Magic. It is quite alluring from the outside. We first see magic as children, it is as a fairy tale. Fancy wizards cast mighty spells atop pointy towers, calling down the stars. Wicked witches curse travelers, brew potions, and transform into cats. Majestic dragons sweep acros the sky, and prove the mightest of challenges to a warrior. Pretty. Fantastic. Yea! I want some of that! I want to throw fireballs and talk to happy-meal animals. Who wouldn't?
What a tease. You can even live it to some degree, in RPGs. D&D lets you be all of this, and it can seem so real. But how does it work *here*? There *must* be magic in the world. I think it was either Thomas Legotti or Lovecraft (so easy to confuse the two sometimes) who said the worst horror is facing that the real world is not as fantastic as we wish it, that there are no monsters at all. We just can't accept that this is all there is.
So, magic. Well, its out there, if you look for it. You draw in on fantasy, maybe learning something that calls itself Witchcraft. There are crystals, and herbs, and gods, and everything represents something important. Maybe you get lucky and find one who knows the Old Ways (as everyone knows, those before us must have known more about magic than anyone today, right?). Perhaps you learn the Shaman's ways, embark on vision quests and gain spiritual animal companions, each with their own medicine, stories, and realms of influence.
Maybe you go the route of the psychic, bred from tabloid tv and superstition. Hunches, clues, visions you don't understand. Tests with reading cards you can't see. Automatic movements of the Ouiji pointer or ghostwritten pen. Auras flare, voices gibber in your head, and the line between what you percieve, imagine, and receive from unknown sources becomes blurred. If your lucky, you'll follow syncronicity to impossible leaps of coincidence.
Maybe you'll just find Jesus and be done with the lot. Always an easy out. Looking for magic and the comfort of the supernatural? Behold the power of prayer! You have to focus on what's really important, right? Best not to truck with so many pagan Gods, you might offend someone. Magic is just a form of religion anyway. Even psychic powers are really those of the spirit.
But is your God any better than another? If you want answers, putting a name to something like God will only hold you back. Welcome the universal consciousness! Meditate on your higher self, and know that God is all things, that you are a part of God, and can see things from this perspective. Om. Look within, and circulate your Chi. All things flow with energy.
Energy flow. Interesting, just as the witches taught, only they deal more with it outside of the self. Gods and prayer and totems and spirits... One interacts with these in every tradition. Energy flows to and fro beings made of energy. It starts to make sense...
Maybe there's something to this afterall, if we strip away the mysticism. Science has always had the answer. Drop all the faces and religions, see things for what they really are: numbers. Energy fields, probability, Quantum mechanics. But in looking too close, we find that we indeed live in an observer oriented universe, and numbers make themselves up sometimes when we need them. Things are not discrete. God *does* roll dice with the universe, and he doesn't look. There may well be wonders to be made by taking advantage of these, but this is in aplication, not understanding. We're still left without a meaning for our existance.
What if we apply science to magic? Formulate, identify, relate, systemize. Understand. All these approaches are trying to do the same thing, from so many directions. We follow them all, but do we find the answers we are looking for? Its all the same, none of it matters, you can make it all up as you go along, and it still works! But some things are consistant. Some things have meaning attached that may demonstrate the existance of energy we cannot measure. Talismans, rituals, energy within and without, beings, invisible fields around us. Meaning placed in objects and actions, words and states of being.
Its all so much. Its so much more than we ever bargined for. Where are the dragons and wizards? Its all about meaning and understanding. Consciousness, dreams, visions, tricks to think in different ways so as to manipulate your own neural programming and that of others. Transmitting information to others on levels unseen, causing change in the mind and spirit, and sometimes in the body as well. I can't throw a fireball, but what if someone can see and feel me do so all the same. Is this the magic I was looking for?
So you want to make a love potion. You'll need to use these items, as they represent these elements you need present. You wish to call the favor of a particular God? They represent these things, so you must do these actions to appease them and bring yourself into a state to make their aspect a part of yours. Your stomache is in pain? Move the energies this way to remove the pain, and facilitate healing. You have complete control over your body if you wish it. You too, can be multiorgasmic and spasm every muscle and nerve in your body at once in ecstacy.
How did I know you were coming? All things are connected, and your pain is mine as well. I feel that you need to know this, and I don't know why. It was in the way the truck blared at me crossing the street that reminded me of this, so I tell you now. A group wishes to come together as one mind and energy to unite purpose? Rituals of this nature follow this sequence to clear, prepare, call, use, and return the forces desired to pray for this change.
Put your hands to mine. Do you feel that? See the arc between my fingers, like lightning from Eg Shen in Big Trouble in Little China? If I take the evergy away from you, how easially you stuble. If I throw it at you, how you jump. Here, let me remove that black spot in your aura, it causes you pain and impedes your health. Your troubles manifest as demons? I will persue them in dreams to amazing realms, and slay them in titanic battles of magic and weaponry. I saw you there, do you remember?
How is it I know what it feels like to run on four legs through the brush, or to soar on the wind? I look, and know of things to come. I see places that are too real to me imagined, and events I would not have dreamed of. How do I relate this to my subconscious, when I have never been there nor thought about such a thing before?
Maybe I have found the magic I'm looking for, afterall. Can these things be explained? Maybe. If I put it all together, I understand for a moment, but risk godhead to do so. There is more than we know. Cycles of consciousness exist in all things, though we percieve few. If we look hard enough, we can move our patterns through theirs, and be a part of larger things. Everything at once, even. God. It is ironic how in rejecting the idea of God to study science and magic, that we only find ourselves proving God all over again, as almost pointlessly obvious? In restlessly moving from one thing to another, we find that each individually is just as beautiful, and each moment forever. Be here now, for now is always.
The dragon, the wizard, the witch, the warrior, the enchanter, the seer, the priest, the angel, the shapeshifter, the medium, the superman. We chase the ideals, are dissappointed that the reality does not stand up to the dream, and sometimes realize just how close the reality actually is, and how much more.
2/13/01
Awakening. Sleeping. Dreaming. What do these things mean?
At night, we sleep. We rest, become imobile, and do nothing. We do not
move, we do not think, and we block out external stimuli to enforce this
state. We turn off the machine. Power down. Go off line. Sleep.
Of course, not being completely dead, we never stop moving entirely. Our
mind still buzzes about, and tries to work through things. Our
consciousness comes online at times, and we dream. Here, we interact with
ourselves, we go through routines, we explore new ideas. For the most part
however, expirements in lucid dreaming aside, we are not in control.
In dreams, we follow paths. We respond, we observe, and we react. We don't
really act much. Little is initiated in dreams. We shuffle about from one
scape to another, dealing with whatever our subconsious feeds us. What we
do is often so unimportant to our waking consciousness that we don't even
bother to remember it all.
How different is this to your average day at the office? One shuffles
about, following orders, completing tasks, moving from one assignment to
the next. One works. One is active, one is doing something. One is also
active in dreams, and thinks one is doing something at the time.
Routine saps our creativity, our imagination. We get up, go to work, do
our jobs, go home, continue to follow a pattern of rest, eat, watch tv
(yet more unconscious programming), and sleep. Maybe have some sex before
shutting down entirely. One doesnt' even need be present for such a day,
one can accomplish automatic tasks in one's sleep easily enough.
So why bother being present for it? One can sleep, turn off, and follow
patterns. How well does a typical office worker remember what they did
that day at work once they get home? The routines we follow are so similar
to the dreams we muddle through while unconscious, and often as
unimportant.
Life slips by, and we fail to notice. Time passes. The routine continues.
The machine trundles on. Maybe something important happens. Maybe you have
a child. This is quickly assimilated into the routine. More tasks to
complete. Maybe your wife up and leaves you one day. Did you notice why?
Does this really change your life any? The routine continues. Small
changes are assimilated, and the schedule is recompiled around them.
The fact is, you won't bother to snap out of the routine and actually be
awake unless you need to. If everything is in order, you'll mindlessly
follow it because its easier that way. You are really only awake when
something happens to change the pattern. Someone taps your space bar and
you have to put power back into the monitor to deal with the new
information coming your way.
You come online. You gather input, you process it, you assimilate it
again. Maybe, you even get excited about it. It takes more energy to run
the main processor, after all. For a brief time, you are actually awake
and dealing with something. You are conscious. You are LIVING.
Of course, this type of stimuli can come in many forms. A baseball game is
a rush of new chaotic information to process. One puts emotional
investment in one side, and is excited by the outcome. So you're awake.
Are you? Really, only awake for a limited scope. Outside of the game,
you're still asleep. Did you ever bother to notice yourself while you were
cheering?
So what can we do to be awake? Its not as easy as it sounds to just shake
yourself out of bed, is it? You are a compilation engine that seeks the
most efficient solution to any given problem. Naturally, you will tend to
follow the easier road, and power yourself down in the process. Its not
easy to fight this. One has to be dedicated to the idea of it for it to
have any lasting effect.
Dedication. It may come in the form of spiritual importance. You are doing
this to serve a higher power. Maybe you have a reason, something you wish
to attain. Magical research is always a good one. Make it a part of your
work, to effect awakened consciousness. Maybe you just enjoy the feeling
of being alive. Hedonism is its own reward, afterall, and excitement feels
good. There's also power to consider. Being awake, one has the ability to
choose their path and destiny. Power over one's self is a mighty alluring
thing, and power is always seductive. Just a few reasons to dedicate the
energy to maintaining it. There are many more, doubtless.
But how to do it? That's ever a point of study. The simplest examination
is that stimuli and information input cause the machine to have to work.
More input = more work. Somewhere, there's a threshold where you might
consider yourself "Awake". Theoretically, if one bombards and overloads on
information, one might break through to a higher state of awareness.
Ecstatic states are a common path to this.
But one doesn't need external input, necessarially. Music, lights, dance,
sex, pain, snuff, drugs... All of these things are workable as sources of
input. But we forget the most obvious one: ourselves.
There is an endless supply if information available to us, if we only
consider our own situation. When we consider ourselves awake, it is
required that we have looked upon ourselves to make this realization. In
self analysis, we can see that we are asleep. We can notice the things we
might have overlooked in our trundling march of routine. We can bring them
to our attention, and fix them. We can improve ourselves. We give
ourselves the power to break out of the prisons we place ourselves in.
When one awakes from sleep, how does one know one is awake? One looks down
and sees that one is laying in bed, and is not in a fantastic dream space
any more. One looks at one's self and realizes one's condition. One
excercises self awareness to know that one is awake, and one wakes.
Now, excercise this self awareness more. Examine everything you do,
everything you think, everything you say. The tasks you complete, the
routines you follow, the rules you obey. Why do you do these things?
Question everything. In questioning, reasons are found. Awareness is
gained. Awakening is had.
When one knows a thing, one has power to change a thing. When one watches
what one does, one expierences it all the more. When one is aware of every
minute of every day, the day is so much longer. Life is so much longer.
Don't we owe it to ourselves to milk as much as we can out of it?
Don't let 20 years pass you by in a blur of persuit over a career. Yes,
this is an important thing to persue, but does it require you to sleep
through your day? If it does, how easy is it to sleep through your evening
as well? Your weekend? Your life?
You've got to make it stop. Shock yourself awake if you have to. Every
minute you sleep through is a minute you didn't live. How much is that
time worth to you?