Magic is not a comfortable niche to be settled into forever. Instead, it is a transitional vehicle, a means to an end. Magic can be the awakening agent that frees its practitioner from certain illusions, allowing the flash of insight that transcends all philosophical inquiry. Through magic, the mind can learn that there is not one indisputable reality. There is an endless multiplicity of realities, none of them ultimately subject to categorization or label. The direct confrontation with Maya that sorcery allows might be said to be magic's primary objective. It is this confrontation that permits the sorcerer to viscerally understand how deeply his or her own shifting subjective overlays influence that which he or she perceives – an understanding that may hasten the transformation of human sentience to divine consciousness. Just as likely, it must be said, magic can become a self-delusive trap of its own, an addictive activity binding the magician ever more deeply to the Maya mirages he or she projects. This is the double nature of Maya, who blinds and reveals with each alternating step of her sinuous movement through time.
Demons of the Flesh
Nikolas Schreck
