Lee Morgan - Standing and Not Falling: A Sorcerous Primer in Thirteen Moons

First published by Moon Books, 2019

Moon Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., No. 3 East Street, Alresford

Hampshire SO24 9EE, UK

www.johnhuntpublishing.com

www.moon-books.net

For distributor details and how to order please visit the Ordering section on our website.

Text copyright: Lee Morgan 2018

ISBN: 978 1 78904 014 2

978 1 78904 015 9 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018931364

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

The rights of Lee Morgan as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Design: Stuart Davies

Photographs: Rebecca Flynn

UK: Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

US: Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, 7300 West Joy Road, Dexter, MI 48130

We operate a distinctive and ethical publishing philosophy in all areas of our business, from our global network of authors to production and worldwide distribution.

Thank you to Rebecca Flynn, my muse, editor, photographer, and continuous encouragement and love.

To Brett Tait, who makes everything I do possible with his practical support and by believing in me.

Thank you as well to the many direct or indirect influences upon my work that cant be named, such as Frater A, Frater B and the spirits R, A and B.

So there is no work in this world so admirable, so excellent, so wonder-full which the soul of man cannot accomplish by its own power Therefore the form of all Magical power is from the soul of man standing and not falling.

(Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy)

My first teacher was hardline about a lot of things. It was his belief that you couldnt practise witchcraft, or any type of occultism for that matter, if you were suffering from mental illness or addiction. Like many purists he was himself a disappointment in these arenas, because close inspection yielded the fact he was addicted to cigarettes, junk food and bossing people around. It may have been him who first drew my attention to the Agrippa quote that heads this book. After two decades in the Craft I find myself having developed a more nuanced view of what it means for the soul of man to stand or fall, and the journey Ive undertaken to get here is the motivation behind this book.

When you scratch the surface of modern life it is rare to find anyone that would honestly meet with my former teachers criterion for a suitable student of magic. Would an occultist from centuries ago like Agrippa have considered their souls to be standing in their power, or slipping into being less than themselves on account of this? Would his perspective be relevant to the pressures of today? Perhaps the uprightness metaphor is no longer meaningful or helpful today, and we can simply extract the sentiment, that we have divinity inside ourselves and it can be found through will and belief in the same.

Most people in this increasingly precarious-feeling world, even the ones who protest most vigorously, use some kind of soma or stimulant against the soporific effects of modernity, or at least struggle with depression or anxiety. Many people arrive at the door of an occult practice far from ready to learn, but more in a vein of hoping to be saved and reformed by the practice or its people. In fact, many who identify themselves as witches seem to see a close connection between their abilities and what one may term their adversary, walking a fine line between gifted and mentally unbalanced.

Some of the most Sighted, inspired and fascinating people Ive met in the occult world have also been potentially the most unstable and sometimes even the most addicted. Unwilling to throw the baby out with the bathwater I have been inclined to take risks on people with all kinds of struggles, from former members of Christian cults, through to those who have been institutionalized or are heavily drug dependent. Some of these people find witchcraft acts as a panacea for all their ills, taking pent up energies that formerly went in other directions and repurposing what they feared was mental illness in a new direction. For others this is not the case. Some have their symptoms exacerbated by magical practice and should very definitely seek concurrent help with a mental-healthcare professional, or perhaps not practise at all. Others simply continue to struggle without resolution, with occult practice seeming to neither exacerbate nor improve their condition.

Having seen examples from all of these categories I neither agree with my first teachers take on things entirely, nor believe that witchcraft holds some kind of cure-all for the masses that can be easily converted into self-help format. Being from a Traditional Witchcraft background I am perhaps pre-disposed towards a viewpoint that the Craft is not for everyone. So where I find myself today is very much on the middle way, in this regard. I find myself not wanting to close my mind to the inspired, half-mad geniuses of the occult world (for how much less rich and interesting would our history be without them!) but not wanting my time wasted by people who come to the path purely for therapy, rather than to give themselves to magical practice as a fully realised adult ready to take responsibility for themselves and their own development.

In answer to this, what I have tried to write here is a primer of the things I wish could be covered and cleared before a student even sets out on the path, whether that setting out is solo or with a tradition that plans to guide them to initiation. I have aimed to help the new occultist stay afloat in a world where standing will code for functionality and falling will code for totally melting down. To this effect I have organised the information to sit beside practical activities to be carried out over thirteen moons. Ideally this would take place before the student even embarked but is useful at any stage of our development as a kind of detox for the soul in these trying times, as a kind of renewal of vows when youre ready to push further, or an attempt to blow the cobwebs out of your current practice and shake things up.

This book aims to take into account some of the ills we battle against as practitioners of magic in the modern world, many we are so familiar with they become barely visible. To take aim at the biggest disconnections from ourselves that cause the leap between the uninitiated and the initiate to seem so much more traumatic than it really needs to be. For this reason these exercises are purposely constructed to be suitable for everyone, regardless of what form of witchcraft or other magical tradition they are entering. These chapters and the exercises that go with them are meant to be read and executed in order, possibly more than once over. Whatever discipline and seriousness you put into them will determine how much you get out of them. No teacher, whether an author or in-person guide, can do that work for you if you arent prepared to take responsibility for your own progress.