Crosspost. I will not update this article, so please check the latest version on the wiki.

While analyzing the components of a talisman, a need to order or map human needs (aka intents) might arise. Human needs are strictly connected to personal development and this analysis might be a necessity for the magician or for the psychonaut without a tradition (or in searching of a suitable tradition). Here lies a problem of classical chaos magic: trascendence is a human need and, as Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford noted in their interview Words of the magi, chaos magic is not an enlightenment tradition. Peter Carroll is ready to bash when he smells anything that he would label as mysticism.

And, as already noted, a “technique only” magic model is a limiting framework. In the following, it is assumed that magic is not just a fancy DIY psychological technique (or, at least, that contemporary psychology cannot describe well all the magical phenomena), otherwise this is not really the best way to proceed.

The most common map is the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, that is composed by 10 sephirot and 22 paths1, and it is mostly used by groups and magicians influenced by the Golden Dawn, like the A.A. and Crowley. It is extremely useful to study, to better understand and use the experience of other users of this “filing cabinet of the Western Magical Tradition”. Yet, one should not be constrained by it. One example.

In a Golden Dawn-like system, the neophyte starts at the lowest, tenth, sephirah (Malkuth, “the material world”) and (hopefully), through several initiations, arises to the highest, first, one (Kether, “God”), to be united with the Absolute. Between the fourth and the third sephirah, there is a dramatic initiation: the “crossing of the Abyss”, the dissolution of the ego and the first illumination. Crowley says that the adept who fails this initiation, by weakness or will, becomes a “Black Brother” to preserve his ego, stays in the Abyss and cannot proceed further. Crowley here is blinded by Kabbalah: as the wholeness of the experiences is probably a manifold, we need more than one map to cover this territory. To claim that there is Only One Path (or that all the paths converge) to the Only One Goal of Majick is to be blind (or really enlighted)! Maybe there is no ultimate truth.

A problem of many Kabbalah-based systems is that they fail to insert low magic (or result magic) organically into their system: these are not systems for the young, the poor, the dispossessed. Who cares about the Absolute when you have no bread?2 This is the heritage of freemasonry, where only men that can financially support themself are initiated, and of Renaissance magic: the life, needs and problems of a court astrologer were way different from the ones of the cunning folk.

A solution might be to consider modern psychological models of human needs, like Maslow’s pyramid. The simplest (and obsolete) pyramid is comprised by 5 steps: physiological and safety needs, social belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization. A later formulation of this hierarchy of needs adds a transcendence step at the top. While Maslow’s work is no more actual in psychological research, it is a simple, (somehow) explicit, useful model of personal development. Even the “advanced” person, in search of transcendence, can meditate on the lower steps: one thing is to assume calories, another is to eat well. Also, this solves another problem with the GD system: the “elemental” grades are used to attune the initiate to the magical current and to “equilibrate the Elemental forces within the psyche of the aspirant” (quote from the Self-Initiation by the Ciceros), an objective that cannot be clear for the aspirant.

Each grade in a GD-like system is composed by both technical tasks and by personal development tasks, while the steps in Maslow’s hierarchy are purely of personal development. To resolve this problem, it is possible to juxtapose grades of technical proficiency, like the ones of the Illuminati of Thanateros3:

Novice: its task is to learn/experience that magic is possible and to work consistently; Neophyte: its task is to shape its path and find a direction or to define its magic; Initiate: its task is to walk its path, obtain concrete results and suitable proficiency in magic; Adept/Magus: its task to complete the Great Work of Magic.

From this point of view, it is the task of the Neophyte to think about progress in magic. In this scheme, it is obvious the role of classical chaos magic as a tool for enlightment, but without content. This is the source of the confusion between the Adept and Magus grade. A serious study of Austin Osman Spare, branded Black Brother by Crowley, might give some hints.

Notes

1 Actually, this map, as understood by Crowley, is composed by the 10 sephirot and 24 other symbols (12 zodiac signs, 7 planets, 5 elements).

2 Yet, voluntary asceticism is a thing. It will be seen in the next paragraphs, but even the lone monk must satisfy, positively or negatively, the lower needs in Maslow’s pyramid.

3 Strictly speaking, the IOT grades are both magical and administrative, but here are intended as purely technical. To cite Ramset Dukes, “I am comparatively senior in the OTO but in the IOT I am sort of a Neophyte and I rather like that.”

Further Reading

Interesting point of views on illumination from leading “chaos magicians”.

In the chapter “Progress in magic”, he describes the construction of a personal development map from the four elements theory.

To have an idea of the A.A. system and of the Golden Dawn system. Proper books to understand the GD are The Golden Dawn by Israel Regardie and Self‑Initiation Into the Golden Dawn Tradition by Chic and Sandra Tabatha Cicero.

Abraham Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation

Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality

Mark E. Koltko-Rivera, Rediscovering the later version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs To study Maslow’s pyramid.

A Theory of Human Motivation is a shorter article, while Motivation and Personality is a longer book.