Low Magick: It's All In Your Head ... You Just Have No Idea How Big Your Head Is - Lon Milo DuQuette 2010
The Rabbi’s Dilemma
Divination is not a rival form of knowledge;
it is a part of the main body of knowledge itself.
MICHEL FOUCAULT,
THE ORDER OF THINGS
The reader who has come this far with me should by now have a fair idea of my basic magical field theory. It is with the most profound conviction that I embrace the words that form the subtitle of this book, “It’s all in your head, you just have no idea how big your head is.” This is not to say, however, that I believe magick is purely psychological. What I am saying is there is more we don’t understand about the human mind than we do understand. With each new discovery we draw nearer to the realization that the mind is not limited by the brain. In fact, our brains, our bodies, our world, and even time and space are manifestations and aspects of mind. If we truly understood the limitless wonders of the mind and its relationship with the universal consciousness, we would know that in actuality there can be no outside of the mind—no outside of ourselves.
Does the mind explain everything? Theoretically, I’d say yes. But I would be the biggest liar in the universe if I were to even suggest that I am firmly in touch with that level of consciousness where everything is explained to me! And that’s one of the reasons I find magick is so fascinating, and at times, so unexplainable. One does not need to understand every detail of the inner workings of a computer in order to install and operate a complex program. So too, the magician does not need to objectively understand every detail of the inner workings of the infinite mind in order to operate the system. I do feel, however, that in this day and age it is wise to give credit where credit is due, and woe to the sanity of the modern practitioner who would have others believe that he or she has guilefully cornered the market on understanding magical powers.
I reiterate all this because I am about to share two stories about magical operations I have done for the benefit of others. Such efforts when not considered carefully threaten to challenge my “it’s all in my head …” field theory. After all, if “… the only thing I can change with magick is myself …” then how can I seemingly help others with my magical endeavors? Do I think that I am ultimately responsible for all the good and evil in the world?
I must confess, I’m not always clear on my own answers to those questions. But there is one thing upon which I am clear. Every bit of information that reaches the receptors of my senses and is processed by my brain—every myth I hear, every historical event I read about—every news story I watch—every book I read—every person I meet—every object, idea, image, sound, feeling, taste, emotion, observation, fear, or longing I encounter—everything changes me and becomes a living component of my conscious and subconscious reality. I am inextricably linked to everything that enters my realm of consciousness, and I am 100 percent responsible for how I process, react, and respond to it.
It might appear to the casual observer that my magick effects changes in the outside world. But ultimately, my outside world is one and the same as my inside world. If my magick does indeed bring about some desired change, it merely proves to me that somehow, someway, I have succeeded in transforming myself into the kind of person to whom such things happen.
In the spring of 2002, I received an e-mail from Ezriel,81 a rabbi living on the East Coast, who wrote that he was familiar with my work and felt confident I could magically help him resolve a serious problem. In his first note, he did not describe his problem or what he wanted me to do. He said he wanted to simply introduce himself and provide me with personal information which he begged I would verify and keep confidential; this included his full name, address, professional titles, educational degrees, and details of his standing within an influential community of Orthodox Jews. He closed by restating his sincerity, and that he was willing to fly me to the East Coast, pay my expenses, and award me whatever my fee may be for “this kind of black magick work.”
As you might imagine, I regularly receive letters and e-mails from some pretty colorful (sometimes very disturbed) individuals. I also occasionally receive requests from people asking me to curse an enemy, repel a psychic attack, expel a demon, extract an embedded extraterrestrial, or kindly endorse their claims that they are Jesus Christ, Aleister Crowley, or Cagliostro. I nearly always leave these requests unanswered, but Rabbi Ezriel’s note struck me as being something more.
I took a few minutes and investigated on the Internet. I easily found a mountain of information about Ezriel’s very ethnic home town. When I added his name to the search criteria, I found it prominently positioned among the religious and educational leaders of the community. I found it very odd that this pillar of piety would ask me to do anything of a black magick nature. Because he said he was familiar with my work, I assumed he was also familiar with the doctrines of esoteric Judaism. After all, nearly all the most popular systems of Western magick have as their foundation the Hebrew Qabalah. The term black magick wouldn’t necessarily strike the same irrational terror in the heart of an esoteric Jew as it would in that of a mainstream Chrislemew.
I was intrigued, so I cautiously e-mailed him back and inquired about the details of his problem. His response was immediate and poignantly candid. His only son, David (who himself was a rabbi), had been married for nearly two years and had not yet become a father. David and his wife, Sarah,82 had been examined by physicians who found them both to be in good health and capable of conceiving a child. After giving me a short and breathtakingly politically incorrect lecture on the religious and cultural importance of his son having a child (especially a boy), he repeated his offer to immediately bring me to the East Coast and pay me to do whatever was necessary to make his daughter-in-law pregnant.
After I banished from my vulgar comedian’s brain a thousand crude and sophomoric possible responses to this statement, I took a day to gather my thoughts and ponder how I should respond to this offer. I hope the reader appreciates the fact that I am not a wealthy man. I connive and struggle day-to-day and month-to-month, just to pay the rent for our little duplex and pay the extortion fees to the blood-sucking organized crime cartels that pose as American health insurers. Try as we might, in our forty-two years of marriage, Constance and I have never been able to rise above the station of genteel poverty. I confess the thought of taking financial advantage of this situation did indeed cross my lumpenproletariat mind.
The next morning I wrote back and answered as honestly as I could. I insisted it would not be necessary for him to bring me to the East Coast or for him to come to California, and that I would be happy to freely offer my magical advice. I frankly stated, however, that I thought it would be unwise for me to attempt to magically intrude in the lives of his family in this manner.
He responded within minutes insisting that, on the contrary, he most certainly did want me to magically intrude—specifically, he wanted me to call up a demon of the Goetia and command it to make Sarah pregnant.
I replied to the effect that even if I were willing and able to raise a fertility demon, and Sarah did become pregnant and give birth to a baby boy, there would be serious and unavoidable psychological consequences for both the child and his family. I asked him to realize how, like in a fairy tale, the blessing would soon turn into a curse—how the happiness that would first accompany the child’s birth would soon be overshadowed by the nagging fear that every illness, every accident, injury, or misfortune visited upon the child throughout his lifetime was somehow the evil result of the demonic black magick operation that had engendered his nativity.
The rabbi coldly responded, “I am willing to take such a curse upon myself.”
I had to admire the depth of this man’s resolve. Such fearlessness and focus may characterize a fool, but are also the mark of a natural magician. I was beginning to realize Ezriel had already set into motion the magical forces that would make Sarah pregnant, and that my participation had already become in his mind a factor in the equation. I resigned myself to try to help him in any way I could. I was sure, however, that raising a Goetic spirit was not going to be the way to do it. I wrote him back and told him so, adding that I was prepared to consult with other spirits to determine the facts of the matter and how best to proceed. He seemed satisfied with that, and thanked me.
I don’t know how he would have felt had he learned that the “other spirits” to which I referred were those who oversaw the operations humanity’s oldest83 continually consulted oracle, the Chinese Book of Changes, the I Ching.
For those of you not familiar with this marvelous oracle, I must apologize for being unable to offer a proper introduction. Instead I must direct you to the many fine translations of the text, which can be found in bookstores worldwide. My favorite is one by Richard Wilhelm and rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes. It has an excellent foreword by Carl Jung and is a real treasure for lovers of Eastern mysticism in general and the I Ching in particular.84
I have been an I Ching dilettante since the late 1960s. I am not being overly modest when I stress my amateur status; for me to suggest otherwise would be a most outrageous presumption. It is said the great Confucius waited until he was ninety years old to study the oracle, and wrote that if he had another ninety years to devote to its mysteries, it would not be enough time. I have discovered, however, that even a superficial familiarity with the images suggested by the ever-changing lines of its sixty-four hexagrams can provide profound insights into questions and issues ranging from the mundane to the sublimely spiritual. For the answer to the rabbi’s dilemma, the I Ching was to be the only “spirit” I would trust with this most personal and sensitive issue.
Before dinner that evening, I showered and put on my most comfortable magical vestments (clean black sweatpants and sweatshirt). I took my Wilhelm/Baynes translation from the top shelf of my bedroom closet and unwrapped it. (Tradition suggests that when not in use, the oracle should be stored high above one’s head, and wrapped in white silk.) I placed it on a small table near the south window of my bedroom temple. I lit a stick of incense and placed it in a holder and tray on the floor just north of the table.
I knelt before the table and bowed three times, each time lightly touching my forehead to the floor. I would remain kneeling throughout the entire process, a gesture which at the time was for me not accomplished without some measure of pain. I hoped the rabbi would appreciate this!
I unwrapped a bundle of fifty dried yarrow85 stalks and, holding them in my right hand, rotated them clockwise three times in the incense smoke while I asked the question out loud: “What is preventing David and Sarah from conceiving a child?”
I removed one stalk from the bundle and laid it horizontally in front of me as a reminder of the supreme consciousness. Then, for the next fifteen minutes (in obedience to the rather complex traditional procedure) I carefully manipulated the remaining forty-nine stalks to randomly generate the number groupings that would create a stack of six lines (called a hexagram).
Each of the six lines of the basic hexagram is either an unbroken line (male—yang) or a broken line (female—yin). There are thus sixty-four ways possible ways to combine six lines that are either broken or unbroken. To the ancient Chinese sages who developed the system, these sixty-eight different hexagrams presented to their minds archetypal images that in turn suggested ideas, situations, even moral commentaries on historical, social, political, and personal matters.
These ideas are not static. Indeed, like everything in our objective reality, the hexagrams are in a constant state of change (hence the name, “Book of Changes”). Consequently, depending upon the nature of the answer, any one of the six lines of any given hexagram may be in the process of changing (or “moving”) into its opposite. In other words, each line of the hexagram can be one of four varieties:
· An unbroken line (male—yang)
· A broken line (female—yin)
· An old unbroken line (a male so old it will soon change/move to female)
· An old broken line (a female so old it will soon change/move to male)
The text of the I Ching provides specific commentaries for each hexagram and for each of the “moving lines” of the hexagrams. For the reader who may feel hopelessly confused at this point, let me just briefly summarize:
While it is possible, using the traditional yarrow stalk method, to arrive at a hexagram containing no moving lines at all, in most cases, the person asking the question receives the answer in three stages:
· The primary hexagram (and its commentary) that usually paints a picture of conditions surrounding the present situation.
· The commentary (or commentaries) on the moving line (or lines), which usually points to the aspect of the situation that is currently changing, or is about to change.
· The new hexagram (and its commentary) that is formed when the moving line (or lines) have changed/moved into their opposites. This part of the answer is usually the most suggestive of what the “future” might hold.
I liken the process to viewing three consecutive drawings on one of those flip cartoons we used to make with a pad of paper when we were kids. The viewer can’t understand the plot or message of the cartoon by simply looking at each individual drawing. The plot is revealed by sensing the apparent progressive movement of the images when several pages are flipped before our eyes.
As in all divinatory systems, the answer is ultimately revealed through the agency of one’s own intuitive impressions. Almost without exception, the I Ching speaks to us in metaphoric language (like a fortune cookie on steroids) that rings true only if we are attuned to hear the answer from out of its flowery prose.
To my great relief, the I Ching answered my question—What is preventing David and Sarah from conceiving a child?—in a remarkably clear manner. It came as a classic three-part answer made up of:
1) The primary hexagram (No. 9), which is called The Taming Power of the Small;
9
2) with moving line 4 (from the bottom), which transforms the primary hexagram into …
3) Hexagram 1, which is called, The Creative.
1.
Now it doesn’t take a seer to see that the ultimate answer to my question (the third and final step in the process) was hexagram 1, the most “male” of all the hexagrams. That being the case, it was pretty clear to me that David and Sarah would indeed succeed in becoming parents and that it was highly likely that the firstborn would be a boy. Furthermore, the appearance of Hexagram 1 as the third and final part of the answer seemed to suggest that the eventual birth of this particular child would be a particularly profound event:
… When an individual draws this oracle, it means that success will come to him from the primal depths of the universe …86
This, however, did not answer the question of what was currently preventing David and Sarah from conceiving and bringing forth this child and what change would occur to make this happen.
Looking back at the first part of the answer, Hexagram 9, The Taming Power of the Small, we see that most of the ingredients for a successful conception, pregnancy, and birth (dense clouds) are in place but there was yet no rain:
The Taming Power of the Small has success. Dense clouds, no rain from our western region.87
The text continues at length and these are a few of the highlights that jumped out at me:
… Hence the image of many clouds, promising moisture and blessing to the land, although as yet no rain falls … Only through the small means of friendly persuasion can we exert any influence … To carry out our purpose we need firm determination within and gentleness and adaptability in external relations.88
The commentary on the moving line (the fourth line from the bottom—the line that when changed turns Hexagram 9 into Hexagram 1) says:
If you are sincere, blood vanishes and fear gives way. No blame.89
Now, I’m certainly not a marriage counselor, and I couldn’t say for sure if it was David or Sarah who was going to need to learn a lesson in “gentleness and adaptability in external relations,” but it sure sounded to me like there was the real presence of fear in the relationship and somebody was not exceeding by romantic delicacy. In any case, if David had inherited even a small measure of his father’s somber insensitivity and inflexibility, Sarah just might be under a lot of emotional pressure—perhaps even enough to prevent conception. Perhaps a small change in David’s attitude or behavior could neutralize his anxiety and her fears long enough to solve this problem. The I Ching’s commentary on the Image seemed to agree:
The wind drives across heaven: The image of THE TAMING POWER OF THE SMALL. Thus the superior man refines the outward aspect of his nature.90
Okay. That was enough for me. My “spirits” had spoken. I was confident that Sarah and David would have a son, that Ezriel would be a grandfather, that the ageless traditions of that East Coast fairy-tale community would go on at least one generation more—if David could just become a “superior man” and “refine” the outward aspect of his nature … in bed.
I wrote Ezriel. I told him I had consulted with my spirits and that I was assured a man-child would be born to David and Sarah if David made the effort to be gentle and charming to Sarah prior to making love. I then really stuck my neck out and added, “The child will be conceived the moment they lie laughing in each others’ arms.” To tell you the truth, I don’t know why I added that last part. It just came to me like I was momentarily possessed by some Fiddler on the Roof -type character.
I immediately got an e-mail back thanking me for my help, but no other comments. I then worried that my answer was too corny or personal or unmagical (or perhaps too Fiddler on the Roof-ish) to be taken seriously.
About sixty days later, I received a very upbeat message informing me that Sarah was pregnant and that everyone was hoping for the best.
About six months later, I received an e-mail from the Rabbi proudly announcing the birth of his grandson, and the simple note, “Thank you for your efforts.”
[contents]
81 I am not using real names in this particular story.
82 Actually, Ezriel never felt it necessary to tell me his daughter-in-law’s name, referring to her only as “my son’s wife.”
83 The roots of the I Ching can be traced back to Ching’s legendary first emperor Fu His (4000 BCE).
84 The I Ching or Book of Changes, translators Richard Wilhelm and Cary Baynes. (New York: Bollingen Foundation Inc., 1950). Third edition reprinted with corrections by Princeton University Press, 1969.
85 Yarrow is also known as woundwort or nosebleed. Its medicinal properties have been known for millennia in both the East and West. Traditionally, yarrow has been associated with I Ching divination since the earliest years when sacred tortoises were released in a temple courtyard “planted” with a grid of dried yarrow stalks. The pattern of the stalks the tortoises knocked down was then interpreted for the answer to the question.
86 I Ching, 4.
87 I Ching, 40.
88 I Ching, 40—41.
89 I Ching, 42.
90 I Ching, 41.