Home » Magick » M3 Episodes » Season 2 » Alexander Cabot, Sacred Regalia, and The Cabot Tradition – Ep. 2
In this episode, I speak to Alexander Cabot, Reverend High priest for the Cabot Kent Hermetic Temple.
Alexander and I chatted about his background, the Cabot Tradition, Sacred Regalia, language, and a bunch of other cool stuff. He’s actually an Ambassador for the Cabot Tradition and initiated into a bunch of other traditions. We’ll talk more about all of that in a moment, but let me just give a short reminder that the best way to get all of this info is to just watch the video.
Background
Alexander has a fascinating history. He immigrated from Cuba with his mother when he was just a baby.
But you know what? I’m not going to spoil the whole plot line — you can read about it in his forthcoming book. The way he writes almost makes you feel like you’re living the moments along with him.
As a child, Alexander was exposed to the teachings of the Masons. At 13, he was initiated into Palo Mayombe; and at 19, he was initiated into Lucumi. These alone would have given him a strong spiritual background, but he always had an additional interest in British Traditional Witchcraft and with notable figures like Gerald Gardner, Sybil Leek, and Doreen Valiente. Later in life, he joined the Welsh Tradition and the New York Wica tradition. All of these different teachings have given him a unique perspective on the magickal world.
Today, Alexander serves as a third degree high priest and international ambassador to Brazil for the Cabot Kent Hermetic Temple, where he was trained directly by Reverend Laurie Cabot.
Book Plans
At Summer Magick 2023, where I first met Alexander, I attended a couple different workshops that he lead. The first was a discussion about his book that had recently been published, Touched by the Goddess: Memoirs of a High Priest. He jokingly touted it as a “soon-to-be collector’s item” because something had fallen through with his publishing company and he wasn’t able to get any more copies after the initial printing.
As it stands right now, you can sometimes find it on Amazon, but due to low stock, some of them are priced high (even up to $70 as I check right now). If you’ve ever bought a used book on Amazon, then you’ve seen how the rates tend to fluctuate. Lucky for me, I was able to borrow a copy from a friend and give it a read prior to the interview.
Lucky for everyone else, he’s found a new publisher. He signed a contract with Schiffer Publishing in Pennsylvania this year and the new release will be called “Memoirs of a High Priest.” It’ll also feature new parts that he’s been writing in the meantime.
That’s something you can hopefully look out for in Fall 2025.
Crowley
Alexander is a huge fan of Aleister Crowley. He kept one of Crowley’s books hidden away in his closet while he was a child because it was too “naughty” for him to have it.
Later in life, he was visited by Crowley in a vision. There’s an entire chapter about it in his book.
Crowley is a pretty polarizing figure. People either seem to hate him or love him. I guess that’s just what happens when you proclaim yourself as “the wickedest man in the world.”
But seriously, Crowley’s contributions to the world of magick cannot be denied. I reference something he wrote at least once a week.
By the way, if you’re ever confused on exactly how to say Crowley’s name, just check out this article. Hint: Ozzy Osbourne got it wrong.
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The Cabot Tradition
I’ve heard a lot about Laurie Cabot from people I’ve interviewed. Christopher Penczak talks about her too. Maybe one day I’ll have the pleasure of meeting her or speaking with her directly!
Alexander’s second workshop at Summer Magick 2023 was entitled “A Traditional Cabot Summer Ritual.” If you’re like me, then you enjoy noticing the small differences between witchcraft traditions under the BTW (or at least BTW-influenced) umbrella. Some folks start with the East. Some start with the North. Some people use different colors or elemental assignments. It’s not that any one way is more correct than the others. It’s just that it’s interesting to hear different points of view and explanations.
So here’s a few of the things that I happened to pick up on while watching their ritual… They start in the North and go deosil around circle. As far as the directions go, they assign Earth to North, Fire to East, Air to South, and Water to West. As Gards, we start in the East and swap the elemental assignments for South and East. Again, it’s not because one way is right — it’s just because we have a different way of explaining it.
If you’d like to hear Alexander explain it and better understand why they do it that way, then… yep, you guessed it… you can listen to the interview!
The Colors
The colors of the Cabot tradition are black, white, and red. Would you like to know why? Then go watch the interview.
No I’m just kidding.
As Alexander explains it: Black is universal. Red is the stuff of life and the color of blood. White is pure and spirit.
Sacred Regalia
In the second half of the interview, I ask Alexander to give me a rundown of his ritual attire… or as he calls it: “the frock.”
It’s a robe with a tartan slung over the left shoulder, some patches sewn on, a pin, and a necklace. That might not sound like a lot when I type it out, but as I told him… it’s one of the most badass looking sets of sacred regalia I’ve ever seen anyone wear. Oh, and of course he has a fantastic crown, too. Everything features the colors of Cabot Tradition.
You can listen to the interview to hear him explain everything in his own words.
Language
Speaking of words, Alexander speaks multiple languages. On that note, I thought I’d ask his opinion on how words effect ritual. If I can sum up his viewpoint, word choice has a particular vibrational effect on the magick being done.
It’s interesting to think about because lots of magickal ideas, spells, recipes, words of power, or divine names come from other languages — things that are not English. But we’ve translated them into English so that they’re easier for us to work with.
I once heard someone say something along the lines of “when you translate, you destroy.” So now I’m going to give you a short anecdote.
A while ago, Selene and I were watching Encanto. During one of the last scenes, a song plays called “Dos Oruguitas.” Here… I’ll save you some time — just go watch it.
The entire song is in Spanish. And the thing is… mi español es muy limitado. As long as people are speaking slowly, I can get a basic vibe of what’s going on in the conversation and maybe even give some simple answers, but I really struggle with understanding lyrics, poetry, or any sort of figurative language. As such, I was following along with whatever auto-generated English captions were going on at the bottom of the screen. By the end of the song, I turned to Selene to tell her “Wow, that was a weird song…” but she was turning to me to tell me how beautiful it was.
So why the disconnect? She understood the writer’s original intentions as expressed by their native language… and I was stuck with a crappy translation. The translation was so bad it actually made me not the music. Translating destroyed the song. I later found a much better translation, by the way, and I can now tell you that it’s a beautiful piece of poetry wrapped inside a musical bubble.
It’s very difficult to preserve flow, rhythm, rhyme, and meaning when you’re shifting from one language to another. The Lord’s Prayer, for instance, has a very different vibe when you hear it in English vs. when you hear it in Spanish.
Many of us might think it’s too much of a time commitment to learn a new language just for the sake of our magickal operations, but just consider this: every word has it’s own particular resonant effect. It doesn’t matter if we’re dealing with Arabic, Hebrew, Egyptian, Latin, Greek, or any other language — you’re changing its inherent vibrational pattern by using a translation.
Finding Alexander Cabot
Want to find out more about Alexander Cabot? You can find him online:
- Website – https://www.alexandercabot.com/
- Facebook – @alexander.delarue
- Instagram – @rev.alexandercabot
Or you can check out somewhere that he’ll be teaching later this year:
- WitchFest USA – https://www.witchsfestusa.org/
And if you’d like to learn more about the Cabot Kent Hermetic Temple, you can find their website here – https://ckht.org/
Other Works Featuring Alexander
While you’re waiting for Alexander’s newest book to be released, you can check out some other works where he was a contributing author.
Now go forth and read!
Music and Magick
How does Alexander use sound or music in his practice? I witnessed it firsthand during his Summer Magick Fest 2023 ritual — he had us all dancing around circle and chanting, calling out keywords for positive energy that we wanted to manifest in the world. He says music joins us in communal energy. But of course, if you want to hear his full explanation, you’ll just have to go watch the end of the interview.
Conclusions
I really enjoyed learning more about Alexander… and I hope you did as well! I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for his newest book release next year.
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Congratulations, worthy reader, you have vanquished this article with your keen reading powers. At such a time as this, it is only natural for me to disclose the fact that there are some Amazon affiliate links on this page. I mean, why wouldn’t there be? If you had a website, you’d be using affiliate links, too. Anyway, part of that whole thing means that I have to tell you the following fact: if you use one of those links to make a purchase, Amazon will pay me a small commission. Sometimes it’s like $0.08. Seriously. Now that all of that’s out of the way, I’m getting a little hungry. Selene made some delicious risotto last night and I think I’m going to heat it up for my lunch today.
Aerik Arkadian 
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