Product Description

"This is foremost an engaging textbook designed for home schooling the advancing witch, and it is encyclopedic in its rituals, charts, and even homework assignments." —Publishers Weekly

THE CRAFT MEETS HIGH MAGICK
Take your spiritual evolution to the next level by mastering the essentials of ceremonial magick.  In this much-anticipated fourth volume in Christopher Penczak's award-winning series on witchcraft, he introduces the concepts of the Qabalah and the rituals of high magick, and explores the deeply interwoven relationship between these traditions and the Craft.

The teachings in this book correspond to the element of Air, guiding you into the realm of creative and critical thinking, communication, knowledge, and truth. Four preliminary chapters introduce the basic concepts, history, and skills you will need for your journey. Next, twelve formal lessons, in the witches' traditional year-and-a-day format, provide instruction in the fundamentals of ceremonial magic:

·The Qabalah
·The Tree of Life
·Symbol and sigil magick
·Elemental constructs  
·Qabalistic Cross
·The four worlds and their correspondences
·Middle Pillar
·Pathworking
·The Ritual of the Rosy Cross
·Invoking and banishing rituals
·Fluid condensers
·Barbarous words of power, magickal constructs, and the Goetia

The book's thirteenth lesson culminates in a ritual initiation fusing the traditions of witchcraft and high magick—the creation of your own Reality Map. The cosmology you create will be based on your own spiritual experiences as well as the philosophies and practices of ceremonial magick.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #174753 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780738711652
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
Like his other thorough guides for all things witchcraft, Penczak (The Mystic Foundation) offers fans another comprehensive, user-friendly handbook for the aspiring witch, this time for advanced practitioners—what he calls continuing education for followers of his Temple of Witchcraft series. According to Penczak, high witchcraft is quite different from the household magick of the everyday witch. It is known as god magick, involving the use of ritual to align with the divine and seeking divine enlightenment while incarnated in a body. Penczak helpfully likens learning the ceremonies and rituals of high witchcraft to a regular routine of exercise, yet instead of the body, you are build[ing] your psychic and magical 'muscles.' And readers should get ready for a hefty workout. Following several introductory chapters, Penczak provides a highly technical course of 13 lessons designed to provide all the necessary tools and intellectual, academic and ceremonial background information readers need to deepen their connection to the divine and self-initiate into high witchcraft. Audiences looking for witchcraft history will certainly find it here, but this is foremost an engaging textbook designed for home-schooling the advancing witch, and it is encyclopedic in its rituals, charts and even homework assignments. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Christopher Penczak is an eclectic witch, writer, and healing practitioner. His practice draws upon the foundation of modern Witchcraft blended with the wisdom of mystical traditions from across the globe.

Formerly based in the music industry, Christopher was empowered by his spiritual experiences to live a magickal life, and began a full-time practice of teaching, writing, and seeing clients. His books include the The Inner Temple of Witchcraft: Magick, Meditation, and Psychic Development, The Inner Temple of Witchcraft CD Companion set, City Magick (Red Wheel/Weiser), Spirit Allies (Red Wheel/Weiser), Gay Witchcraft (Red Wheel/Weiser), the award-winning The Outer Temple of Witchcraft: Circles, Spells, and Rituals, The Outer Temple of Witchcraft CD Companion Set, The Witch's Shield, Magick of Reiki, Sons of the Goddess, and the new Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

The Magician and the Witch

When we look at images of the magician and the witch, we see that they are not so different. One of the first images of the magician that I remember from childhood was the wise old wizard. Wizards and witches have always gone together in the minds of our popular imagination. And there is a reason for this link beyond the alliteration of the letter w. The magician and witch have much in common.

 Both magicians and witches have graying or white long hair, signifying a long life, during which knowledge and wisdom has been accumulated. Coming from a time and place where many die young due to illness, poverty, or war, survival into elderhood denotes a powerful person with a powerful will to live. They often wear a pointed hat that could be seen as a symbol of their place in society or their wisdom. Conical hats have been linked symbolically to the Cone of Power that magickal practitioners raise in a ritual circle and release out into the world to manifest their wishes. Both wear robes of a sort-cloaks, hoods, or capes reminiscent of religious garb, hinting at a religious status of some sort that was lost with the rise of Christianity. Both have a fondness for animals and plants and often will keep a special or unusual animal or grow unusual herbs. Both live on the edge of society. We see the hedge witch in her hut or cottage at the edge of the village, near the forest and the source of her wild herbs and medicines. We see images of the medieval wizard, real or fictitious, living in an isolated tower and surrounded by his books and laboratory. Both are sought after for advice. People visit the village cunning woman for cures, divination, and spells. In the old myths, magicians are the guides and tutors to the heroes and royal courts, pointing them in the right direction but letting them do the work.

Some practitioners think the roots of the words wizard and witch come from the same source, meaning "wise," though modern scholars would disagree. Even if the etymology doesn't support this theory, the image of each denotes the wise old one, with the witch more often depicted as female and the wizard as male. In the modern era, we know that a woman can be a magician and a man can be a witch, but archetypally they denote two similar but different paths. The hedge witch, with the intuitive feminine mysteries, keeps one path, while the magician, as the forerunner of the scientist, seeks to solve the mysteries of the universe through the study of texts and experimentation.

The division between the two might not be as clear in reality as it is in our mythical images. The magician is very much in tune with the forces of nature, the elements, and intuition. It would be impossible for him to have any mastery of magick without understanding the feminine mysteries. In turn, the witch must study and have knowledge to support intuition and instinct. Ritual books, symbolic charms, secret languages, and incantations are as much a part of the art of the witch as freeform, spontaneous workings. Both of these magickal paths balance and harmonize what we think of as masculine and feminine mysteries. One may be emphasized over the other, but both are paths of balance and recognize the need for both sets of skills.

When I began my study of witchcraft, I looked at a lot of disciplines and drew upon many different traditions, even sources that would not be considered traditional witchcraft. I drew upon the theories and terminology of Hermetic magick. The Hermetic principles (ITOW, Chapter 8) influenced me profoundly. They gave me a basis, as a rational, thinking person, to understand how magick could work. My first teachers approached witchcraft as a science, and the Hermetic philosophies were the means of conveying the ideas of the ancient world's scientists-philosophers-sorcerers. As a witch, I saw these ancient researchers into the mysteries as my ancestors. We all practice magick.

The word magic comes from the Middle English magik, and some prefer that spelling, or the spelling of magick, made most popular by Aleister Crowley's work, to differentiate stage show illusionists from spiritual practitioners. We can trace the word to the Old French magique, the Late Latin magica, and the Latin word magice. The Latin use of the word comes from the Greek term magikos, meaning "magical," and magos, meaning "magician." The history of the word goes back to the Old Persian term magus, usually translated as "magician" or "sorcerer" and possibly meaning "to have power." The term magi, the plural of magus, is identified most popularly with the three wise men from the East, who reportedly visited Jesus of Nazareth at his nativity. Many overlook the fact that these men were Eastern sorcerers or magicians who had far more in common with pagan priests and priestesses than modern-day Christians.

The term sorcery comes from the Old French sorcerie and from the Vulgar Latin term sortianius, meaning "one who influences fate and fortune." In modern times, the word sorcerer can mean vastly different things, depending on where you are in the world. Some people use the word sorcerer to refer to shamans and holy practitioners of the spiritual arts of healing. Others use the term for those who practice harmful magick. Interestingly enough, it is believed that the feminine sorceress has an older history than the male sorcerer. Throughout history, the terms witch, sorcerer/sorceress, wizard, and magician have been used somewhat interchangeably. By looking at all the languages and cultures that had terms for spiritual magick, and the practitioners of this art, we can see that the concept of magick, or working one's will through ritual and charm, was a part of the cultural landscape of many lands and time periods.

My teachers believed in a common spiritual ancestry for both the magus and the witch. This encouraged me to incorporate the ideas of the pagan magicians of the Middle East-of ancient Sumer and Babylon, Persia and Egypt-into the lore of the Europeans. I was taught that the two roles were not as different as they were seen before, and in many ages past, there was not much difference between them in the popular culture of the time. Our modern division between the witch and the mage is just that-a modern division. Differences between traditions grew over the last few thousand years. Some traditions remained wild and primal, and others became more intellectual, but magick was not divided neatly into two camps. The lines between witch, shaman, and magician were not clear-cut in the ancient world. During the Burning Times, the Inquisitors didn't see much of a difference between them. All were considered heretics and devil worshipers, even if the magician was working in a Judeo-Christian context. Those on a more intellectual path were able to hide in the upper echelons of society, while those on the primal paths attempted to blend in with the peasantry. Both continued their traditions in secret. Once the magickal practitioner was no longer a vital and open part of the community, the differences between the two became even more pronounced, but they still came from a similar root, and that common root is the force that continues to bring them together.

Through this holistic viewpoint, I was able to integrate the image of the magician into my identity as a witch. I described myself as a shamanic Hermetic witch, giving references to both the tribal ecstatic mysteries that became a part of my Craft as well as the intellectual and theoretical material of the Hermetics that influenced my way of viewing the work. I've found both to be invaluable to my own spirituality. I don't feel a schism between the study of ceremonial magick and the folk ways of the witch. I don't see a distinct line separating the two. When you compare the images of the magician and the witch, you find that they have far more common ground than most people would think.

 The Powers of the Magus

One of the most popular images we have of the magician comes from the tarot deck. The classic image of the magician in the Rider-Waite deck gives us a lot of information about the magician and the magician's powers and teachings. It is also in this imagery that we find a lot of elements common to the witch.

The image on the Magician card, unlike the popular image of the wizard, is usually one of a fairly young man, a man in his prime, not elderhood (figure 1). Before him lies an altar, and on that altar are the four elemental tools of the four suits of the tarot deck. He has a wooden wand, metal blade, chalice, and pentacle, which usually stand for the elemental powers of fire, air, water, and earth, respectively. Here are the elemental "weapons" of ceremonial magick. They are also the ritual tools of the witch.

Skeptics would say that the modern witch's use of these tools is the result of the modern witchcraft founders borrowing from modern ceremonial magicians. I believe the tools to be more universal, showing up in many different forms and cultures associated with both witches and magicians. The witch's magick wand is a popular image from fairy tales, as is the witch's broom, an older version of the wand. The knife can be seen in old images of the witches' goddess Hecate. The cauldron is a popular witchcraft image from many cultures, transformed from the Celtic cauldron of immortality or inspiration into the image of the Holy Grail, the sacred chalice. The pentagram was drawn on the shields of the Celtic warriors devoted to the dark war goddess the Morrighan. The five-pointed star, the endless knot, is a classic symbol of witches and mages. We find similar groupings of ceremonial tools in the mysteries of the Cult of Mithras. They are not just tools, but four universal powers. Each tool not only represents one of these powers, because its form shares similar characteristics with the eleme...

Customer Reviews

Introduction to Qabala for Pagans
This book is the fourth in a series on Witchcraft by Penczak. It follows a very similar layout to previous volumes. The first four chapters introductory reading, then thirteen lessons to be studied in a year and a day. The first lesson is basics, then one lesson for each sepherot (plus Da'ath), then ending with an initiation. The material on the Qabalah follows orthodox Golden Dawn teaching very closely. There us not much material on the 22 connecting paths nor on the Tarot. In fact it is remarkable how little information is conveyed in 500+ pages. Other writers cover much more in less space. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. For pagans unfamiliar with the Qabalah the conversational tone and lucid exposition is very helpful in learning what is, in my opinion, a dry and intellectual subject. All in all, I would say this book will be of interest mainly to those familiar with his three previous volumes. Ceremonial magicians will find it too elementary to be of much use. But for pagans who are curious about the Qabalah and how it could be incorporated it into their craft, it can be very useful.

effective and pleasant
i have enjoyed other books by this author, but this is by far his greatest work. the qabalah is a subject i have had some difficulty with over the years even with such refernce tools as kraigs modern magic and witcombs magicians companion in my library. this book presents the material in a way that is very accessable to most readers and is very detailed in the attributes of the spheres to include assosciated dieties from all pantheons and related spell work. if you are interested in this subject and wish a more thorough insight into its mysteries, especially from the perspective of a witch, this book is invaluable.

A top 'must have' pick for any collection strong in Wiccan concepts and practices.
The fourth volume in Christopher Penczak's series on witchcraft, TEMPLE OF HIGH WITCHCRAFT: CEREMONIES, SPHERES AND THE WITCHES' QABALAH introduces a focus on ceremonial magick, offering teachers which correspond to the element of air and guide users in basic concepts, history, and skills in a series of overviews, introductions and informal to formal lessons covering symbols, elementals, pathworking and much more. The conclusion is a ritual initiation using witchcraft traditions, making this a top 'must have' pick for any collection strong in Wiccan concepts and practices.