Spiritual Alchemy: Scrying, Spirit Communication, and Alchemical Wisdom - Jenny Tyson 2016

Foreword

A UNIQUE BOOK OF

PRACTICAL SPIRIT INITIATION

This is Jenny’s book. All of the text, apart from a few notes that I’ve added, was written by her or received by her from spirits through scrying or clairaudience. My wife is not a professional writer, so she asked me to edit it. I was happy to do so because I regard it as a unique document in the history of Western magic. Nothing quite like this book exists elsewhere. It is based entirely on Jenny’s actual experiences over the course of a full year of intense esoteric practice. I can attest to the integrity of that practice. Every day for a year she spent several hours in ritual meditation or trance. Although she didn’t know it at the time, she was preparing herself for the extended ordeal of alchemical initiation that forms the heart of the book.

This intense year-long course of magical practice to facilitate communication with spirits was entered into without any prior expectations. In the beginning, Jenny merely sought to contact the spirit of the great Elizabethan magician Dr. John Dee, due to her ongoing interest in Enochian magic. After experimenting with various methods of communication, she succeeded in forming a link not only with Dee, but with Dee’s partner, the alchemist Edward Kelley, and with other spirits who came to be her teachers.

The spirits she contacted told Jenny what to do in her daily magical practice, and she did it. She allowed them complete control over her development. In the course of her training, she acquired the faculties of clairaudience, clairvoyance, and channeling. The results are recorded here in her own words. For twelve months, she believed she was developing her psychic perceptions as a trance medium. It was only later that she came to realize how during that period of intense training she was being prepared by her spirit teachers for a ritual of initiation that, when successfully completed, resulted in a perfect state of oneness with the highest spiritual principle.

The successful completion of the alchemical initiation ritual had practical as well as spiritual consequences. When you realize on a very deep level that mind and body are one, it becomes possible to cure the ills of the body with the mind. The ways in which Jenny healed herself of medical problems are described in the text. Jenny would say these cures were of small importance compared to the spiritual wisdom she acquired. I think they have value in indicating the practical benefits of spiritual enlightenment.

A DEDICATED MAGICIAN

Jenny’s interest in Western magic began before I even met her. It was her study of my writings on magic that caused us to get to know each other. We corresponded, found we had common interests, got together, and eventually married. Jenny moved from Maine to Nova Scotia and obtained her Canadian citizenship. I have been able to help her in some of her esoteric work in the years since we came together, but the impulse to undertake that work did not come from me. It arose from her own deep fascination with magic and spirituality.

For five years prior to even beginning the year of training described in these pages, Jenny made an intense study of all the major currents of Western esotericism. Her study was not confined to books. She practiced what she learned on a daily basis. Some of the disciplines she mastered include modern witchcraft, Nordic mythology, ritual magic in the Golden Dawn tradition, tarot, Kabbalah, astrology, and Enochian magic.

The Enochian magic of the Elizabethan sage Dr. John Dee held a particular fascination for her. For two years prior to beginning her year of preparation, she devoted herself wholly to the study and practice of Enochian magic. The house is filled with the Enochian ritual furniture and instruments she constructed for her work. No one who watched, as I did, while she painstakingly carved the Sigillum Dei Aemeth, or Seal of the Truth of God, into disks of genuine beeswax that she had cast herself could ever doubt her complete dedication and commitment.

I emphasize the practical side of Jenny’s study of magic because so often books on magic are written by those who get their knowledge only from other books. They are library magicians who never actually do any magic, but Jenny is not one of them. Everything she has written here is based on her actual experience; there is nothing theoretical or derivative.

POINTS OF VALUE

Readers will find great value in Jenny’s unique analysis of the ancient alchemical text known as the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, the sentences of which have never before been explained as the stages of spiritual evolution.

They will welcome the detailed practical instructions she gives on the use of the spirit box, an electronic device for communicating audibly with spirits that is enjoying an enormous popularity at this time due to the wonders of electronics, which have made this device both inexpensive and simple to use.

They will be fascinated by her complex initiation ritual, an ordeal of faith and endurance that involved the rising of her consciousness through the esoteric centers of the self under the guidance of her spirit teachers.

The description of how to use an alchemical homunculus in training to open the heart to the entry of spirits is, so far as I am aware, completely unique. It was conveyed directly to Jenny by the spirit of Edward Kelley and has great utility in enabling the student to learn the skills needed for mediumship and channeling.

SPIRIT TEACHERS

All these teachings stemmed from Jenny’s initial desire to make contact with the spirit of Dr. John Dee. There is an old saying in magic that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. This was certainly true for Jenny. In her case the teacher turned out not to be John Dee but his friend and crystal gazer, the alchemist Edward Kelley, who received the system of Enochian magic we have today from spirits while scrying into a crystal globe. Through his expert guidance of Jenny’s magical training, Kelley proved that he was as gifted a teacher after death as he had been a scryer during his earthly life.

It has long been my personal contention that the only true teachers in magic are spiritual beings. Many of the grimoires of Western magic consist either of a method for contacting a spirit who will then teach the magician a system of magic or a description of a system of magic that has already been taught to the author of the grimoire by a spirit.

Sometimes the two are combined—the first part of the grimoire gives a method for contacting the spirits, and the second part gives a portion of their secret teachings. This is the case with the grimoire known as The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, which played a key role in the Golden Dawn tradition of magic and its offshoots.

Samuel Mathers, who translated the Abramelin text and who was a gifted psychic and spirit medium, received the complex magical system of the Golden Dawn from spirits known as the Secret Chiefs. They dictated various rituals and techniques to him, and he wrote them down as he received them.

One of Mathers’s students was the infamous magician Aleister Crowley, who was for a time a student of the Golden Dawn system of magic. Crowley’s Book of the Law, the central text of his cult of Thelema, was dictated to him by a spirit named Aiwass. Crowley regarded Aiwass as his Holy Guardian Angel, which he had received after successfully completing the Abramelin procedure. In this way the thread of Western magic unspools itself through time.

In contacting Dee and Kelley, and having these spirits agree to teach her, Jenny was continuing a tradition in magic that predates recorded history—all shamans, from the earliest beginnings of humanity down to the present day, have been instructed by spirits with whom they make psychic contact. Modern magic is a direct descendant of shamanism.

Where Jenny’s book differs from many of the books on magic that have been conveyed by spirits to human students is its focus on personal spiritual development. This is not a book of spells or rituals or sigils, but a book of techniques for developing actual skills in scrying and spirit communication. It will teach you how to make contact with your own spiritual teachers. Once you have established communication with a spiritual teacher, you hold the key to the kingdom of magic.

KELLEY’S COMMENTARY

Throughout the book you will find illuminating comments by Edward Kelley and sets of dialogues that took place between Jenny and Kelley. The spirit gave Jenny strict instructions that his words should not be altered by her or by me, except to modernize the punctuation and sentence structure so that it would be more easily comprehended by readers. I have been true to these instructions. These are Kelley’s own words exactly as he spoke them to Jenny, with minor changes in punctuation.

You will notice that Kelley’s literary voice is quite different from Jenny’s voice. He tends to use archaic constructions, which I have let stand. His writing is very concentrated and focused so that he is able to pack a great deal of meaning into a small amount of text. His commentaries should be read slowly and with care to avoid missing the teachings he wished to convey.

ALCHEMICAL INITIATION

The ritual of alchemical initiation that is the heart of this book was the natural culmination of Jenny’s year of study. It was truly a peak experience, more intense emotionally and more profound spiritually than any other event in her life. Even as a mere onlooker, I found it almost overwhelming to watch her work her way through this ritual, which is fully described in the text. Let me only say here that it provides a means of direct personal communion with the very highest spiritual entities and transcends the boundaries both of philosophy and religion.

At the highest level, all enlightenment is the same. There are many men and women throughout history who have achieved this clarity, and there are many paths to its attainment. Kelley, having been an alchemist during life, chose a system of enlightenment that is based on alchemical principles. It is completely unique, and it is practical. I witnessed its success with my own eyes. This book is a testament to the power of magic to expand and transform human consciousness. It is also the amazing story of one woman’s journey of the soul, through all doubts and trials, and her ultimate successful attainment of higher consciousness.

Let Jenny’s story serve as a beacon to other seekers—proof that such attainment is possible without decades of religious study. This is the Western way, the way of magic. No, it is not quick or easy. Nothing of value in life is quick or easy. But it is within the abilities of anyone who has a serious desire to transcend the limits of ordinary consciousness and undergo a personal life-altering transformation. The greatest magic is the magic that transforms the self.

—Donald Tyson