LIBER SIGILLUM: THE BLACK BOOK CALLED NONE
PRELIMINARY NOTES
Whether a student of the A.A.O., another group or intrepid lone wolf, the practitioner is highly encouraged to keep a regular record of his notes, ideas, feelings and thoughts within a magickal journal if he is to exercise the material, particularly the gates and circles, found herein. Indeed, this recommended item serves a variety of practical purposes and may take any form so long as it suits the practitioner. For the most part, this journal should be for your eyes only, though it is entirely appropriate to share its contents amongst fellow students and trusted friends. Discouragingly, some appear to be apprehensive about keeping a journal such as this, despite it being a tried and true mechanism of self-
reflection, note keeping and all-purpose record of attainment, not to mention that nearly every occult order had required the keeping of a magickal journal in one form or another, and with very good reason. For one, we might not remember everything that we experience, with a journal serving in this way as a more concrete form of remembrance when it comes to dream recall and the subtle thoughts, feelings and messages one receives during meditative sessions or throughout the day. Often, the mere act of writing something down increases the odds of it being remembered tenfold. The second reason is more traditional, and details the meticulous recording of any and all attempted operations and experiments so that formulas for success may be kept and failures dissected, understood and overcome. For the student of the A.A.O., the magickal journal shall very likely increase ones chances of continued success, and should therefore be in ones possession before he attempts the operations and goals described by the schema of distillation in section three. As a textbook, this volume may serve one better as a tome of reference rather than a casual read-through, though either approach is apt. However, a brief review of its previously unexplained contents may assist before proceeding. We may begin by noting the at-times surreal prose utilized in the sections titled “Initiation: the Theatre”, “An Age of Reason”, “The Timeless Eye”, “The Mountain” and “A Rare Council”. These are segmented and spread throughout as they were in the first edition, though without proper explanation may only serve to throw some readers off, or at the very least cause some unnecessary confusion as to their hidden meanings. To partially understand them we might acknowledge the time in which the first edition was written, being the foremost exploratory incarnation of Circle Zero, called ground zero or Zero Point. A full explanation of circle zero may be found in section three, though we can describe it here in brief as: an operation and state of mind whereby one forcefully tears away or temporarily (or permanently) discards the many layers of self (which contain intellectual assumptions, beliefs, etc.) in order to arrive at something resembling a core or naked state of
being. This naked state of being no doubt exists, as it may certainly be experienced, though a superb sensation of utter disconnection serves as its foremost benchmark. This sense of disconnection is felt more on a cosmic or metaphysical level, as a start, rather than any other. It is felt at the very center of oneself, and must then be faced without the usual toys and tools of contemporary, information-based civilization. While suffering this, one becomes somewhat knowledgeable of how early man might have felt as a frightened, fledgling species with no idea one way or the other as to the natural forces he finds himself incarnate amongst, and in this way, encounters a sort of primal nihilism taken root within his conceptions of existence. He is a being that is not n ot animal and yet not human. However, one then soon becomes aware of a means by which he may assuage this nihilism by the act of conscious invention. He becomes dissatisfied with the emptiness and so decides, truly decides, to make something more out of it. By doing this, be begins to create himself, his surroundings and the role he has chosen to play within them. He creates a world of thought, feeling and belief around himself, and by this act of invention, finds himself as being more than a frightened, empty animal – he becomes a magician. Given this harrowing initiation, the word ‘invention’ might hardly do the process much justice, for the long climb towards stability does not enact itself upon any idealistic function, but that, strangely enough, when one finds himself without anything at all to grasp onto within those internal planes, that something which we shall simply call “Nameless” here as to avoid any cultural bias, sparks up within his empty core and proclaims a purpose, meaning and function. Although more felt than intellectually rational, as it is certainly felt as an Other-being confronting that which we perceive as self. Its message is at the time so clear and seemingly truthful as to both stupefy and invigorate with newfound drive and reason to live, to carry on, and to explore the existence which one is found born within. Could this be the shadow of the primal conception of God or divinity tucked deep within the self? One may easily construe it as such, though as a staunch
skeptic and explorer of consciousness, I hold some other, albeit unpopular theories alongside the major. It must be said that the operation of Circle Zero and all others that resemble it shall likely not simply delete all past conceptions and historical learning, even for a short time, and that when one finds himself empty that he or she shall very likely begin to grab at those subconscious artifacts which are most prevalent within; conceptions of divinity, an absolute or a totality, as these are certainly an esoteric commonality by any definition. On another level, I had certainly acknowledged an underlying structure or quintessential, mysterious order to the multiple incarnations of existence in both a scientific and metaphysical sense. At this time, I do not make any distinction between them. I then put it forth that our underlying conceptions of God or divinity relate directly to those very mechanisms and faculties which make us human to begin with, that there is no difference, and that given the appropriate procedures, we may converse and meet with them directly and needless of any historical masks or historical traditions. This however carries along with it another problem, that of the divide between subjective and objective truth and experience. It is likely that the internal God I encounter shall differ from your own internal God, lest we each subscribe to an external God, being those described by culture and popular religions, and then we have no choice but to agree if we had been thoroughly indoctrinated. Of course, these external faithbased traditions shall only serve to cover both our internal Gods with a mask which must be adhered to lest we face excommunication or worse. Indeed, I think that God or the cosmic force might only be adequately approached from a naked state outside of history and personal conceptions, and I also think that S/He can hardly be said to exist outside of the individual! When one begins to explore the mind, it shall become increasingly obvious that the entirety of the universe, being what one knows of it and how one perceives it, also resides within the individual mind. If experienced and understood, then this means of viewing goes beyond nihilism, solipsism and, indeed, all ‘isms’ which human society is so fond of creating. We must
confront ourselves with the knowledge that how societies, collectives, countries or sections of particular faiths will never correctly fit with how we, ourselves, might approach existence as individuals, and all societies, collectives, countries or sections of faith are certainly made up of individuals. The collective cannot be accurately talked about as an individual unit; the collective cannot accurately talk about the individual without profound error. We are then left with the self, and it is here that God and divinity discard their cultural masks and make themselves known, not as an anthropomorphized and mythic symbol, but that thing which makes us unique, human, conscious beings in our own right, stewards of the earth and intellectual savages turned upright by their own nagging curiosity. There is no holy book on earth that could compete with your own relationship to the existence you have been born within. Herein is the essence of magick! The very same conception you hold of any God or divinity is just another way of thinking about that part of yourself that is divine that part of yourself that is able to perform miracles and create dreams, events and experiences. The God you discover may in fact be yourself. Be then thine own religion! For some, this may not be enough, as they desire to encounter truly ‘Other’ beings and spirits, and wholly disconnected from the self, throughout their own mystic voyage. We do not deny that they may exist, though I do maintain that the fluid environment by which they might be recognized as being ‘truly other’ is certainly consciousness itself. They must appear by means of an individual consciousness in order to exist, and so then are either treated as ‘truly other’ or as a deeper, ingrained portion of the evolved mammalian mind, which is, indeed, vast enough to contain the conception of an entire universe in and of itself. The practitioner might then desire to find a bridge, something that connects his conceptions of inner and outer so that it may all finally connect. Certainly, you will find such a bridge, and that bridge may be called the magickal style of thinking, of which language itself plays no small part therein. The magician is then seen to be a few steps beyond the philosopher, for he does not only theorize about the supposed
nature of reality, but drives himself down into these suppositions, now made reality for him, so that they may be experienced firsthand. Because of this, it will not do any of us any good to sit back and discuss the nature of external spirits or intelligences unless we gear ourselves up and dive headfirst into that realm wherein they are found dancing. This is the promise of the magickal lifestyle lived to its fullest; you shall encounter spirits, miracles, spells, curses, astral travel, Gods, Goddesses and spectacular results. You shall experience them all if you remain diligent as a student of the mysteries, the very things that civilization had founded itself upon. What you are not promised is that any of these will be exactly real as we understand the term in the modern sense, and we must also tip our hats to that discipline called science, a fairly recent approach, which we also wholeheartedly subscribe to. You might then imagine our own frustration. You might then imagine our want to gather a post-tradition group of practitioners who might train themselves to navigate such dimensions, given the helping hand of multiple lasting adepts, coming out of it with their sanity intact, and ever more. The A.A.O. experiment has thus far not been without its trials. For the author, the sheer scope laid out has taken its toll, and I am not the only one who has felt the sting that this work demands. Far from being a purely occult treatise, it must also serve the purpose of un-fucking anyone who finds themselves in a state of utter confusion and downward spiral; it must inspire just as much as it analyzes the techniques. Whether you are an occultist who feels himself experienced enough, or someone who faces a set of dire complications in terms of your own relationship to these subjects, we must unite you all herein. This demands a dire sort of existential humility, and the acknowledgement that none of us are perfect, or have our fingers right on the button, as it were, of any real metaphysical truth. However, it also admits to a scale, or gradient of what might be called ‘truth’, in the same way that Einstein had a better grasp of relativity than the guy who worked at the nearest bread baking shop. Such a gradient is expected, and relies on nothing much more than focused application, though the magickal impulse, and
especially lately, feelings or theories as to a magickal truth, have been all over the board, and much to the detriment of the tradition and community in whole. This is a peculiar and recent problem which begs some attempt at deconstruction. In truth, there are only a very few outlets that one may engage in beyond joining a so-called official order such as the IOT, OTO, Golden Dawn, and so on. They are left with the online community, by and large, with the various forums and groups being equally contaminated with the predominant fluffy-ism inherent. Those who would rather disregard all of that in favor of a critical examination that favors base-line techniques over the various masks that are placed upon them are mostly left to the wayside, and this is highly unfortunate. We may call this the Disneyfication of Occulture – form over function, image over flesh, which in turn gives an ever increasingly Hollywood depiction of the occult as well as a cloud and fog over those searching for some solid, practical answers, leaving them in a haze of popular culture, fiction and all those things which contemporary Chaos Magic (which is a thing quite different from the original) had left in its popular wake. Magical result then suffers, confusion is predominant, as well as the attitude of “every opinion is created equal”, while ignoring that there had ever existed a personal path, a way, or a means of coming into contact with the underlying mysteries to begin with. Post-modernism does have this effect, but we aren’t exactly post-modern anymore (meaning post-industrial) as a society, and just as society had become informational in nature, so must the occult community in order to catch up. Chaos had fulfilled its use as a primary header for the occult underground. We’re all just about ready for something else. For now, and for the remainder of this 2 nd edition introduction, let us talk about magick, itself. It is a word that conjures visions of fantastical results, spiritual beings, Gods, Goddesses, rituals, magical tools such as wands, swords, cups, sacraments, herbs, and so on down the list. All of these conceptions are apt, though some will treat them as being quite different than what most the tradition latches onto. Yet, one desires them all! He desires to hold these experiences for
himself, and thereby, perhaps he might call himself a magician, or by any other name, one who had braved the mystery traditions and came out with a set of stories to tell. Perhaps the reader already has a desire in mind, just as he reads – perhaps he or she desires a worldly or physical goal, such as wealth, revenge, or any other of the primary vulgar desires that had drawn so many to the occult for so long. I will tell you right here and now, in order to spare you some disappointment, that such desires and their workings will not be found in any published book, including this one. You may find techniques scattered throughout various texts which promise such things, though the only means by which they might be correctly enacted is nowhere found. This thing, this secret, this key of manifestation is gained by your own continual delving into the style of thinking called magickal, and there is no single volume, system or paradigm that will freely give it, for it is only yours to give. It is yours to find, and yours to believe. It shall not be free of tribulation. This book seeks to invigorate and tease your own inner power. It will taunt you with depictions of death, fantasy, realism, science, apathy and every other concept worth a damn. Herein is a tomb haunted by spirits who do not very much care for you or your desires. Despite this, they are very understanding as to your own plight and hardships as an organic vessel, as they had surely been through the same. For this reason, it is best to strap in, keep your eyes sharp, and travel through the pages which they delightfully delightfully stain. Perhaps by the end of it, you may earn their respect, and appreciate the existence that you have inherited before attempting to sloppily control the depths of it. And yet, even this is found without much rule. To all those who seek, Maintain.
