Live.Laugh.Love. Yes Please!!!

Wizard Merlin said:

"There will come a day,

when you will understand that

The whole universe lives within you.

Then you will be a magician.

As a magician you do not live in the world,

the world lives inside you....

When this happens you will begin

manifesting instead of attracting.

And you will realize that you lack nothing,

you just haven't yet seen within you

Georgetown University Medical Center neuroscientists say the brain’s auditory lexicon, a catalog of verbal language, is actually located in the front of the primary auditory cortex, not in back of it — a finding that upends a century-long understanding of this area of the brain. The new understanding matters because it may impact recovery and rehabilitation following a brain injury such as a stroke.

The findings appear in Neurobiology of Language.

Previously, the researchers showed the existence of a lexicon for written words at the base of the brain’s left hemisphere in a region known as the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) and subsequently determined that newly learned written words were added to the VWFA. The present study sought to test whether a similar lexicon existed for spoken words in the so-called Auditory Word Form Area (AWFA), located anterior to primary auditory cortex.

“Since the early 1900s, scientists believed spoken word recognition took place behind the primary auditory cortex, but that model did not fit well with many observations from patients with speech recognition deficits, such as stroke patients,” says Maximilian Riesenhuber, PhD, professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Georgetown University Medical Center and senior author of this study. “Our discovery of an auditory lexicon more towards the front of the brain provides a new target area to help us understand speech comprehension deficits.”

In the study, led by Srikanth Damera, MD, PhD, 26 volunteers went through three rounds of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to examine their spoken word processing abilities. The technique used in this study was called fMRI-rapid adaptation (fMRI-RA), which is more sensitive than conventional fMRI in assessing representation of auditory words as well as the learning of new words.

“In future studies, it will be interesting to investigate how interventions directed at the AWFA affect speech comprehension deficits in people with different types of strokes or brain injury,” says Riesenhuber. “We are also trying to understand how the written and spoken word systems interact. Beyond that, we are using the same techniques to look for auditory lexica in other parts of the brain, such as those responsible for speech production.”

Josef Rauschecker, PhD, DSc, professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Georgetown and co-author of the study, adds that many aspects of how the brain processes words, either written or verbal, remain unexplored.

The magus is their own source of power, essentially being a catalyst for change. Still, there comes the particular effect that if a magus expends too much of their own energy (be it by the name of Prana, Qi, Aethyr etc.), they may suffer detriment in the form of mental, emotional or physical hurt. This is not to say that a magus cannot develop their own personal force in order to affect change on their own capacity while mitigating the effects of draining. In fact, the more you practice witchcraft and develop your faculties, you may find yourself being able to affect changes without the need for materials. None-the-less, the magus still has the ability to draw upon forces outside of themselves in order to empower their own force and the force of their magick. A great bit of these forces to tend to be deific or personified but there are just as many, if not more, primordial or secular energies. In the words of a wise person, why should I be obligated to put a face to the energy I work with.

Secular Sources of Power that the magus can draw upon include:

Herbs and plant materials

Crystals, rocks and other curios.

The sexual force of the magus and the products thereof.

The force of the magus based in their emotion.

The force of the magus based in their Wod (Inspiration) the Unbridled Desire for a goal to be obtained.

The magus's force found in the servitors created by the magus.

The energy latent in areas such as graveyards (Death Force), Oceans, Forests, Crossroads, Churches (bearing a particular energy), rivers, particular trees, holy wells.

The energy latent in astrological events - meteor showers, eclipses, the usages of fixed, muteable and moveable signs, the 12 signs, the fixed stars, the constellations, the planets etc.

The energy latent in metereological events - rain, thunderstorms, snow, violet storms, snow, mist, high wind, low wind.

The energy latent in timing - planetary days/hours, weekdays having particular hours, a woman's period, the birthday, sunrise, sunset, midday, midnight, upon waking, upon sleeping, during one's birthday etc.

The energy in the blood.

The energy latent in the overwhelming of the senses (to obtain a deep trance useful to particular types of magick, like the orgasm but without the orgasm).

The energy apparent in the four elements (earth, air, fire, water, bone, clay, candle, incense, wines, philtres etc.)

The energy lateny in sounds and musics - playing certain songs before, after and/or during rituals in order to obtain the right mind for the spell.

The energy of ritual - repetition, the more that a gesture, ritual, spell is done - the more cemented it becomes in the magus's mind as effective.

The energy of symbols, signs and marks - including Kameas, handmade sigils, Runes, Ogham, Alchemical Symbols.

so i’m a pretty quiet person irl, and i find a lot of spellbooks and posts on here include verbalization in the form of incantations, mantras, et cetera.

which is all well and good if that works for you, whatever floats your boat and casts your spell; but what if you’re like me and verbalizations make you uncomfortable?

or you’re practicing late at night while your housemates are asleep?

or you just. prefer to not speak?

well, here are some alternatives!

say your incantation internally

visualize your incantation

make your incantation physical (could you add movement/gestures to your spell?)

make it symbolic (breaking something, binding something, burying it?)

use a noisemaker! (eg. a bell, clap, a song, note, chord, etc)

simply do without! not every spell or ritual needs a verbal component, and maybe you’re just not that kind of practitioner. that’s okay!

i’m sure there are tons of things that i’ve left off or forgotten, and i definitely want to hear more ideas if you have them!

Feeling overworked? Tired? Drained? Have you ever considered why you might not be feeling quite like yourself lately?

If so, This Article is for You!