The Magician's Dictionary

RA

First of the Gods in the Egyptian pantheon. Sometimes hawk-headed, like Horus. (See ISIS.)

RA

Ancient extraterrestrial entity channeled by Don Elkins from 1962 to 1984 (when Elkins died). Ra was a "sixth density social memory complex" who visited Egypt 11,000 years ago by ufo.

RAFLIFU

The guardian of the 30th dark tunnel, corresponding to The Sun. Its magic is the power to acquire gold and wealth. The disease is wasting sickness.

RABU INA ILI AHURA MAZDA

Babylonian phrase meaning "Ormuzd is the greatest of Gods."

RAT

The female form of "Ra" (Mother of Geb, Nut, Shu and Tefnut).

REALITY

"Reality" is illusion only in the sense that there is more than one version. You can alter this aeon's reality, but there are several million separate Kalpic realities that are also primed for re-adjustment.

Reality does not exist apart from you and me. Although it seems to retain a changeless nature, that is merely the illusory consensus which our society clings to. And of course, our perceptions define reality, as do history and tradition, but we can also alter reality by physical, mental & arcane means. There are the perceptionless reality systems, after all (see below). The psychedelics have also played a tremendous role in changing collective reality, that despite the built-in limitation that all psychedelics can do is restructure ephemeral, subjective consciousness on society's lowest, least influential levels.

Ordinary, right-eyed, aeonic reality depends on our senses, but there are realities interwoven through this consensus that do not derive from the bodily senses, in which (as far as our waking minds are concerned) we act unconsciously -- but deliberately. Sense reality, for all its unreliability, is not very flexible, hence it serves as the final testing field (as well as rubbish heap) of substance. Usually our work in the separate realities is more important than our work in "this" one. As for using one's mental expectations as a reality-set, that would apply strictly to the superzeroeth R-Levels.

Reality is "Non-being," and according to Grant: "...withdraws as the Principle of Consciousness recedes and returns to the point of original absence."

Gurdjieff describes the following while under the influence of an anomalous substance: "I perceived directly now that everything in the universe was directly connected, and that moreover these forms were all connected just because they were all one and the same, repeated to provide the illusion of complexity. When presented with such a multiplicity of images, one can infuse them with differences sufficient to completely deceive oneself even though behind it all, one knows and understands the truth." And then, as the ground began to give way under him, he thought, "Everything, as soon as it is formed, flows into infinity in which it is transformed into the void and reformed as a new formation, which in turn is instantly swallowed."

REALITY ALTERATION

First of all, discounting ESP, we must never forget that thought alone, no matter how powerful or dazzling, cannot change reality. Only the body can change reality -- through physical means. On the everyday level of realty-alteration we simply exercise the passive power of choice: emphasizing certain things that present themselves, while minimizing others. But even this, the most basic of natural powers, has psionic repercussions and occult meanings.

Realty alteration by M/magic(k)al means can be accomplished with or without drugs or rituals, i.e., by the exercise of the Imagination and the Will. Drugs enhance the Imagination and ritual enhances the Will, although for the Adept such artificial enhancements are no longer always necessary.

The secret to the physical change of Reality is the M/magic(k) of the moment and the desperation of need. We also call this "Spontaneity." Being caught in a lie, for instance, will provide you with a crash course in stagecraft. If it's practice that makes perfect, then it's practice of invention that makes practice unnecessary. Therefore, learn the art of invention.

It's not necessary to memorize a set of rules. Every day is a new day -- every job is a new job. And we come to all things with a brand new mind. If there are principles to be grasped, they are vague and cover only certain rudimentary skills learned in childhood (such as riding congruencies and swallowing labyrinths). At the same time, since everything is the same thing, there is but one endless repetition in infinite regression -- and since everything is also unique, nothing can be counted, except One... One... One... One...

The key to transformation of the world is to move vertically from lower to higher levels of consciousness. As we rise, we do less and less "magic" because reality becomes more and more accessible to negentropic direct action of the Will. As we move downward towards material reality, we require more rigid technoscientific control and more onerous practical labor because we are dealing with harder and harder crystallizations. Eventually we reach the ultimate entropy of matter/energy, wherein no further change is possible because everything is already chaotically changing. Since we stand at some midway point, we are in a state of eternal metamorphosis. Reality, I'm bound to say, is also changed passively and unconsciously, not just by our gross manipulations, hackings, intentions, misunderstandings, negligences and mesmerisms. It is also changed by our simplest perceptions. When we poke at the skin of a pachyderm, it tightens. We must acknowledge that there are (from the photonic standpoint) two modes of reality, the subluminal (slower than light) universe and the superluminal universe (FTL). We are mostly involved with the subluminal.

Since anything is true, let's say that the dynamics of Reality are infinitely subtle. Everything emits its own unique radiation in holomovement with the potentiating space-grid of the reality-level that we happen to occupy. When a photon bounces off such a "wavicle," it registers the wavicle's particular vibration, conveying that reflection to our eye. We retain the photon-pattern, or that segment thereof necessary for our idiosyncratic mnemonic interaction. What is "returned" is the unused remainder or vehicle (the photonic shell) which is now infinitesimally altered in character and contains a slightly different "new" matrix. When a plurality of minds perceives similar shells, then the "new" visual reality is proportionately strengthened or established. In this way everyone contributes to the changing visual reality of one another and to the whole, merely through the passive act of seeing.

Nuit, as Crowley says, is "divided for the sake of love, for the sake of union..." In other words, take a tip from the sexual act. Self is divided from other so that it can experience the ecstasy of joining other into the One. The truth is, all separation, all variety, all opposition is part of one Whole. Once you know that you are not separate from the object you wish to transform, it is easily changed in accordance with the Will.

REALITY ANOMALY

From David Brinn's The Practice Effect: "A psychosomatic reality anomaly has its start when we surround [the centroid mass] by a field of improbability..." But, yes. Seth aside, we might add to Brinn's observation that this "improbability" is the key to ex nihilo manifestation.

REALITY-TEMPLATES

Reality is a blueprint or "template" of existence. Any integrated system has a reality of its own, apart from "general reality" or "Ultimate Reality." There are also levels of reality, ranging from the purely theoretical, subjective or solipsistic to the most incontrovertible consensus of "scientific law." There are as many reality-templates as mind can derive or devise.

REALITY-TUNNEL

R.A. Wilson: "An emic reality established by a vivid metaphor and transmitted through symbolism across generations. "A nagging question crops up in the mind of the ordinary denizen of "objective" Western, Xtian, technological society as to whether it's "Reality" we're taking about as being "alterable" or whether it's only individual subjective experience. Apart from the reality of the Original Mind or of Nirvana, let's say, there are at least two common varieties of reality: personal individual experience and the objective consensus reality of society. We've only just dropped the third: scientific objectivity. Contemporary physicists are now able to hypothesize sub-categories of reality: Zeroeth Level, First Level, Second Level, etc., but as Wilson adds, "90% of all we experience is our own imagination!" That experience is called a "reality tunnel."

The trick is to recognize how the tunnel has been "customized." Only then can we look clearly at so-called "objective" reality and effectively change it. Scientists believe they have a corner on that market, because they demand strict controls and dispassionate observation. But without realizing it, they're still operating from within their own reality tunnels. They may be able to measure the temperature of the dragon's breath and the length of its claws, but it's still a dragon to them. Whereas to enlightened observers, the dragon may be only fire and paper (or, at the other extreme, the great rooster-headed god, Abraxas himself).

REDEEMERS

There have been several: Buddha, Zoroaster, Goel Jesus, Abu Al-Qasim Muhammad Ibn Abd Allah Abd Al-Muttalib Ibn Hashim (Plus Mani and Asklepios).

REINCARNATION

Advanced minds seem to take reincarnation for granted: Plato, Emerson, Edison, Shaw, Jung -- even Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. All life transmigrates -- indeed, not just life, but everything "returns." Many find the latter idea hard to take -- as though there must be not only no mice in the Afterworld, but no machines! Yet, obviously, if one thing evolves, then everything evolves. Molecules of steel and granite cling tenaciously, as do we, to permanence and the spider chooses her life, even as we choose ours, because spiderdom is the acme of her aspirations. Where the will exists, there return exists.

Even if the evolution of life out of the inanimate does not indicate mind apart from brain, even if it demonstrates only the "accidental" fact that things must mutate "upward" or else dissolve downward into entropy, then "mind" or "purpose" is synonymous with or implicit in "accidence" itself. The one apodictic truth is that life and complexification have prevailed, whatever else has not, including the "content" of entropy.

The universe is mind, as we've pointed out elsewhere. The purpose of mind is to know itself, and knowing can succeed only through particularization.

One way to understand metempsychosis is to imagine our poor sublunary lives as pressings onto phonograph records, on the Akasha's etheric record. When the Atma particle, or Oversoul, incarnates, it shuffles off its generalized shell and starts to particularize. In so doing it may, under certain rare and privileged circumstances, find itself able to examine previous akashic recordings in which it formed similar particularizations. The Oversoul itself, however, is made up of all these countless recorded souls. With each experience it grows in metamorphic complexity. In the Oversoul the Whole is greater that its parts -- although when it separates individually the part is naturally greater than the Whole.

The Buddhists hold that there is no "immutable soul." Therefore reincarnation is simply a way of expressing the rebirth of unenlightened mind. Rebirth is then merely like the same sand pouring into different vessels: bucket, goblet, urn, etc. If death is the abandonment of personal self, then the dividing walls between us crumble and memory has access to all former lives. Most people tend to remember only the former lives of the more interesting or arresting personalities: kings, queens, martyrs, monsters, etc. That's why there are so many former Napoleons and Cleopatras and so few kitchenmaids and village idiots.

Finally, we must detach ourselves from the encapsulating Xtian belief in literal "Resurrection." We must understand that the "raising of the dead" is a metaphorical version, not of reincarnation, but of renewal within life. To be reborn of the flesh, of fire, of water and the spirit -- these are its tetramorphic aspects, to be sure, but resurrection, reincarnation and being "born again" are all symbols of the birth or rebirth of the spirit within the "dead" soul of materialistic greed. Rebirth begins before physical death and proceeds post-mortem into actual reincarnation. Reincarnation per se, however, is not acceptable to orthodox Xtianity in the slightest because it neutralizes Salvation.

RELIGION

The word "religion" derives from the Latin prefix, re (an intensive) + ligio, "to tie, to bind," hence "a practice designed to tie down tightly, as though by a spell-binding force." If religions were not impervious to change, they would quickly dissolve into the chaos of the occult.

Religion is worship. It is based on the strict separation of divinity and humanity. Magic, on the contrary, is the invocation or evocation of spirits or divinity based on kinship or identity with them.

Living religions begin by being as creative, spontaneous and iconoclastic as the arts. But that creative fire quickly damps down to immutable dogma and robot-priests. Worship for its own sake amounts to little more than useless idolatry. It is utterly infra dig for any intelligent human being. The sole purpose of ritual is the arousal of consciousness in the participant. When such awakening fails to take place, it is time to throw the ikons to the dogs. The universe is self-created and everything in it created itself and goes on creating itself. There are higher beings, to be sure, but it is a perilous mistake to worship "The Creator" who is as far from perfect as you can get and still live on this side of Nothing. Nor should we consider humanity, in its present condition, to be anything but imperfect. Along with Nietzsche, we should see man as capable of infinite improvement. But Nietzsche's so-called "superman" will never evolve without struggle -- and not be the easy struggle of fascistic tyranny over material forms, but by the infinitely more difficult way of universal internal enlightenment.

Since there are infinite levels of enlightenment the majority of people are incapable of consensus or agreement, hence any idea of a religious "congregation" is absurd. As for the profane multitudes... unaware that omniscience, omnipotence and immortality comprise the deepest foundation of existence, they consider their own confusion to be the highest expression of consciousness. The ultimate purpose of creation is to know itself through the experience of eternal expansion of the mind. It is physical or fiscal expansion, however, that is of primary interest to homo vulgaris.

The mission of the magician isn't necessarily to bring down the traditional houses of religion -- especially the monoliths: Islam, Christendom or Judaism. But neither can he support them. For it is a truism that there is wisdom in the individual and it is difference that we should value, not sameness. For the magician, far more acceptable alternatives to monotheism can be found in India, Egypt, Tibet, etc. with their practices of Lamaism, Tantrism, Yoga and so on, or in the atheistic systems of the Tao and Buddhism. But always -- though he understands and honors tradition, the magus creates his own rituals and observances, tailored to his own needs. He does not serve established orders. As Madame Blavatsky so hopefully put it, "There is no religion higher than truth."

RING-PASS-NOT

As the magician draws his circle to keep the demons from entering his world, so other monads draw their own circles to keep out the magician. The ring-pass-not is that Level of attainment beyond which you cannot go. In occult literature, according to Alice Bailey, it is a term used "to denote the periphery of the sphere of influence of any central life force, and is applied equally to all atoms, from the atom of matter as dealt with by the physicist or chemist through the human planetary atoms up to the great atom of a solar system. The ring- pass-not of the average person is the spheroidal form of his mental body which extends considerably beyond the physical and enables him to function on the lower levels of the mental plane."

HPB (The Secret Doctrine) defines the RPN as: "The circumference of the sphere of influence of any center of positive life. This includes the fire sphere of magnetic work of the solar orb, viewing it as the body of manifestation of a Solar Logos or to a planetary scheme and could equally well be applied to the sphere of activity of the human Ego."

RITUAL

There is only one thing to be said for ritual: Create your own or risk being swallowed up by some damned religion's stercus taurinum.

ROMULUS AND REMUS

The author's name is merely old Roman "Remus". The intrusive "h" was a German grandfather's idea to give the correct pronunciation for other Teutons. Latin names are (or were) common in Germany and Scandinavia (cf. Rommel). A permutation of the name is also seen in Arminius, a German prince who defeated the Romans in the First Century. See Amullus Silvius (also Armand, Herman, etc.). According to Jung, the twins represent the religious conviction (like Moses in the bulrushes) that one is a prince by birth and forced to live as an ordinary person until destiny reveals his true status to the world: Romulus and Remus, Remus being the poor victim of oppression, Romulus the emerging prince:

O Gemini of Latium, gentle and cruel,
Princes, wolf-suckled, born to rule:
O Gemini of Latium, gentle and cruel,
Princes, wolf-suckled, born to rule:
The one to be ground in the dust,
The other to rise as he must...

Twins in mythology and in Geminian symbolism refer to the One in its manifestational phase of self and other, as the union of opposites (Yang and Yin, Light and Darkness, Being/Non-Being, etc.). Together with his brother, Remus, Romulus founded Rome as a haven for abductors of the Sabine women. The twins, who were the sons of Mars and Vestal Priestess, Rhea Silva, were abandoned at birth and suckled by a wolf. Originally both presided over the building of Rome, but they quarreled (a parallel of Cain and Abel) over every decision. One day, while Romulus was constructing the city wall, Remus jumped over it, saying: IN HOC MODO SUPERSALIT HOSTIS MURUM ("Look how easily the enemy can leap over this wall!"). At this, Romulus shouted, "And look how easily I can kill you!" and ran him through with his sword. In this way Romulus achieved harmony without union and thereafter set the tone for Roman conquest and empire by will and force.

After his death, Romulus was transported to heaven and wassometimes identified with Mars and sometimes worshiped under the godly Sabine name, Quirinus. Quiris, lit. "spear", also referred to citizens of Cures, the Sabine town, and it eventually came as well to mean a citizen of Rome. The Quirinalia was a military holiday in honor thereof.

Furthermore, according to Jung, "Armilus begot by Satan on a block of marble, is the Anti-Messiah. Messiah ben Joseph must die in order to atone with his blood for the children of Yahweh. Messiah ben Joseph will in turn be felled by Armilus and will succumb during the conflict between Gog and Magog. Armilus will be killed in turn by Messiah ben David." Armilus = Romulus, the Antichrist. From Methodius: "Romulus, who is also Armaeleus." According to some authorities, Romulus was the product of an incubus and a salamander.

Remus, the slain geminus, is represented by the lute, whereas Romulus is the mace. This is the usual Greco-Roman view of the Gemini.

In John Puhvel's Comparative Mythology, things take on a different color. We discover that when the Romans referred to the beginning of time, it was 'AB REMO ET ROMULO', whereas now it's "Romulus and Remus". Remus, it seems, is the true founder of Rome -- its sacrificial origin -- whereas Romulus is but secondary, the name meaning merely "or Roman". The twins, Rhomos and Rhomulos in Greek, are the equivalent of the twin Norse god, Ymir and the Vedic Yama and Yami.

ROSE

Most occultists claim that the rose stands for the manifest world with the self at the center. As the "Redemption of Man," the red rose is "redemption by force" and the white rose is "redemption through enlightenment." The rose is to Occidental mysticism what the lotus is to the orient.

RUACH

Stands for the Intellect, also the Hebrew word for the "Air" element.

RUMI

Famous enlightened Muslim/Sufi -- founder of the whirling dervishes. (Note in Arabic rumi (lit. "from Rome") actually means "Grecian or European" and is a synonym generally for "Christian."

RUNES

The early Germanic alphabet obtained for mankind through Odin's sacrifice. Like the Egyptian hieroglyphs, obtained by Thoth, and other sacred alphabets, the runes hold all the powers of mind. Originally, each letter had a meaning of its own, in addition to the word of which it was a spelling element. Therefore, runes could be cast for divination, just as were the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the Greek alphabet and the Babylonian syllabary.