Intro
For nearly two years I’ve been sharing my magikal thinking with you all. The writing I do here is as much the process of this thinking as the product of it. It’s hard to underestimate the service that writing does to thinking.
Reading back over some of what I have shared, I see themes that I return again and again. I also see that trying to make these themes clear often takes me afield of what I am trying to express in any given essay. Often this is unavoidable. Whenever we try to communicate, we make assumptions about how others will hear what we are saying, assumptions about the meaning of words. But the more specialized and idiosyncratic the thoughts we try to put into words, the more we must beware of such assumptions. I find myself going down a lot of side roads in an effort to be clear about what I mean when I employ a word or concept.
A good example of this can be seen in my recent essay about the occult meaning of gender. In the opening paragraphs of that essay, I spent a lot of time parsing the differences between gender and sex from an occult as well as biological point of view. Such side trips, although necessary for clarity, can make for unwieldy writing and reading.
The essay you are reading now, started out as one about the concept of reincarnation (a subject I hope to return to at Samhain). I have a long and complicated relationship with this concept and wanted to demonstrate how my thinking about it has evolved over the nearly half century I have been thinking about it. But in order to describe my current thinking and how I arrived there, I needed to describe a lot of “theoretical” considerations which, although not directly related to the idea of reincarnation, seemed necessary in an effort to be clear about how I think of it and how others might. As often happens, I thought I was setting out to write one essay and ended up writing another.
It what follows, I want to share some of the foundational ideas that underlay my thinking about magik, divination, deity work and all manner of “spiritual” subjects. My hope is that the present essay might serve as both a reference for future essays as well as a kind of “tool kit” that has been useful to me and might prove so for my readers as they navigate their own magikal/spiritual journey.
Serious but not Literal
Joseph Campbell described a myth as something that “never happened but is always happening”. This is close to the spirit of serious but not literal. The “truth” that we find in everything from fairy tales to grand religious narratives is not in their facticity, it is in their RESONANCE with human experience.
The same principle is at work in divination practices. Whether we are reading Tarot or tea leaves, interpreting dreams or making sense of some uncanny coincidence, the images and connections are less like a photographic record and more like poetry.
The 10 of Cups, for example, shows a happy couple with their children, a cozy home with a rainbow overhead. This card is usually interpreted as a SIGN of emotional fulfillment and the fleetingness thereof. Couples fight, kids rebel, the roof leaks and rainbows fade too soon. Although the specific scene might not “look like” emotional fulfillment for everybody, the truth of the image is that whatever brings us delight will also bring conflict, unintended consequences, material decay – all delight is ephemeral. Whether we respond to this truth with Buddhist detachment or gleeful carpe diem will vary from person to person, but the truth does not change.
The images that confront us in myths and dreams, divination and meaningful “coincidence” impart information which is fundamentally different from that gleaned through scientific experimentation or forensic and journalistic investigation. The latter attempt, with greater or lesser success, to uncover FACTS while the former furnish INSIGHT. Facts can be subjected to interrogation to determine their OBJECTIVE validity. The interpretation of dreams or the meaning of a Tarot spread can only be valid SUBJECTIVELY. While the answer to “Who committed a crime?” or “Is this material radioactive?” can be KNOWN, the answer of an oracle can only be BELIEVED. X murdered Y is LITERALLY true or it is not. Cain murdered Able because he was jealous of God’s favoritism toward the latter can be taken seriously for the moral instruction it provides but to take it literally implies knowledge that no one has. The distinction between knowledge and belief is an important one in matters occult.
Belief and Knowledge
Etymologically, belief implies that information has been deemed valid without the benefit of proof by demonstration. Knowledge implies that information has been demonstrated by appropriate investigation to be true. Although the difference between the two seems clear cut, they exist in a complicated relationship based on TRUST.
For example, if my car continually stalls, I can take it to a mechanic. The mechanic can run appropriate tests and discover that the problem is in the carbonator. Assuming that the mechanic is both honest and competent, he or she could be said to KNOW that this is the problem. If I am ignorant of the workings of my car, I have no choice but to BELIEVE the mechanic’s verdict – I must TRUST that the mechanic is both competent and honest.
Complex societies depend on a wide range of specialized knowledge that can take years for any individual to learn. A competent and honest mechanic may know little or nothing about the inner workings of their own body, a similarly virtuous doctor might be ignorant about the basic operation of their car. No matter how informed any individual or group might be, a broad measure of public trust is essential to the smooth functioning of modern life. That this trust is lacking is clear from the fractiousness of our public life.
Nor is this lack of trust entirely attributable to a lack of knowledge. We do not always appreciate the extent to which knowledge PRODUCTION (education) is dependent on BELIEF. A good example of this can be seen medicine. “Western” (allopathic) medicine holds that communicable disease is caused by viruses and bacteria (germ theory). By contrast, practitioners (and consumers) of some forms of “alternative” medicine subscribe to terrain theory. Terrain theory does not deny the existence of viruses and bacteria but rather questions whether these are the ultimate cause of disease. The argument geos that, since we are constantly surrounded by pathogens, why do some people succumb to infections while others do not. By way of answer, terrain theorists suggest that it is the overall health of individuals that dictates their susceptibility to disease.
Both germ and terrain theorists believe in germs, where they differ is in their beliefs about CAUSALITY. Health is difficult to quantify. Roughly speaking, allopathic medicine views health as a lack of disease-causing pathogens (or at least that their presence should not exceed a specific threshold). The advantage of this position is that it is based on things that can be KNOWN. The presence, quantity and distribution of streptococcus bacteria can be DEMONSTRATED to corollate with strep throat in a CAUSAL manner – when the germ is there, the condition is, when it is not, the condition is not.
Terrain theory defines health not as a lack of something (bacteria, environmental toxins, etc.) but rather in terms of ideas like “balance”. In this way, terrain theory resembles modalities like Traditional Chinese or Ayurvedic Medicine with their emphasis on diet, exercise, environmental factors and most importantly, the psycho-emotional state of people. While such modalities have gained a measure of credibility within the allopathic medical establishment by showing statistical correlation between diet, stress reduction, etc. and greater resistance to disease. But correlation does not prove causality.
The greatest obstacle to terrain theory and other wholistic health modalities gaining wide acceptance is not, as some claim, the influence of insurance and pharmaceutical companies (although these influences are undeniable), it is rather that western medicine - western SCIENCE - is PHYSICALIST. Physicalism holds that material phenomena can only have material causes because ONLY material entities (germs, electrons, gravity, etc.) are REAL. Since only material entities are real, only material entities can be said to CAUSE material things to occur. The power of physicalism lay in demonstration. If a physicalist claims that a disease (or any other phenomenon) is caused by a germ, chemical or some other physical entity, he or she can demonstrate that the phenomenon always occurs in the presence of that entity and never apart from it. Remember that KNOWLEDGE implies that something has been demonstrated. Physical entities provide the WHAT of the demonstration. An improvement in health associated with prayer, luck with a charm or insight from an oracle, no matter how strong the statistical correlation, can not count as knowledge within the physicalist paradigm because no SPECIFIC material agent can be shown to account for the improvement.
From all this we see that it is not primarily a lack of knowledge which accounts for the pervasive lack of trust in many advanced societies, rather, it is our differing beliefs about what COUNTS as knowledge. Another way of saying this is that belief must always proceed knowledge. Physicalists do not BELIEVE in non-material entities and so, do not believe in the causal power of such entities. For physicalists, knowledge consists in knowing the material cause of anything that happens. By contrast, people who believe in the healing power of prayer usually also believe in the entity to which those prayers are directed. For such people, God as a metaphysical or supernatural entity can count as a causal agent in the unfolding of affairs in the material world. Therefore, if a person prayed for recovers from an illness, the believer KNOWS that prayer works because this has been demonstrated.
Before moving I need to say a bit about HOLISM vs. REDUCTIONISM. Terrain theory can be said to fit into the broader category of “wholistic health”. Holism as a philosophy starts from the premise that the part is best understood in terms of the whole. In terms of health this means that organism is an expression of the environment from which it emerges. Applied to the social sciences, this point of view places emphasis on the influence of the social environment over the individual. In the humanities, individual works of art, philosophy and even scientific doctrine are best understood in the broader cultural and historical context from which they emerge.
Reductionism works in the other direction. The health of the individual has to do with the presence or absence of specific material entities within the body of the individual. In the social sciences, the individual is seen as the basic unit of society, the “health” of a culture depends on the behavior of the individuals who comprise it. In the humanities reductionism shows up in the GREAT MAN doctrine which sees advancement in the arts and sciences as proceeding from specific, highly gifted individuals who heroically pull the rest of the world up with them.
Broadly speaking, traditional societies are wholistic. When the shaman goes into trance, he or she brings “medicine” not just to the individual, but to the community as a whole. Modern society is reductionist. Internal medicine carries more weight, at least in the public perception of health than epidemiology. In traditional cultures, societies produce individuals, in modern cultures, individuals shape society. I propose that traditional cultures are more SPIRITUAL in the sense that, like the air we breathe, is all pervasive. The individual is dependent upon and would soon perish without this spiritual air. The dominant world view of such societies is holistic. Modern cultures, by contrast, are more SCIENTIFIC in that they place emphasis on discrete units, chemicals, technologies, powerful individuals. They place emphasis, praise or blame, for the overall condition of the world on parts thereof.
I hope to show that these dualities, belie/knowledge science/spirituality, holeism/reductionism are mutually generative. I do not propose a “reconciliation” of these dualities as we see in much “New Age” thought. Rather, I will try to show that the spirit world and the world of matter, although radically separate from one another, meet and mutually shape one another both within and between individuals.
Beyond Belief
Much contemporary spirituality seems to imply that reality is infinitely malleable. But in truth, we are not at liberty to MANIFEST any reality of our choosing simply by clarity about what we most desire and freeing ourselves of “limiting beliefs”. Although our beliefs critically shape what we imagine to be possible, the horizon of belief is not infinitely expandable. Like any horizon, the fact that we cannot see beyond it does not mean that there is nothing out there.
As an animist, I believe that magiko-spiritual reality, in fact ALL reality is ultimately “social”. The universe is populated only by THOUS, there is no such thing as IT. The immanent magus Alister Crowley described magik as “The art and science of causing change in conformity with will”. It is difficult to underestimate the influence of this idea of magik on the spiritual practices of the past century. Whether in the “New Thought” movement of the late 19th century, the “Prosperity Gospel” of late 20th century Evangelical Christianity or the “New Age” teachings about the abundance of the cosmos and our ability to tap into this abundance to bring about anything we desire, the idea that reality is, with the right paradigm, “at our disposal” has sold a lot of books, filled a lot of conference centers and, in my opinion, caused a kind of spiritual narcissism that the thoughtful mage should view with suspicion.
Ancient cultures viewed the material world as peopled with myriad living, conscious entities with their own desires and agendas. Even the Psalms of The Bible tell us that “The world is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). We would look long and hard to find any suggestion in ancient spiritual traditions that the world is simply there for our entertainment or the fulfillment of our own “highest good”. Instead, we must pay for everything we take from the world by offerings and prayers of propitiation. This attitude discloses an awareness that whatever we take from the world is taken from “someone else”. Even physicalist accounts of the world accept that an increase in energy or matter in one place must be compensated for by a decrease somewhere else. Nothing in this world is “free”.
I propose an alternative to Crowley’s definition. “Magik is the courtship of fate through correspondences”. This definition attempts to honor the inherent selfhood of the world and every part of it. I have chosen the metaphor of courtship rather than some more “economic” form of exchange because I want to acknowledge both the intimacy of magikal workings and the very real possibility that the forces we hope to charm might not want to yield to our advances. Magik resembles the most vulnerable and potentially heart-breaking aspects of social reality. This is, I think, the proper attitude to approach any entity from whom we hope to gain a boon.
Belief as a Tool
Among Chaos Magicians, “Belief is a tool”. While knowledge attends only to what IS, belief attends to what COULD BE. Beliefs are how we gain access to and (hopefully) influence the subtle forces that shape fate. Beliefs are a product of our imagination (which is one reason rationalists are suspicious of belief). There is a touching passage in Ramsey Dukes’s lovely and practical guide to magik “How to See Fairies” in which he recounts his experience with tree spirits. He describes wanting to see “real” tree spirits. Failing to do so, he “imagines” what they would look like if he could see them. Turning to a particularly beloved tree he imagines what the tree’s spirit would look like and, to his surprise, is able to conjure an image. From this he concludes that imagination is HOW tree spirits are SEEN.
Like in M.C. Escher’s “Drawing Hands”, we see belief and imagination “drawing” one another into being. Most of us have heard that “seeing is believing” but we often forget that to see something, we must first believe that there is something to be seen. Some skeptical readers will see in this the danger of confirmation bias. Far from denying this possibility, I suggest a creative relationship with this bias. There is danger here, imagination is a dangerous faculty which might lead us into delusions, grandiose or paranoid. Yet what great feat of human creativity is not forged from the mercurial “stuff” of the imaginary. Instead of seeing belief as something we passively “accept” in the lack of evidence, we might see it as something we DARE, a grand quest to make real what we might otherwise merely dream.
Like any tool, belief requires skill in its use if we wish to have a high-quality result with minimal waste, damage or injury to self or other. We must hold our beliefs carefully and know how to apply them. it is also important to have a diversified set of tools and to develop some expertise in their use. Remember, to the person who only has a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Finally, we must have some sense of what we would like to build. Tools are heavy. High quality tools require a good deal of investment of time and money to acquire and care for. Without a clear idea of what we would like to DO with them, tools easily become an unwieldy and expensive burden.
But how do we utilize these tools? In what medium do they function and to what end? Beliefs are tools of “analogy”. They function in the medium of Sign and Correspondence. We now turn our attention to this medium to glimpse something of its nature and how the tools of belief are deployed therein.
Sign and Correspondence
A sign points to a thing without being that thing. The constellations of the zodiac are called “signs”. They are more indications of things than pictures of them. The stars of the constellation of Ares may or may not suggest the form of a ram to one who views them, but when they appear, it “means” that it is time to plant crops and that the season of fecundity and rapid organic growth is underway. All signs function in this way. When the hostess yawns, it is a sign that the party is over. When we have a crush on someone, we look for signs of interest (a wink, a casual touch, giggling “self-consciousness).
Signs “direct” our attention to larger patterns without being the “cause” of them. Because the connection between signs and pattern is acausal, we are never able to “know” that they indicate what we hope or fear. A wink could be a sign of attraction or an allergy. We might believe it is the former and we might be right. But if we believe that a wink can only be a sign of attraction, we are taking the sign literally, mistaking belief for knowledge. Here we are in danger of beliefs becoming superstition or dogma (not to mention a fair degree of social awkwardness). We are best served by believing that the wink “could” indicate attraction and watch for further signs.
As tools, beliefs about the world function much as compasses, protractors and maps. They allow us to identify SIGNIFICANT features and relationships and align our intentions within them. Knowledge, which only knows what things ARE, cannot provide this service since it is mute on matters of what COULD or even SHOULD BE.
Knowledge is discursive where belief is narrative. It is only in the narrative dimension that things can gain significance – can be a SIGN. I can KNOW that a particular chemical is toxic to a particular insect, but this fact can only gain significance within the context of BELIEF. What I believe will determine whether I use my knowledge as a conservationist or an exterminator.
Finally, beliefs can lead us to misread signs. As I said earlier, reality is not infinitely malleable. Everything we seek, from the most mundane to the highest magik is won through negotiation. Successful negotiation involves reading the signs that other’s present to us. We can nevere occupy the position of anyone else, even our nearest and dearest. It is as if we try to imagine how the other appears to themselves and fashion a mask of that visage. If they like the mask, they might wear it for a while. Of course we could be wrong, they might be hurt or insulted by how we see them. In which case they will turn away.
Closely related to signs are correspondences. In Hermetic lore we learn “as above, so below”. This means that things below (here on the material plane) are “like” things above on the archetypical or spiritual plain. In magikal practice we encounter correspondences in spell craft and deity work. Hermes made a lyre from the shell of a turtle, so turtles are associated with him, Hekate has her keys. When we make alters to deities, we include the things associated with them. Likewise, when we call upon ancestors, we offer them the foods and other things they enjoyed in life to draw their spirit closer. These gestures are the way we make those “masks” we hope that Gods and Ancestors will wear in our presence that they might become visible to us.
Correspondence has to do with something about a material thing which embodies some more abstract idea. A particularly pretty example of this can be seen in this bit of flower lure. Violets are both fragile and invasive. They are so tiny and petit that, at first glance, they do not seem to embody something tenacious, let alone overwhelming. But once these wildflowers become established in a place, they are difficult to irradicate. Violets, therefore, are powerful in spells when one would like to conceal their true power in a mask of vulnerability and harmlessness. We see something similar in the lore around crystals. Whatever “causal” influence they might (or might not) have on the body and mind, they need only “represent” something by their form and use. Carnelian has a bloody appearance that looks like it could come from Mars. Roman soldiers carried them into battle for bravery and protection. This makes them a good stone to use in spells and charms of courage and strength. Diamonds are “forever” which is why they are traditional stones to accompany marriage proposals. If signs are the way information from the spirit world signals to us here in the material world, correspondences reverse engineer this, allowing us to evoke the spirit world and its’ powers by material symbols of our intention.
Like signs, correspondences work “acausally”. Carnelian doesn’t “make” someone brave or strong but rather “reminds” them of the courage and strength resident in each of us. The yawn of the hostess doesn’t “make” people start reaching for their coats but rather reminds them of their obligation to be considerate of the generosity extended to them. In all such situations, signs and correspondences are the material embodiments of narrative significance.
Nearly every religious, magikal or divinatory system has its symbolic language. Since we can never know whether this language is more than mere babble, we can only believe in the world they represent with enough fervor to trust their signs and correspondences, act upon them and see what sort of results emerge. There are important things to be said about results but first it might be instructive to understand how signs and correspondences, which appear in the material world, relate to the realm of spirit.
Duality
A good deal has been said about the concept of non-duality in spiritual traditions both ancient and modern. But nonduality is itself half of the dyad duality/nonduality. It is difficult to think about relationships without thinking about duality. Relationships are “between” entities. Nowhere is this truer than between the spirit world and the world of matter.
Earlier in this essay we looked at the Hermetic law of correspondence “as above, so below”. This implies separation. For something to be “like” something else (as/so) it must be separate from it. In magikal, and especially “pagan” discourse, we often hear of the “veil” between worlds. In my essay Probing the Veil at Samhain, I suggested that this veil is formed by the interweaving of the spirit and material realms. In a weave, the fibers do not “merge”, the warp and weft which is the structure of the fabric (veil) arises from a relationship between the distinct fibers of the weave. The spirit and material worlds, through their interaction, weave the fabric of the veil.
The spirit world is eternal, the material temporal. In the spirit world all things happen simultaneously, in the material they must happen sequentially. There is no contradiction between opposites in the spirit world, in the material world there is a conflict between different things, moments, even beliefs. This is a lot to unpack so I will try to take these points one at a time.
First let us look at the duality between the eternity of the spirit world and the temporality of the material. This has a lot to do with time and the difference between Chronos and Kairos. Briefly, Chronos is “clock time”, hours, days and years. Chronic time is time emptied of content. An hour is an hour whether we are sleeping or working or having the time of our life. Chronic time “runs out”. Kaironic time has to do with the “right moment” for a thing to happen, an opportune time. The time to take the bread out of the oven, sell that stock, lean in for that kiss.
Chonos is quantitative, Kairos qualitative. The material world runs on Chronos, the spirit on Kairos. These worlds do not unite but rather interweave. Reading signs is a matter of seeing the moments where the two kinds of time warp around each other.
An example may help here. If you have ever baked bread, you know that there are many factors determining the exact moment to take it from the oven. Although the recipe may say “bake for 25 minutes”, the experienced baker knows that the ambient temperature of the room, the quality of the flower, the activity of the yeast, the mineral content of the water and the “feel” of the dough while kneading tell us that THIS PARTICULAR LOAF might need a little more or less time (clock time) in the oven. It isn’t easy to say how much more or less, but we will know when the time is “right” (Kairos) by virtue of the “signs” we get from the bread (color, texture, smell, etc.).
The right time has to do with our sense that a situation has “ripened”. Of course, we experience this ripe moment within the flow of Chronic time. We can, for example, say in retrospect that the corn was ripe for harvest on a given day, but it didn’t have to be “that particular day”. The moment of ripening is marked by signs (the color and firmness of the ears, a certain chill in the air, etc.). This moment might come sooner or later in clock time depending on an almost incalculable number of factors. The “ideal” moment comes (if it comes at all), when all these factors come together in a way that we recognize as significant. This is true of the ideal time to ask for that raise or lean in for the kiss. We know such moments by “signs of the time”. If we do not act at the right time, the moment will be lost (the bread is overcooked, the corn over ripe).
The word “ideal” is important here. Ideals, in a sense “float above” actualities. We all have some sense of what an ideal loaf of bread, career, relationship and so on “looks like”. It is marked by signs. We can describe these signs even when they are not present. This brings us to another duality: the simultaneity of the spirit world against the sequential unfolding of the material.
Ideals exist in the spirit world, in Kaironic time. If this were not so, we would not be able to discern their appearance in Chronic time. In Chronic time there is a moment before the ripening and one after. These moments can be distinguished one from another by changes from one moment to the next in Chronic time, but these differences are mere facts. What makes one moment more significant than those adjacent to it in the chronological sequence is its correspondence to the ideal image that we bare within our mind.
Which brings us finally to the duality between non-contradiction in the spirit world and contradiction in the material. Just as there is an ideal moment for everything, there are moments which are not. In the spirit world these two kinds of moments define one another, in the material they oppose one another. In the material world, where every smallest increment of time must remain discrete from all others, it cannot be both the ideal time and not the ideal time at once.
The Weave of the Worlds
The potential and the actual are another duality between the spirit and material worlds. Ideal moments exist eternally in the spirit world but as “merely” potential. They only become actual in the material world and only when a certain fortuitous arrangement of circumstances come together. Since no arrangement of circumstances endures in Chronic time, actual ideal moments are always fleeting.
The reader will remember that physicalism is a paradigm in which the only things which are real are material particles and forces such as gravity and electromagnetism. Further, this world of physical things operates on purely causal principles – given a.), b.) must happen. In this world there is no telos, no end toward which the world or any part thereof is directed. Things just happen without purpose or meaning based on what went before. This world is completely determined by the laws of physics. The material world is “fatal” both in the sense that no situation remains forever and in the sense of fate as an unchangeable course of affairs. This is, I believe, an accurate description of the material world.
Physicalism rejects the existence of anything that does not follow inevitably from the laws of physics. It does not “believe” in ghosts, gods, tree spirits, the influence of the stars – in short, anything that we might recognize as spiritual, magikal or occult. Physicalists do not deal in beliefs, they deal in “knowledge”. They only accept as real what they know to be true based on “demonstration’ through appropriately controlled experiments.
It may come as a surprise to some readers to learn that I am fairly satisfied with the physicalist account of the material world. I too “believe” that the material world, considered in isolation, has no meaning or direction but operates exclusively on causal and demonstrable natural laws. The main and critical difference between my view of reality and that of the physicalist is that I “believe” that the spirit world is real.
I hold this belief without benefit of or need for demonstration. This does not mean that I hold my belief without “evidence”. For example, I work with my ancestors and certain deities. I pray and make offerings to these entities, and I see their presence and intervention in my life. I am also fully aware that such “evidence” could be easily and fully explained by completely “natural” causes and confirmation bias. I “know” this is so because I “believe” (as do the physicalists) that everything in the material world has a material cause. But I also believe that there are moments in the flow of chronic time when all of the blind and meaningless lines of causality merge to form a “picture” of the spirit world. They do not do this “on purpose”. But in these Chronic moments, Kaironic, archetypal “moments” are reflected when we look in just the right way.
What is happening in such moments can be explained by APOTHENIA, seeing patterns where none are “intended”. Sometimes we see a face in wood grain or a rabbit in a cloud bank. If I think of my dead grandmother, look down and see an empty pack of her cigarettes in the gutter, I might take this as a sign that she is somehow present. These things can be attributed to “coincidence” or “confirmation bias” but none of them can be definitively demonstrated to be so. I was thinking of my grandmother, I looked down and there were her Marlboro Reds. Whatever the explanation for this, I felt the connection between the two incidents and that feeling was as “REAL” as anything in the world. The laws of physics and statistical probability might explain such experiences but do not explain them “AWAY”.
I believe that in these Kaironic moments, the spirit world “rides the fatal body of matter”. It is a moment of “possession” by spirits. As a witch, I trust these moments without demanding proof of their reality. Such trust is essential to the belief that magik is possible.
Results
One of the most consistent warnings I have encountered in my study of magik concerns “lust of results”. In sigil magik, for example, we are to concentrate our intention into a graphical representation, “charge”, this sigil and release it (by burning, burying, etc.). Once the operation is complete, we are supposed to simply forget it. We should never say, for example, “I WILL be wealthy”. Spells are effective, if at all, AS SPOKEN. In the forgoing example, the word “will”, being a future tense, ensures that the one who speaks it always “will” be rich in the future - but never in the present. When we speak a magikal intention, we are not trying to make something happen, we are acknowledging it as always already so. We attempt in this way to bring the Kaironic moment into Chronic time. We create as we speak – ABRACADABRA!
If one is successful in this, they will begin to “feel” the spell working. Again, this is tricky. What is it like to “feel” rich? One might, for example, worry less about how they will pay their bills. They might begin to develop habits, skills and attitudes that put them in a better position to make money. They might begin to appreciate their material circumstances more. They might even develop habits of thrift allowing them to “need less money” which feels a lot like having more. All these things contribute to the “feeling” of wealth. Similar things could be said of beauty, strength, confidence, etc.
Ultimately having the feeling of being rich, confident, beautiful, etc. is the aim of magik. Fortunes come and go, confidence can be undermined by small errors in judgement, beauty suffers the ravages of time. These things rise and fall in Chronic time, but what it IS to be beautiful, rich, wise - these things live in Kaironic time, never having happened but always happening.
The warning about lust of result brings us back to taking things seriously but not literally. When we are in the state of lust of result, we imagine a very specific situation which we believe will bring us what we want. But what does it mean to be LITERALLY wealthy? Does it mean a particular bank balance, a certain car, the ability to spend recklessly without consequence? If those conditions are never met, one will never feel wealthy even when all their material needs and even wants are met. Yet depending on one’s attitude, wealth could be achieved with modest financial resources.
I will close with a small example of what I am talking about here. A few months ago I was sitting in the shade of a beloved tree outside of our cabin, reading a book, listening to Chopin drinking a cup of coffee and generally enjoying my life at 4:00 pm when most people are still at work. In that moment I realized that I was doing EXACTLY what I wanted to do and was at liberty to do so for as long as I wanted. In that moment I felt SERIOUSLY rich even though my LITERAL bank balance might have just covered the next round of bills.
Now someone might say “OK, that’s nice but it isn’t the same as being REALLY rich”. To which I would answer “OK, what DOES it mean to be LITERALLY rich?”.
You continue to weave a beautiful tale of how this world works that brings into balance views that appear opposing, but actually both exist. Thanks again for helping this beautiful and mysterious life make a little more sense.