Tag: occult

rare-occult-books:

Here’s one of the best essays I’ve read concerning the Azoëtia which I found online couple of years ago. For those who haven’t read it, enjoy

THE AZOETIA, Thoughts on the Grimoire, by Andrew Logan Montgomery.

(2013)

The Modern Necronomicon

If you are a serious occultist, you’ve probably heard of the Azoetia already. For the more casual reader, let me give you some background. In May, 1992, British “cunning man” Andrew Chumbley self-published a new occult work in limited edition. By 2002, Azoetia: A Grimoire of the Sabbatic Craft, was ready for re-release in another, slightly more deluxe edition (the Sethos edition, named for the book’s “guardian daemon”). It was already by that time a sensation. In today’s esoteric market, everyone seems to want to imitate the late Anton LaVey, whose 1969 Satanic Bible was a mass market grimoire written for the Everyman.  Aleister Crowley had attempted such a thing decades earlier, but his work proved too dense for the non-specialist. The Satanic Bible, by contrast, was a little paperback anyone could purchase, read, and then completely apprehend all the “secrets” of magic with. When LaVey published this book, it was a landmark. Since then, however, everyone under the sun has tried to do the same thing, flooding the world with mass market self-help mumbo jumbo. Most of these modern New Age books are to the medieval grimoires, or Crowley’s Equinox, what the Big Mac is to filet mignon; cheap, filling, but utterly lacking in substance.

Chumbley decided to go against the current. It is the oldest magical formula in the book: do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. Thus, the Azoetia was neither mass market nor for the Everyman. Chumbley’s esoteric group, the Cultus Sabbati, released the volume in a very limited number through a publisher (“Xoanon,”) specifically created for the purpose. The book was exceedingly rare, and possession of it suddenly put you in an elite club.

By 2004, it seemed as if everyone in the occult community had heard of the book, but few had every actually seen it. Like Lovecraft’s Necronomicon, it seemed quasi-legendary, an urban legend for modern Magicians. And then, the unthinkable happened. On his 37th birthday, Andrew Chumbley died of a sudden, severe asthma attack.

Another thing Magicians share in common with Artists is that death makes their work even more valuable. In Chumbley’s case, this was triply so. Not only had he died young, suddenly, and unexpectedly, the very date of his death had eerie occult significance. There is something weird—in the classic sense of the word—about dying on your birthday, particularly given Chumbley’s profession. Add to this the fact that the number 37 has tremendous qabbalistic significance; 37 is the number of the “Perfected Man,” the three divine Sephiroth of the Tree of Life balanced above the 7 manifest Sephiroth below the Abyss. In addition, 37 is the seed of all triple numbers. 37 x 3 = 111, 37 x 6 = 222, 37 x 9 = 333, and 37 x 18 = 666. These coincidences all coalesced, turning tragedy into a kind of frenzy. On the internet, people started to compare Chumbley to Lovecraft’s Abdul Alhazred, who penned the infamous Necronomicon before himself dying a mysterious death. The Azoetia was lifted from legend to myth. The result was a kind or viral marketing campaign. Copies of the Azoetia couldn’t be obtained for love or money.

Well…not exactly. People were willing to part with their precious Azoetias for absurd amounts of money…usually in the range of $1500 to $2500 US. Worse still, one was expected to shell out the cash sight unseen. If you went on Amazon to read “reviews” of the book, for example, no one seemed willing to talk about what it actually said. All you got was a bunch of scary hoodoo about the book being a “True Grimoire,” “not for the weak-hearted,” “a text only for the most serious student,” etc, etc. As I started to research the book, it became clear to me that most owners weren’t willing to divulge its contents mainly because it’s very mystery ensured its value.  I began to wonder if anyone actually used it.

More fuel was added to the fire by the Cultus Sabbati themselves. In an age where every “secret,” “occult” order has a website and runs around constantly blabbing about it’s teachings and trying to recruit new members, the Cultus was truly closed. Few knew what they stood for, what they did, or how to get in. Possession of the Azoetia seemed to be the only glimpse inside a secret order that really was secret.

I had gotten my hands on Qutub, Chumbley’s second work, some time before and found it astounding.  This made me only more determined to read the Azoetia.  Reasoning there is no point calling yourself a magician if you can’t even conjure up a book, I sent out a sigil for it, Austin Spare style, and went about my business.  About three months later a friend put me in touch with a young woman who had found religion and wanted to get rid of her “devil books” as quickly as possible.  It turned out she had an Azoetia, and I picked it up for little over it’s original price.  That was back in 2007.  I’ve had to re-read and digest this extraordinary book for five years before feeling like I could start to discuss it.

But not all in one post.  So here is the first of an eventual series of essays on the work.   

A Book By Its Cover

The Sethos edition is indeed a handsome book. Hardbound with the very highest quality binding, the spine is stamped with the title, the publisher’s imprint, and a sigil that resembled the god Set crossed with a Spare-type sigil. This would be the mark of Sethos, no doubt. The cover bears a mandala-like magic circle, an eight-spoked wheel bearing 22 mystical letters, around the circumference of which are words of power in the same characters.

The title is itself provocative. “Azoth” was the Universal Solvent or Medicine of alchemy, the “quintessence” from which everything else was made. Lovecraft might have been inspired by this term when he created “Azathoth,” the mindless, nuclear chaos from which the universe emerged. In any case, Azoth plays a key role in the book, as we shall later see. “Goetia” (perhaps the source of the second half of the title) is the fabled medieval Lesser Key of Solomon, the grimoire of grimoires concerned with the evocation of fallen angels.The title Azoetia is suggestive of both the original essence of creation and the calling up of spirits. One might wish to translate it as “the calling of daemons from primal quintessence,” which given the contents of the book is not so radical an interpretation.

Tradition

The first thing readers will wish to know is to what tradition does the Azoetia belong. Is it Wiccan? Satanic? Hermetic? Thelemic? Voodoo? Sufi? Chaotic? The answer, it seems, is “all of the above.”

“…it has been my endeavor,” the author writes in his introduction to the first edition, “to define those Principles underlying the many different paths of Magick and to unify them within the single body of a working grimoire…” It would seem, therefore, that the author is working from a Perennialist viewpoint, the assumption that there exists a universal truth or set of truths in all schools of magic and philosophy. He confirms this a few paragraphs later;“…all currents of Magick flow from a single fountain, and I, in drawing this Grimoire from my dreams, have hopefully filled a cup from a pure source…” For Chumbley, the dogmatic differences of occult traditions are veils, masks concealing a single, hidden source. The Azoetia is an attempt to tap directly into that source.

The skeptic might say that Chumbley is not so much as tapping into the primordial source of occult traditions as synthesizing a new one from diverse schools of thought. Either viewpoint is valid with regards to this text. The final point is that virtually any Magician, working from any tradition, could find in the pages ofAzoetia some portion of teachings or practices mirroring his or her own.

For example, despite consciously distancing himself from the modern schools of Wicca, Chumbley’s “Sabbatic Craft” shares a great deal in common with them (at least on the surface). This text is very much concerned with a God and a Goddess (the former embodying Death and the latter coming in triple forms). The working tools mirror those of Gardenarian or Alexandrian Wicca; the wand, a black handled Arthame (Athame), a white handled working knife, a Pentacle, a Cup, a Cord, a Circle, an Altar, etc. The opening ritual closely resembles Wiccan Circle Casting, and there is even a wheel of the year. However, elements from other traditions are clearly woven in here. A magical quill is included, which recalls the Peacock Angel Melek Taus (a key figure in Qutub). The altar is a double cube (more Hermetic than Wiccan). The temple includes a central pole, or “fetish-tree” which is nearly identical in function to those in voodoo honfours.

But all of this, the author asserts, is just set dressing, with little bearing on the truth of the text. A constant theme throughout the Azoetia is the reminder that all the tools, rituals, incantations, and even the text itself are just outward expressions of inner truths. Without getting too far ahead of myself, the last page of the Azoetia reads; HERE ENDETH THE GRIMOIRE AZOETIA…MISTAKE NOT THIS BOOK FOR THE WORDS UPON ITS PAGES. Chumbley earnestly wants us to understand that the grimoire, and all the tools, are physical representations of something else, something without form. For him, Magick is tool of working backwards from the trappings towards that inner source.

Again, back to the introduction; “…the Quintessence of Magick is not to be found by the combination of externals, but solely by the direct realisation of innate source. It is not to be discovered by system with system, belief with belief, or practice with practice; it is not found by uniting the “elements” in their temporally manifest forms. For beyond the Outer, beyond the dualistic and substantive manifestations of element with element, the Quintessence is already attained…when this Mystery is understood, the secret of the Azoth is revealed in truth…”

Like the Chaos Magicians, or to an extent Anton LaVey, Chumbley is telling us that the dogmatic elements of Magick are all mechanisms to tap into its noumenal source. Writing from this standpoint allows Chumbley to imbue his grimoire with a quality which transcends divisions of tradition. A Hermetic is going to read the Azoetia and say “Chumbley was really one of us.” But the Wiccan, the Satanist, and the Thelemite might all come to the same conclusion. Whether you feel that this is evidence of Chumbley’s “Quintessence,” or just a skilled job at integrating diverse forms and practices, is up to you.

Sethos

The second edition of the Azoetia bears the name of the entity watching over it, and opens with a dedication to him. Chumbley explains “Sethos” as…“the Daimon of the Grimoire Azoetia; a noetic emanation of the Magical Quintessence; a mediator between Abel, Cain, and Seth, that is, between the Sacrificed Man of Clay (the Uninitiate Self), the Transformative Man of Fire (the Initiating and Becoming Self), and the Self-Transformed Man of Light (the Initiatic Self-existent One)…” p. 361

Chumbley is drawing on a bit of Gnosticism here. For the Gnostics, ideological rivals of the early Christian Church, the Hebrew God described in the Old Testament wasn’t the Good Guy at all, but rather the Villain. He and his angels were merely lesser emanations of the True Deity. The Gnostics called the false god Ialdabaoth, and explained that he had fashioned the world of matter as a prison to hold captive human souls (which were, in fact, tiny sparks of the True God). Ineffable, invisible, and intangible, the True Deity was far removed from the material world. He did not act directly, but only sent forth emanations. For some Gnostics, Jesus was just such an emanation, sent by the True God to liberate people from the captivity of false one.

While this may seem odd to the modern reader, it does explain a great deal of the Bible’s inconsistencies. Any objective reading of the text leads the reader to wonder how the jealous, vindictive, and murderous God of the Old Testament could possibly be the beneficent and compassionate one spoken of by Jesus. In addition, it explains the problem of suffering and evil a lot more efficiently than the more standard “blame-it-on-Lucifer” line. Regardless, this is what various Gnostic groups believed and taught down through the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries, until the Christian Church got organized and started putting them out of business.

Now, if you reread the Bible with Gnosticism in mind, several things change. For example, in Eden, Ialbadaoth and his angelic cronies suddenly appear to be keeping Adam and Eve naked and stupid, like apes. Then along comes the serpent, who actually helps the couple by persuading them to rebel. He talks them into eating the fruit of knowledge and becoming self-aware. They stop being animals and start being human. For this reason, there was an entire Gnostic sect known as the Ophites (snake-worshippers).

But there was another Gnostic sect known as the Cainites.  To understand why, we must consider the next biblical drama; Cain and Abel. Cain, the eldest son of Adam and Eve, is the first farmer and blacksmith. Abel is a herdsman. God (ie Ialbadoath) commands the two to make a sacrifice to Him. Cain sacrifices the finest fruits of the harvest. Abel slaughters an animal. As a result, God favors Abel’s sacrifice and scorns Cain’s. Message? This God wants blood. As a result, Cain murders his brother and as a result undergoes a mysterious transformation.  Though sent into exile, he is somehow “marked” with a sign of God’s protection.  If anyone tries to punish or murder Cain for his crime, they themselves will be punished by God.  This is completely bizarre, given Yahweh’s “eye for an eye” mentality.  Even more odd, in the wake of losing two sons, Eve conceives a new son, Seth.

Seth is a very curious figure in both Gnosticism and mystical Judaism. Many sects regarded Seth as an emanation of the True God.  The line of Seth was called the “sons of God,” and believed to be holy.  Adam is said to have given them the secrets of the Kabbalah, and many Gnostics belived that Seth—not Jesus—was the savior who would return at the end of time.  

For Gnostics, Seth’s incarnation was made possible by Cain’s sacrifice.  Abel was the first human being to die, and by killing him Cain had opened a path into the otherworld, a path along which the True God could send part of Itself into Ialbadaoth’s creation. Perhaps Yahweh couldn’t punish Cain because he somehow enjoyed the protection of the higher, true God.  

With all this in mind, we are ready to tackle the dedication opening the Sethos edition of the Azoetia;

O Sethos! Rise up and remember!

Recall the Promise once stain’d in red upon the primal dust of the earth!

By baying dog and moon-beam, by lantern, stave, and upright stone,

Come fathom the starlit heights of Heaven in the Old Dew-pool of Cain.

Come ring the blood round with the Serpent, Come turn the skin of time,

Come pace about the corpse of Abel, here break the Fate of Mortal Man!

Here cast forth the Visions from Yesterday, from Tomorrow, unto Today.

Here open the way for the Crooked Path, for the Pathway forever to be!

O Sethos! Rise up and remember,

‘Til thy Namesake, the Man of Light, is born!

The Crooked Path is the one opened by the sacrifice of Abel, and it leads directly to the Azoth. And Cain—the first Magician—is held as the psychopomp, the opener of the way.

Now on one level, Abel is the Uninitiated Self, the normal, everyday mortal held captive by the system, subject to all the laws of nature and time. Cain is the Initiate who rebels against this, sacrificing his old life up in an effort to tear free from the bounds of time and space. And Seth is the Divine Self, the perfected being born from Cain’s sacrifice, the magician who completes his quest. We are seeing the old alchemical formula, solve et coagula, again.

In purely psychological terms, this myth reflects the fact that our lives and identities are hollow constructs, forced upon us by heredity, society, and experience. It urges us to murder these identities and to replace them with entirely self-created ones, to transform ourselves into who we want to be rather than who we’ve been told to be.

But on another level, Abel represents what Chumbley calls Zoa—the life force present in all human beings, analogous to the alchemical mercury. Cain is his darker twin, Azoa, the force of death equally present within us, analogous to salt. And Seth/os would be Azothos, the magical force that unites and transcends both, the divine fire analogous to sulfur. The work of the magician is to liberate himself from both the forces of life (with its pains, cravings, and instability) and death (with its limitation and finality). He must murder Abel and exile Cain, so that Seth (transcendence) might be born.

Aleister Crowley touched on all of this in his Book of Thoth, particularly with regards to the Trumps “Lovers” and “Art.” Another excellent source for further reading would be the writings of Julius Evola (the best being The Hermetic Tradtion).

Here Is How You Create Your Language.

mandrakeandmarjoram:

Take words from the body, with the grammar in hand as your guide. 

Sethos by your side, the Old Toad Woman by mine. Ancestor and guest, two pillars, two frames, one gate, an infinity of gates.

Where is the beginning? Where is the end? 

None, a circle that spins forward through the stars, never ending, never beginning, always transforming, shape shifting, stretching, breaking, being reborn, circle become uncircle then circle once more. 

Eleven Aats, 22 Letters, an infinity of points upon the map of quintessence.

What are yours? How do you speak? Write? Lip?

Sounds guttural and aerial, authocthonic and aethyrial both of the I that is both beginning and end. 

You say, 1, 2, 3, 4 call the Devil to your Door, and find his horns upon your own crown, hoofs on your own feet, fire burning hot in your own belly. 

Tell the story of your own being, 

The Quintessential I.

image

Azoetia, by Andrew Chumbley, page 6.

noise-vs-signal:

“Wisdom for the New Flesh” by Andrew D. Chumbley

“An Introduction to the Lore of the Sabbatic Tradition with reference to the transmission of the Quintessential-Azoёtic Current.

In seeking the Quintessence of Magick we must seek within ourselves, as Unique Stars shining
within the Body of the Void – shining with the Single Flame of Magical Power. We must not look further
than the Present Moment, nor strive towards an ever-distant Idol of Perfection; rather we must grasp the
Secret NOW.

For the Arcanum of the Quintessential Current lies within our flesh, permeating the blood
with the quickening of the Spirit; and here within the Vessel of the Body the Primal Atavism of the Magician is enshrined.

This atavism is called within the Tradition of the Sabbatic Mysteries ‘the First-born of Witch-blood’. It is the Soul of the Mundane Autochthon, the Ancestor/Ancestress unto whom the First Vision
was given and unto whom the gift of speech was bestowed, that he might utter the Power of the Vision
through the sacred medium of language (the Sacred Alphabet) and thus communicate the Arcana unto Us,
the Inheritors of Witchblood.

This ‘First-born’ of Magick is named by some ‘Cain’, he who received the Mark of the Beast upon
his brow. Cain is called ‘the Master of Horsemen’ and is identified with the Blacksmith, the Master of Fire
and Metal. He is referred to as ‘the Man-in-Black’ and as such may be identified with the Burnt or Blackened God – Shaitan or Set-an.

Within the Sabbatic Tradition ‘the Man-in-Black’ is figured as the Devil, the
Great Opposer, and is in literal terms the very entity of Death. As ‘Death’ or Thanatos he is the deified
form of the first initiate, and his god-form or ‘entity’ is the Gateway to the atavistic lineage of the Tradition, from the First-born to the Last-dead of Witchblood.

The means by which we may enter into communication with these atavisms of magical heredity
through the Gateway of our own bodies may best be described in terms which are at once both mystical
and practical. We are taught that the Primal Goddess, who is Life Itself, must be called upon at the Place
where three roads meet. These three roads are the three states of awareness – Waking, Dreaming and
Sleeping. The Goddess is the Continuity of Awareness – the State in which the Adept abides after the accomplishment of contemplative, ritual and votive disciplines.

Beyond the Meeting-place of the three
roads there is the Fourth Road; this is entered through any State of ‘Inbetweenness’, such as a ritually induced hiatus of consciousness or more often the State of Hypnagogia. The Fourth Road is the Trance
State Itself — the State of Silent Knowing or Gnosis.

The Sabbatic Teaching is that where the Four
Roads meet the Power of Death resides. As the God of the Cross’d-Roads he leads the Aspirant through
the Psychostasis of the Initiatory Ordeals, thus granting him communion with the ‘Living And the Dead of
All Blessed And Wise’.

In summary, the instantaneity of Illumination is the immediate result of contact with the innermost
sanctum of our own being. It is the unveiling of all past and future transitions of entity through which the
Indivisible ‘I’ will pass, by the means of going to the ‘Cross-roads’ or Transvocatory Point between all
Space and Time.

The Great Sorcerer draws Power from his own Death. Now!

I have outlined in a basic manner the crux of a Body of Lore, whose elegant simplicity and yet
highly intricate nuances cannot be given a just expression by words alone. But nonetheless this outline
will suffice to impart to the reader a sense of the approach to the Quintessential Current which the Tradition of the Sabbatic Craft may grant the Aspirant. In essence it focuses upon the individual as a centre of
power and emphasizes the vital importance of one’s personal vision of the World.

Rather than primarily
attempting to externalize a Unity of different initiatory streams, by bringing together individuals skilled in
such, to facilitate a ‘working group’, its prime objective is to allow the individual aspirant to discover the
Unity of Magical Power within, whilst engaging them in a complete body of magical disciplines and lore
without compromising the germination of personal insight. (This manner of Teaching is akin to the Sufic
Technique known as the ‘scatter’ method).

By going forth through the Gateway of the Cross’d-Roads the
aspirant meets face-to-face the Catena of the Mighty Dead – not only those of his own metempsychotic
lineage, but all Kindred of Our Arte to which he is bound by the Covenant of descent from the First Initiate.

He enters the Circle of the Living and the Dead to dance in co-ёval rings of moments, days and
epochs, hand-in-hand with Gods, Beasts, Men and things of Spirit and Flesh as yet unnamed. This Vision
is that of the Great Sabbat — the Prototype or ‘Form’ of Magical Quintessence from which all magical
rites and practices take their pattern.

It has been called ‘The Communion of the Saints’, ‘The Sabbath of
the Witches’, in antiquity ‘The Sabaziorum’, and in the times of Ancient Babylon ‘Sa-bat’.

To some this
Vision is full of glorious imagery, where angelic nymphs will lead them carousing and singing to feasts of
delightful superabundance. Yet to others it is an infernal pilgrimage, traversing gulfs of pain upon ladders
of knives, jostling with concupiscent hordes of half-formed Satyri and Succubi unto the oft’-bloodied altar, where the Anus of the Goat is kissed as though it were the tender lips of a Proserpinian Virgin.

The Unity of these disparate representations lies in an integral area of Sabbatic Lore, the Teachings regarding the Hand and the Eye, in which magico-aesthetic formulae regarding the Purity of Perception and the sensory transmission of the Quintessential Current via Art have been developed, and are still
under refinement.

Their Praxis is fundamentally akin to that of the Varna Marg and the One-Life/Short-Path of the Bon-po Mystics of Tibet and Nepal — the Full Embrace of Abomination in order to gain intercourse with True Beauty and Understanding.

This is glyphed by the transmogrification of the Osculum
Infame to the ‘Sacrificial’ Heiros Gamos of the Virgo Sabbati, and that of the Medusine Witch-Queen into
the flowering visage of an Aphrodite. (It is of note in comparison to the One-Life/Short-Path that there is
an identity with the ‘Fourth Road’ previously mentioned, this also relating to the half coil of the Fire-snake
or Kundalini, which is of three and one half coils. The identity between the ‘Short Path’ and the ‘Fourth Road’ is explicit
upon a study of common techniques and aims within both the practical and the mystical fields).

With regard to the magico-aestheticism of Sabbatic Lore, we have a direct cultic precursor in Zos
vel Thanatos (Austin Osman Spare), whose own artistic and magical work greatly refined this specific
area of the Tradition. He was himself an Initiate of the Sabbatic Mysteries — in the Outer via the lineage
of Yelda Paterson and the Salem Witch-cult, and upon the Inner via the psychically inductive initiations
caused by traffick with ‘intrusive familiars’ such as ‘Black Eagle’, as well as the metempsychotic inductions of the Sabbatic Lore facilitated by his practice of Atavistic Resurgence.

It was through the personage of Zos that the Sabbatic Current conjoined with the Typhonian 93 ̇. ̇ Current transmitted through the
O.T.O. The symbiosis of the two streams is attained par excellence via the Zos Kia Cultus, which may be
seen as both an ‘atavism’ of the Sabbatic Cult today and as the ‘Portal’ for the insurgent vitality which is
presently revivifying the Circle of Artist-Initiates.

It is perhaps pertinent at this juncture to state my own
role in these matters and to comment, as much as is permitted without breaching the law of secrecy, upon
the present form of the Cultus Sabbati. Contrary to the aspersions of historians, anthropologists and occultists, there are surviving traditions of magic, witchcraft and sorcerous practices in Britain and Europe.

The one to which I belong is that of the Sabbatic Craft or Cultus Sabbati which, discarding nominalisations, is a magical tradition preserved a direct lineage of Outer Initiations. Its essence or ‘Current’ is native
to Britain, although in antiquity it has been informed by the same current from Sumer which informs the O.T.O. (hence the etymology of Sabbat = Sa-Bat, the Lunar festival of Inanna) and is within my
own time once more assimilating the web of currents transmitted from the many occult power-zones upon
and beyond the Mundane Sphere.

The Lineage of Outer Initiations, which has been unbroken since before the inauguration of the
Thelemic Era, is preserved by a means simply called the ‘Passing-On or Passing-Over of Power’. It is
usually a gesture of contact between the Initiate and the Initiator — accompanied by the reception of the
Pass-word and the Words of Benediction: “May the Blessing Be”.

It is of note that this blessing and gesture are identical to that preserved in certain Sufic and Dhulqarneni Circles, the words being translated
directly as “Mubarak Bashad” — “May the Blessing Be”.

A cognate means of this ‘Passing-On’ will be
found in the tradition of ‘The Horse-Whisperers’, a Secret Society closely linked to the oldest forms of the
Craft — hence the relevance of the ‘Master of Horsemen’ or Cain, the First Initiate, born from the Union
of Adam and Lilith.

Certain forms of Freemasonry, Voudon, the Bon-po, as well as the aforementioned
Sufic and Equine-totem sects et al., preserve an initiatory gesture to impart the power of their current from
Initiator to Initiate.

Within the Sabbatic Craft this is only bestowed when the aspirant has fulfilled a preparatory period of nine months and a novitiate period of one year and a day, during which they are taught
and trained in the manner of the tradition. There are other means of this ‘Passing-On’, such as the purely
metempsychotic, which preserves the Inner Catena of Witchblood.

There is also the Eroto-inductive
means, which is only used once by an Initiator in his or her lifetime in order to pass on not only the
‘Power’ of the Tradition, but also a certain secret authority. According to custom the worthy Initiate must
be of the opposite gender, thus ensuring the alternation of masculine and feminine emphasis in the teachings, and also engendering the ‘Children of the Elder Gods’ — those sired in the precincts of the Sabbatic
Conclaves.

It is also important to point out another aspect of my own work, because it bears upon the relevance of the Zos Kia Cultus and the work of future adepts within these Mysteries. This is the matter of the
individual Initiate’s responsibility, not only to preserve the lineage and its lore, but also to refine, expand
and sublimate it in accordance with personal vision and predilection.

Zos, in his formulations within The
Witches’ Sabbath and in his Grimoire of Zos, transmuted the Sabbatic Lore as a natural consequence of
his own artistry, but nonetheless did not detract from its Corpus of Wisdom. What his words do not impart his pictures most assuredly do.

Likewise in my own recension of the Tradition within The Azoёtia, A
Grimoire of the Sabbatic Craft (From Azoth, Zoa, Azoa, et al.; hence Quintessence, Life and Death, and
cognate ideas) I have redefined the Body of Sabbatic Lore and have sought to reconstruct the entire
framework of the Tradition in accordance with its present aim of reifying the Quintessential Current of
All Magick.

Certainly the work reflects my personal vision, but the ‘Lore’ encoded therein is a direct ’re-enfleshing’ of the Tradition as a Whole, drawing in strands of symbolism and technique from many paths
to achieve their focus within the Quintessential-Azoёtic Current. Thus having focused the Gnosis of the
High Sabbat upon the inner as a repository for the Unifying Current of the Magick of All Aeons, the task
is now to reciprocate this upon the Outer.

The Book Azoёtia is the Telluric Point of Ingress in the reification of the Quintessential Current. It
is the ‘Living Truth’, the Very Flesh of the Initiates, which is the Gateway through which the Mighty
Dead of Witchblood will once more “go forth in Shadow and in Light upon the Earth”.

The Book is only
a visible means to read from and thereby gain access, through the subtleties of symbolic inference and
psychic perichoresis, to the Great Unwritten Grimoire of Magick which is the ‘True Form’ of the Azoёtia.

As Present Magister of the Cultus Sabhati, I have initiated this Work in accordance with both the principle of preserving the integral Body of the Teachings and the ethos of their perpetual refinement. This is
not straightforward, nor is it a light responsibility; one must ensure that whatever one adds or subtracts
does not diminish, imbalance or conflict with the Harmony of the Totality. This concerns all who are at
present conjoined in similar endeavours within the field of the Arcane; with all due honour I express my
blessings, gratitude and encouragement to those True Companions of the Way.

The Principal Methodology of the Sabbatic Arcana is Sorcery, and therefore it is necessary for me
to define what is meant by ‘Sorcery’ in this context. Its meaning as employed in the Cultus Sabbati is in
agreement with its correct definition via the roots of etymology: ensorcel/ensorcellment = encircle, meaning ‘to bewitch’ or ‘to bind by witchcraft’.

Hence this implies the method of ‘encircling’ or ‘binding’ as a
means of control and influence within the manipulative procedures of Magickal Power. It is usual for occultists to maintain a simple error of technicality to strengthen their practical ineptitude.

In the use of
‘Sorcery’ as a name for specific magical procedures the error of terminological inaccuracy is most common. The term is usually restricted to those operations which rely upon the use of material bases, or are
located strictly upon a fixed level of magical processes, i.e: — the Lunar/Sexual Strata Entity. The error
extends further, classifying the ‘Sorcerer’ as a Practitioner of ‘Black Magick’. Fortunately these errors are
half-truths.

Sorcery embodies the technique of ‘Binding’ as the means of controlling the Magical Forces, and
hence may best be defined via a definition of that technique:

The act of Binding is the deliberate limitation of a Force or State of Entity by Will, desire
and Belief, in order to give that Force or State of Entity a specific Form or Icon, and
hence give its Power a Focus and an intensity.

This definition is not restricted to any one level. It functions from the Highest to the Lowest Strata of Being; upon the Transcendental and Mystical Plane via the ‘Forms’ of the Elder Gods and the Abstract Magical Principles embodied in the Sacred Alphabet; upon the Intellectual Plane via the ‘eidos’ of the Gods
and Powers as ‘cogent principles of philosophical enquiry’ and as the ‘Ideas’ which specific god-forms
represent; upon the Emotional level via the sensory corollaries of the Sacred Letters; upon the psycho-
sexual level via the use of specific eroto-cognitive and orgiastic formulae; upon the mundane level via the
ritual iconography and the use of fetishistic bases to earth or manifest the Power Invoked; and upon the
atavistic level via the ancestral, totemic and elemental powers communicated with and used by the Practitioner as delegatory extensions of his present entity.

This only glosses over the Practice of Sorcery, but it clearly exemplifies its relevance to the Adept.
As defined in reference to the Azoetic Current, Magick is the Force Itself, the Transmutability of the
Quintessence (Azoth) of All Nature; and Sorcery is the Method par excellence of the Arte Magical used
to control that Force.

Its advantage is primarily its technical precision in working with the extremely specific nuances of the Magical Current, and yet maintaining the Sanctity of Mystery via their understanding
and control through the cryptogrammatical meta-language of the Sacred Alphabet.

The ramifications of
the system are complex and intricate, but it exists as an holistic ‘entity’. Its understanding should be undertaken not solely upon an intellectual or rational plane, but rather by ‘feeling’ an intuitive knowledge and
by virtue of sudden realization: a deep and tacit gnosis married to the lightning-swift illumination.

The notable distinction in the Sorcery of the Azoёtic Current is that it is ‘the Sorcery of the
Crooked Path’; it defines, refines and achieves its ends, and in doing so confronts the limits of Nature’s
own horizon. By the transilient dance of the Adept from the Old Flesh to the New Flesh he perpetually
reifies ‘That’ which he is not: the Body of Otherness.

He is thus not only the Gateway for the Returning
Dead but the Gateway for Those who are ‘Beyond’ and ‘Between’ the borderlines of Possibility. In consequence of this I give the following magical formulae, which I hope will serve as a precis of these ideas,
and if used as daily objects of contemplation will transmit and enflesh the Quintessential Current to the
‘Pure of Hand and Eye’.

Of these, The Soliloquy of Alogos should be used upon waking and The Exvocation upon retiring. This order should be changed around at the Full Moon and the New Moon.

The Soliloquy of Alogos

I: O’ Thou Sole Arcanum — Panphage, Pangenetor, Panfornicatrix,
who art the Wanderer within the Labyrinth of every Possibility.

A Cipher of Cryptograms concealeth the Metatheses of thy Name.

Thou hast no kingdom beyond Transciency,
who art exiled amid perpetual metamorphoses.

By this Sorcery of Will, Desire and Belief:
Thou art Here, this Very Moment: Enfleshed.

From this Form give forth the Necroloque:
the Death-Speech of Atavism.

Grant us the Immediacy of Our Futurities:
Transference between all Otherness.

Lead us to meet the Ever-coming Chaos with a tranquil embrace
and ennoble us with thy Solitude.

Spare us no Sensation:
That we may attain Gnosis within Ekstasis.

For Thine is this Illumination:
the Living Truth of I: NOW.

The Exvocation

I: O’ Thou Colossus of Phantasie,
who art the Mote and the Motion of All Creation,
the Ephemeral Masquerader of Chaos.

Ever-changing are thy Names;
All Names but no Name will suffice to call Thee.

Thy Kingdom is the Horizon that encircleth me.

By mine Inscrutable Sorceries,
Thou art Here, this Very Moment: Transvoked.
That the Circle lieth empty.

In this Void enflesh anew the Alogos of I.

Grant us the New Flesh: Protosarkia.
Incarnation to That which hath yet no nature.

Lead us not,
For we are the Path Itself.
The Sole Prae-determinant of That which shall Be: NOW.

“Wisdom for the New Flesh” by Andrew D. Chumbley, in “Starfire Journal Volume I Number Five” (1994).

“Gnosis For the Flesh Eternal” (1999) is an expanded version of this article, and appears in “Opuscula Magica Volume Two” (2011).

Source: noise-vs-signal

kiwiwitchpriestess:

“The Traditional Craft is the Nameless Way of the Arte Magical. It is the Path of Wytcha, the heart’s calling of avocation to Cunning Man and Wise Woman; it is the Hidden Circle of Initiates constituting the living body of the Elder Faith. Its ritual is the Sabbat of Dream-made-Flesh. Its mystery lies in the Land, below the feet of Those who tread the crooked track of Elphame. Its scripture is the way of wort-cunning and Beast-charming, the treasury of lore re-membered by Those who revere the Spirits; it is the gramarye of ear-whispered knowledge, beloved of Those who hold sacred the secrets of the dead and entrusted to They who look ever onward… If any ask about the Traditional Craft, their answers lie in its native land: the Circle of the Arte of Artes!”

– Andrew D. Chumbley, What is the Traditional Craft?

the Opposer…

iopanosiris:

image

“The Opposer is the god-form of transgression; it personifies the essential ethos of the Crooked Path and is the totem of the sorcerous mentality. Its double-form is perceived in contemplating the two sides of a knife edge or the bifurcation of a serpent’s tongue. One may discuss the double-form in dualistic positive/negative terms or in male/female polarized terms. In the former mode the positive form is the attitude adopted by the sorcerer in order to be at one with a given environment of belief, that is, to use the surroundings, irrespective of their nature, as the vehicle of one’s path. The negative form is the conscious inversion of the forms of belief which are imposed upon oneself from outside and the use of their inverse forms as the vehicle of one’s path. The key is alternation between the two forms according to the needs of the sorcerer. In simple and illustrative terms: the positive application of the Opposer allows one to move unseen within any given environment of belief and to utilize it without incongruency, either within one’s own internal belief structure or in the system within which one is moving. The negative application liberates one from the imposition of belief-forms upon one’s perceptual purity by the deliberate over-turning of those imposed forms; the inverse belief-forms being taken as the expression of one’s own intent. An understanding of this secret reveals one reason why the Sabbatic Initiate could utilize the demonic symbology imposed upon the strata of folk-magic during the Inquisition; it also reveals why such an initiate could go to a Christian church without offence to himself or any others. One should bear in mind that the two forms or modes of praxis are means to the realization of the Opposer as the Force which transgresses all Nature.”   

– Andrew D. Chumbley, “The Sabbatic Cultus: an Interview with Andrew D. Chumbley" by Robert Fitzferald; Opuscula Magica Vol. 2

”…the Crooked Path may be seen as a perpetual dance between the stations of Holiness and Heresy, Tradition and the Deviation of the Path. Each momentary stance must be held in equipoise, the practitioner fully aware of the summit of its potentials, as well as their weaknesses, ultimately knowing that meditative integration will render all duality false and illusory.“

– Daniel A. Schulke, Foreward to Opuscula Magica Vol. 2

This manifest realization is something which has greatly impacted and fueled my sorcerous work in such ways as its realignment of personal praxis and as the vehicle for change I work to embody.