Tea: the elemental eucharist

The idea of an elemental Eucharist has been in many ways in the world of the occult.  In the golden dawn, the "mystic repast of the four elements", being a rose for air, a candle for fire,  a glass of wine for water, and bread and salt for earth searves as a type of eucharist.  In Thelema,  The gnostic mass takes the cakes of light and wine straight from the host and wine in catholic mass.  In the book "The Magicians Workbook" by Steve Savedow, a consecrated  egg is used (the book says that this is from crowley, but I have not read this any where else).  Personally, I think all of these are great, but perhaps something a bit more familiar  would also work?

A great tea mug I found on the interwebs

Tea is, in my opinion, one of the best examples of all of the elements combined in one consumable item. At first,  tea may appear to be completely of the element water.  Water is the first step of brewing tea.  Of course, this makes up most of the tea physically, but it is not at all the entirety of it esoterically. After water is collected, the next step is to boil it.  This is where the element of fire is incorporated.  Not only is the water being put on fire, but the fires heat stays with the water for a long time.  The third step in making tea is to add the boiling water to the tea leaves, which are the element of earth.  This is what makes it tea and not hot water.  The air portion it the vapor and sent which come from the tea.  Good tea should be aromatic and pleasant smelling.

In addition to it corresponding to the foul traditional elements, by choosing the correct tea leaves it can also represent the three Alchemical properties of Salt, Sulfur, and Mercury.  The best way to do this would be to buy pure black, pure green, and pure white tealeaves.  Black tealeaves are harvested when the leaves are old, Green when they are not too old and not too young, and White just after they have sprouted.  I am not sure which alchemical elements they each correspond to,  but if you have an Idea, please leave a comment.

Everything is somehow related to at least one of the elements, but tea seems to be a part of all.  This is a great eucharist for general magical workings.  Different types of teas cam be used for different rituals; a tea made with herbs corresponding to a certain sephera can be consumed as preparation for a specific planetary invocation.  I intend on writing some sort of ritual of consecration and consumption for tea.

93 93/93 and In LVX , Frater Rota in medio rotæ

Side note:  I have discovered the great use of reddit in studying the occult.  I suggest that you go on r/occult, r/thelema, r/magick, r/goldendawn, and r/esoterica if you already go on reddit.  Its really great, you should try it.  Also, I'm on facebook and would like to find more pages/friends in relation to the occult.  My facebook name is Rota-in Medio-rotae.  I'm sort of desperate now, because I only have one friend currently, and would truly appreciate more. But don't friend me if you don't want to.

Invoking Raziel

93.

 The world is full of secrets; big ones, small ones, ones about friends, ones about enemies, and even ones that seem to be about nothing at all.  With all these secrets out there,  it is only natural for one to want to find them out.  some people use force to gain this knowledge, others use reasoning. However, I prefer a much more spiritual method: invocation.  But who would you invoke in order to gain the answer to a secret, especially if the secret is something esoteric itself?  Well, an archangel with the name meaning "Secrets of God" sounds like a pretty good candidate.

[The seal of Raziel] 

Today, (Saturday, October 15th)me and my friend/partner-in-occultism Frater S.'.S.'.E.'.I.'. (This is the Frater O who I mentioned earlier, he recently changed his motto), preformed an invocation of the Archangel  Raziel.  The specific invocation that we preformed was from the book "Keys to the gateway of magic", or more specifically "Dr. Rudd's Nine Celestial Hierarchies".  This ritual had a "celestial key" (in this case, a bottle with Raziel's seal painted on a glass bottle), as opposed to the traditional black mirror/ invocation triangle.  Here's the details and preparation of the ritual:

The first stop in preparation was  finding a good date for the ritual.  We chose Saturday because the the book which we were using listed Raziel as corresponding with Saturn.  Technicaly, this is incorrect, because he corresponds with the sephira Chochma, which in turn corresponds with the zodiacs, not saturn.  however, since there is no day of the week for the zodiacs, we go down the tree of life until we find a sephira with a day corresponding to it, which is Binah, the sphere of saturn.  We would also attempt to preform the ritual in the hour of Saturn.

We made quite a big deal with candles, in my opinion.   we bought two gray candles to represent chochma,  as gray is the color of the saphira chochma and two is it's number.  in addition, we attempted to buy correct candles for the four quarters of the temple.  To find the right ones, we went to the local Botanica (Santeria store)  we were able to find a red candle with "saint Michael, archangel" on it for the south.  The other candles were a bit of a compromise.  For the west,  we were able to find a candle with "saint Gabriel, archangel" on it.  Sadly, it was purple, not blue.  For the north,  we bought a blain black candle.  Unfortunately, it did not have the name Uriel or Auriel on it.  the East, however, was the least accurate.  We asked the man at the botanica if he had any yellow candles with Raphael on them, but there were none in stock.  He said though, that since Raphael was an archangel,  that the white candle with "Holy Guardian Angel" on it would be the closest that we could get.  We ended up getting that one.

[A different 2 sided seal of Raziel]

Because we are both "closeted occultists" so-to-speak (meaning we have to hide out occultism from everyone [hence the name of my blog]), we decided that the best place to preform the ritual would be in a secluded section of the park near both of out houses.  After setting up the temple and donning our robes, we preformed a divination to see if we should continue with the ritual.  The tarot cards said that we should go along, but first we should be ritually cleansed in some sort of way.  To do this, I put water,  a small stone (earth), a wildflower (air [like a rose in the mystic repast of the golden dawn]), and some florida water (representing fire [sort of like Crowley having Abramelin oil representing fire]) in a small container and used this to baptize/anoint ourselves before the ritual.  This is a little non-tradition,  but I think that it works in this situation. I acted as ritualist, and Frater S.'.S.'.E.'.I.'. as the seer.  We preformed LBRP, BRH, Watchtower Ritual,  and began the invocation (pg 152 - 158 of the download I gave as a link in the name of the book).

The ritual went very well.  I almost wish that I were the seer in the ritual, to experience seeing the great archangel Raziel,  who I have always thought of as somewhat connected to.  I am not sure why, but Raziel seems like  the angel who i would associate myself with, and I'm not sure why.   I have not yet recieved knowledge and conversation with my HGA,  but I do not think that it is Raziel.  Sadly,  Raziel told the seer in this ritual not to reveal what was revealed to us,  so I cannot post this.  However, I must say that it is not something that a person could have thought up.  these are clearly archangelic works.

frater s.'.s.'.e.'.i.'. at altar 

The altar with celestial key

Red Michael candle

Gabriel candle

Black (auriel) candle

Guardian Angle candle (Raphael) 

 I'm not a big fan of the religious feeling that the candles give the temple, nor the fact that they call them "saint Gabriel" and "Saint Michael", nor the fact that there are spanish prayers on the side that I cannot understand, but still, the temple feels more authentic with the candles.



in LVX and 93 93/93, Frater R.'.I.'.M.'.R.'.