Monday, August 4, 2008

Magick that cant be written.


I had a lengthy phone conversation with Persephone the other day which started by coordinating our efforts to help a mutual friend. The discussion led to a more general discussion of techniques that covered everything from seduction magick to invocation of apocalyptic Goddesses. Since Persephone is a natural witch, who is only relatively recently engaging in more formal training, she shared her frustration at not having words to describe everything she does. The problem is, I don’t have words to describe everything I do either.

No matter how much I write about magick I will never be able to share all my techniques because some simply cannot be written down. I don’t mean because of secret oaths or something like that. I mean for technical reasons. For instance, in the conversation Persephone talked about “grafting” qualities gained from an old spell onto a new one that she is weaving. I knew exactly what she was talking about and call it copying and pasting. How do I do it you ask?. Ctrl C and Ctrl V? We also talked about “jacking in” to the streams between people, a type of magick that I leaned when experimenting with Misheln Lindens Typhonian Teratomas. I can’t really describe either of these easily because the description depends upon being able to observe the energetic signature of a spell of ritual and deal with that directly. If you can’t see it, than it all sounds a bit Harry Potter. If you can see it, I don’t need to tell you how to do it. I can show you.

Another example would be a friend I was mentoring for a while, JM. I took JM down to Lake Lefferts and taught him a gesture that had energetic elements as well as physical elements that I used to summon a being that lived in the lake. He could see the work of the gesture and the spirit that arrived, but if I wrote about it, it becomes more difficult.

There is fairly new and unique tradition of magick being taught here in NJ called Omnimancy that relies heavily on magick that has to be shown. Though I am not an Omnimancer, they were kind enough to give me an introduction to their tech a year or so ago, and from what I saw, most of it was not something you could write about in a book. The whole system is built directly upon the ability to observe magick directly advance from there. If I talked to them about copying and pasting, they would know exactly what I mean as well because they do it too.

Of course not everyone that sees magick, sees it the same. Some don’t even see it, but feel it. Whatever your capacity though, if you can observe it directly, you can work with it directly. I can do a rather simple candle spell and see the way that the divine elements called in by prayer get translated into energy/astral patterns which in turn infuse themselves into the candle, the oil, and any other physical matter I am working with. I can explain the basic spell to people easily enough, but if I decide to play with the energetic and astral patterns directly by force of will and my own energy, it’s a bit harder to explain.

That’s part of what is frustrating about laying out the current book. There is a lot I want to write about, that I just can’t explain to a reader. I will have to keep this stuff for personal students that I can show. Thankfully, there are ways to help people to see. I will include exercises in the book that should help people to develop whatever gifts they have to observe the layers of reality necessary for this work. There are also different ways of directly touching people to help them.

In Tibetan magick, there are wangs or empowerments that introduce you directly to the mandalas that you will be working with. The first time I ever took an empowerment I came home that night and when I sounded the seed syllable, the whole mandala of Vajrakilaya was clearly visible in all its glory.

Shaktipats give this kind of kick, as does the reciving of Apostolic Ordination. OTO initiations can do this to a much lesser extent if they are conducted by talented people. The aforementioned Omnimancers have energetic “amps” that they give out to their students to help in their direct learning. I myself use a technique that was called “Catalyzing” by one of the founders of Thelesis Camp that observed me doing it during a lecture I was giving. I can’t really even show people how to do that, however. I just do it.

Than there are things that only the spirits can teach. I would love to write about the tesseract ritual that Metatron taught me in a vision, but I just cant quite figure out how it works myself.

Oh well. Back to writing the book.

3 comments:

Rufus Opus said...

One of the reasons I shun most of the "energy" model is that it can't be written about. I've always believed (as a writer) that you do not know a thing until you can put it into words. So much of the energy model's methods and techniques are only explainable as "you know what I mean?"

And personally, I never really developed an interest in how things get done, and I certainly don't have the skills or fine artistic craft to directly play with the energy being raised or implemented. I'd much rather leave it in the very skilled hands of my spiritual co-workers who aren't currently burdened down with the cumbersome "body" that I am.

Jason Miller, said...

Well, I think that there is a large portion of energy systems that are explainable. Eastern systems tend to doi a damn good job of it, but its true that even then, there is still a bit of "you'll know it when you find it" and "you need to be shown this directly" type stuff. That goes for Kung Fu, Qi Gung, Tsa Lung, Rajyayoga, Kundalini Yoga etc.

But there is an element of the Khabbalah and Angel model that isnt quite explainable either. The first thing I tell people when i give a talk on the tree of life is to remember that the menu is not the meal, and that the universe doesnt literrall look like the tree of life. Its a two dimensional representation of a multidimentional existance. It can only do so much.

I think the same is true of angels. While you know I have no tolerance for the "they exist in the mind" model, its also not as clear as them existing as independant beings. If anything I like to say that we partially exist in their minds.

Like I said in an earlier post, my view if shaped at a basic lavel by the Tibetan systems, which incorporate the spirit, energy, and physical modes of magick pretty seamlessly.

To me, all three are equally important.

Rufus Opus said...

Yeah, you're helping me understand the "energy model" better. Lack of caffeine probably left me unable to convey that I was expressing thanks for explaining things I didn't get before.

So... Thanks again for making things make sense.