Practice and Self-Initiation

Practice in the Order of the Serpent is self-directed, recorded, tested, and sober. There is no one to report to, no curriculum to complete, and no examination to pass. There is the work, and there is the record of the work.

This page gives an overview. The texts in the Library treat each subject in full, and First Workings is the place to begin if you intend to practice. Three further pages, listed below, consider what a working does, what to read, and how to work with other people.

Principles of Practice

Self-directed. You decide what to practice, when, and why. The Order's texts describe methods; they do not issue assignments.
Recorded. Every working is written down, honestly, immediately afterward. A practice without a record cannot be evaluated, and a practice that cannot be evaluated cannot be improved.
Tested. Methods and beliefs are kept or discarded according to what the record shows over time, not according to who recommended them.
Sober. No practice of the Order requires intoxicants, and clarity of mind is treated as a precondition of the work.
Mostly solitary. The work is done, for the most part, alone. Others may share it with you, but no one can do it for you.

The Seven Coils

The Seven Coils are the Order's map of self-initiation. They describe stages of the work as conditions a practitioner recognizes in themselves. They are not grades: you cannot be promoted into one, no one can confer one on you, and no one can verify that you are in one. You recognize a coil when you find that you are already in it, and you may return to earlier coils many times.

IThe HatchingThe first question, asked in earnest. The decision to take responsibility for one's own path.
IIThe GroundThe building of discipline: the record, stillness, and study, kept without fail.
IIIThe SheddingThe examination of inherited beliefs, and the release of those that do not survive it.
IVThe VenomThe deliberate confrontation with what one fears, forbids, and avoids in oneself.
VThe CoilIntegration: the gathering of a divided self into a single, coherent will.
VIThe RisingCreation: the making of one's own methods, works, and understanding.
VIIThe Open RingReturn: the release of what one has made, freely, to others.

Each coil has a task, a characteristic danger, and a sign by which it can be recognized. All three are described in The Seven Coils.

The Five Disciplines

Five disciplines support the work at every coil. None of them is secret, and none of them is new. What matters is that they are actually practiced.

1. The Record

The magical record, or journal, is the practitioner's most important tool and the only reliable teacher. It is where experience is set down before memory revises it, where patterns become visible over months and years, and where self-deception is most easily caught. See The Nightside Record.

2. Study

Read widely, critically, and from primary sources where you can. Read in mythology, philosophy, psychology, history, and religion, including the religions you have rejected. Read those who disagree with you. Study is not a substitute for practice, but practice without study tends to reinvent old mistakes. The Study page describes what to read beyond the Library, and how.

3. Stillness

The training of attention through regular, simple meditation. Every working depends on the ability to hold the mind on one thing, and to notice when it has wandered. The Order's basic exercise, counting the breath, is described in First Workings.

4. The Working

A working is a structured, deliberate, symbolic action undertaken for the purpose of transformation. It may be elaborate or extremely simple. Its effectiveness does not depend on its props, its language, or its antiquity, but on the clarity of its intent, the quality of the practitioner's attention, and the honesty of the record that follows it. What a working can be claimed to do, and what it can be shown to do, is the subject of On Magic.

5. The Nightside

The deliberate engagement with what one fears, avoids, represses, or has been taught to despise. Nightside work is undertaken gradually, with care, and always within limits the practitioner sets in advance. It is the discipline most characteristic of the left-hand path and the one most often done badly. See Venom and Remedy before undertaking it.

The Anatomy of a Working

The Order prescribes no rituals. It does recommend a simple structure, which can hold almost any working, and which makes the record easier to keep.

Preparation. Decide in advance what you will do, why, and for how long. Write the intent down in a single sentence. Arrange not to be interrupted.
Opening. Mark the beginning of the working, so that it is clearly separated from ordinary time. The Order uses the Gesture of the Open Ring, described in First Workings, but any clear mark will serve.
Statement. Speak the intent aloud, in one sentence, exactly as you wrote it.
Operation. Do what you prepared to do: a meditation, a recitation, a confrontation, a piece of writing, a symbolic act.
Closing. Mark the end of the working as clearly as you marked its beginning, and return deliberately to ordinary time.
Record. Write the record at once, before you do anything else.

Working Alone and Together

The Order does not charter, list, endorse, or supervise groups. Practitioners who choose to work together do so on their own initiative and their own responsibility, and nothing they do carries the Order's authority.

If you join or form a group, we offer one piece of advice that has never failed us: if any group, of any tradition, asks you for money, for secrecy, or for obedience in exchange for teaching, leave it. Teaching that is worth having does not need those things. The page Working With Others says where the lines fall, and lists the questions worth asking before you join anything.

No Calendar

The Order keeps no calendar of observances. It has no festivals, no holy days, and no hours at which practice is required. A working is done when the practitioner has a reason to do it.

Practitioners who want fixed points in the year choose their own. The most common are the anniversary of the first entry in the record, which is a natural day for the yearly review described in The Nightside Record, and the practitioner's own birthday, which more than one left-hand path tradition regards as the highest feast of the year. Some read The Shed Skin on 2 October, the night the Order was founded. None of these is an obligation, and the Order holds no observance of its own.

Safety and Sobriety

Practices that confront fear, conditioning, and the repressed can be destabilizing. They are not therapy, and they are not a substitute for medical or psychological care. If you are in crisis, practice is not the answer; qualified help is.

Stop practicing and return to ordinary life for a time if your sleep is disturbed for more than a few nights, if you experience intrusive fear, if you begin to withdraw from the people who matter to you, or if you begin to believe that you have been chosen or set above others. First Workings contains a full chapter on when to stop. Stopping is not failure. The serpent rests in winter.