THE ABRAXASIXAXIS MAGIC SQUARE:









I   I   I   I   I   I   A   I   I   I   I   I   I



I   S   I   S/  I/  A   B   R   A   X   A   S/  I



I/  I   S   I   S/  I   R   I   S/  I   S/  A   S



I   S/  I   X   I   X/  A   S/  I   S   I   S/  I



I/  A   X   I   S/  I   X/  I   S/  I   S   I   S



I/  A/  I   X   I   X/  A   S/  I   S   I   S/  I



 A   B   R   A   X   A   S/  I   X/  A   X   I   S



I   R   I   S/  I   S/  I   X   I   X/  I   S/  I



I/  A   S/  I   S/  I   X/  I   S/  I   S   I   S



I   X/  I   S   I   S/  A   S/  I   S   I   S/  I



I/  A   S/  I   S/  I   X/  A   S/  I   S   I   S



I   S/  A   S/  I   S   I   S/  I   S/  I   X/  I



I/  I   S   I   S/  I   S/  I   S   I   S/  I   S



I channelled the ABRAXASIXAXIS MAGIC SQUARE after a fly agaric journey with three close friends, Zya, Ken & Hex, on the Imbolc full moon '97. During the trip I read Austin Osman Spare's 'Rechtaw' evocation. The only line of this evocation which I didn't fully understand was the last, where it shifted to invocation: 'By the sacred word-graph of heaven, I invoke thee...' There were no immediate obvious effects from the invocation, until many hours later while cooking a hen's egg in the mushroom-brewing pot at dawn I began channelling information about the gnostic deity Abraxas being the axis of Abr', which seemed to represent both Abrahadabra (word of magical manifestation) and Abramelin the mage, an ancient magus whom I remembered had created or revealed several Magic Squares. Coming across these same Abramelin Magic Squares a few weeks later, I was amazed to discover that they were actually 'sacred word-graphs of heaven' -they were formed from qabbalistic arrangements of numbers which related both to astrological star maps and corresponding sacred sites on our planet, e.g. the Sun square relates to Stonehenge, the Mercury square to the Great Pyramid, etc.

This revelation had me searching for graph paper and pencil. About four hours of a progressively-deepening trance state later I completed the ABRAXASIXAXIS Magic Square, ofwhich I had previously been given the key: Abraxas is the axis.
On one level the square related to the way the four of us related to each other on the fly agaric journey, through different deities and archetypes we were invoking that night (eg. Zya and I felt as if we polarized each other on either end of an axis); but because it deals with such archetypes it is also applicable on a much more general level, and works as an invocation itself. Its layers of meaning as an affirmative mantra are multifarious.
The square reads from top to bottom and from left to right. The slashes / and dashes _ show the breaks between the individual words.

Abraxas is an ancient gnostic christian deity representing the convergence/transcendance of duality. Rather than the dualistic separations of the fundamental christains, Abraxas is God and the Devil, as well as all other apparent 'opposites', rolled into one. (S)He is usually represented as a sun deity, with the head of a rooster and two serpents for legs, bearing a shield in one hand and a whip in the other.

Ix (pronounced 'ish') is the Mayan glyph for the jaguar shaman, the sorceror. (I tattooed this glyph on Z's arm the day of the night we had the fly agarics.)

Ixix is a hybrid of Ix and Isis

Isis is an Egyptian mother deity. Queen of the heavens, she rides a peacock-drawn chariot across the skies> The eyes of their tailfeathers are the stars, thus she relates also to Nuit, the Egyptian Goddess of the Universe and of the unmanifest.

Iris is the Greek messenger Goddess, who travels on the light of the rainbow.


Contained in the square and the lines which heralded its arrival were clues for me as to what to do with it. For example the presence of 'Iris' the Greek messenger Goddess ...'as Isis' suggested I should work with a particular priestess, M, who has an affinity with this deity and often reflects one of the four, Zya, who has an affinity with Isis (particularly that night), to represent and help convey messages from Zya as she was in India. With the channelling came a strong calling to Hanging Rock, and it soon became clear to me that this hitherto-unexplored magical place (apparently on a leyline with the Bermuda Triangle)was the geographical correspondence of the AbraxisIxAxis Magic Square. I was drawn to go there on the upcoming full moon eclipse to activate the Magic Square. Hearing from Zain that there was a stone egg up there inwhich Aboriginal women used to give birth, I suspected my ritual would somehow release Abraxas from the Egg!

egg




ABRAXAS RITUAL I - FULL MOON ECLIPSE 9/97:


On the night of the eclipse, while awaiting M's arrival to go out to Hanging Rock, I consulted a dictionary, scanning all the B words for an alternate last name to balance (not replace) 'Defenestrate', as I wanted to be Ob (O.B.) as well as Od (O.D.) as I had heard they are the two serpents who entwine the Caduceus. The only appropriate 'B' word I could find was one that suggested the balancing process itself: 'Bascule -a device or apparatus ofwhich one end rises when the other end falls'.
As I put the dictionary aside, unsure if this was the right name, I noticed a copy of Lewis Carrol's 'Alice in Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass' in the bookshelf and, remembering M's affinity with Alice (espec. in The Labyrinth, I decided to do a spontaneous scrying with the volume. I opened to a random page to find Humpty Dumpty telling Alice a strange riddle about 365-1=364. The significance of this did not dawn until dawn.

We arrived at Hanging Rock much later than expected due to mechanical problems on the way there. The full moon was bright in the sky as M, C and I approached the unknown territory of the dark mass of rock formations. We went up to the (closest)dark side of the rocks and stumbled about for quite some time, trying to find paths upwards. After meeting several dead ends I ventured into a tall very narrow crevice. It was intensely cold, still and dark and probably the densest atmosphere I have ever experience -solid, powerful ancient stone. I felt like I was in Gaia's vaginal passage, earthed to the extreme, chilled to the bone with the compactness of the atmosphere, yet somehow warm and comfortable simultaneously. This is the most I have ever experienced Earth as Mother.
We explored the damp catacombs on the dark side of the rock for a while longer, flirting with the myriad elusive spirits there; until C sensibly suggested we go around to the moonlit side to more easily find a path upwards.
As we made our way around the base of the rocks the moonlight began to shimmer strangely. We looked up to see that the eclipse had already begun. A sense of urgency gripped me -I had to find the stone egg and begin the ritual as the shadow crept across the moon. We found a pathway and hurriedly ascended the towers of rock. By the time we were at the first major summit the moon was about a quarter covered. There was a natural circle there with a clear view of the vanishing moon. I gave up on the stone egg, deciding this was the place -we could delay no longer.
As M laid out our magical apparatus on the cold stone I cast a circle and began directional invocations. As we focused into ritual space C, who was not directly involved, crept away, climbing up onto a nearby boulder like some kind of weird sentinel.
We went straight into the ritual, realizing then why my chosen method of gnosis, flagellation (chosen because of the whip symbolism of Abraxas), was so appropriate. I had expected to get there in time to slowly prepare and meditate into trance state, but the urgency of timing it with the eclipse after our late arrival had not allowed this. The whipping, however. put me immediately into a deep gnosis. With the first hard lash across my back, I screamed out the first vertical lines of the AbraxasIxAxis Magic Square with the intensity of sudden pain, while M intoned the first horizontal line simultaneously. Thus we moved into the square, a lash with each line, arriving at the axis, where our invocations converged, as the moon vanished into the darkness.
As the blackness enveloped us we ceased the flagellation. I sat and breathed deep, stilling the rushes I was experiencing. From the invocations in the square I began to be flooded with the energies of Isis, becoming at one with the primal Mother of the universe. My mind flashed back to the feelings I had experienced in the crevice below. I fully felt like a mother. I experience my feminine aspects often, but never before this strong a maternal feeling. All the universe was my beautiful children; we Isis: Is is. Then the absurdity of this struck me. I realized I wasn't a mother, yet still felt like one: Isisn't. The illusion of gender then fell away. I wasn't male or female, I just was: Is (primal essence before it became female and gave birth to all Is is). Then the illusion of my very being was stripped away. My existence vanished into the void, the Abyss: Isntisnt (a new non-deity of the aeon, relating to Maat as the spaces inbetween the star s).

Then slowly the moon began to peer out from the shadow - the finest curve of white light - and this began to bring me back, through the layers from Isntisnt back to Isis as Diana emerged from her cowl. Returning to the material plane of illusion, we began to work our way back out from the axis of the Magic Square, softly incanting the vertical and horizontal lines as M gently caressed my whip welts with a peacock feather (she played the irridescent Iris of the eye of the peacock of Isis, to the edges of the square opposite those where we had begun.
The moon as she returned became a great white oval again, and I realized that this was the great Egg I had sought, the egg which had cracked with the eclipse and allowed my rebirth. And now, sure enough -Abrahadabra!- Abraxas began to hatch: the eggmoon glowed with a vibrant golden reddish hue as the Sungod began to rise opposit Her in the sky. A cock crowed in the distance as Abraxas's fiery crest appeared on the horizon. The sweep of the surrounding valleys was revealed in the soft luminescence of dawn. The moon sank as she returned to full roundness. Standing on the fulcrum of Hanging Rock, I was a microscopic echo of this cosmic bascule. I had white moon on one ankle, red sun on the other, freshly tattooed the full moon before. My body is the scales (legs the chains, spine the axis, hip the swivel), balancing these masculine and feminine energies. Sometimes one would fall and the other rise, as I moved with the cosmic drama above. Closing the circle, I scrambled up onto the highest boulder, crying out joyously to the dawn: "I am the Bevel!" -half-remembering the name I had found in the dictionary earlier that night. I meant 'Bascule' of course, and as C laughingly told me when I later discovered my mistake, I'd just have to send out a 'cosmic spell-check' -in both senses of the word!
I did so. I am the Bascule.

CODA:


We found the stone egg the next day and grounded out the energies from the ritual therein.
The name of the sungod Abraxas was apparantly formulated from an arrangement of Greek letters expressing the movement of the sun around the Earth creating the yearly cycle of 365 days, sometimes -1 (leap year). So that's what Humpty Dumpty was trying to tell Alice and I.

I was unsurprised to find out a few weeks after the eclipse that Zya was pregnant. She and the father, Ken, finished the egg-like structure below, where they had their child, Lilgimmel Iannu which was conceived around (probably at) the time of our fly agaric journey. (The top and left edge of the square ('IIIIIIAIIIIII')is the name of the homunculi Magickal Child released by B and I that same (Imbolc) night.)
 



Eggs within eggs...



The AbraxasIxAxis Magic Square was used again for Abraxas Ritual II, which adapted elements of the above into a performance ritual as part of Carnival Saturnalia
 


(c) Orryelle 1999
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