As a part of my burgeoning studies in ceremonial magic, I have now performed the Qabalistic Cross ritual every morning for the last three days. I can already feel it making changes to my aura: my crown chakra is rising, my root is descending, and the two stars at my shoulders are becoming semi-permanent fixtures. I had not anticipated these precise changes, but they seem to confirm a theory of mine: I don’t believe that the human aura has pre-configured centers of power. I think that those nexi and meridians are formed as mystics, witches, and magicians work magic – particularly the internal kind.
When I was taking Aikido in high school, and first establishing my magical practice, I read a great deal about chakras, but the only ones I could actually feel were my Third Eye, my One Point – very important to Aikido practice, to the exclusion of all others – and my Root. Of them all, though, only my Third Eye was where I expected it to be. My One Point and Root were both low. The One Point only a little bit, too close to my genitals; but my Root seemed to hover somewhere below my feet unless I sat cross-legged.
It was only after years (and years, and years) of pointed practice that I could detect the others, and they always faded quickly when my practice lapsed. I can still feel them in my aura now, of course: although my practice has not been as regular as I might like, lately, I’m still very near the top of my game. But as I begin this very different regimen of ritual and meditation, I can alread feel them mutating.
Which leads me to wonder (more. Again.) what the purpose of the Qabalistic Cross ritual is. The resources I can find that talk about the why suggest that it is primarily about centering, both in the sense of ground-and-center and in the larger sense of realizing one’s position as the center of one’s own universe (the King of the Kingdom Malkuth, the Keeper of the Garden). But it seems to me that it’s doing more than that.
Is it to begin making the changes to the aura that will be furthered by the Circulation of the Body of Light, the LBRP, and all the rest? is it, as Rufus Opus has suggested of the LBRP, to “season” one appropriately to be devoured by the Secret Chiefs? The answer, I suppose, is the same as always: more research, and more practice, are required.