GBM, what is?

"It is now appropriate to explore the phenomenon of GBM itself.

 What is it, how does it work, and how may the Setian begin to experience it? 

 Greater Black Magic (GBM) is the causing of change to occur in the SU in accordance with the will. This change in the SU may cause a similar and harmonious change in the OU. 

 Examine this definition.

A deliberate effort is made to alter one's subjective frame of reference, so that a thing which used to be conceptualized one way is now conceptualized in another. 

A distasteful situation may be adjusted to produce a favorable outcome; a live enemy may be adjusted to be thwarted or nonexistent; a desire of any sort may be realized. Magical manuals from the medieval grimoires to the Satanic Bible have discussed the use of imagery as an aid to this process.

Perhaps the most stereotypical example of this is the sticking of pins into a wax effigy to cause harm. In Walt Disney's Dumbo the little elephant was given a feather to hold with his trunk. He was told that it was a magic feather which would enable him to fly - and he did so by flapping his ears. 

When he eventually lost the feather, he started to fall, until he was told that the feather was really nothing more than an ordinary feather. As soon as he realized that he was the source of the "magic", he flapped his ears again and regained altitude. Photographs, wax images, talismans, music, fires, swords, statues, and indeed entire ritual chambers have no more intrinsic magic in them than Dumbo's feather. 

Their effectiveness in magic, again like Dumbo's feather, comes from their significance to the magician. If he grants them certain powers in his SU - if he credits them with atmospheres, auras, curses, or blessings - they will assuredly have them. 

They will possess these qualities absolutely in the SU. Once this occurs, the phenomenon of the ML between the SU and OU will transfer a portion of the quality to the items' objective mass. The potency and endurance of the transfer depends upon the skill and willpower of the consecrating magician, the scope of the working, the amount of distortion in the OU attempted, and a wide variety of physical and environmental factors which may range from sunspot activity to a sore toe which intrudes upon the magician's concentration. 

Perception and activation of the imbued qualities by another magician will similarly depend upon the skill and willpower which he brings to bear upon such objects. 

The implications of this principle are fascinating. Among other things it explains why sophisticated magical workings based on a variety of different gods or pantheons have worked. It makes no difference whether the gods be socially generated (like those of ancient Greece) or personally created (like those of H.P. Lovecraft). 

It makes no difference whether the Enochian Keys be phrased in honor of YHVH (as in John Dee's diaries), in honor of Satan (as in the Satanic Bible), or in honor of Set (as in the Word of Set). 

Accusations of heresy, blasphemy, and/or inauthenticity - whether historically justified or not - are simply barking up the wrong tree from a magical standpoint. Another implication of the operational principle of GBM is that there is a large amount of it "loose" in the OU by individuals who are generating it without calling it by that name and without even realizing what they are doing. 

Every time we have an "objective impression" of something possessing a quality which its physical characteristics do not substantiate, we are sampling the results of a GBM operation on the OU. 

 To take a few common examples: Snakes and rats are usually thought to be sneaky and evil, birds and cats beautiful; smog and sludge unnatural, trees and flowers natural. Many SUs agree upon and reinforce such interpretations, and in the OU it becomes increasingly difficult to identify the phenomenon in question without the subjectively-imposed "overlay". [Such overlays may also be called "biases", "prejudices", or "points of perspective".] 

 We are thus the victims of a world-wide GBM epidemic which has manifest itself as political ideologies, artistic aesthetics, advertising, social morality, etc. We cannot honestly say that we "live" in the OU, but rather in a crazy-quilt of SU overlays on the OU. 

The first thing the magician must do is realize this; the second thing he must do is attempt to see and understand the actual OU through all the layers. The third thing he must do is attempt to change parts of the OU carefully and precisely through his own magical workings, both LBM and GBM. 

 The "unconscious" GBM of profane society works because of sheer mass, as a herd of buffalo will break through a fence that would easily stop any one of them. At the same time this profane effort is chaotic, unreliable, and ultimately random in its consequences. Attempts to control such massive social forces have been made by many political and religious leaders throughout history. 

All have failed in  whole or in part, even when the illusion of control could be created.

 The individual Black Magician cannot change the OU through raw force; his is only a single, isolate will. He does possess, however, an understanding of how GBM works and the consequent ability to narrow his use of it to a precise, directed focus. It is this focus that enables his workings to succeed. If you have never undertaken GBM Workings before, some of the preconditions for them may strike you as unnecessary, even adolescent. Be patient, and you will come to see why they are not. You may think that you possess great powers of imagination, particularly if you have some skill at art, music, writing, or some similar form of creative expression. Consider, however, that your soul - which communicates with the OU through your brain - constantly receives reinforcement of OU reality through your five physical senses. 

This reinforcement tends to act as a kind of "shock absorber" to your mind, cushioning and compensating for all ideas that do not correspond to OU parameters. What you will be doing in a formal GBM working is to change the signals which are received by your five senses, bringing them into synchronization with the concept on which you intend to focus. 

Thus you prepare for a working by constructing an artificial environment in the OU most closely attuned to it: a ritual chamber. There is no "official" design, nor required contents for a Setian ritual chamber. Our Reading List exemplifies how widely our interests vary, and a working emphasizing any one Category of that List [or any other concept] would require appropriate accoutrements. Thus a "classic Black Mass" in the most delicious tradition of Gothic horror novels might recreate the atmosphere of a gloomy, medieval crypt. 

A ritual utilizing spacial/dimensional concepts might make use of odd, Expressionistic angles, optical illusions, mirrored or irregular lighting effects, and atonal or unharmonious sound effects. Workings concerned with space may take place under the starry sky in a desert, where the absence of reflected light from cities reveals the cosmos in all its glory ... or in planetariums, observatories, or astrophysics laboratories. The more care you take to find or create the proper environment, the more potent the working itself will be...
" - Michael Aquino, Black Magic 1975-2010