Low Magick by Lon DuQuette (the reading strategies book TXT) 📕

It must have been quite a scene—a large man in a black robe sitting on the couch and dangling his wand and pendulum like a tiny fishing pole over each Scrabble tile while asking out loud to (seemingly) no one in particular, “Is this a letter in name of the demon of Our Lady of Sorrows?”

About ten minutes later, the pendulum had chosen only three tiles, which I set aside (still face down) while I put the rest of the tiles back in the box. Then, one by one, the pendulum determined the order of the three letters in the spirit’s name. I then turned the tiles over and, voilà! The name was revealed.

It was a funny looking name with no vowels: S L G. Would that be pronounced Slug? Slog? Slig? Sloog? Slyge? Sludge? I had to admit “Slug” sounded like a perfectly proper and nasty name for a demon. If these were Hebrew letters, they would probably be (Samekh), (Lamed), and (Gimel). Each Hebrew letter also represents a number. In this case Samekh = 60; Lamed = 30; and Gimel = 3. Together they total 93.

Now, 93 is a pretty important number for many modern hermetic Qabalists who, like me, subscribe to the magical doctrines of Thelema,104 and the watchwords “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” and “Love is the law, love under will.” If you’ve ever corresponded with a Thelemite, you’ve perhaps noted that we begin our letters and e-mails with the former phrase and close with the latter. The words “will” and “love” in Greek are “thelema” and “agape” and each enumerate to 93. In informal communications and in social settings, Thelemite magicians often abbreviate these phrases to their numerical essence and simply greet each other with a friendly, “93.”

This amused me at first, as if the demon were being playful. My amusement soon cooled as it occurred to me that the “S” in the spirit’s name could also be treated as the Hebrew letter (Shin), whose number is 300, and in that case the name Sh L G would add to 333.

I realize that not everyone reading this book is a magician or a hermetic Qabalist, and therefore should not be expected to appreciate what all the fuss is concerning these numbers. But, for many modern magicians, no number carries more terrifying implications than does 333. It is the number of the archdevil Choronzon, the dweller in that horrible pathless anti-region of the Tree of Life known as the Abyss.

Every magician, as he or she ascends the evolutionary ladder of consciousness, is sooner or later obliged to pass through the looking-glass of this Abyss. It is the final barrier preventing the true essence of the magician’s consciousness from identifying completely with that of the Divine. The ego cannot make it through the Abyss; indeed nothing that the magician has heretofore considered “self” can pass through that awful non-place. If the “crossing” is successful, what emerges on the other side is the equivalent of a Buddha—a Master of the Temple—a level of consciousness represented by the third Sephirah, Binah, on the Tree of Life. If unsuccessful, the magician (still clutching to and identifying with the false self of ego) falls into the Abyss and is lost in the perpetual madness of a “false” Sephirah, Daath, closed off and separated from both the divine influence from above105 and the merciful distractions of mundane consciousness from below.106

Now, before any of us gets too carried away here, I want to make it perfectly clear that I presently dwell conspicuously low on the Tree of Life’s initiatory ladder of consciousness. I do not believe that I was on that day, nor am I now, poised upon the precipice of that great initiatory crisis. But at the time I did interpret the numbers 93 and 333 to be an unmistakably personal two-part message to me from the demon, which I will vulgarly and succinctly boil down to something like this:

“93”—Hi Lon. I’ve got YOUR number, Mr. Hot-shot Thelemic Magician! and

“333”—Don’t mess with me. I’m one bad-ass demon!

I’m not going to attempt to further explain the magical nuances implied by the manifestation of these numbers as they relate to the demon’s name and my own magical career; neither do I wish to overstate or overdramatize the significance of either number 93 or 333 in this particular context. It is enough that you understand that for me this bit of Qabalistic information added a new and disturbingly personal spiritual dimension to this operation—one that informed me in no uncertain terms that the struggle in which I was about to engage was inextricably linked to unseen and unrecognized issues relating to my own initiatory journey—indeed, it was my battle, my crisis, my initiation. Sister Martha didn’t know it, but in asking me to exorcise Our Lady of Sorrows she had also retained me to call forth and exorcise a demon from myself. When you think about it, how could it be otherwise?

As for the true and proper name of the demon, I decided to incorporate both spellings and call it SLG-ShLG,107 pronounced Slug-Shlug (very Lovecraftian, I thought).

I created a simple Slug-Shlug sigil by using the large lettered rose from the center of the Hermetic Rose Cross.

Hermetic Rose Cross

Sigil of Slug-Shlug Drawn on the Rose of the Hebrew Alphabet

Sigil of Slug-Shlug

Sigil of Slug-Shlug within the Triangle of Evocation

Drawn on a yellow 3 × 3 Post-it Note

The Pentagram of Solomon

The Hexagram of Solomon

Now that I knew the spirit’s name and had its sigil, I used a Magic Marker to draw the sigil on the front of a circular copper medallion. The medallion was attached to a chain. I would wear it around my neck and show it