For many years I have kept a list of the successes and transformations I have been given in the work, and a student has a right to see it. I set it down here in the language our School uses now. Every item on it happened to me.
In the rite
I have engaged in ritual praxis across hundreds of systems and lineages, among them Tantra, theurgy and ceremonial magick, and I have given myself to the art of disciplined, repeatable ritual. In the rite the body, the breath, the voice and the attention each have their place in a set order of acts.
I have designed, formulated and successfully performed hundreds of operations for healing, for personal transformation and for the resolution of illness, for myself and for others. In my early years I called them spells, as most of the books I learned from did. Today we call them operations and teach them as part of the theurgic work, with the same aim and the same care.
I have worked respectfully with the archetypal forces found in astrology, in the mythic deities and in the pantheons of many cultures, bridging East and West through the symbolic frameworks they share. I have done this work without taking on a creed.
I have empowered and consecrated crystals, sigils, talismans, amulets and other ritual objects for protection, for healing and for change. A state held in the rite can be placed in matter and kept there, and the consecration of tokens and garments is taught in our School today.
In seeing
I have consistently perceived the fields of light around people, and the luminous fields of the Earth that pulse through living nature. In our School we read that seeing through the body of light, the ochēma in its own nature.
I have watched photosynthesis as a living process, the light of the Sun passing into the green world in small globules on the leaves.
I have kept a sustained connection to the currents of the Earth, and I recognize nature's agency as a conscious and sacred field of intelligence.
I have invoked the spirits and intelligences of nature, elemental, ancestral and archetypal, and worked with their vast cooperative powers for healing, balance and revelation.
In dreams, vision and divination
I have had precognitive glimpses of future events on many occasions, most often in powerful and lucid dreams. My dream journals hold dreams written down by night and met by the events that followed them.
I have been given revelations in visions of light, a body of knowing that I have called an "eternal spiritual encyclopedia", given in moments of grace. The insights of our Central Doctrine came to me over many years from that visionary state.
I have practiced divination to read present and future circumstances, through the Tarot and through visionary states reached in the rite. I have read the cards for myself and for others.
I have made initial explorations into remote viewing and clairaudience, and they have made me more sensitive to perception beyond the senses and to the voice of spirit.
In my life
For years I worked to experience, channel and direct what I then called the "astral light", to shape circumstances and to bring about pivotal events and synchronicities on my path. I now say it as I teach it. Through the rite I prepared the vessel, and threads that already existed in the continuum were admitted into my life when their conditions came within its reach.
The same is true of people. The relationships my mission and my growth required came into my life precisely when they were needed, teachers and friends in America and in India, colleagues who now work beside me in our School, students who have taken up the practice and, above all, my wife Lannah.
My working life went the same way, over more than twenty years. The ideas and the resources that carried my companies into industries with a great need and no answer to it were admitted through the same preparation.
I have spent years on the purification, elevation and reshaping of my own personality patterns, and the shifts toward wholeness and purpose have been dramatic.
I have experimented with psychokinetic influence, particularly in my dealings with fire and the other elements, exploring the bridge between mind and matter.
Beyond decay
Through all of it I have received living proof of the immortal nature of consciousness, in direct awareness of the eternal aspect of the soul, the part of me that is beyond decay and dissolution. Our School calls it the Divine Double, and I have known it in the temple.
Where to begin
I hope you will study our School itself and not only my history. A good place to start is our Central Doctrine, where the teaching behind every rite is set out in order, and I suggest reading through it as many times as necessary to capture its most salient points. By mastering its concepts you gain the key which unlocks the rest of our teachings, whether we are speaking about divination, astrology, theurgy, yoga, meditation or the Tarot. When you are ready to practice, Ritual Praxis and Instruction gives the rites in the order our School teaches them.
If you have found your way to our work, we honor your providence, as we are now of one fate, and I hope to see you join us as a fellow keeper in the light of truth.
I close with lines from an Orphic hymn, spoken to Protogonos, the first-born god who came out of the cosmic egg and brought the first light into the world.
"Ineffable, hidden, brilliant scion, whose motion is whirring, you scattered the dark mist that lay before your eyes and, flapping your wings, you whirled about, and through this world you brought pure light."
Orphic Hymn 6, To Protogonos