Circles of Power by John Michael Greer

Author:John Michael Greer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AEON Books

CHAPTER NINE

APPLICATIONS OF RITUAL: WORKING TOOLS

As discussed earlier in this book, the essential tools of ritual magic in the Golden Dawn tradition are to be found within the magician, as powers and capabilities which exist on the various levels of the human microcosm and which can be used to shape the forces of the macrocosm around us. These powers and capabilities, not the hardware to be found in occult-supply stores, are what accomplish the work of magic, and their development is the chief task of the magician in training.

At the same time, these innate tools can be supplemented and strengthened by the use of a set of specially designed and consecrated objects. These objects have generally been called “magical weapons” in recent writings, but this term is unsatisfactory for a whole range of reasons, starting with the fact that most of the objects in question are not especially weaponlike in any ordinary sense. Here, a phrase from another branch of Western esoteric tradition will be borrowed, and these implements will be referred to as “working tools.”

A magical working tool, in this sense, is an object that has been charged with a specific set of magical energies, and is then used to direct and shape those energies in ritual. It works through an artificial form of the process of creation we traced back in Chapter One. Working tools are charged through a ceremony of consecration, which links the material form to patterns of energy on the higher levels of experience; a working tool thus becomes an expression of those patterns on the physical level, and it then functions in magical terms exactly as though it had been brought into being by those patterns in the natural course of the creative process.

The Cup, for example, the elemental working tool of Water in Golden Dawn usage, is a physical expression of the higher-level energies that are linked to Water, in much the same way that a lake is. The connection, however, is made through deliberately chosen astral symbolism and etheric patterns, rather than through he ordinary course of the creative process. In the case of the Cup, this is done simply because a solid object of modest size is more convenient to use in ritual work than, say, an actual lake would be. In the case of other kinds of working tools, the energies which are placed in the tool are often sufficiently abstract or sufficiently subtle that they have no direct physical expression, or none which is uncontaminated with other influences; a working tool in this situation allows the magician to handle energies which otherwise could not be ritually directed at all.

It's useful to trace out the interactions between a working tool and the five levels of experience, in order to get a clearer sense of the way in which these devices are made, consecrated and used. This might be done as follows:

On the spiritual level, a working tool is linked through contemplation and the use of appropriate Names of God to the highest aspect of the energy which the tool represents.

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