the Necronomicon, or that the procedure deviates from the steps laid out in the Necronomicon. These statements would be factual and true. But it's still using Necronomicon. And if we are measuring success by material outcome, it seems that there would be other motivations involved in needing to tell others that any other procedures do not appreciate the system. Certainly, share the methods you use, but why make a point that other methods are lesser?

Careful and well-managed experiments depend on the proper documentation of the procedures, process notes, and outcomes of any given experiment. I think it is unfair to imply that all experiments that deviate from the text are not careful or well-managed so long as the procedures are properly noted. Perhaps the experiment will fail, or the magician will concoct an explosion, but the integrity of the operation itself is not compromised so long as everything that went into the experiment was documented.

The proper source of comparison is to a set of results, not to another method. This argument in general reminds me of how a certain group of Chinese Buddhists told myself and my Korean teacher that we were not practicing Buddhism, since the Korean Buddhists had deviated from the Chinese teaching centuries ago. Obviously I do not have the personal authority of persons who have devoted their lifetime to a set of spiritual practices, but hopefully you understand my analogy here. It's all Buddhism, and it's all Necronomicon, and I think there are other reasons (such as wanting to claim authority, though I don't know in your case) that make it important to assert that deviations aren't valid in some way. As long as the experiment is properly documented and the desired results are obtained, why not call it Necronomicon?

This post has been edited by monkman418: Feb 6 2011, 03:23 PM

If you are conducting an experiment for yourself, I don't see any need to keep a record with papers and documentation. It probably couldn't hurt, but the work can be done without it.

Before going any further into this, I should mention that I've never explored the 50 Names of Marduk and have no basis for comparison between what happens one way or another. I came into this discussion after seeing a reference to myself, and my contention here is purely a general comment on the nature of occult experiments with no thought at all toward any element of the Necronomicon.

You can say a Mass over some crackers and wine in a real church, and it is not Catholicism even if it is still Christian. I know Reform Jews who love to eat bacon, and who work Saturdays, and to many Jews these folks are missing the point of Judaism even if they are still acknowledged as sincere in their faith. Adherents of Caribbean traditions tend to be very adamant about the idea that without the proper initiations and procedures, you are either going to get nothing or you are going to be sorry, yet plenty of people draw the sigils of those traditions and report success. All the same, those non-traditional sorcerers have no leg to stand on when speaking of the real thing: they can only speak for their own experience.

More directly, you are not in a position to say what is or isn't lost in stripping the Necronomicon of its processes. Maybe there is some added benefit to be gained from the "real" thing that makes the Necronomicon Spellbook approach look laughably inadequate, or maybe the simplified method really is just as good if not better. I figure if the material exists, yet you can get the same results without any of the initiations and rituals and never miss a thing otherwise, they might as well be lost and forgotten as worthless curiosities. My point is that there is no way to tell without experience in the matter, and who can be found that actually has experience of this sort?

Personally I would have thought that without being able to locate anyone out there who does the Necronomicon rites with the celibacy and all of that, hand-writing the text and following the gates as it claims is so important in the book itself, that there would be more interest in exploring things as they are described. It seems that 99% of occultists know exactly why everything is done or used in the rituals, since there is always the "you can change it if you understand it" excuse. Apparently everyone understands everything! I would have expected to find more interest in seeing how things go when done the right way, rather than an immediate desire to create bastardized copies.

If you are conducting an experiment for yourself, I don't see any need to keep a record with papers and documentation. It probably couldn't hurt, but the work can be done without it.

We're going to have different approaches then. I hold the magical journal as the most important and indispensable tool in ceremonial magick. It may not be necessary in order to practice magick, but if our bases of comparison are the procedures and results of an experiment then it seems only necessary to record these details.

It appears that you make the grimoire itself the basis of comparison, which is a fine method to use, but that method doesn't automatically dismiss other methods so long as they are properly documented.

Before going any further into this, I should mention that I've never explored the 50 Names of Marduk and have no basis for comparison between what happens one way or another. I came into this discussion after seeing a reference to myself, and my contention here is purely a general comment on the nature of occult experiments with no thought at all toward any element of the Necronomicon.

I'm glad you picked up this thread, because you always have many good insights to share and express yourself well. In fact, I had hoped to prod you to respond with my prior comment. I think this is an extremely important discussion to have. The Necronomicon is not a book I work with even semi-regularly, but I think it is a good text to use as the basis of this discussion.

You can say a Mass over some crackers and wine in a real church, and it is not Catholicism even if it is still Christian. I know Reform Jews who love to eat bacon, and who work Saturdays, and to many Jews these folks are missing the point of Judaism even if they are still acknowledged as sincere in their faith. Adherents of Caribbean traditions tend to be very adamant about the idea that without the proper initiations and procedures, you are either going to get nothing or you are going to be sorry, yet plenty of people draw the sigils of those traditions and report success. All the same, those non-traditional sorcerers have no leg to stand on when speaking of the real thing: they can only speak for their own experience.

Then the argument is about who gets to hold the flag of tradition or not. As far as the Catholics and Orthodox Jews go, they want "real" Christianity or Judiasm to be synonymous with their organized tradition, and they find it important to denounce everything that deviates from the protocols of the group. I don't have a problem with Roman Catholics wanting to strictly define what practices Roman Catholics do and do not perform. But even beyond saying what "is or isn't" an authorized Catholic or Orthodox Jewish practice, they want to extend their purview of authority to other groups that are comfortable with the fact that they have split off from the endorsed practices. And the motivation, as far as I can tell, an attempt to try to define the boundaries of a group's entitivity in order to exclude others from claiming privilege through their own work. It's like the Chinese Buddhists claiming that the Korean Buddhists are not 'real' Buddhists because they deviated from the teaching, even if the Korean Buddhists reach nirvana it isn't good enough.

From what you have claimed in your introduction to this forum, you are the "sole legitimate heir" of the grimoires. Perhaps your tradition is to keep to the methods of the book itself, and that's a legitimate pursuit and point of view, all power to your desire to emulate magick according to your interpretation of the most authentic practice. But why claim that other magicians are not practicing Necronomicon so long as they are honest about how they are using the book?

Of course, I would welcome any specific criticisms on methods, especially since you tend to have such sharp insights on these matters...that would be something entirely different.

More directly, you are not in a position to say what is or isn't lost in stripping the Necronomicon of its processes. Maybe there is some added benefit to be gained from the "real" thing that makes the Necronomicon Spellbook approach look laughably inadequate, or maybe the simplified method really is just as good if not better. I figure if the material exists, yet you can get the same results without any of the initiations and rituals and never miss a thing otherwise, they might as well be lost and forgotten as worthless curiosities. My point is that there is no way to tell without experience in the matter, and who can be found that actually has experience of this sort?

The basis of an experiment is the experiment itself and all of the conditions going into it. Without a willingness or interest to thoroughly document all experiments conducted, I would especially understand your insistence on adherence to the text of the grimoire itself as the basis of comparison. But without documenting an experiment, no one would be in a position to say what aspects of the Necronomicon were required or not, because nothing would be tested against a record. Especially as I have progressed in magick, I have found that I made mistakes that either deviated from my own error in reading the text or that were caused by my own misunderstanding of the practice, and the documentation of my past methods has proved essential. This given, it seems just as legitimate to me to practice magick by pulling it apart as it is by keeping it together.

Personally I would have thought that without being able to locate anyone out there who does the Necronomicon rites with the celibacy and all of that, hand-writing the text and following the gates as it claims is so important in the book itself, that there would be more interest in exploring things as they are described. It seems that 99% of occultists know exactly why everything is done or used in the rituals, since there is always the "you can change it if you understand it" excuse. Apparently everyone understands everything! I would have expected to find more interest in seeing how things go when done the right way, rather than an immediate desire to create bastardized copies.

I draw the authority of my work from the integrity of my experimental procedures, which are documented from beginning to end and not based on the afterthoughts of a personal experience or the safety of an automatic claim to legitimacy based on adherence to a text. Mimicking a set of instructions does not automatically convey true understanding or legitimacy, especially if the procedures and results of those experiments are not documented such as will give a clear record of what does and doesn't work. A series of experiments take place over the course of many years, and it is far fetched to expect anyone to keep the details of all the work conducted in their head. I do not know everything, but I know how to ask questions with my experiments and how to gauge results based on methods. My understanding changes based on my results, and is in a state of constant evolution, a hypothesis tested and retested.

You seem to think that I am calling for laziness and a willy-nilly approach, and this is hardly the case. It may be true in that most practitioners dismiss methods altogether, again this is not what I am seeking to promote here.

While I make an argument against the text as a source of authority, I think it is important to note that I'm not dismissing using the text. Part of the reason I find this discussion so humorous is for the reason that I tend to strictly perform the methods that I do take most seriously. That given, I do not hold texts as the standard of comparison in and of themselves.

Again, I hold the documentation of all procedures as essential. And this is my opinion...it isn't important for me to say who is or isn't doing the "most real" Necronomicon. What is important is whether or not people know what they are doing and what those results are. I applaud your willingness to invest time and energy in emulating the practices of the grimoires, especially since you obviously have gained a great deal of real knowledge and understanding, documentation or not. And I hope you continue in your willingness to share your experience of the grimories. But I think your priorities are a bit off if the text is your only source of authority.

This post has been edited by monkman418: Feb 7 2011, 09:58 PM

When I began experiments with the Goetia, I was the only living person who had done such a thing, and I am the first person on record to have performed the actual Goetia ceremony. Correct me if I am in error, but it seems that my accounts are the only such records that exist in print, whereas every other version makes some alteration of the method and the overwhelming majority include no practical records whatsoever. The handful of people who have taken up that particular art in its full format have done so upon inspiration from my records, and so far as I am aware none have made nearly so much progress with it, hence my self-appointed (and somewhat tongue-in-cheek) title as its sole legitimate heir.

Yet for all that, there are many thousands of people who draw this and that element from the Goetia - the book itself, mind you, not "goetia" as some generic sort of occult practice - and then claim to have knowledge in the subject. What knowledge can they truly claim, having taken a sigil here and there, or a circle, or some other alteration for which they cannot account except with an excuse? They might be mighty magicians indeed, but they have no experience of the Goetia. I have heard by way of rumor alone (which is of course prone to error) that some others who have taken my example, the "by the book" approach, have found that such a method does indeed work in the way it is supposed to work and that there is a significant difference to be discovered only by experiment. If they exist, these folks can speak on the Goetia, and others must be content to speak about something else with several common elements.

There are also people who have followed the book, or apparently so, and found nothing as a result. Magic isn't science, but for what it was worth those folks have approached the subject in a scientific manner. They are in a position to evaluate the subject on their own terms, not on mine or upon the word of some paperback author or occult guru. A failed experiment is also a valid experiment!

As noted in my book of records (the results section, for Agares), the first experiments were not recorded at all. I wasn't seeking peer review, I was trying to find out if it worked. Discussion with my wife was my way of keeping a record at that time, and due to the complicated nature of the results she encouraged me to make a thorough written account thereafter. Among the magicians I do hold in high esteem, none are widely known as magicians and none keep records of their occult work.

Before anything else, I want to be clear that I am not denouncing anyone's occult work on account of failure to follow the rules. But I do say that without actually following the rules of a given system, they have no experience of the system. If their system has no rules, or they make it up on their own, that is wonderful! It is a delight to see people create something effective without needing to rip off sigils and conjuration formats from ancient literature. The world needs more magicians like that, and it is toward that end that I am probing the old literature, under the assumption that by thoroughly exploring the older methods we can get a clear idea of what magic can do and how it operates without having to make it up as we go along.

Whether you keep a record or not, the system described in the Necronomicon is essentially an experiment. Maybe it works, maybe not. Maybe it's all very necessary and there are dire consequences if you fail to follow it perfectly (it says giant demons will eat all the sheep in your country!), and maybe you can just scribble a seal on paper and say the magic word. No matter what you are able to manifest with the abbreviated approach, it gives no experience in the original system. I would caution this person "seeking a mentor" to understand that fact, and to recognize that when he finds a disciple of Enki to gauge whether or not that person meets his expectations of one who knows the system thoroughly, or whether it is one who had dismissed the majority of its teachings.

There are definitely places where interpretation of the text comes into play. Several of the pages appear to be out of order, especially in the Book of Calling and the two Watcher conjurations, and obviously "olieribos" and "aglaophotis" are obscure or nonexistent. The Copper Dagger of Inanna, by its usage, appears to be more like a wand than a dagger, and one would need to decide whether to make it flat and sharp or maybe three-sided and pointy with a ball on the end. Maybe the deities on the altar are Wiccan gods, and maybe they are Nuit and Hadit, and all of that is left to interpretation, but to omit them entirely is to fail to perform the experiment.

It might be a fine experiment. It might be scientific. It might be fifty meticulously performed double-blind tests including the full gamut of scientific processes, recorded in triplicate by seventeen qualified observers with a peer-review to follow, but unless the experiment is done with the Necronomicon itself, the results will not show what's up with the Necronomicon. They show the results of your own work. That might be fine for you, and fine for someone else, but for someone who wants to know about the Necronomicon, it's off the mark.

You'll never know what happens when you sacrifice eleven people to Hubur with a sword until you try!
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This post has been edited by Imperial Arts: Feb 8 2011, 12:13 AM

It might be a fine experiment. It might be scientific. It might be fifty meticulously performed double-blind tests including the full gamut of scientific processes, recorded in triplicate by seventeen qualified observers with a peer-review to follow, but unless the experiment is done with the Necronomicon itself, the results will not show what's up with the Necronomicon. They show the results of your own work. That might be fine for you, and fine for someone else, but for someone who wants to know about the Necronomicon, it's off the mark.

This makes no logical sense. The experiment is with the Necronomicon (or whatever it is we're using). How does an experiment based on Necronomicon fail to show anything about the Necronomicon? I'm scratching my head on this one, because apparently you're saying that science itself has no meaning.

Magic isn't science, but for what it was worth those folks have approached the subject in a scientific manner. They are in a position to evaluate the subject on their own terms, not on mine or upon the word of some paperback author or occult guru. A failed experiment is also a valid experiment!

Then you don't really care whether magick is even based on science or not, you care whether the method in the book is precisely followed. Regardless of whether the experiment works you deem it a successful experiment so long as the book is followed, and suggest that anyone who has any other experience is not in a position to evaluate the subject. You can't have it both ways, science either works or it doesn't work. And even given your willingness to only look at work that reflects the "whole" system as you interpret it, you overlook the obvious fact that there are claims that the system in and of itself is not sufficient to produce results and undermine any other explanation for the results. If the system isn't sufficient to produce results, what is making things work or not work? You fail to make this inquiry and interpret the system to be essential regardless, and this says very strongly that there are other motivations for your wanting to assert that the whole system "is the only way" in addition to calling the conclusions you make about the system into question.

Before anything else, I want to be clear that I am not denouncing anyone's occult work on account of failure to follow the rules. But I do say that without actually following the rules of a given system, they have no experience of the system. If their system has no rules, or they make it up on their own, that is wonderful! It is a delight to see people create something effective without needing to rip off sigils and conjuration formats from ancient literature. The world needs more magicians like that, and it is toward that end that I am probing the old literature, under the assumption that by thoroughly exploring the older methods we can get a clear idea of what magic can do and how it operates without having to make it up as we go along.

So you'll admit that people are at least practicing magick, but you won't admit that people are practicing anything that has to do with necronomicon or that people understand what they are doing in the least.

The experimental method isn't "making it up as we go along." It is based on hypotheses, methods, results, and conclusions. Moreover, it is based on a reflection on the entire process employed.

In short, your argument is that a system must be taken as a whole to be considered valid, but this would never pass as a scientific statement. Without the simplification and isolation of variables, many -if not an unlimited number of- interpretations could explain a particular phenomenon. Without breaking a text down into its essential parts, it is impossible to rule out or make implausible different factors that might explain a particular phenomenon. In other words, taking a system as a whole does not convey understanding of the principals behind a system. A system must be broken down in order to understand the elements that go into it. And without documentation, any conclusions gained by such work would likely be rife with bias, neither understanding the power of the interventions used on the result(internal validity), neither the extent to which the interventions may be generalized to other operations (external validity), nor understanding what part of an intervention was responsible for the result (construct validity). In the end, you would have an understanding of practicing the system as it is written, but you would not understand how or why or what about the system works. You would only have the system and, without any power to understand it, the only conclusion that could be reached would be to recommend that the system be practiced as given.

When I used to practice martial arts, we practiced forms, or kata, that were intended to convey principals based upon a strict adherence to a given formula. The only reason the kata were able to teach anything at all though was because the teacher broke down the various steps. Moreover, it was possible to practice a kata with perfect emulation of the form while still failing to achieve to the principals behind it. I could not practice kata correctly until I broke the principals down, and by the time I did that the kata was only a way of remembering the principals already learned. I still think the best general rule on magick is to seek to understand the purpose of the various tools, gestures, and accessories going into a ritual; but since our best understanding is only a hypothesis, the entire process must be documented, otherwise our understanding is not capable of being tested.

This post has been edited by monkman418: Feb 9 2011, 12:10 AM