Whence the Power of Words?

An Analysis of
Three verbal modalities in "The Bornless Ritual"

Gabriel C. Dietz
2014

The Bornless Ritual is a ritual of evocation designed and utilized by the Victorian Occult
group The Golden Dawn, an organization founded in 1881 by S.L. Macgregor Mathers and
William Wynn Westcott. It is a ritual that is supposed to allow the practitioner to make contact
with his own "higher genius," which seems to be capable of being viewed as both an internal
aspect of the self and an external being simultaneously. This contact was an essential aspect of
the occultists mission to achieve a perfected state. Like most rituals, the rite utilizes a powerful
mixture of verbal modes and physical actions coupled with the manipulation of objects. In the
case of this ritual, as in many others, the words have a particular significance with respect to its
efficaciousness. Tambiah has noted that when an ethnographer asks 'why is this ritual effective?'
the answer, more often than not, is an expressed opinion that the magic lies in the words.1 It is
worth noting that The Bornless Ritual ends with the solemn proclamation "such are the words"
not such are the deeds, or such is the rite, but such are the words. This paper will take up the task
of identifying and analyzing the verbal modes of the ritual in an attempt to discover what the
words can tell us about the culture that practiced it. Why do certain words have power, or rather,
how did various western occultists explain the power of words, and how did this explanation
shift over time? How is the power of words mobilized in the ritual? What does this tell us about
the very particular moment and context in which these occultists were working, namely
modernity?
In his article "The magical power of words," S.J. Tambiah states that ritual is both word
and deed combined, rather than simply "stereotyped behavior consisting of non-verbal acts and
manipulation of objects."2 Moreover, complex rituals entail "...the exploitation of different verbal
forms arranged in ordered sequence" that overlay specific actions.3 In illustrating his point,
Tambiah uses an example from a Singhalese exorcism ceremony practiced in Ceylon. Looking
closely at this ritual, he identified three verbal forms that accompany the ceremonial acts: mantra,
kannalava, and kaviya. The ceremony follows the pattern mantra, kannalava, kaviya, and then
another mantra, and Tambiah insists that the use of this distinct variety of verbal forms utilized
in this particular sequence are constitutive of the ritual's logic.2
Singhalese mantra is what Tambiah calls 'a spell.' It consists of esoteric speech which is
not meant to be heard or understood by anyone other than the exorcist himself. Mantra is
understood by the exorcist to be the language of the demons, rather than human language, and
has been thought to be nonsensical or unintelligible. In fact mantra embodies "a subtle design
which uses the notion of a hierarchy of languages."4 When Hindu gods are invoked, the language
used in the mantra is a slightly distorted version of Sanskrit. When Buddhist myth is invoked, it
is cloaked in a similarly distorted version of the Pali language utilized by the Buddha. When
creation mythology is recited, it is done in the classical literary language of Singhalese. Finally,
when the demons are addressed and commanded, "the words are a polyglot mixture and therefore

1
Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. "The magical power of words." Man (1968): 176.
2
Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. "The magical power of words." Man (1968): 175.
3
Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. "The magical power of words." Man (1968): 176.
4
Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. "The magical power of words." Man (1968): 177.
unintelligible, being compounded of Singhalese, Tamil, Pali, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Telugu,
Bengali, and even Persian."3
Mantras also contain abbreviated myths which lay the groundwork for the next phase of
the ritual, the kannalavva, which is chanted out loud in rhythmic prose of ordinary and
intelligible language which is meant to be understood by the participants. According to Tambiah
it is here that the public aspect of the ceremony begins.5 The kannalavva consists of a sort of
announcement that tells the reason for the ceremony, the nature of the patient's illness, and asks
for the rite to be blessed by the deities. The kaviya, or verses, then begin, which comprise the
majority of the ritual. These are poetic verses composed in the classical Singhalese language of
the 16th to 18th centuries. It is "perfectly intelligible, but yet distinct from contemporary
everyday language."6
The Bornless Ritual bears some striking similarities to this Singhalese rite, as well as
many important and informative differences, but this paper does not set out to merely compare
and contrast the two rituals. It was not Tambiah's intention to suggest that the example should
serve as "a cross cultural representative scheme."7 He utilized this case of the exorcism ceremony
to demonstrate that language is central to magical rites and has as much force as actions (words
themselves are magical acts in the context of ritual), and to show clearly the troublesome
slippage between the categories of magic and religion. This analysis of language modalities in
The Bornless Ritual will instead take Tambiah's example, and the claims he has made based
upon his dissection of language, as the groundwork from which to launch an inquiry into the
power of words and the functions of modalities of speech found in the context of this particular
ritual.
This ritual was first published by Aleister Crowley in 1904 as the preliminary rite for his
8
Goetia. However, the ritual was not originally a part of The Lesser Key of Solomon (the text
upon which the Goetia is based), but was derived and adapted from an exorcism ritual from
Greco-Roman Egypt, first published in 1854 by Charles Wycliff Goodwin.9 The original ritual
was designed as an exorcism, in which an evil spirit is driven out of a victim suffering from a
harmful possession, but the adapted version of 1904 has a completely different objective and
many alterations have been made to it. "The aim of the ritual is to invoke a being referred to as
“The Bornless One”, to whom all spirits, both good and evil, are subservient. This is
accomplished by changing the order in which the ritualist makes key-conjurations. The editor
also chose to re-translate certain phrases into more resonant equivalents, which still preserve the
sense of the original," as well as render the words in a more poetic form to fit with certain
aesthetic notions of what a magical ritual aught to be.10 It is believed that the original editor of
the 1904 version was Allen Bennette. Bennette was Crowley's mentor in the Golden Dawn and

5
A very problematic assertion, but not to be delved into here.
6
Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. "The magical power of words." Man (1968): 177.
7
Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. "The magical power of words." Man (1968): 178.
8
Goetia refers to a practice which includes the invocation of angels or the evocation of demons.
The Lesser Key of Solomon the King (originally edited and published by S.L. MacGregor
Mathers from various MS sources) is the most famous among modern occultists, though it is not
the only text containing instructions for such ritual activities.
9
Originally published by C.W. Goodwin as Fragment of a Græco-Egyptian Work Upon Magic:
From a Papyrus in the British Museum, Oxford University, 1852. A later translation by Hanz
Dieter Betz refers to it as "The Stele of Jeu the Hieroglyphist" in his The Greek magical papyri
in translation, including the Demotic spells. Vol. 1. University of Chicago Press, 1996.
10
Sumner, Alex, "The Bornless Ritual," Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition 1, No. 7, 2004
he left his papers with Crowley when he travelled from England to Ceylon, shortly before
Crowley published his edition of The Lesser Key of Solomon. 9
The ritual came to be much more than a preliminary rite for working with the Goetia. By
the time Crowley had published an edition of it that contained even further edits as Liber Samekh
in his Magick in Theory and Practice in 1929, the ritual had come to be understood as the
invocation of the higher genius, or the "knowledge and conversation of the holy guardian angel."
This "knowledge and conversation" constitutes, in Thelemic terms, the most important element
of "the great work," which is the ultimate aim and crowning achievement of occult practice.11
As such, The Bornless Ritual can be read as a central ritual practice for followers of the Golden
Dawn tradition, and therefore a particularly privileged object of study for gaining insight into a
specific branch of Victorian occultist culture.
The ritual is extremely complex, and contains throughout it many sub-rituals, which are
practiced both by themselves and as parts of other complex rituals in the Golden Dawn system. It
is performed in a temple arranged with special banners, within a magical circle at the center of
which is an altar that is furnished with a variety of sacred instruments that are manipulated in
highly specific, formalized ways throughout. The ritualist is clothed in a specific manner:
"clothed in white, wearing yellow slippers, white sash, and consecrated rose cross."12
Furthermore, alongside the vocalizations of the ritual there is a complex grammar of physical
gestures and formal embodied signs that are utilized continuously by the practitioner. There is
the use of specific incenses and odors, and the ritualist's mind is actively focused on various
tasks of visualization at every step, so that every sense of the practitioner is focused on the task
of performing the rite. In addition, everything in the world of the occultist is engaged in a
complex web of intellectual relations. By means of correspondences organized by a cabalistic
system, every element of the ritual has multifaceted layers of meaning.13
It is important to note all of this because it is not my intention to reduce the ritual to its
linguistic elements and present only a shadow of what it is in reality for the occultist. All of these
elements together, coupled with the esoteric knowledge that the ritualist has at his disposal
regarding every detail of movement, object, visualization, smell, and sound make the ritual an
incredibly rich and potent subjective experience for the practitioner. This paper is not meant to
do the reverse of the work that Tambiah and others have done by undervaluing the ritual actions
to disproportionately privilege the power of words in magical ritual, but instead seeks to
highlight how verbal modes function within the broader framework of ritual action and how the
power of these verbal elements were experienced and understood by practicing occultists.
I would argue that the heightened emphasis on the subjective experience of the
practitioner is one of the key elements that makes this ritual distinctly modern. It is important to
note that The Bornless Ritual, unlike the Singhalese exorcism, is not a public event, but is
usually performed privately. A linguistic analysis reveals that there are three verbal modalities
utilized in the ritual. In addition to these, there are three distinct vocal registers that are used in
the delivery of the words. Both the modes and the registers, in addition to having certain magical
properties in themselves, are designed to enhance the immersion of the subject in the trappings of
the ritual. The modes of speech utilized can be called hymnal, commanding, and the barbarous

11
Crowley, Aleister. Magick in theory and practice. Dover Publications, 1976. "The great
work," or magnum opus, has many and varied definitions put forth by occultists in many
branches of the "science." In this instance, the Crowleyan (Thelemic) understanding (itself quite
multifaceted) is used.
12
Regardie, Israel, The Golden Dawn, Llewellen, 2002
13
See: Regardie, Israel. A garden of pomegranates: skrying on the tree of life. Llewellyn
Worldwide, 1999.
names, and each is delivered in a particular register. The registers will be referred to as intoned,
cried out, and vibrated.
The ritual is broken into roughly eight sections: an opening called "the oath" which has
two parts, and a closing called "the attainment" consisting of two parts, which bookend five main
sections that correspond to the five occult elements of the universe, air, fire, water, earth and
spirit.14 The oath consists of announcing the purpose of the ritual, and the closing announces its
success, as the ritualist identifies himself as the object of the invocation. Each section contains
all three modes and registers in a particular sequence which, much as the Singhalese ritual of
Tambiah, can be said to form the very logic of the ritual. The same intermingling of modes that
can be classified as religious prayer and magical speech is also very evident in this ritual. Each
section of the main body follows the pattern of command, barbarous names, command,
barbarous names, hymnal. In addition there are extended hymnal sections after the oath, and
before the attainment.
The mode of commanding consists of very short repetitive phrases which begin each of
the main sections: "hear me," "Thee I invoke (or alternatively "I invoke thee")," and a slightly
longer phrase that ends each main section which says: "Hear me, and make all spirits subject
unto me, so that every spirit of the firmament and of the ether, upon the earth and under the earth,
on dry land an in the water, of whirling air and rushing fire, and every spell and scourge of God
may be obedient to me."15 The language of command is perfectly intelligible language, but
couched in a poetic and slightly archaic style. It is delivered in a register that is very subtly
different from the main register; it is cried out. Crying out is a slightly higher pitch delivered
with a subtly more distinguishable expression of passion and force. The register is more
noticeable in the short bursting phrases "hear me" and "thee I invoke."
The mode of hymnal consists of enumerating in classical style, couched in poetic form
and slightly archaic but comprehensible language, the deeds and qualities of the spirit being
evoked. For example in the oath we hear: "Thee that didst create the earth and the heavens, thee
that didst create the night and the day, thee that didst create the darkness and the light...Thou
didst create the seed and the fruit..." etc.13 It also contains thanksgiving for blessings as well as
phrases of ingratiation to the being that is the object of the invocation. "Unto thee, Sole wise,
Sole mighty, and sole eternal one, be praise and glory forever, who hath permitted me, who now
kneeleth humbly before thee, to penetrate this far into the sanctuary of your mysteries."14 This
mode can very well be classified as prayer. It is delivered in very formal speech in the register of
intoning, which has a solemn, sonorous timbre.
The third verbal modality is the most complicated, and is the most magical in nature. It is
the usage of what are called the barbarous names. Much like Singhalese mantra these appear to
be utter nonsense, yet have the most magically efficacious significance in the operation of the
ritual. The barbarous names of evocation are thought to be long forgotten names of gods and
demons, or corrupted forms of them. They are a mishmash of ancient Greek, Hebrew, Assyrian,
and ancient Egyptian. Their antiquity is testified to, both in the manuscript which The Bornless
Ritual was based on and in other theurgical texts of ancient Egypt (though they have been further

14
All quotations from the ritual are primarily derived from the edition found in Regardie's The
Golden Dawn (Llewellen, 2002), as it is the most fully elaborated version, but it is worth noting
that it differs from the edition found in Liber Semekh, mostly in its expansion of the hymnal
elements. It is interesting that Regardie emphasized the mode of hymn whereas Crowley focused
on the vibration of barbarous names and kept out any of the ingratiating elements of the hymnal
mode, sticking to descriptions of the deeds and nature of the spirit being invoked.
15
Regardie, Israel, The Golden Dawn, Llewellen, 2002
corrupted by later additions, including Crowley's).16 The Chaldean oracles (2nd Century CE), for
instance, regarding the names says emphatically “change not the barbarous names of evocation,
for these are names in every language which are given by God, which have in the sacred rites a
power ineffable.”17 Even in these very ancient texts the barbarous names were thought to have
been much older still. In matters of ritual or spirituality, greater antiquity went hand in hand with
greater authority, and the names of gods were particularly important in this respect, since the
more ancient cultures were the first to learn the names of the gods and to pass them on. The
names were immutable, just as the gods themselves were, and were the most efficacious element
in theurgical worship in antiquity.18
But it was not only the supposed or very real antiquity of the words that lent the
barbarous names such great power in the minds of the modern occultists, who over time
developed an understanding of the power of words that both incorporated the ideas of their
ancient predecessors and elaborated and expanded upon them in creatively syncretic and very
modern ways. For the antique theurgist the names had great power because they were given to
the ancients by the gods themselves, in the first languages that men spoke. Later occultists both
adopted this belief, and enriched it with further explanation and elaboration.
Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) and other renaissance occultists played a crucial
role in transmitting the understanding of the power of words held by antique theurgists to the
modern occultists who adapted The Bornless Ritual. The rediscovery of many ancient texts, such
as the Hermetic Corpus, initiated a new interest in esoteric religions, philosophy, and matters of
occult practice during this period. Agrippa's The Three Books of Occult Philosophy, published in
1533, represents a synthesis of various streams of occult philosophy. It is an amalgam of Greek
and Roman occultism drawn from classical sources such as Pliny the Elder, Ovid, Virgil,
Apuleius, and Hermes Trismegistus, as well as later writers such as Fecino, and medieval Jewish
cabala drawn from the works of Reuchlin and Pico della Mirandola. Agrippa was the first to
thoroughly blend and synthesize these two streams of esoteric tradition.
In the hands of the early modern occultists, especially Agrippa, the understanding of the
power of words began to be elaborated in terms of correspondences, which had been suggested
by ancient texts in the simple formula of "as above so below."19 In the Three Books Agrippa
writes: "Hence...proper names of things are certain rays of things, everywhere present at all times,
keeping the power of things, as the essence of the thing signified."20 These rays were believed to
be celestial influences that permeated all of creation, and every object had a mixture that was
particular to it. The name of the thing is said to signify the essence of that particular mixture, and
in that way represents a power that is celestial in origin. "For as the great operator doth produce

16
Crowley obviously did not feel compelled by the exhortation of the Chaldean Oracles, since he
revised some of the names in his first edition to make them more cabalistically rational to his
interpretation of the rite. He made even further changes to the names in his final publication of it
in Liber Semekh, wherein he attempted to spell them how he believed they would be rendered in
Egyptian. See: Sumner, Alex, "The Bornless Ritual," Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition 1,
No. 7, 2004.
17
Majercik, Ruth Dorothy, ed. The Chaldean oracles: Text, translation, and commentary. Vol. 5.
Brill, 1989. (Verse 155)
18
Taylor, T. Iamblichus on the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. C.
Whittingham, 1821.
19
Copenhaver, Brian P., ed. Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius
in a new English translation, with notes and introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
20
Von Nettesheim, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Llewellyn
Worldwide, 1993.
divers species, and particular things by the influence of the heavens, and by the elements,
together with the virtues of planets; so according to the properties of the influences proper names
result to things."19 The name itself is derived from its particular mixture of elements, planets, and
celestial rays. "Adam therefore that gave the first names to things, knowing the influences of the
heavens, and properties of all things, gave them all names according to their natures."19
The influence that Agrippa's work had on the Golden Dawn is unquestionably vast.
Macgregor Mathers, in constructing the initial rituals of the order's system relied heavily on
Barret's The Magus. This book was essentially a copy of Agrippa's text.21 The tables of
correspondences that Agrippa constructed are still authoritative in occult groups to this day, and
were utilized and expanded on in the Golden Dawn system. It was through his influence that the
cabala took its place as the central organizing schema of modern occult practice, and the creators
of The Bornless Ritual used the cabala as a means for further elaborating on the power of words,
particularly the barbarous names used in ritual.
This is accomplished through a process known as gematria, a numerological system that
originated in Babylonian Asyria, or ancient Greece, and was adopted by the Jews and
incorporated into their cabalistic system.22 In this practice every letter of an alphabet is ascribed a
numerical value. Words can thus be reduced to numbers which correspond to the numerological
ordering inherent in the tree of life, and a whole complex of associations can be developed
around that word. It then comes into special relations with other words, entities, powers, and
things that correspond in the system. This elaboration made it possible for modern occultists to
make sense, or a whole host of new and elaborated meanings, of the seemingly nonsensical
barbarous names of evocation. Thus, in this process of gematria, a name found in The Bornless
Ritual "Ar," which enumerates to 101 can come to be rendered as meaning "the love" through its
association with the word "He Agape."23
For the modern occultists of The Golden Dawn the names were no longer efficacious
simply because they were the forgotten names of the gods handed down to the ancients (the
Theurgical view), nor were their powers only derived from the fact that they contained the
essence of the rays and celestial powers that they signified (Agrippa's view, also illustrated by
cabalistic correspondences). They contained these powers, certainly, but had further force by
means of a complex elaboration of meaning previously untapped. This emphasis on
intellectualized meaning is significant, as it relates directly to the cultural moment in which the
occultists of the Golden Dawn were living and operating, and gives insight into the function of
the vocal modalities found in The Bornless Ritual.
Agrippa, when he formulated and synthesized his occult system, was fully immersed in
an enchanted world. As a Christian claiming access to the highest powers his system accepted
the name of Jesus Christ as the most efficacious name for the working of wonders. His church
still offered for him and his contemporaries a unified, overarching, and universal system of
meaning. By the time The Golden Dawn was being developed much had changed. Darwin's earth
shattering observations in biology were shaking the once firm foundations of religious faith,
work in the history of religions was seeking to rationalize religious thought, and Freud was
developing startling models of human consciousness. All around, modes of thought that
privileged a mechanistic and rational view of the universe were undermining and fracturing the
irrational and enchanted worldview that Agrippa's work developed in.

21
See editors introduction: Von Nettesheim, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Three Books of Occult
Philosophy. Llewellyn Worldwide, 1993.
22
Opsopaus, John. "Some Notes on the History of Isopsephia (Gematria)." (1995).
23
Sumner, Alex, "The Bornless Ritual," Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition 1, No. 7, 2004.
 As Owens has shown, the occultists of the modern period dealt with this process of
disenchantment in ways that profoundly affected the synthesis and practice of their systems of
magical ritual.24 The elaboration of intellectualized meaning imposed upon the barbarous names
in evocation by means of cabalistic translation is one example of rationality's influence on occult
practice. But the emphasis on the subjective experience of the ritualist previously mentioned is a
crucial element in this development. Under the influence of Freud’s theory of the unconscious, as
the enchanted world was being replaced by a mechanistic one, the place of enchantment retreated
into the hidden aspects of the self. Previously hidden (occult) powers of the mind were posited in
tandem with, if not in place of, the external personified forces of the magic of previous ages. The
Barbarous names then, as well as taking on the more rational and intellectualized elaboration of
meaning, became keys to unlocking hidden potentials within the self that could be marshaled by
the magical will to initiate change in the physical universe. In form The Bornless Ritual is an
evocation in the classical sense, but in function it is distinctly modern. The being invoked is
called the higher genius, a thing that is located within the self of the practitioner.
The modern understanding that developed of how the power of these keys worked was a
response to the disenchanted rise of rationality. On the power of the barbarous names, Crowley
writes in his Magic in Theory and Practice "I am ashamed to say that I have devoted
considerable time to the absurd task of finding meanings for, and tracing the corruptions of, the
'barbarous names of evocation' which occur in nearly all conjurations, and which Zoroaster
warns his pupils not to change, because 'they are names divine, having in the sacred rites a power
ineffable.' The fact is that many such names are indeed corruptions of divine names. We may
trace Eheieh in Eie, Abraxas in Abrae, Tetragrammaton in Jehovah. But this, an initiate knows, is
quite contrary to the true theory. It is because the names are senseless that they are effective."25
This is clearly paradoxical, since Crowley himself changed certain barbarous names in
editing The Bornless Ritual precisely to endow them with more potent cabalistic meaning. But
this illustrates the interplay between the drive for rationality, the intellectualization of magical
words, and the understanding that magic ultimately lies beyond the rational mind. "The most
potent conjurations are those in an ancient and perhaps forgotten language, or even those
couched in a corrupt and possibly meaningless jargon,"26 because the use of these names
somehow allows the mind to get around the rational, and unlock the hidden reservoir of powers
that it possesses beyond its rational functions. So, quite paradoxically, the power of the words
was in elaborated intellectualized meaning, and at the same time a sort of nonsensical babble that
allowed the mind to free itself from its rational boundaries and freely associate with hidden
powers that are inaccessible to the uninitiated. This idea constitutes a psychologization of
magical words that is quite distinctly modern.
As has been stated, the vocal modality of the barbarous names in The Bornless Ritual is a
complex one. It encompasses previous notions of the powers of these words, and further
develops and elaborates them in intellectual and psychological ways that are explicitly designed
to exert a force of some kind upon the subject, as opposed (or in addition) to simply causing
effect by virtue of their influence upon external celestial forces or deities. The register in which
this vocal mode is delivered is also complex, and serves functions that are reflexive upon the
subject.
Barbarous names are delivered in a register which is called 'to vibrate.' Vibrating is a
particular technique utilized in the Golden Dawn system in every instance in which a divine or

24
Owen, Alex. The place of enchantment: British occultism and the culture of the modern.
University of Chicago Press, 2004.
25
Crowley, Aleister. Magick in theory and practice. Dover Publications, 1976
26
Crowley, Aleister. Magick in theory and practice. Dover Publications, 1976
barbarous name is used in ritual, and is absolutely crucial to a ritual's supposed efficacy. The
technique is straightforward in theory. Alex Sumner provides these directions:
When reciting the Ritual, each individual “Barbarous Word” should be “Vibrated” with
a complete breath. That is:
1. Breathe in, imagining that one is “aspiring” to the Divine, and that one is pulling
divine power or Light down through ones’ crown-centre;
2. Contemplate the Word at ones’ heart-centre;
3. On the exhalation, chant or “vibrate” the word fairly loudly, so that you can both hear
and feel it resonating - throughout your chest-cavity and body, throughout the room, and
indeed throughout the universe.27
There are very modern pseudo-scientific explanations as to why this technique is
efficacious. For instance, Donald Michael Kraig, in his Modern Magick, explains that "It has
long been an occult secret that all matter is made of vibration. Today many scientists depend on
this being a fact in their research. If we follow this assumption that all matter is vibratory energy,
then magick becomes a type of science that allows a person to affect vibrations" through a
phenomenon known as "harmonic resonance."28 This is the intellectualizing standpoint that is an
important element of this mode, but what is most emphasized in Sumner's instructions is the
subjective experience that the technique engenders. One should be able to hear and feel the
resonating force of the words. Sumner further emphasizes the subjective experience as the
primary location of the effectiveness of the rite by saying "Performed this way, the 'Bornless
Ritual' cannot fail to leave one with the sense that one is buzzing with magical energy, that one
has indeed contacted one's Higher Genius."29 The technique of vibrating enhances the subject's
experience of the barbarous names by initiating a physical sensation in relation to their use. The
expenditure of an entire lungful of breath, in a deeply resonant mode of delivery serves the
function of causing the body to "buzz" in sympathy with the vibration.
The power of the words in The Bornless Ritual is multi-layered. The words are
understood to be potent names of gods given to the ancients and handed down from antiquity. To
contain the essence and the cosmic power of the things named. To be intellectualized with
elaborated and expanded meanings, and at the same time to be incomprehensible. They were
psychologically transcendent keys that could be used to unlock the hidden powers lying latent
within the mind of the practitioner. They invoke a being that is at once an external power and an
internal aspect of the self. They are delivered in a register that emphasizes this very duplicity: it
is felt within, and heard without, echoing through the universe.
An analysis of the verbal modalities of this ritual shows how the ancient practice of
evocation was received and translated into a modern framework of understanding. There is a
shift in emphasis from appealing to outside forces, to an identification of these forces with
psychological aspects of the self as a reflection of those forces. The effectiveness of the ritual
was not understood merely to be based upon the authority derived from its antiquity, it was
changed and adapted freely. It was the subjective experience that came to be the gauge of its
efficacy. The modern self, rather than the physical world, was the location of its effects.

27
Sumner, Alex, "The Bornless Ritual," Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition 1, No. 7, 2004.
28
Kraig, Donald Michael. Modern Magick: Eleven Lessons in the High Magickal Arts.
Llewellyn Publications, 1998.
29
Sumner, Alex, "The Bornless Ritual," Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition 1, No. 7, 2004.
Bibliography:

Crowley, Aleister. Magick in theory and practice. Dover Publications, 1976

Copenhaver, Brian P., ed. Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in
a new English translation, with notes and introduction. Cambridge University Press,
1995.

Kraig, Donald Michael. Modern Magick: Eleven Lessons in the High Magickal Arts. Llewellyn
Publications, 1998.

Opsopaus, John. "Some Notes on the History of Isopsephia (Gematria)." (1995).

Owen, Alex. The place of enchantment: British occultism and the culture of the modern.
University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Majercik, Ruth Dorothy, ed. The Chaldean oracles: Text, translation, and commentary. Vol. 5.
Brill, 1989. (Verse 155)

Regardie, Israel, The Golden Dawn, Llewellen, 2002

Sumner, Alex, "The Bornless Ritual," Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition 1, No. 7, 2004.

Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. "The magical power of words." Man (1968): 177.

Taylor, T. Iamblichus on the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. C.

Whittingham, 1821.

Von Nettesheim, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Llewellyn
Worldwide, 1993.

To hear a recitation of the ritual by Israel Regardie himself see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9F1eETbKnE