The Black Crow

The Black Crow

by Lee ‘Red Oak’ Johnson

Copyright 2012 Lee ‘Red Oak’ Johnson

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Stillness

Sacred Space - The Star Ruby

Active Meditation

Moving Meditation

Breathing

Sacred Space - Kabbalistic Cross

Sacred Space - Kabbalistic

Concentration

Oaths and Bonds

Visualization

On Initiation

Sigil Magick - Introduction

Sigil Magick - Working With Sigils

The Soul

Protection

Self Creation

Suggested Practice Outline

About the Author

Introduction

The Black Crow is an alchemical representation or symbol of the first stage of soul alchemy, Negredo, which is the stage of Awakening the Sleeping Man. Before Awakening can occur, Stillness must be sought, this being Stillness of the Mind and Body.

This course book is focused on Stillness, but also goes into many of the rituals and practices that are to be performed during this stage. Practices such as Sigil Magick and Desire Inhalation are to prepare you for the Act of Magick, and are well worth performing to better your life and circumstances. The Sacred Space formation is also something that will required in later stages of your personal evolution and practice as a Witch or Magician, and so to find the ritual niche that best suits you is a very important aspect at this early stage.

This book is complimentary to The Reality of Things, as the previous book was designed to give the beginner on the Paths a solid grounding in their knowledge and understanding of Magick and Witchcraft in general. Here, we continue that Journey on with more theory, but add more practice and practical approach to your daily routine is given, so that you may perfect yourself.

Go well on your Soul Quest and Journey with the Intent of the Pheonix.

Lee ‘Red Oak’ Johnson

Johannesburg, South Africa

Spring Equinox 2010

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Stillness

This first stage in your training has to do with stillness. In a sense this is a broad Not-Doing in that it is opposite to what we are used to. We go about our day in constant movement, doing things, thinking things, feeling things, and so we need to learn how to become still.

One of the methods to achieve this stillness is through the practice of Asana, which is basically the practice of sitting with comfort and ease. Now this may seem simple, but sit in the same position for half an hour without moving a single muscle, and you will soon learn how difficult it can become, no matter how comfortable you may think you are when you begin.

Another aspect of stillness, and especially with the practice of Asana, is to remove the mind from the body and all exterior influences. What this means is that you bring total focus to your mind and the intent or thoughts that you are focusing on, and so whatever happens to your body or around you disappears and becomes irrelevant.

What is necessary for this course is that you practice stillness. Whenever you sit down for an exercise in meditation or further exercises, unless of course the exercise requires movement of the body, you will sit in Asana and be completely still. This means that you will not move a single muscle, you will not move your tongue, your fingers, your head or any part of your body. There are those, and you will see this if you ever read Liber 4 by Aliester Crowley, who suggest that you must practice until you become perfectly still, to the point where you can sit for an hour and balance a saucer full of water on your head without spilling a drop. Now being someone who has involuntary muscle twitches, I find this to be a bit overboard. So, if you do have involuntary movements, i.e. those movements that you have no control over, that is alright, but any movements that take place which you do have control over is a no-no. One thing I have found necessary is swallowing. No matter how hard I try to not swallow, I have to. If I do not, then I would probably have saliva running down my chin by the end of the practice which is not very good for your robes if you are wearing any. So, do swallow, but only when absolutely necessary.

Now the positions you can sit in are quite vast as far as Asana positions go. Crowley talks about four positions in Liber 4, but I would suggest using a particular one, and that is the God position. You can read the others in Liber 4 if you like, but I think you will see that they are somewhat difficult for the beginner.

So to get into the God position, find yourself a chair that is firm with an upright back. Sit in the chair with your back up straight and move your head, on your neck, slightly back and tilt your chin down very slightly. If you were to exaggerate this movement you would be tucking your chin into your chest. This will keep your neck comfortable. Then put your feet firmly on the floor, legs together (I find this difficult so legs slightly apart will do. If they are together you may find that the muscles will not allow it after a few minutes and you will spend all your time trying to keep them together, not a necessity), and your palms on your thighs. Your calves should be perpendicular to the floor, your thighs parallel to the floor.

That is the position. Now don’t fool yourself by thinking that is so easy. Try sitting like that for half an hour without moving. You are going to go through pain, I am not going to lie to you. That pain however, after some practice, will start to disappear. It is usually some or other blockages in your energy system that are clearing out. However, the pain can also result from non-movement of the muscles. You may get cramps, you will get itches that you need to scratch, but don’t move. Just let them pass and they will pass. When you are done with a meditation, don’t move immediately, first start to move your fingers, and then slowly start to move your body. First get the aches and pains worked out before you stand up.

One-Pointed Meditation

Meditation and breath are two of the most important aspects of all magical paths. The problem is that we tend to consider them to be annoying aspects. We have a problem meditating and so we allow the practice to slip until we don’t practice at all.

Meditation is necessary for many things. First of all it is used for focus and concentration. One-pointed meditation is the aspect of causing the mind to focus on one thing to the exclusion of all others and is usually the method taught in Buddhism. Now, one big fallacy in meditation is the idea that we need to banish all thought from our minds. Quite frankly, this is impossible, even the Tibetan monks who have been meditating for hours every day and for most of their life cannot cause the mind to become blank. I recall hearing that the monks were actually tested in this regard, and the most they could accomplish was five minutes of complete blank mindedness.

When we consider the 7±2 theory we find that the mind is never blank for any split moment of our life. This theory states that during periods of deep rest the mind has five thoughts going through it, and during periods of heightened activity, a maximum of nine thoughts. As we have thoughts crowding the compartments of our mind we focus on them, analyse them and when a thought starts to become less important than another, it is pushed out of the compartments of the mind and a new, more important thought takes its place. Of course what this means is that the mind always has at least five thoughts crowding it at any given moment. Taking that into consideration, how can we make the mind blank of thought? Well, we can’t, and there really is no need to create this condition. During meditation we are not required to completely remove all thought, but rather to not analyse those thoughts. We allow the thoughts to be present, but unlike in a normal waking state whereby we take each thought and analyse it, moving it aside to allow analysis of the next one as it becomes more important, we merely allow those thoughts to pass by without giving them any importance. One of the ways to accomplish this is one-pointed meditation, to focus the mind on one thing allowing all of the other thoughts to continue on by.

Another reason for meditation is to calm the mind, which is very similar to what we have just discussed. Once your mind becomes less and less like a train station with thoughts coming in and out and crowds mulling around, getting on and off the trains, and all that NOISE in the head…and more like a tranquil meadow with thoughts floating about like butterflies resting on flower tops and being blown here and there with a gentle breeze, then the mind starts to become more tranquil. This tranquility can lead to various states, such as the surrendering of the body in order to move into altered states of consciousness.

However, one-pointed meditation can be difficult for someone with little patience, and even if you consider yourself to be the most patient person in the world, when practicing meditation day after day, we all have moments where we get frustrated and question what we are doing and start to lose the purpose and meaning of our attempts. So we end up ignoring meditation and when we do our magic work, we just go straight into it. What happens is that we perform this or that magical operation without being completely in the required state and much of the power is lost.

There seems to be an opinion that meditation is something that is practiced as a separate act from magical work. I have to disagree with this. Although meditation should be practiced every day as an act by itself, in order to enter into a magical working it is always better to begin with a meditational practice that will take you into a mild trance state. This prepares you for the working, and also gets you between worlds or states so that your working is more enhanced. Just to walk into your working and start chanting names and performing magic will get you somewhere, but not nearly as far as you could,