The reference pages on this site try to say what is the case. The essays collected here are more personal. Each takes one idea from the tradition and turns it over, to see how it holds up against experience. They are signed, and they speak for their authors.
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The Temple Is a Room
You do not need a vaulted chamber or a chest of regalia. On making a place to practice out of a corner, a table and a habit, and on why the place matters more than what is in it.
Read the essay: The Temple Is a Room -
As Above, So Below: What the Maxim Does and Does Not Say
The most quoted line in Western esotericism is also the most loosely used. A close look at the wording, the source and four popular misreadings.
Read the essay: As Above, So Below -
Solve et Coagula: Taking Apart and Putting Together
Dissolve and join together. The alchemists' two word summary of their art, read as the pattern of any real change in a life, and the two ways it goes wrong.
Read the essay: Solve et Coagula -
The Four Powers: To Know, To Will, To Dare, To Keep Silent
Four verbs from a nineteenth century book of magic that still make the best short description of a balanced practitioner. Why the last is the hardest.
Read the essay: The Four Powers -
How to Read an Old Book of Magic
Grimoires and Hermetic treatises were not written for us, and they punish hasty readers. Eight working rules for getting something true out of them.
Read the essay: How to Read an Old Book of Magic -
Results and the Honest Record
How would you know whether a working had worked? On coincidence, wishful thinking and the old discipline of writing things down before they happen.
Read the essay: Results and the Honest Record