ABRAHADABRA: Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thelemic Magick
By Rodney Orpheus
Weiser Books
One evening, a month or so ago, I was scouring Amazon for something to spend a $15 credit I had been sitting on when I stumbled across this little gem written by the main dude behind the band, The Cassandra Complex. Let's face it, understanding that which has been written by and through Crowley isn't always as simple as comprehending the words on the pages. Often times I find that a foundational piece of knowledge can be misconstrued to mean something else entirely which unfortunately can bleed throughout intersecting waves. Rodney Orpheus decided to breakdown these fundamental building blocks of the Thelema structure and expound upon them in an easy to digest manner without losing the initial integrity behind that craft. I'm not going to deny that I was full of apprehension prior to sitting down with this book, but what followed turned out to be one of the great stepping stones in my growth as an Occultist.
One thing that I find to be extremely bothersome about current Occult books and esoteric authors of this time period as a whole, is there the obvious over population of creative writing class drop outs. You know the type, they spend page after page, chapter after chapter, spewing nonsense in the form over overtly articulated run on sentences. I am not trying to step on any toes, so I will refrain from dropping any names of those authors that pop into my mind right off the bat, but within the black sea of reiterations and jumbled thoughts, devoid of any relative human attributes, lives the likes of those truly gifted magicians that have been blessed with am ability to digest the Great Work of others and utilize it for the greater good. The first thing that I recognized about Mr. Orpheus and his approach to writing that was his amazing gift of being able to teach and assume the roll of teacher while remaining peer-like and warm to the touch. We, as individuals in the continual search for expansion, have a poor habit of keeping our findings shrouded in secret and mystery, hidden from the assumed peering eyes of the "others" and drenched in utter thespian gibberish. Many pieces of brilliantly conceptualized and authored pathways to outstanding rites and magick ritual works throughout the ages have found themselves to be so bastardized and worthlessly mixed into nothingness by the modern day, pseudo intellectual, single subject persevering, basement dwelling Occultists, that even hearing about, much less coming across something as magnificent as Abrahadabra is much like a dream.
Anyway, as much as I'd like to spend a couple thousand words praising this wonderful work by Orpheus, it is not really his processes that are highlighted within the chapters of this book. I will take a moment though to applaud the author's methodical approach to the book, rotating between the yoga, magick/ritual and cosmology behind each basic pillar of the Thelemite path, all points of interest and validity at hand are thoroughly broken down to their most basic form before moving onto the next stage. By taking each step and analyzing the integral framework, the aspiring magician is able to build a closer relationship to the methodology being presented, in this case. A real teacher of man will take nothing for granite and never base the lessons upon the assumed perceptions of the student, but rather set the stage systematically so that each interlocking piece of the greater whole fits together properly.
The book begins by Orpheus going into the first stages of understanding the True Will of Self through a basic teaching of the importance of studying and finding our relation to the asanas and follows in line with the stages of meditative yoga teachings that Crowley described in the first two parts of Liber ABA, . We are employed to put ourselves through a series of tests and exercises, at first focusing on just being aware of the mind and body, moving into the stillness of body, to the resonance and value of breath to the discipline of controlling thought and the lack of and so on and so forth, eventually in the realization of pure meditation. Whereas a good majority of the book is a very much welcomed refresher course, the unpretentious nature of the explanations and the overall embodiment of a real day to day magician, sharing in his findings and more or less walking the reader right up to Nuit's front door is something to be praised.
I remember being taught, and much later on, understanding the basic movements and reasoning behind said movements of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram many, many years ago. I must've performed someone elses' interpretation on this fundamental rite a few dozen times before I got fed up and had to abandon repetition for individual courses of study involving each step and the rationalizations behind performing the series of actions. Point being, what might be second nature for one student might very well be in complete Chinese to another. In using the LBRP as my example, Orpheus shares his version, known simply as the Nu-Sphere, to systematically evaluate the notions that we weren't all born into a reincarnation of the Beast666 worth of magical background, and thus shows the Who, What, When, Where and Why behind the basic rituals in Thelema, temple set up, the acquiring and consecration of altar weapons, the Qabalahistic Tree of Life, magick exemplified in tarot etc.
As I previously mentioned, the book is broken into sections contained within 3 chapters per section and it is constantly mentioned that the mastery of each step is necessary before moving forward to the next step. I found this to be a point that could be driven home a million more times and still be over looked by the aspiring Thelemite and/or magician. Our drive to grow as fast as possible and cut as many corners as we can to get ourselves to that end result as quickly and effortlessly in one piece is always littered with mistakes and oversights. For many of us though, it was the inception of the decision to study abroad in our minds that lead us to the blind implementation of ritual structures and definitions based on the practices of others, in different points in their lives, with different relations and upbringings that shadow the symbolization and personal tools of reflected sheds of light. In an attempt to bring that full circle, Abrahadabra enables one to find meaning behind everything, to create and build, to study, implement and manipulate, to utilize for our own Will and to tap directly into the forces and energies and gods and goddesses that we are all apart of and are all apart of us.
All in all I found the fundamental maps and path work laid out within the pages of this book to be of paramount importance and worthy of a read for not only those aspiring Thelemites, but for all of those modern day Occultists that are looking to expand their horizons with a fresh look at one of, if not the most intensely up to date theories and methodologies of LHP magick. As we look back at the famous Occultists of the past generation and then fantasize upon what future generations will be be honoring as the great practitioners of the Left Hand Path and magick as a whole, I am certain that many a hats will be tipped to this very Rodney Orpheus and his contribution to the Occult libraries.
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