Magical Physical Training (IV)

The exercises of the first step should have become a habit by now. Those of the second step have to be enforced and deepened according to time and opportunity. One ought to have the capacity of sticking firmly to any asceticism one has imposed upon oneself without having to fight temptations or even to succumb to any of them. The exercises of the third step are to be deepened as well. One has to manage the position of the body so far as to endure the asana-seat for hours without feeling the slightest disturbance, nervousness, tension or convulsion. The power of radiation has to be enforced, deepened and must become more expansive, meaning more dynamic, which has to be accomplished by imagination and deep meditation. The magician has to learn the practical use of the radiant power for any purpose and in any situation. He must reach such a degree of perfection that any desire that he is transplanting into the radiant power is realized instantly. In this manner he will be able to help suffering people in cases of illness and accidents, and thus bring great blessing to himself.
Now we shall go on to a further chapter, also unknowns to date, concerning positions of the body, gestures and positions of the fingers, generally known as ritual. The fundamental principle of rituals is based on confirming an idea, a train of thoughts by an external mode of expression or the other way around, producing a train of thoughts by a gesture or an action,
which we shall designate “evocation” in hermetics. This maxim is standing for the entire magical ritual. It is stated hereby that not only any idea can be expressed by an action, but can also be bound to a certain task. This refers to any creature as well. Anything not receiving and bearing a special name, symbol or external mark is without significance. All the magical processes and rituals are based on this primordial thesis in every religious system with its special cults since the remotest times. The only difference is that nothing but a very small part has been accessible to the masses, whilst most of it has been kept strictly secret but reserved only to high priests and adepts. Every ritual answers a certain purpose, regardless whether the point in question be the banning witchcraft of Tibet or the gestures of fingers
(mudras) performed by the Bali priests in their cults in the Orient, or the exorcism ritual of magicians. The synthesis will always remain the same. At a trial, the hand with three fingers raised for the oath as confirmation of a truthful statement may also be regarded as a magical gesture. From the Christian point of view the raised fingers symbolize the Trinity. Each of the numerous lodges and sects has its own rites. The lodges of the freemasons, for example, are all bound to a fixed sign, word and touch. A lot could be said about this problem from the historical point of view. For practical magic respecting the magical training, however, studies like these would be absolutely useless.
It is of no importance at all to the genuine magician if he reads books about the particular way in which any other magician is drawing his magic circle, regarding it as a symbol of infinity, Divinity and purity, planting his genii and angels in it for the sake of protection, or else how a Lama is painting his Mandala and sets up his Thatgatos as a symbol of protective deity. He does not need such strange directions because he knows very well that they are only a mental support for the mind. In this fourth step the magician will learn how to produce his own rituals, gestures and manipulations of the fingers. All this depends a great deal on his individuality and perception. Many a magician has achieved more with the most primitive rituals than a philosophic speculator with all his complicated performances of his cult. It is not possible to give an exact direction in this matter and the scholar will have to act intuitively and must understand how to express the ideas, trains of thought and everything he would like to be realized by a suitable gesture, position of the fingers or by a ritual. He will certainly not try to express a blessing gesture by a clenched fist ready to attack. He will compose his individual unceremonious ritual according to his situation and position that he is using when no one is watching him. There are magicians who are performing rituals

unnoticed in the middle of a big crowd by movements of their fingers in the pockets of their coats. In conformity with the elements, they are using the analogy of the five fingers by imputing the forefinger to fire, the thumb to water, the middle finger to akasa, the ring finger to earth, and the little finger to air. The right hand represents the positive eleme nts and the left one the negative elements. This small example may be sufficient.
Learn to give quite individual signs to different ideas. But keep silent about them, because if anyone else should use the same sign for the same idea, he would weaken it by the derivation of its strength. Bind and fix your personal desire that you wish most eagerly to be realized to your own small ritual or gesticulation, best of all to gesticulations of the fingers, and imagine that your desire is being realized by this gesture, or that it has been realized already. The rule of the present-imperative formula is valid here as well. The imaginary realization in connection with the gesture or rite has to be performed at the beginning with the feeling of assurance, self-confidence and self-reliance and with unshakeable faith in success.
At first the ritual as well as the imagination have to be used. Later on, dealing only with the imagination of the desire and its realization, you will be induced without even noticing it automatically to use the gesture or the ritual. Having arrived at this point, that a desire has become an automatic function of your imagination, the process will go in an inverted order:
you perform the ritual or the gesture, and the imagination or the power in question will automatically release their effect. This is the real purpose of the ritual, the position or the gestures of the limbs and the fingers. As soon as the ritual has become self-acting with the imagination, it will be sufficient to perform the ritual only to achieve the effect or influence you have been wishing for. A comparison very near to the point is offered by a fully charged battery that needs nothing but the correct contact to produce the current at any time. By repeating the imagination with the selected gesture or ritual, a power reserve is formed in the causal sphere of the akasa principle which will adopt the necessary vibration (electromagnetic fluid), color, sound and all the analogies corresponding to the desire or purpose. We can rightly assert that they are blood particles of the entire condition. If this power reservoir has been loaded by frequent repetition, the mere ritual will produce the discharge of one part of this reservoir, bringing about the necessary effect in this way. It is therefore profitable not to talk about it; otherwise, somebody else could easily draw up the power by the same ritual and accomplish the effect, naturally at the sacrifice of the originator.
Certain lodges let their beginners perform rituals by which such a power reservoir is loaded automatically. In this case, the higher adepts would get a cheap additional allowance and could work with it effortlessly. But as soon as the scholar is making progress and is capable of obtaining it by himself already, he will be advised to use this ritual as little as possible.
Evidently some people will come to the conclusion that several of the political movements or parties are performing an indirect magical action with the gesture of salute, and in this manner supply the general reservoir with more, however small parts of the vital power, by constant repetition. We shall remember the salute of the German NSDAP, consisting in a lifting of the hand and certainly representing a certain gesture of power. But if such an increased collective power reservoir is used for greedy and questionable purposes, this mentally strained power is turning against the founders because of its polarity, and decay and destruction will follow, apart from the fact that the curses of the absolutely innocent victims pining in prisons, sentenced to death or sent to hopeless battles in the field, will invisibly produce an opposite polarity that will also contribute to the decomposition of the power reservoir.

The same law works in all the rest of cult practices, no matter whether they happen in religions, sects or lodges. The miraculous healings in places of pilgrimage have the same fundamental base. The devoted believer is drawing up the spiritual power from the akasa principle, accumulated there by the worshipers as a result of their firm faith and unshakeable confidence, and the miraculous effect is carried out in this manner. The well-trained magician will always find the sole true explanation for such and similar phenomena by this knowledge of the universal laws. Using his knowledge of the polarity laws he could without any doubt grasp all the power from the cult reservoir by force and produce healings or other ostensible miracles at any tie if he wanted to. On a high ethical level, the magician would regard such deeds as a sort of theft, and therefore will always refuse to lower himself to do it because he has so many other possibilities at hand. This shall be mentioned only by the way and we shall turn back again to the rituals.
It has been said before that any idea, every desire and every imagination can be realize by a ritual, no matter which of the planes, material, astral or mental, be concerned. Only the time of realization depends on the mental maturity and the diligence of using the rituals. The magician will choose such best rituals of a universal character that he can use for a lifetime.
The fewer desires he ahs, all the sooner he can book the success. Supposing the rituals he chose do not function effectively enough at first, he should not subjoin with others. In the beginning he ought to be satisfied with one or at most three rituals. Having arrived at this step of development, the magician will understand perfectly to check on the right measure,
and he will also know how much he is able to load.

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