I had to drive across the city of Houston to find the one copy of High Magick by Damien Echols that was listed as being available locally at a Barnes and Nobles bookstore. I had first heard of Damien Echols and the West Memphis Three from watching Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. Along with the imprisonment of Jason Baldin and Jessie Misskelley, Damian Echols was sentended to death for a crime he didn’t commit. His sentence was based mainly on the fact that he wore black, read books by Stephen King and Aleister Crowley, and listened to Metallica music, in a small conservative, fundamentalist town in West Memphis, Arkansas. A jury was lead to believe he was the leader of a cult and several children were murdered because of a Satanic ritual. It was a modern-day witch hunt. The West Memphis Three were released in 2011, when new DNA evidence came to light. To learn more about this case, you should watch the trilogy of Paradise Lost documentaries and the documentary, West of Memphis.
Echols spent eighteen years of his incarceration on death row and half of it in solitary confinement. He states in the book that magick was the only thing that kept him alive and gave his life purpose. The book documents the practices that kept him alive while in prison. The book is divided into 5 sections: An Introduction to Magick, Preliminaries, Fundamental Practices of Magick, Additional Practices, and Final Thoughts. After a foreward by his friend and supporter, Eddie Vedder, whom the book is dedicated, Echols explains what magick is and how it is different than magic without a k, and why you should learn it.
Preliminaries covers training your mind and reframing your thoughts, meditations, visualization techniques, and raising and directing energy. He explains that magick is a never-ending process and the importance of where and how you direct your attention. There will be doubt along your journey in magick and it is a normal part of the process. Everyone encounters doubt when working with magick, including him.
The next section covers fundamental magick techniques such as The Forefold Breath, The Middle Pillar, The Qablistic Cross, and The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. I first came across the ritual of The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram when I read about it in this book. The LBRP for short, is a ceremonial magic ritual created and used by the the original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and is considered to be the basic preliminary to any other magical work. The only magickal implement is typically a ritual dagger. With it, you can cleanse and create a sacred space. Apprentice magicians in the order were instructed to perform the ritual 1-2 times a day. I have performed this ritual the most in my first year of practicing magick and I was inspired to have a tattoo artist tattoo my right inside forearm with a ritual dagger dedicated to this ritual. This book contains one of the best explanations and set of instructions for the LBRP.
Section 4 covers The Lesser Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram, creating thoughtforms, charging water, talismans, a tarot deck, tattoos, etc. Echols states that “Thoughtforms are packets of energy stamped with a specific purpose or intent.” These thoughtforms exist in the astral and etheric plane and they influence manifestations on the physical plane.
High Magick closes with Echol’s final thoughts on magickal implements, urban shaminism, and the path of knowing thyself. He believes basic techniques are more important than magickal elements, and once stated in an interview that a magician doesn’t seek to escape the world, but to master it. To shape the substance of reality through sheer will power until he creates the world he wants and there is no need to escape.
~ Danny Stygion
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