The Magus’s Vision

Although the Magus seeks to develop all three principles of the Psychocosm – intelligence, feelings, and will – the focus of his efforts lies primarily in the realm of will. One might say that if philosophers know the world through intelligence, mystics through immediate experience, then Magi know themselves and the world by interacting with it through their will. That is why Magic is, above all, a Way of action, a way of awareness in motion, a Way of learning through studying changes and interactions.

Of course, the awareness obtained, if it is genuine awareness, ultimately is the same regardless of the “gates” through which it enters the mind: the philosopher who reaches the final depths of intelligence, the mystic who plunges heedlessly into the abyss of Direct Being, and the Magus who has flawlessly achieved his Vision all arrive at the same Reality, which transcends all concepts and definitions. Yet until that point is reached, the routes and methods differ, as do their intermediate results.

When it is said that the Magus sees energies, one does not mean sensory perception or visualization — but the very mode of knowing, the mode of interaction.

This mode means that the Magus perceives the active aspect of reality: the streams that constitute its foundation, the interactions that lead to actualization and manifestation. It is clear that the essential, cognitive, and active aspects are fundamentally one and indivisible, but on a relative level they are perceived as distinct principles.

So, if the philosopher knows, and the mystic experiences, the Magus sees his reality. Just as will is a neutral principle encompassing both the differentiating activity of intelligence and the integrating depth of feelings, the Magus’s vision is neither a subject–object description nor a trance immersion, although it includes elements of both.

One can say that vision is the ability to immerse oneself while maintaining one’s separateness, the art of union without mixing, in which the Magus is simultaneously transcendent and immanent to the current with which he interacts — a mode of engagement we call “walking the Threshold.”

And the Magus strives to attain this vision, entry into the streams of reality, into the eternal flow of energies, by various means. Whatever these means include — Western contemplation, seeking, or calling — they amount to the Magus attempting to enter a particular current while retaining his self-identity within it, and to “study” that current “from the inside,” without allowing the current itself to overwhelm the Magus’s mind. In contemplation the Magus seeks to see the inner patterns that form the current as a unified whole; on the hunt (or while seeking) he observes the manifestations of the current arising from the current’s needs; and in calling the Magus “provokes” the current to reveal those properties that in a “calm” state might remain unmanifested or unnoticed.

None of these methods alone yields the complete picture, but their combined use makes a more or less complete perception possible. By combining these approaches, the Magus attains his vision — knowledge of actions, knowledge of currents — through which he comes to know himself as a current, to know the world as a current, to discover the unity of self and world, and to behold his own individuality.

And the final stage of this vision becomes vision itself, in which there is no longer one who sees and one that is seen — but a direct presence, free from all constraints, including the need to be present.