Donate to save Kraig

As many of my regular readers know, Donald Michael Kraig, the author of Modern Magick, is suffering from stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Besides magical and healing works being done to help him, there is also a GoFundMe campaign to help raise money to offset his medical bills. If you can, please donate to help the man that has helped many of us on our magical pathway though his books and lectures.


The GoFundMe campaign can be found here.

Tarot and healing

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Welcome to the Tarot Blog Hop, Imbolic 2014 edition. Today's subject is Tarot, creativity and healing. In light of that I thought that I would talk a little about a healing effort going on in the ceremonial magic community.

Simple layout for Tarot healing spells.

A few weeks ago, the ceremonial magic community learned that Donald Michael Kraig, best known as the author of Modern Magick, was suffering from stage four pancreatic cancer. Upon learning this news, several members of the ceremonial magic community started to post rituals to magically help Kraig survive this illness.

Donald Michael Kraig--author of Modern Magick.

I will admit that I find it interesting that I have yet to see anyone suggest that we need to do a divination before warming up our cauldrons and circles. One of the things that Kraig writes about in Modern Magick is that one should always perform a divination before doing magic. Basically, his position (to the best of my understanding) is that good intentions are not enough to prevent a spell from going dark--rather it is the eventual outcome of the spell that determines whether you were doing white, black, or grey magic.

No, I am not suggesting it either. While I might be using Tarot cards in my spellwork, they are for focusing purposes. My personal opinion is that this is one working that it is probably safe to skip the divination on.

(For the record, healing magic can turn negative...let's say you save the life of the next Adolf Hitler, that's probably dark mojo there. Or a child abuser. Or a drug kingpin. Or a serial killer. You get the idea. But in general, most healing spells can be assumed to be white magic, or grey at worst. Generally, most of us don't sweat the idea that a healing spell can lead to bad things.)

The idea behind using Tarot cards in spell work is that just like we use the symbols of Tarot to communicate with the universe about events, we can also use them to communicate with the universe about what we want to happen. In practice, it is like playing a game where you present a situation and guess what cards (forces and events) would come up in a reading that would be read as representing that situation.

(Practical hint--if you have never done this before, buy a separate Tarot deck for your spell work. It has been my experience that spell work with a deck hinders its use in divination.)

The first card of the spread represents the client to be healed. In this case, I chose the Magician because Kraig is a ceremonial magician and a writer.

The second card of the layout represents the illness to be healed. This does not have to be a physical illness; this layout can also be used for emotional, mental, and spiritual illnesses. In this case, I was undecided what card to use, so I looked up the astrological ruler of cancer in Rex E. Bills' The Rulership Book. According to Bills, cancer is ruled by the Moon and zodical sign of Cancer. D'oh! He also suggests looking up the organ in question, which in this case is the pancreas, which is also ruled by Cancer. Being someone who still uses the Golden Dawn attributions for the Tarot cards, that means it would be represented by the Chariot.

(Interestingly, I understand cancer to be a set of cells that are growing out of control--therefore, the symbolism of the Chariot does seem to fit the issue at hand.)

The third card represents the healing force to be activated and used in the curing of the illness. Honestly, I am not sure what force to use (while I have Reiki, I only have the first level of it). In general, healers (including doctors of modern medicine) are ruled by Virgo. (Except for faith healers, who are ruled by Neptune--they pull power from above, aka God.) So I figure using the Hermit (Virgo in GD terms) would be the proper card to use. Kraig will be undergoing procedures with doctors, so hopefully it helps the procedures to take and put the cancer in remission.

The final card of the spread is the hoped for outcome. In this case, it is a personal choice. I feel like I owe Kraig a drink or three, and hope to someday be able to buy him a drink or three.

(This involves me also overcoming my own health issue of moving vehicles being one of my migraine triggers, as well as my budget problems--gee, this spell has two layers to it...scary, isn't it? Yes, I just realized that.)

The reason I feel like I owe Kraig a drink or three is the fact that I was reading his book, Modern Magick, when my Golden Dawn sponsor first spotted me. If it wasn't for that book, my sponsor and mentor wouldn't have spotted me, and I might have ended up being a self-initiate, rather than being a Vaulted member of one of the many branches of the Golden Dawn system of magic. So I figure that if I ever meet Kraig that I should buy him a drink or three, just for getting me entry into the Temple.

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Differences between the Cicero version of the Outer Order oaths and other self-initiation oaths

There are some slight differences between the oath of obligations presented by Chic and Sandra Tabatha Cicero in their book Self-Initiation Into the Golden Dawn Tradition and those presented by other self-intiation systems.

For instance, Donald Michael Kraig (in the first edition of Modern Magick---Eleven Lessons in the High Magickal Arts) adds "[I promise] to keep secret all of my occult knowledge from any and all whom I deem unworthy due to their evil intents or lying ways. I undertake to prosecute with zeal the study of occult sciences for the betterment of myself and the betterment of all humanity."

Furthermore, Kraig changes the penalty for breaking the oath to "I realize that should I willfully break this, my magical oath, that I shall be known as a perjuring wretch, void of all moral worth and unfit for the society of all right and true persons. Furthermore, should I break this, my magicakal oath, may my weapons turn against me or turn to dust, and may all of my magick and rituals be for naught, so help me the Lord of the universe and my own higher soul."

Kraig pointed out that the preceeding ritual that this oath is from is actually a "self-dedication" and not a self-initiation.---MDE 4 Feb 2011

There are also some interesting things in the Adept Minor "self-obligation" oath that he provides. The most interesting is probably "I will not claim to be anything more than I am, a student of the magickal way of life, light, love and freedom. Not being an initiate of an Order, I will not initiate anyone."

Another oath that has some differences from the Cicero version is the one from the Thelemic Golden Dawn. The part that leaps out is the fact that one will keep "all real secrets and true mysteries" of the TGD safe.