The Colors of Magick: 1 Black

Death Magic

Disclaimer:

This is not a post about "black magic" as it is generally conceptualized. The term "BLACK MAGIC" usually carries undertones of racism and otherism. Frankly, I avoid using this term except in specific cases where I'm talking about literal "colors" of magic, not white magic vs black magic, i.e. good vs evil. This is a false dichotomy.

Now that that's cleared up, on with the post!

The self-destruct programs built into our own genetic, behavioral, and emotional structures can be seen as the price we pay for the capacity for reproduction, which is our only true avenue for evolutionary change. Only organisms that reproduce asexually, replicating endless identical copies of their simple forms, are immortal.

Two conjurations that use the power of "Black" can be of particular interest to the magician; The casting of destruction spells and the avoidance of premature death.

The "Chöd rites" (for more info see here.) are a Tibetan Buddhist concept that symbolize a ritual reversal of death in which the "death-self" is invoked to manifest its knowledge and wisdom. The death-self is commonly conceived of as a black robed skeletal figure, the iconic grim reaper. The death-self is privy to the mysteries of aging, sentience, morbidity, necrosis, entropy, and decay. It is said to also possess a wry and world-weary sense of humor.

Surrounded by all the symbols and paraphernalia of death, the magician invokes the death-self in a Chöd rite for one of two purposes. Firstly, the experience of the death-self and the black gnosis brings the knowledge of what it feels like to begin dying, and thus prepares the magician to resist the manifestations of actual premature death by, as it were, knowing the enemy. In the course of various Chöd rites, the magician may experiment in shamanic style by invoking the visualized entities and symbols that are associated with various diseases, to practice banishing them. Thus, the death-self has some use in medical diagnosis, divination, and healing.

Secondly, the death-self may be invoked as a vantage point from which to cast destruction spells. In this case the invocation takes the same general form but the conjuration is usually called an Entropy rite. It is my belief that one should always look for any possible alternatives to the exercise of destructive magic. Being forced to use it implies an inherent position of weakness. In the case of Entropy Magic, the magician must plant a mechanism in the subconscious by which the target could come to grief, and then project it with the aid of a sigil or perhaps an evoked servitor. Entropy Magic works best by sending information to the target which encourages auto-destructive behavior.

Entropy Magic differs from the type of War Magic associated with red gnosis in several ways. Entropy Magic should be performed with complete stealth in the cold fury of the black gnosis. The aim is a cold-blooded surgical strike of which the target has no warning. The magician seeks to avoid getting into a fight. This type of working is about a quick assassination rather than a protracted battle.

There are many God-forms one may invoke to harness the black power of magic, from the simple form of the cloaked skeleton with scythe to the forms of Charon, Thanatos, Saturn, Kronos, Hecate, Atropos, Anubis, Yama, and Kali.

I mentioned servitors earlier, but I will just add that servitors using the black power of magic are rarely created for long-term use, partly because their use is likely to be infrequent. They tend to be made and then dispatched for a specific single task, therefore a sigil may be a better alternative.

Large portions of this post come directly from Peter Carroll's Liber Kaos. I've done some editing, but I can take little credit for the ideas in this post. I only want to share the information I've been reading. I find it fascinating. Please comment with any ideas, reactions, etc. I love sharing knowledge and expanding my tiny human perspective. Thank you.

Images taken from "the internet."