Magick on the Road
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
Martin Buber
Being an initiating officer in the O.T.O. has over the years afforded me the opportunity to travel worldwide quite a bit on Order business, and my subsequent writing and musical careers have more recently added other events to my travel itinerary. I like to travel, and I am for the most part a good traveler. I enjoy the disciple and focus travel demands of me. I enjoy the solitude of the journey. I enjoy the long hours of quiet self-sufficiency when I’m alone with my thoughts. I delight in a perpetual background meditation of not knowing exactly what adventures await me along the way and at my destination.
Each trip is a complex magical “ceremony” within which are multiple smaller ceremonies all needing artful coordination and precise timing. Funding must be invoked. Scheduling obstacles must be banished. Spirits (manager, airlines, friends, colleagues, bookstore managers, club owners, guitar rental stores, cab drivers, hotel reservation and desk clerks, etc.) must be conjured and charged (appeased, cajoled, directed, and compensated)—all this even before I am ready to focus on the main object of the operation (the initiation, business meeting, lecture, workshop, seminar, book signing, recording session, concert, etc.).
Of course, you could say that I’m simply applying fancy magical terminology to mundane events, and you would be correct. But for a magician, there are no mundane events. I meant every word of what I wrote in chapter 0: “… once you realize you are a magician, it will be impossible for you to remove the magick from any aspect of your existence.” It’s all magick, and every moment of your existence you are called upon to be a magician. Airport delays, waiting at the gate, and tedious hours in the air offer me opportunities to practice pranayama and mentally banish, invoke, or silently chant my magical mantra. Even standing in slow-moving lines and passing through the dreadful security procedures at airports can be transformed into an initiation ceremony that echoes with uncanny similarities the passing of the pylons of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, if only one has magical eyes to see it as such.
But there are also occasions while traveling when I unexpectedly find it necessary to perform a more formal impromptu or “emergency” magical operation using improvised magical accoutrements and weapons. I can think of no clearer example of homemade magick in action than these rituals that I have had to throw together in hotel rooms, public lavatories, or even the backseats of taxi cabs. Here are just a couple of examples of how I operate in the field, so to speak.
Traveling as much as I do each year, I’m used to quickly setting up housekeeping in hotel rooms and living out of my suitcase. Obviously I don’t travel around the world with all my magical furnishings and tools. I don’t bring my elemental banners or symbolic decorations that festoon the working area of my home temple, nor do I bring along my magical robes or my wand, cup, sword, and disk. I’ve never traveled with the heavy and elaborate furniture (holy table and elemental tablets) that I use to perform Enochian vision magick, and when I’m required to summon spirits and demons in Goetic/Solomonic operations, I certainly don’t pull out of my suitcase a magic circle (nine feet in diameter) and a triangle and placards of divine names.
I do, however, always travel with a deck of Tarot cards, and the cards (together with a few common items I can scavenge from the hotel) are usually all I need to construct a viable magick temple anywhere and execute a first-rate magical ceremony.
A deck of Tarot cards is a magick temple (indeed, an entire universe) in a box. Each card represents a particular facet of the magical universe around us and within us. The deck is the ultimate pantacle—organized upon the purest of qabalistic principles. There is no aspect of consciousness that cannot be located on or represented by one or more Tarot cards. Even “nothingness” can be found in the formless inscrutability of the Tarot. In fact, everything I have ever needed to build a homemade temple while away from home, I have conveniently found in a deck of Tarot cards. Here’s a quick example of how it’s done.
Hotel-Room Homemade Temple
After performing my customary banishing ritual (most usually a version of the pentagram ritual), I create the perimeter of my temple space by acknowledging and marking the sacred quarters in the cardinal directions. Of course I do this in my mind, but in order to ground my understanding of where in the cosmos I am, I place the four aces of the Tarot in the quarters of the room as unmistakable emblems of the elements and the magick they embody.
There are two distinctly different ways the four aces can be assigned to the quarters, depending on whether the temple is to be arranged for microcosmic or macrocosmic workings.
Elemental Temple (Microcosmic)
For rituals based on the elements (fire, water, air, earth, and spirit), I create a “microcosmic” temple. I imagine myself standing on the surface of the earth with the four quarters assigned according to the classic elemental rulerships of the four terrestrial winds: Ace of Swords (air) in the east, Ace of Wands (fire) in the south, Ace of Cups (water) in the west, and Ace of Disks (earth) in the north.
Planetary/Zodiacal Temple (Macrocosmic)
For planetary or zodiacal (macrocosmic) workings, I project myself into a much larger universe, and imagine myself positioned as the sun surrounded by the belt of the zodiac. In this greater universe, the four quarters are assigned according to where the cardinal zodiac signs (one each for fire, water, air, and earth) are positioned: Ace of Wands (cardinal fire, Aries) in the east; Ace of Disks (cardinal earth, Capricorn) in the south; Ace of Swords (cardinal air, Libra) in the west; and the Ace of Cups (cardinal water, Cancer) in the north.
Note: For Enochian magick rituals, the four aces of the Tarot are also representative of the archangelic and angelic powers and personages of the four elemental tablets. In my deck, the Tarot of Ceremonial Magick,44 the full image of each Enochian elemental tablet is actually displayed on the appropriate ace. The use of these cards as the four “walls” of your magick temple, along with the proper rituals to charge them, is a most effective way to ceremonially create sacred space in which to perform magick operations or meditations.
Very often the placing of the aces in the four quarters is all that is necessary to create the sacred space I need. But for more elaborate workings, I also cast a homemade magick circle in the center of the sacred space.
Hotel-Room Homemade Magick Circle
For ceremonies of spirit evocation (Goetia, or Solomonic magick as presented in traditional texts such as the first book of the Lemegeton: The Lesser Key of Solomon),45 the magician stands within a protective circle surrounded by a litany of divine names. Placed outside circle is the triangle, also surrounded by magick words of power. The triangle (theoretically) traps the spirit or demon that has been summoned by the magician’s prayers and conjurations, and constrains it long enough for it to receive its instructions from the magician. For years, when doing this kind of magick, I took a lot of time and expended a great amount of energy (pushing my artistic skills to their limits) to create the classic circle and triangle as described in the traditional texts. As the years passed, I eventually became comfortable with my understanding of what was actually going on inside my psyche during operations of this nature. As a consequence, I have dramatically simplified my operating procedures, streamlined my circle and triangle, and abandoned much of the elaborate trappings and medieval (and superstition-inspired) choreography that filled the ancient books. Today, my Goetic magick circle is simply a thin silk cord that I can wrap up and put in my pocket (or, when necessary, wrap around my body so I can “stay in the circle” for extended periods of time), and my triangle is a segmented carpenter’s ruler.
But the magick circle is (or should be) more than just a magical prophylactic that we roll on before we penetrate the infernal realms of Goetic demons. For countless practices, the casting of the circle (and understanding what you are doing when you cast the circle) is, in and of itself, a magical ceremony of the highest order. The aces in the quarters establish the holy ground of our temple, but the circle is the Holy of Holies, where we elevate and unite our consciousness with that of the Supreme Consciousness, and where we stand to banish or invoke elements, planets, and gods. It is the sacred space in which we sit or lie down to induce visions; it the high place from which we call forth angels; it is the sanctuary where we can safely leave our physical bodies during out-of-body experiences. The circle is our workroom where we consecrate talismans and magical weapons; it is our monk’s cell, our meditation chamber, our alchemical laboratory, our wedding chamber, or, simply, a quiet place to worship and adore the Supreme Consciousness of the cosmos.
Tarot Cards Again to the Rescue
I use Tarot cards to create a beautiful and powerful homemade magick circle that I can construct anywhere in just a few minutes. Briefly, here’s how it works.
For macrocosmic workings, the circle can be viewed as the belt of the zodiac, with you, the magician, as the sun at the center. Right off the bat, this is a very cool meditation!
The cards we use to form the circle are the thirty-six small cards of the Tarot (the 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 of each of the four suits).
Note: You might think there are forty small cards (the ace through 10 of each suit), but technically the aces are not small cards. The aces are actually the master cards of their suits—the 2 through 10s of the suits live inside their aces. Are you following me so far? Good.
The thirty-six small cards represent the thirty-six decans (or periods of ten degrees) of the zodiac, and the zodiacal year. When laid out in a counterclockwise ring, these thirty-six cards will form our magick circle. The small card/decans pass through the zodiacal year from Aries all the way through Pisces in a most elegant and logical manner.
Recall that the suit of wands represents (among many other things) the element of fire, the suit of cups represents water, the suit of swords represents air, and the suit of disks represents earth.
Of the twelve signs of the zodiac, three are fire signs (Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius), three water signs (Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces), three air signs (Libra, Aquarius, and Gemini), and three earth signs (Capricorn, Taurus, and Virgo).
There being nine small cards in each suit, the first three cards in the series (the 2s, 3s, and 4s) are assigned to the cardinal signs of the zodiac, the second three cards in the series (the 5s, 6s, and 7s) are assigned to the fixed signs, and the final three cards in the series (the 8s, 9s, and 10s) are assigned to the mutable signs.
Here’s how that works:
• The 2s, 3s, and 4s of each suit represent the cardinal signs of the zodiac, thus:
• 2-3-4 of Wands = the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd decans of Aries (cardinal fire)
• 2-3-4 of Cups = the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd decans of Cancer (cardinal water)
• 2-3-4 of Swords = the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd decans of Libra (cardinal air)
• 2-3-4 of Disks = the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd decans of Capricorn (cardinal earth)
• The 5s, 6s, and 7s of each suit represent the fixed signs of the zodiac, thus:
• 5-6-7 of Wands = the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd decans of Leo (fixed fire)
• 5-6-7 of Cups = the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd decans of Scorpio (fixed water)
• 5-6-7 of Swords = the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd decans of Aquarius (fixed air)
• 5-6-7 of Disks = the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd decans of Taurus (fixed earth)
• The 8s, 9s, and 10s of each suit represent the mutable signs of the zodiac, thus:
• 8-9-10 of Wands = the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd decans of Sagittarius (mutable fire)
• 8-9-10 of Cups = the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd decans of Pisces (mutable water)
• 8-9-10 of Swords = the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd decans of Gemini (mutable air)
• 8-9-10 of Disks = the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd decans of Virgo (mutable earth)
So, to create a complete, beautiful, and most proper homemade magick circle, simply clear a space on the floor and surround yourself with the thirty-six small cards of the Tarot laid out like this:
Starting in the east, lay the cards around you in a counterclockwise direction, just like the wheel of the zodiac:
Aries: 2 Wands, 3 Wands, 4 Wands
Taurus: 5 Disks, 6 Disks, 7 Disks
Gemini: 8 Swords, 9 Swords, 10 Swords
Cancer: 2 Cups, 3 Cups, 4 Cups
Leo: 5 Wands, 6 Wands, 7 Wands
Virgo: 8 Disks, 9 Disks, 10 Disks
Libra: 2 Swords, 3 Swords, 4 Swords
Scorpio: 5 Cups, 6 Cups, 7 Cups
Sagittarius: 8 Wands, 9 Wands, 10 Wands
Capricorn: 2 Disks, 3 Disks, 4 Disks
Aquarius: 5 Swords, 6 Swords, 7 Swords
Pisces: 8 Cups, 9 Cups, 10 Cups
Voila! An elegant, accurate, and functional magick circle.
When you think about it, the simple act of taking a well-shuffled deck of Tarot cards and reordering and reassembling them in neat and precise astrological order is, in and of itself, a magical exercise of the highest order. After all, how many opportunities do you get every day to take your “shuffled deck” (your screwed-up and unorganized life and universe) and put it in perfect order?
44. Lon Milo DuQuette, Tarot of Ceremonial Magick (deck), Babalon Edition (Washington, DC: Thelesis Aura, 2010).
45. The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King: Translated into the English Tongue by a Dead Hand and Adorned with Divers Other Matters Germane Delightful to the Wise: The Whole Edited, Verified, Introduced and Commented by Aleister Crowley. Most recent edition, with engraved illustrations of the spirits, by M. L. Breton and foreword by Hymenaeus Beta (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1996). Known as the Lesser Key of Solomon, it is the first book of the Lemegeton (c. 1687). Translated by S. L. MacGregor Mathers, the “Dead Hand” referred to in the full title above. From the Sloane manuscripts nos. 2731 and 3648 found in the British Library.