The Elementals and Ceremonial Magick:

 

The Elementals and Ceremonial Magick:

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”

The Tarot is split into three parts, these are the Trump cards, the Court cards and the Suits. The Major Arcanum, ATU’s or Trump cards deal with the individual. While the Minor Arcanum is of a more general nature and concerned with the Sephiroth and the Tetragrammaton.

This structure starts with the Aces, and these are placed in Kether as representing their nature, which can be understood as the first whirling of elemental force, such as an idea that is still unmanifested. Kether does not correspond to any specific letter of the Ineffable Name, but instead as it holds the potential of existence within itself, corresponds to all four letters. Thus, all the Aces are placed there to indicate this idea. These symbolize an idea that is unrealized, but in its inception may be sensed by the individual. Crowley wrote in the Book of Thoth concerning these cards. “The point to remember is that, both in appearance and in their meaning, the Aces are not the elements themselves, but the seeds of those elements.” 

Along with the aces there are the Court Cards, or the Dignitaries composed of Knights, Queens, Princes and Princesses. These form part of the Suit Cards which are also composed of the cards relating to the sephiroth such as the Aces and form the last part of the Tarot. They are the ones through to the tens of every suit. Thus, the two of Disks is Binah of disks and the ten of wands is Malkuth of Wands. But for this essay I will concentrate on the purely elemental cards, which are the Court Cards or the Dignitaries, and as will be observed form the Four Worlds on the Tree of Life.

The Minor Arcanum is split up into four suits that correspond to the four elements, these are Wands, Cups, Swords and Disks. These correspond to the ineffable name as follows, Wands-Fire-Yod-Chokmah, Cups-Water-Heh-Binah, Swords-Air-Vau-Tiphareth, Disks-Earth-Heh final-Malkuth. The four dignitaries of the Tarot accordingly also correspond to these suits the Knights are Fire, the Queens, Water, the Princes, Air and the Princesses, Earth. Thus, a Queen of Wands represents Water of Fire and Prince of Swords is Air of Air. These represent different types of people and are linked to the Emotional, Sensual, Intellectual and Spiritual faculties. Along with other traits, although for the purpose of this essay, the four mentioned should suffice. Some people are more spiritual than others and this trait is associated with Wands and Fire and some are more emotional, and they are considered waterier in their natures. The harmony of an individual’s elemental nature is important to consider when reading the cards, for example, Fire and Water are inharmonious and indicates an unbalanced individual, whereas Fire and Air are in perfect Harmony, and indicates an extremely intelligent pioneering and spiritually minded individual.

The Dignitaries of the Tarot also correspond to the elementals in the same way, the Knights of Wands, Salamanders, the Queens of Cups are the Undines, Princes of Swords the Sylphs and the Princesses of Disks correspond to the Gnomes. Since the aim of magick is first to establish equilibrium between these elements, I will try and construct a coherent ritual for doing this, or even just to aid in communicating with these elementals. When opening one’s temple for ritual we usually start with the Pentagram and Hexagram rituals. The elementals correspond to the Pentagram and it may be helpful in High Magick to use them as a means of raising our faculties to communicate with the Higher Words, that correspond with the Hexagram and the Angels, Arch Angels and Gods. This can be done by following the rules of symbolism and the way in which they stimulate our senses and our psyches. The first thing then is constructing an appropriate temple for the purpose of one’s ritual. And since the Tarot is in perfect harmony with the laws that govern Magick, we may use the Dignitaries to communicate with the elementals. I suggest enlarging the cards and placing them in their appropriate quadrants. Thus, Knights in the South, Queens in the West, Princes in the East and Princesses in the North. This should serve to enliven one’s psychic faculties, especially once the circle has been constructed.

The circle shall be made up of five circles, these are associated to the different parts of the ritual. It should be a 9 foot in diameter circle in the middle, with four smaller circles about five feet in diameter at each of the elemental corners, North, South, East and West. The circle in the Middle is dedicated to the Macrocosm and the God being invoked and the surrounding circles are dedicated to the Elementals or the Microcosm. There should be five participants to make the ritual work, the Priest stands in front of an Altar in the middle and the assistants occupy the smaller ones. Below is the qabalistic hierarchy for invoking the Elemental Kings.

Element	Devine Name	Archangel	Angel	Ruler	King
Earth Gnomes	Adonai-Ha-Aretz	Auriel	Phorlach	Kerub	Ghob
Air     Sylphs	Shadai-Al-Chai	Raphael	Chassan	Ariel	Paralda
Water Undines	Elohim-Tzabaoth	Gabriel	Taliahad	Tharsis	Nicha
Fire Salamanders	Jahovah-Tzabaoth	Michael	Aral	Seraph	Djin

 The ritual starts with the Priest performing the LBRP followed by each participant in turn along with the Priest reciting the corresponding prayer of the elementals, starting with the Salamanders and ending with the Gnomes. Following the prayer, a carefully devised invocation is read to each of the elemental Kings, the officer then spins around clockwise and ends his part by drawing the appropriate active and passive and invoking pentagrams over the elemental images, that are placed in view in front of each altar. Similarly, and in unison with the assistant the Priest does the same, they end with the signs of rending and closing the veil and the sign of Harpocrates. Next the Priest performs the Hexagram rituals and ends these preliminaries with the Bornless Ritual, while performing these rituals each participant accordingly draws the Pentagrams and Hexagrams that correspond to each quadrant along with the Priest, while vibrating the appropriate names of God. The Ritual ends with an invocation performed by the priest to the God which the operation is dedicated. When finished, the ceremony should be followed by the appropriate banishing rituals for clearing the space.

“Love is the law, love under will.”