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A Heathen Middle Pillar Exercise
Aug. 21st, 2018 08:54 pm
As promised, here's a version of the Middle Pillar exercise reworked for Heathen practice. Our working title for this is the Central Axis exercise, as it works with the central axis or Pillar of Mist in the Heathen Tree of Life, midway between the Pillar of Fire and the Pillar of Frost. Here's how it goes: 1. Perform the complete Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, beginning and ending with the Hammer-Sign.
2. Imagine a ray of light descending from infinite space to form a sphere of light just above your head, around eight inches in diameter. This sphere is white and contains the rune Ansuz in gold. When you have formulated it clearly in your imagination, vibrate ODIN three times. (The practice of vibration is explained in the discussion of the Heathen Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram linked above.)
3. Bring the ray of light to your throat, and form another sphere. This one is violet and contains the rune Perthro in silver. When you have formulated it, vibrate FREYA three times.
4. Bring the ray of light to your heart, and form another sphere. This one is golden and contains the rune Sowulo in black. BALDR is vibrated here three times.
5. Bring the ray of light to your genital center, and form a fourth sphere. This one is blue and contans the rune Mannar in red. If you're male, vibrate HEIMDALL here three times. If you're female, the name to vibrate three times is SKADI.*
6. Bring the ray of light to your feet, and form a fifth center. This one is black and contains the rune Bierkan in green. The name vibrated here, three times, is IDUN.
7. Return the attention to the center at the top of the head. Bring a current of white light a few inches wide down the left side of the head and neck, the left shoulder and arm, and the left hip and leg, down to the center at the feet, and then back up the right leg and hip, the right arm and shoulder, and the right side of the neck and head, back to the center at the head. Repeat this a total of three times; if possible, synchronize with the breath, so that the energy flows down with the outbreath and up with the inbreath, but it is more important to visualize the whole course than to make it happen within a single breath.
8. In the same way, bring a current of white light from the center above the head, down the midline of the front of the body to the center at the feet, and then back up the midline of the back of the body to the center above the head. Repeat a total of three times.
9. Breathing out, send a ray of white light down the midline of your body from the sphere above your head to the one beneath your feet. (This is done just once.) Then breathe in, and draw a current of energy up the Middle Pillar of the body from that center to the center above the head; breathing out, allow it to spray like a fountain out and over the whole body, cleansing the entire aura, pooling at the feet and being drawn back up the Middle Pillar with the next inbreath. Do these latter two steps—the rising current on an inbreath and the fountain on an outbreath—a total of three times.
This is the fundamental practice of Golden Dawn magic and should be done daily if at all possible. It establishes and energizes five centers in the subtle body, cleanses the aura, and opens the way to further magical practices.
*Students of mine have found repeatedly that it's important, if you're working a Middle Pillar-type exercise and invoking Pagan gods and goddesses, it's important that the name you vibrate at your genital center should be of a deity of your own physical gender, to avoid odd and unpleasant energy effects. If you happen to be intersexed or transgender, you may need to experiment to figure out which name to use.
I think most of my readers know at this point that longtime reader Sven Eriksen and I are hard at work on a system of Golden Dawn magic designed for Heathens, building on the Heathen Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram presented in 
Several of my Heathen readers have inquired recently about a project that's been under way for a while -- the development of a system of Golden Dawn magic, parallel to the one I published in my book The Celtic Golden Dawn, but invoking Norse Heathen gods and goddesses and deriving all its symbolism and structure from the Norse tradition. My co-conspirator Sven Eriksen and I have been working away at it for a while now, and here's the first publicly available result: a version of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram suitable for Heathens. 
