“Who’s Listening?”
One of my teachers, Chris Monnastre, told a story of a lesson she learned from her teacher, Israel Regardie. She was just beginning to work under his personal instruction when she showed him how she performed the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. Quietly, she started sounding the first word. “Ahhhhhhhhh-tahhhhhhhhhhh.” Regardie stopped her and asked, “Who’s listening.”
In magick, certain words are meant to be vibrated. Several writers have given different ideas of what this means. For example, some say you should send the sound down through different parts of your body. Others elaborate in saying that you should visualize the letters, in Hebrew, of the words you are vibrating and move the sound to follow that visualization throughout your body. While that may cause some slight degree of modulation, it doesn’t answer Regardie’s very simply question: “Who’s listening?”
Regardie’s point to Ms. Monnastre was that if you want to be heard, speak up. And if you’re trying to shake the universe with your voice, you’d better speak up loudly. Words that are meant to be vibrated in magickal rituals should be called out in order to make the universe shake or vibrate so that all entities and spirits—especially non-physical ones—will hear you.
Harry Belafonte “Vibrating” a song in 1954
The technique of vibrating words of power, then, is simple:
- Inhale deeply, visualizing or imagining your breathing going through your body to the center of the earth.
- On exhalation, use a full breath to say or chant the word(s) loudly, virtually shouting, causing the entire universe to vibrate to your words.
- Repeat as necessary.
When teaching this, I’ve often found that some people don’t like to do this. I’ve come up with every sort of idea I can to help people get the idea that vibration of words should be LOUD. I’ve squeezed people from behind, as if I were giving them the Heimlich Maneuver, in order to increase their breath flow. One student, who flew in from Jamaica for training, just couldn’t get it. Finally I asked her to do it while I stood behind her. As she started her quiet sounding I kicked her in the butt! The words exploded from her. “That’s it,” I told her. She was totally shocked, but she finally figured out the technique.
One thing I like to admit to students is that it’s hard to vibrate words that way when you live in an apartment with paper-thin walls. Sometimes you simply cannot be that loud. The truth, however, is that while volume does create vibration, the important part of vibrating words is having them cause the universe to vibrate through the laws of resonance. While volume helps in this, it is not required.
The method for learning how to vibrate words effectively without loud volume is by practicing vibrating the words loudly and stretching out with your senses to be able to appreciate what vibrating the words feels like. One you have that experience, repeat vibrating the worlds. Slowly get softer in volume while maintaining the effects of the vibration on the universe. With a little practice you should be able to effectively vibrate the words of power in rituals even though your volume is very slow or even silent.
I used to go to the beach late at night to practice this. Nobody’s at the beach that late and when you practice vibrating at a high volume, virtually shouting at the ocean, nobody else will hear you.
When High Volume is Silent
There is a strange experiment in physics where vibrations at a high volume cannot be heard. A simple tone known as a sine (or sinusoidal) wave is created by a device known as an oscillator. This is put through an amplifier and speakers that is turned up to such a high volume it almost hurts the ears. Another sine wave at the same pitch or frequency is put through a similar amplifier/speaker set up. The volume is turned up to the same level. Then, the oscillator is changed in a way known as being completely (180°) out of phase with the first set up. The result: even though both amplifiers are blaring so loud that it should hurt your ears, even though you can touch the speaker cabinets and feel them vibrating wildly, the room is totally silent.
Loud vibration. Total silence.
How?
Science that is also Magick!
i don’t care who you are, it is not okay to physically assault your students to make a point,
There is an ancient tradition that it’s a teacher’s responsibility to know what a student needs and it’s the teacher’s obligation to give that to a student. Sometimes, it’s as simple as a word or a congratulatory hand on the shoulder.
Today, in many states, teachers in K-12 are not allowed to put a hand on a student’s shoulder. The lack of human touch may be one of the reasons why some students are not succeeding.
If I tripped and fell on you, is that an assault? A fall onto another person could result in a broken limb. In the instance I described a quick boot to the butt was far more for surprise than your assumed physical “assault.” If I had accidentally fallen on her she might have been hurt to a far greater degree than the kick I gave her could have ever harmed her.
And the result was that she learned how to successfully do the work.
Many years ago, people who read some of Aleister Crowley’s works would come to him with certain expectations. Instead of fulfilling their expectations, he gave them what he knew they needed. As he put it, they came to meet the Master Therion and instead met the demon Crowley. As a result he kept valued students and the dilettantes quickly left.
To TRM, there is too much cotton wool wrapped around others these days. I greatly respect DMK and his work. What he done to the pupil worked in this instance and in years gone by many people in training or on the path to enlightenment would have undergone much greater hardships than a kick up the bum. I have studied his work and although life keeps getting in the way I fully intend to complete his courses in MM. If I could study under DMK directly I would consider it a fantastic opportunity and if he had to kick me to get me to do the work correctly so be it. Next time before you start throwing around the ‘abuse’ panic button think was this good for the individual and did it achieve the results. I know you can speak for yourself DMK and did do so however, what happened wasn’t done out of malice and I agree that sometimes a small shock can nudge someone into the right direction. Also llewellyn it would be helpful if there was a ‘like this’ or ‘don’t like this’ button for the comments.