Introduction
The Way of Abrahadabra is a grimoire on initiation and coming to adepthood that progresses from grade to grade. However, in The Grade of the Pentagram, exercises are given that are to be repeated seasonally throughout the life of the magician, as a method of keeping balance and personal development in check. These practices will also identify the Adept of this grimoire even after the whole course of the book is finished.
We have a weekly exercise that is not to be laid out here as it depends too much on the context of the book and on previous exercises that build slowly into the weekly practice that is to happen every Sunday. It is an auric exercise that functions as a banishing rite and a method for purification and works with the centers of memory, meaning, reason, cognition, intuition, instinct, emotion, and light, adding particular sigils that connect to the activities of each of these centers then merging the centers together into a single starry body.
Beyond the affirmation of this current in the weekly calendar, there is a specific practice for the solar cycles and one for the lunar cycles.
The Council of Eight
This exercise comes at the tenth step of The Grade of the Pentagram (On Getting the Mind, Body and Soul to work under Will), and it should keep on going with the posterior workings of the macrocosmos and the Grade of the Hexagram (On Getting the Micro and the Macrocosmos to Work Under the Law of Love).
In the original, eight guides have been found on the inner planes for each of the centers mentioned above, and eight beastly expressions in the deep mind. There are then four circles, the first with the four intellectual centers and the seals of the four guides, the second with the four animals of the intelectual centers, the third with the four guides of the astral centers, the fourth with the four animal powers of the astral centers.
Because we are adapting for someone that isn’t coming from the previous steps in The Way of Abrahadabra, two circles should suffice, each of eight rings corresponding to the centers. Inside the rings we can insert sigils made in the simple fashion designed by Austin Osman Spare , so that the first circle finds good reason, good meaning, good light, etc, and the second active reason, active meaning, active light and so on…
The magician should lay comfortably on the circle of these two circumferences with the sigils inscribed. He or she should begin to feel their eyes heavy, and the body getting heavier and heavier agains’t the ground until it falls numb bellow the ground and the magician closes their eyes. They should imagine being pulled underground, either by the etheric body, astral body or by the mental consciousness. It will be dark, but let them shine and imagine a spiral staircase of seventeen steps, for seventeen is the number of surrender, and it is the number of the star. During the descent the magician will find three windows , from one will be seen the Earth, from the second will be seen the Sun, and from the third will be seen the Moon. But when the magician finally reaches the bottom there will be found nothing but a chalice containing a double-star.
Let the magician drink it and shine further, bringing to light that they are standing on a vesica wounded by a cross, and surrounded by eight thrones, as if these thrones are the radiation of that very same vesica. Let them be looked at closely, each chair until eight are counted. Sometimes a guide will be seen sitting, and sometimes several guides watching from the thrones.
Every time a master is present at one of the thrones the magician should ask for equilibrium and be given a task, for this council is meant for the magician not only to find perfection through each virtue but also to find balance between his own virtues, for a virtue without its proper complement may easily become a vice. This effort of pathworking should be executed at every solstice and at every equinox.
The Sane Hatter Posture
&
The Posture of the Unbroken Heart
The following ritual is suggested every new moon:
Choose a hat, or a piece of cloth to cover the head, and listen to your thoughts and, not attached to them, ask yourself what or who is thinking these thoughts? How? Is this thought mine? Or does it belong to some automatism, or to some external influence? Stand like this from ten minutes to one hour at every new moon. Make notes of your answers.
Likewise and in the same manner, at every full moon wear an emerald pendant and observe your emotions under the same scrutinity.
The magician will find that most thoughts are indeed automatisms of many kinds and thoughts of the body or of the mechanisms inherent to reason. But every now and then, if the magician is lucky, they may find a thought that is truly theirs, it may come at its active manifestation, which is that of the presence of True Will, or at its passive aspect, which is that of Glory. These are emanations of the magician’s own supernals, while in the domain of emotions, they may find, for instance, that most emotions are but automatic echoes of childhood.
But sometimes the magician may find an emotion that trespasses all time and all states, something primordial through which one taps into all lifetimes. They are accessing the core of their own Creation.
The Half-Moon Mantle
The magician is to build himself a robe and wear it. Then they are to sit on their asana, close their eyes and listen to their thoughts and feelings, understanding which are universal, which are relative and which are personal.
If possible, they should take one hour at each half-moon to perform the given exercise, and they should have examples of the different categories written down on their magical diary.
