DAMIEN ECHOLS: You don’t
have to believe in it.
There’s no dogma.
Even like I said it uses
iconography and symbolism
from things like gnostic Christianity
and esoteric Judaism, things like that.
But it doesn’t require you
to believe in these things.
The reason it uses this symbolism is,
for example, in the part of the country
that I grew up in there
are literally places
where you come to a four way stop and
there are churches on all four corners.
So even if you’re completely atheist,
even if you’re repelled by these
things, they are still part of your
psyche, still part of our culture.
So we on some level respond
to those things in some way.
That doesn’t mean we necessarily have
to believe in them for magick to work.
Like I said the people who devise these
techniques wanted to know what works,
why it works, how it works, and
how we can make it work better.
You don’t have to believe in any of this
any more than you have to believe that
your muscles are going to get
bigger by going to the gym.
The way that I guess
one of the things that
was so hard about Eastern
traditions like Zen
was you focus almost entirely on staying
in the present moment all the time.
That is really, really hard.
Once you actually start trying to do
that you realize how out of control
your thoughts are.
Our thoughts chase
themselves around like a dog
chasing its own tail all the time
from the time we get up until the time
we go to sleep.
And a lot of the Eastern traditions
deal with almost wrestling against that.
Every time you realize you’re doing it,
bringing yourself back to the present
moment, back to the present
moment over and over and over.
For me I didn’t get a lot
of results out of that.
I never found myself in
the present moment m ore
than I was whenever I
started the practices.
Ceremonial magick on the other hand what
it does is it doesn’t really address
that at all.
Instead you’re dealing
like, for example,
on energy circulation practices
where you’re circulating chi through
different parts of your body, you’re
trying to energize different energy
centers.
It runs down through your spine.
Doing that as a side effect you
become more and more present.
And I didn’t even realize a lot of
these practices say, for example,
the lesser banishing
ritual of the pentagram,
when you would learn these things
traditionally the organization,
the Order, would give you these
exercises and they would not tell you
what they’re going to do.
They would not tell
you what they’re for.
They would say “go practice this for
a year, come back and talk to us then.
And if you’re interested in learning
more and going forward we’ll talk about
it then.” Whenever you came
back they would say “okay,
well what did you experience?” That’s
how they would know if you had actually
been practicing them or not.
So I would practice these techniques,
the middle pillar, the lesser banishing
ritual of the pentagram,
and one day while I
was in prison I bent
over to tie my shoes
and I realized, without even trying
to do so, I was in the present moment.
And it was almost like an atomic bomb
going off because it was for the very
first time in my life
I realized “oh my god,
I’m completely in the present moment!”
Of course the second you think that
it’s shattered, and you’re
back to thinking or whatever.
But it was even after
years of Zen practice
it was the first time that I
had truly experienced that,
and it was due to ceremonial magick.
One of the techniques that
I use, you know, the analogy
I used earlier about flushing
yourself out like a cup of water,
this is a technique that
flushes our thoughts out.
If you have a song going through
your head over and over or if you’re
reliving an argument you
had with someone a year ago,
if you’re obsessed over something
that you can’t get out of your head,
this technique is good for that as well
as just general meditation purposes.
It doesn’t have a name.
I usually just refer to it as
the prison cell meditation.
But if you’re interested I’ll do that.
Is that okay?
All right.
You start by closing your eyes and then
you envision yourself in a prison cell.
Standing in the center of a
cell, everything is white.
The walls are white.
The ceiling is white.
The floors are white.
The only thing there is in the cell
other than you on the back wall
is a slit of a window.
And it’s up so high that the
only way that you can reach it,
the only way you can see out of it is
by gripping the window ledge high above
your head and hoisting
yourself up by sheer, brute,
physical upper body strength.
Almost like you’re doing
a pull up or a chin up.
So you want to bring as much tactile
sensation to the visualization
as you possibly can.
You want to feel it as much as you can.
So picture yourself walking
to the back of this wall,
pressing yourself against it,
reaching up with your hands
and gripping the edge of that
windowsill with your fingertips.
Try to feel what the back
wall of that prison cell
would feel like pressed
against the side of your face,
pressed against your torso.
Feel the coldness of it,
the grittiness of it.
And as you start to lift yourself
up off the floor using just
your arms try to feel what
that would actually feel like.
Feel the muscles in your shoulders.
Feel the muscles in your
chest, in your abdomen firing,
tensing as you’re pulling yourself up.
Try to feel what the wall would feel
like as you scrape against it lifting
yourself slowly by sheer strength.
As your eyes crest over the rim of
the window white light bursts through
the window, floods through the window,
and obliterates everything: The cell,
you, everything, until there’s
only white light remaining.
Do it again.
Press yourself against the back of
the wall, reach up with both hands,
and grip the edge of the windowsill.
Feel the muscles in your
chest, in your abdomen,
in your shoulders tensing as
you start to lift yourself up.
Feel the wall scrape against
the front of your thighs,
against the side of your face as you
hoist yourself until your eyes come
over the edge of the window frame,
and then white light comes flooding
in through the window obliterating
everything – you, the cell,
until there’s only white light.
Once more.
Feel yourself pressed against
the wall, raise your arms,
hook your fingertips
over the window ledge.
Begin to raise yourself
slowly up by sheer strength,
feeling the muscles in
your shoulders, your chest,
your torso straining as
you lift your body weight.
Feel the wall of the prison
cell as you scrub against it;
and as your eyes go over the
edge of the window frame,
white light comes flooding
in, obliterating everything.
And this is one of those things you
can do for as long as you have time.
You can do it five times,
you can do it ten times.
The longer you do it the
more effective it is.
And it gives you something to
work with in your visualization
instead of just trying to stay in the
present moment, which is really, really
hard.
