AVALON TEMPLE MAGIC GUIDELINES

How to write a magical ritual

A new thought or realisation has come into your head during a meditation session and
you'd like to develop it, or perhaps you've been inspired by something you've read, or
you've visited a sacred site and formed your own inner impressions how can you turn
these ideas into a magical ritual?
The basis of a good ritual is very simple: it is a form of communication between all the
participants, visible and invisible, who inhabit the many levels of Creation. You must
convey what you want to say to the participants who will be helping you to perform it,
and you must also communicate the essence of the ritual to the Innerplane Beings who
will empower it.
An effective ritual will probably include all or most of the following:
1. Statement of intention
2. Construction of the Temple
3. Contact with Inner-world beings
4. Pathworking or guided meditational journey ('rising on the planes')
5. Realisations
6. Grounding and Closing

1. Statement of intention
You must be clear as to the purpose of the ritual, and this statement of purpose or
intention should be written clearly and briefly right at the start. The purpose of this
statement is to assist all participants to become of one mind and in one place, and is a
signal to everyone involved that they should now begin to focus their attention on the
specific work in hand.
Sometimes the purpose of a ritual is simple and clear-cut: 'To consecrate and dedicate a
sword,' or 'To travel along the 27th Path,' or 'To make contact with Merlin,' or 'To build
the Round Table.'
Other rituals can be less specific in their aim, for example: 'To gain greater reality on the
Holy Grail,' or 'To celebrate the Rites of Dionysus,' or 'To explore the Mysteries of Isis.'

If you have difficulty in defining the purpose of your ritual in a sentence or two, you
might need to think more carefully about what you are hoping to achieve. A ritual is
very often an expression of personal realisations and inner growth, but if you have
written something intended for group work it will not be sufficient to jumble your
personal realisations into a script in the hope that they will somehow come together and
make sense in the performance! Your personal realisations must be communicated to the
participants in a manner which makes it possible for them to share in your experience
without undue difficulty. Everyone involved should be clear as to what they are doing,
and why.

2. The construction of the Temple

The form of the Temple used in any ritual must be a reflection of fundamental universal
principles. It goes without saying that the form and content of anything you write for
ritual performance should in every way possible be in accordance with Divine Plan. The
more closely the layout of your ritual corresponds to, and evokes, the harmony of
universal forces, the more readily will your work harmonise with the perfection of the
Divine. Thus will your ritual synchronise with the machinery of the universe rather than
grating against it.
Unless you have good reason for doing otherwise, the best and most easily balanced
form to use is that of the circled cross. The circle can be marked out on the floor, or
simply implied by the circle of chairs and participants. Divide your ritual script into four
speaking roles, and have each person with a speaking role sit in one of the four cardinal
directions of the circle.

3. Contact and communication with Inner-world beings

The importance of communication with the Inner Plane Beings in a ritual cannot be
overstated. They play an essential part in a ritual's effectiveness and without their active
co-operation a ritual can be little more than a piece of costume drama.
A magical ritual should open gateways to, and invoke the presence of, layers of Inner
plane Beings from God downwards! Assuming a layout of a circled cross with a central
candle, the potential contacts at each quarter are first the aspect of God or Name of God
appropriate for that quarter, then the appropriate Archangel, and then perhaps the
elemental King and the elemental beings. These should be invoked at the start of each
ritual in order to help build, dedicate and seal the Temple and ensure a smooth and
harmonious flow of power.
There is then a second 'layer' of contacts which are chosen for their particular relevance
to the ritual and these will vary according to the content. For instance, in an Arthurian
ritual they might be Arthur, Gwenevere, Merlin and the Lady of the Lake, or any of the
Knights and Ladies of the Round Table. Or you could use characters from Tolkien, or
Saints, or Biblical characters, or totem beasts.

The importance of this second layer of contacts is that they continue to play an active
part throughout the ritual, and having invoked their presence, the person mediating each
of these roles should then continue to mediate their presence throughout. It is therefore
important to ensure wherever possible that the words they have to speak will be relevant
to the role they are mediating.
And don't forget the importance of ritual actions. Simply lighting a candle, if it is done
with focussed intention, can be an extremely effective way of communicating what you
are doing to the Inner plane Beings.
Or you might like to choose some symbols such as a wand for Merlin, or a crystal ball
for the Lady of the Lake, or whatever is suitable for the speaking roles in your ritual.

4. Pathworking or guided inner journey: rising on the planes

This is the main part of the ritual. The purpose of this section is to take the participants
together on a journey upwards in consciousness from the physical plane to a location on
a higher plane of creation. Here, you can experience the Inner reality which lies at the
heart of the ritual. Without this journey, you will literally find it difficult to get your
ritual off the ground. There are many possible Inner locations: Atlantis, a Sephirah on
the Tree of Life, the Hesperides, Venus, Camelot, the Duat, Elysium, Avalon, the
Pleiades .
Having decided on the destination appropriate to the purpose of the ritual, structure your
journey towards it in gradual stages, steadily travelling up through the levels of
consciousness and the Inner planes. Many myths and legends incorporate a structured
journey to an Inner location and it is simply a matter of re-writing the story in ritual
form. Many legends are memories of actual rituals, and once you have extracted the
core material from them they readily lend themselves to being represented as a magical
ritual.
If you feel confident in constructing your own inner map rather than using a tried and
tested one, you can for example climb the floors of a tower, or sail in a boat around the
starry constellations, or travel up the Nile, or through the desert, or up a mountain, or
down into the Underworld, or slowly walk round a Temple or Abbey. The number of
levels you climb depends on your subject matter, on your skills and experience as a
ritual-writer, and on the skills and experience of the participants. Generally, seven levels
of consciousness/Inner planes are the maximum to aim for, and many legends are built
around this structure. But three well-differentiated levels will often be sufficient.
You may also like to give thought to providing a 'vehicle' in which the ritual participants
can travel. For example, a boat works well as an inner construct.
It is in this section of the ritual that you can use your imagination and creativity to best
effect. The other participants will respond well to clear, well-painted images which
make the journey come alive. It is through the collective building of images on the Inner
planes that the magic comes alive.

If creative writing does not come easily to you, there is nothing wrong in using words
that others have written, and many good rituals have been constructed from carefully
chosen passages from a wide variety of sources such as myth and legend, the Bible,
ancient texts, poetry and visionary prose.

5. Realisations
When the participants have been taken to the ritual's inner destination, the purpose of
the ritual should finally be 'realised,' ie made real in the consciousness of those taking
part. It will be up to each participant to gain his or her own realisations, and you cannot
necessarily prescribe them. But if you have constructed your ritual with a view to its
final intention, you will have satisfactorily created the opportunity for such realisations
to be made. You will also have helped to create a balanced and empowered structure on
the Inner planes which can be used for the furtherance of the Divine Will in the
continuing Great Work. The participants will have reached a place of spiritual truth not
normally accessible in waking consciousness, made it real through their own
perceptions and understanding, and then brought those realisations back to earth. This is
the ultimate aim of any magical ritual.

6. Grounding and Closing

When the destination has been reached, the reality which is perceived and experienced
there must be ritually brought back to earth, and then grounded through the
consciousness and actions of the participants in their daily lives. So the journey back
home must also be carefully written into the ritual. It is not necessary to slowly retrace
every step of the outward journey, but it should be taken at a speed which will allow the
participants to gently return to normal waking consciousness without any disconcerting
bumps. The 'homeward journey' also allows for the build-up of Inner forces to disperse
through the appropriate channels within the Temple and out into the world, and
sometimes a final section of imagery can be used in order to fully earth the ritual
experience. For example, this could be a visualisation of four sacred rivers flowing out
from the centre to the corners of the land.
Keep these principles in mind, and your magical ritual will be an effective act of service
to humanity.

Inner 'Contacts' and how to contact them

Like other magical groups which work at similar levels, The Avalon Group is what is
known as a 'contacted' group. This means that the outer group which the world sees is,
like an iceberg, only a part of the complete whole, and the outer group are aware of this.
The outer group operates like the earth terminal of an electric circuit in the overall

scheme of things, but the greater vision and guidance of its work comes from higher
level inner beings who are not physically incarnate.
Fantastic though this claim may sound (at least, to those outside psychic environments),
the truth and reality of it can be verified by experience. Indeed, successful teamwork
depends on it.
In the early stages of magical training, students are given teaching and exercises by their
appointed tutor as a foundation. However, this is only a temporary arrangement and
ultimately the aim is for members to receive guidance and teaching independently from
the inner plane adepts responsible for the group and its incarnate members, as this will
go far further than any material offered by incarnate teachers. As well as providing a
general source of magical projects and inspiration, these inner adepts may also
introduce individuals who naturally resonate with a certain type of theme, to inner
specialists who may train and work with them in specialized types of magical work of
common interest.
A fundamental skill, then, is to learn how to contact and communicate with these higher
level teachers. Because our level of consciousness is generally fairly mundane in
orientation, and theirs is based on a much more elevated level of intelligence, in order to
communicate at all, we are going to have to learn to raise the level of our own
consciousness up towards theirs. Except in rare cases of unusually outstanding natural
psychic talent, this normally requires training.
Describing the process involved requires attempting to describe inner states of
consciousness, which our language is not well equipped to do. However, we could use
the metaphor of radio broadcasting. The inner plane adepts could be conceived of as
transmitting on a certain high frequency radio band. If we regard our own consciousness
as a radio receiver normally tuned to a lower frequency, the first aim would be to retune it to the appropriate wave band. When we have got that far, we can search along
the correct waveband for the station we are looking for.
In terms of consciousness, we are thus aiming to raise the level of our own mental
vibrations to a higher level of mentation, and then tune into the identity of a particular
inner contact. Although the latter are able to come down towards our level a little, we
still have to raise up our own level of consciousness some way above the norm to at
least meet them half way, as it were.
Students in the physical group practice techniques from their first year of training which
will enable them to raise consciousness at will. As part of the process, these same
techniques also 'open' the (non physical) 'heart', as described in numerous mystical texts.
For in this tuning process to contact higher beings, a combination of both heart and
mind are necessary.
It is the open-hearted desire to connect and the unconditional love which flows as a
result, which propels consciousness upwards to the correct 'waveband'. Once there, the
mind fine-tunes to focus upon a particular contact.
The student knows what they are looking for, of course. They will have done research
on the inner plane teacher, and memorized any available images of them. They will

almost certainly have read words from the inner plane adepts which have been recorded
by other individuals who have spoken with them, and this in itself will enable them to
probe around mentally, trying to define the energy behind those communications, ready
to recognize it again by feel. This latter technique is particularly useful, for if the
student can memorize how abstract energies feel, having once contacted them, recalling
the feeling will serve as a 'homing beacon' as their mind scans the waveband to contact
them again in the future. The student is also aware that the inner teacher knows what
they are trying to do and wants them to succeed, helping as far as possible to get the
communication process off the ground.
How will one know any results are genuine? Initially it is possible that the student may
not, particularly if they are using the technique of 'astral psychism' described below,
which is more prone to interference from the student's own mind than the second of the
described techniques, conscious channelling. A good rule of thumb is always to coolly
examine and appraise the content of any received communications - 'by their fruits shall
ye know them', as they say. If the supposed communication consists of drivel and/or
information with which the student was already familiar, more practice may be required.
The channelling technique involves a direct link between the consciousness of the inner
plane adept and the student, and the experiential result where it is genuine is far more
distinctive, putting the student into an elevated and open-hearted state of consciousness
in which they intuitively know it to be genuine and true. After the communication has
finished, there remains with them a 'residue' of that same state, and a sense of a link of
unconditional love with that inner plane being.
Let us take a look in more detail at how the two aforementioned methods can work in
practical terms. Both are used by modern occultists to establish and develop conscious
communication with elevated inner contacts, the first technique often leading to the
second, and this latter being the more preferable of the two, for reasons described:
1. Astral Psychism
A rather grand term which refers to the technique of visualizing the inner plane being in
one's imagination in a suitable pictorial context and then having a telepathic
conversation with them, seeing them articulating and responding, and showing you
relevant symbols or performing relevant actions as appropriate. An imagined 'meeting
place' is usually invented or borrowed, based on the 'personality' of the inner plane
being. For example, to meet an inner being who presents himself as a Victorian
engineer, the interior of a Victorian workshop might 'set the scene' for this meeting well.
Perceived advantages: This is a technique widely used by psychics and development
groups which can be operated without very high levels of consciousness. Visually
imaginative people (e.g. the astrologically Neptunian or Lunar types, and water sign
types generally) tend to find this method particularly easy. Visual symbols can be
received readily.
Perceived disadvantages: This technique is an indirect, reflected, one in that one's own
High Self (or 'super consciousness'), which forms the interface with the consciousness
of the inner plane contact, is feeding down into one's subconscious ('Low Self') from
whence it is then being retrieved second hand into conscious thought by the thinking

'Middle Self'. The operation can thus be akin to wanting to observe the moon, but
instead of looking upwards into the sky, trying to focus instead on a clear image of the
moon on the surface of a pond with a light breeze rippling the surface, and the
occasional leaf or twig floating by, as one's own emotional nature and imagination tend
to keep trying to intrude. It therefore requires quite a sustained effort of concentration to
keep the communication clearly tuned, plus holding the visual imagery and articulating
it, pushing aside one's own thoughts, and listening telepathically to the communication
itself. However, it can produce valid results for shorter length communications in
particular, and in the early stages of practice can act as a springboard into ......
2. Conscious Channelling
This method is more abstract and consists of one's own super conscious 'High Self' (the
interface with the consciousness of the inner being) primarily feeding direct into the
thinking, 'Middle Self' of the recipient. It thus tends to bypass the interference and the
pictorial imagination of the subconscious 'Low Self', and information is received more
intuitively as telepathic words forming in a stream, sometimes with flashes of
perception or energy flows.
One way to locate this rather abstract state of consciousness is to begin with the
technique of astral psychism, engage the inner being in conversation, and focus
increasingly on keeping the exchange and flow of words going (keep asking questions!).
At the same time as one is holding the link in this way, one raises up consciousness,
allowing any visual imagery to fall away but focussing increasingly on the flow of the
conversation and the energetic link with the inner contact. As consciousness rises up to
become a direct High Self-Middle Self channel, the stream of thoughts and words from
the contact will seem to form spontaneously like bubbles in your head from a
perceivable, high level, abstract energy beyond them.
Visually orientated people who might find the abstract perplexing, may find it helpful to
visualize a vague horizon line or horizontal layer in front of them and just a little above
eye level. Accompanying efforts to travel into it in imagination (which doesn't actually
happen) should tie up the visual faculties whilst one focusses on holding the verbal and
energetic link.
Perceived advantages: Inner plane beings have expressed a preference for this type of
communication. Once mastered, long transfers of information and energy can take place
with little effort and inaccuracy. Those of an Aquarian or Uranian astrological type tend
to find this method particularly easy.
Perceived disadvantages: Requires elevation of consciousness to an appropriate level.
Relocating the inner energetic 'coordinates' at will can take a little practice.
Occasionally information may seem to originate from one's own super conscious High
Self, rather than passing through it from a higher source. The nature of the material and
the feel of the energy should indicate if this is the case.
The techniques above are conscious methods of communication that is, the
practitioner is aware and participating in the interchange, and in charge of their own
consciousness. A formerly popular unconscious technique of receiving inner plane

communications was trance mediumship. In this process, a suitably trained trance

medium who is able to raise conscious high enough to contact the level of an inner
plane adept, allows the inner plane being to temporarily possess them so that the being
is then able to articulate the medium's vocal chords and speak through them. During this
process, the medium enters a sleep-like state, and on awakening usually has little or no
conscious recall of the communication. Other people present in a waking state are able
to question the inner contact by addressing the medium, if appropriate. Much valuable
magical material has been brought through in this way by mediums of a suitably high
level of consciousness and calibre, such as Margaret Lumley Brown and Dion Fortune
last century, who were able to control and use their skills in a balanced manner.
Today, however, trance mediumship and the training available to become one are far
less common. Mediums who are naturally gifted tend to be psychically very receptive
and absorbent, and most remain within spiritualist circles where they do not have to
contend with strong magical forces which could impact on their psychic sensitivity. In
addition, many modern occultists dislike the principle of giving up control of their own
consciousness when they can participate more fully in other, conscious, methods of
receiving the same material.