Pause to Initiate Ultramarine Witchcraft Ultramarine Witchcraft is a term coined by scholars in the field of occultism to describe a unique practice that combines elements of magic and divination with the power of the color ultramarine. This mysterious and esoteric form of witchcraft incorporates ancient rituals and spells that harness the energy and symbolism of the ultramarine color. The color ultramarine has long been associated with mysticism and spirituality. In various cultures and belief systems, it is believed to possess powers of protection, healing, and spiritual awakening. Ultramarine Witchcraft utilizes this color as a focal point for channeling these energies and manifesting desired outcomes. One of the key aspects of Ultramarine Witchcraft is the emphasis on pauses or moments of stillness.
His studies paid off; the spirits found him a (first) wife and a job with the Bernard K. Passman Gallery at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas. For the better part of a decade he earned $19.50 an hour designing black coral jewelry for tourists. He then became a bulk purchaser of gold; opened his own jewelry store; closed that store and opened another on an island in the Puget Sound; got divorced; lost the store; and now, twenty-two years later, works at a strip-mall jeweler’s in a Seattle exurb. “The graveyard of jewelry careers,” he called it. “At least I never have to do a ‘get a job’ spell.”
It has survived the coming and going of empires and scientific revolutions; it has outlasted the brutal proscription of ecclesiastical authorities and the indifference of the recent past. Think of them like decentralized movements, King said, like changes in the air you feel to be taking place on a vast scale, even as you have no idea where they came from or what they portend.
One of the key aspects of Ultramarine Witchcraft is the emphasis on pauses or moments of stillness. Practitioners are encouraged to take a moment to pause and reflect before initiating any spell or ritual. This pause serves as a way to connect with one's inner self and attune to the energies present.
Sorcerer’s Apprentice
The wizard’s blog opened thusly: “I, the sole legitimate heir to the ancient magical traditions of King Solomon the Wise, propose to demonstrate his powerful art in its true and proper form so that it will not pass from history unknown.” In the starched prose style of a naturalist, the wizard detailed nearly two decades of spirit conjurations and regular interactions with ancient evil entities such as Paimon and Belial. He alone could do this, he swore. He alone could summon these demons, and bind them. He alone could prove their existence.
The man was not shy about signing his real name: John R. King IV. In fact, he was something of a celebrity among the small yet expanding subculture of dead-serious magicians. On Facebook and obscure message boards, these men (and they’re almost all men) quibble over demonology, teach one another Latin and Hebrew, and share high-resolution scans of archaic spell books. They pool notes and trade conjuration hacks like programmers working with open-source code.
King uses a spell book—or grimoire—known as the Lesser Key of Solomon, which is believed to have been translated into English in the mid-seventeenth century, although it likely contains texts that are much older. King boasted that he followed its instructions “to the letter, neither adding nor subtracting from the ritual.” “In my opinion,” he wrote, “a truly scientific examination of the occult—this art in particular—cannot occur if the laboratory conditions and procedures are not met and thoroughly tested.”
Aside from this fastidiousness, King attributed his success as a mage to his considerable goldsmithing skills. For the rituals of the Lesser Key are centered on talismans made from precious metals, and these talismans require quite a bit of smithing, stone setting, engraving, and forging. The many steps are onerous, and must be undertaken by a magician whose mind is settled and fixed upon his work, on the day and at the hour of the planet involved, in a fortunate place, and during fair weather.
Blood sacrifice this is not. Ceremonial magic is more akin to a legal proceeding than a Black Mass. There are rules to which demons are bound. King claimed to act as a representative of this order, subpoenaing and deposing whom he pleased like a district attorney. The encounters were formalized in parchment contracts complete with looping script written in india ink. “Behold your confusion if you refuse to be obedient!” read one of King’s standard forms.
Therefore make rational answers and be obedient, in the Name of the Lord. Welcome, ______, most noble ______! . . . By that same power by which I called thee forth, I bind thee to remain here so long as I have occasion for thy presence, not to depart without my license until thou hast dutifully fulfilled my will.
When I first came across King’s blog late one summer night in 2019, I felt stunned and exhilarated, as though I’d been electrified by a bolt from the blue. King’s writing shocked me out of a despondency that was not too extraordinary, I don’t think. At the time, I was finding myself bereft of a sense of purpose, as well as a horizon to look forward to. I was despairing over the death of civility, the collapse of public trust, and the obliteration of consensus reality. Existence had been whittled down to the dumb play of atoms and a tribalistic will to power. It was as if malevolent entities had been loosed upon the world, to make sure the center did not hold.
But what if? I wondered. What if you could actually show the world a demon? Not a symbol or conceit, but a living, malign intelligence that transcends the material plane and reacquaints us with our first language: fear. Wouldn’t that change everything? Wouldn’t it free us to know it’s all true?
Reading King, I felt myself vacillate between terror and wonder like a compass needle brought near a magnet. Here was a man who had punctured the airless dome of modern existence, and, what’s more, was really goddamned cocksure about it. “Again,” King wrote, “I invite anyone who doubts me personally to come to me . . . I will be glad to resolve any uncertainties you may have about my life and work.”
So that’s what I did.
Furcas, from Dictionnaire infernal, 1863Page from Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros, circa 1775. Courtesy Wellcome Collection
Page from Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros, circa 1775. Courtesy Wellcome Collection
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King sent me things. Copies of his paintings, for instance. In one, the tentacles of a kraken envelop a Viking longship. In another, a T. rex lunges at the neck of a stegosaur. He worked primarily in oil paints. I was unsure whether this meant he had hobbies, or was Hannibal Lecter–nuts.
I got him to agree to video-chat with me. Onscreen, King was short and slight, a forty-something man built like a gray alien. His head seemed an order of magnitude larger than his body, and his brown hair was both thinning and receding. He counterbalanced this with a thick, full mustache.
King spoke deliberately, with a wisp of a Tennessee accent. He was extremely sensitive to the precision of words, and I could tell this sensitivity brought him less joy than sorrow. Even in casual conversation, King winced at my crudity and malapropisms as though they were shirtsleeve affronts. He, on the other hand, had received the gift of rhetoric from Furcas, a Knight of Hell entreated early in his wizarding career.
I explained why I’d reached out. When it comes to the supernatural, I said, I am as the dorm-room poster: i want to believe . Skinwalkers, Jungian synchronicities, hollow-earth theories, Vallée-ian UFO speculation. With hokum such as this, my credulity can be counted on.
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But my interest, I clarified, while probably morbid, is not merely personal. It stems from a keenly felt, soul-sucking disillusionment. By accident of birth I am a modern, which means I will never know a charmed world. A world of consecrated hosts and faerie-haunted forests, where the line between individual agency and impersonal force is blurred at best. Gone is the idea of a porous human self, vulnerable to immaterial forces beyond his control. Significance has retreated from the outer world into our respective skulls, where, over time, it has stiffened, bloated, and finally decomposed into nothing, into dust.
This decay of faith—in institutions, in other people—is practically audible to me. I exist within a purely immanent culture in which the value of human life has been reduced to the parameters of the marketplace, where little is sacred and even less is profane. And I cannot take this shit much longer, I said.
“At this point, does one not wish for demons?” I asked King.
In fact, he told me, I already had proof of their existence.
“This is something that I requested,” King said, explaining how he had asked the spirits to bring him a middleman who could connect him to the masses. “Not too long ago I said, ‘I would like someone to come forward to get this kind of project going.’ ”
“What you are saying,” I enunciated carefully, “is that I have been touched by a demon?”
“I normally wouldn’t tell people that,” King said. “But, yeah.”
As King breezed past this revelation, my stomach plummeted. My scrutiny turned inward. I reconsidered some weird events of the past few weeks: cockroaches pouring out of a broken light fixture, a ringing in my ears that may or may not have been related to a gas leak, the smell of fresh flowers wafting suddenly over my (unwashed) bedclothes. I tried to make out a pattern, thought I might be seeing fog on the mirror. Then I waved this away as ex post facto wish fulfillment as applied to the vicissitudes of Section 8 housing.
My need to be dispossessed of myself was causing me to imagine things. This would not do. Either King would show me a demon, or I’d force the one he sent to reveal itself.
San Francisco de Borja Exorcizing an Evil Spirit from an Impenitent Dying Man, by Francisco Goya © Album/Alamy
In the weeks that followed, King and I established a routine of video-chatting deep into most Monday nights. He filled me in on his background: Born in Nashville, raised in Memphis, mother was a microbiologist, father was an architectural draftsman. Though not Catholic he attended a Catholic school, and in the fifth grade Brother Larry Schellman taught him about shamans, swamis, and thaumaturges, as well as the Catholic Church’s position on them—namely, that their powers are real but demonically granted. This piqued King’s interest. “I thought, Hey, great, I can get the same powers without needing to be a good person.”
At fifteen he apprenticed with a Native American diviner named Harlen, and at seventeen it was on to Fern the witch. They instructed King in intuitive forms of folk magic. After that he studied English literature at the University of Tennessee, then relocated to Crescent City, California, where he bartered an almond-size emerald for lessons in the jeweler’s arts from Eric Smith of Eric’s Fine Jewelry. In his free time, King immersed himself in historical demonology, reading “nearly everything of import on this subject that has been put down in English.”
His studies paid off; the spirits found him a (first) wife and a job with the Bernard K. Passman Gallery at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas. For the better part of a decade he earned $19.50 an hour designing black coral jewelry for tourists. He then became a bulk purchaser of gold; opened his own jewelry store; closed that store and opened another on an island in the Puget Sound; got divorced; lost the store; and now, twenty-two years later, works at a strip-mall jeweler’s in a Seattle exurb. “The graveyard of jewelry careers,” he called it. “At least I never have to do a ‘get a job’ spell.”
As captivating as I found King’s vocational odyssey, I was much more curious about his adventures in the demonic—particularly his encounters with their physical manifestations. For as he had written:
It should be noted that the spirits appear visibly and speak audibly, as they are commanded to do. . . . I would also submit that I am not prone to visions and hallucinations of any sort, nor to fantasies and deceptions; so it is upon my critics to suggest a means by which a rather simple ceremony as this can render a sane person temporarily and predictably psychotic.
These aren’t your shrieking private wants, right? I asked. The demons really do present themselves as clothed consciousnesses?
The spirits appear instantaneously, King told me. There is no gradual rise from the floor or coalescence out of vapor. “It is basic and efficient, and more unsettling as a result of that,” he said. King pointed me to his conjuration of Haures, Duke of Hell and commander of thirty-six legions, known better as the Egyptian deity Horus. This spirit appeared first as an enormous, shaggy, hunchbacked leopard. “Supplicants convene for my adoration. Do not delay me beyond necessity!” it spoke. Then it stood to reveal “a man with a face blackened as if by flame, and eyeless.”
“Who is God?” King asked the demon.
“God is that which can destroy with impunity, demanding worship from whatever it threatens,” Haures replied.
“I found the answer simplistic and unsatisfying,” King told me. Then he clarified: “That a demon would have something worth hearing, and reliable, to say about God is a strange proposition. The spirits cannot be given implicit trust in the least thing.”
Weeks turned into months. Slowly it dawned on me that I was performing the role of Boswell for a man who might be: a) a put-on maestro or arcane troll; b) a fiction writer slash performance artist; or c) a lunatic. But by his own admission King had tagged me with a familiar spirit. Whether or not he was telling the truth was irrelevant at this point. I could feel something squatting on my soul. I needed to see what it was.
I pressed King to let me watch him conjure. Show me a scream full of hooves, I said, or a smile spreading across a pool of blackness. He demurred. He had to ascertain what kind of person I was offline before that could happen. So we made plans to meet at the Okanogan Family Faire, a festival where especially dirty hippies encamp alongside militiaman types in a valley on the far side of the Cascades. For several days, they sing and dance and barter goods and services—mostly drugs. King would be offering tarot readings, but for me, he said, he might perform services that would disclose how demons affect everyday lives, my own included. I booked my flight and dusted off my camping gear.
Illustrations from a Persian manuscript on magic and astrology, 1921. Courtesy Princeton University Library
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In preparation, I dove into the books of magical lore that King had recommended. This was no small task, as mankind’s desire for communication with the deeper, intangible levels of reality is older than history itself. As long as there has been speech, there has been magic. It has survived the coming and going of empires and scientific revolutions; it has outlasted the brutal proscription of ecclesiastical authorities and the indifference of the recent past. Magic appears to be irrepressible as well as ineradicable, which is doubly interesting when you consider that its promises are supposed to never come true.
The magical tradition, in the West at least, is unbroken. According to Stephen Skinner, a prominent latter-day practitioner, this tradition can be traced to millennia-old Egyptian magic, which was formalized and syncretized by the Greeks in Alexandria around the third century bc . This system combined Egyptian apotropaic spells (i.e., those designed to thwart evil influences) with Greek spells intended to fulfill more personal aims (i.e., sex stuff). The resultant Greco-Egyptian magic was codified in a series of papyri, some of which survive to this day.
When a sizable number of Jews fled to Alexandria after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 ad , Jewish magical formulae, divine names, and figures such as King Solomon were added to the practice. (This probably inspired the Talmudic adage: “Ten measures of magic came into the world. Egypt received nine of these, the rest of the world one measure.”) Not long after, Christianity arrived in Alexandria and brought its own elements to Greco-Egyptian magic, the most consequential of which was the reclassification of pagan gods as evil spirits.
The thaumaturgic melting pot burbled away in Alexandria until the city fell to Muslim armies in 641 ad . Refugees smuggled the Greco-Egyptian tradition into Constantinople. Along the way, Mesopotamian elements were incorporated; now Nebutosualeth rubbed shoulders with Abraham and Anael. In Constantinople, Greco-Egyptian magic came to be known as Solomonic magic. This was not spooky saturnine devil worship; Solomonic magic was practiced in service to a higher power, with the aim of binding ill forces and putting them to good use. The techniques were passed down from master to pupil in an underground apprenticeship system until Constantinople, too, was sacked in 1453. The magical tradition hit the road again, this time traveling to Italy, where it was translated into Latin and became the Clavicula Salomonis, or Key of Solomon. As it spread throughout Europe, the Solomonic system fractured into many derivative, incomplete, and often deliberately misleading grimoires, which were acquired in secret, sometimes under threat of death.
Perhaps the most important takeaway about magic, I came to understand, was this: If it were simply made up, then each successive generation of mages would have invented new, fanciful, and wildly divergent systems. But the opposite is the case. No worthwhile magician has ever dreamt up his own practice. At best he modifies or adds to an existing one. The methods of invocation, the forms of the circles, the vestments, even the incenses have changed little, if at all. Magic is inherently conservative in this way. Wizards operate within a canon.
I cracked an eye and saw that the windshield was frosted over. I unbuckled my seat belt, kneaded my face, and took a moment to reorient myself. It was day one of the faire, and I, along with King, his second wife, Jenna, and his childhood friend Andy, had bedded down in the cab of a rental SUV after joining the line of vans, recreational vehicles, and buses queued outside the fairgrounds.
A thin moon was still shining when I exited the vehicle gingerly so as not to wake the others. To the west, tiered silhouettes of blue mountains receded in visibility from ultramarine to smoke-gray. Short, buff grasses grew in the valley along with a few gnarled trees. Eventually my companions emerged, shaking the sleep from their bodies, and huddled around a glass pipe. Jenna appeared to be Canadian through and through—tall, polite, relentlessly sanguine. Andy, on the other hand, wore a beard sans mustache, and had about him the squat, condensed aspect of a fantasy race forced to live underground. “Andy and I have known each other since we were adolescents in Memphis,” King explained. Andy had aided him in his earliest experiments, serving first as something of a guinea-pig-cum-amanuensis. “He’s a wonderful counselor,” King said. Andy took a hit from the pipe, chewed it vigorously, and exhaled.
Once we were allowed into the grounds, we claimed a piece of choice real estate at the intersection of two narrow, hay-strewn lanes. In spite of the temperature, a festal gaiety was rising. Groups of friends were erecting tepees next to camper vans overflowing with grubby children. Ponchoed neobeatniks rambled everywhere. We set to work assembling a cluster of personal tents, communal tents, bartering booths, and a gazebo.
As soon as the gear was readied, King donned his black, waterproof wizard’s robe. He took me aside and whispered in a low, urgent tone that now was the time to drop acid. We swallowed paper blots that King had procured from an associate.
King showed me into his business tent, where he would be giving tarot readings. Inside stood a few folding chairs around a small table covered with sequined fabric. Occupying the space between our faces were kitschy rubber bats hung from strings.
“A lot of this psychedelic consciousness-alteration stuff that will go on at this thing—I think that it’s important to keep this separate from the idea that there’s mystical reality to such trips,” King said, lighting three electric candles. “It’s entertainment of sorts. It’s illuminating sometimes. But what you experience on trips aren’t truths.”
In between tarot sessions with dreadlocked fairgoers, King gave me a better sense of his political and moral framework, which turned out to be a kind of spiritual libertarianism. “While there may never be any agreement on what violates divine laws,” he told me, “there can be a general consensus that it is wrong to suppress free will.”
Though King does not believe in Christian ontology, he sees demons as being evil nonetheless, because they hinder individual will. They exert a nearly constant and entirely negative influence over us. Many really are the gods of antiquity; others are the manifestations of large-scale sociohistorical forces. Think of them like decentralized movements, King said, like changes in the air you feel to be taking place on a vast scale, even as you have no idea where they came from or what they portend. These demons are directors and products both. They are the impetus as well as the sum of all the actions taken by those who’ve sworn allegiance to them in their various forms: financialized capitalism, say, or the politics of resentment. Really, anything you might call up from the scrying mirror of your phone screen.
This is why the wizard acts as an exorcist, never a supplicant, King explained. He wants not to acquire the influence of these spirits, but to be rid of it. He binds them in order to free himself. This is the ultimate task of the magician: to discover his uncorrupted will and fulfill its purpose.
Hours later, we closed up shop and crossed over to the communal tent. By now the acid was making me squint as though my surroundings had been translated inexpertly into my native tongue. It was also emboldening me. I asked King: “Why do bad things happen to you if you’re this all-powerful magician? Why aren’t you filthy rich?”
“If that’s really the test of it,” King answered, “then you can look at—well, what happened to Jesus?” His voice was quieter than usual, but otherwise he appeared to be suffering no ill effects from the LSD. “Jesus is hanging on the cross, and the thief next to him is saying, ‘If you’re God, why can’t you stop this?’ ”
He frowned and continued: “This is my personal calling. When I was younger, I wrote out all seventy-two seals in my own blood. The pact of it was that I would be the world’s greatest magician for the period of my life. . . . If I were to abandon it at this point for whatever reason, I don’t feel like that would go over very well. I don’t really feel like I’m allowed at this point to back out.” He paused to swallow. The matte, phosphorescent sigils painted onto his robe appeared to palpitate in the low light.
The magical tradition, in the West at least, is unbroken. According to Stephen Skinner, a prominent latter-day practitioner, this tradition can be traced to millennia-old Egyptian magic, which was formalized and syncretized by the Greeks in Alexandria around the third century bc . This system combined Egyptian apotropaic spells (i.e., those designed to thwart evil influences) with Greek spells intended to fulfill more personal aims (i.e., sex stuff). The resultant Greco-Egyptian magic was codified in a series of papyri, some of which survive to this day.
During this pause, practitioners are guided to focus on the deep blue hue of ultramarine. It is believed that this color has the ability to unlock hidden realms and tap into realms of knowledge and wisdom. By immersing oneself in this color, one can connect with the spiritual energies that surround them and gain insight and guidance. Once the practitioner has entered this state of deep connection, they can then proceed to initiate the desired spell or ritual. Whether it be a spell for protection, love, or healing, the power of the ultramarine color is harnessed to amplify the intention and manifest the desired outcome. Ultramarine Witchcraft is a path that requires dedication and mindfulness. It is not a practice to be taken lightly, as it delves into the esoteric and profound aspects of magic and spirituality. Those who choose to embark on this journey must be willing to commit to the rituals, spells, and meditative practices that are part of this unique form of witchcraft. In conclusion, Ultramarine Witchcraft is a fascinating and complex tradition that revolves around the utilization of the color ultramarine. By pausing to connect with the energy and symbolism of this color, practitioners can tap into the vast reservoir of spiritual power and propel their spells and rituals to new heights. It is a path that requires patience, discipline, and an open mind, but for those who are called to it, the rewards are immeasurable..
Reviews for "The Aesthetic Beauty and Magic of Ultramarine Witchcraft"
1. John - 2/5
I was really disappointed with "Pause to initiate ultramarine witchcraft". The title was misleading, as there was no mention or exploration of ultramarine witchcraft in the book. Instead, it was filled with random ramblings and disconnected ideas that made it difficult to follow the storyline. The characters were underdeveloped and lacked depth, which made it impossible for me to connect with them. Overall, I found the book confusing and unsatisfying.
2. Emily - 1/5
I struggled to get through "Pause to initiate ultramarine witchcraft". The writing style was convoluted and pretentious, making it hard to make sense of what was happening. The plot seemed disjointed and haphazardly put together, leaving me feeling frustrated and uninterested. I was hoping for a captivating story about ultramarine witchcraft, but instead, I was left with a confusing and poorly written book. I would not recommend it to anyone.
3. Alex - 2/5
I had high hopes for "Pause to initiate ultramarine witchcraft", but unfortunately, it fell short of my expectations. The story lacked a cohesive narrative and felt like a jumble of disconnected events. The characters were forgettable and their motivations were unclear. Additionally, the pacing was uneven, making it difficult to stay engaged with the story. While it had potential, the execution was disappointing, and I struggled to stay interested in the book.