Category: Correspondence

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1 Feb 1950 – Advice on Astral work

1 Feb 50 Huntsville, Ala.

Dear Candida,

Astral work is the most important part of practical magick, all magical effects and magical knowledge are gained, one way or another, by its media. What the Astral Plane is, is too abstruse a matter to take up here, you may have gotten some ideas from my past letters. How it works, in the beginning, is easy, any one with any psychic development whatever may learn it. However it can be extremely dangerous to the careless and unwary.

Some magicians use drugs, fasting, dance, mantra or yoga to get on the astral. This is almost unnecessary – all you need is a calm, steady will, quiet and plenty of determination. Then try this.

1. Banish
2. Open the temple
3. Get yourself in a comfortable ritual position (the Egyptian God – hands on knees with palms open – back straight, feet square – will do).
4. Calm you mind and body with deep regular breaths.
5. Close your eyes and imagine yourself standing outside your body, beside your altar. Keep up this practice until you get a clear image.
6. Transfer your consciousness to the astral body and open your (its) eyes. This is a trick. It will all be rather dim at first, but persevere.
7. Practice the pentagram and the hexagram (rituals) until you become used to working in the astral body. Turning is usually difficult, but it can be mastered. Keep at it. Make the pentagrams appear in fire – the names vibrate in the four corners. Visualize yourself standing on the earth, with the four archangels about you.
8. When this is easy, pick a plane and a purpose (i.e. to get information, to test someone, to determine the nature of a god, symbol, or spirit or dream). The plane is that appropriate – each idea has its own plane – i.e. the Egyptian, Arthurian, Artistic etc. When in doubt, use the general Magical plane. (At first avoid dead people and the plane of the dead. This belongs to the department of necromancy which is something else.)
9. In your astral. Rise straight up (always straight up) until you come to your plane. Then go about your business. Question and test the figures you meet. Get what you go after. Banish (with an earth pentagram) those that seem doubtful. Use your magical weapons as necessary. Use your head as necessary.
10. Return straight down. Return to your body. Banish. Record everything that has happened in detail.

Notes.

A. Return to your body after any sort of astral work. This is important, in fact, vital. It is a trick, you click into place. Absorb everything. Leave no residue.
B. Banish bodily before and after each working. If there is any doubt or residue, banish again, with sulfur if necessary. Two things are most dangerous – to lose contact with the astral body (Scin Lica) and to bring back unbanished residues.
C. Rising for information is all that should be done until you are an expert. It is least dangerous. It may lead at any time to illuminations, which should not be taken too seriously. Always test, check, record.
D. Talismans and signs can be carried and used, according to your knowledge.
E. Advanced experiments.

1. Healing. Summon the astral body, diagnose the trouble and cure astrally (by banishings and invoking the appropriate conditions).
2. Injury. Vice versa. (This is very poor policy.)
3. Questioning. (a) ask the appropriate god. (b) summon the astral body and ask it. It may lie, but an answer can be forced. Don’t try to push the real powers around.
4. Astral intercourse. An amusing experiment for the advanced student. You simply visit the sleeping person in the astral. Some of the whitest and blackest Magick is done by this means.
5. Lycanthropy. You kill the animal in the magic circle and appropriate its form. It becomes your permanent familiar, you are responsible for it, and can be injured through it. Sometimes an inconvenience. Very evil magicians use children in this manner. Advanced magicians simply make the required form out of a body of darkness, but this is rather complicated.
6. Also you can manipulate the gods, spirits, talismans etc. on the astral to get almost anything you want. It is a wonderful method for the study of the Tarot.
7. Skrying. The greatest and final form of astral work. The investigation of planes and states of being (such as Aires) for illumination and initiation.

All magical work is actually done on the astral. It is the true home of every magician and should become as familiar to you as your study. The astral body is as truly your body as your physical. While your higher self resides in it, it is deathless and independent of the life of the body.

You can, I have discovered, use it to explore past lives – a much simpler way than the Magical Memory method. The dangers are through ignorance, carelessness, or stupidity – or overweening lust of result. Its proper knowledge and use is a tremendous and valuable tool, which you should use only to develop your own initiation. If you get in trouble call on me or Babalon. I have developed a strong sensibility on this plane. But don’t visit me, or try to. You know that we are taboo to each other until this work is finished.

As you develop, memorize your rituals and do them astrally. You are then working directly, without the intervention of the physical plane. Always know what you want and reject what you don’t. And don’t forget the link, that prime and often forgotten aspect of practical Magick. For the sake of your own initiation, record.

That’s about all there really is to it, although volumes could be written. There is more twaddle about it, and more people are fouled up on or about it, than almost anything – yet it is the most important aspect of Magick.
Don’t initiate the unready – it can be fearfully dangerous to anyone without suitable background.

Work slowly and carefully, persistently and you will have the whole of Magick at your command. But don’t let success throw you. Be skeptical and test. The astrals can fool and flatter and have overthrown many a foolish magician.
Once you have mastered it, you can work the reverse, and materialize astrals here, or yourself at a distance.

But that’s usually more difficult and extremely exhausting, unless you are up to it. Blood is often used – but of course the sex method is supreme here. Sex is the gateway, and energy is never lost – only transformed. Each sex act creates on the astral plane: under will it creates what you want. But that is indeed a deep matter, and needless to say one to be cautious about. Acquire the techniques first, and save the power until you know how to use it.
Well, this is it.

Love, Jack

P.S. Be sure to work only undisturbed. An interruption in the middle can be very bad. And never, never go to sleep while working. You had better observe the ordinary taboos – nails, hair and personal matters – lock your room, consecrate your food, and banish twice daily while working. Also keep the Star of Babalon with you. Always remember that you are working with your own purified, consecrated force – a far more delicate and subtle matter than handling so much Plutonium.

J.

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29 Jan 1950 – Dee’s Skrying, Hubbard Mention

29 Jan 50

I have the text of Dee’s skrying in the 7th Aire, as he said “so terrified me that, beseeching God to have mercy upon me, I finally answer that I will from this day forward meddle no more herein.” The voice, speaking from Kelly, resulted in a sinister dissociation of Kelly’s personality. The parallel with my own working with Ron is appalling. After this Kelly robbed Dee, absconded with his wife, and developed a criminal confidence career. This is the voice:
“I am the daughter of Fortitude. (La Force = Babalon) and ravished every hour from my youth. For behold, I am Understanding, and Science dwelleth in me; and the heavens oppress me. They cover and desire me with infinite appetite; few or none that are earthly have embraced me, for I am shadowed with the Circle of the Stars, and covered with the morning clouds. My feet are swifter than the winds, and my hands are sweeter than the morning dew. My garments are from the beginning, and my dwelling place is in myself. The Lion knoweth not where I walk, neither do the beasts of the field understand me. I am deflowered, yet a virgin, I sanctifie and am not sanctified. Happy is he that embraceth me: for in the night season I am sweet, and in the day full of pleasure. My company is a harmony of many symbols, and my lips are sweeter than health itself. I am a harlot for such as ravish me, and a virgin with such as know me not. Purge your streets, O ye sons of men, and wash your houses clean; make yourselves holy, and put on righteousness. Cast out your old strumpets, and burn their clothes and then I will come and dwell amongst you; and behold, I will bring forth children unto you, and they shall be the Sons of Comfort in the Age that is to come.”

In view of the fact that this MSS was unknown to Hubbard and I [sic], the parallelism is really extraordinary. I have found another prophecy in Khaled Khan which I shall send later.

The voice is of course disembodied, and the problem to furnish an appropriate body. The formula, it would seem, is that of Inanna descending (or the Pistis Sophia). At the first stage she takes off her clothes, the soul, and so on until she stands completely naked before Anunnaki, the eyes of death, with only love in her heart, and this is what ascends in her cast off garments.

It is all a matter of devotion – of willed inversion. The Bornless One (Liber Samekh) is a Sumerian ritual of the same period. If you can listen to primitive chants, Zuni, Vaadon [?], Ashanti – they may be of some use. I have some ethnic records that are really unusual, and invaluable in establishing connection.
I cannot overemphasize the danger to health, character, life and sanity if the whole mystical doctrine is not properly understood – if the will is not properly dedicated.

The way to individual initiation has never been closed – you simply see the dross and the gold, and exchange the one for the other, and keep your counsel, save where it will do some good. But the way to racial redemption has been opened but rarely by those rare, intense, passionate souls that range far beyond ordinary initiation, into realms that no man knows.

There is really not much else that I can think of. You have the techniques and the essential information – the rest is up to you. But I do not want to tincture your work with my own predilections. I can see something dimly – but it is so strange, dangerous, fantastic, that I do not now wish to even think too far on it. You understand the link between us in this work – it is fraught with all sorts of hazard, and mistake would involve us both in disaster. For over two thousand years now everyone who tackled this job has made a fool of themselves – it is time someone was making more sense.

Love, Jack

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27 Jan 1950 – On Disaster and Tragedy

27 Jan 50

Dear Candida

I have suffered some vicious astral attacks lately and my skryings indicate that they relate to a fruition of one aspect of the Babalon working, and this because I have willfully and knowingly accepted the counter charge. It is now four years since I saw the words of destiny in blood and fire, and transcribed to my own disaster. I should have died that time, what lived has had one purpose, to teach and to transmit.

Crowley is dead, Max Schneider dead of a stroke, Roy Leffingwell paralyzed with a stroke, Jones insane – you see – this is a strong magic – and Germer and Smith both old and in bad health. I do not know who else stirs in Her womb, but you are the only hope I know. If you only had with you an image of Kali – or could spend some time with Ixcunia[?] in Mexico City – to comprehend the intolerable self – the vile, frightful aspects of the mother that yet lifts up the upholding hand in the immemorial gesture of – peace, child, all is well.
It is in the passage of the barrier that lies just one inch beyond the possible that the attainment is made – the going down of the ego between the adamant or malefic back [black?] sides of the gods, that the fusion of infinity takes place.

To go deep you must reject each phenomenon, each illumination, each ecstasy, going ever downward, until you reach the last avatars of the symbols that are also the racial archetypes. In this sacrifice to the abysmal gods is the apotheosis that transmutes them to the beauty and power that is your eternity, and the redemption of mankind.

Neurosis and initiation are the same thing, except that neurosis stops short of apotheosis, and the tremendous forces that mold all life are encysted – short circuited and turned poisonous. Psychoanalysis transforms the false ego symbols – it is a confusion of conformity and cure in terms of group behavior. But initiation must go on until the barrier is passed, the misty bastions of infantile Trawenfells in to the rocks and crags of eternity, the garden of Klingsor in to the City of God.

The apotheosis is in short the translation of good and evil in terms of the father and mother Imago into Isis and Christ, Swa and Panita [?] and duad beyond duality and causality, above the abyss – and these in turn to the One that is beyond speech and sight and knowledge.

Tragedy is diurnal, comedy annual [?], the laughter and dance of the great year, where all crucifixions are only birthday parties of the Gods. Change and death are the song of the immortal, incarnate spirit, and the triple flame of greed, lust and hate no more than its mortal vestment.

But we are here all diurnal, tragedy to us, however hysterical, is real. That is why we must for ever have the message, ever old, ever new, that we are portions of eternity. We must have it as a sacrament from the great noble ego that goes down to its own crucifixion and returns an immortal spirit with celestial song. You, Cinderella of the Wastelands, have chosen the way of the hero – and the gods alone may guess the end of your path. You are, as Bolitho [?] says, “Camped out with Mystery” with only Karma-Maya and the archetypes for your companions. All the eyes of the secret world are on you, wondering and hoping. May you win through.

Love, Jack

P.S. Do you fully understand the nature of your magical relation with Freya?

P.P.S. Your show had some short press notices, which I thought I sent you, but perhaps didn’t. I haven’t written about it probably because I felt badly at the time. I don’t think that Tato’s [?] is a very good place to show – or the Coast at all.

Re the divorce. I would have preferred that you get it, but it seemed important to take decisive action in order to clear up the loose ends of the past. My lawyer says it would help if you furnished a letter stating that you are in accord with the divorce proceedings. Can you do this?

There is some literature and MSS that you should have. If you wish, I will list and tell you how to get them.

93 93/93 J.

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22 Jan 1950 –  The Roosevelt – On Gnosticism and Magick

22 Jan [1950]

The Roosevelt, Madison Ave. and 45th St., New York

Dear Candida,

Well, here is where I met you two years ago, and I wish that you were with me now, my dear, so that we could do New York together again.

It has been an interesting trip – I saw Haly of course, and Dan Kimball in Washington, then down to the grim heart of the coal region in Cumberland, then to Princeton, where I spent an afternoon with Martin Summerfield. I will see Hap and Germer, and try to find you a copy of the Goetia while I am here.
There is a Rocket Company starting in Paris, and I have an opening there which I am keeping an eye on if my plans at Hughes do not materialize. I should rather live in Paris, but am on to a big thing here which I had better stay with until it breaks. Is there anything you particularly need or would like for a post Christmas present?

If you are right in your choice of San Miguel as the place for your work, you will undoubtedly find means to complete it there. If not, I should be glad to help you get established there, if it looks like your finances would necessitate some such move.

As a rule no one is sure of his will until he has made a variety of experiments.
One thing about Magick, there is too much claptrap in the present method of presentation, too much indirection. It is all there, but overlaid, like Troy before Schlieman. The modern spirit requires an austere simplicity of approach, a burning passion to truth beyond all partiality and predilection.

Even two thousand years ago that was the reason for the victory of Christianity over gnosticism, because gnosticism, although true, was too complex, and Christianity, although false, was simple and direct. Simplicity has been the key to victory in all the idea wars, and, at present, Magick does not have it. There is the skeleton, in the Rights of Man and in the coverings in the main literature. But the true body has never been shown forth.

The difficulty with the truth is the subtle and pervasive nature of rationalization. Existentialism is just as much on one side as Christianity is on the other, science is as weighted as Shakerism. There can be no objectivity so long as there is preference.

We are not Aristotilean – not brains but fields – consciousness. The inside and the outside must speak, the guts and the blood and the skin; the penis and the vagina, as well as the brain. We must have it all out, the fear and the disgust, the hatred and cowardice, and the beauty, tenderness and courage as well, and balance all.

Then we can get at the truth. The mind is an instrument that measures itself with itself and as such a contradiction – an impossibility. But out of this abyss, as we know, we can make significance, but to be cogent it must be significance for the entire field.

In a world of partialities and pseudo-ideals, the truths on the other side open as horrors and we admit them with a sense of despair, of utter abnegation. But the conflict is real, and the solution cannot be “thought up” as such, it is as obviously ersatz as Esperanto. These continual things that we reach for are just obviously fake, and I must confess that much of Magick seems that way to me.

These “returns,” as though we, of a grown generation could go back to anything, are all off the track – we must go forward to what we are, and no one has ever been there. It’s no use pretending to be adults when you are children, or children when you are adults, and we, unfortunately, do both. The only thing is to find out what you are, and try to be it. Of course, if there is no faith (and there shouldn’t be, if we have thought through) then there must be an act of faith, but this should come after an experiment in truth that comes clean.

Something is moving now – in France, and England, and in Berlin – even moving a little in this benighted country, like the slow, shallow ripple, far out to sea, that hints of a great wave that will flood the land four thousand miles away; and strange as it may be – and brutal and savage as it could be, yet I sense a sort of searching sincerity in it, that has not been known in the world before.

We can sense it, partially predict it, perhaps even guide it a little, and those of us that do may be the makers of a new world. It is all strange and uncharted – nothing but truth will serve us here, and it must be the truth of dream and hallucination and frenzy equally with the truth of science and dialectics and economics. And that truth must be [hounded?] and hunted to its last resting place in the ultimate abyss.

Indeed my personal and interior experience, however hallucinated, must be at least equally valid with the things I have been taught to call “objective” and “real.” But these are also my truths – they are part of me – part of the equipment of my cosmic laboratory wherein I can begin an experiment in truth.

Somewhere I must get interior and personal experience – I am shut off from it and starved for it, as we all are in the West. I can think of no better starting point than “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” – no better equipment than the magical, scientific, and psychological techniques I have inherited. But all these boil down to will, experiment, and honesty in regard to data.

Love, Jack

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15, 16 Jan (1950, presumed) – Hotel Raleigh – Methods for Invoking

[Hotel Raleigh, Washington, D.C. letterhead] Jan. 15 [1950?]

Dear Candida

93.

I am enclosing the 7th Aire. Copy it into a permanent note book along with any other rituals you intend to use. You should have the plan in detail, order of rituals, layout of temple, procedure etc. I will send you the ritual of the Bornless One, probably in a small Goetia, since it is rather long to copy. It is a very ancient, potent & dangerous ritual, often used by bold magicians in the Guardian Angel Working. It is useful as a preliminary in almost any sort of work, causing a tremendous concentration of force. It is, however, liable to produce dangerous side phenomena and sometimes permanent haunting in an area where it is repeated, & is for this reason often avoided. Never do it without banishing & opening the temple, then closing and banishing again. I’m tired from the trip and will myself close now.
——

Jan. 16

Method of invoking

1. Banishing pentagram

2. Opening Hexagram

3. Ritual (may be preceded by Bornless One, or other preliminary invocation).

Then, for a superior force (god)

a. Supplication of the force
b. Description of the Force
c. Identification (or union) with the Force.

For a lesser force (spirit, angel, demon, elemental)

a. Supplication of a superior force (appropriate god)
b. Description of a superior force.
c. Identification with superior force.
d. As superior force, invocation and command of lesser force.

4. Closing Hexagram

5. Banishing pentagram.

For gods, an appropriate altar is used. For the rest, the magician stands within an appropriate circle, and invokes the force into a triangle. In any case the appropriate weapons, perfume, colors, should be used, the names and signs of the appropriate angels, planets should be drawn or written on talismans.
The magician should be robed and wear the sign or talisman of the highest force appropriate to the invocation. He should exhibit this when it is necessary to command, and (except in the case of Gods to whom it is inappropriate) a sword which he should not hesitate to use on anything or anyone who threatens to intrude or break the ritual. Once started, a ritual must not be stopped for any reason. It should be done in a secluded place, and no one should enter who has not been tested and consecrated by the magician.
The invocation of Gods (which pertains to a higher magic) is subtle and subject to individual variation and personal composition.

The invocation of lesser forces is exact, and, since love does not usually enter in so much, in one sense far more dangerous. In the higher work you are actually wooing the god – it is an act of art. In the lower you are compelling, it is an act of science.

The state in a proper working is indescribable but unmistakable. It is essential that everything be prepared and learned properly well in advance, since when things start to happen much of the work will have to go on automatically.

The primary methods are:

1. Goetia (Demonic)
2. Planetary (Clavicle)
3. Enochian (Elementals and Aires)
4. Solar (Guardian Angel)

I have found the Enochian the best (although complicated). The Tarot corresponds to the Enochian system obtained by Dr. Dee – the Trumps to the Aires and the courts to the Gods, Seniors and Angels and the numbers to the lesser angels.

Probably you can use the Tarot alone if you follow the following steps.

1. Consecrate the appropriate weapons to Earth, Air, Fire and Water. (The Sword also to Mars and Bartzabel.)

2. Consecrate the appropriate card as a talisman.

3. Construct the entire ritual. Invoke the card down from the appropriate trumps, and across by the appropriate correspondences. Don’t forget the material link and vital fluid. Blood will do in a pinch.

4. Fast, for the day before starting.

5. Consult the cards first to see if the ritual is appropriate and correct.

6. Remember that the Tarot is a great and sacred arcanum – its abuse is an obscenity in the inner and a folly in the outer. It is intended for quite other purposes than to determine when the tall dark man will meet the fair rich widow.

But the master don’t give a shit for that. He will tell the yokels fortunes till the cows come home, if it suits his purposes.

93 93/93
Love, Jack

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5 Oct 1949  – Extract Only – On the Babalon Working

5 Oct 49

Dear Candida

According to your last letter – although I may be able to give you valuable technical advice from time to time – still you have probably reached the point where your guidance – in terms of that necessary for an appropriate decision – is adequate for your needs.

However, since Rome is such a new center, I wonder if it would not be worth your while to spend a little time there. It is only one of the three centers of opposition. I don’t see how you will meet destiny in Guadalahara – on the other hand you might – or in Oshkosh, Minsk, Flatbush or any other place you may decide to go. This is quite uninspired – as it should be – it is really not my concern at all.

After all, the other name of Armageddon will not be written until the morning of Ragnarok, when at last Her banner is unfolded before the armies. This part of the prophecy I have never told, and do not know that I ever shall. So far it has been quite literal. I suppose I shall see that bloody sunset, just as I have seen the rest. Well, I can change nothing, nor do I care to. What is loosed is loosed, and well loosed. All the rest calls for redemption; and nature moves inexorably towards a balance. If I am used in that work – however ill used – I am glad of it.

We can be insulated against everything but death – in fact, death is the very substance of our insulation. But to be used by life we must be naked and to be naked is to be hurt. But it is also to be alive.

 

In Tarot Divination – the IHVH method is better to show how the cards are running and indicate the general situation – the Celtic mode is best for particulars. Notice that you can detail either method by increasing the number of houses – and the pack dealt into the blocks so that the relationship can be studied. Usually this is not necessary. Remember, divination is the least of the powers of the Tarot. It is also a key to the highest initiation. Each trump and its relations.

The rest of the happenings that befell are secret. They concern things of which I never can tell, and never shall try to tell. Let this suffice. I know that Babalon is incarnate upon earth at this moment, although I do not know where or as whom. I believe that She will manifest in Her proper time, and that thereafter the rest of the prophecy will naturally follow. And in that knowledge and belief I rest content.

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LETTERS TO MARJORIE CAMERON

 

Note: The transcripts of these letters were sourced from the now-defunct babalon.net (viewable via webarchive.org) and contain the citation:

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN JACK PARSONS
and His “Elemental”, Marjorie Cameron
Edited by Cameron and Hymenaeus Beta (Fra. Superior, OTO)                    ©1989 Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel                                                          Revision 2

The typed manuscript notes are given a title page:

Letters of Jack Parsons to his wife Marjorie Cameron Parsons                  5 Oct 1949  to  12 Feb 1950                                                                                            (Typed by Jane Wolfe (Soror Estai) from the holographs in the possession of M C Parsons in 1954 and recopied from the typescript here in 1954)

Handwritten notations: “Letter #2 Admirable” ( 22 Jan 1950 assumed – Ed.) and below, “Are Extremely good“

5 Oct 1949  – Extract Only – On the Babalon Working

15, 16 Jan (1950, presumed) – Hotel Raleigh – Methods for Invoking

22 Jan 1950 –  The Roosevelt – On Gnosticism and Magick

27 Jan 1950 – On Disaster and Tragedy

29 Jan 1950 – Dee’s Skrying, Hubbard Mention

1 Feb 1950 – Advice on Astral work

6 Feb 1950 – On spiritual mythology

8 Feb 1950 – The nature of Magick

9 Feb 1950 – On gods, and spiritual independence and growth

12 Feb 1950 – On gods, cont.