The Witch's Ladder

Elements and Tools of Fate

INTRODUCTION

This time I want to think about a magikal “formula” that goes by many names: the four powers of the sphinx, the witch’s ladder, the four powers of the magus, to name a few. Widely attributed to the occultist Elephas Levi, the formula goes as follows:

To Know

To Will

To Dare

To keep Silent

Historically, each of these were thought to correspond to one of the four classical elements. To these I will add the four tools of the magus.

To Know = Air = The Sword

To Will = Fire = The Wand

To Dare = Water = The Cup

To Keep Silent = Earth = The Disk

The meaning and mastery of these correspondences not only ensure success in magik, it deepens our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live. This is the goal of the
“great work”.

Their order suggests levels of initiation. Knowledge is at the beginning because we must know what we are doing before we can do it, what we want before we can get it. To do what must be done consistently and persistently requires strength of will. Although knowledge and will are necessary virtues, they are not sufficient. We must dare to apply them. Daring means overcoming doubt and fear which are more potent than ignorance (lack of knowledge) or weakness (lack of will). Finally silence “seals” the working. Speaking of what we intend to do can easily become a substitute for doing it. Speaking of what we have done can arise from pride, or “lust of result”, a kind of nervous coaxing the magik which implies doubt. In addition, when we speak of our workings we might be met with skepticism or even condemnation. This “feedback” can become a part of our inner monologue, allowing the doubts and scruples of others to pollute our intention and dilute our will. In the end, silence might be the most important of these powers because it protects and insures the others.

As valuable as arranging the steps in order is for developing a clear sense of their different potencies in theory, in actual practice, their relationship is more complex. For example, we cannot come to KNOW without the WILL to do so. Further, will can act, can DARE, without knowledge. Such daring without knowledge leads to a different kind of silence, the silence of inevitable fate. Magik is, at bottom, a practice of understanding our fate in order to take a more active role in its’ unfolding.

PREFERENCE TURNS FATE INTO DESTINY

I begin with a distinction between two concepts often used interchangeably. FATE, refers to the hand we are dealt while DESTINY refers to the outcome of how we play it. All deliberate action takes place against a background of preference. If a host offered you chocolate or vanilla ice cream, and you ask the host to surprise you, this is no better than flipping a coin. The outcome of letting someone else, whether a coin or another person, decide what we get is the same as fate.

On the other hand, there is no such thing as a “free choice”. To be a choice at all requires a preferred outcome on the part of the one who chooses. Schopenhauer pointed out that: “We can choose what we do but not what we want”. This means that the desire that founds our choices, the destiny we wish to reach, is something we DID NOT CHOOSE. In other words, the destiny we choose is a matter of fate.

In terms of the four powers, if we say that Silence (Earth) is both the beginning, the ground. Desire (Will) emerges from this ground like wild plants. Some of these will be good for food, medicine or adornment, others will be noxious. This is where Knowing comes in. Knowing carefully separates the profusion of impulses that spring forth from the ground of being to understand their potentials and limitations. In so doing it cultivates what it would like to see more of and suppresses what it would like to see less of. This is the Daring phase because in cultivating we alter the course of events in accordance with our will and knowledge and will, in the end, inherit the results.

Earth (The Silent Inheritance)

Before any GNOSIS there must be something to be known. Neither change nor continuity mean anything except in reference to something that already IS. All of us are born into a specific historical epoch, culture, family, etc. Each of us has a genetic heritage, a birth chart, accrued karma and experience which determines who we are. This is what is meant by FATE. Any intervention intended to alter the course of our lives, from the most mundane to the most magikal, begins in an inherited context. This context can be symbolized in the form of the Disk, Pentacle or Coin, the “tool” that corresponds to the earth. We “inherit” our fate like we would anything else bequeathed to us and, like any tool, this bequest can be used to accomplish several different tasks.

The Earth is “silent” in the sense that fate is under no obligation to explain itself or reveal where it might be open to our influence upon it. The idea that we might question our inherited fate, understand its deep strata and alter its pattern is what magik is about. Although any of us might be inclined to question our fate, not everyone will. Those who do not remain in silence. To break this silence is to speak – to create – ABRACADABRA!

To Know (Wind and Sword)

Knowledge begins in what we learn from others, from books and other people, from experience and introspection. Our quest for effective magik benefits from knowing things like magikal correspondences, the names and powers of various spiritual beings, the structure and meaning of ritual actions, and the lore and technique historically connected with the kinds of magik we are interested in performing. In a word, scholarship.

But the most important knowledge is that of the self. We must know who we are, our deepest desires and fears, what we are prepared to believe about the world and what goes beyond credulity. In the end, no expert testimony or time-honored tradition can be taken as true without some inner ascent that comes from a place we might not be able to know. This “blind spot” is also inherited and will become important when we come to the subject of will. For now, suffice to remember a teaching of Socrates: “Sound mindedness consists in knowing what we know, what we do not know, and that we can never know how much we DO NOT KNOW”.

The Sword of Knowledge dissects the world into things inherited. Things we wish to carry forth and those we wish to leave behind must be distinguished and examined. In winnowing wheat is separated from chaff by wind. Most of us do not wish to bequeath to the future all we have inherited from the past. By wind and sword the mind inventories all we have received, sets aside what no longer serves and cultivates what we wish to endure

To Will (Fire and Wand)

Let us return briefly to the blind spot we spoke of above. There is an interesting relationship between knowledge and will. Gaining mastery in any field of knowledge requires the prolonged application of will. We might even make the argument that will must proceed knowledge if the latter is to be acquired at all. Will corresponds with Fire and the Wand. Wands are “the green fuse” that Dylan Thomas sang of when he wrote:

The force that through the green fuse

drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts

The roots of trees.

And I am dumb to tell the crocked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintery fever.

This force is life itself and life itself is will. When we think the wand we may be reminded of the manner in which such tools are used by a the teacher who directs attention to equations on a black board, the way a conductor directs an orchestra, a shepherd guides a sheep or a cop an unruly mob – the way the magician casts with his or her wand the power that moves objects, makes them disappear or animates their movement. But will itself is blind. What gets studied is what is underwritten by our Will. We do not always, and may never fully know, why we will what we do. This leads to a clash.

THE WAND AND SWORD CLASH OVER THE DISK

Why do we believe the things we do. Reason, (knowledge and the sword) flatters itself that it directs the force of will, but it is will that gathers and directs the power of reason and applies it to whatever it seeks for itself. The sword serves the wand. The wand (Will) emerges from the silence of the Earth, the disk or coin.

The Disk of Earth is a packet of potential. Many things can be bought with one coin. To exchange the coin for something is like the planting of a seed. We release this packet of potential and cultivate it (more on this when we get to Water, Daring and the Cup). What grows from the seed, hatches from an egg or in any other way emerges from that which comes to us from the past, including the very Earth which sustains what ever is planted in it, has its own desire, it’s own WILL. This will is to create anew the conditions from which it emerged. Eagles beget eagles, wisdom begets wisdom. All things that emerge from a realized potential point, like a Wand, to the continuity of that from which the potential emerged.

The wild Earth brings forth a commonwealth of things. Lions prey upon gazelles and the latter, in running in their flight, makes the lion a more keen predator. The Lion never questions its’ will to hunt, nor the gazelle its impulse to run. Neither questions the given, the fate which they inherit, and therefore, neither will come to KNOW. This is the way of all things that move and grow upon the earth, all but one. We alone wield the Sword of knowledge.

With this sword we know the world. We alone among living things, so far as we can tell, can not only imagine a different fate than that which we have inherited, but deploy the tools to bring about a destiny. By spade and sword, scalpel, lazar, microscope and telescope, by logic and mathematics, we dissect the world around us. We try to understand its parts and reassemble it according to a plan. Solve et coagula, the sheep from goats, the wheat from chaff. This is our magik, to remake the world in our own image. For better or for worse, we are as Gods, we might as well get good at it.

THE CUP OF LOVE AND DARING

Our granaries are filled with wheat, our treasuries with gold, our libraries with all of our great notions, we fill our cups with sparkling wine and toast a hopeful future. Tomorrow we will plant and invest and teach the children all that we have known. The name for what we leave to our descendants is a “Will”. What will they make of our bequest? Will they follow the movements of our baton, maintain the furrows we have cut? The answer to this question is our destiny. Our destiny their fate. Do we dare to pour this libation on the field? To cultivate these seeds unto green shoots? Do we dare to say “SO MOTE IT BE”?

AFTERWORDS

As we move into a new season of light and growth let us remember that our fate was our forbearer’s destiny and daring. What do we know of it? What will we make of it? For us, even ignorance and apathy are choices. And these in turn expressions of our will. There is no real silence for us while we live. No way we can avoid the Cup of Daring, to pour out our libation and to speak the magik word. But remember that silence is the end. The future is the spell we cast, the incantation that we sing today. And remember what was said of sound mindedness. The things we never knew we never knew will travel with our words to our decedents. All of our words are magik and all of them contain as much of ignorance as wisdom. Knowing that, what will we say tomorrow?

Blessed Ostara

Frank Callo

Little Meadow

3/12/25