Today the boundaries between myth, legend and folktale often are blurred. Often what we are left with is a palimpsest touched by many voices and pens, overwritten, cut short and expanded again in multiple layers and times. That is why going into the mythical structures ourselves in vision and ritual and bringing them back to life again is essential. Only by embarking on the mythical journeys ourselves can we explore and ultimately judge if they are true patterns of spirit power - and what type of beings lie waiting at their sources.
Read MoreLately I have been asking myself: What’s the role that the myth played in ritual magic in ancient times? There is a stark contrast between the colorful myth of the Egyptians, the Greeks or even Chaldeans and our more recent tradition of Western Magic since the time of the late Gnostics. While the former is full of stories about relationships between humans and gods, between divine offsprings, their battle for freedom, their protection of the land as well as direct encounters of pleasures and threats of the spiritual world, we are faced with a strange silence and absence of such stories when surveying the latter.
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There is one more thing I have to share on Power and Magic. It is a personal story. When I was a young boy and had just about entered kindergarden I remember a night of bonfire. Families would meet in the yard of the kindergarden where a large fire had been prepared. Parents would come and gather in the dark, sit around the fire on stumps, eat, drink, and allow the children to stay up late and play with the flames under their watch. How much better does it get when you are a boy of six?
Read MoreIn the previous posts of this series we discussed the basics of Power and Magic. In Part 1 we introduced a simple model allowing us to connect the What, How and Why of Magic and explored its impact on our own ritual practice. In Part 2 we took a look at the fundament of magical power built from experience and meaning and how these need to be in balance for a living approach to magic. Furthermore we examined an example of abuse of magical power that can be encountered both in past and present times.
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