Imagination · “Feel It Real”
Nightside Pathworking
Use the sigil of a single ‘Tunnel of Set’ as a doorway and let imagination carry you on an autonomous inner descent into the ‘Nightside’ (the shadow/averse paths), to confront and integrate repressed, transgressive material — a deliberate descent rather than the usual upward pathworking.
Nightside pathworking (Grant): Banish. Take one Tunnel of Set with its Liber 231 sigil. Draw the sigil large and gaze it into trance until it opens as a doorway. Descend through it and follow the autonomous inner landscape down into the averse/shadow; meet the guardian as a part of yourself and dialogue rather than fight. Retrace the path out through the same sigil, banish again, and record everything. Honestly read: symbol-trance + projective shadow-imagination — integrative, intense, and not literal travel.
What it is
Pathworking is the magical practice of entering a symbol and travelling an inner landscape behind it. Standard Hermetic-Qabalistic pathworking ascends the Tree of Life toward light. Kenneth Grant inverted it: he mapped the “Nightside” — the qliphoth, the averse or shadow side of the Tree — as 22 “Tunnels of Set,” each a hidden path with its own sigil and guardian, and taught a descent into them.
Each tunnel is keyed to one of the 22 channeled glyphs in Crowley’s Liber 231. The practice is to take one tunnel’s sigil as a doorway, gaze into it until consciousness shifts, then let imagination carry you down an autonomous inner journey to meet what lives there.
Read psychologically, this is symbol-induced trance + projective imagination aimed deliberately at shadow material — a structured descent into the repressed and transgressive. Grant’s claim that the tunnels are objective realms inhabited by real averse intelligences is his tradition’s metaphysics, not an empirical fact (see §4).
The Method
A faithful, doable distillation (one tunnel at a time; short quotes only):
- Banish first. Open with a banishing ritual (e.g. the LBRP) to clear and bound the space. On the Nightside this is non-negotiable — it sets the frame you will return to.
- Choose one tunnel. Take a single Tunnel of Set with its Liber 231 sigil and name. One path per working; never wander the whole system at once.
- Make the doorway sigil. Draw the tunnel’s seal large and clear, often combined with a personal symbol. This drawn glyph is the gate.
- Gaze the sigil into trance. Fix soft, steady attention on the sigil — scrying it — until the lines seem to move, deepen, or open. Let the figure become a doorway rather than a flat drawing.
- Descend through it. Imaginatively pass through the opened sigil and let the landscape build itself. As in all true pathworking, once the scene starts to move on its own, stop directing and follow. Grant’s Nightside is entered as a descent — downward and inward, toward the averse.
- Meet the guardian; do not fight blindly. Expect a threshold figure or guardian. Treat the encounter as a confrontation with a part of yourself: observe it, address it, let it speak — the point is integration of what was averse, not conquest.
- Hold a return-thread. Keep awareness of the doorway behind you. When the working completes, retrace the path back up and out through the same sigil — do not just “wake.”
- Banish again and record. Close with the same banishing, then immediately write the full descent in your magical record. The material is worked afterward by reflection/amplification. (Sourcing note: a faithful summary of the Nightside-pathworking approach Grant sets out across Nightside of Eden; the tunnel sigils derive from Crowley’s Liber 231. Attributed paraphrase, not full reproduction.)
Source & Lineage
Kenneth Grant (1924-2011), Crowley’s onetime secretary and head of the Typhonian O.T.O., developed the Tunnels of Set chiefly in Nightside of Eden (1977).
He took the 22 averse glyphs from Crowley’s channeled Liber 231, fused them with the qliphoth of Kabbalah and with Spare’s sorcery, and reframed the shadow-paths as territory to be explored rather than merely banished — a magical parallel to depth psychology’s integration of the shadow. → originator; source; lineage.
The Traditions' versions
Entering-a-symbol-and-travelling is a whole family; Grant’s version is distinctive in its deliberate descent into the averse/shadow rather than ascent toward light: - Qabalistic (dayside) pathworking — the standard upward journey on the Tree.
- Guided inner-journey pathworking — building and entering an inner temple/doorway.,
- Jungian shadow confrontation & active imagination — meeting and integrating the averse inner figure.,
- Psychological Goetia — treating spirits as parts of the psyche to be worked with.
- Tattva / spirit-vision scrying — gazing a symbol to open an inner vision.
Common refinements
Skipping the banishing. The open/close frame is what keeps the descent contained and lets you return cleanly. Always bracket the working.
- Over-steering the descent. If you script every step it stays a daydream; gaze in, then follow the autonomous imagery.
- Treating guardians as enemies to defeat. The integrative value is in dialogue and owning what they represent, not domination.
- Working many tunnels fast. One path per session; let each settle. Grant’s system is dense and deliberately destabilizing — speed compounds the risk.
- No return-thread / no record. Always retrace the way out through the same sigil, then write it down; unrecorded, the material is lost and unintegrated.