Descriptions:
Video Description
After the pentagram ritual clears the four elements, the Golden Dawn curriculum introduces the Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram, which works with the seven classical planets instead. Each point of the hexagram corresponds to a planet, with Saturn, the outermost sphere in the old Aristotelian cosmology, banished first because it stands as the symbolic limit of a magician’s own initiation.
The ritual’s most complex layer is the Analysis of the Keyword, a chain of acronyms (INRI, the Hebrew letters Yod-Nun-Resh-Yod, and the Egyptian trio Isis-Apophis-Osiris) built on one underlying principle: the visible aspects of a thing call forth its hidden essence. Through the myth of Osiris’s death and resurrection, the ritual frames light as something that rises up out of the earth and through the practitioner, rather than descending from an external, external heaven.
Full Video Transcript
Okay, let’s start talking about the hexagram ritual. The banishing ritual of the hexagram. Students who do the curriculum work in the Kabbalah Magic Book perform the lesser banishing ritual, the pentagram, every day, at least once per day. And eventually they perform the banishing ritual, the hexagram, once per day. Okay. I think in the Zalada grade, that’s when it gets introduced. Okay.
what is the hexagram why is it important as you will recall from the last video it is the two
forces of the divine which have become separated from each other okay in order to produce
manifestation right and so in the pentagram ritual the hexagram is introduced uh towards the end i
I guess we’re in the middle, so that it is present, and so it sets the stage for the
invocation of the planets, let’s say, okay, after the elements have been cleared aside,
more or less, okay, and so after the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram, normally
we perform the banishing ritual of the hexagram, which then banishes the influences of the
planets the astrological planets and as you can see each point of the hexagram corresponds to
one of the seven planets except for the center you’ll notice that the center has no point
okay uh now seven planets uh if you are if you do modern astrology it’s like wait a minute there’s
more planets than that astrologically speaking uh we are using the aristotelian system of the
the planets back when people did astrology and they could not see any of the planets with the
naked eye past saturn okay and saturn is going to be really important for this when we when we draw
the hexagram for the vanishing ritual of the hexagram we use the saturn vanishing hexagram
okay the directions for how to do this are in the book or you can easily look it up online okay i’m
sure this is a well-known or well-published ritual. The secrets behind it are not so easy
to understand, which we’ll try to go into here, okay? You’re banishing Saturn because Saturn is
the mother of all the other planets. Like I said, it is the outermost planet, okay? And inward from
there, we have Jupiter and then Mars. So Saturn’s out here, then there’s Jupiter, then Mars, then
the sun then venus then mercury and then finally uh the moon and then we’re down to where the earth
is okay so the the spheres of the planets are like enveloping influences uh so when you are
doing these pentagram rituals and hexagram rituals you are participating or you are creating the uh
ancient cosmos around yourself the way that the magi of old would used to see the universe this
is an it’s an important kind of cosmos it’s a psychological kind of cosmos okay uh it does
have some correspondence with reality it’s not pure fantasy okay um uh it does it does it literally
match the solar system no it does not of course not okay uh so in this cosmology that you’re
building around yourself earth is in the center and saturn is on the outer edge okay it’s supposedly
saturn is as far as you can go with your initiation okay so if you are to initiate yourself
you first rise up into the sphere of the moon okay then you rise up into the sphere of mercury
then venus then the sun then mars and eventually all the way out to saturn which supposedly most
people cannot initiate themselves past you cannot get past saturn saturn represents death of course
that’s not true okay so the idea that you cannot get past saturn is an illusion but we can talk
about that in a later video all right so uh so now we are ready to work with the planetary energies
okay uh supposedly when you you know work with the planetary energies they get to know you and you
get to know them uh and that plugs you into this larger universe of these concentric spheres of
condensing power outside beyond saturn there is the sphere of the zodiac the wheel of the zodiac
and beyond the wheel of the zodiac supposedly there is the divine and the way this is portrayed
is that the divine is pure radiance all encompassing everything uh infinite etc uh and
then but it radiates light inward towards the earth and as that light radiates inward it filters down
through all of the spheres through the zodiac through the sphere of saturn through the sphere
of jupiter okay through okay on onward and onward down eventually through the sphere of the moon and
then it creates the earth okay and the earth is really a little more than vibration complex
patterns of vibration all supposedly created by this descending influence that’s filtering through
all the various planetary planetary spheres okay this is the kind of universe you are starting to
create it gels very well with astrology in fact it is the cosmology of astrology so if you practice
astrology already that’s uh more power to you because you’re basically now taking advantage
of astrology not only as a predictive art but as a creative art when you initiate yourself into
these planetary spheres supposedly now you’re able to participate in the creation of the universe
along with those planetary deities or planetary powers okay that’s supposedly what happens does
will it happen for you i don’t know uh one way to look at this is that the magician is standing on
top of a truncated pyramid. That’s a pyramid with the top chopped off. And the pyramid represents
the four elements. So the four faces of the pyramid that are facing outward, they represent
earth, air, fire, water. This is a very profound symbol because it indicates that the four elements
are merely aspects, which really means faces, facets of the substance that the universe is
actually made of the elements are not the substance itself they are the aspects or faces of
that substance the um the prima materia or the quintessence okay uh uh the the elements are the
outward appearance of the quintessence okay so inside the pyramid the substance of the pyramid
itself that is the quintessence okay also known as the philosopher’s stone okay there’s a lot to
talk about in regard to the difference between prima materia quintessence and philosopher’s
stone don’t have time for that here the topmost facet the facet that’s facing upward that you’re
supposedly standing on top of to do your ritual that could correspond then to the quintessence
or the prima materia and that oh you you could see that surface as in vibration so the planetary
powers are descending down upon the power of the divine is filtering through the planetary powers
descending down upon that platform causing it to vibrate fluctuate and create everything in
manifestation everything in your dream world everything in your waking world is produced by
this vibration of the interlocking triangles of the hexagram i hope i’m explaining that well
uh very mysterious isn’t it it’s kind of um convoluted symbolism uh worth exploring
because the way the psyche works is uh not necessarily straightforward it’s convoluted
it’s like a maze so the main part or the well the most confusing part of the hexagram ritual
doesn’t involve hexagrams it is the analysis of the key word okay the analysis of the key word
has a lot of secret symbols tied into it it pulls a lot of concepts together into words of power
okay the principle behind this is not as complicated as you think it is think about
the business world where we use abbreviations acronyms okay for various uh you know procedures
that we use or strategies that we employ in the business world and we come up with acronyms to
represent them or like in the academic world we come up with stem for all of the sciences
essentially science technology engineering mathematics stem uh so uh that’s a uh an
acronym that ties all those disciplines together into a little word of power so this analysis of
the keyword portion of the ritual kind of does that the principle behind it is simple okay
the principle behind the analysis of the keyword is the principle behind most magic and that is
the aspects call forth the essence okay the essence of anything that you happen to be looking
at is hidden and whatever you happen to be looking at is the outward manifestation of that
hidden substance okay if you look at the truncated pyramid okay the only visible part of the pyramid
symbolically speaking are the four outward faces of it and that’s solid liquid gas and plasma
the four phases of matter or the four elements okay these are the only things we can experience
in regard to matter and the actual quintessence that they are all made of is invisible okay
however supposedly if you put these things in balance if air earth air fire
water are all in balance these will then call forth the quintessence into
manifestation hmm is that possible so what happens is you infer the
quintessence okay nephew and now it’s never going to be called forth into
manifestation the fact that it’s not in manifestation is a bit of an illusion
anyway okay but the idea is that if you take the aspects of something and you
lay them out in some kind of aesthetic way artistic way they will call forth
their essence it’s just not a complicated thing really if you think
about it artists do it all the time if you’re
watching a movie they’re using aspects of something to call forth the spirit of
whatever that thing is okay the director does that the stage designers do that
the cinematographer does that the writers do that they’re using aspects of a mood let’s say to call
forth that mood okay and the mood is not quite accurate either because mood is an aspect of
something much deeper anyway so let’s go into some of these aspects then that you are working with
in the analysis of the keyword first start by saying i n r i it’s already an acronym and in
the christian mythology it stands for jesus of nazareth king of the jews i believe yes uh uh i
in latin i in latin was also j so i for jesus okay and of course i for the jews apparently so um and
then uh n i guess is for nazareth i’m assuming and then r is for regis which is king so jesus of
nazareth king of the jews naturally this plugs into the myth of the crucifixion and you are
essentially visualizing yourself sacrificed or crucified in the golden dawn we transliterate
the i n r i to yud nun resh and yod and we have it goes this way it proceeds from right to left
yod nun rash yod because hebrew hebrew goes from right to left the two yods yod corresponds to
virgo every hebrew letter in the hebrew alphabet corresponds to an astrological power
the signs of the zodiac or the elements or the planets okay uh so yod the little tiny flame
there corresponds to virgo which is a gentle mother-like influence or sometimes an overbearing
mother type influence uh and then nun corresponds to scorpio which is darkness and death and
putrefaction that’s you rotting in the grave uh then we have resh which is the symbol of rebirth
which corresponds to the sun the uh to the uh solar body the sun and then of course there’s
another yod there which is virgo and what we have then is oh try to do this okay but we it’s hard
for me to because it’s like a mirror image so um the two yods there are for are like a gate this
is the gate of the feminine um which between the uh the gate the two gates the opening gates of
the feminine let’s say uh we have both of these forces we have the oops we have the nun which is
death and then we have the resh which is rebirth so the nun is going back into the mother
into the universe disappearing dying and then resh is coming back out of the mother going
coming back out of the universe and being born from the universe okay so one of the secrets of
the mysteries is that we did not really come into this universe from some other plane we came out of
this universe okay that’s about in the goddess mysteries that’s one of the reversals of a lot
of what happens in the Abrahamic face. Sort of a heretical way of looking at spirituality. We came
out of the earth. We didn’t come into this world from some other alien place. All right. That’s
Yud Nun Resh Yud. Isis. The Virgo corresponds to Isis, which is the mighty mother. Nun, of course,
Nun corresponds to Scorpio, which is Apophis. Okay. And then Saul, the son in this ritual,
corresponds to osiris okay osiris is many things he’s a moon god he’s a sun god he’s essentially
a middle pillar god okay if you study kabbalah you know what the middle pillar is i’m not going
to go into that okay but he’s both solar and lunar in this ritual he’s solar because he’s
pretty much represents immortality and rebirth so the sun aspect is emphasized here isis is virgo
apophis is scorpio and osiris is saul or the sun and then these are paired up with l v and x in an
almost cheerleader type way give me an l give me a v give me an x what does it spell i just ruined
it didn’t i uh so um as you can see though in a pep rally uh it’s very magical isn’t it they’re
they’re using these um they’re using these magical techniques to call forth a mood aspect call forth
essence lvx is the latin word for light looks the v in latin is a u doubles as a u okay so lvx looks
and so the the isis apophis and osiris apparently are aspects of light okay and they their
participation in the death and resurrection of osiris shows them as aspects of the light of
osiris they are essential including the destruction and the death this is a necessary part of the
light interesting we could go into the second law of thermodynamics to talk about that couldn’t we
anyway then we have another word of power isis apophis and osiris which is an ancient gnostic
word for god okay uh and the golden dawn it can correspond to the heart center um so uh what’s
you’re essentially doing in this analysis of the keyword is calling calling upon the osiris current
because it’s pretty much the passion of osiris the death uh and the and the floundering in the
underworld and then the resurrection of osiris uh back into this world in in the form of horus
his son or raharakti okay so um so isis apophis osiris
you can see this as a vibration of the two triangles between the two triangles of the
hexagram if you like uh and this is the essence of light this is the golden dawn magic of light
okay the osiris current the osiris current rises up through the earth from the underworld through
nature into you okay that’s sort of heretical because normally in the abrahamic faiths the
light of the divine comes down from the sky comes down to the earth and then the earth is all
corrupt and needs to be fixed right well in the uh in the mysteries the light of the divine rises
up through mother earth she conveys it forth and this is shown forth in the christian mysteries as
well mary mother of god very sacred as the gateway into this universe of the christ force she is also
the gateway back out of it okay very sexy imagery there in a disturbing way maybe all right uh
formulation of the hexagrams finally we get to the hexagrams and with the hexagrams um uh as a
matter of convenience we don’t use the star of david and as we’ve already shown uh the star of
David doesn’t have an angle in the center where the sun normally sits, okay? So we use the
unicursal hexagram. The only reason for that, we just basically bring the student into the use of
the unicursal hexagram right away, okay? That way it becomes habituated. Is this symbol, does it
have a lot of archetypal power like the normal hexagram does? No, not really, but it’s a matter
of convenience to draw it this way it does plug into that power okay and it is developing its own
associations as people use it more and more okay uh we could go into that what is an archetype
actually right um uh the golden dawn originally didn’t use this hexagram they used the regular
hexagram but then for invoking and vanishing the sun there was a really clumsy technique for doing
that and your arm gets really tired tracing all of the different hexagrams okay so uh this symbol
makes it a lot easier and if you perform it daily your psyche or the psyche of the universe will get
comfortable with you using it and will say okay this is the language you’re using to speak to me
i will now i’m happy to work with that okay kind of how magic works okay uh yes we want to use
architect our archetypal symbols that have a long history that’s plugs into a lot of power there
okay but we can also habituate into using symbols and eventually the universe will adjust itself to
us and learn to speak our language okay and of course we uh we include the symbol of saturn in
there okay and the colors that we use um initially just use white okay and then you have um the
symbol of saturn which could also be seen in white uh but eventually you’ll begin to use the
planetary colors for the color scheme of the golden dawn uh and this the so the hexagram
vanishing saturn would be black or like a luminous radiating black fire and the
uh symbol of saturn itself would be indigo sort of a very dark luminous blue okay uh
but in the meantime like when we start this we just use white and event but eventually like in
the oracus grade then you can start using the black and the indigo colors and yeah so we can
see the reason just to make it clear the reason we use the universal hexagram the sun here in this
symbol up above does not have angles so eventually when when you want to invoke and vanish the sun
which is really for the portal grade okay then you have the universal universal hexagram established
in your sphere of sensation it’s one of the tools that you use and it’s one of the tools that the
universe is comfortable using in regard to you all right so i hope that clarifies some things
about the hexagram ritual uh the most important thing that we’ve talked about here and i know
it’s very basic but it’s that the principle of the aspects of something properly arranged will
call forth its its essence the aspects of something properly arranged will call forth
is its essence this is the and of course in the golden dawn they go take this even further and
they’ll say by names and images are all powers awakened and reawakened and this is why in magic
we surround ourselves with various objects that have a certain aesthetic appeal the aesthetic
appeal these various objects they comprise the aspects of some deeper force that we are calling
forth okay very basic principle of art actually so that’s why magic is both an
art and a science all right until next time
Source: Lyam Christopher