The Problem of Magical Presence
The following short text is an excerpt from an upcoming book. It forms the introduction to a chapter on conjuring celestial spirits with nothing but the sound of your voice and a magical bell. The deceptive simplicity of the operation can make us fail to realise the complexity that underpins it. Often the simplest of rituals take the highest of skills to accomplish. Much of the magic at an adept level resides in not getting lost in the maze.
So while I am knee deep in working through the details of the operation, I thought you might enjoy the introduction.
LVX, Frater Acher
“And yet no roasted dove will ever fly into your jap.”
Here is a simple problem worthwhile pausing over: The classical planets divide the heaven into 7 orbits, the Zodiac into 12 realms, the lunar mansions into 28, the decans into 36. The Earthbelt realm goes all the way to 360. And every star, Behenian or not, is supposed to have an intelligence, a demon and a ruler at least. So just when you look up at the night sky - how many spirits to do you see? That vast dark canvas can easily get a little crowded. Or maybe it is just our human mind that gets lost in the maze of celestial complexity. So here is the problem worthwhile pausing over: If all of these spirits indeed exist - 443 to sum up just the above - then they have to exist all at the same time, at every single moment. They gaze and breath and experience with us. Now, and now, and now again. None of them wait for Jill or Joe to call them into being. They are all present, conscious, working and weaving, all the time. So when you prepare for a ritual that calls on a single planetary spirit or on a particular family of beings - can you begin to see the perfection and craft it takes to ensure your arrow hits its mark? Literally, you have a night sky full of beings listening - and yet somehow you need to work the magic of connecting the cloud of dust you are to that one stellar being you call for. What a long shot, one might say.
A wise woman once said to me, everything is always present. Whenever we enter into an experience, we actually make a choice. For every experience creates a division between foreground and ground; between the part that takes shape and the part that remains in the dark. In singing one note, we silence all others; in seeing one face, we become blind to all others. As humans, we walk on a weave and have mastered the art to only see the thread right in front of us - and often not even that. The consciousness of all the beings that create, destroy, maintain and evolve the cosmos, constantly surrounds us - and yet when we pour a coffee, when we cross the street or stare on a mobile phone, our consciousness connects with none of them. Over millennia humans have mastered the art of walking undis- turbed, of becoming focused on a single task, of absorbing the melody that creation is, and to listen to one instrument only, one note at a time. We have become surgeons of focus and effectiveness to complete a single task - and in the process we have become deaf to the orchestra of voices and experiences that awaits our attention. We have numbed out oceans of possibilities, in order to learn how to ride a single wave. Now, when we work magic at an adept level, we aim to return from riding the wave, to becoming part again of the vast space deep down underneath it. As adept magicians we aim to be back in the ocean, not on top of it. We aim to let go of our humanness, and bring to the foreground the part of us that always knew how to breathe under water, how to navigate through patterns and waves, and to sing with the whales. As adept magicians we do not aim to perfect our humanness. We are no longer in the business of leveraging magic as crisis support for everyday life problems. We aim to reconnect with the medium that is our spiritness.
Of course, nobody has said that would be easy. Experience and consciousness are directly correlated. The more complex our consciousness, the more complex the experiences we get to make. Magic of the adepts is amongst the most complex experiences humans can make. Intentionally tuning into and consciously co-creating the symphony that is an adept ritual is not only a form of art - it is an interdependent art-form that relies on the complex interplay of contacted consciousness, our inner and outer senses, and the entire living world around us. For most of us it takes decades of training to first experience it, and a lifetime to refine it.
Now in this work, one could argue, the thing that matters most is our ability to send a magical call. But what is a call in magic? What does it essentially consist of, whether it takes the form of a prayer or a pact? Essentially, a magical call is nothing but vibrations traveling on the weave. A traveling sound that awakes the attention of the beings in resonance with it. Thus, a single call can awake legions or just a single being. It depends on the key that was placed inside the call; and that key con- sists of three elements mainly: intention, intonation and integrity. We will explore these in detail further below. But for now, just hold on to this: The problem of magic - and adept magic in particular - is not that it might fail to work. The real problem is that magic will always work. That is, no call properly placed will ever go unnoticed. Whether it hits its intended mark or not - something will respond - some ears will be pricked. Finding that single weave between us and the spirit(s) of our work, and then placing our call onto its string - that is at the heart of the magical art.
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