Magical Practice

As we have said many times, Magic is a Way of developing the mind through action — a Way of transformation and transmutation that unfolds through ordering, through the interaction of the cognizing aspect with whatever is brought into awareness.

Strictly speaking, this is precisely why the Western Way is called a “Way”: a chain of interconnected, mutually conditioned actions and realizations.

Within a single process of awareness, it is useful to distinguish two components: awareness itself (within which there is not, and cannot be, any change) and activity (which “provokes” change and thus reveals new aspects of the mind, translating them from potential, unmanifest states into an actual form accessible to direct vision). This distinction is, generally speaking, conventional, yet it is extraordinarily convenient for the very process by which reality reflects itself to itself. Put differently: although the process of awareness is one, for the sake of self-comprehension it is helpful to distinguish mind and activity within it.

And although, as we have already discussed, this division leads to the “entanglement” of the mind in its individual aspects — to the emergence of the illusion of separateness and the opposition of one aspect to the others — it is also the key to overcoming that illusion.

Because we are speaking of a Way of development— a process inverse to the “unfolding” of the mind, a means by which the mind can rectify the situation and “return” from obscuration and disharmony to existence as free light — we must draw practical benefit from this understanding.

Practically useful, above all, is the idea of two principled approaches to liberating the mind. The first approach, which we called “Eastern,” moves “from above downward”: the mind seeks its deep foundation within itself, identifies with it, and in this way purifies its separate manifestations. The second approach, which we call “Western,” moves “from below upward”: the mind realizes itself in actions that ensure contact with its “pure foundation,” gradually transforming — “re-smelting” — its “active” component, its “vessel,” and thus entering into its primordial nature.

In any case, it is impossible to transform one’s totality merely by “purifying the mind” or simply by “accumulating power/authority.” A “purified mind” must express itself in “pure actions,” just as the “realization of potencies” must culminate in an “expansion of awareness.” Many examples are known in which highly advanced meditators — having achieved astonishing success in concentration and immersion into the depths of the psychocosmos — fell into the most destructive activity as soon as they stepped beyond the rift of their meditation cell; just as many highly realized Magi displayed an astonishing narrowness of understanding.

The “Western” Way, in essence, is this: the Magus, time and again — Ritual after Ritual, mystery after mystery — repeatedly brings himself into contact with Power, with the boundless, unformed ocean of potencies and energies, allowing this ocean to fill, “rectify,” and “fit” the vessel of his awareness to the pure nature of absolute reality. It is precisely this approach —aware activity directed toward harmonizing self and environment — that, step by step, leads to the total realization of the Magus’s being.

The Magus’s battles— his efforts toward the “opening of the vessel” and the separation of that Power which this vessel can and must receive — are not a struggle against being, not an opposition of oneself to any forces or currents whatsoever, but efforts to cleanse the channel of the Great Flow of mind.

When the Magus carves Runes, summons spirits, or makes appealing to gods, he transforms reality. He “reconfigures” the fabric of being so that it becomes capable of a new contact with the mind; and this contact can lead either to harmonization or to further destruction of a given binary — herein lies the Magus’s great responsibility.

A Ritual is not merely meditation, just as it is not merely an ordinary action. It is an intervention into the primal Fabric of being itself — an influence upon causes rather than phenomena — and therefore it is always a creative act that places the Magus beyond everyday existence. This is both a great opportunity and a great danger. The acting Magus may turn from an instrument that cleanses being into a means of further contamination and darkening. Yet be that as it may, the Magus’s method of development is action, practice; and that action is all the more successful (as a means of development) the more aware it is.

It is understandable that, by “purifying” the cognizing side, the mind risks “destroying” and disharmonizing reality less than it does through action. Nevertheless, if one system may attain realization by changing the subjective component, another may find a shorter path through changes in the “objective” one. One should not assume that the “Western” and “Eastern” approaches differ in efficacy: they differ in applicability — to a particular system, and to particular conditions and demands. The “Western” Way is, perhaps, richer in traps and dangers than the “Eastern,” though the depth of those traps is often relatively smaller. In taking up the Way, a person must be guided by his own peculiarities — his individuality — yet he must understand firmly that wherever he begins his transmutation, whether from being or from mind, it must be total, affecting all strata and levels of his existence as an individual manifestation of the One Reality.

Read also

A Magus becomes a Magus when he not only understands, but learns in practice to find himself and to realize himself.

What Do Magi Do?

The Way is a systematic, ordered, and directed development in which one step logically and inevitably follows from the previous and likewise logically and inevitably...

Step by Step

Magic begins when direct experience shows that there is no other way, that one cannot pretend or stall, because the battle proves not to be...

Condensation of Mind

All efforts must be directed at seeking out and removing obstacles, at separating one's own elements from destructors, at cleansing the field of the mind.

Adeptship and Enlightenment

For the Magus, both the state of "coolness"—the relaxed condition typical of humanity—and the "molten" condition characteristic of trance-based, "altered" states of mind are equally...

Passions of the Magus

There is no Magic without Rituals, no development without stepping beyond the bounds, no evolution without transformation.

The Ritual Activity of the Magus

The revolutionary Way of the development of the mind has always been a very narrow trail that only a few could walk; this Way was...

Fire from Within

Each Magus builds his own unique Way, stringing individual beads of Power on his necklace, and, with honest and attentive regard, attains his own realization

Conformity to Criteria