Rituals, and hand gestures

Initiation Into Hermetics, The Practice of Magical Evocation and The Key to the True Quabbalah.
User avatar

Topic author
StGermain
Neophyte
Posts: 42

Rituals, and hand gestures

Post#1 » Sat Aug 18, 2018 10:31 am

Hello Everyone,

It's been a few years since I last posted anything here, I don't expect anyone to remembmer me :D (I was the one who had this bright idea to make a sort of public magickal diary on Studio Arcanis).

Now I've got to the level in Bardon's IIH where I can begin devising rituals as it is written in step IV.
I found the part about finger and hand gestures very inspiring, and wish to work with these first. Obviously, the four fingers would be linked to the four elements, but this is about as far as I got.
I tried looking up sources in the western tradition to get some idea about which elements correspond to which digits with varying success. A few sites I found suggest Fire to correspond with the index finger, Water with the middle finger, Air with the ring finger and Earth with the little finger. Also, this whole thing seems to be a more popular idea in the east, as all the other internet sources I got to were about Mudras and such, which could be utilized, if only I wanted to work with eastern mysticism. As none of these sources had any citation, I am unsure if I want to trust them. The only traditionally western hermetic book I read that had anything to do with this was Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia, as it has a whole chapter on digits, hand gestures, and their numerical values, but nothing on the Four Elemens' correspondence to fingers.

Based on these I suggest the following theory;
The four fingers would be assigned an element each starting with the little finger being Earth and going from there in an order of subtility, so the ring finger would be Water, the middle finger, Air, and finally, the index finger, Fire. The thumb could be used for either Akasha, or vital force. As the exercies teach the student to inhale, and exhale the elements, we need two positions to signify these processes; as well as both hands to work with the positive and negative aspects of the elements.

I am interested in your opinions and thoughts on creating rituals in such a way, as well as any ideas or criticism about how to make it better, or what to use instead.

Have a nice day,
StGermain

This topic has 12 replies

You must be a registered member and logged in to view the replies in this topic.


Register Login
 

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests

cron