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October
2006
Taylor Ellwood |
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Taylor
Ellwood is co-author of Creating Magical Entities, author
of Pop Culture Magick and Space/Time Magic. This month will
see his essays published in an anthology of contemporary
magickal thinkers, Magick on the Edge. In November of 2006,
his fourth book, Inner Alchemy, on the shaping of physical
neural paths will be published by “Megalithica
Books”. Kink Magic: Beyond Vanilla Sex
Magic, co-written will be published in 2007. Taylor is currently
working on his next solo book, Media Magic.
In
addition to his books, his website thegreenwolf.com, and
his blog, Taylor is a regularly invited speaker on everything
from novel magical technologies like those found in his
controversial Pop Culture Magick to topics like sex magick,
physiological paradigm shifts and time travel.
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| taylor,
ellwood, pop culture magick, creating magical entities, space
time magick, inner alchemy, pagan, chaos magic, ohio, short
story, fiction, essay, paintings, seattle, washington, lecturer,
new age |
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| The
Harry Potter Ritual |
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listen
to Taylor read this work |
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For
Ostara 2004, (Spring Equinox) the college group of pagans,
which I meet up with sometimes, asked me to write up a ritual
for them. I decided to do a Harry Potter ritual. I chose Harry
partially out of whimsy, but also because I felt he embodied
the youthful and hopeful energy of Ostara. I based this ritual
on a Harry Potter collage sigil I’d created along with
David Cunningham in 2000. And although this ritual was written
for Ostara, it can easily be adapted for any time of the year.
David and I noted with some
interest how upset the far right of Christianity was with
Harry Potter, proclaiming that the books were being used to
promote the occult, even though the author stoutly claims
to this day that she’s not a witch and isn’t trying
to promote the occult. But even if she wasn’t, that
didn’t mean that Harry Potter wasn’t. We felt
that since the Christians were putting so much energy into
Harry Potter, even if it was negative energy, we’d capitalize
on their belief and direct it into their worst fear, that
Harry Potter was stimulating an interest in the occult, something
ultimately productive for magickal communities everywhere.
To make the collage, we gathered
images from the web and put them into a collage. For instance,
we used part of Hogwarts Castle and then we showed a stream
of people running into the castle. We had several images of
Harry, one of him studiously reading, one of him pouring liquid
into a cauldron, and one with his hands raised, looking wrathful.
This last one was placed over a picture of a crumbling church.
In bold red letters we wrote the phrase “Couldn’t
we all use a little magick?”
We sent this collage out to
our e-mail list and asked people to charge it up, to focus
and fire the collage with the intent in mind that I described
above. As far as I can tell, to this day the collage sigil
continues to fulfill its function. I attribute the rise in
online magick schools as being partially due to the collage
sigil.
Fast forwarding to the spring
of 2004, I began to think it would be cool to do the Harry
Potter Ostara ritual, albeit, with a different focus in mind.
This time, I wanted to stimulate a feeling of growth and renewed
interest in doing a little bit of magick. Maryam Fazl helped
me to put this ritual together.
The first thing we actually
decided to do was do a traditional circle which usually entails
calling the corners. Instead of calling four corners, we asked
those who attended to call one of the houses of the Harry
Potter universe. For example, instead of north, someone would
call Houses Slytherin, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, or Ravenclaw.
The script for the calling was up to the callers, though we
did offer to provide a script if anyone didn’t feel
like coming up with their own. Calling each house involved
evoking the attributes each house embodied. For example, with
Slytherin, the person called on cunning, slyness, and other
attributes that represented an ideal Slytherin person. I drew
upon Rowling’s first book for a chant that could be
used, the following from the Sorting Hat chapter:
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For
Gryffindor:
“You
might belong in Gryffindor,
where
dwell the brave at heart,
Their
daring, nerve, and chivalry
Set
Gryffindors apart” (Rowling 118)
Couldn’t
we all use a little magick?
For Hufflepuff:
“You
might belong in Hufflepuff,
where
they are just and loyal,
Those
patient Hufflepuffs are true
And
unafraid of toil” (Rowling 118).
Couldn’t
we all use a little magick?
For Ravenclaw:
“Or
yet in wise old Ravenclaw,
If
you’re a ready mind,
Where
those of wit and learning
Will
always find their kind;” (Rowling 118).
Couldn’t
we all use a little magick?
For Slytherin:
“Or
perhaps in Slytherin
you’ll
make your real friends,
those
cunning folk use any means
to
achieve their ends” (Rowling 118).
Couldn’t
we all use a little magick?
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It’s
clear that we drew upon on the actual writing of Rowling for
the ritual. I find this to be effective because if people have
read the books they’ll recognize the lines and get into
the ritual even more. Drawing from the actual writings also
got the attention of the Harry Potter Egregore focused on the
group. We had people who felt they identified with one house
or another go to that part of the circle, the idea being to
create a resonance from the identification with the particular
house. This strengthened the energy, and allowed us to successfully
invoke the characters from the Harry Potter universe,
For the next part of the ritual,
I led a guided meditation. I had the people go through a hundred
deep breaths with each ten breaths focused on spreading a tingling
relaxing energy through the body. The people would breath through
their nostrils and out their mouths, continuously, without pausing
between breaths. The first ten breaths focused on the feet,
feeling this tingling relaxing energy in the feet. The next
ten breaths moved the tingling relaxing energy up the calves
to the knees. We continued this with the thighs, then the hands
and arms, before moving on to the torso and head. Ideally this
one hundred breath routine will make you feel very relaxed and
very open for the next stage of the ritual. At the end of the
one hundred breaths, the participants were asked to step through
a magical door where they would meet a Harry Potter spirit guide
that’d instruct them in how to find a little more magick
in their lives.
Almost all of the people who participated
in the ritual had an experience with the Harry Potter universe
through various characters. All of those characters offered
advice to the various people in the ritual. Characters as spirit
guides ranged from Harry Potter to Draco Malfoy, to McGonagall.
Some of the characters were trickster like in nature such as
Malfoy, but overall the majority of experiences that people
had were useful for them. What I found most interesting is that
one person, Aurora Mallin, was already devising a correspondence
system for the Harry Potter universe and tarot cards. This ritual
didn’t necessarily contribute to that, as she already
had it well developed, but nonetheless both the ritual and the
correspondence system allow for a furthering of the HP current
of energy for those who wish to work magick with it.
After the meditation was finished
we had a feast where we told stories about people who could
use a little magick. At the end we closed our circle, again
with the chants above, but with a hail and farewell at the end
and went on our way. The idea of the ritual, to promote magick
in our own lives worked, even if only for that night.
This ritual can be done at any
time of the year, for any day of the week. As the purpose is
to promote a little magick in your life, why not try it some
time when you need a little magick and see what results you
get!
Works Cited
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
New York: Scholastic Inc, 1997.
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