#xanaduum

Familiarise yourself with the basic shamanic three worlds model, the four-quarter elemental model (which shows up everywhere – from the four archangels and the four evangelists in the Bible, to the Four Worlds of Qabalah, the Four Quadrants and the Transactional Analysis personality grid), the various 8-stage models of Buddhist consciousness (which are even more finely-grained upon closer inspection), Timothy Leary’s “Circuits”, Spiral Dynamics and Chaos. Study the ten spheres of the Qabalistic Tree of Life (this can become the work of a lifetime but it’s well worth it), the 30 Aethyrs of the Enochian system, the 64 hexagrams of the I-Ching divination system, the 78 cards of the Tarot deck etc.

Cultivate a working knowledge of the many gods, demons and angels of the world’s religious and mythic traditions. Read up on the various forms of Mag!c practised by shamans, witches and sorcerers over the centuries and even millennia; Australian Aboriginal dreamtime ideas, Hindu cosmology, pre-Buddhist Bon Po sorcery, Gnosticism, Wicca, Enochian Angelic Mag!c, Goetia, Voudon, Crowley’s Thelema, Spare’s Zos Kia, Satanism and the dark side Typhonian schools, the Chaos curent of Carroll, Sherwin, Hine. You must be willing to absorb and synthesize of all this contradictory information into your own personal prismatic worldview.

1) Mag!c offers a tried-and-tested self-help discipline which allows all of us to make specific beneficial changes to our personalities and motivations: its practice confers a powerful sense of self-determination and agency which can counter the powerlessness we often feel in the face of the world’s hurricane motion. Given that the “spiritual”, transcendent impulse appears hard-wired in the human organism and shows up in every human culture, why not indulge it with a practice that doesn’t require you to believe in any god or devil but elevates lovely, daft you, to the centre of all creation?

2) Mag!c gives us an excuse us to create something from nothing. Again, this is not a supernatural or occult feat; writers, artists, mothers and fathers, architects and filmmakers, among many others, do this every day and some of them spend lifetimes perfecting the trick. Grab NOTHING in your greedy, ugly physical fists and make magnificent SOMETHING from it!

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3) Mag!c connects us to generally unremarked upon, usually ignored but undeniably higher dimensional aspects of our being.

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Mind confers Meaning upon Matter.

Mind is nourished and sustained by the Meaning it assigns to Matter.

Matter is elevated and ennobled to Mag!c by the Meaning Mind attributes to it.

It's a winning transaction, an erotic snakedance, a slinky menage-a-trois that makes the world go round and around and up and down.

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Feel free to think whatever makes you comfortable but be aware that there’s very little benefit to be gained from [a] dismissive approach and it could result in your missing out on something that might change your life for the better.

The simple and terrible first truth Mag!c teaches is this: you’re much more IN CHARGE of your own life than you may have been led to believe. If you truly grasp the implications, this simple statement will return to haunt and delight you in the years that lie ahead.

Mag!c, as it is discussed here, has little room for the supernatural. Nor do we see any virtue in the stereotypically “New Age’, somewhat heroic tendency to privilege all things bright and beautiful while electing not to acknowledge the ugly, cruel, dark and hateful aspects of existence.

Mag!c is a pragmatic, albeit heightened and focused, engagement with things as they are – the Buddhist condition of sunyata. If some results of this specialized attention to ordinary obvious shit give the powerful impression of supernatural events, this is a misunderstanding which further immersion in the disciplines of Mag!c will clarify and resolve in ways guaranteed to surprise and charm you.

The feats of an Olympic gymnast, conjuror, martial arts master, or talented artist can often seem like “magic”, but they are the results of years of training, focus and attention.