Mind magic
Every magical order begins with a lot of the same stuff. Somewhere in the first few chapters or even the first chapter they mentione meditation. You might be wondering "Not this again?" Then they try to educate and communicate how to do it and what its for. Its obviously extremely important and frustratingly difficult. Meditation can often leave you asking questions. "Aam I doing this right, or did I do this correctly". There are plenty of books on meditation and plenty of free resources you can browse online including the usage of Wikipedia.com.
Instead of focusing on detailed instructions I will break meditation down into parts.
- Not-Thinking: The goal is to reduce the train of thought to one thing. A void or flame. The space between.
- Thinking: Train of thoughts. It's bets to follow one train of thought carefully and how it connects to other train of thoughts. Perhaps even reflecting on why the train changed. Perhaps revisiting the original thought.
To have quality meditation sessions you need to practice stillness. Do not blink or move any body part. Perhaps start with you eyes closed at first. There are some exersises where you begin at the toes and work your way up the body by tensing for 3 seconds then relaxing the body part as you move up the body.
Breathing
Plenty of books exist for breathing as well and I'm extremely partial to Taoist breathing. Forward and reverse respiration in the form of an egg as you circle the Qi arround you. You keep the tongue on the roof of the mouth as you perform the exercises. There are times to drop the tongue on exhilation or inhalation. Just depends on what you are doing.
The goal is multifaceted. You should be able to use entire capacity of lungs without muscular strain. Full body breathing or embryonic breathing are goals to achieve but perhaps beyond scope in this work.
Magical States, Trances, Gnosis
Very difficult to achieve but once in alterd state You can cause change in conformity with will. This is kind of the root of magic. Ofcourse all fo this requires discipline of the mind as stated previusly. But there is something interesting about these states. Its possible to slip into them with external sources. Art, Music, and exercise are ways to achieve those states. But only mental discipline will allow you to produce magic while in those states. Very often we slip into those states and enjoy the bliss, or feeling and often the memory associated with and then it slips away. You are not exactly sad when it slips away, bcause you are left with the comfort of the memory for that session that might even leave you smiling. But as a magician you really need to take advantage of that moment
The goal is to focus entire attention on a meaningless phenomenon. Something not of emotional significance. Because you don't want the magic to short circut as a result of lust. Passion, desire are tools to achieve change but they can become abberated and skewed. This is why you need a plan or memory. When you hit the trans state. You should have a list of things to work on.
Concentration
Extremely important. Stories are told of hermits and shamans who remain unmoving with eyes open staring into nothingness. In your case pick an object to focus on. Most schools begin with a point or circle, Even a primary color. Start with common shape. But try the gaze for a minute then increase to 5 minutes. Eventually go for 15 minutes. This exercise is strange but in a world of animism. Secrets will be revealed to you. Perhaps not in this exercise but eventually with mirrors, prisms, spheres, crystals etc...
Sound is extremely important as well. Perhaps more important the the others listed above. Some say it was God who gave us Ahhhh. If you believe that sort of thing. At a fundamental level sounds evoke change. A profanity can induce anger and hostility just as 'I love you' can create wamth and compassion. The ancient mantra of "Aum Mani Padme Hum" with tone and vibration can ilicit change. Zazas, IPSOS, IAO, Yod, and many other are wonderful tones for spell casting.
Philosophers stone, Internal Alchemy, Metaphorphosis
Transmutation and change will occur in the magician and it happens to be a goal. Even the slightest change can have a profound affect and you should embrace this change as a magician starting out. Once you accomplish making the first few simple changes you start to get a hange of it and realize you now have a tool for radical change, growth and and personal development.
Magical Journal
Every activity above should be recorded in your digital journal. This is your basline for change. You have to chart you spiritual growth. But there are other facets that include reverse journaling that aids in recapitualtion, and past life discovery. We miss so much on a daily basis that we intially think is not important but actually is.
Magical name or Motto
This is not always used. But meanains exists in everything including a name. The magical name was deisgned to disassociate oneself from mundane world for duration of the magical work. Strangely revelations of the name have meaning in the Aether and Astral, Never-Land etc...Just because its formless doesn't mean the name is revealed. So its possible to have several names for differnt purposes. If you are visiting you might not want to reaveal your real name or magical name because you don't want to be summoned or located beyond your will.
Basic Magic
Success is tricky. It really depends on the magical state at time of performance. The methods to perform magic are endless. Seems like every culture has some sort of occult, esoteric order, or religion that utilizes a ritual to help bring about change. The tools for the ritual vary.
Magic does have a language that can be argued by cultures and belief systems, such as the concepts of Monad, Dyad, Triad, and Tetrad. Elements however are roughly the same, consistent and universal, (fire, water, air, and earth, and spirit consisting of the breath to unite them. Eastern mysticism might have substitutes for air and spirit consisting of metal and wood. In five element theory those elements feed and create each other through change. Shifting colors, flashing colors, grades and geometric shapes, text, script, logo's or pictograms, numbers and calculations. Finally we have the stars, planets and other moving bodies far off into space. All of this place a part in magic some how and some way depending on tradition.
Ritual
Ritual is a combination of talismanic weapons, sigils, spells all performed with practice and in a state of gnosis or trance.
The talismanic weapons are as follows:
- Dagger/Sword:
- Wand/Scepter:
- Cup/Chalice: 4: Pentacle:
Very often you might see combinations such as "Wands or (Scepters) or 'clubs', Cups (Chalices) or 'hearts', Swords or spaces, Pentacles (Coins) or diamonds. Obviously these are reflections of Tarot cards and even an extension of common playing cards.
These are the core tools everything else is merely supplemental. For improved performance you need a ritual space, ritual clothing, ritual head covering, Maybe an altar, some candles usually two or three, a lamp for incense. Other symbols exists in the sacred space that correspond to a particular order. Like pillars, banners, tablets, etc.. this list can be long. Some traditions might have some pretty wicked looking tools, scourge, chain, club, dragons egg, Horn, carved wand with crystal embedded, sacrificial bowl etc...
Banish
All rituals begin with some sort of banishing to cleanse the area from hostile influences. In Golden Dawn you have Lesser and Greater banishing rituals. SBRP, SIRP, LBRH, LIRH, GRH, GBRH, GIRH the acronyms are enough to drive you nuts. A worthy study for anyone wishing to learn. Other rituals exist. You do not have to use Judeo Christain names, of God or Angels to perform the banish ritual but they certainly help.
It doesn't have to be a 5 or 6 pointed start. It could just as easily be a triangle or circle in the four directions. The four directions however seem to be clear. Its about the magical current. You can substitute angels for beams of light for the cardinal directions. Like the Druid revival you could simply create a sphere of light that surrounds you.
I don't spend much time performing a banishing ritual. I find that a banishing ritual while effective at removing un-friendly and unknown. I feel demagnitized. Hard to explain but its like i'm not charged.
Invoking Ritual
I prefer to spend more of my time invoking a divine light, whatever that might be for you. Perhaps even secret names such as those found in Enochian. For you this could mean many things including soome wild digital influx beyond the realm of the cosmos as we know it today.
You banish with a blade and invoke with a wand. But you can invoke with a wand, ring, is simply the mind, perhaps even a digital byte. Imaginatino and will makes all of this happen and you use that to create a magical barrier or ward.
Sigils
Various tools exist outside traditional channels to manifest or co-manifest and bring into reality. Desire can skew, strain or dilute the outcome. The desired may occur long after it has been forgotten. A sigil can stimuilate the work and continue to work on subconscious level, bypassing the active mind.
There are three parts to a sigil.
- Construction
- Charge
- Let go and forget
Constucting of the sigil can be done in a variety of ways. The 'word' method is the most popular. It usually consist of one or multiple words with some letters missing and smashed together. some of the letters overlap or are rotated to produce a new sigil. The word is usually associated with the desired result.
Picture method is wher you draw a picture and make changes to it in a similar way by smashing, overlaop and rotation.
There many other methods including traditional methods wher you substitute Words for a different scirpt such as Hebrew or Enochian. You would then construct a magic box associated with a planet and some sort of key like Aiq Beker.
Sigil Code
The code to generate the sigil method was created using a combination of old unix tools pic and troff. Manuals exist on line
.PS 1
A: box "Money" at (0,0)
B: box "Me" at (0,-1)
"\s14O" at (0,-1)
"\s8y" at (0,-1)
.PE
The command to generate the image is pic smash.ms | troff > smash.pdf
You can easily convert it to another format you wish. In my case here I try to convert everything into .png image format.
Here is the other image
.PS
L: line at 0,0
arc -> from 0.5,0 to 0,0.5
arc cw from 0,0 to 1,0.5
C: circle at 0,0
line from C.s to L.nw
.PE
Obiously other tools exist to raster, vector or render images faster and this is an old tool. Pic is powerful and where it lacks troff picks up form where it leaves off. Modern tools such as 'gimp', 'inkscape', blender could accomplish tasks faster. Or you could extend this by building an xlml or json map with some sort of canvas front end, and some widgets.
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