No Angels In My Living Room

Landcraft is a “new” psychocosm or correspondence system. This is an optional essay which explores in more detail why I couldn’t find my way with previous systems, and what problems this one was developed to “solve” for me. This is not to denigrate other people’s use of such systems, but hopefully this piece will help you understand why you might want to use Landcraft, and to better know how to use it.

There are some problems with other systems for the kind of magic I want to do, the worldview my paganism evokes, the vision of divinity I actually believe in, the myths in my lore, the powers I have experienced. To participate in the Western Esoteric tradition, you need to use the Tree of Life correspondence system; and it is so dominant that this also seeps into Wicca, into Cochrane, into Crowley. Generally, you will also be using the Four Elements, which come from ancient Greek philosophy. I love ceremonial magic, but I’ve gradually come to understand – for many reasons – that those systems don’t work for what I want to do. And so, in their place, I developed Landcraft.

Why? First and foremost, because I want to. Developing a system around my own lore and my own psyche has been one of the best things to happen to my magical life, and I couldn’t recommend it enough. After all, if you take the approach that these maps are really there to tap into parts of the subconscious, then what better than making your own map? One should always, I think, be empowered to tinker with the systems you use – that’s when you start taking ownership. It’s also faster than learning a system someone devised 100 years ago, when you’re dealing with symbolic systems that feel intimately yours.

Some Underlying Flaws

Let’s explore what correspondence systems are for, with more quotes from The Magician’s Tables by Alan Richardson.

Traditional magic uses the images of four archangelic figures placed at the quarters of the circle cross…they are often, for convenience, known as god-forms. Those who may feel uncomfortable with such Judaeo-Christian figures can easily substitute them with imagery from whatever tradition most appeals to them, for example Celtic or Egyptian deities.

But is the choice of four figures, with these characteristics, “natively” Celtic or “natively” Egyptian? We know that in China, for example, they use a five elemental system rather than four, giving us at least one example of a pantheon/mythos which, surely, would NOT operate on the four elemental directions.

Assume the Celts would choose 4 god-forms: why are we assuming that Celtic magic would choose the same four concepts as the most important? This model assumes the same pattern of four things exist across spiritual traditions, across time and across the world. Merlin is the angel Raphael; but would the Celts choose “the figure of the magician-intellectual-of-the-air” as one of the four things everything can be reduced to?

So is a nebulously-new-age-Judaeo-Christian framework going to produce the right kinds of maps for Pagan spirituality…? Are we truly understanding what Merlin is, or is he just a costume for our preconception of Hermetic Air? Does this approach serve to *block* us from true interactions with spirits? If a correspondence can be a sort of calling card, then perhaps this in fact is a way of getting a wrong connection? What if Merlin is nothing like Raphael at all?

The Kabbalah proved itself manna to the magicians. And it is the diagram known as the ‘otz chaim’, or Tree of Life, that provided the framework upon upon all was hung. One commentator described it as the “Mighty and All-embracing glyph of the universe and the soul of Man’

The author doesn’t state whether this commentator is Jewish or using the Tree in the context of non-Jewish magic. I’m still not clear how much overlap there is between how I’ve learnt the tree and how it would be used in actual Jewish mysticism.

But there’s a tendency in a lot of new-age spaces to see the universe and man as interlinked, for example, in recommending you celebrate the Wheel of the Year as a kind of self-improvement program. That’s not a fit for Fencraft – we are part of the universe, but not central to it. Our Map is not a metaphor for human behavior or glyph of the soul of Man, but a map of energies and divine influences. We can be influenced by the divine, but it is not in our image nor are we in its.

We can best imagine the Tree as a kind of filing system that is divided into ten compartments, and into which everything – everything – can be placed. Our initial problem is simply that of having the exact nature of this system explained to us, because after that it begins to explain itself. Had there been 26 compartments it would prevent no problem at all, for it would be based on the Roman alphabet. Into the compartment L, for example, would go leopards, lemurs, light, locusts, and love…but the exercise would be meaningless on a spiritual level: it is no good looking for love and finding lice, lugworms and loquaciousness. With the system used by the Tree, we can not only store away our own experiences in a particular area – intellectual, emotional or spiritual – but we can also use it to lead us into the collective experience of humankind as a whole

Firstly, that’s an unwise critique when you’re using the Kabbalah. Because Hebrew letters are both letter and number, there is an important strand of Kabbalah dedicated to numerology: if two words add up to the same number, it implies a link. So, you might very well get love with the lice and the lugworms.

But it is immediately clear that, if your filing cabinet has a limited number of compartments, then what they represent is extremely important. I’m a librarian. We have furious political debates in librarianship, because it turns out the way you organise concepts is, in fact, pivotal to how you understand them.

Additionally, there is something of bathos in plummeting so quickly from the supreme cosmic sigil of the soul of man to utilitarian paperwork.

Like a novice secretary the neophyte will handle the system clumsily at first, often puting things into the wrong holes; but, with rapidly increasing assurance, the peculiar patterns and interrelationships between the spheres will begin to teach of their own accord. For example, all those gods related to the intellectual ”hermetic” arts would be equated with the sphere of Hod: Thoth, Hermes, Merlin and so on; while all those figures of romance and enchantment will go into Netzach: Nimue, Nepthys, Freja and so on

The author does not explain the difference between “intellectual” magic and “enchantment” magic, or what separates Merlin’s magic from that of Nimue and Freja. And the reality is, even non-novice magicians often employ correspondences very clumsily in this way. The way your filing cabinet influences how you think about things, categorise them, and experience them.

In this case, male magicians who (on account of their masculinity) are assumed to be precise, intellectual, and associated with the mage himself; and a separate category for female witches, who are hot, and therefore inherently linked romance and sexuality, and their magical powers described instead as “enchantment”. Is that the only or best way of organising these spirits? It reveals more about the way we think about things in gendered terms, than the specific qualities of those spirits.

It encourages a non-reconstructionist approach to Gods and spirits, picking up on only one or two surface level attributions (“Mars is the god of War”) when most deities actually had complex roles and functions across history and geography; and that complexity is a huge part of the *fun*, the parts where spirituality gets compellingly weird and evocative.

Furthermore, as mentioned above with the Celtic four quarters, the Tree of Life does not really have a hole for some of the most important parts of Fencraft. I tried assigning the Stellar to Kether, I really did; but it’s a disservice to both systems to do this. The concept of cosmic awe and terror is central in Fenraft, and so, it deserves its own hole.

As long as the neophyte makes his or her own efforts in determining the correspondences for each sphere, that process known as “Building the Tree into the aura” will take place. It is when this happens that the filing system starts to become more-akin to a super-computer of spiritual possiblities.

There’s no real evidence that there’s a special quality to the Tree of Life enabling it to do this, aside from tradition. In theory, at least, it’s just a Memory Palace. That process of building a system into your psyche can work with any arrangement, if you work with it enough. In other ceremonial texts, I’ve heard this process called “enneagramming”. A less fancy term would be habit-forming. The human brain is wired for survival, and as any trauma survivor can tell you, if you see a curtain rustle just before something terrible happens, you will associate the curtain rustle with fear until you die.

And here’s a bit from The Ritual Magic Handbook by Dolores Ashcroft Nowiki

Because the Qabalistic magic is universal and encompasses within its Mandala, (the Tree of Life), all the symbology of other traditions, we will use a basic Qabalistic Seal, but with a twist to it that will enable you to align all four quarters to whatever tradition you wish to use

There are two major problems with this, both stemming from the assumption that the Kabbalah is “universal”.

The first is, as a Pagan, the Qabalah does not really represent my worldview. One cannot avoid that the Tree of Life takes us from base, crude matter up towards the bright and perfect divine – and it will therefore be a poor fit for most Paganism, which has no such concept. Implicit in it are notions of good/evil, pure/impure, perfect/imperfect, divine/material. Nothing I do suggests a pure white light decending from the emanation of G-d, that could be used to smite the unholy. Nothing I do implies that the divine is not already manifest in the material world.

At the same time, as much as I love chesed, it doesn’t feel like a “fit” for paganism either – it feels like it comes out of a tradition of Jewish doubt and compassion which I admire, but don’t find in the Mabinogion, in which the Mighty Ones are generally petty and cruel.

Therefore, I need to use a map giving me the right “building blocks” of power, the right waymarkers in the otherworlds, the sorts of binaries and unities which represents the contrasts in my lore, and so forth. To practice in a way that is authentically magic, that means getting away from pre-existing correspondence maps and defining our own. Landcraft is a perfect fit for Fencraft, although it can – of course – be used by anyone for any other purpose or paganism for which it seems like a “fit”. My sense after 15 years as a pagan is that it is sorely needed by a *lot* of other practicioners. By studying Landcraft, we can learn deeper insights about our faith: fluidity, wanderlust, the call of the outside.

The second problem – perhaps the most important one – is that the Kabbala is a specific part of Jewish spirituality, heritage, history and culture. It is not universal, not neutral, not “blind”, not generic. It comes from a specific cultural place. To say that it doesn’t is rather like saying “All Lives Matter is better than Black Lives Matter”, or “I don’t notice race, I’m colourblind”, or “I don’t care who you sleep with”. All of these seemingly-benign statements are ways of distracting attention from the ways that issues relate to a *specific* group.

I’ve seen many posts now by Jewish people expressing discomfort with the way the Kabbalah is used in the Western Esoteric Tradition. Statements like Ashcroft Nowiki’s is why: using a piece of Jewish heritage, while finding a way to deny that it is Jewish (it’s now “universal”, or as Magician’s Tables said, it expresses the “general” Soul of Man) and therefore being able to claim it for yourself, without then making reference to a) Jewish people, b) culture or c) practitioners using the system in its original context. very messy.

Connected to this is that my husband will not, under any guise, allow me to summon angels in our living room. Which I think is reasonable. And according to Norwicki, even if I’m calling on Merlin and Freja, I am still really calling on an angel.

Ceremonial magic tries to fudge this in various ways, such as permitting us to slot in any god-names we fancy; but to get serious and committed to most traditions, you’re still going to have to learn the Hebrew alphabet and make friends with things-that-look-like-angels with Biblical-sounding names. It’s pretty clear that in the early years of Western magic, this familiarity was part of why the Kabbalah was appropriated; it didn’t feel Satanic, it had angels in it! But it’s 2020, and most of us here in Paganism actually do want to feel a bit Satanic.

Critiques of the appropriation
of the Tree of Life

I really enjoy ceremonial magic. It does wonders for my brain. However, the Western Hermetic Tradition draws heavily from Jewish mysticism, and has done so throughout its history. You can’t participate in Thelema, Golden Dawn, Inner Light, or other modern ceremonial traditions without it; and so too is much grimoire magic drawn from the kabbalah.

I’ve encountered many Jewish people online pointing to ways this is a problem: a form of appropriation which takes the kabbalah out of its uniquely Jewish context. Additionally, the idea of secretive but powerful magics hidden in Jewish texts reinforces sinister/satanic/conspiratorial/anti-semetic tropes. Interacting with Jewish mystical culture does not necessarily lead to respect or allyship with Jewish people; on the contrary, it frequently goes hand in hand with people being Really-Weird-to-Actively-Dangerous about Jews.

From a selfish perspective, this has always bothered me, because I love ceremonial magic, and you can’t participate in this magical line without interacting with the Tree. It’s integral now. Perhaps one could argue that the Ceremonial Tree is now branched sufficiently far away from its Jewish origins to be its own thing with its own history? But in other contexts, I have a strong belief in the importance of interacting things as they were designed. Whether it’s tai chi, voudou, or kabbalah, I support people going back to the original texts and authentic teachers and communities to learn how to do these things “properly”, instead of a shallow, appropriative engagement in the surface-level appeal of exoticised traditions; because these traditions function in unexpected ways, ways you can only grok from an “insider” perspective rather than interpreting them through an outsider’s stance.

These conversations online have spurred my search to build something different. Something I can use as a stand in for the Tree of Life in rituals I borrow from others, and to stand alone on its own merits when I’m developing my own craft. But something which does not appropriate or decontextualise somebody else’s faith; because for all these reasons, it doesn’t feel right. There is a legitimately unique tradition of magic and occultism that has built up attached to this appropriated image - practices which are not in any sense closed or harmful; one merely needs to find a new image to attach them to.

For the Aesthetic

When one does magic, everything that one does is part of it. By this, I mean that casting a spell which uses angel names feels very different from one where we call in the disir, even if the actions are the same. Some people have attempted to adapt and adjust ceremonial magic styles to non-Abrahamic workings: for example, Ross Nichols has a druid Tree of Life which is very peculiar; I spent a deal of time creating a Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram with Egyptian god-figures. All of these are, to me, fundamentally quite unsatisfying.

In ceremonial magic, I have read more than once that different god-names and aesthetics can be applied to ceremonial forms, but that the Jewish mysticism/generic ceremonial hybrid form is a “neutral and universal” one. This is obviously bollocks, and there is nothing neutral about invoking an angel in your living room (again, it additionally erases the specificities of a Jewish tradition, by making it “universal and neutral”, and thus available to universally “claim” – rather than it being something “local”, specific, a unique flavour in its own right)

So the core flavour of Landcraft is not “neutral”: it looks and feels like the fairy tale tradition, from its landscapes to its language. One could, of course, awkwardly use it to try and summon an angel, but it would be as imprecice as trying to locate fairy-chaos-spirits on the Tree of Life. Landcraft’s core it is a match for the core of what we’re doing. To use a current programming buzzword, Landcraft is "opinionated" - it guides you towards its way of doing things:

Opinionated software means that there is basically one way (the right way™) to do things and trying to do it differently will be difficult and frustrating. On the other hand, doing things the right way™ can make it very easy to develop with the software as the number of decisions that you have to make is reduced and the ability of the software designers to concentrate on making the software work is increased. Opinionated software can be great to use, if done well, if your problem maps onto the solution nicely. It can be a real pain to solve those parts of your problem that don't map onto the tools provided.

The Role of Gender in Wicca and Hermetics

Like a lot of queer people, the role of heterosexual sex as symbolic of creation and magic in many occult traditions feels very alienating. I celebrate and support queer people who have found their way within that system, and I can get quite into Crowley and Hine’s adaptations in a way that feels very affirming. But I’ve accepted that it will not work for me, as a primary and central part of every rite.

You don’t have to scratch very deep to find this binary model in magic. Although Wicca, a fertility cult, is perhaps the most iconic representative of this, it comes into Ceremonial Magic too – for example, Alan Moore’s second volume of Promethea, with its has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed sex scene as magical tuition chapter. Which is strangely beautiful, but brings it down to a lance and a cup.

And so, the idea of dividing everything that is into a binary of Maleness and Femaleness, which is joined in the mystic union of heterosexual symbolism, doesn’t work for me either. And it doesn’t work for Fencraft which is gender-agnostic, and agender in tone: a system where gender is uncertain and unmarked by default, unless there is a specific reason to reintroduce it.

Also, While I'm Being Picky,
I Don’t Like The Four Elements

It’s never worked for me that “water”, say, governs everything from rainfall to fish and the crests of the waves to the bottoms of oceans, all of which seem to me very different – both magically and symbolically.

Additionally, they’ve always seemed an odd fit for Paganisms that are otherwise ancient-Northern-Europe in character. The Classical elements come to modern Paganism through ancient Greek culture; but other parts of the ancient world had (different) sets of five elements, so why are we not using those? We don’t really know how the druids or vikings would have broken down their world, or if they’d even have used an elemental model to do so.

The elements are coming back into Landcraft gradually, but organised in different ways. I'm thinking a lot about artist James Gurney's comment in Light and Color that there are no primary colors in art, that any pure hue on the colour wheel has equal claim to being a primary, and it is only convention which names some as primary and others not.

However, it’s a good place to note that the 3 Domains of Landcraft in many ways do not work like the neo-pagan elements – for example, they can’t be channelled in identical ways, and there’s no sense that they need to be balanced within a person, for example; nor do they make much sense when related to the human psyche. Again, this makes a better kind of sense with the worldview that Landcraft explores: not anthropocentric, and something that influences us rather than something over which we have comprehensive control.

Over to You

I hope this has been an interesting introduction to Landcraft, as well as maybe provoking some thoughts about the correspondence systems you use and encouraging you to feel able to tinker with them or develop your own