hi Jacqueline, Dave,

let me apologize in advance for the length of this reply. 
I know that this is an academic list, and i am attempting 
here to launch into an examination not only of the subject 
of props and paraphernalia but also of the means by which 
such magical activities are studied.


"jacqueline simpson" <[log in to unmask]>:
>> ...what happens if a Ritual Magickian needs to conduct a rite in an 
>> emergency and does not have all his robes, wands, incense etc at hand ...
>> Are there ...dispensations [to omission of accoutrements] in Magick?

the spectrum of magic as conceived by human beings under this 
shifting label does include completely "propless" activities 
all the way to what may be completely fictional psychic powers, 
siddhis, and verbal magic utterances transforming the world we 
know through unknown principles of cause. 

Dave makes helpful mention of makeshift or 'on the fly' 
substitutions in transubstantiation rite: 

D E <[log in to unmask]>:
> and there was a catholic explorer-priest whose name escapes me at present, 
> who wrote of celebrating an improvised mass in the wilds of China, using 
> river water and an oatmeal mush for bread, and how it was one of the most 
> moving experiences of his life
 
much of what falls under the category of 'ritual magic' is a kind of 
ceremonialism whch doesn't tend to lend itself to emergencies because 
it is a practice of those whose class, culture, and condition has 
all of those variables of ordinary life already under control as a 
prerequisite to the more exalted Great Work that is being done. 

to ask whether ritual magicians might omit their accoutrements 
is therefore controversial, and touches on metaphysical and 
evaluative criteria of the process and aims of magic.


Dave continues:
> chaos magick came about at least in part as a reaction to the overblown you 
> must have seventeen kinds of props-and-paraphernalia before you can do 
> anything angle of 'traditional' ceremonial magic
 
even within a more narrow zone of ceremonial magic, for example, 
as Dave points out, there are those (Chaos magicians) whose premise
is often that tools, implements, accoutrements, are unnecessary, and
in some cases that rules or principles of magic *themselves* are 
completely unimportant. sometimes this is explained (even by 
ordinary ceremonial mages) as an indicator about the metaphysics 
or cosmology of the world and how the mind is so important to 
what comes into being and changes.

these same Chaos mages usually don't draw strident lines in the sand 
about what kinds of magic they will perform, or what it is that magic
"should" be used for, whereas conventional ceremonial magicians will
often do this, perceiving their art as spiritual, mystical, and thus
important enough to reserve for deliberate and honoured occasions,
often outside the ordinary world of social dramas and emergencies.

where this begins to most seriously break down is where the ritual also
starts becoming less important than the accoutrements, such as in folk
magic and spellcasting. this is something that Dave was making plain 
and in a very helpful way:

> because you can never find a black egg salesman when you 
> really need one.....

and that's why it helps to be familiar with the exact ritual need in
question where folk magic is concerned. when it comes to 'black cow
milk' and 'black hen eggs', this tends to refer to the colour of the
ANIMAL in question. eggs from black hens are far easier to obtain
than an egg from a hen which is itself black, and one might simply 
keep and care for black chickens, collect and use their eggs (as 
in magical rites of cleansing and purification) to obtain them, 
or contact the right farm to do it for you.

now if you ask the conventional folk magicians or witches whether, 
in a pinch, some other kind of egg could be used, more often than 
not the answer will be "No." that said, within the spectrum of 
those who consider how magic works and why, those who side with the
notion that it is the mind that makes it work will suggest to you 
that the more powerful (or possibly the more powerfully believing)
mages could substitute a lemon, or an orange, or a golf ball, roll
that round object over the same body, and produce the same effects 
of purification and cleansing as another could with their black
hen's egg.


in an academic study of this type of magic, my impression is that
such a study would either accomodate for a diverse spectrum of 
evaluation or locate itself within specific disciplines of 
hypothesis so as to properly test and evaluate them. if one 
is operating under the premise that magic is a social or a
psychological phenomenon, then observing and possibly surveying 
the resultant attitudes and changes in consciousness and opinion 
of participants or targets of the spell would be necessary, 
for example.

if one is operating under the premise that magic is a phenomenon
that causes the changes that are intended (rather than functioning
at merely social and strictly pacifying levels), then one would 
need to arrive at a means of evaluating (also?) the actual 
condition of the patient as regards their purification or 
cleansing, how this changed, and whether the use of that golf
ball made some difference in the result of the ritual and its
effects. 

would it matter if the golf ball were substituted in without 
anyone else knowing about it except the magician? that's
the kind of question that quickly ranges into considerations
that are fundamental and metaphysical and thus difficult to 
answer without taking some kind of stand on these matters.

I can tell you what i, from a non-academic perspective, tend to
do as a preliminary to evaluating the phenomena and actuality of
magic, intending to make this evaluation a bit easier for me as
a solitary observer and researcher as part informal settings.

the first thing that i do is to nail down my premises under which
i am operating for the purpose of my studies and activities; that 
is, i try to make these clear to myself: based on the surveys that 
i have conducted online, the many conversations that i have had 
with practitioners, the instruction i have received from the 
number of teachers of magic that i have engaged with (at times) 
challenging questions, and the study that i have made in text 
and other means about the categories of phenomena themselves 
and how appearances can be manipulated without a corresponding 
change in actuality (illusion, sleight, legerdemain, etc.; 
posterior justification and fabrication; storytelling 
and aggrandizement).

what this has resulted in is a restriction for *my* purposes 
on what i personally call and categorize as magic. that broad
range or spectrum that i mentioned at the outset of this post
is the social context within which i started, and i nailed
down my lexicon more precisely with each passing year so that 
i can more clearly know what i am considering and why, and not
waste my time with things that i have eliminated as either
inconsequential or unlikely. having started with a rationalist,
scientific education in conventional university science and 
logic courses and supplemented with individual studies outside
the academic curricula, i began to apply the principles of 
observation to phenomena supposed within the religious and 
occult worlds, and, through decades began to reach tentative 
conclusions about what i found tenable and useful within them.

obviously these conclusions will only be as helpful to others
as they might consider me to be reliable and capable. that is
one of the disadvantages of proceeding this way, and one of the
advantages of organized learning institutions and the options
made available by a willingness to seriously investigate magic.


that said, how i have restricted my terminology is that where a
phenomenon pertains solely to mental intention and effects that
require no tools other than one's mind i class this as 'psychism'
or 'psychicism'. having looked into such investigations as that
of Rhine and the Stanford Research Institute, supplemented with
incidental studies by governments as i could trust them on same,
i have eliminated these "forms of magic" as deceptions or of so
small an attendant effect as to be unworthy of my continued study.

on the other end of the spectrum from this, where a phenomenon 
is brought about quite obviously as part of a known physical 
cause, and does not masquerade as something else (as in the 
case of what i call 'stage magic', an entertainment and 
manipulation of perceptions in an observer) i call this 
'engineering' (or lacking other language, 'applied technology')
and also divide this *away* from what i understand to be 'magic'
for the purpose of my study. 

I mean by 'engineering' such things as diverse as what would 
be considered some form of medicine by introduction of a 
substance to ingestion or even somatically absorbed, or what 
might be perceived in *association* with magic as a necessary 
conventional activity in pursuit of the aim of a ritual or 
spell. that is, i separate out what may be intending to 
*enhance* the conventional ('increasing probability' if you
like) and observe this and see how it operates, where, 
and in what manner. the conventional cause and effects 
themselves i disregard as magic primarily because these 
are already studied in depth by conventional sciences.


having narrowed the aperture of consideration, i then began to
evaluate what level of investigation i wanted to proceed to 
emphasize in any given circumstance, having discerned that there
were 4 general 'dimensions' of examination that i might bring 
to bear on any given incident or event that includes magic:

	1) Sociological -- how magic affects social groups;

	2) Psychological -- how magic affects participant 
			    conscousness;

	3) Metaphysical -- how magic might function and if
		           it is a hidden (occulted) aspect
			   of the natural world which i may
			   discover or disclose as technology;

	4) Anthropological -- how magic fits into overall
			      human behaviour and what a
			      cross-cultural study of its
		              practice tells me about it.

I find that these are also the academic approaches to religion
and magic that i appreciate and study as an element of my 
informal and solitary education, and that texts on these 
topics out of academic presses are increasing in their 
frequency, depth, and reliability through time.


now returning to your very complex question about emergencies
and ad lib or improvised ritual accoutrements, the way that you
asked the question in part steers my response. what tends to 
associate itself with "Magick" is ceremonial magic, and this 
is in part due to the works of Crowley, and why i think Dave 
responded as he did. since Chaos Magick grew out of ceremonial 
magic as it extended from the influence of Crowley (in the work 
of Kenneth Grant and others influenced by the writings of Austin 
Osman Spare, Crowley, and the Golden Dawn), it makes sense that 
a question about an ability to be impromptu and substitute in this 
context would recall principles emphasized by Chaos magicians. 

authors such as Ray Sherwin and Peter Carroll (ignoring for the 
moment their diversity of quality) attempted to assert within 
a ceremonial magical culture something known for ages by folk 
mages but which was being lost in an emphasis on tools and
riteforms with the continued use of the quasi-masonic framework 
adopted by the Golden Dawn: the ability to extemporize or 
spontaneously adapt to changing conditions for the purposes 
of magical aim. 

since ceremonial magic tends to deal in very specialized aims 
and psycho-social events, its tools are quite refined and its 
application isn't really suited for emergencies.

instead, what kind of magic *is* suitable for emergencies is to
what Dave made reference in his remarks: folk magic. principles
of folk magic might be, in part, said to have inspired Chaos
Magick's development in the face of the Golden Dawn. in parallel,
it appears to me, the notions of magic's inclusion of psychicism
and ability to extend one's influences beyond tools and leave 
them completely behind seems also to have received emphasis there.

as i understand it, this latter development in part derives from 
the legends and characters or conditions ascribed to the result of
magic's employment in mysticism as explained by such interesting
sources as E.M. Butler in her "Myth of the Magus" series. that is,
seeing that an understandable emphasis on tools and accoutrements
became fashionable within the magic of ceremonial magicians, a 
kind of 'backlash movement' began amongst ceremonial magicians
to exalt the liberty as well as the mind and consciousness of 
the successful mage as not in fact needing any tools or 
indeed rituals *at all*.

this applies in all 4 levels of examination of 'what happens' 
about which you might have been asking: 

sociologically if people notice that the wrong (or no) tool 
is being used then they may not have the confidence in its 
results and (speaking strictly from a sociological evaluation 
of magic and its results), this can cause problems.

psychologically, if the magician or others notice that the wrong 
or no tool was used then it may influence the mechanism that 
serves to effect the change being sought. it may certainly 
affect their *attitude* about the event, and if (speaking now
*metaphysically*) what matters or counts as regards how magic
works is how people *think*, then this could also cause problems.

anthropologically, whether as part of a deception or, as you 
have suggested it, as from the circumstance of an emergency 
situation, the fact of the matter is that most magicians do
extemporize and, lacking some specific component of a spell
they have previously devised, inherited, or dug up from some
august grimoire, will improvise a substitute without the need
of (what you humorously referred to as) dispensations. this
typically has its exceptions in august grimoires where 
formulae are specific as requiring difficult-to-obtain 
accoutrements, to which Dave might have been referring.

seeing as there is no central authority in the general 
ceremonial magic community (as compared with the Roman 
Catholic Church with her Mass Transubstantiation magic),
there is far less to require that any kind of dispensation 
need be made. the aggrandizement of the successful mage 
'not needing the crutch of tools' plus the heterodoxy of 
Chaos magicians' assertions that 'nothing is true' and 
'everything is permitted' certainly makes room for 
this amongst those to whom you are referring.

the problem in concisely responding to your query is in
part the terminology that you are using and the premise
from which it proceeds. if a "Ritual Magickian" is in 
fact a ceremonial magician, then under what kinds of 
circumstances would she "need to conduct a rite in an
emergency"? are there ceremonial first aid rituals that
are conducted on the battlefield or in a disaster? 

the only example with this premise that i can conceive 
within ceremonial contexts would be defensive. they are
conceived as being required immediately in the instance 
of what is called 'magical battle', and this between two
rival magicians (several examples of roman a clef come 
to mind, Crowley's "Moonchild" amongst them) or between
a magician and some adverse entity, agent, or 
intelligence (a demonic attack, for example). 

in such a case as this last the usual literary end
is that only superior and powerful magicians may win 
in battles without their proper power tools. it is 
in part an element of the plot that they are caught 
without their wands extended, as it were (see this 
in the recent Harry Potter stories).  

in my experience and in reflection of actual mages
outside of storytelling and the drama interior to 
ceremonial lodges, the usual convention centers on
such treatises as "Psychic Self-Defense" by Dion 
Fortune, and typically extends into psychicism by 
my measure, or the reliance upon components that may
be summoned from the mind of the magician (by word,
gesture, or thoughtform).

in the case of magicians outside the ceremonial style
who may utilize ritual to effect their magical aims,
it is rare that they rely upon august magical tools,
or things for which difficulty of substitution will 
be a serious factor. they are comfortable making do
with what may be found within the confines of a home,
a garden, or a forest, and require no special authority
to exercise this most practical finding of alternative.

thank you for your kind attention,

nagasiva yronwode ([log in to unmask]), Director 
  YIPPIE*! -- http://www.yronwode.org/
----------------------------------------------------- 
  *Yronwode Institution for the Preservation
   and Popularization of Indigenous Ethnomagicology
-----------------------------------------------------