Famously, Magic is defined by Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune as “causing change in conformity with Will”. I was trying so hard to define it and I just felt like this definition didn’t quite cover it anymore. There arose for me a few definitions which spoke more about why I do Magic than what it is exactly. Sometimes Magic is dressing up and make-believe and reviving the childish fun that goes so repressed in adulthood. Sometimes it is rebelling against the establishment. Most of all Magic is taking action even when there seems to be little action that can be taken, being a doer. This leads us to see Magic as a philosophy of life, which makes you reflect deeper and perceive more. Magic is the ecstasy of religion which makes you question your fundamental beliefs about reality, the mind, mankind and what lies beyond reality and beyond death, if anything at all. Also, practitioners of Magic focus more on practice than spiritual truths and so join a circle with people of many different beliefs and put themselves in new positions to challenge their experiences. So that’s 6 things I would like to explore in more depth.
1. Playing Dress Up
I have a nephew who is 2 years old. He is lovely and runs around throwing his hands up like he is casting a magic spell. Often he runs around with “dinosaurs” that no one else can see. Generally, he has achieved a state of being that so many adults struggle with, he is actually happy.
In some groups, Magic is practiced by getting into rich beautiful robes and holding up elegant daggers and wands. It’s all a bit like playing make-believe. Some people go as far to say Paganism / Wicca / Thelema is Cosplay and LARPing as religion. This isn’t new! Freemasonry has been doing it for years. Do you think masons take swords to lodge to defend the realms and take back Jerusalem? They’re dressing up and playing make-believe. But there’s nothing wrong with that!
This can be quite a diversion from life and for so many it’s great to step away from their stresses and be someone else for a short while. They don’t need to face their troubles just for a little bit. This relief can sometimes give people the space that they need to deal with the stress of life. However, it can often become unhealthy. For many people avoiding their problems and going into fantasy land is rewarded with stress relief. So, it’s no wonder this becomes a common practice for the rest of their lives, avoiding problems instead of addressing them. As I will cover later, this is the biggest difference between Magic and LARPing.
Alternatively, there is a joy to be had in practising make-believe. A joy we deny ourselves for the fear of what others would think. In this modern day and age, we have entered a period in our evolution where we have begun to recognise that constantly edifying ourselves for the sake of others is not morally right. To allow others to dictate our actions all the time is to live under oppression. Those that live under oppression, allow and abet oppression. Those who break free from oppression lead the way for greater freedom for others. So if your only reason for not playing make-believe is because others will think you silly then you owe it to the people around you to do it.
There is also a power to be had in the imagination and thoughts. A person working in severe cases of mentally ill patients might come across a patient who in a state of mania believes they can fly like Superman. Yes, it’s a cliché, but these delusions do exist. The thing which is always reported is that although these patients cannot really fly, they often seem to be able to jump surprisingly far for the muscles in their legs. Their belief helped carve their reality. What would happen if you believed you were gifted with powerful Magic? How might you approach life differently? Would that really be a bad thing? So long as keep on the right side of the line known as delusion we can use belief to empower ourselves in our life and achieve things that others regard as impossible.
Amy Cuddy in one of my favourite TED talks discusses the concept of fake it till you make it. She says when we fake these things we often hold our body and mind in such a manner that it informs the body what chemicals to release. When a person walks around acting like they are in control, their body releases chemicals which help them stay in control of their hormones. To act empowered is to be empowered. On some level playing make-believe at Magic is, in the imagination at least, very empowering. This mindset makes one act empowered. Their body sees this and makes sure to better handle stress hormones. Let’s just say… when you’re a witch… you never stop seeing yourself as the witch, you might not show or tell people that you are a witch. But you know it and you are powerful. People see that and respect it on a subconscious level.
2. Rebelling Against Establishment
Karl Marx famously said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses”. If this is so, then Magic is growing your own refined high-quality heroine in your back garden. When you practice Magic, you stand against a long-standing tradition of access to god being held exclusively in male power-hungry hands that use it to oppress the masses. You become the priest so does everyone who practices it.
Is it new that women could commune with god? No! But it is the source of the demonizing of witchcraft. It would appear in the church in Corinth in the early days of the Christian church women would prophesy, or bring messages from God. In Paul’s letters to the Corinthian Church, he mentions this in 1 Corinthians 11:5, but a later letter (1 Corinthians 11:33-35) reads as follows:
“Women should keep silent in churches. They are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. And if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church.”
Paul 1 Corinthians 11:5
Women were speaking in churches. Otherwise, why forbid it? But what made them so scared they had to silence a person? I’ll tell you what. There is no issue that a person might say something you don’t like, but the problem arises when someone else hears it. The problem the men had with women speaking in churches wasn’t them speaking, it was people listening to them. A person working in circles of Magic and Witchcraft is that women are equally priestesses as men are priests. In fact, sometimes people have driven it home so far that women are the dominant force with men serving them.
The first book of Corinthians suggests there was an issue with women speaking. It can only be concluded that the male leaders of the church wanted a monopoly of power. Since then when women whirl themselves in ecstatic states and speak on behalf of spirits they suddenly find themselves represented in seemingly distorted ways. Consider the case of Nicole Obrey who in the mid-1500s began to speak on behalf of a ghost who spoke of unfinished business. The church was so threatened by her voice that it gathered millions, and built them wracks to witness the exorcism of “Beelzebub” from her, where her body was subject to restraints to impress her “weakness” on the minds of the viewers. Instead of hearing her words, they heard that she was being lied to by a demon, which removed all authority from her words. The priests knew only empty rituals to bless bread and wine and force-fed it to her because they could not experience the spiritual world and she threatened their role to be the sole representatives of spiritual truth. Would you not choose to stand for a religion where no voice is subject to this cruel removal of authority and humiliation? A religion where all voices are raised up and heard. Where all initiates have the power and authority of a priest.
Often the movement of the mystic in a state of ecstasy can easily be represented as a demonic rapture so her ecstasy was rendered as weakness in the eyes of the public. They saw her as penetrable by demons rather than powerfully able to summon the dead and visions. Her movements began to be described as like those of a pleasured prostitute associating female sexuality and female pleasure with demonic forces. Whether or not this is accurate of Nicole Obrey’s movements, it provides a visual confession for the power of the authority to draw on to justify its actions. It furthers their cause of silencing the woman. Practising Magic is rebelling against this establishment and aligning us with Nicole Obrey.
Nicole Obrey is not an isolated case. In fact, there are many examples of the repression of women, female sexuality and justice brought about by religious leaders. To practice Magic is to cut out the priest, the non-spiritual middle man, practising his empty ritual and espousing centuries-old tradition. Instead to have direct, unmediated, embodied experiences of the divine. To establish the power of enjoying one’s own body, and sexuality, and owning it. To speak directly to the divine and feel its response is to render the priests of the church powerless and superfluous. After all, when a witch is first initiated they become a priest or priestess of their own religion. The initiate who experiences the Holy Guardian Angel has met the finite avatar of their own god. In doing so, the practitioner of Magic disempowers the force that oppressed so many, that started wars, that absorbed so much wealth and provided so little in return. Priests that helped us, but in doing so kept us small in a state of perpetual reliance on them. Magic is cutting our own umbilical cord.
Magic is sacred. The word sacred conjures up special ideas in our minds. We think of it as something divine, something that has been blessed or something with a holy purpose. The truth is, it means something that has been “set apart” from normal things. In most cases with Magic, the tools have been dedicated to the pursuit of God, Goddess and the mixture of the two, so you would keep your ritual knife in the draw with your kitchen knives. You set it apart from the normal knives.
I want to argue it’s not just the tools that are set apart from the norm, it is also the participants. The practice of Magic makes you an “other”. It sets you apart from the society in which you live. You do things differently and you become quickly dedicated to things inconsistent with society. You rest in your evening, so at the stroke of midnight, you can run to the woods and dance around a campfire chanting until your mind goes blank and fills with a familiar experience of something liminal creating a living art piece as you move. While everyone else is tuning into Love Island episode 21 series 349. There is so much power and joy in being other, in being different. Let’s explore why.
Firstly, Magic lets you be different so you can look at society from the outside and then really question it. Let’s think about the dream we have been sold:
- A beautiful house (£250,000),
- regular holidays to the Canaries once a year (£2000/year),
- a nice car maybe a Jag (£35,000),
- a new iPhone with a certain internet access (£50/month),
- with Audible, Spotify, Netflix, Prime and now Disney+ memberships (£35/month),
- a beautiful body maintained by gym membership, makeup, moisturizers (£100/month),
- dressed in the latest clothes (£50/month).
Did you notice I just spent the average UK person’s earning potential for 10 years there? That’s without including money for food, going out to the pub/cinema and without including rent or mortgage interest. That’s 10-20 years of our life spent fulfilling a dream that we have been told and which has been suggested to us since we were born. A dream we did not choose ourselves. Practising magic makes you other. So you no longer need to buy into that bullshit.
Slavery is not something we left behind, it is something we actively create today for ourselves. I have been saying for years I want to go live in China, but I didn’t. Why not? Because debt. I had got myself locked into a situation where I could not live in accordance with my will. What’s worse I was forced to tell myself, “It’s my fault”. We often work to pay for the roof over our heads, our taxes and food and then we are enslaved to work.
Magic takes us outside of normal society often it becomes a focus for us a dedication. Then we immediately question how we live our lives. Will this Netflix membership help me work on myself? No. Can I enjoy my TV time without it? Yes. Will I binge on it and lose entire days’ worth of time with little reward? Yes if I pay for Netflix I definitely will! How about I don’t get this membership? Do I really need a car which costs me 4 times as much in insurance? A car that heavily pollutes the earth? Will it make my journey from A to B any more comfortable? Yes, it will, but not so much it’s work tripling the price of the car, quadrupling the price of the insurance and nearly doubling the cost of petrol and damage to the environment. You really begin to say “You know what? I’m not afraid to be different!” In fact, often you begin to say “Being normal is ludicrous!” That frees you from slavery. A voice in our heads says “I must not dance to the music, I will look weird.”, “I must not admit to loving Legally Blond. People will not respect me if they knew that.” and “I must not dress like a leather daddy people will assume I am a seedy sex pervert and not want me visible in public.” Instead, you will dance in clothes which make you feel empowered, being honest about who you are and you’d be surprised at how much of your personal power will be freed up just by that small gesture.
There is a war going on. One you don’t see. A war against dreams. People who dare to be different are met with disgust. It stops people from being able to pursue their dreams. We buy so much into society that we learn from what society now accepts. Go back to the 1960s and a man who loved another man was met with violence, insults, spat at and often robbed. That was just the treatment they got from the police before the rest of the public got involved. Now we recognise their right to be an individual and we recognise they shouldn’t have to confirm to hetero-normative relationships. But when a person says “I don’t drink alcohol” we scorn them. “They must be judging us. Is there something wrong? Are they broken? If they’re not…how dare they be different!” We didn’t learn our lesson from before. By stepping outside of society’s B.S., we are able to see it for what it really is. You learn and embody the outsider and stop being scared to be different because you begin to realise whatever the hell you are, it’s pretty damn cool.
Like, I said before, to practice Magic is to lead a current of people in the act of breaking boundaries. You do not break boundaries for yourself alone but for those too afraid to stand up for themselves without a symbol of success in defiance. Be the symbol of success for them. Reassure them it’s okay to be weird. Don’t say it, but live it in front of them. When you do this you no longer have guidance from authority, so you have to guide yourself. This can often feel like stumbling around in the dark with things you do not understand, but this is adulthood in spirituality. You can trust your own guidance and rationale over another person who may have alternative motivations. This is taking responsibility for yourself. Sadly many pagans just blindly follow one another and missed this point. They just swapped one priest for another. Magic is your opportunity to guide your own life, be your own person and live a life which is different. Side note: It’s also worth taking the advice and guidance of those that walked the path before you.
3. Taking action
So often the symbol seen through modern Magical is the united sword and cup. The sword symbolises action while the cup symbolises passivity and receptivity. My focus here is the sword because Magic is something active.
People who declare themselves Magicians, Witches or whatever do so because they practice Magic or Witchcraft. You would not be a witch if you didn’t practice your craft. Magic is being proactive about everything. If you have a problem you act on it. You act both directly and indirectly. This is the difference between LARPing and Magic. In LARPing you only ever escape things, but the proper practice of Magic is the act of walking directly into your problems and facing them. It becomes such a natural part of life you become a natural problem solver.
One of the earliest practices of a practitioner of Magic is called the Magic mirror. They hold up a mirror to the facets of their own personality and begin to perfect each part themselves. So never in the practitioner’s life do they have nothing to do. Magic in its reflection, the cup, always provides pieces of work to do. To achieve the opportunity for union with the divine we must perfect and balance the person we are.
So often when a practitioner of Magic can take action to achieve a desired result they will take that action. If there is a poor chance of success they can improve the odds by performing a ritual action. Even if there is no physical action they can take, the practitioner can still take a ritual action.
This brings a mindset of positivity which flows through the practitioner’s entire of life. So used to this mindset the Sorcerer is never overcome with troubles. While others throw their hands in the air, feel helpless and then spend the rest of their time worrying about the problem, the Sorcerer draws upon their knowledge, takes action and when all is done that can be done they reassure themselves that they no longer need to carry any concerns because there is nothing further that can be done.
4. Reflection
We looked at the active side of Magic and it would not be complete without its opposite, the passive side of Magic. While some religions focus on one side of things like for example having a triple male deity or Dianic witches who focus solely on the female side of the craft, most magicians and witches I know focus on a model of deity designed to encompass a more rounded view of the divine and a rounded view of the world we live in. Examples of the models that witches use include, but are not limited to the four Empedoclean elements, a deity that reflects people of all ages, the Qabalistical Tree of Life and the divine expressed through male and female. No magical practitioner would be complete while being exclusively active throughout life. A magical practitioner would seek to summon the passive powers of reflection, receptivity and being the subject of action.
While in ritual, a witch reflects on what a deity might be telling her/him/them. Often this comes in the form of images which do not always make sense at first. Some choose to hear imaginary voices like spirit guides which often lead them to some truths. Most simply reflect on what they are doing, and what is happening in their life and just ask themselves the question “What can I learn from this?”.
Most Ceremonial Magicians are initiated with long intricate ceremonies which impart a small piece of philosophy through allegory and dramatic ritual. This gives them something to learn and to meditate on, as they go through the next part of their life. Often the initiate is subject to upheaval and change in their life often coinciding with an initiation and they choose to be receptive and try to view the changes within the scope of the initiation. “What am I meant to learn from this initiation?” they ask themselves.
The mystic who believes in a god that determines fate will often view their life experiences with suspicion. “God ordained this moment” they will say. “What is he/she/they trying to teach me?” they will ask themselves.
This puts the practitioner of Magic regularly practising a mental state which has the power to turn negative experiences into learning opportunities. Think of the Christian who says Grace (a prayer expressing gratitude for specific things in their lives) at every single meal. Their regular practice of a particular mental state (in this case gratitude) increases the regularity of that mental state in their life. Overall they are more grateful for the things in their life. So when the Witch, Mystic or Magician faces turbulence in their life they are quicker to ask what can they learn from this difficulty. This is easy for the small trials, but the committed practitioner will become so used to asking it of themself, that even when they are faced with great adversity they will walk away from it a stronger person like a steel sword forged in fire, the melting might have softened it but after it was done it was stronger and less brittle.
Often the witch is so practiced in reflection, observation and receptivity that before she has exercised any psychic gifts she already demonstrates a knowledge that is beyond that of other people. She often perceives connections that other people do not see and is able to draw conclusions. The Witch maintains an awareness of the leaps she has made jumping to conclusions so is able to re-evaluate her beliefs and assumptions she has made. Some initiations (particularly those that belong the spiritual path of Thelema) are specifically focused on breaking the assumptions that had already been made.
5. Ecstasy and Truth
As I said before, Magic focuses on practices rather than spiritual truths. Practitioners of Magic often have methods of whirling themselves up into states of ecstasy in which they perceive the divine in as much a way as any human could. Often in place of the word Magic people will substitute “Neo-shamanism” which is frequently defined as the use of alternate states of consciousness. Frequently the practitioner of Magic will attempt to explore all levels of consciousness. They won’t limit themselves to trying to recreate their favourite childhood drink binge.
Most Magical practitioners work with altered states of consciousness through meditation and the constraint of thought, self-hypnosis or ecstatic practices. Ecstatic practices include chanting, flagellation, sexual excitation, dancing or aerobic movement, exhaustion and hyperventilation. With these practices, a person can quite quickly reach an altered state of consciousness. When the practitioner uses these altered states of consciousness they can have visions and experiences of impossible things. Whether or not the experience is “real”, they can experience walking across the rocks that constitute the rings of Saturn, leaving the film strip of the flow of time, sinking on the Titanic and of course, the conjuring and communion of spirits. Through these states of consciousness, the practitioner experiences the closest it is possible to have direct communication with god and other spirits that is humanly possible. The practitioner of this direct form of spirituality gets into contact with the aspects of the self that might continue to exist after death, if any. The subconscious throws up visions like the dreams of the Old Testament and these speak forth new information about the nature of the universe and the spirits that are present.
Often the practitioner does nothing to whirl themselves into any kind of trance state, but simply follows the instructions from a grimoire and still is made aware of the presence of a spirit that he or she has summoned. This can be quite scary for some whose worldview suggests that these can only be accessed in states of trance. It can lead to people to evaluate a lot of what they think is possible, but hey welcome to Magic. It will make you re-evaluate what you believe to be true on a frequent basis.
6. Diversity
It is often said about Magical practitioners that if you asked 100 of them what they believed in, you would get 101 different answers. Magic is not limited to a single belief. It leaves its practitioners to derive their own beliefs from their experiences. This is like a person who learns from life and a scientist who learns from experimentation. They enjoy the beauty of rituals rather than dogma which could later be proven wrong. This means that we occasionally discuss our experiences with other initiates with widely different beliefs to us without erupting into argument. It’s surprising that this can happen.
The Magical practitioner learns to phrase their beliefs like a question about the universe that might lead another to come to the same conclusion. They practice thought experiments with each other from to time where they recognise the assumptions and jumps they have made to come to conclusions, so they can be open to people who might not have come to the same conclusions. Magical practitioners show an unparalleled ability to work with people who have different beliefs to them. As a group, they inquire as to how a puzzle could be solved. This method enables a group to come to a conclusion together about how to solve a problem without strife. Sadly when you become aware of this method you recognise when a person is trying to lead a discussion into an argument and thwart their attempts. If only politicians could work like this!
I say this but a large number of magical practice groups have a power dynamic that ruffles people’s feathers. A teacher-student relationship leads some to seek approval, some to rebel and a large number to seek approval, become disenchanted with the group’s leader and then rebel. This often causes dramatic schisms, breakdowns of relationships and group politics which are very unhealthy. My mentality with the OTO when I was a member of the OTO was simple “I am here to learn what I can. I don’t care what other people learn. I don’t want to disrupt or control the functioning of the group in any way.” Even when there were excessive accusations flying around, drama and people getting upset I walked away unscathed. This was actually a good learning period for me. I tried to not pander to my desire for other people’s respect. All these things grew me as a person and made me more aware of the politics that were going on around me.
Magic has connected me with a lot of people who are VERY enthusiastic about their spirituality, but actually, it was when I walked away from them that I found my own spirituality. While among other practitioners I was like a child in a candy store desirous of everything I set my eyes on. When I returned again to conferences to see old friends I found that actually a lot of the things I set my eyes on seemed a distraction from my current path and was an irritation rather than a joy.
Practising Magic will often lead you to meet with and connect with people from such diverse places in life and there is a strong current that often binds groups together. Group politics provides a good ground for you to learn to deal with your own neuroses and in that difficulty, your social steel is forged.
Magic is Dressing Up
Magic is dressing up as the best person you can be. A person who has worked hard to develop their body, mind, emotions and passions. A person who is in touch with all aspects of their self, the world around them and anything that may lie beyond that world. To practice Magic is to aspire, to dare, to liberate and cast off the shackles of oppression and lead the way for others. To practice Magic is to walk the line between your actual self and your potential self, between mundane reality and spiritual reality and between society and self. The practice of Magic is faking it, but has the potential to make it and in doing so, cause change to occur, in conformity with Will.