The Body in Ritual

A rite is performed by a body. It is stood, walked, breathed and spoken before it is understood, and a great deal of what the Art does, it does through posture, gesture and voice. This page describes how the Guild trains the body for ceremonial work, and how the work is adapted to the body each member actually has.

Becoming the practitioner

Scholars who have lived and worked among modern practitioners of ritual magic have reported something that every mentor in the Guild already knows. What makes a person a magician is not, in the first place, a set of beliefs adopted. It is a way of standing, moving, breathing and attending, learned by repetition until it is second nature, which carries the practitioner from an ordinary way of meeting the world into another. Belief, where it comes at all, tends to come afterward.

The Guild's own Records say the same. Members report that the daily Rite of the Four Gates stops being a sequence of gestures somewhere in the second or third month and becomes, in the words of the first Paper, "a way of standing in a room." It is at about that point that the rite begins to do anything. The body has learned the work before the mind can give an account of it, much as a binder's hands learn to sew a book long before they can explain the sewing.

The hands learn the sewing before the head can explain it. So with the Gates. Do not wait to understand before you begin, or you will never begin.

Ambrose Tolland, The Binder's Notebook

This is also the reason the Guild asks that rites be learned by heart. A rite read from a page is performed by the eyes. A rite known by heart is performed by the whole person.

Standing

The posture of the Hall is simple. The practitioner stands upright with the feet a little apart and the weight even, the knees unlocked, the crown of the head lifted, the shoulders easy and the eyes level. The hands rest at the sides when they have nothing to do. The Common Book gives only one further instruction: stand as though you had been asked to, and had agreed.

For the Lamp the practitioner sits, upright, on a chair or on the floor, with the spine supported if need be. Nothing in the Guild requires a cross-legged seat, a kneeling posture or any position that cannot be held comfortably for twenty minutes.

Breath

Every member learns the Fourfold Breath in the first week: in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. It is the hinge between the voluntary and the involuntary, the one bodily rhythm that runs by itself and can also be governed, and for that reason it is the first thing a practitioner learns to govern. Later in the course the breath is joined to the voice and to the imagination, as described below.

The breath is never strained. A practitioner who becomes light-headed has been breathing too deeply or holding too long, and should sit down and breathe normally until the feeling has passed.

Voice

Ordinary speech is used for the Statement and for any part of a rite that is addressed to people. The names of power used in the Calling are not spoken but intoned. The practitioner takes a full breath and sounds the name slowly on the out-breath, at a pitch a little below the speaking voice, so that the sound is felt in the chest and in the bones of the face. The tradition calls this vibration. Its test is physical. Done well, the name is felt through the whole body, and the old instruction says that it should reach the soles of the feet.

Vibration is not shouting. A name intoned at the volume of quiet conversation, with the whole breath behind it, is stronger than one bellowed. Members who live in thin-walled apartments are reassured to learn that a name may also be vibrated silently, with the breath and the attention moving exactly as they would if the voice were used, and that some Masters prefer this.

Gesture and sign

A sign is a word said with the body. At each of the Four Gates the practitioner traces the sign of its element in the air, with the hand or the proper instrument, and in the later grades a small number of fixed postures are learned which stand for the elements, for the opening and closing of a working, and for silence. The Guild keeps the number of these small, and asks that each be made exactly, at an unhurried pace, and in the same way every time. A gesture made differently each day is not a sign but a mannerism.

The sign of silence, the forefinger laid against the lips, closes every rite of the Guild. It is the motto of the Seal made visible: Opere et Silentio.

Movement

Within the circle the practitioner moves sunwise, in the direction of the sun's daily path, when opening and calling, and against it only when closing. The circle is walked at an even pace, as though carrying a full cup, with a pause and a quarter turn at each Gate. The center is not crossed without a reason. In group work the members move together and at the pace of the slowest, and the Keeper of the Gate watches the floor for trailing robes and the flame for sleeves.

Dress

The plain dark robe and the cord, or simply clean clothes kept for the purpose, are put on for one reason: the body learns from them that this is not ordinary time. Watches and telephones are left outside the Hall. Many members work barefoot or in soft shoes, which makes the floor of the Hall easier to feel and the circle easier to keep. Nothing more elaborate is required, and members are discouraged from acquiring it.

The imagined body

From the grade of Journeyman the Papers add exercises of imagination to those of posture and breath. The best known, common in one form or another to most modern schools of ceremonial magic, has the practitioner stand and imagine a column of light descending through the center of the body from above the crown to below the feet, with five spheres of light upon it at the head, the throat, the heart, the loins and the feet, each awakened in turn by a vibrated name. The column is then circulated about the body on the breath.

Members who hold the energy model of the Art, described under The Art of Ritual Magic, understand this as the gathering and circulation of a subtle force. Members who hold the psychological model understand it as a training of imagination and posture. They perform it in exactly the same way, which the Guild regards as the right outcome of the argument.

The body in the seven parts of a rite

The parts themselves are described under Ceremonial Practice.

Coming back

A practitioner leaves the Hall changed, if the work has gone well, and is not always ready at once for a crowded kitchen or a car. The body is brought back deliberately. Say your own name aloud. Wash your hands. Stamp your feet once or twice on the floor. Eat something plain and drink a glass of water. Only then take up ordinary business. Members who neglect this step are the ones who report, a day or two later, that they have felt "not quite here," and the remedy is always the same.

Adapting the rite to the body

The Art is a discipline of attention, and attention has never depended on the legs. No posture, movement or sound in the course of the Guild is required of a member whose body cannot make it. A rite may be worked seated from beginning to end, the Gates turned to by a turn of the head, the signs made with one hand or with the eyes alone, and the names vibrated inwardly. A member who cannot walk the circle may trace it with the attention, and a member who cannot see the lamp may keep it by its warmth. Several Masters of the Guild have worked in one or more of these ways for the whole of their careers.

Mentors are experienced in these adaptations, and the Warden of the Hall keeps notes on them gathered from every Chapterhouse. Petitioners are welcome to raise the matter in their first letter. See also the answer under Questions and Answers.