THE BEST RESOURCES
FOR MAGICK

John Dee and the Empire of Angels

Weighing in at nearly 600 pages, this is my magnum opus—the ultimate history of the Western magical tradition, from the 1400s to now. More than just a biography of John Dee, history's greatest magician, this is the master key to understanding the true secrets of magick and the occult.

Thee Psychick Bible

This is the entire magical corpus of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, one of the foremost magical orders of the late 20th century, and one of the schools I received my training in. Assembled from the underground archives of Genesis P-Orridge, this is the ultimate sourcebook on magick as it currently exists.

Ultraculture Journal

An anthology of writing by master magicians, this time focusing on the Eastern traditions of Advaita Vedanta, Vajrayana Buddhism and the Nath Sampradayas of Hindu tantra. Also includes tons of practical writing on Western occultism by myself, Jhonn Balance, Genesis P-Orridge, Ira Cohen, Joel Biroco and many more. A mind bomb.

Generation Hex

An anthology of writing by young magicians taking their first steps through the gates of initiation. This is my first book; it's chock full of first-hand accounts of what initiation is like, plus tons of practical working material and rituals.

Hyperworlds, Underworlds

A collection of my long-form journalism, including tons of material on advanced meditation. If my books above are about how to do magic, this is my magical record, collecting dispatches from one man's attempt to put magical teachings into practice on the front lines of the reality war, and prevent the world from sliding into oblivion.

Queen Valentine

A novel about the early 00s occult underground in New York, Queen Valentine is a direct download of the magical current, written to directly bypass the reader's conscious filters and embed magical perception directly into their unconscious mind. And an awesome story to boot.

9 Gates of Chaos Magick

This very short e-book collects some of my writing for the Magick.Me blog into an introductory guide for new students to magick. If you're already a Magick.Me subscriber, you can likely skip this one, but it makes a great introductory read for people you might want to turn on to magick.

No Boundary, Ken Wilber

Ken Wilber is perhaps the greatest genius of spiritual theory of our age. His books exhaustively compile and collate nearly every Eastern and Western modality for personal and spiritual growth. This is one of his first, best and mercifully shortest books—it perfectly outlines, in sequence, a map of spiritual and psychological techniques for evolution and enlightenment.

Liber Null & Psychonaut, Peter J. Carroll

This book lays out the raw practices of ritual magic, stripped down and taken out of context. Good for picking up the very basics, but take Carroll’s reductionist editorializing with fifty times the salt one would reserve for Aleister Crowley.

The Golden Dawn, Israel Regardie.

Contains the ritual corpus of the Golden Dawn, the 19th century Victorian occult group that counted many of the British Isles’ primary cultural movers among its members. This is a synthesis of most of what came before and the foundation of most of what came after.

Magick: Liber ABA, Aleister Crowley

Crowley’s masterpiece. If you haven’t been exposed to Crowley before (outside of his image), you’ll be shocked at the clarity of his insight and wit, along with the range of his technical knowledge. Crowley’s system took the Golden Dawn material, added in Eastern mysticism and sex magick, and ratcheted the whole thing up to the tenth power. Don't get lost in Crowley's personality or often-disturbing biography—what's important is the techniques. Alongside this, you’ll likely want a copy of the equally important Gems From the Equinox.

The Invisibles, Grant Morrison

Morrison’s epic graphic novel series is a masterpiece of literature in any form, and a veritable index to nearly every conceivable type of occult practice to boot. You’ll recognize the clear inspiration not only for The Matrix but a huge swathe of pop culture that came after this comic, which seemed like a truly “alien” transmission in the 1990s. (Morrison claimed that the comic book was his attempt to express information given to him when he was abducted by aliens in Kathmandu.) Caveat: Find the letters columns! These were in the individual issues and featured Grant talking about his personal occult experiences that prompted the series. They’re not in the reprint book, but Google will turn them up.

Promethea, Alan Moore

If The Invisibles is an excellent introduction to chaos magick in graphic novel form, Promethea is its equivalent for ceremonial magick. You'll learn a tremendous amount about the Western Magical Tradition herein, including all of the traditional ceremonial attributions, how the Tarot and Qabalah work, how magick can be used as a path of spiritual evolution, and lots, lots more. Look, it's a must. It'll light up the sometimes dry material you can find in Crowley and the Golden Dawn and help you just get it. This comes in a set of five trade paperbacks—One, Two, Three, Four and Five.

Zafu Meditation Cushion

You need a meditation cushion that you’ll want to sit on with a straight (and unsupported) back, day in and day out. Chairs are no good, and laying down will lead to sleep. You need a zen-style cushion. A folded up blanket can work. The Zafu cushion, which comes in several colors, is specifically designed for meditation, offers great support and is quite versatile.

Ananda Meditation Bench

I absolutely love this bench and can't overemphasize how important it has been to my practice. It allows one to assume Dragon Asana, or Zen-style meditation, fairly easily—and also facilitates the practice of pranayama and even more complex asanas and practices. I got one of these at the much-missed Bodhi Tree Bookstore in Los Angeles many years ago—it was one of the most worthwhile purchases of my life. One note: Mine doesn't have the cushioning that has apparently been added to this model, but I do tend to cushion mine with a blanket anyway.

Zabuton Meditation Cushion

You could pair either of the above with a meditation under-cushion—particularly with the bench, as it will spare your knees. A folded blanket or two will work, too. (Note: I haven't tried the specific model linked here, but have used others extensively in Buddhist meditation centers.)

NOTE: Meditation padding and props are a matter of personal preference. You don't necessarily need to get everything listed above—just what makes you most comfortable.

Red Nylon Paracord for a Basic, Portable Magic Circle

After you’ve got your meditation seat, grab a cord or rope to use to make a magical circle around you. Not only is this method portable, but you can pack it up and move it easily if you live with people who might be confused by what you’re doing. Check out this durable red paracord. It’s sturdy—and red, the color of Mars, the planet of establishing and guarding boundaries.

That's more than enough to get cooking. You can always upgrade later, but this stuff will start you off well.

Double Cube Altar—Threshold 2-Cube Organizer

Finding an easy starter altar turns out to be a phenomenally hard task for some reason. Traditionally, the altar is meant to be a double cube, the dimensions of which are determined by the height of the individual magician. (See Book 4, linked above.) That takes custom woodworking, and that's expensive and time consuming. To make things easier to start with, this is the absolute best off-the-shelf altar I've found—and I actually looked for years before I found something so seemingly simple. These are often sold at Target stores in the United States. You can cover the openings with an altar cloth in order to make a closed altar. It's also low enough to act as a good meditation focus while sitting. An all-around excellent basic buy.

Abramelin Oil

Oil is traditionally used to purify and consecrate both your tools and yourself. It represents the pure aspiration of the magician. You can rub it into your tools to keep them sparkling and rust-free, and you can also use it to "light up" your chakras by dabbing a bit on each location. The classic blend is Abramelin Oil—this is a good blend, made by serious practitioners.

NOTE: Be very careful in handling this and do not get this in your eyes, whatever you do! It's not toxic, but it contains cinnamon oil and will burn.

The Four Elemental Tools.

These are the Pentacle (Earth), Dagger (Air), Cup (Water) and Wand (Fire). Building and consecrating these tools is a critical part of any magician's training, and an immensely personal task—however, doing this properly can take years. In the meantime, it doesn't hurt to have off-the-shelf stand-in items on your altar to start using in your magick. I've listed some great, inexpensive (and even Qabalistically appropriate) starter tools here.

Robe

A simple black robe is all that is required for ritual work. With regular use, it can provide a potent trigger for altered states, allowing you to assume "magical consciousness" when you don it. This is a high-quality black kimono, similar to the classic "Tau robe," that will work just fine as a starter robe.

Bell—Tibetan Tingsha.

A good bell is used to mark the beginning and ending of rituals, and can be used to strike specific notes within ritual as well. The word "bell" is a bit misleading, however: What you ideally want is tingsha, which are small Tibetan-style cymbals on a cord that you strike together. They sound better, look cooler and are easier to control. This pair works great.

Thurible, Charcoal, and Incense.

As your ceremonies progress, you'll want to build up a retinue of different incenses. While it's OK to start with stick incense, you'll want to graduate to getting an open incense burner, which uses special charcoal and raw incense grains. You can get a burner, charcoal and some basic Frankincense, a good incense to start with for your early spiritually purificatory work, at the links below.

NOTE: To operate, you hold the edge of the charcoal up to a flame until sparks begin to run through it, and then you place it in the burner. After it stops sparking, you can place incense kernels on top. But note carefully: The burner will get extremely hot. For this reason, don't place it on plastic or anything flammable, be very careful about touching it, and don't leave it unattended.

Amazon Echo.

What??? You ask. Seriously dude?? No, I'm not bullsh*tting you to sell affiliate deals for a pricey piece of gear. Although most people (perhaps rightly) consider the Echo to be a frivolous consumer excess, it actually turns out to be a phenomenally useful tool for magick, primarily because it allows you to control environmental conditions and do things without moving—i.e., breaking a yogic pose or getting out of your magical circle during a ritual. This actually solves, in a single stroke, many of the most grating day-to-day annoyances that ritual magicians and yogis have faced for centuries. Here's a few of the pertinent things you can do with the Echo:

• Set a timer to wake you out of meditation at a set time, without moving

• Turn a stopwatch on or off to help you time pranayama, without moving

• Take notes and dictation for your magical record, particularly if you get interesting ideas that you don't want to lose in the flow of the ritual, to save for later

• Ask the Echo to pull a random Tarot card or cast an I Ching hexagram

• Control ambient music to suit your current state of consciousness and easily segue between music to fit parts of a ritual—again, without moving, or even opening your eyes. The Echo comes pre-loaded with a tremendous range of ambient, white noise and meditative sound loops, and many more are being added constantly through Amazon Skills. If you connect the Echo to Spotify and/or an Amazon Prime Music account, you'll have access to a good chunk of the recorded output of all human history, that you can now summon with a single voice command to perfectly soundtrack your voyage into inner space. (Yes, that even includes Coil's Time Machines, the #1 tried-and-tested all-time favorite ritual soundtrack in occult history.) For really good and immersive sound, you can connect the Echo to a bluetooth speaker system like a Sonos Play:1

• If you have the Echo connected to a smart lighting system, like Phillips Hue, you can perfectly control the ambient lighting in your ritual space, from barely-there to all-the-way-on and everything in between—again, all without moving.

These are just a few of the untapped potential uses of the Amazon Echo for magick. If you discover more, please let me know! (PS: Amazon claims that the Echo only records what you're saying and sends it back to Amazon HQ after you say the command word. However, if you're overly concerned about digital privacy, please do your own research before installing an Echo.)