This is a re-run of a popular November 2006 article because of the imminent arrival of the movie this week of the Half Blood Prince. The article was written before the publishing of the last book in 2007 and I have left the speculations in that I made at the time.

Any magician can use the material in the Harry Potter books, though the visual results are not Hollywood fireworks but changes of conscious state, which is the aim of spells. Here we go.

In November 2005 I posted a blog entry entitled Become a Magician in which I outlined a simple method that practicing magicians could use to make their "spells" more effective. It’s in the archives. Since a year has gone by and the last Harry Potter book is apparently scheduled for release on 7/7/07, a neat nod to Crowley’s book, 777, I thought to add a little to that posting and a few further hints on the matter of using dog Latin for your spells.

The principle of splitting the magic words so that one is at the beginning of the ritual you practice and one is at the end still applies. Eventually you can achieve the results of an extended ritual by saying the whole word, or words. The subconscious mind has got used to the word that begins the ritual and the word that ends it. Since there is no time in the subconscious it eventually produces the effect of the whole ritual when you say the word(s) you have practiced.

For the magician the magic word is a shorthand for the whole ritual. For the apprentice in the old stories who just overheard the word it is just a puff of air and produces no results, or unexpected results.

If you go on the Web and look up the spells used in the Harry Potter books and games you will see that most of them are in dog Latin that corresponds to Pidgin English. The spells are often not 100% accurate classical Latin, but if the user has the meanings embedded in the rituals using his own English they will still work. I use some of them myself, and thank Rowlings for her inventiveness and ability to connect dots that most Muggles aren’t about to notice.

Since spells are usually used to change the consciousness of the magician it is only necessary to know a few words made of Latin verbs that correlate to the required action, and a small vocabulary of nouns or adjectives to act as the target.

For example, the first Harry Potter spell in any alphabetized list of them is ‘Accio,’ pronounced AXE-SEE-OH. This verb form means ‘ I summon, bring or fetch.’ If the object is out of sight then it is named, and often in English. Accio Portkey, Accio Broomstick, Accio My Broomstick, Accio Draco’s Broomstick. You get the idea.

Examine the PRINCIPLE, not the fictitious example. Unless you are way up there in the Theosophical Adept class you are not likely to be able to cause even a cigarette paper to crawl towards you on the floor. Moving a light pendulum on a tripod with your mind would give you an A+. But using the verb at the beginning of your work and a noun at the end will give you power to move very light things such as memories, visualizations or feelings, after repetition.

Another Harry Potter example that can be used in such ways is the Locomotor spell. In the books the object named after the verb rises in the air and can be moved around. The Latin roots are locus…place, movere…to move, so the result is ‘to move to another place.’

I have used both of these to place memories. I use Accio (plus a Named Memory) to remember something from the past, and Locomotor Jewel/Osco for example so that when I get to the store my mental grocery list is already there and available.

If you have done any magickal work as a runist, vitki, shamanka, bruja, streghe, GD ritualist or whatever, you have the ability to visualize a rune, bind rune, or a magickal sigil that corresponds to the target of your will, simultaneously with the magick word. With constant practice the result in you will be instantaneous. It will not be noticeable to others unless they are clairvoyant and can see the changes in the energy field.

If I want to remember something from previous incarnations I use the same principle and the rune KENAZ. Constant association with an Akashic Record ritual produces an opening of the Akashic filing cabinets and the required item appears in consciousness. If you know how to make a sigil representing whatever you want, by using the standard 30 dot circle and the alphabet, then the combination of word and visual is very powerful.

If you suspect that someone is shooting you a line or you need to see through what is happening you can use your own version of Harry Potter’s ‘Specialis Revalio.’In the books it is used to make something reveal its hidden secrets. Hermione uses it to find out more about Harry’s Potion-Making book in The Half Blood Prince. The peerless expert Snape uses a similar spell meaning ‘Reveal your Secret’ on the Marauder’s Map in The Prisoner of Azkaban.

You can use such a spell outside Hogwarts by using the PRINCIPLE. This is the concept of light making something more visible than before. With practice you can use your version of the word when you think someone is trying to deceive you. You use the word mentally and send it, or your associated sigil along a visualized beam of light joining your solar plexus to theirs. The thoughts that immediately enter your mind are the thoughts they are having at that moment.

As a young magician in the 40’s and for many years after, I used the words ‘Show me.’ By an interesting coincidence the new DaVinci Tarot deck with all its drawings by Leonardo and arranged by the ace Celtic writer Caitlin Matthews, uses the Florentian or Italian equivalent as ‘dimmi.’ The ancient Latin root is monstrare, from which we get the word deMONSTRate. I recommend ‘Show me.’ It worked for decades for me in all kinds of circumstances. After saying it you must go into hyper alert mode. You never know where the clue is going to surface.

Here is an example of the use of Accio or Show me in a case where visualization is important. I mention this one because I could not visualize until I was fifty years old, and was very surprised after fifty with how effective this kind of spell is. Among my metaphysical activities is the creation of numerology reports for clients.

A very complex part of the chart entails knowing a table that has three columns labeled Creative, Vacillating and Grounding, and four rows labeled Physical, Mental, Emotional and Intuitive. In this twelve piece grid are all 26 letters of the alphabet showing how the letters in the name of the person affect the twelve life areas mentioned. There is no perceptible pattern. Some table blocks contain only one letter, others have four. I was very surprised first time I used an Accio type recall spell and found that I could see the whole table in my mind’s eye and just read off the various qualities of the letters like reading the table in front of me. Someone who has been able to visualize from the get go would find such a spell very useful.

Any of the two part spells in Harry Potter can be used as patterns for your own, and it’s a lot of fun accessing the ingenuity of Rowlings. The one that Hermione uses a couple of times to repair Harry’s beaten up spectacles is ‘Oculus Reparo.’ By using any other Latin or English noun before Reparo you have a creative spell. You could substitute Deleo, ‘I destroy,’ and have another bunch of material. Can be used with a hangover or a mental block, or some handicapping fear. Other forms you could use are faceo…I make, creo…I create, and so on. Any first person form of a verb can be used and these are shown in Latin dictionaries. I get mine at library sales.

The Swiss Army Knife of Latinate spells is Fiat! In Genesis, in the Latin Vulgate, God says “Fiat Lux.” Let there be light. You can use it with any noun or adjective with practice as indicated. For example, before I start my workout I always say, “Fiat Potens!” It only took about three weeks to begin to have an effect. Potens is Latin for ‘power,’ as in the words potent, and potential. When feeling chilly you could use “Fiat Calor.” Let there be heat. By working with it, it will work with you. Not first time, but as your nervous system adjusts to the words.

Many people nowadays have realized the advantage of being in alpha or even theta consciousness before they study or do something requiring the use of right and left brain simultaneously. Lots of people use the method of counting backwards to go into alpha. By adding a word at the beginning and the end of your count you could eventually go straight into alpha by saying the words together.

If you realize in your dream that you are dreaming you can use your spells without the handicaps of the 3D material world. To make your dream lucid you deliberately make a movement in the dream with your right hand. Then the resting left brain consciousness awakens in the dream and you can use speech to change the dream as you please. As you can change your visual images at will in a conscious state, so you can do the same in your dream with very interesting results. Latin for ‘to fly’ is volare. A favourite activity of mine in lucid dreams.

Another PRINCIPLE is in the incident where Draco made Hermione’s teeth grow with the spell ‘ Densaugeo.’ You will see the teeth part in Dens…from which we get Dentist, and the grow part in augeo, from which we get augment. Hermione had the spell ‘Reducio’…make smaller, used to make her teeth smaller and more attractive than they originally were. So you could use an Augment spell for anything you want to become greater, like temporary strength or heat, and it always pays to have an opposing spell ready, just in case. Remember Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

You can make any spell into its opposite by using the prefix…dis, as in disappear, distrust and other English words. As long as you and your subconscious agree on the meaning the word will have an effect. You can see the principle in an orthodox Tarot deck. The Magician rearranges the four elements on the altar of awareness. You can see him doing it on the card. Then the arrangement becomes a law of the subconscious in the scroll of the High Priestess and flows from her robe as water, throughout the rest of the Trumps. That’s how you originally made the laws that run your life from behind the scenes.

Using the principles mentioned you can make the laws obvious to you with ‘Accio’ or ‘Show me’ and then Dis them if they are not too your liking. This is real magick with real results that even other people notice, IF they are alert enough to notice you have changed habits for example. Sometimes people do not see you at all, only a memory of you. They may still be bugging you about not smoking six weeks or even months after you stopped, because they don’t see you in present time.

Many people I encounter in my counseling activities have power or totem animals. The Harry Potter spell to energize these into activity is ‘Expecto Patronum.’ This literally means ‘I expect (or welcome) a guardian’ In ancient Latin patronum was also used for ‘father.’ In the books the expected patronus (defender) is a power animal associated with the young magicians.

In Harry Potter’s case his guardian takes the form of his father’s animagus which was an Elk stag. This indicates that Rowling knows quite a bit about magick. Algiz is the rune of protection in the Futhark and Uthark runes and its literal meaning is Elk. Hermione’s patronus is an otter, which is symbolic of feminine magick and Dumbledore’s is a Phoenix, which gives a hope that he will return to the land of the living in the last book. You can use your own words to become more aware of your power animal.

Some years ago, as a participant of several pagan groups, I introduced them to Animal essences. These are essences rather like Bach Flower remedies except that a couple of drops of say the Wolf Essence brings out in the group the Native American Indian positive qualities associated with the Wolf. And there are many. The drumming circles where everyone had Wolf Essence were astonishing.

On one occasion a psychic friend came to visit just as I had taken some Wolf Essence. My power animal is the wolf, hence my Lakota name which means Silent Wolf. My friend was astonished to notice that he could now see my wolf clearly. We took it for a walk and it was amazing to see how the dogs that people were walking in the park all got on the far-from-wolf side of their owners. There are about 48 Essences. I remember how one of the group, an ex-Marine Blackfoot shaman leaned weakly up against me and said in his deep bass voice ‘Douglas, that Snake Essence (transformation) really does kick arse.’

If you are interested in applying your magickal words to animals and power animals I can recommend www.animalessences.com No animals are harmed in preparing them and they are a great help to subtle awareness.

The Hogwart’s animagus procedure is sound. You have to be able to produce at will some energy filled and joyful memory when you do the work. This takes you out of the mundane world into the plane of infinite possibilities, as Deepak Chopra says. Your animal helper will usually go straight to the option that helps you most and will bring it back. It will usually be more of a helper than a defender, though it will be available as both in dreams if you do lucid dream work.

The Saint, Don Bosco had a huge grey dog that always appeared and became visible to others whenever he was in danger from the dark places he visited in the slums of Naples. No footpads or bandits stayed around when Old Gris, as the students called him, appeared on the scene.

Rowling has done a LOT of research work that magicians should notice in preparing a skeleton for her stories. There is always more than meets the eye. Hogwart’s houses are very familiar to every alchemist as the four elements of the processes of alchemy. Slytherin is water and Griffyndor is fire…they are always at odds with one another unless some great force unites them into the harmony of the sacred hexagram, the Star of David.

It is the elemental enmity between them that produces the need (NOD/NAUTHIZ in runes) for magickal tools, as it produced the multiverse when the Fire and Ice collided in the Norse creation myth. Ravenclaw is air and Hufflepuff is earth. Alchemists be very aware of examples in the books of solve et coagula…dissolve and coagulate. The sleeping dragons, red, black and white are important processes of alchemy. Remember Hogwart’s motto…Never tickle a sleeping dragon. Nicholas Flamel was an actual alchemist who finished the Great Work and developed the Philosopher’s Stone NOT the Sorcerer’s Stone as some dumb editor renamed it for the American editions. Look up Flamel on the Web.

The names in the Potter series are as carefully chosen as those of Tolkein in the Lord of the Rings, though without his mastery of many ancient languages. Lupin is obviously going to be the werewolf, because lupus is Latin for wolf. His first name is Remus, and Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome were suckled by a she wolf. Argus in Greek mythology is a giant with a hundred eyes. They are never all closed at once. He is a watchman for the goddess Hera. In the book he is a caretaker. None of the names are accidents. Many are from star constellations. The spells are therefore connected in your subconscious with the archetypes that produced the stories of ancient mythology. And we all live these archetypes in our mundane lives.

Before I deal with the Death spell let me indulge a little bit of Douglas trivia. My favorite character in the books is Severus Snape. He is an amazingly gifted wizard with a very miserable childhood history and is playing a double role with tremendous skill in all the books. He is accepted by both Voldemort and Dumbledore as trustworthy and his skill at preventing his thoughts and mind being accessed by others is without peer among all the magicians known. This skill he learned young because of his being bullied and persecuted by Harry’s father and godfather when they were students together.

He has a wizard’s debt to Harry’s father, which complicates matters. He has already saved Harry’s life a couple of times, though he is upset by Harry’s resemblance to his bullying father. I expect him to be an ultimate hero in book seven…the solve et coagula
that brings the water of Slytherin and the fire of Gryffindor together, and enables Harry to integrate his shadow side, which appears to be Voldemort.

His name does not appear to be a random matter. It is the same as the Emperor Severus, who as Emperor of Rome ruled from 193 to 211 when the barbarians were becoming a danger to the Empire. The 80 mile long fortified wall that the Emperor Hadrian had built in the North of England to keep out the barbarians was being threatened more and more. Right up against that wall is the village of Snape. Right on the border of two opposing factions. Probably his name is not a coincidence.

And it doesn’t make me feel bad as a solo Celtic magician, with a miserable childhood and a birthday of January 9th to know that soloist Snape’s birthday is also January 9th, and that the actor who plays him so well has a totally Celtic gene pool, an Irish Catholic father and a Welsh Methodist mother, two opposing religious groups, just like my father and mother. The actor’s father died when he was eight and his mother brought him up. Mine died when I was nine. We were both brought up in working class homes in less salubrious parts of London. Obviously I will be biased in Snape’s favor in spite of his sardonic façade.

There is much discussion among Potter books fans as to whether Snape was born in 1958 or 1959. On the ‘Show me!’ I thought that Rowlings was connecting with archetypes when she designed her characters I did a 49 year numerology report for Snape for both years. The one for 1959 fits the character MUCH better than the one for 1958. So I’ll go with that.

OK, indulgence over. Back to spells.

I have to go into the Death spell…Avada Kedavra. It is the only spell in the six books so far that has nothing to do with Latin or English. It comes from the Aramaic, the language of Jesus, and means roughly “My speech destroys…” It is unique among the spells that I know in that changing one letter turns it into its opposite, a Making spell. Avara Kedavra…“My speech creates…” This last form is the origin of the old mediaeval spell, Abracadabra, which all Victorian stage magicians used…“As I speak, so it becomes.”

Magicians of olden times used words that were not common in the language of the time. Magicians today do the same. If you have worked hard to be able to change state by just saying a word or two then you don’t want someone on the radio or in the next booth at a restaurant to say it before you have prepared yourself for the change.

The Elizabethan magicians used Arabic words for this reason. Nowadays the chance of the popular media using Latin or Classical Greek is negligible. So I use Latin or Welsh myself, occasionally Sindarin. When Samuel Johnson wrote the first great dictionary of the English language, by himself, he defined ‘an illiterate’ as a person who did not know Latin or Greek. Elizabethan wizards were fluent in Arabic, and didn’t use spoken Latin or Greek all that much because every educated person knew both, and probably Hebrew as well. Times have changed.

Celtic folks note that using Avara Kedavra with care can replace the famous Merlin four line Welsh Making spell from ‘A Elfyntodd’ to ‘necrombor llun.’ So “The Force be with you!” Oðin’s Will. This was disguised in the movies as the Will of Yodin who shape shifted to Yoda, a most unlikely but peerless warrior.

That was where I intended to stop the article, as is probably obvious, but a recent “Show me!” incident may interest you because it involves possibilities in the 7th Harry Potter book and the power of the "Show me" spell to produce mental material.

At the end of The Half Blood Prince Harry and Dumbledore have a hard time looking for a horcrux, and Dumbledore is killed, by request or otherwise by Severus Snape keeping his Unbreakable Vow. Harry sees a little handwritten note in the fake horcrux, a note from someone who was obviously a formidable wizard and an enemy of Voldemort. It is signed with the initials R.A.B. This is obviously a Rowling’s mystery for the last book and I didn’t pick up on who it might be.

But I wanted to know and used “Show me!” Immediately, my wife Shirley who was reading the book at the other end of the living room said, “This R.A.B. has to be Regulus Black.” We had not discussed this at all at this point, and I didn't know where she was in the bookj.

Well, I can take a hint, so I went on a short drive with another “Show me!” and this is what came together…true or not, it shows the dot connecting power of the spell.

Regulus Black is the brother of Sirius Black…both from a family of pure blood wizards. Sirius talked about his uncle Alphard who left him the house Grimmauds. It seems then that the younger brother was named after this uncle and would therefore be R.A.B. Regulus we are told, became a Death Eater, tried to leave and was killed by Voldemort. We are not told how, or where, or when.

“Look at the stars.” I was told. So I did. Sirius is a star in the constellation Canis Major, the Great Dog. It is called the Dog Star. So Sirius Black means Black Dog, by connecting those dots. And Sirius in the book, as an animagus, is indeed a black dog. Do the same to Regulus. This too is a star, the 25th brightest in the sky. It is in the constellation Leo the Lion. A lion is a big cat.

There are three cats in the story so far. Sirius said of Crookshanks, Hermione’s ginger cat… “This cat isn’t mad. He’s the most intelligent of his kind I have ever met.” Crookshanks is said to be half cat and half kneazle, which explains why he is always after Scabbers, who isn’t a real rat, but Pettigrew in animal form. Crookshanks immediately befriended Sirius when everyone else thought he was a murderer. My conclusion is that Crookshanks is the animagus Regulus Black hiding from Voldemort and that he will play an important part in the last book. All this from “Show me!” and it might even turn out to be true as well. We just have to wait and see.

Please note that Gatesofhorn.com is in no way associated with J.K. Rowling, Scholastic, or other companies involved in the production of Harry Potter. Herein we discuss the wildly popular fiction series, in an editorial fashion and in a way we believe benefits the author and the publishers of her work.