Drawing Light Down the Body

The Middle Pillar is a ceremonial-magic exercise that draws on the teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and was set out in influential form by Israel Regardie in a 1938 book of that name. The practitioner visualises a series of centres arranged along the midline of the body, crown, throat, heart, pelvis and feet, corresponding to spheres on the middle column of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, vibrates a divine name at each, and imagines light descending and then circulating through the whole figure. Its stated aim is to balance and vitalise the practitioner and to build a stable foundation for further magical work. Regardie, who had served as Crowley's secretary and later published much of the Golden Dawn's once-secret material, presented the exercise partly in psychological terms, and it has since become one of the best-known set practices of the modern Western magical tradition.