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TWPT:
Do you think that it is easier to begin your studies of magick now as
opposed to 10 or 20 years ago? Why is that?
DMK: There are advantages and disadvantages to
beginning a study at either time. Had one begun 20 years ago, he or
she would have had far fewer books to work with and far fewer groups
to work with. On the other hand, this means that studies could have
been more directed and focused. Today there is a plethora of books,
some great, some not so good, which a student can choose to study.
Note that I don't say there are "bad" books, because if a
student can determine that a book is incorrect or not for him or her,
then that "bad" book has clarified for the student what is
valuable to that person.
Unfortunately, some students end up lost in those books and end up
not having a thorough understanding of any particular tradition. Do I
follow Golden Dawn, Crowley, Chaos, Bardon, Grant or somebody else?
Do I follow the published traditions of Cunningham, RavenWolf,
Grimmasi, Buckland, Cabot, Gardner, Sanders or someone else?
What happens all too frequently today is that students end up
creating an incomplete mish-mosh according to their personal desires.
Further, some have then gone on to create "traditions" with
High Priests and High Priestesses, Hierophants and Masters. They end
up presenting incomplete information as a "complete"
system. Many students today are being short changed.
I would suggest to anybody following a magical path that he or she
should study one system until they are completely familiar with it.
Then that person should go out and study other systems. The student
can then add to or modify what he or she has been doing to develop
his or her unique system. Eventually, all magick is personal magick.
TWPT:
If someone were interested in studying magick what steps would you
advise them to take to make a sincere beginning of it? Should they
seek out teachers or can magick be learned successfully by studying alone?
DMK: In my opinion, a person can definitely learn
magick by studying alone. However, let us compare this, for a second,
to a person who is learning music on his or her own. The student may
spend years learning some techniques, only to discover later, when
meeting with others, that it was being done all wrong and that there
are easier ways to do it. Similarly, if a student wishing to learn
magick has a personal teacher, I think he or she will be able to
advance more quickly.
However, I have found that in magick, a person does not need a
constant teacher so much as one who can get a student started and
then answer questions and solve the inevitable problems which will arise.
And again, I suggest that a person learn one system completely, then
add to it from other systems. Some people have objected to this
saying that it will take years to learn one system. Exactly so.
Magick, like music, does more than simply give a person the ability
to change the environment. The regular practice of any system of
magick changes the individual, mentally, physically, emotionally and
spiritually. To short-change the positive changes which occur because
a student wants instant knowledge of all systems ends up hurting the student.
TWPT:
Tell me how your book Modern Magick came about and what goals you had
for the book when you wrote it?
DMK: Many years ago I lived in the beautiful area north
of San Diego, California, known as Encinitas. I shared a house with a
man and his son. This man was one of the important influences in my
life, sharing with me his knowledge of Zen, Taoism and Shiatsu
massage. He taught classes in massage at our house and let me take
the classes. After a while, he asked me to help him teach the classes.
One day, some of the students asked me to teach a class in Kabalah,
something which I had been studying, in depth, for a few years. Even
so, I knew how little I understood of the vast range of the Kabalah.
I held my thumb and first finger about two inches apart and explained
that the Kabalah was enormous and I only knew about this much. One of
the students held his fingers about an eighth of an inch apart and
said that they knew even less.
So I consented and taught a class on the subject. Then a metaphysical
store contacted me and asked me to teach a class on the subject.
Later, this expanded to four classes and finally 10 classes.
I taught this series of classes several times and frankly, I had two
conflicting goals: First, I wanted to be able to share the
information more widely and second, I was getting tired of saying the
same thing, over and over.
So I came up with the idea of doing a mail-order course. What I
wanted to do was make up 52 short lessons which would be based upon,
yet expand upon, the classes I had been teaching for years. I started
to work on it.
At this time, I was sharing an apartment in San Diego with Scott
Cunningham. Scott was just becoming famous, having published two or
three books by this time. He received a call from a man who ran a
mail-order lesson outfit in Santa Barbara, California. It seems that
the woman who had been writing a course for him on Wicca had vanished
and he was asking Scott if Scott could finish the course. Scott told
him to send down copies of what had been written and he would see (he
did not end up doing so). Then he asked Scott if he knew anybody who
could write a course on ceremonial magick. Scott, in his usual way,
simply handed me the phone and said,
"Here, it's for you!"
The person running the mail-order lesson business told me what was
going on. At this time, I was basically unknown except for the San
Diego area, so he asked for some samples of my writing. I sent him a
few of the brief lessons I had created. He asked for longer lessons
and I said I could do it.
So, all of the short lessons were rewritten into longer ones.
Everything went fine for about six months. Then, the person operating
the mail-order outfit didn't contact me and didn't send me any money.
When I finally got in touch with him he said that in one month, all
of the people taking his courses (Wicca, astrology, magical
herbalism, Voodoo and more) decided to stop taking the lessons and
that he was going to move to New York and get into making adult
films! Well, we signed an agreement that I would vacate any claims I
had to money he owed me and that all copyrights to the material I
wrote would immediately go back to me.
So there I was with a bunch of mail-order lessons. I talked about it
with Scott, and he suggested that I make it into a book. Once again I
re-wrote the material.
There was one other thing which happened which gave impetus to me
getting the material published. At that time I was lucky enough to be
in communication with Israel Regardie. When I learned that he was
going to re-write his book, The Golden Dawn, I wrote him urgently
suggesting that he put everything in a logical order rather than have
everything interwoven.
Had he done so, Modern Magick would have never been published.
Instead, he chose not to accept my advice. When I complimented him on
the new version of the book he wrote to me saying that he had found a
good use for it... as a doorstop! Without such a step-by-step set of
lessons, I felt there would be a market for Modern Magick.
From Llewellyn I obtained their writer's guidelines. I followed the
conventions described there (wide margins, double spacing, etc.), but
there were also questions to answer. I answered those questions as if
I was selling myself and my work.
By this time I had moved from the apartment I had shared with Scott
to Claremont, California and was working for Bank of America in their
courier service. One night, the president of Llewellyn, Carl Weschcke
called me on the phone and said he wanted to publish it. I could
barely restrain my joy and amazement.
Not long after, the person who was Vice President at Llewellyn called
me. He and Carl had been impressed with the way I had answered the
questions in the guidelines and they offered me a job. I ended up
moving to Minnesota and working for Llewellyn for the next six years.
I am very grateful to both of them, and Llewellyn, for giving me that opportunity.
The writing and publication of Modern Magick allowed the information
I wanted to share to be spread more widely. I think I was able to
present things in a way that appealed to people. That, combined with
a beautiful cover by Martin Canon as well as being in the right place
at the right time has made it successful. It also freed me to move on
in my personal studies and work.
TWPT:
Do you feel that the book has accomplished what you set out to do
with it? Give me some specifics that make you feel that it has indeed
met your expectations?
DMK: In terms of sales, Modern Magick did not merely
meet my expectations, it has exceeded them by such a huge amount that
I am amazed. In answering the questions for the writer's guidelines,
I said that I thought it might sell 5,000 copies the first year and
then settle down to 1000-2000 copies for the next few years. I
thought that if it stayed in print for three or four years I would be
lucky. Instead, it has continued to sell strongly and has sold over
100,000 copies.
In terms of getting the information out, I am amused that much of
what I wrote has become some sort of a common nomenclature in the
occult community. For example, before Modern Magick, the Lesser
Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram was usually called the
"LBR." Now, I figured that there could be lots of
"Lesser Banishing Rituals," so in Modern Magick I used the
letters "LBRP" to indicated exactly what I was talking
about. Although it is possible (indeed, probable!) that LBRP appeared
before Modern Magick, it has now become a standard shorthand for
naming the ritual.
Indeed, I have received hundreds of letters and emails from people
saying that their group uses Modern Magick as a text book. Most of
them say that they change things to fit their group. They say this
almost apologetically, as if I might take offense. On the contrary, I
say that I hope they DO change things to fit their group. Modern
Magick is my way, but it is not the only way.
But most satisfying have been the letters I've received from people
who have told me that their lives were screwed up and they started to
practice the techniques in Modern Magick and it helped them turn
their lives around.
I had not anticipated that, but it has been deeply touching.
So, it has exceeded my original sales goals, it has reached people
and become part of the magical vocabulary and helped some people
change their lives. This is far more than I could have ever expected
and I remain amazed that I could have participated in this.
TWPT:
How does Tarot and the Cabbala fit into your study of magick? Is it
simply a matter of using the same energies and techniques in
different forms?
DMK: One of the things that each of us, knowingly or
unknowingly, attempt to do, is have a way for answering seemingly
insoluble questions. Why is there war? Why did that person try to
hurt me? Why did another person try to help me? Why do innocent
infants die? Why do politicians behave the way they do? Why am I here?
There are many ways to answer these questions which influence a
person's understanding of reality. One way is through religion. For
the prevalent religious paradigm of the West, Christianity, anything
perceived as good comes from God and anything perceived as being not
good comes from Satan. Another paradigm would be any of the various
schools of psychology. Others include the hard sciences.
Astrology also gives us a way to understand reality, and it works
very well. The I Ching, with its Taoistic influences, also works. The
Tarot and the Kabalah can also give us full understandings of reality.
I have found that the more paradigms we understand, the closer we
become to understanding the reality that transcends them all. We are
like the proverbial blind men examining an elephant. We each get one
view of the whole, complete from where we are, but incomplete when
compared to the totality.
I do not think there will ever be a single way of being able to
answer those questions and understanding reality. But the more
paradigms we have, the closer we can get to understanding the nature
of the universe.
I should point out that we are spelling "Kabalah" in
different ways. Some people make a distinction between Kabalistic
traditions by the spelling of the word. I do not.
Beside using both the Tarot and Kabalah as ways of understanding the
basic nature of reality (i.e., what we change with magick), each has
useful tools for the technical workings of magick. Tarot symbolism
can help direct Kabalistic rituals. And the Kabalah is filled with
various magical techniques.
I see the Tarot and Kabalah as complimentary systems which can be
used, symbiotically, to enhance our abilities in magick. I like to
consider myself a pragmatist. If it works, use it!
TWPT:
You've also written a book entitled Modern Sex Magick. Why a separate
book to cover the area of sex magick? What is there about this area
of magick that needs more explanation than what is covered in Modern Magick?
DMK: Although in Modern Magick I included a section on
sex magick, I felt that times had changed enough for a focus on this
topic. Modern Magick was the first occult book to even mention AIDS.
Many of the expectations at that time concerning AIDS, and
specifically, the prediction that AIDS would soon infect huge
segments of the population, have not occurred. I am not going to
debate people about that. Go back and check the predictions and look
at the current numbers (not percentages, actual numbers) as given by
the Centers for Disease Control. The sex-negative, psychological
terrorists no longer threaten people by saying, "Have sex
outside of marriage once and you'll get AIDS." Instead, they are
adding the names of other diseases.
I am NOT saying that there are not risks to sexual activity or that
people should either do something they are not comfortable with or
not use methods to protect themselves from transmission of disease.
But the facts are that people, more and more, are losing the terror
of AIDS and instead respecting their health. The result is that many
people are engaging in more active sexual lifestyles. For example,
the number of "swingers clubs" seems to be showing a
dramatic rise.
At the same time, the people who still are terrorized have
established stable, monogamous relationships and are discovering
something disconcerting: sex can get boring. As a result, both people
who are monogamous and people who are not are looking for ways to
enhance their sex lives. The first thing that comes to mind for most
people is Tantra, and the misunderstandings around Tantra (which I
hope to clarify in a future book) are astounding.
Meanwhile, several things had been going on in my life since the
publication of Modern Magick. First, I have traveled all over the
U.S. giving classes. One of the many classes I teach is called
"Western Spirituality." It is surprising to see so many
people looking for spiritual truths and thinking that there is only
an answer in Eastern traditions. In fact, there is not one thing in
Eastern traditions which is not available in the traditions of the
West. People here don't know about Western spiritual traditions, I
believe, because they are based on the personal experience of the
Divine. If you have such an experience you no longer need priests,
ministers, rabbis, etc. Western spirituality is a dark secret because
it would put too many people and organizations out of business.
While seeking out further information on this, I was finding myself,
well, bored with much of the typical Kabalistic methodologies. At one
time I had written several pages on one of my chosen magical names to
indicate, through Gematria and Notaricon the meaning of the name. I
have seen people make long and wild journeys of a similar type giving
"proof" to something which, to me, was self-evident.
Let me give you an example. One of the most astounding Gematrias in
my life was that the word in Hebrew for "one" had the same
numeric value as the Hebrew word for "love." Thus,
one=love. And since the ultimate identification of God is as a
oneness, it was basically saying that God is love. Further, if you
take the numbers of the word "one" and add it to the number
of the word "love," the sum equals that of the
tetragrammaton, the holiest of names of God. Therefore unity and love
IS God.
Duh!
I found that I no longer needed such things to prove anything to me.
Note that I specifically am writing "to me." There are
other people who delight in this type of Kabalism and this is not
meant as a criticism. It is what they need now. I simply needed
something else.
What I realized is that most of these Kabalistic techniques were passive.
You sit there and think. I needed something more active. The works of
Aryeh Kaplan showed that the ancient Kabalists and pre-Kabalists used
such active techniques in things such as meditation. As I studied
further I discovered that what we generally call "The
Kabalah" is really based on only one school of Kabalism, and
that there have been many schools of thought and practice.
One such tradition, dating back at least as far as the great Temple
of Solomon, was that sexuality was sacred and magical. There had been
only hints of this in some Kabalistic texts, and my researched led to
further investigations.
During this time, too, I became involved with a sex magick group (I
had already been initiated into two Tantric traditions) that was very
effectively using those techniques, many of which I presented in
Modern Sex Magick. |
