By A. B. Neilly
As a magician, I must choose carefully which grimoires I dedicate my time to. A Working sometimes can take years to complete, and life is short.
Some Left-Hand Path initiations are part of what I call High Risk Spirituality (HRS). It is HRS because you are in contact with archetypes who are chaotic and who can take a piece of you if you let them. In fact, they do. This kind of work is better done when you have detached yourself from your ego as much as you can, not taking seriously your misfortune or success.
Michael Kelly has many books, but the two I have worked with are Apophis and the Grimoire of the Sevenfold Serpent. Those two books in tandem are needed to get initiated into the mysteries of the serpent that devours the world.
Apophis is the serpent that is beyond creation. It coils in the Void, a void that is previous to any creation, and it eats everything that comes close by. It is the black hole of mythology, the dark force that is beyond any manifestation. The place where everything comes to die, but also where it is created. The initiation of Apophis is that of the Void. We can only face it with an egoless state because anything you bring with you will disappear.
The book Apophis is about theory. It talks about Leviathan, another of Apophis’ names, and its seven heads; the meanings that come with each head and what we can get from working with all of them. Every head is a door to mastering one aspect of ourselves and the universe.
The Grimoire is where the Workings are. Beautifully written, with a word choice that spark our imagination, these Workings are an evocative threshold to the Void and the Creative power.
I have read the books, and I have completed the Workings of the first five heads. These are my results.
Rhythm:
I’m a slow magician. I think a year for every head can really give a taste of what they offer, but if you like to drink it all fast, just go for it. Just be aware of how much you can do take to avoid breaking down. This stuff is not for weaklings. I’m serious.
Experiences:
After I made my drawing of the Seal of the Eye of the Serpent, I spent a tough night. I opened my eyes, in the thin veil between being awakened and the realm of dreams, and I saw the eye of the serpent coiling over the shelf that was in front of me. It was looking at me, and I knew I was drowning in the Void that was inside. I woke up, scared, and then I went back to sleep, and again, the serpent coiled and looked at me. It was terrifying, but I took the dreadful night as a good omen of having tapped into something. There was power behind these grimoires.
Practical effects:
As I told you, I have only gone through the first five heads. It’s over one and a half years since I did the fifth, but I think I’m still getting around everything I discovered about myself. I’m afraid when I do the sixth, I will probably end up levitating or something, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. As I told you, I’m a slow magician.
They say it is for fools to do the same and expect a different result, but the additional element, magic, changed the whole thing.
When I worked with the First Head, the Scorpion Head, I had been doing fitness routines for five or six years. Although I had improved a lot in the gym, with Pilates and weights, I could not establish a running routine because every time I tried to run, after a few weeks of training, I would get injured, and I had to start again. It was frustrating because it was like the Sisyphus’s curse, always starting the training and never ending it. No improvement. Then I did the First Head Working. I invoked the Scorpion Head with my partner, Arthur Curtis. I think we did it in the desert of Tabernas, but I have to check my diary to be sure. Anyway, I did the Working, and I continued doing what I had been doing the last five years, starting training. They say it is for fools to do the same and expect a different result, but the additional element, magic, changed the whole thing. I didn’t get injured and two years later I could run a 10 k race and finish it. The First Head is about mastering our own body. After four years, the effects had faded away, and the injuries came back. That’s something Michael Kelly says in his book. You need to reconnect with the Heads if you don’t want to lose the effects.
The Second Head is called the Thunderbolt, and it is about mastering the mind. With this head, I joined a Tibetan Buddhism meditation group and I achieved levels of a clear mind I had never got before, not after decades of practicing Western Esotericism. The magic was not to join the group. What the serpent did was to create such a motivation by which I got to levels of initiation in this group that still today keep me connected to them and getting into deeper levels, where my ego is no longer my master. I find my ego cute and necessary in my daily life, but not very useful in initiatory practices, so I try to keep it on a leash. I think it is time to reconnect with it because my aim is finally fading away.
The Third Head is the Hyena. While working with this, I asked for clairvoyance. I successfully trained to scry with a crystal ball and I saw many things that were related to the questions I asked. The most strange things, four or five months before the Pandemic, I was making a side Working, scrying, and I saw a sickness that killed lots of people and the angels I were working with said: There is no salvation. I was so bothered I had to stop that Working, thinking I was just poisoned with my feverish imagination. Terrible enough, the Pandemic arose, and I understood what I had seen. Another thing you can master with the Third Head is Lucid Dreaming. I recently had a strange dream that told me I need it, so next time I invoke the Third Head, I will focus on the Lucid Dreaming training.
The Fourth Head is the Serpent. It means detachment. During this period, I cultivated, through meditation, a distant look at my own emotions and feelings, letting the patterns unravel themselves in front of me. Also, during this period, I had to detach myself from a group I had grown very fond of, and that was very painful, but at the end it made me realize the source of my needs, and how I no longer had those needs. It was eye opening at such a level I’m still profiting from that insight. I was truly free from unconscious needs that had been a heavy weight on my life.
The Fifth Head is the Raging Lion. There are few ways in which you can work with the last three heads. You just invoke them and see how your life unravels. This one is about the passion. Once you are free from the patterns that had enslaved you, you can find who you truly are and create a life that suits who you really are and what you truly want to do.
“This is the hardest and longest Work of all the heads, because it demands sacrifice and real life change, which we are often fearful of committing ourselves to.” Michael Kelly: Apophis, p. 64.
With the Fifth Head, I discovered the principle that informs me, that is the source of magic, Heka, and I realized I had to work for Magic to come back to the world, free and available. It gave me the strength to start Heka-ICRE, and I am working on it every day of my life, with every article, with every person who reads it. As Michael says in his book, it will be a long time before I’m ready for the next head. Another thing Michael told me on one of our calls is that you discover things that made you happy when you were a child, and now you go for them with a lot of passion. That has happened to me as well. I have rediscovered the pleasure of playing the piano, and I love it more every day.
Conclusion:
Apophis is a powerful entity. It delivers whatever you need, but it claims sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Self to the Self. If you are willing to make it, you can find the books on Amazon. Also, Michael Kelly has a Patreon site where you can find advice and other people to share experiences and get advice. But be aware: not everybody can deal with it and come out in their right mind. You have been warned.
Links and Bibliography:
Michael Kelly Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3389166
Kelly, Michael: Apophis. https://www.amazon.com/Apophis-Michael-Kelly/dp/1456336185/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=apophis&qid=1631891665&sr=8-1
Kelly, Michael: The Grimoire of the Sevenfold Heads. https://www.amazon.com/Grimoire-Sevenfold-Serpent-Michael-Kelly/dp/149956533X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+grimoire+of+the+sevenfold&qid=1631891733&sr=8-1
A. B. Neilly is a magician, writer, philosopher, astrologer and founder of Heka-ICRE.
AHH interesting I was just playing a song about Apophis this last week maybe it's a subtle calling, I shall get your book