First I must apologize for the lengthy article. It is meant for people that are interested in having a magical life and as you might imagine, this can't be a explained in few simple paragraphs. Grab a cup of coffee or two. Better yet, go get your lunch.
A long-time friend asked if I could explain magick in generic terms. It was an odd request until I realized most modern magick tech is based on some flavor of dogma. His interest was in magick, not Thelema, my chosen philosophy. Thelema is, for those unfamiliar, the philosophy that provides me with the ethos required to make the sort of magick I am interested in. For me, Thelema is a modifier. I may need to write about this later, but trying to define magick without explaining why I love Thelema so much proved interesting. I am learning a lot about myself.
My friend isn't interested in the ethos as he is in magick's history, where it comes from, and most importantly: how it works. He asked for a generic explanation. Something without what he refers to as "woo-woo."
What the hell is this woo-woo?
Woo-woo is a term to explain the mental gymnastics that a superstitious person must engage in to avoid cognitive dissonance. I'm not too fond of the term because it is a negative connotation for a necessary process in human mental development, whether it is applied in magick or psychology. Suspend disbelief for a two-hour movie, and people even make popcorn for the occasion. Do it while wearing a robe and showing reverence, and people think you are crazy. More on this later.
So I fought like hell to get out of this assignment by recommending my friend read a few books that could explain it much easier than I could with the space given here. But he insisted I do it. When I explained the task's difficulty, he reminded me of what I always tell him: Accept the challenge, even if you fail. And here I thought he was not listening.
Woo-woo, as my friend explains, is any method or belief that warps reality to justify the endorsement of irrational emotional attachments. We engage in it daily without much thought when we act on a feeling, for example. Some people refer to these feelings as "Spidey Senses."
Even doctors, scientists, and academics are vulnerable to the effects of woo-woo because it is a psychic investment and part of the human condition called "hope." There is a fine line between belief and fact, and just like Switzerland, those who practice magick are always doing their best to jump between them without taking sides. You cannot get through life without beliefs, and this is something that has been something of a battle with the development of artificial intelligence: Sentience must include emotions and beliefs.
Magick is a science. Many of our preconceptions have been there since early childhood. They are the result of many years of persistent societal and religious indoctrination. We can only become aware of our biases by understanding how our emotions fuel them. Magick brings those emotions to the surface where we can examine them, as I will briefly discuss later in the case of Goetic Magick.
This woo-woo is necessary in human life. It is as natural as breathing, and I think trying to defeat it would be unnatural. Our rites and celebrations strengthen those parts of our psyche most vulnerable to exterior attack. They serve as psychic protection. Please understand that I do not mean to say that we should enforce ideas and beliefs which are not based on reality unless one can benefit from doing so.
So my task is no easy one. I will try to explain what magick is, how it works, and whether or not it is still relevant today without superstition. I am sure that I am biting off more than I can chew. Yet, I think my associate's questions are good ones and deserve an answer, even if I am sure to fall short.
I think I have adjusted your expectations accordingly. Here goes nothing.
The separation between magick and medicine (i.e., science) is relatively new. Not too long ago, magick was medicine, and medicine was magick. The Book of The Dead evidences this, but it wasn't until the 17th century an English astrologer, herbalist, and doctor named Nicholas Culpeper demystified the use of herbs in medicine. There are hundreds of similar examples.
Magick was the predecessor to religion, and it likely began as humans tried to exert some control over nature. It presumably began in Mesopotamia, Egypt, then spread to the rest of the world. Countless volumes were written about magick on paper, parchment, and others on clay tablets and rocks. Many of these texts are either hundreds of years old or new ones. Academics mostly see it as intellectual curiosity or pursuit, and others wish to use it to better their lives.
Sadly, the study of magick rarely receives the attention of academia outside of its place in history and social anthropology. Many ancient practitioners lost their lives and freedom to make their thoughts, ideas, and methods available. They were otherwise socially ostracized for attempting to wake people up via a spiritual means that didn't involve the accepted norms, which were even more superstitious than magick itself: the Church. It seems ironic that the new writings have invested such little time in making magick relevant in our own time. It's mostly a rehash of the old stuff.
Despite fierce opposition by the prominent religious opposition of the times, magick has survived into the modern age. Thanks to newly discovered concepts about the nature of reality, Magick is slowly returning to the mainstream. As before, with the help of science. If a person wishes to have an examined life, and discover that fine silk thread that connects everything and everyone, then the pursuit of magical knowledge is worthy.
Perhaps one of the problems with people not treating magick as a science or art is a general lack of knowledge of what it is, and I think the woo-woo is likely the culprit. Some people today want magick to be as magical for them as it was for the people who developed it so long ago, and they are willing to suspend belief or facts so long as it provides a means to an end. It isn't like a Harry Potter book, The Hobbit, the Lord of The Rings, Peter Pan, or Narnia. Still, some excellent allegories about real magick are hidden behind the symbolism and language used in those stories. We humans tend to be rather lazy, and we will accept something at face value without question if it means we have to work to get to the real meat of the matter, even if it is something we seem to want. Skeptics see no value in LARPing. More on this later.
Another reason that magick has failed to become culturally significant in our time is that it hasn't evolved much since Aleister Crowley so eloquently defined it. He expressed it so well that people began to worship Crowley rather than doing the recommended work. This phenomenon is not limited to those who are drawn to magick, but also folks drawn to religions such as Christianity. Admittedly, the romance and superstition attached to the pursuit of magical ability (or heaven and salvation) haven't helped much. And again, we go back to the definition of magick. Once adequately explained, it will devalue the social currency of groups of wannabes that see it as little more than a carrot for personality cults, anachronistic hobbies, or a sophisticated form of LARP. Magick evolves with human knowledge. Not so much with religion.
Magical work is not for the lazy, but many lazy people are drawn to it, primarily due to its spookiness, for sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Watching those goals change if a person is even the slightest bit successful is fantastic. At least that's what brings people to it at first.
But the question remains. Is there a contemporary, practical use for magick today?
Can magick even be explored through science?
It depends on what you think science is. If you understand the term to mean the careful recording of experiments, constantly attempting to understand failures, and explaining your successes using the scientific method, then absolutely yes. If you accept philosophy as a science, then even better because both science and philosophy represent the search and study of truth.
Enter The Qabalah
Magical experiments in human consciousness were disguised in allegory out of fear of persecution or simply because there was no language to communicate or measure results scientifically. Magicians needed to have a language of symbols and correspondences they could use to communicate with one another while hiding their magical work from the profane. They found such a system in Judaism: The Kabbala. It was a system of correspondence and numerology used throughout the Old Testament. Those who wrote under Moses extensively used it in The Pentateuch.
Later, as magicians from different cultural backgrounds and religious societies began to add parts of their own religion, philosophies, and symbols to this Judeocentric system, the spelling changed to differentiate it from its Jewish source. It became known as The Qabalah or Hermetic Qabalah.
As mentioned before, Magick has been with us since that moment when humans became self-aware. This evolutionary jump allegedly led to the infamous Fall from Eden from the Chapter of Genesis in The Old Testament and marked the moment of that self-awareness.
An example of why Qabalah is so essential is that it makes it easy for us to explore likely scenarios of the initiated meaning of the Fall from Eden.
We are studying a myth. Whether or not this is historically accurate in any form is irrelevant. We are in search of hidden meaning or possible alternative scenarios. This is one such scenario and an explanation that can be made using Qabalistic principles.
Adam represents the human conscious. The simple awareness of our surroundings. He characterizes the consciousness of the immediate "now" as unrestrained by any influence from the past or expectations for the future.
Eve represents the subconscious mind. The womb of all experience, past, present, and the expectation of the future. God allegedly creates her from one of Adam's ribs. The rib looks like the Hebrew letter Vav, which means "nail," as if to bind them together, making them one.
The serpent represents knowledge, the source of their temptation. The conscious and subconscious mind marriage liberates Adam from the confines of his seemingly helpless circumstances. The helplessness of having no control over nature. The illusion of being helpless without "God" was lifted, and Adam and Eve felt and mourned the loss of their innocence. Now, humans were responsible for their actions. They no longer could blame anything on "God" because he was no longer "out there."
This jump allowed humanity to study nature and, unfortunately, marks our inability to recognize ourselves as a part of nature, which we now see as alien, other, and separate. THIS inability to acknowledge our role in the grand scheme of things was the actual Fall, and we deal with those consequences even today.
As the mind evolved the ability to review the effect of past actions, humans could simultaneously predict the future. Poorly. This is where the illusion of time began. This point is crucial as it illustrates why so many people see "God" as something exterior. It is much easier to experience a "god" externally precisely for the same reason humanity can more readily study nature by separating itself from it. From a magical point of view, the idea is that the reflection will eventually reveal itself as a part of the individual's Self. At this point, integration of the experience must take place. We hope it will ultimately be the same between man and nature. But I am not hopeful.
In the Hermetic Qabala, the consequences of The Fall are illuminated in the tarot card The Devil. In that card, we see a man (Adam) and a woman (Eve) very loosely shackled to a pillar upon which sits The Devil. The loose shackles suggest a voluntarily accepting the bondage of duality. When using the tarot, I find it helpful to consider cards in which one man and one woman are symbols for the conscious and subconscious mind. There is usually a third element in the cards, which is a key. Compare The Devil with The Lovers, The Chariot, and Judgement for clues to what the ancients thought we must do to "get back to the garden."
And speaking of The Garden, it is here now. Under our feet. We walk on it as we go through life, never seeing its value or recognizing our proper place within it because to examine something, we must first separate ourselves from it. In studying nature, science hasn't prioritized exploring the role of humans in nature until recently, but it took climate change to get things to accelerate. Before this, science devoted much of its time to exploring nature's exploitation without considering that we were exploiting humanity because, as I have said ad nauseam, we ARE nature. Ignoring this elementary point has been easy, particularly in the West, where we prefer things the imaginary world has to offer, to say nothing about Christianity and its view about the Earth.
So as I have just tried to explain, the Kaballa, the ancient Judaic system, evolved into the Qabalah as magicians from different cultural backgrounds and religious societies began adding their correspondences, such as the tarot cards. Magicians today use the Qabalah or Hermetic Qabalah, which is why it needed to be touched on. Numerous books have been written on the subject. So many that to try to explain it further would be silly to attempt here. Instead, I will explain why ceremonial magicians think it is crucial.
We are wired to look for patterns, and that is what makes the Qabalah so practical. The value of the Qabalah is in how effectively a person can communicate with his subconscious mind by organizing various symbols into different patterns or deciphering unknown patterns. In short, we use this system to cultivate a system of symbols and correspondences.
Think of a giant filing cabinet containing drawers that open from the front and the back of the cabinet. One side of the cabinet is accessible only to the conscious mind, and the other to the subconscious. Suppose you file a symbol or idea into the corresponding drawer, and the subconscious opens it up, makes changes, reveals attributions to your symbol, adds notes to the margins, and puts it back into the drawer for you to uncover. Now you have more information that you can add to, and maybe now that you have a different understanding of that symbol, you realize that it is better suited for another drawer. Repeat the process an infinite number of times. The Qabalah helps magicians strengthen their relationship with the unconscious minds. It is truly mind-blowing.
Those who have studied for a colossal test may have noticed that after cramming, one can become overwhelmed to the point where understanding does not occur until after a good night's sleep. While you're sleeping, the subconscious mind is working on the problem. It is sorting information and organizing it for us so our conscious mind can have access to the data. The Qabalah is a mechanism whereby this cooperation between the conscious and subconscious minds can occur under our direction.
I am sure most people in the West are familiar with the BBC's adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's, Sherlock Holmes, in which the creators introduced the concept of a "mind palace." Think of the Hermetic Qabalah in the same terms. I should point out that I know brilliant Qabalists who are not the least interested in magick but use the system to sharpen their intellectual skill, memory, and understanding of their particular circumstances.
I have written a book on modern magick, explaining the Qabalah in a very easy-to-digest form. It is an easy read for beginners. Suppose you are interested in the "Universal Consciousness" and how the Hermetic Qabalah can open our eyes and minds to comparative religion and mythology. In that case, I highly recommend it as the first stepping stone.
I hope I have been able to show how and why the Qabalah is so valuable, even today. It is a significant influence in ceremonial magick.
So what is magick?
Before we can explore how we can have a magical life or whether or not a 21st-century human being should bother to pursue it, we should make sure we understand what magick is.
In his book, Magick in Theory and Practice, Aleister Crowley declared, "Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will." This definition, as awesome as it sounds, is partially responsible for much trouble because, on the surface, this seems to imply that a person may change nature simply by willing it. You cannot impose your will on the universe. That idea is superstitious.
In the attempt to differentiate the superstitious forms of magic from the real deal, Crowley begins spelling it with the "k." That is why I have been using that spelling since the beginning of this article.
Then why bother?
Magick appeals to those whose feet are firmly planted on the ground and those whose heads are above the clouds. If this sounds like something Carl Jung would say, it is because magick is, at its foundation, an ancient form of psychoanalysis/psychotherapy.
"No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell." ― Carl Jung
Crowley also described magick as "the science of understanding oneself and one's conditions. It is the art of applying that understanding in action."
My definition is similar: Everything is consciousness, and magick is the consciousness we use to connect with the rest of the universe. Or, if you like, Magick is the line that blurs what we think is possible and what is doable. We are a piece of the universe that exists in time in space (itself) so that it can experience itself. We are connected and inseparable from creation. Magick is a way to participate in and engage in that relationship. To summarise, magick is the method by which we can understand our strengths and limitations and use that knowledge to our advantage. To understand oneself to the extent that one does not waste time on what is impossible: To get on with living the best life possible.
If you want a magical, charmed life, you must learn to live with the roots and the tree-tops in perfect equilibrium. The Magician tarot card is known as "The Juggler" for a reason.
Primitive Psychology - Not Dogma, But A Model
During the 17th century, The Goetia, part of The Lesser Key of Solomon the King, deals with a hierarchy of the seventy-two demons King Solomon evoked and restrained in a bronze container sealed by his emblem. He then employed them to perform various tasks.
The power of the word is critical in the practice of magick, and the act of naming something gives one control over it. Whether "Solomon" knew it or not, he was assigning his vices to various symbols and characters. He was externalizing them so he could exercise control over them. He was wise not to change them but to use them in ways he thought were "good."
Interest in Goetic Magic peaked during the Renaissance but gave way as a scientific wave spread throughout Europe. Still, even today, it is practiced by individuals seeking to control those aspects of their psyche which stand in the way of their happiness.
The Goetia, and many other books like it, continue to be the source of many of Hollywood's fantastic productions that play to the fears of the superstitious. It is profitable, so the churches have latched on to it to strike fear into the hearts of people they wish to separate from their money.
Psychological terms are the closest we can claim to a scientific language to communicate magical phenomena.
And today?
Going back to the beginning: Humans ARE nature. And because of this, the ultimate bonus of magick is that no superstition is required. We deal with the possible and don't waste time with the undoable. Trying to change a man into a toad is impossible (and superstitious) because the laws of nature will not permit that, and for better or worse, we must always comply with the laws of nature. Trying to "hex" someone without laying hands on them or trying to stop a war purely with ritual is also superstitious because the magician IS the magical link to their work. All practice must follow some action to accomplish ritual work. If I tried to use magick to become a marathon runner, I would be wasting my time and probably hurt myself because nature dictates that you don't try to start a gymnastic career at my age.
Can a person use magick to achieve physical, emotional, and mental health? Can it help us achieve our maximum physical potential? Can it help us reconcile existential problems? Can it help us learn physics, metaphysics, religion, ethics, and the arts? Can it help us achieve success in our careers? Can we increase the brain's capacity to reason? Can we use it to draw people into our lives and remove disruptive people? Can I develop Spidey-like supersenses? Can I make myself more attractive to others? Can it save my marriage?
Absolutely yes. But most importantly, humans are wired to seek "something more," which satisfies our thirst for meaning. Magick can help fill that hole where your spirituality belongs. It can strengthen our connection with our Higher Self, an idealized version of a maximized individual. And you can do it without resorting to a bunch of superstitious mumbo-jumbo or following some guru charging several hundreds of dollars per session simply by acknowledging that any gods, spirits, demons, and angels are aspects of your subconscious mind. That said…
The Pros and Cons of Magical Thinking
What is magical thinking? Knocking on wood, saying "bless you" when someone sneezes, crossing your fingers for luck, etc. Magical thinking begins very early in human life as we are initiated into cultural myths like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Thanksgiving, Easter Bunny, lucky numbers, and rubbing a pregnant woman's belly. Those seem pretty harmless beliefs. But what about ignoring the disaster our planet faces today because we think god or aliens will save us from ourselves? How about being denied an abortion, a blood transfusion, or other life-saving procedure because of someone else's beliefs? These actions, which most of us perform without even a second thought, are based on the premise that there is a supernatural force that we can appease by engaging in superstitious activities or the promise of some reward for proper behavior.
"Permit the children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all." Mark 10: 13-16
Magical thinking is not required to perform magick anymore than it is necessary for meditation or yoga. Today we are discovering how magick works and identifying its uses and proper use. That we have a greater understanding of the mind doesn't mean we have reached a point where we have demystified magick—quite the contrary. There is still so much that we don't know. So much more to explore and discover. Magick will stop evolving when humans do, and we aren't done yet. Keep a diary.
However, if you wish to use magick to have the same experience our predecessors encountered, you may have to apply magical thinking. Why? Because THEY did, and their results are a product of their magical methods, to say nothing of their karma, which is different for everyone.
In my life, magick is highly experimental. At times, I will engage in the work of my ancestors and embody their magical paradigms, which often include magical thinking. My modus operandi is to understand why those rituals work the way they did for them and apply what I know of the universe today to create the same results sans woo-woo. I find this kind of magick challenging as I do difficult because I must use a mental muscle I abandoned long ago when I was a child. In my opinion, this is the only reason the purely scientific and proudly skeptical fail. How can a person expect a result they don't believe. Imagine being an atheist and complaining that God won't answer your prayers. I agree it is a slippery slope. Aleister Crowley's The Soldier and The Hunchback is an excellent book explaining the use of skepticism in magical work. I highly recommend it, and it is one of the many texts available on the web for free.
In children, magical thinking promotes creativity. And children are more likely to accept an experience as magical. For example, a young boy thinks about a girl he likes and draws a heart around her picture. The next day she approaches him and tells him she likes him. Adults would call that a coincidence. As cultural education occurs, our magick fades away, and we are left with little more than some hazy memories of being able to connect to "something else" or accessing alternative realities. Magick is how we get that back.
We live in a culture that only values money and things. Consumerism is "keeping up with the Joneses" to have the latest in the greatest. It's a race to own and consume. This is what our culture has ordained it means "to adult." We have been sold a bag of goods that is killing us. Beyond what each of us needs for our basic survival needs, more stuff will not make us happy. Magick helps to function in the environment you create on your terms. Is it possible that your universal experience includes the accumulation of more money or more stuff? Absolutely. Remember, magick is a way to maximize your potential based on your karma. By karma I mean the strengths and limitations imposed upon you by the circumstances of your birth.
Belief is magical thinking. Think about the placebo effect and how well it works to mitigate chronic pain in some people. Hypnotism falls in the same category as the placebo effect because they both work on the same premise: The subject WANTS the treatment to be successful, and thanks to this psychic mechanism, it is. It is the same with magick.
Perhaps one of the most common examples of magical thinking is Magical Contagion. This is the religious idea that we can move the magick from one person to another. Think of things like Apostolic Succession, for example, baptism or the laying of hands. Magical Contagion can even move from an object to a person. A good example is when people spend millions of dollars on an item because they believe that the original owner's luck, juju or skill will be magically passed on with the thing, like Kurt Cobain's acoustic guitar, which sold for $6,010,000 in 2020.
Magicians use models. Paradigms that we accept as fact to get the results we seek. Afterwhich we abandon that model or that belief until it is needed again. The subconscious mind responds to symbols; magick is how we expose it to symbols. By keeping this in mind, we can avoid treading into superstition.
And speaking of karma.
Karma is another form of magical thinking. Most people define Karma as some reward for doing something good or visa-versa. Karma is often confused with synchronicity rather than cause and effect. Synchronicity is the belief that everything happens for a reason. These beliefs imply some grand plan or some celestial puppet master who looks over us.
With great power comes great responsibility.
If you dedicate enough of your life to magick as a form of self-improvement tech, you may succeed, become a better person, heal your anxiety, get that job, change the world, etc. In this case, you will become a member of an invisible but exclusive club. With a lot of work and dedication, you will externalize your Higher Self, realize that it is an internal phenomenon and integrate it, thereby becoming a more honest likeness of your True Self.
"Use the force, Luke"
Today, we know much more about the working of the brain, human nature, biology, psychology, and social sciences than we did when these archaic, esoteric works were first put to practice and written down. With the help of neuroscience and other scientific disciplines, we are only now beginning to understand just how much our predecessors knew, how lofty the magical arts were, and how they can be applied today.
For example, electrons behave like particles, not waves, when under observation. This means we have a possible mechanism of affecting our universe by merely observing it. From a magical perspective: THAT. IS. HUGE! But you must have the imagination our predecessors did to figure out how to make it work.
We know that vibrating words or names cause the bones in our head to vibrate, which affects our consciousness.
We understand that pranayama works because our breathing can stimulate the vagus nerve.
Karma and Bhakti yoga lifts our spirits because we now understand that a life of service is what gives us meaning and causes happiness.
We know this today. But guess what? When our ancestors were creating this magick, it was all woo-woo. They didn't know nor care how and why it worked, just so long as it did. A hundred years from now, will those that come after us think of our methods and discoveries as woo-woo? Which begs the question: Should we care? Should we use woo-woo if it furthers our goals?
Something to think about.
But Keep It Real
Magick is revolutionary. It has nothing to do with a status quo, quite the contrary. It runs against the grain of the societal programming inherited from our culture and parents and their parents before them ad nauseam. At its very core is the release of superstition. It is also a means to an end, not the end itself. Eventually, you will no longer need the ritual, the poetry, the magical tools, or any other prop used in magical work because you will understand your unconscious mind and work together as one unit to achieve your goals. In other words, you will eventually grow out of it. Unless you like to do it because it's fun, in which case, have a blast.
To Know, To Dare To Will, and To Keep Silent
The goal of magick is to achieve the freedom to make our way through the jungle. Magick allows us to navigate the world on our own terms within a culture that constantly demands conformity. This kind of magick is simultaneously dangerous and exciting because we purposely engage our psyche and challenge the status quo by learning who and what we are at the core.
But be careful. Clinging to the same old beliefs and practices, we will never get there and do more to strengthen the fabric of illusion. If "the method of science; the aim of religion" is true, it has worked to get us HERE and NOW. Let us use it to take the next jump.
Why so serious?
If you begin this work, you will be an outcast in the eyes of the masses—an oddball, a wacko, a nut-job, lunatic maniac, crackpot.
Jesus said, "I am the truth." His own people crucified him.
Mansur al Hallaj, a Sufi poet, would go into ecstatic trances where he would become so intoxicated by Divine Love that he uttered "ana'l Haqq" meaning "I am Truth." He often stated "In my turban is wrapped nothing but God" and other times, "Maa Fil Jubbati Illa-Allah" which is to say, "there is nothing in my cloak except God." His people took that to mean that he claimed to be the ONLY god. He was tortured and crucified to teach others that "god" is something within us all. Admirably, his convictions were so honest, so overpowering that he danced in his chains to his execution and remained calm, cool, calm, and collected as he was tortured.
Anyone daring to challenge conventional religious wisdom or superstition could encounter the same fate. Joan of Arc comes to mind, as well as some more contemporary martyrs I will not name here to keep politics out of it.
Silence is essential in this work. The brain releases just as much dopamine when we accomplish a task as we do by talking to others. Think about that. Shhhhhh!
Where we go from here is up to us.
As I always say, that is my opinion, and I am sticking to it until I form a better one.
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