73 When I went to school in the 1950s and 1960s, participation in organized athletic events (like military service) was pretty much reserved for the boys.
74 Israel Regardie. The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic. Vol. VII, Third Revised Limited edition (Reno, NV: New Falcon Publications, 2008), 48.
eleven
Pop Goes Ganesha!
All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel;
The monkey thought ’twas all in fun,
Pop! goes the weasel.
A penny for a spool of thread,
A penny for a needle—
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.
Traditional Nursery Rhyme
I am now going to describe to you a little ritual that whirled into my bag of magical tricks about ten years ago. I first created it to be a whimsical meditation that I could quickly perform mentally to begin and end my morning routine, but it soon became for me something much more. In fact, within the context of its goofy simplicity, I have found not only a powerful banishing ceremony, but also a profound and breathtakingly effective technique of invocation. As it has become a key component to both my meditation and magical rituals, and because I will be referring to it in several places in the chapters that follow, I would like to share it with you now.
It is one thing to have an intellectual grasp and appreciation of the Great G, but it is quite another to allow oneself to gushingly melt in giddy adoration to it. I’ll admit, as I was growing up I had a real problem loving God. No. That’s not quite correct. I had a problem loving what seemed to be the monster everyone around me was calling God. Nevertheless, as I grew older I knew that if I was ever going to evolve into a sane and competent magician—if I ever hoped to perform a proper invocation, and become duly and truly connected with the divine “above,” I would have to come to grips with my deep-seated negative attitudes. I would need to discover how to open my heart and fall in love with the Great G and set off the divine love feedback I spoke of a moment ago.
My first challenge was to settle on a tangible image, a form, a name for this formless and most abstract of abstract spiritual concepts. It would seem logical that I would try to personify the Great G in the likeness of one of the deities of my religion. After all, as a practicing Thelemite and archbishop75 of my church,76 my life is not bereft of gods and goddesses, foremost of which is a trinity of infinities that define the fundamental principals of Thelemic cosmology:
Nuit—the Egyptian goddess of the night sky often depicted in Egyptian art as azure in color, tall and slender, arching over the earth. She is the infinity of an ultimately expanded universe (the circumference of the circle).
Hadit—Nuit’s lover. In Thelemic/Egyptian iconography depicted as a winged solar disk. He is the infinity of an ultimately contracted universe, the point in the center of
the circle. If Hadit were a phenomenon of physics I see him in his most fundamental character as the pre–Big-Bang singularity.
Ra-Hoor-Khuit—the hawk-headed Crowned and Conquering Child of the union of Nuit and Hadit. Because Nuit’s expansion (the infinite “out”) and Hadit’s contraction (the infinite “in”) are both infinitely everywhere, so too must be their points of contact. This infinite contact creates Ra-Hoor-Khuit, a field of operation in which the universe can manifest.
Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit are perfectly lovely cosmic concepts—awesome in fact—more than enough to qualify as proper deities to invoke. But, as much as I love my religion and the iconography of ancient Egypt, and as much as I respect these profound concepts, I personally find it very difficult (at least initially) to get emotionally warm and fuzzy at the thought of loving (and being loved by) the cold expanded universe, its dimensionless center, and the everything that lies between.
I also consider myself a hermetic Qabalist, and as such I worship the Great G as the threefold negativities that precede creation: “Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur.” The concept of these three varieties of nothingness is as cool as modern jazz and (in my mind) catapults esoteric Judaism into the subtle stratosphere of Zen Buddhism (and vice versa). I sip my virtual espresso and snap beatnik fingers to applaud such hip transcendent realities, but honestly, how can I be expected to warm up to three wacky kinds of nothing?
If my magical career was to evolve, I realized I would need to find a sweet and simple god upon whom I could project all the infinite and sublime Great G concepts that already held my soul in jaw-dropping awe. I needed to gather all my infinites and omni-everythings (I’m making words up again) and bundle them together into one irresistible and lovable package. And so, I set to work combing the pantheons of the world’s religions, great and small, in search of a deity whose image and character resonates with my peculiar menu of spiritual programming. About ten years ago, I settled ever so comfortably on a deity that fills the bill perfectly, the potbellied remover of obstacles, Ganesha.77
Ganesha
Now, before you read anything unduly sectarian into my special relationship with Ganesha, I want you to know that I do not claim to be a devotee of Ganesha in the orthodox sense of the word. I do not belong to any Ganesha cults or sects. I don’t travel to Ganesha pujas or festivals, nor have I memorized the 108 Names of Lord Ganesha (although they are wonderful beyond words).
Also, please be clear on this—I am not advocating that you or anyone else necessarily need to select the image, character, or concept of Ganesha as your tangible icon of the intangible, the supreme consciousness of the cosmos. It’s your life, your spiritual cosmos, your magick. You are your own magician. Get your own God! If Ganesha floats your
