A Step Toward
«If you take a step toward Allah, Allah will take several steps toward you. If you walk toward Allah, Allah will run toward you».
(Hadiths: Ahmad 1/368, Ibn Abi Asim 1/204)
A well-known law of Magic is the law of the attraction of Powers: unlike the “physical” world, where opposite poles attract, the world of Causalities draws like things to like.
This difference follows from the nature of these worlds. The embodied world obeys the law of the quaternary, while the world of Power — the “spiritual” world — obeys the law of the ternary.
In other words, consciousness describes the actual objects of the embodied world through a dynamic system of interactions between the poles of binaries. As it describes them, consciousness moves along the Tetragrammatic Way: idea — material — thing — field of the thing’s manifestation. For this reason, the key law that keeps consciousness mobile in the world of manifested objects is the attraction of opposites. It creates the difference in potential required for any activity. The objectified world is therefore a realm where multiplicity dominates unity. This dominance is a necessary condition for the differential development of consciousness, and it means that forces of repulsion dominate forces of attraction.
Power and spirit, by contrast, develop according to the principle of threefoldness, in which unity prevails over multiplicity. Like things that share a common source attract one another because they possess substantial unity. The potential world, accordingly, is an environment where unity dominates multiplicity, and forces of attraction dominate forces of repulsion.
These ideas take on special importance when we speak of the manifestation of Power in the world — that is, the penetration of the one into the many.
Because the actual world is the world of victorious disunion, any penetration of Power in it — that is, any expansion of consciousness — becomes possible only when Power and Vessel mutually attract one another, overcoming the repulsion that exists between them. We have already said that this act includes two stages: the creation of the Vessel and its opening to Power.
Now consider another point: consciousness can develop only by moving along the gradient of Power. This movement is called the Way, the being’s Orlög.
Put differently, for Power to enter a being, for the Light of consciousness to fill its existence, the being must move toward Power.
As long as the desire for Power remains only a desire, nothing happens. Power flows only when consciousness moves from lesser syntheticity to greater — that is, only when a being walks the Way of development.
The concept of the Way is not identical to the simple notion of activity. Activity often amounts to nothing more than the chaotic displacement of elements. The Way means purposeful and highly ordered activity directed along the gradient of Power. In other words, the chief criterion for the value of an act is its capacity — or incapacity — to bring about an increase of Power: an expansion of awareness. This is true only when purposeful activity does not turn into goal-setting— only when the goal of activity, the expected result, does not become more important than the movement itself, and when all the activity of consciousness remains in the present moment rather than looping in the potential reality of the future.
The same regularity applies to the Magus’s particular actions. Any realization requires purposeful and highly ordered activity. It seems simple: if you want to achieve something, do it, while remaining yourself; act by throwing every effort into the act, yet without plunging into it completely. Yet how often actions diverge from intentions.
The Way as a Fundamental Category
Step by Step
Stairway to Heaven
The Discreteness of Power
Fire from Within
Ends and Means
Contact with Power
The Authority of the Magus
In Zen Buddhism, it is also said that filling the ‘vessel’ is possible only when it is ready to accept light; practices are given, but for their effectiveness, a teacher’s or mentor’s initiation is necessary… Nevertheless, thank you for the article… The path is made by walking.
Your articles somehow strangely intersect with events in my life. Indeed, how often the social, moral, or other norms of behavior imposed on us put us in a deadlock ‘I desire and I can’… Perhaps therein lies the freedom to be oneself, that stimulus to fight for that right.
When I finished reading the article, I decided to take a Step towards the Gods of Asatru, I saw myself in a dream calling to the Gods of Asatru having taken the position of the rune Algiz.