I like to see a Liber Null that’s been well used. Although chaos magic has moved on since Pete Carroll wrote the seminal chaos magic book Liber Null, chaos magicians owe Pete a huge debt of gratitude for Liber MMM, the ‘studentship syllabus’ for the Illuminates of Thanateros Novice training program. And this section of his book has really stood the test of time as an introductory training programme of magic. Not that you need it, of course.



He adapted the Yoga exercises of Aleister Crowley’s Book 4: Mysticism (part 1). This in turn was appropriated from The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Read these books and you’ll notice the repurposing of the exercises from the “…system by which the practitioner can directly realize his or her puruׅṣa, the soul or innermost conscious self, through mental practices.” (Sutras, p. xlvii) through Crowley’s Thelemic “aims of religion” to the Mind Control exercises of MMM, where “to work magic effectively, the ability to concentrate the attention must be built up until the mind can enter a trance-like condition.” (Null, p. 14).

As I’ve remarked elsewhere, when repurposing a practice it really does matter when you consider the consequences. The What For is important. In this case MMM marks the beginning of Carroll’s growing reduction of ‘spirituality’ to ‘getting good at magic.’ In doing so the baby of Illumination/Enlightenment/Liberation disappears into the bushes with the bathwater.

What makes it worse is that this impoverishment of the Great Work of Magic is committed merely in the name of attaining trance states, often called ‘gnosis’ by chaos magicians. Now excuse me if I point out that trance states are about as difficult as putting on a hat. Get into self-hypnosis, brainwave entrainment, Silva Method or any number of other things and you’ll see what I mean.

By ‘get into’ I mean, of course, ‘research and practice.’ With the emphasis on ‘practice.’ Our belief systems matter less than our practice systems. Occultists are notorious for owning the books, reading the articles, having the debates and not getting down to enough solid practice.

Patanjali required practice: “practice is the effort to be fixed in concentrating the mind.” (Sutra I.14) The whole project requires dedication to practice. Meanwhile in Crowley space, Aleister once chose as his magical motto Perdurabo: ‘I shall endure to the end,’ or ‘I’ll stick it out.’ Tells you something, eh? Pete Carroll overstates the case when he claims that the magical trances he lists require “fanatical and morbid determination,” but practice there must be. It will be demanding, it will be inconvenient, it will be a pain in the lifestyle. But do it, and magical power will come to you.

Back to that bit about how our belief systems matter less than our practice systems. Echoing the doctrinal disputes of Christendom, occultists often suffer from the ailment of Having The Right Answers. This distracts them from the necessity of racking up the practice time. You’re not a sky pilot until you’ve logged the flight time.

Now I’m not recommending that you fill your every waking moment with ‘praxis,’ the bloatware of magic. A benefit of chaos magic reductionism is that you can restrict yourself to the most economically effective and get most of it done. A few bang-for-the-buck exercises and a simple training program and you’re ahead of the crowd. Weight training starts not with the steroids but with squats, deadlifts, presses and such, the biggest exercises to get you strong quickly.

All you need is a set of exercises and a program. And therein lies another problem with occultists, especially the postmodern variety. They will program-hop, doing Golden Dawn warm-ups then switching to yoga, trying vipassana for a week, then it’s offerings to the ancestors for a month or so before being ADHD’d by something else. Diet-hopping and program-switching cheat you out of the steady gains offered by sticking out the practice – the promise of Perdurabo. Ask anyone who can pick up twice their bodyweight.

Re-enter Liber MMM. Yes, all right, you’re an experienced magician chasing advanced stuff now. But the basics always count. Use them or lose them and end up falling upside-down through the Abyss of Sophistry and having flamewars on the Internet. Liber MMM is a – not ‘The,’ but ‘a’ – solid program of introductory magical exercises.

So what’s in it? The field of activity in Liber MMM is listed quite clearly under the three headings of Mind Control, Magic and Dreaming. (if you haven’t already done so, now is a good time to fish out your copy of Liber Null. Yes, get one)

In Mind Control, we work quickly through the exercises in the order given such that by the end of the first month we are performing a minimum of 30 minutes of Motionlessness No-Thought (MNT) daily and performing occasional exercises in Magical Trances. This core exercise set is all about developing your concentration and visualization. Motionlessness is about not shifting weight, not scratching those inevitable little itches, and so forth. It’s not about torso movements when you breathe or tics or involuntary eye movements or blinking (if those bother you, shut your eyes). Just sit still. If you gaze at a random spot on the wall for a bit you’ll very soon notice a slight tunnel vision. This is you entering a very light trance. Relax into it and your breathing will slow, swallowing and blinking are inhibited and the itches will become ignorable.

Pick a posture and stick to it. Since you don’t want to be shifting for comfort, pick a posture that’s comfortable in the first place. You may need to attend to your posture — keep it upright — to stop yourself going to sleep.

Breathing: pranayama. There’s a simple technique. In — out. And so forth. There’s not much else to it. If you’re curious about different breathing techniques by all means pick one and use if for a few days. Otherwise, and especially while becoming accustomed to the daily practice, just allow your breathing to deepen and slow naturally. Fancy breathing techniques can wait.

No-Thought is an unceasing business. To start with, begin a session by just watching thoughts arise and pass away. Do nothing about them. When you catch yourself fixating on a thought, just drop it.

As you become aware of ‘space’ as it were in your consciousness where no thoughts are, as thoughts arise then simply attend instead to that empty space. From time to time you get some blessed peace, when there are no thoughts to ignore. You’ll probably notice this moment of peace only when it’s over. That empty space will become the arena into which you project visualizations, including sigils.



Start with about 15 minutes (time it) daily, and then after a few days of practice add five minutes, and so forth until you’ve got 30-35 minutes practice time daily. Then keep doing that daily. Notice the repetition of the word ‘daily.’ Do not interrupt the dailiness of this practice. MNT more than anything else forges the magician.

That was MNT. If to start with you feel that you’re not doing enough training, do some Object Concentration as well. 5 minutes at a time is plenty. Remember that business of gazing at a spot on the wall? Do that, and keep bringing the gaze back to it and holding the tunnel vision effect. It’s healthy that the eyes wander — just bring them back.

With both, write in your diary what time you started, what time you finished, and any salient features.

After a month or two, if we have not already done so, we investigate works of Metamorphosis. I consider Metamorphosis a neglected aspect of Liber MMM and personally regard it as being equally important as MNT. Simply swap out habits to start with. Need help? Start here.

In Magic, I suggest adopting one or two banishing rituals as soon as possible. In this context, most banishings are simply exercises to settle you down into the moment’s work of magic or to bring you back to normal afterwards. Sigil work and any other magical work is also good, including some sort of sortilege divination – cards, runes, stones and bones or somesuch equally simple. Liber MMM explains sigilization adequately so don’t overthink it: just decide what you want, scribble and go.

In Dreaming, the practice of keeping a diary next to the bed seems to convince your mind that you really do take this seriously, and it will oblige by producing material to put in that diary. It’s not usually worthwhile to ask for meanings of dreams: I don’t believe in universal dream symbols and expect instead that our own individual network of symbolism will explain our dreams best.

I absolutely recommend recording the activities of Liber MMM in a diary. Under the general heading of the day’s date, each activity should be timed, and it should be written up such that a reader could recreate that activity themselves from the notes given. The first time a ritual is described, it should be written in full, with any symbols or technical flourishes explained fully. Thereafter it is sufficient to mention repeats of the ritual by name and add ‘as before,’ expanding only upon any differences from earlier performances.

RESULTS

Both record and acknowledge results. Recording contemporaneously both an activity and its results simply helps us to know the truth of what happened and not to be fooled by psychological heuristics including so-called tricks of memory. Acknowledging results means celebrating our victories. Some magicians handicap their morale by being unwilling to accept successes and need reminding that success is matching actual result to recorded Intent, regardless of exactly how the result manifested. They sometimes need reminding to look out for results of divinations also.

In Mind Control the result is not of nice long periods of No-Thought (nice when it happens though) so much as the abilities, manifested over time, to drop easily into inhibitory trance states, to close down unhelpful streams of thought while under pressure and to concentrate on what is currently important.

Early experiments with Metamorphosis manifest a growing comfort with behaviours which we may have used to find unfamiliar and perhaps threatening, and may give us the clue that behavioural identity is not fixed.

In Magic there’s nothing quite like totting up your enchantments done and ticking off the successes to demonstrate to yourself that your magic works and that you’re not just fooling yourself. Likewise with divinations that turn out to be accurate.

In Dreaming work the results consist of enhanced knowledge of our own symbol system and a more relaxed relationship with our own out-of-consciousness workings.

All in all, good results in these practices help develop confidence in the whole magical endeavour and a no-nonsense attitude to practice that comes as a refreshing contrast to that of many others in the magical community. So if you do this for six months – not two weeks or two months, but SIX months – you will have laid a firm foundation of skill, consistency and durability as a magician. Any dabbler can do this for a fortnight, but in the month on month daily grind the will of the magician is forged. Thank you Pete for MMM.



