Making Talismans: Living Entities of Power - Softcover

9780738700045: Making Talismans: Living Entities of Power
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Making Talismans gives you the practical techniques―and the secret keys―for turning mundane objects into living entities of power that will bring about real change in your life.

By pooling techniques from areas as diverse as Shamanism, Paganism, the Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn, and the teachings of Dion Fortune, Making Talismans provides training in magical techniques from the simplest to the most complex. With these clear instructions, anyone can become capable of performing advanced magical talismanic operations.

You do not have to be an experienced practitioner to get positive results from the information contained in this book. Whatever your magical tradition―Wiccan, Pagan, or Ceremonial―Making Talismans provides you with all the necessary practical information and techniques for creating these potent magical objects. It is a valuable resource for anyone interested in this important and rewarding occult art.

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About the Author:
Nick Farrell (United Kingdom) has been a ceremonial magician since he was 17. Born in England and raised in New Zealand, he was initiated into Builders of the Adytum (BOTA), and is currently an initiate of the Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn and one of its branch orders, the Order of the Table Round. He now runs a temple in the tradition of Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn, lectures and runs workshops throughout the world. He has contributed to Quest, Liongate, and Round Merlin's Table magazines and Chic and Tabatha Cicero's Hermetic Journal.

He is currently working on books on magical psychology, earth magic and ritual magic. Nick has a career in news journalism and magazine writing. After more than 15 years working for daily and local newspapers, he is now a full time writer and editor, working for many UK computing and Internet magazines he also advises companies on media relations.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Talismans and How They Work
A talisman, amulet, or charm is any physical object that stores and radiates a magical energy to create change. A metallic disk, stone, wand, sword, pen, paper, or television remote control can be a talisman provided that it is dedicated toward a "magical purpose. The definition of magic, however, has successfully eluded occultists for centuries.

Aleister Crowley, a Golden Dawn adept, devised the most widely accepted definition of magic. He argued that magic is "the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will, but this is too wide a definition to be of much use. Crowley, himself, admitted that this definition implies that any willed act is magical. While turning on a light switch may be perceived as magical to someone who has not seen electricity, most would not define it as a magical act.

Another definition of magic, touted by more than one magical school of which I have been a member, is "the art of causing meaningful coincidences at will." This is equally unsatisfactory, though, since magical work does not always create coincidences that can be seen on the material plane.

While it is not entirely satisfactory either, my definition of magic is " the art and science of becoming a co-creator with a Supreme God. This is not to say that we can be co-equal with the Most High, but rather that we merge into Divinity and its purpose. Occultism teaches that everyone has unlimited potential. We stop becoming successful only when we forget that we are part of an infinite creator. This divine creator aspect of us is like a divine secret self; Jung called it the Higher Self. As this self is realized, we become more in tune with the Divine and have access to more of its powers.

Occult techniques bring us to a gradual realization of our immortal nature over a period of incarnations. In the early stages of occult training, we develop enough belief in its concepts to effect changes in our material surroundings.
Using my definition, a talisman, amulet, or charm is a material object that stores and transmits a fusion of the magician's will and universal powers to create something new.

How Talismans Work
To know how talismans, amulets, and charms work, it is important to know how things in the universe are created.

Like a physicist, an occultist defines the universe as being made up of energy vibrating at different frequencies. Occultists, however, say this energy is intelligent and is the material part of a single divine being. They go further to say that this energy extends to higher frequencies than have been identified by physicists.

Occultists define four frequencies or levels that exist within different dimensions of the same space (figure 1). These are sometimes called the four worlds of the Cabbalah. These worlds interact and affect each other. An event that happens on one level of creation will affect all the others. A form of Jewish mysticism called Cabbalah named these levels Atziluth, the world of deity; Briah, the world of creation; Yetzirah, the world of formation; and Assiah, the world of matter.

The highest frequency is the creative intelligence of the universe or a Supreme God. This is where all ideas in the universe are born.

These divine ideas filter down to the next level where they become an impulse toward a particular direction. At this level, the ancients noted that parts of God divided into specializations. For example, one specialization would bea creator and another a destroyer. The ancients named these divine specializations archangels. If God's idea were to create dogs, then the archangel would map out the details of what would make up a dog and its evolutionary destiny.

The work of the archangels filters down to the next level. Here the divine plan is drawn in greater detail. The ancients noted that different parts of the archangel would specialize again into what they called angels. There was one angel for each part of the creation. Using the last example, there would be an angel responsible for creating each dog's teeth, another for its hair, and another for working out each animal's time of death.

Once this work has been carried out, the image of the dog is strong enough to manifest on the material plane. Here the images are formed, under the angel's instructions, out of beings called elementals. These creatures are partly built of spirit, but resonate to different types of matter and effectively build the image on the material level.

There are four types of elementals, which are described in terms of the type of matter they resemble. The lowest level of elementals are the earth elementals, or gnomes, which represent solids. Higher up are the water elementals, or undines, which represent liquids. The next highest are the air elementals, or sylphs, which represent gases. The highest level of elementals are the fire elementals, or salamanders, which represent radiant energy.

A talisman is like the foot of a ladder through the four worlds. It contacts the divine idea and the correct archangel, angel, and elemental builders. It continuously pours power into all four levels until the desired result takes place.

Making its physical design resonate to the forces that it is trying to contact makes the loading of the talisman easier. The talisman should be a color and shape that corresponds to the force that you wish to attract. It should have occult signs and divine names of power that occultists agree are the earthly representations of the four worlds, and it should be made at a time when those powers are the strongest.

We will be looking at talisman designs in chapter 3. The technique we will use will utilize the colors, angels, and names of power used in a Cabbalistic glyph called the Tree of Life. This glyph, which is the basis of Jewish esoteric tradition, has influenced countless Jewish and Christian talisman makers for centuries, especially those in magical orders like the Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn.

Claiming Your Power to Build a Talisman
It is possible to build powerful magical objects because we exist simultaneously on all four levels and can become consciously aware of each of them. Like a deity, we can formulate a creation and then work with the archangels, angels, and elementals to build it on Earth. With this power, we theoretically create whatever situation we want. We do this instinctively every day.

If we have this power, then why do we experience so much suffering? Surely we would create environments that are happy and prosperous.

The problem is that the creative process is forged by the unconscious beliefs of each of us. Most of us unconsciously believe that our lives will remain the same or get worse. We worry about bad things happening to us, and our moments of happiness are spoiled with the fear that everything will be taken away.

Psychological fears and phobias built by environmental conditioning add more bogus beliefs to the miix so that most of us use our magical powers to build a hell on Earth rather than creating a happy environment.

Occultists are in the process of reclaiming the use of their creative powers. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. The psychological blocks to our success are not always embedded in one lifetime, but in many incarnations. Even after all our personal blocks are resolved, there are the complexes shared by all humans, however spiritually developed we may be.
It is hard to be successful in magic without first removing our psychic blocks; however, success in magic often removes these blocks. Nothing succeeds like success. Magicians who have used talismans to improve their environment are more likely to believe that such techniques will improve their future.

What is the way out of the catch-22? The ancients used ritual magic to bypass that which stands in the way of success.

How Ritual Works
Ceremonial magic is a drama in which a magician plays the main character. His stage is set in a candle-lit room, with thick, sweet-smelling incense, and usually an altar; but the magician's mind is far away.

The magician is imagining that his ritual is taking place in a mystical temple in sun-scorched Egypt or on top of a sacred mountain. In his mind's eye, he calls to beings that exist in other worlds and imagines that they arrive.

As the magician loses himself in the drama of the ritual, something strange happens. The illusion becomes real. The magician feels like the gods and angels that he called feel are really there. Energy can be seen crisscrossing the room, which is charged with a strange atmosphere.

The ritual magician can enter an altered state of consciousness. He becomes aware of the next world, and, in his mind, operates upon it. He has effectively laid a new reality over this one. It is a reality where he talks to gods and goddesses because he is like a god or goddess. Because this altered reality flows down the worlds, an observer with no psychic ability often sees things that are not on the material level.

Because these worlds are built of thought, the language the magician uses are symbols and images. The ritual act of drawing a pentagram in the air has a reality in realms of thought. Symbolic systems have the power to take the magician to even higher states of consciousness.

There is a further advantage. Once the magician is walking in the realms of the angels, he can cooperate with them to change patterns of creation. It is easier to make changes in the worlds above this one. They are made out of thought and can be controlled by thought. Immediately after they have been placed in the worlds above, the changes flow downward until they have a material reality.

These are the acts of a high-level magician, but even a novice can obtain staggering effects from the most basic ritual without hitting deep altered states.

This happens for two reasons. The first reason is because of the great occult maxim " As above, so below, and as below, so above."  This statement (which was written in an early Hermetic treatise called the "Emerald Tablet" ) implies that everything that happens on Earth also happens on the other frequencies or levels of creation and vice versa; so a simple ritual actually does stir the angelic levels.

Simple rituals also work because they can unlock potential from us that is so subliminal that we never knew we had it.

One talisman consecration ritual only requires a colored candle to be plungeed into a bowl of water as a simple ritual phrase is spoken. Having tested a talisman consecrated by this ritual, I discovered that it is as effective a talisman as those made by more elaborate means.

The reason that this ritual works so well is that it focuses the magician's concentration on the task at hand. This focus sets up a vortex on all planes of manifestation, drawing astral beings toward the magician's goal.

Some of the simpler talisman systems work because the angelic contacts, whose job it is to empower it, have agreed to let it work that way. Countless magicians and Wiccans have used this ritual and each success has added to its power. When you use this ritual, it is like you have been given a key that bypasses the need for a large amount of technical knowledge.

This ritual's weak point, however, is its simplicity. Many people find that they cannot work with such rituals because they don't believe anything that simple will work. This attitude prevents the ritual from achieving its goal.

That which is built from thought can be destroyed by another contradictory thought. It is useless to spend hours performing a ritual to earn yourself money if at the end of it you say things like " This will never work, nothing good ever happens to me."  You have to suspend disbelief and believe you will get the result you want until long after the ritual has ended. Only after you have gotten your result, or realized that the ritual has not worked, should you analyze it too closely.

This is one of the reasons why occult orders insist on secrecy and keep silent about their ritual activities. If you tell someone that you have performed a ritual, then you are dependent on them not to have negative thoughts about its success and accidentally destroy your results. Since this cannot be guaranteed, it is always better to keep quiet about it.

Later in this book, we will examine different types of talisman consecration rituals.

Reasons to Build Talismans
Theoretically, it is possible to make a talisman for any magical purpose, certainly those that have survived the passage of time do not give any indication that their tasks were limited. Talismans have been created for esoteric reasons like spiritual development, to help the soul transverse the afterlife, and more mundane tasks like helping someone sing properly.

Many of these tasks could be performed equally well by an act of ritual magic; however, there are some advantages for creating a talisman, even for an established ritual magician.

A ritual targets those three levels above the material with a single mental image and aims for an eventual physical result as the wish percolates downward. A ritual is generally a one-shot technique that either works or fails. A talisman, however, draws magical power all the way down the levels and connects it to the earth plane extremely effectively. A talisman keeps the doors to these levels open over a long period of time and organically draws the right circumstances to it, while repelling negative suggestions. To achieve the same effect, a magician would have to do many rituals regularly.

Another advantage of making a talisman is that while a ritual is usually performed in a secret place, a talisman can be carried to the scene where it is most needed. If a traveler wants protection, by carrying the talisman with him, it can work directly with the minds of those who might attack him.

One magician, who was having trouble with his boss, made a tallisman so that his boss would leave him alone. He taped the talisman underneath the lid of his boss' desk. Every working day, his boss was exposed to the energy radiating from the talisman, and he did leave the magician alone.

Talismans have also been made for writers to help the creative energies flow into their work. A friend of mine who is a writer has a talisman beside his computer that he touches whenever he experiences "writer's block."

The tactile nature of talismans is one of the key reasons that they are so popular. You can make talismans for friends, who are then constantly reminded of the work you have done for him or her. When they touch the talisman, they unconsciously cooperate with the energies that it represents. People who are sick will feel reassured knowing that a healing talisman is under their pillow, slowing enabling the changes in their bodies to make them well again.

On a more cynical level, a talisman provides some material proof that a ritual has been performed. Historically, a layperson would not want to hand over large amounts of cash to a magician or priest to perform a ritual unle...

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  • PublisherLlewellyn Publications
  • Publication date2001
  • ISBN 10 0738700045
  • ISBN 13 9780738700045
  • BindingPaperback
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages240
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