Images by Jack MacBeth


These stellae designs were created by the Artist to encrypt salient aspects of the work pertaining to the various elements within the book entitled ‘The Totemic Invocation of the Shadow Selves’. The illustrations are an integral aspect of the book, as a result much of their significance is lost, when they are stripped from this context. However, the beauty of such images in their symbolic nature is such that they are able to be understood by dint of common or recognisable glyphs, whilst allowing the observer to draw their own conclusions as and when different aspects present themselves for attentive scrutiny. In this way they are intended to stimulate key ideas, ritual descriptions and contextual information without obliging the observer to specific interpretation.


The Images themselves serve the following purposes:

In their inception and design the Artist is able to explore and consolidate ideas and gnosis, that have lead up to their individual creation, focusing upon specific elements within the mysteries of Otherness.

That through the chance expression of lines upon paper, further aspects of such mysteries are revealed to the Artist by the power of the Other to affect subtle manipulations of hand and eye.

With repeated exposure to the images in meditative states, the Artist is able to enter into the particular frame of awareness anchored to the image, by sign, sigil and symbol. In this last respect the stellae operate as focal points, to explain, allude and evoke within the sorcerer the mysteries of their outer form.


The following descriptions of the images should not be considered definitive, or even accurate to the original intent behind their creation. The magical currents are self-realising paths of wisdom. Observers should gauge the images as their own Daimon dictates.


The Stellae - Cabaal’

The entity of Otherness, within the book from which these images hail, is particularly focused upon the atavistic nature of the Negative-self as a means of directing the sorcerer’s awareness towards the extremity of the horizon of perception. Thus we find within this first image a representation of the entity grotesque. His navel, crowned by a star of nine points, symbolises not only the commonly understood number of Yesod, but also a number that plays a particular significance within certain Blackman formulas underlying much of this field of work.

This stellae in particular concerns the subject of the primal transformations. Thus we find compound sigils, of various names and spells arcing over its form, relevant to such praxis. Beneath the entity, as foundation bedrock, four sigils of the night-side sphinx, are laid down, and bound together by a sigil encoding a spell of unity. This entity is a momentary refraction of the night-side sphinx, a glimmer of the sorcerer as a seething and perpetual transformation of Nu-flesh.

The three sigils below the night-side sphinx set, are formulaic, concerning the activation, re-alignment and advancement to the sorcerer along a regressive path towards the primal source, depicted below as the Black Dragon. This form is venerated within the mysteries of otherness, for its symbolism of the eternity of transformation, for its use as a gateway or point of egression into otherness, for its notions of ‘absolute beyond’. The first spark of manifestation from the primordial of the mundane, into the magical awareness we call the Nu-Flesh.


‘Heru-Ra-Ha the Headless One’

During the period of this working the author utilised the dualism of Ra-Hoor-Khuit and Hoor-Paar-Kraat, to designate the divisions of solar consciousness and wakefulness (RHK) against the lunar and dreaming selves (HPK). The perceived unity, or re-alignment, finds its form in the Daimon of totality, called Heru-Ra-Ha, symbolically given as the fusion of the two sphinxes, black and white. Headless is the centrality, for its form is beyond the quill in hand, faceless is he for he is unmanifest until the moment of re-alignment, whereon the unveiling of his visage is the completed expression of the mystery itself. A black sun blazes above the enthroned figure of the Blackman. Within this system of sorcery, the blackfire/sun is used to designate the concealed flame of initiation. The sun is given nine rays, again to identify it with the Blackman, who (as with the blackfire) dwells at the heart of the mysteries of otherness. The blackfire and the Blackman are thus interchangeable forms, one masking the other. The heart of the black sun (also emblematic of the sun at its darkest hour - total eclipse- in conjunction with the moon) carries with it the traditionally recognisable form of the ‘eye in the triangle’. This form is understood within this stellae to describe the ritual awakening of ‘I’ within the evocatory triangle, into the perceptual position of otherness entire. The transmutation of I into All-Otherness. At the bottom of the image, the mithraic bull shedding a single tear. He kneels upon the glyph of MAAT whose word is truth, there in sacrificial submission to be slain by the dragon of space. He serves as the nourishment of the sorcerer within the transformations of I into the serpentis child of the dragon (QTB 17).


‘Ixaxaar - the gates of Ingress’

No comment is given.


‘Itlachiayaque - the Mirror of Tez’

A black disc of obsidian finds its centrality within this image. It contains within it three aspects; of eye, of smoke rising, and of fluid flowing. Again, the black mirror is likened to the Blackman, and the blackfire, for they are all bound to one another within the mysteries of otherness. The magic of the mirror is not so much that it allows the sorcerer to see far away places, but rather that it allows us to see ourselves. However, unlike a regular mirror (magical in its own way) the black mirror allows enough ambiguity to enter into the field of vision that we are able to ritually distort the reflected image, and through engagement with procedures laid down within the book, develop an ability to experience ‘The Gnosis of the Hundred and One faces and None’, whereby the sorcerer is blessed with the vision of the visage of the blackman, Ourself as the negatively existent ‘entity of all-otherness’. This concept is expressed by the form of the mask emerging from the mirror, behind which nothing radiates, and from which reality is torn asunder within the formula of the great enchantment of the un-creating.


‘The Formula of the Rite - the Meeting place of the Cross’d Roads’

This final stellae encodes the entirety of the ritual work as laid down within the book. At the bottom of the image the circle of art rotates as the dervish upon the point of centrality ‘NOW’. This is the heart of the junction. The pillar of I extends vertically passing three aphorisms of ‘that-which-is-not’. The pillar encounters the same circle, but relocated with a centrality of Otherness. The four totems employed to build the night-side sphinx gather at the edge of the circle, united by various aspects of negativity typified by four abysses. The Serpentine eye at the heart of the circle, is again reflected within the inverse pyramidal form of the Blackstone (again sharing iconographic status with the Blackman / blackfire / black-mirror). The black stone features prominently within this working as a fetish item and nexus point of otherness, providing the sorcerer with an externalisation of Ourself upon which to work. The four animal totems, whose sigils are bound into the four triangles of evocation -outside the circle of arte- are united within the pyramid form and bound unto one another by the inverted base of the square, housing once again a glyph signifying the Other in it totality.