Preface to the Second Edition
First Workings was first circulated in June 2011 as a photocopied pamphlet. Since then it has been copied, translated, and adapted many times, and we have learned a great deal from what readers did with it. This second edition, published in March 2026, makes four changes.
- It removes every suggestion to use purchased tools. Nothing in this primer requires anything you do not already own.
- It shortens the daily stillness exercise from twenty minutes to ten, because a practice that is kept is worth more than a practice that is abandoned.
- It describes the Gesture of the Open Ring more plainly, and states clearly what the gesture does not do.
- It adds a chapter, When to Stop, which the first edition should have had from the beginning.
The first edition remains in the public domain, like everything else the Order has published. Anyone who has a copy may keep it, share it, or republish it.
1. What You Need
You need a notebook that you will use for nothing else, and a pen. You need a quiet place where you will not be interrupted for about twenty minutes: ten for practice, and the rest for the record. You need a regular time of day, kept as faithfully as you can keep it. And you need honesty, which is the hardest of the four to come by.
You do not need a teacher, an altar, robes, candles, incense, a blade, a cup, oils, a membership, or anyone's permission. If you want to use any of these things, nothing in this primer forbids it. But none of them is required, and none of them will do the work for you.
You also need a reasonably stable footing in ordinary life. If you are in the middle of a crisis, whether of health, grief, or circumstance, put this primer aside until the crisis has passed. It will still be here.
2. The Record
Before anything else, begin the record. Every practice in this primer ends with writing, and the writing is not an afterthought. It is half of the work.
For each entry, write:
- the date and the time;
- where you are;
- your physical and emotional state, in a sentence or two;
- what you intend to do;
- what you actually did;
- what you observed, described as plainly as possible and without interpretation;
- and finally, separately and clearly marked as such, what you think it means.
Write the entry immediately after the practice, before you do anything else. Write on every day you practice, including the days when nothing happened. Especially those days. A record that contains only the interesting days is not a record; it is a highlight reel, and it will lie to you.
The Nightside Record treats the subject fully. For now, these instructions are enough.
3. Stillness
Sit upright in a chair with your feet flat on the floor and your hands resting on your thighs. Close your eyes, or lower your gaze to the floor a little in front of you. Breathe through your nose, naturally, without trying to control the breath.
Count each exhalation silently, from one to ten, and then begin again at one. When you lose count, or notice that you have counted past ten, return to one without comment and without frustration. Losing count is not failure. Noticing that you have lost count is the exercise.
Do this for ten minutes every day for thirty days. In your record, note roughly how many times you lost count, and anything else you noticed: what pulled your attention away, what the body did, what mood you began and ended in.
This exercise is not mystical. It is the training of attention, which is the one tool that every working requires. Practitioners who skip it tend to come back to it later, having discovered the hard way why it comes first.
4. The Gesture of the Open Ring
The Order uses a single, simple gesture to mark the beginning and the end of a working. Its purpose is to separate the time of the working from ordinary time, so that both you and your record can say exactly where one ended and the other began.
To Open
Stand, facing any direction. Raise your left hand in front of you, fingers together. Beginning at the left side, trace a large ring in the air, moving down, around, and up, and stop a little short of the point where you began, so that a gap remains on the left side of the ring. Then bring the hand to rest flat against the center of your chest, and state aloud, in one sentence, what the working is for.
To Close
Raise your left hand again and trace the ring in the opposite direction, beginning at the upper edge of the gap and ending at its lower edge. Then turn the hand outward, palm open, toward the gap, and say: "What was gathered is released." Lower your hand, sit down, and write the record.
What the Gesture Does
The gesture is not a spell. Nothing is summoned by it, and nothing is banished. It does not protect you, and it does not charge anything with power. It marks a boundary in time, and it reminds you, at the beginning and end of every working, of what the Order's sign means: the ring is the work, the point is the self, and the gap is the gift.
Practitioners who prefer a different way of opening and closing are free to use one. What matters is that the boundary is marked clearly and the record is kept.
5. The First Working: The Inventory
The purpose of this working is to see the skin you are in.
Preparation
Over the course of a week, write in your notebook an inventory of what you were given before you were old enough to choose. Write what you were taught about gods and the absence of gods, about death, sex, money, work, family, duty, right and wrong, the body, and your own worth. Write one statement per line. Write what you were taught, not what you now think. Aim for at least fifty lines.
The Working
Open with the Gesture of the Open Ring, and state: "I examine what I was given." Then sit, and read the inventory aloud, slowly, one line at a time. After each line, pause, and mark it with one of three letters:
- K, for keep, if you have examined it and choose it as your own;
- R, for release, if you have examined it and reject it;
- U, for unknown, if you cannot yet tell.
Do not hurry. If a line produces a strong reaction, note the reaction beside it. When you have finished, close with the Gesture, and write the record.
Afterward
Do not act on the lines marked R yet. For the next thirty days, simply notice when any of them governs what you do, and note it in the record. At the end of thirty days, perform the working again with the same inventory, mark each line afresh without looking at your earlier marks, and compare the two.
This working prepares the ground for the Shedding, the third of the Seven Coils. Many practitioners repeat it once a year for the rest of their lives.
6. The Second Working: The Descent
The purpose of this working is to meet a fear deliberately, on your own terms, and to discover that you can.
Preparation
Choose a fear that is real but not overwhelming. Do not choose a phobia, a trauma, or anything connected to a real threat to your safety. Suitable choices are ordinary, persistent fears: the fear of being seen to fail, the fear of silence, the fear of being ordinary, the fear of the dark itself. Write the fear down in one sentence. Before you begin this working for the first time, read Venom and Remedy.
The Working
In a darkened room, open with the Gesture, and state: "I go down to meet what I avoid." Sit, and practice stillness for ten minutes. Then, for up to ten minutes more, allow the feared thing to come fully to mind. Picture it. Let it speak, if it speaks. Notice what it does in your body: where it tightens, where it goes cold, what it makes you want to do. Do not argue with it, and do not flee from it. Observe it.
If at any point it becomes more than you can hold, open your eyes, turn on the light, and close the working. That is not failure. It is information, and it belongs in the record.
Close with the Gesture, and write the record: what the fear felt like, where in the body it lived, what thoughts and images came with it, and how you felt afterward.
Afterward
Repeat the working once a week for no more than a month. Most practitioners find that the fear loses some of its grip, not because it has been defeated but because it has been seen. Before you attempt deeper nightside work, read Venom and Remedy again.
7. The Third Working: The Name
This working is optional.
Many practitioners take a working name to mark the self they are becoming. The Order neither requires nor records such names. If you take one, choose it yourself, after some thought, and use it in your record. Tell no one unless you wish to. Open with the Gesture, state the name aloud, and state in a sentence what it stands for. Close, and record.
Change the name when it no longer fits. A name is also a skin.
8. When to Stop
Stop all practice and return to ordinary life for at least two weeks if any of the following occurs:
- your sleep is disturbed for more than a few nights in a row;
- you experience intrusive fear, or thoughts that you cannot set aside;
- you begin to withdraw from the people who matter to you;
- you begin to neglect your work, your health, or your obligations;
- you begin to believe that you have been chosen, singled out, or set above other people;
- you experience voices, presences, or perceptions outside of a working that you cannot distinguish from ordinary perception.
If the difficulty continues after you have stopped, seek qualified medical or psychological help, and tell them honestly what you have been doing. There is nothing shameful in this, and nothing about it contradicts the left-hand path. A sovereign self uses every tool that serves it.
Stopping is not failure. The serpent rests in winter. Return when you are ready; the texts will still be here.
9. What Comes Next
When you have kept the record and the stillness exercise for thirty days, and performed the Inventory at least twice, you have done what this primer can teach you. Read The Nightside Record and then The Seven Coils. Begin to design workings of your own, using the structure described on the Practice page.
The purpose of a primer is to be outgrown.