metallicafires 
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(5/20/04 11:41 am)
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meditation on magick
A Meditation on Magick
by Bestia Mortale
article
I'd like to examine three levels of magick, the world, the will and the
spirit, from a particular perspective I shall describe.
Like most things, magick looks different from different sides. The word
"magick" normally conjures up spells, unseen forces, strange worlds and
mysterious beings. This is the "supernatural" point of view. This is the
vantage from which we see sorcerers pursuing arcane knowledge to gain
amazing power.
Take the skeptical version of this point of view, and magick signifies
self-delusion, wish-fulfillment fantasy, unconscious deception and
intentional fraud.
But then stroll around to another viewpoint, where you assume knowledge
rather than ignorance. Assume for a moment that you can understand
everything (not that anyone can). From this perspective, much of what we
think of as magick vanishes, becoming just another technology, just another
way to get what you want.
When you want something, you use your understanding of the world combined
with your intelligence to identify a course of action that might achieve it.
Then you use your will and determination to follow that course of action. As
you go, you use intermediate results to modify your course of action. Are
you a sorcerer or an engineer?
Both historians of science and historians of magick are well aware that
until relatively recently, the two were more or less indistinguishable. In
the last several centuries, the techniques of modern science and engineering
have emerged as by far the most powerful and effective means of doing magick
in the world. The spells of physics almost always work reliably, and when
they don't, physicists are delighted - there are always reputations to be
made in perfecting them.
The magick of getting what we want in the world is fascinating and
impressive but not necessarily deeply moving. Take doing the dishes, for
example. Some people still eat with their hands from food that lies in their
laps. Others have pursued centuries of dogged experimentation to produce
specialized eating surfaces and utensils. Some people clean such surfaces
and utensils in streambeds, while others have devoted amazing ingenuity to
channeling and heating water and devising special chemicals that make
cleaning these surfaces and utensils easier. Some people wash their own
dishes, while others have devised complex social transactions that result in
"servants" of various sorts doing the cleanup. There are even electric
dishwashing machines, and if that's not supernatural, nothing is.
At the same time, who cares? We eat. If we do it right, we are nourished, we
don't get sick, and we don't have to devote too much of our energy to doing
it. Fine china, beautiful silverware, exotic spices, gourmet recipes, all
these are lovely if they don't cost us too much.
From a perspective of understanding, the magick of getting what we want
tends to merge disappointingly into what we like to call "technology," our
ancillary crafts, and its appeal seems less bright, if no less useful, from
this point of view.
There is also magick of the will - the art of being able to decide cleanly.
Each of us is full of ambivalence. We want a thousand contradictory things,
consciously, semi-consciously, entirely unconsciously. Magick of the will
aligns and balances all those conflicting desires so that you can choose
consistently and effectively to achieve a given end.
Will is an elusive magick that varies radically from person to person. Like
music, painting or writing, it can be taught, but like any art, it is based
on talent and taste. It is practiced by every successful person in the
world, although few would regard it as magick. The ability to choose
consistently and well, at least within a narrow focus, is essential to
success in almost every undertaking.
There are easy ways to achieve will. Some of the peskiest and most
disruptive of our desires are ethical and emotional. Simply by suppressing
these, you can become much more effectively decisive. Fortunately, few
people want to pay that price. Indeed, it may be that no one has the
resources to pay that price, except by foolish borrowing.
Will is like health. Many of us are blessed with it initially, but to keep
it takes luck, attention and good habits. Many of the disciplines of what we
narrowly refer to these days as "magick" can be helpful, but plenty of
people who have never used the word are masters of will magick.
Finally, there is magick of the spirit, the magick of listening to the quiet
voices. This is a magick that is easy to lose in modern life. Plenty of
atheist engineers and salesmen may be better sorcerers or better at will
magick than you or I, but few of them have found a way to meet their
spiritual needs.
Following Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, many of us have come to see the
roots of our spiritual yearnings sinking deep into our unconscious minds,
down among primal cultural artifacts and almost universal archetypes.
Whether they re-emerge on the other side of the unconscious into an astral
reality is a philosophical question, not a practical one. After all,
satisfying the deep yearnings of your unconscious mind is important whether
or not you want to believe that the spiritual world is "real." Lots of
people know that it is, and lots of other people know it isn't, but I don't
like the question.
I'm very clear that something really happens when I give myself over to
magick of the spirit. It happens often, particularly if I make the effort to
let it. It happens in loving sex just about every time. It happens at the
oddest moments. It happens in meditation, speaking with a goddess or a god.
But particularly, it happens when I connect to the spirits of place, of the
earth.
Sitting on the ragged stones at the edge of the sea watching patterns in the
water, crouched with my back to a rock high in the mountains, listening to
the songs of the wind, standing among the old trees in a forest glade
feeling rain on my face, I find myself lost in wonder. Minutes pass when I
am far, far away. I come back changed. My yearning is answered and affirmed.
These are moments of pure magick for me. I don't know what happens, but I
know it's important. It doesn't have to do with getting some specific thing
I want or honing my will; it has to do with receiving some kind of deep
sustenance.
This magick of spirit goes well beyond our wisdom.
Copyright © 2004 by the article's author
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