A crucial part of the art of magic and mysticism involves awareness of creating our own realities. However, as with many magical and mystical ideas it seems a concept that many completely misunderstand, either in a kind of blind new age optimism of a future where we can all fly around the Earth using will power alone, or by criticising it as a fascist ideology that blames the suffering for their own plight.
To my mind both extremes miss the point, as they think the concept refers to changing external reality. I personally see this technique as actually about changing one’s internal experience of reality. When we experience reality, we experience it via the senses, in our minds, with the experiences filtered by our own prejudices, ideologies, emotions and past experiences. Sometimes we experience suffering as a result, not of our external reality, but our minds.
Whilst idly surfing the web yesterday evening I stumbled upon the story of a young woman who felt ashamed of her body. Even with her sexual partner she would only get naked in the dark, or under the bed covers, or at most with a candle lit. On the beach she would remain completely covered up. Then one day she came across a ‘clothing optional’ resort. Much to her husbands surprise she suggested they try it out. After observing the naturists at the resort for a while she decided to take off her own clothes. At first she felt a bit self conscious, but she looked around and noticed that no-one was taking much notice of her, let alone reacting negatively to the sight of her body, she began to enjoy it, and even felt uncomfortable putting her clothes back on when it was time to leave. Now she regularly attends various clothing optional venues and feels totally at ease with her body. Further more she became much more confident and happy in all spheres of her life, felt more fulfilled generally.
Now in this example she didn’t use magic or mysticism to enact the change, but I think none-the-less it illustrates beautifully the kinds of internal change in our experience of reality that magic and mystical practise should aim for. In her story she broke through the fear that held her back and caused her suffering, almost by a chance decision. However in magic we aim to identify the roots of our suffering and deal with them more consciously. We do this not by denying our emotions, such as fears and anxieties, but through confronting them. We do this when we identify that a fear, or other emotion holds us back from experiencing the pleasure, joy, bliss and everything that comes with the fulfilment of our desires.
So, does this a philosophy necessarily blame victims and the poor for their own suffering? To me that would be a gross misunderstanding of its basic premise. Of course, I can see where critics of the viewpoint come from on this, I even warned of a similar danger in Kaos Hieroglyphica when I said that focusing heavily on pleasure magic could make ‘us feel like we are pleased and content, but really it makes us easily pleased and content to be poor.’ As I noted then this ability can prove useful to our well-being and happiness, but can also lead to a kind false contentment and our failing to challenge those who abuse their wealth and power. On the other hand it need not. For if we can live content and happy on so little, why let let the few live in obscene luxury far beyond their needs when so many suffer through no fault of their own? I’m not proposing some kind of authoritarian Marxism here, but I don’t believe in the current myth about so called ‘free markets’, which are actually highly controlled by powerful corporate monopolies and oligopolies that lobby governments to regulate the markets in their own favour to the detriment of everyone else. Anyone who opposes this centralisation of wealth and power gets labelled a socialist or communist.
Now some kinds of magic do aim to manipulate and change the outside reality for our own benefit. Changing things internally will cause external changes indirectly because they change the way we relate to our surroundings, and effect our choices of surroundings to experience. But sometimes we also use sorceries and enchantments with the intent of influencing reality and improving our fortunes. This kind of magic, known to some as ‘results magic’ has little use to the rich and powerful, who can simply ‘buy’ what they need or get it by force much easier, but rather finds itself much more useful as a tool of last resort for the poor, powerless and vulnerable. At its most useful sorcery becomes an essential for survival for those living on the edge.
So why do people like me practise it at all? Do I need it to survive? Perhaps not physically. I reside in household with an income barely over half the UK average, so I don’t consider myself particularly well off, although we have enough to eat and have a bit of fun so I don’t consider us particularly poor either.
For me, I didn’t choose to practise magic, I had no choice. I began having weird experiences in my teenage years. Actually further back even, its just that during childhood no one takes much notice as they think its just a wild imagination, but as a teenager I found myself less willing to discuss experiences of premonition, visions, contact with entities and so on for fear of people thinking me mad. I decided I needed to learn about what I felt was happening to me. So my interest in the subject was not initially academic but rather practical, with particular emphasis on navigating myself through the psychic and psychological roller coaster of paranoia, anxiety, depression and visionary I felt myself to be on.
On top of this I found myself handicapped by a particular form of social ineptitude, which I and others later started to observe strongly resembled the symptoms of what the medical profession call Asperger’s Syndrome, although I never sought a diagnosis for this, and personally think believe that it and other forms of autism actually form natural variation in the human mental spectrum, and that the failure of the autist to fit into contemporary society reflects a failing of the increasingly rigid expectations that contemporary society places on individual behaviour rather than an illness or defect in the autist.
So I found myself as an outsider. I found myself at one point in a living hell of depression, substance abuse and slow suicide though the taking of pointless and unnecessary risks. I lived through times when I seriously contemplated ending my life, it seemed so empty. I found myself unable to connect and properly communicate with others. I felt myself trapped in a glass cage looking out at everyone else living their lives, whilst I lived in my own private hell. During this time my interest in magic, mysticism and the occult had been more that of the dabbler.
Before I became depressed I’d met with new-agers but found them kind of boring and lacking in practical answers to my problems. My first main practise came from a couple of friends I had at school, on of which was into Crowley and the other of which was into psychedelics. We and some other friends performed a mass group ‘initiation’ ceremony in a woods, one Beltane in the early 90’s, before we started university. This I found a positive and exhilarating experience.
After starting my degree, I met with Wiccan’s and other pagan’s, and bought their magazines and from these I began to learn things I found useful, although overall I got slightly turned off by its more religious forms of expression, such as the apparent worship of deities. I also continued my own studies, reading such books and magazine’s I could find, practising the tarot, pathworking and even solo ritual. Some of these magazines introduced me to writings on Chaos magic and Thelema, such as those by Phil Hine and Gerald Suster, and I found these resonated with me quite a bit as they seemed a lot more thoughtful and a lot less dogmatic than the more religious writings that dominated the magazines.
Experiments with their techniques brought a sense of wonder and joy back into my life and probably marked a kind of turning point where I began to pull myself out of the depression I found myself. I guess there is a lot more to this story and maybe I should write it up sometime, but I think I’ve said enough to make my point. Mystical and magical techniques helped me pull through depression, break through the social barrier of autism to form friendships and and loving relationships (although that was a bumpy ride with some false starts), overcome paranoia (more or less), and permanently end my depression. It helped me overcome an endless list of inhibitions, opened my eyes to the vast diversity of options available to me in life, and gave me the wisdom tell the difference between my own genuine desires, and those stimulated by outside manipulation from those wishing to control through fear and false promises.
Magic never made me rich, I never sought that from it, nor did I get it. I’m certainly not part of the financial and political ‘elite’. Magic never made me their slave either. If anything it freed me. Those who seek to drag the free back into the chains of fear, rather than allowing the free to help them escape do the work of the enslavers for them. They police themselves and those around them to make sure they stay chained. This is why I have no patience for them.
Thank you Anton
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Interesting post Anton. I guess that magick can be used in many different ways and for different reasons. For me it is something i grew up with, so its understanding changed a lot through the years and it still does. I believe that using magick to gain power or become very rich is a misunderstanding. The need for such things comes from one’s perceived separation from the rest of the world/universe. I believe that this point of view is automatically rejected by individuals who reach certain (higher) level of consciousness.
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There is a lot of people out there who although seem to share interest in occult and magic do so for a very different reasons than gaining personal freedom and enlightenment. If someone obtains knowledge of the Mysteries and uses them selfishly and without concern for others or even directly against others they make a mistake. I think that if there is anything we could call the Great Work it would be bringing down the purifying light, the sword braking through illusion down to the Earth/Malkuth to help others out of their bonds.
People can be so terribly ignorant and this is difficult but we all have been there and we all know how it feels. It’s not fun. That’s what I try to bare in mind when encountering such individuals. Not that I have a lot of patience for them either, but I’m trying.
I think that there is certainly a responsibility involved in spiritual growth. In fact this may be seen as simple responsibility humans have for each other anyway. If people take this responsibility others consider them kind. Kindness coming from heart constitutes a true virtue. You may have someone mega rich giving away few thousand dollars for charity to gain good publicity but this wouldn’t count as kindness in my book. I mean kindness that comes from understanding and compassion for others. If an individual developed this kind of understanding and compassion they wouldn’t want to take more than they need. This could be considered a higher state of consciousness. Understanding the long therm and far reaching consequences of our actions gives us power and advantage in live but also sense of responsibility for others . I think that is why ‘spiritual masters’ didn’t abuse magical powers for their own advantage. They simply understood misery that follows such practices.
When people talk about Black Brothers or Black Magicians I can’t help but think of individuals who gained understanding but still choose to act selfishly and out of greed.
I try to live as consciously as possible and make sure that all my choices have a good impact on my surroundings and others but there was certainly time in my life when I didn’t really care about it. I think depression could have been a major factor. If your own life seems miserable how can you care to improve life of anyone else. This to me came as a form of illumination that Altruism may come from immense inner power rather than weakness. If practised purely religiously it could be harmful but not more than selfishness. That’s where I disagree with ‘satanic’ way of thinking. To be able to give something to others means that you already have enough of it for yourself.
What I written above relates loosely to Anton’s post but I do see a link. To explain it better I need to use a practical example from my own life.
I have never been rich but I wasn’t very poor either. I understand well how it feels not to have money or food although I rarely lacked them completely. I always liked sharing my things with others, I could give other a kid my lunch at school and things like that. People always tell me that I am a very generous person. I like the sense of power coming from sharing my stuff with others and so on. To me it is not about superiority a tall. I rather see it as braking boundaries. How can I see anything around me as my own. There might be slight communist influence there I suppose
but I feel like all we have on Earth we share. All I have was given to me in one way or another so why not ‘share’ it back. I always meet people who share their wealth with me. I have never been in true trouble. I met lots of greedy people who struggled many times. I think it is my attitude that keeps me ‘on top’. I feel wealthy even when I don’t have much of my own and although many people would consider me poor at the moment my life doesn’t seem such to me. I do not envy others for their possessions and I get presents all the time. I could sit here and think how big depth I got myself into taking student loans but I rejoice temporary wealth this brought me (like huge video library at my campus). Happy people notice opportunities around themselves more often than others.
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Anton, addressing your main point, I think I consider the useful part of creating our own realities as a law of attraction of sorts. What I consider as unuseful is when it gets used to “blame the victim.” I think it is too complex and beyond mutual agreements to say that any victim created that reality.
One could use the same law of attraction or law of karma to describe how the victim did create that situation, but I find it incredibly distasteful and unhelpful to anyone.
I do indeed know from experience that by changing ones own relationship to reality, reality changes. I have been helped in understanding this dynamic by learning more fully, the Buddhist idea of emptiness. On the practical level, this translates to the fact that we can change, along with our attitude towards our environments.
I have had endless discussions on this concept of creating our own realities, and have never reached any agreements or ends. I do find it helpful though to make sure everyone is discussing the same concepts. This seems obvious, but it really is rarely done.
The greatest part of this post is hearing a bit about your own personal path with “Magick.” I find such sharing to be very helpful and inspiring. I really appreciate your sharing and the many, sane and down to earth to me, points of view that you have and shared here.
I also wonder how many here have had the similar experience of having always practiced magick. I didn’t know I did until about 10 years ago when I cam across some chaos magick articles, and I saw that I was doing many of the things mentioned there. Learning about the different traditions has given me direction and focus on my way.
– An outsider
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@anton A moving story and I find myself feeling a similarity in much of what you say, although my own journey was slightly different in details. ^-^
@tortugo23 Who are these people that use this philosophy to ‘blame the victim’? I haven’t come across any such nonsense in any of the books I’ve read. Maybe I’ve just been lucky in my choice of reading material.
I have come across some misunderstandings of ‘karma’ that blame the victim for their own suffering. I see this as misunderstanding because I see karma as a vicious circle that enslaves and needs breaking, not a law justifying the current state of affairs.
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@Sally I’ve not come across it in readings. It would seem as you say, to be misunderstandings, as in the karma case.
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@lolita and @hippi I understand what you mean about those that try and use magic and sorcery to control and manipulate others, but to my mind they seem to have failed to grasp the mysteries fully. If they had, they wouldn’t obsess over control, as that brings stress not joy. I don’t really like Crowley’s term “Black Brothers” though, as it could imply an association of the colour black with evil (like the terms ‘black witch’ or ‘black magic’), although to my mind he may simply have meant those trapped in the first stage of the great work, the nigredo…
@tortugo23 and @sally with regards to karma, I similarly see it as cycles and cycles within cycles that we need to break, some on a personal level and others on a collective level. So rather about blaming and dismissing peoples suffering I see it as incitement to act and take responsibility for helping and fixing both your own situation and the situation of us all as a collective. Creating our own realities is a part of that, and together we create our collective realities as much as we do individually. But we can only create to the extent we have choices. Rather than blaming the poor we should be blaming the rich, as they are the ones who created the situations that cause mass poverty and suffering. This does not let us off the hook however. Nor do I even see blaming the rich as that constructive in the long run. Instead we need to start building the world as we want it, demonstrate how things could work and collectively bring our influence to a level where we can end suffering. I don’t see this as impossible. Not easy of course, there are those who desperately want to cling to their positions of power over everyone else. But we needn’t let them. And if we can slowly dismantle the means by which the few hold power over everyone else and establish a society of individual sovereignty, then we can empower ourselves to make the necessary difference. I see this as a long term objective, but one we can continually work towards even now, seizing any opportunity to advance it we can.
Creating our own realities seems the essence of being human to me. It isn’t always magic. Everything we do, every choice we make, to some extent shapes our reality. Technology, religion, philosophy, agriculture, hunting, gathering, making tools, walking, riding, swimming. They all change our realities. We aren’t the only animals that do it either. Elephants actively destroy trees they don’t like to make more for the ones they do. Other animals adapt and learn behaviours appropriate to survival in different environments. I mean behavioural adaptation, not genetic.
Only when we are deprived of all choice are we enslaved so much that we can’t create our realities.
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“I also wonder how many here have had the similar experience of having always practiced magick. I didn’t know I did until about 10 years ago when I cam across some chaos magick articles, and I saw that I was doing many of the things mentioned there. Learning about the different traditions has given me direction and focus on my way.”
l
@Tortugo23
I definitely did. To me discovering magick happened very early on in my life. I was just around 11 years old when I read a book on Taoism and roughly year later I started practicing self initiation Wicca and some form of modern ‘Shamanism’. I had the same realization that in fact I have been always doing this stuff. To me reading books on magic and getting familiar with different systems also helped with getting sense of direction and focus in my practices. I wouldn’t label myself a chaos magician but at the moment my magick is very random and I do not stick to one particular tradition. I prefer creating my own, individual one.
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@Anton
I dislike term Black Brothers as well. In essence it must be meaningless and seems to be used only as a derogatory term of some kind. You could see it as some sort of occult equivalent of swear words.
I also believe that greedy attitude can last only as long as an individual failed to comprehend the magick on a deeper level.
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Incidentally for all the Satanists and other left hand pathers reading this thinking I’ve lost it and turned all fluffy RHP, don’t forget that altruism can actually be motivated by self interest. Personally I see it as in all our personal interests to ensure that our future world becomes more and more free from tyranny and oppression in all its forms. The other extreme, dictatorship, serves no-one, ultimately not even the dictator.
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All very interesting, especially as I always seemed a little “different” myself.. it was only very recently that I started to try and find out what it could be.
it’s some folks opinion that there is only good and evil in humans, in which case.. seeing as Satan, and his host are not human, it would follow that they are also not evil.
I was intregued by the concept of Anton turning all fluffy as well.
I am not quite sure what to do with that thought, but it makes me feel happier about some things.
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@anton Don’t try and wriggle out of it, we can all see you’ve turned fluffy bunny. ~.^
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heh heh! .. only when it’s not necessary to be anything else…
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@trace and @sally: “Well, that’s no ordinary rabbit. That’s the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on! Look, that rabbit’s got a vicious streak a mile wide! It’s a killer!” ~ Tim
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Oh…. ah!……. er, hello Anton, (sheepish grin).. could I interest you in a carrot?
The intricacy is too big and too small for me to understand all of it in a cognitive way. I will just have to be content with just knowing and feeling that it’s there…. and it’s there for us.
aside from that though, it would seem, from my little sliver of collective consciousness, that magik, (magic).. may be a lot of different things to everyone.
Ranging totally… from fairies at the bottom of the garden to tackling the very abyss and beyond! I suppose like anything, it’s always going to be that way. and the more I think in those terms, the more i get swallowed up in fractals! (not that i mind,)
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@anton on the karma thing, I think you are right. I think that if one is ready to see it, that they can grow very much by seeing their situation as self created. I just wouldn’t want to push it on anyone.
@Lolita Perdurabo I wouldn’t label myself a chaos magician either, it would be too stifling.
Same goes for RHP and LHP, and anton’s having gone totally fluffy bunny. Why not be ambidextrous?
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@trace Sure I like carrots, just keep don’t let me catch site of a Holy Hand Grenade…
@tortugo23 I play with both hands of course, my comment above was concerned with explaining how my viewpoint here can be viewed from both a LHP and RHP point of view.
I don’t think think anyone’s reality is totally self created of course, and neither would I want to push any view point on anyone. Any more than I like it when someone tries to push their viewpoint on me.
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@anton http://www.thebookofbiff.com/2007/10/15/355-cadabra/
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@sally Yes, never underestimate those bunny’s… :-D
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A very, very, verrrrry  late lack of a holy hand grenade is definitely far better than none at at all.
have a carrot @Anton, you know you want to……..
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