Descriptions:
Video Description
The strongest secret of Golden Dawn theurgy turns out to have been hiding in plain sight all along. Lyam Christopher opens this video for students who have reached the Portal grade and suddenly wonder what comes next. They have changed deeply, yet they do not feel like magicians, and he says that feeling is common. The reveal is gentle, almost like the closing scene of The Wizard of Oz: the power was in your hands the entire time.
The outer order, he explains, is built on the four elements, earth, air, water, and fire, the slow work of learning to bring forth the divine virtues of the sephiroth. As the grades climb, the scale of colors deepens, and the planets begin to enter: the Moon on Mondays, Saturn on Saturdays, Mercury on Wednesdays, Jupiter on Thursdays. The whole process is theurgy, divine working, not sorcery aimed at outer prizes but an inner transformation that changes how the person sees.
Then the path to the Adeptus Minor opens, and it is not found in the book’s outer grades alone. The curriculum in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation carries a student to the threshold, and what comes after belongs to the one who has learned to recognize the work already underway. It is a deeply encouraging turn: the discipline did not fail to produce a magician, the student simply needs to see what they have already become and take charge of it.
Full Video Transcript
A number of you have already reached the portal grade in the Kabbalah magic book and the question might arise well what do I do after this and there’s something that happens sometimes when people do the Kabbalah magic work this is the golden dawn curriculum they go through the outer order process they are transforming themselves into an adept a magician but they’ve experienced
profound changes in their lives but they don’t necessarily feel like a magician yet or like an
adept and that’s actually uh fairly common um and in the original golden dawn i believe um there was
a period of of seven months something like that where uh there were some ritual work done with
the planets which i’m going to talk about here okay um for for many of you um going through the
outer order grade process um you gradually learn how to bring forth the energy of the
seeroth or those divine virtues okay so we’re going to talk about what theurgy is the secret
of theurgy okay and this is going to be one of those moments kind of like the wizard of oz where
the good witch at the end says you were there all along you know you know you knew how to get
home all along so try not to smack me when i reveal that to you which i’m about to do all right
so um the the process of the outer order of the golden dawn is primarily focused on the the four
elements or the four phases of matter so to speak right um solid liquid air solid solid liquid gas
and plasma right or earth air fire water and these are of course the aesthetic qualities of
those elements which do have some correspondence of course in the sphere of sensation to your
actual experience of fire or your actual experience of air things like that and eventually what you
are doing as you go through the outer order grade process becoming somebody who can use magic
you are learning how to control the elements okay and the golden dawn is really interesting
in this regard because not only do you bring the spiritual power of the divine realm to bear upon
the elements but you do it in a very soulful dramatic way it’s not just spirit against matter
its spirit filtered down through the spheroth or through the planets let’s say right through the
planets and then after it comes down through the planets it then descends here upon the earth and
manifests planetary virtues or sephirothic virtues okay and the the main focus of theurgy
theurgy is like white magic okay it’s like magic that is not corrupted by the what’s in it for me
demon okay so if you want to practice real magic the way that um iamblichus practiced it or the way
that some of these you know ancient alexandrian adepts supposedly practiced it uh or the way that
golden dawn people supposedly practiced it you would practice theurgy okay um if you want to
know more about theurgy i would suggest reading israel regardi’s the tree of life that’s a pretty
good introduction to theurgy. But I’ll be talking about what theurgy is actually here. So, in the
process of mastering the elements or mastering the aesthetic qualities of the elements, eventually
we apply the Tetragrammaton or the Pentagrammaton, right? So, in other words, we use, you know, this
is Yud, He, Shin, Vau, He. Pentagrammaton is the five-letter name of God, which actually Yud, He,
Shin, Vau, He supposedly spells Jesus according to Renaissance Kabbalists, the Christian Kabbalists
of the Renaissance. And that powerful name in the Golden Dawn is supposed to give you the ability to
master the elements. And here we have a picture of the Adeptus Wand, where the Tetragrammaton
is written on the side, Yud-Heh-Vau-Heh, right? You can barely see it. And the letter Shin is
written at the very top of the wand, which you can’t see here. So the letter Shin is,
so it’s yode, shin, vahe. The letter shin is supposedly spirit right here as you can see
added to all of the elements and so the pentagram is a symbol of spirit. Many people would say spirit
dominating the elements but it’s really spirit as the essence of the elements and here we have
a picture of a truncated pyramid. It’s a pyramid with the top chopped off and this is the symbol
of the adept by the way the um the adeptus minor symbol is the truncated pyramid if i’m not
mistaken and uh naturally the pyramid represents the four elements but the substance of the pyramid
itself is the fifth element right spirit of course spirit is not really an element because it’s the
essence of all the elements all right and here we have the flashing colors this is the color scheme
of the golden dawn and the main thing i want to say here i think in this video is that the
color scheme presented by the golden dawn is the essence of its theurgy the its system of magic is
primarily based on color i mean in my opinion that’s the color is the most powerful aspect of
it at least for me and the color system of the golden dawn is very striking if you look at the
golden dawn implements they’re very brightly colored like screaming um like these colors
here they tend to be just use the brightest color as possible as you can see here we have the
flashing colors so the um those are complementary colors like if you look at that blue with that
orange it kind of plays tricks on the eyes there and that’s a flashing color technique
which was explored by the famous uh poet and well magician and scientist um goethe goethe
did some work with complementary colors and the system of scrying that the golden dawn used with
flashing colors is based on his use of color which we’re not going to go into in this video
but you can see the colors are very interesting there that that blue one’s really popping out at
me right now it depends on your monitor i guess all right so not only do we have the flashing
colors of the elements and so we have the elements here are blues for water reds for fire yellows
for air and black is for earth and green also for earth and then um lo and behold we have these
other colors and these colors uh you guys are using when you’re in the outer order grades
from theoricus through practicus you are then exploring the planetary colors there are seven
planets of the ancients the golden dawn didn’t really much acknowledge the outer planets we
only go as far as Saturn. And Saturn, because Saturn was the furthest away planet that the
ancients were able to see. So the system of Alexandrian Hermeticism and all that stuff was
pretty much only based on the planets that we could see in the sky. It doesn’t mean that the
outer planets are not of interest to astrology, but the golden dawn tends to only focus on the
seven planets of the ancients okay the sun and the moon being considered planets of course
because they are also wandering bodies in the sky science came along later and usurped
the word planets for astronomical bodies and so the sun and moon are no longer considered
planets to them but they originally yes planets was what we applied to these and that is yeah
so here we have the um the phoenix wand which is wielded by the second adept i think it is and the
zero equals zero ceremony some ceremony of the golden dawn um and supposedly if you were to use
this wand whatever planetary force you’re using you would hold it by that particular band okay
i’m just showing it here to show that um the golden dawn system of magic had colors
for the elements like these and then the it had colors for the planets and it had colors for the
signs of the zodiac and pretty much what the golden dawn adepts did is they used the roy g
biv spectrum of the rainbow red orange yellow blue indigo and violet right so if you look at
a rainbow you should be able to see all those colors sometimes it’s hard to see indigo in there
and uh so you’ll see that here in the phoenix wand we have a red orange yellow blue green indigo
violet that doesn’t quite work probably because my monitor maybe maybe your monitor shows the
green better yeah yeah that for venus that should be green just notice that red orange yellow green
blue indigo violet roy g biv and you can see that it it uh it becomes a bit awkward um but as they
assign these colors like for the you would think that the sun would be golden color or yellow
let’s say right even though if you look up in the sky at noon it’s white but um many people
associate the color yellow with the sun but yellow applies better to mercury here so orange gets
relegated to orange gets relegated to the sun here red for mars that makes sense because of
spilled blood and cutting off of heads and things like that venus should be green emerald green here
actually so that looks like a i don’t know is that an error and blue is relegated to the moon
and then here you see saturn there that’s indigo and then violet is for jupiter sometimes the color
scheme of the golden dawn seems a bit forced like with that orange sun okay um but this is the way
you learn the system to get it functioning coherently and cohesively and it also becomes
slightly awkward here as with the signs of the zodiac many people would not consider scorpio to
be blue green color like the color of a fresh gushing spring if you want to read some really
cool rationalizations for these colors, I would recommend getting Crowley’s 777. Alistair Crowley
wrote a book called 777 in which he gives a bunch of tables of correspondence and he gives a quite
lengthy rational description for each of the colors for each of the signs of the zodiac. I
recommend reading it because it really makes it pop for you. It makes it click for you. So you
okay these are the colors now. And so as you guys are going through the outer order grades becoming
a magician or becoming an adept, right? You’re going through the grade of neophyte, zolotor,
theoricus, practicus, philosophus, then the portal grade, and then adeptus minor, okay? The Kabbalah
magic book doesn’t really go into adeptus minor. That’s up to you to carry all of your knowledge
forward to try to then summon your holy guardian angel and become proficient. And so what you’re
become you proficient at is theurgy and that is um theurgy is the act of god making it really is
the many people would call it the act of transforming yourself into a god but more
accurately it it is the practice of manifesting divine virtues right here in your human form
that’s the main thing okay bringing these divine virtues down to earth so that they’re expressed
in your lifestyle in your environment around you in yourself in your demeanor in your personality
things like that all right um and what you will notice and this is the um aha moment um some
somewhere along this path somewhere in the outer order process you’re going to eventually realize
spoiler alert that oh my god i’m already doing it am i i’m already doing theory this is the kind of
work that the adept does only i’m doing it in a way you know that’s very formulaic and because
i don’t really know what i’m doing yet i’m doing i’m doing these formula they actually are theurgy
already um the main challenge is to recognize that the uh the theory is happening and of course
eventually you learn to appreciate magic from the inside not from the outside anymore
okay so um but as you go through these grades um you’ll be working with the different colors as you
can see okay so and in the neophyte grade many of you are in the neophyte um and you’re working
with the white light okay and then when you do the zolotar grade then you work with the princess
scale of color and so when you start doing your middle pillar work and your body and asia exercises
you are effectively installing a whole system of colors into your subtle body okay and i’ll tell
you what i mean by installing later so in the theoricus grade you work with a different set
of colors called the prince scale and the in the practicus grade you work with the queen scale
and in the philosophist grade you work with the king scale of colors in the portal you mainly
just work with the king and queen scale. And then the Adeptus Minor, all the colors supposedly,
right? Then you could use them all. And you can see that these various grades correspond to
particular elements, let’s say, right? Or to spirit. In the grades of Theoricus through
Philosophus, you begin working with the planets. So in Theoricus, you invoke the moon every Monday
and saturn every saturday and then in practicus you invoke uh mercury every wednesday and jupiter
every thursday okay so um so you get some exposure to the planetary colors as well as you’re going
through the outer order grade process the primary focus in the outer order is still upon the
elements but we are already introducing the planets to you okay in in the kabbalah magic book
a little bit and then so once you get through all the grades you’re like hmm i’ve been transformed
a lot i’m very different than the way i used to be my whole outlook has changed but i can’t seem
to call forth magical forces yet that’s when you want to settle in and start invoking these
planetary and energies which you’ve already been introduced to and now we want to really dig in
okay so i’m going to show you what’s involved with that these are the color scales and some of you
are already using these okay so if you’re in the zolotar grade you’re using that’s what you see
there for grade number one theoricus practicus and philosophers right um these are the colors
that are used so in each of the elemental grades you and you’re installing 10 colors
into the aura or into your subtle body okay and by installing them if you’re installing them i
don’t really mean that you’re installing them it means that you are establishing an inner contact
through vibration of the word of power and the color that you’re visualizing and the form that
you’re visualizing you’re able to call upon that force maybe okay what’s probably going to happen
is that during that process you get fairly good at working with particular types of forces and
you’ll know which ones those are okay and other ones they just don’t come when you call them it’s
like i i don’t know this one just that one doesn’t like me and um so that’s okay because uh for the
minor adept, the minor adept is somebody who can call upon some of these forces, right? And then
the major adept is someone who supposedly can call upon all of them, all of the forces, or at least
all the planets. And you can see each sphera on the tree of life has ten colors, one color
associated with it, right? One color in each of the four worlds. So, in other words, each of the
spheroth on the tree of life has four colors assigned to it. You can see Kether is pure
brilliance in Atsaluth and it is white brilliance in Berea and that’s just white in Yetzirah and
then white flecked with gold or white rayed with gold sometimes white flecked with gold in Asiyah
the lowest level okay so if you were in the earth grade in Zaladar grade you’d be using all those
colors on the far right and those are colors you’d be installing in your aura let’s say right
these are um it’s interesting because you’re entering an experience of reality in which those
colors really are those forces and the forces that you’re calling upon are the colors they’re
very much the same maybe at first they were uh disassociated from each other now they’ve it’s
almost like you are restoring them back to the way that they were because they’ve been broken
apart okay i’m not saying that’s really the way reality is but that’s kind of what we’re doing
here to experience the inner contacts. Seems a bit contrived, I know, but it works. And mostly
what you work with as the adept is the minutum mundum. All right, so if you look at, these are
the four color scales for the four worlds, okay, and the minutum mundum is made up just of number
three and number four. When we combine the colors of the paths in four to the spheroth in three,
we get this the minutum mundum okay and so once all of your work is done let’s say you’ve completed
everything all the way up through the portal grade then you can begin using the planetary colors
in your daily work and each planet each of the seven planets has two colors associated with it
Okay, so in the tree of life, there are several spheroth that are associated with planets, let’s say.
If you look at the purple one near the bottom there, the purple sphere, that’s the sphere of Yesod, and that is assigned to the moon, or rather the moon is assigned to it.
Okay, and there is also a path that is assigned to the moon.
okay and the the sphere at the top that leads to the sphere in the center that blue line from the
top to the center that is the path of the moon so the two colors that we use for invoking and
banishing the moon are purple and blue okay and i’ll tell you about those in a bit i think there’s
a chart coming up here yes okay so so once you finish all the work and you’re trying to um you’re
you’re trying to establish the ability to call upon these planetary energies you might already
be able to call upon one or two of them fairly well and now you want to try to master the rest
okay um what we do is we simply uh line these forces up with different days of the week
okay the reason we do that is not because not because monday is has some special virtue assigned
to the moon um there might be some correlation there because it’s such a deeply embedded cultural
thing that monday is for the moon you know but um the reason we do this is so every single day
you’re working with a different planet so you don’t miss anything you don’t you don’t bypass
any blind spots okay and you don’t skip saturday which is saturn because nobody likes saturn
or saturn is always a challenge right so um so on monday we call upon the moon and in order to do
that for the in the middle pillar exercise you would use the negative color for the aura and
the positive color for like the central column let’s say right so for your middle pillar work
you could use the blue so you’re not using white light anymore so all throughout the outer order
grades you’re using white light for the middle pillar but suddenly once it’s all done then you
start to do the middle pillar in colors and the color that you use for that central column for
the moon would be blue and then um or i’m sorry would be blue right exactly and then the color
for the aura around the body would be violet okay so if you’re already doing the grade work you know
what i’m talking about okay otherwise this is obviously going to be a little bit mysterious
okay and you can see that for that sunday we have the sun and the sun the positive color is orange
i always like to see it as a burnt orange it’s comes like it just that’s the way it keeps coming
to me um and uh so the positive color would be the color that goes down through the center would
be like a orange and then the color of the uh the aura would be gold some some would prefer yellow
but yeah gold is the official color and you can see there are god names that you would use to call
upon those powers that’s essentially what you’re doing and of course how does it feel when you do
that um if you do successfully the body fills with energy okay there can be a buzzing sensation
or things like that right which you probably have already experienced somewhat um uh what’s what
tends to happen is that you the body will feel big or dense heavy actually and maybe so heavy
that you feel like you’re monstrously large like a mountain and if you lifted up your hand and laid
it on yourself you would crush yourself you know but of course you move and then suddenly everything’s
normal again um but um so so that feeling of being filled with chi or whatever like that
this is the sensation you’re going for uh and this is the energy you’ll eventually you’ll
eventually be able to direct into that talismans and in imagery and into dramatic scenarios to
make transformations things like that okay so this is a formula that an adept or somebody who’s
finished portal this is something they might use at this point though they’re on their own they
they kind of are taking what they’ve learned and then they’re creating a ritual sequence that’s
that’s pretty much centers around invoking one of the planetary powers so here’s an example like um
start out with doing a poor breathing exercise to sort of relax loosen up uh poor breathing is
very important by the way it’s a very important exercise and um not p-o-o-r breathing but p-o-r-e
breathing and then there’s lesser banishing ritual the pentagram standard right banishing
ritual the hexagram standard which is saturn banishing and then supreme invoking ritual the
pentagram which is all four elements and i’m going to write an article i’ve already written an article
on what i’m talking about right now which i will link to and i’m going to write an article that is
a narrative of a magician actually going through this process so you can see it sort of blow by
low. I will also describe how it feels for him, let’s say, to go through these various invocations,
okay, at least in terms of how I’ve experienced it. Invoking ritual of the hexagram, that would
be for the particular planet. So if it’s Monday, you would do the invoking hexagram of the moon
with violet colored hexagrams and blue moon sigils. Then you do the middle pillar in the
sephirothic colors uh that would be the sephira of uh sephira of yesod and there are four different
colors that you would use um and that is in other words you would do the fourfold body of light
and that’s the you would use um you would use the four colors of the four worlds for that okay and
for those of you who are who are already doing it you would you know what i’m talking about
okay and of course as you do that fourfold body of light you’re visualizing your astral body let
say or your subtle body as it appears in all four worlds the material world the world of Yetzirah
the world of dreams the world of dreamless sleep which is Bria and then the world of Atzaluth
visualizing the body of light as it supposedly appears in all these worlds okay and the primary
powerhouse behind that is the higher two worlds you want to you’re visualizing your astral body
or your subtle body in Atzaluth and your subtle body in Berea. And most of the meditation is spent
focusing on that sensation. Once you’ve been vibrating the divine names and then you rest
within that image. By names and images are all powers awakened and reawakened. Very important
line from the neophyte ceremony and so your primary task is your is to develop the ability to
call upon these planetary energies and more through so that they’re tangible for you okay
and then whatever you’re working on will take on some of the virtues of that you can make talismans
or you can just do some dramatic imagery with demons and things like that to help them work
through their processes or whatnot okay and then you might do some tarot to get some advice for
the day or something like that right and then uh the banishing ritual of the hexagram of the for
the planet so you you’ve invoked the planet you’re going to banish the planet and then supreme
banishing ritual of the pentagram okay and follow follow following that up with the kabbalistic cross
also would be important okay and there’s a little trick to this too um we notice i’m only talking
about the seven planets okay what about the higher sphere oath the tree of life has 10 sphere oath
and i’m only talking about invoking seven different powers this is the powers of the planets
those are the most important but you might want to see there are only seven of these right
and um if you wanted to invoke the higher sphere oath of hokuma or kether um the way that the
golden dawn did that was quite simple um you kind of acknowledge that well i really can’t
experience those spheres directly let’s say right they’re just too high up there right but i can
experience their emanations or their signatures through the sphere of vena okay so in other words
in order to invoke kether let’s say you would use this saturn invoking hexagram but you would do it
the colors of kether okay it’s something you would develop for yourself okay um and if you invoke
kether don’t plan on getting anything done that day because it just kind of makes you into a
vegetable like you’re kind of just sitting there um not feel you don’t feel like doing anything
um so uh but um you could do that on a saturday let’s say on saturdays you could sometimes invoke
saturn or you could or you could invoke kether or hakama possibly um that’s also a possibility
but you’d have to develop those colors for yourself based on the knowledge you already have
all right so that’s this is like a little regimen of rituals um this is not something
i’m prescribing this is an example of something that you would come up with on your own in order
to uh invoke or practice invoking planetary powers this is a calisthenics of consciousness
you’re becoming a spiritual uh athlete okay you’ve probably already developed some ability to invoke
some of the planets for instance when i went through the outer order i was pretty good at
invoking jupiter yeah jupiter is my chart ruler so i guess that shouldn’t be a surprise but um
uh yeah and other other planets i didn’t do so well with so i had to work at it still um they
you it was pretty obvious that all of them especially the sun were transforming me
my me and my outlook and my teachers could see it but my ability to call upon those forces was not
that good i had to develop it and something to add so like when you do the lesser banishing ritual of
the pentagram you can also and instead of just calling upon the four archangels you can call upon
the also the angels and the elemental kings okay this is for you to work with your own particular
familiar spirits for instance if my earth spirit is kind of undeveloped okay i would so um i would
might do some work not only would i invoke the archangel of the element but i would also invoke
the angel of the element for lock the archangels aureole the angels for lock and then i might
invoke um the elemental king which is gob or if you vibrated it might be gi hob and um and then
a particular spirit which is one that i have contacted which is sort of my earth spirit that
is undeveloped and needs to be you know made refined or whatever like that uh something that
i have contacted for myself um and then if i’m invoking a planet not only would i invoke the
archangel of the planet, but I would also invoke the angel of the planet, and then the planetary
intelligence, and then the planetary spirit. For instance, for Mercury, the archangel is
Michael, the angel is Raphael, the intelligence is Tyrael, and the spirit of the planet Mercury
is Taphtharath. Okay, but what you might want to turn that into is if you wanted to work with your
own poorly placed mercury let’s say you’ve got mercury and it’s not appearing in a sign that
it’s comfortable in so you have a mercury spirit let’s say because of your birth chart that is
acting up and has difficulty you can work with that spirit and so you would call upon michael
the archangel then rafael the angel then tyrael the intelligence but instead of taphtharath you
would call forth your own mercury spirit uh and however it appears to you okay you would work with
it um calling upon it that way okay you can see how this is working now because you’ve already
developed proficiency at calling upon these higher um powers but eventually things get so
low down and specific that you are then calling upon your own personal familiar spirits interesting
stuff right all right and then you can bend you so already you you’ve been transforming yourself
you’ve already been doing theory but now you’re doing it much more surgically much more consciously
and you can make much more pronounced specific changes more or less all right i know that was
very technical there is an article about this that outlines it and there’s going to be another art
another article forthcoming where i do the narrative describing what it looks like and
feels like, okay, to do a sort of formula like this. So you can see what it’s like to be a
proto-adept or an actual adept who’s conjuring forth, successfully conjuring forth.
I’m probably going to do it with mercury. Yeah, so what mercury feels like. Anyway,
that article is not written yet, but article number one is written. I will link to it in
the description below so you can click on it um i’ll also give links there so that you can join
me on patreon you can become a free member because there’s like five articles that are free for you
guys on patreon uh and then all the other articles are available if you support me there if you
support if you for if you support the forbidden realms project on patreon i’m also available for
consultations. And if you go to the Patreon site, you can find out pretty easily how to
make an appointment with me there. All right, so I hope that was clear. I know that was pretty
technical. The article should make things clear, I hope, if you want to go ahead and read it.
The article that I’m talking about, article number one, is going to be free when I link to it,
so you don’t have to become a member to read that one. All right, so until next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher