I talked about manifestation, now let’s tackle karma. This is one of those things that grind my gears about the spiritual community, largely because it unveils how derivative, unoriginal and moralistic it often is.
To understand this we need to remind ourselves of one of Nietzsche’s criticisms of his philosophical predecessors, who, according to him, were trying to safeguard religious morality even after doing away (overtly or covertly) with the concept of God.
This exact same thing happened to the spiritual community, which often reacts allergically to Christianity, yet seeks to safeguard the moralistic notion of hell (“if you do X you will be metaphysically punished”) by transfering its role to a vaguely defined “universe” whose task is, somehow, to uphold the believer’s social, political and spiritual views and punishing those who contravene them by causing bad things to happen to them.
Let us grant that this is somewhat of a misunderstanding of the original concept of karma found in some Eastern philosophies, even though it is not THAT much of a misunderstanding. The fact remains that, as used by most Western “alternative” thinkers (who somehow always end up believing the exact same crap), karma is just a lazy excuse for maintaining the holier-than-thou attitude they accuse traditional religion of: hey, enough with the badly understood Christian superstition! Time for the badly understood Oriental superstition!
Except that at least traditional religion has something grandiose and awe-inspiring about it (some passages from the Bible could be turned into a cool metal opera). The alternative spirituality of many girlypops has a way of pettifying everything: wow you left your girlfriend via message? That’s bad karma! What? You acted like a douche your whole life and suffered no consequences for it? That’s for another life then! If this is not the epitome of bitchy passive aggression I don’t know what is.
As many silly beliefs, this, too, has its glimmer of truth hidden in it. The Platonic myth of the soul, according to which our soul chooses what to incarnate as, offers much food for thought and meditation on the nature of our choices and how we must then live with the traces that those choices invite into our soul. There is no need to add metaphysical burdens on top of it.
Often people associate meditation with the quest for aha-moments. There is more than one kind of meditation. While realizations can come from any kind, the one that tends to produce them is discursive meditation, where attention is fixed on a symbol, image, phrase, prayer or problem.
Meditation, understood as simply sitting somewhere, catching one’s attention in the act of wandering off and bringing it back, does not necessarily entail the reaching of any conclusion on any particular subject, although it can foster clarity, which is conducive of finding solutions.
Many occult schools and spiritual organizations recommend meditation, and even though I am no longer part of any of them at the current stage, I think it is for good reason. The stilling of the “monkey mind” before ritual work is only the most obvious of the benefits of meditating.
Deeper than that is the fact that meditation is not a state we get into. It is a state we get out of and must return to consciously. Our attention’s natural place is here, next to us. Our attention is like a blade: it belongs sheathed on our belt, ready for action when needed. Instead, we spend our time swinging it about maniacally, blunting it by hitting it against anything that crosses our path.
There is tremendous power in keeping our attention by ourselves, in the present moment. Here and now, being and changing coincide one with the other, and together they coincide the the state of initial void from which the power needed for magic comes.
All too often I hear phrases like “you are the magic” or “the power comes from you.” Although these are supposed to be empowering statements and they mean well, they are founded on an egocentric misunderstanding typical of our age, where old ideas that would otherwise be dismissed as superstitions, like magic, seek to survive by psychologizing themselves.1
But Magic is the art of creating vessels for spiritual forces to dwell in. We, too, are vessels. Magic comes through us, not from us. In meditation, with our attention sheathed by our side, we slowly make room from something other than our ego to incarnate through us.
MQS
This is not meant to discredit psychological work, which can and often is necessary in our line of work. But psychology is not spirituality or occultism. ↩︎
I was having one of my philosophical discussions with a friend, and she was venting about how she doesn’t believe in love anymore, and that, at the end of the day, love is just a chemical reaction of the brain.
I thought this was an interesting take, not because it hasn’t been done before (it’s a cliché for a reason), but because it is ripe with philosophical (and magical) presuppositions that are worth exploring.
Usually, by saying that love is only a chemical reaction, we are trying to decrease the power or importance of love. This in turn implies that we consider chemistry something inferior to feelings, since we are trying to reduce feelings to chemistry.
Yet why should such a statement make us believe that love is less than we think it is, instead of opening us to the idea that chemistry is more than we give it credit for? After all, if love = chemical reaction X, then saying ‘chemical reaction X’ instead of ‘love’ is just a rebranding excercise: we are merely giving a different name to the same experience. It doesn’t change one iota of how love works, its effects on us and on existence itself.
So love *is* a chemical reaction we experience. It isn’t *just* a chemical reaction we experience. And who does the experiencing anyway? Is it the same biological substance that is subject to the chemical reaction or is it something further beyond it, an observing consciousness which can become aware of it, as well as being aware of its own awareness?
Even if we choose the first route (i.e., it is the same biological substance) , we are still saying that the chemical reaction has awareness attached to itself. So we are saying that same substance subject to chemical reactions is capable of developing awareness of them. That’s no small fit. And yet again, we are still left with something that polarizes into two aspects: love and awareness of it. In this majestic self-aware process there is plenty of space for wonder, and love is once again restored to the status of powerful driving force.
The Greek philosopher and magus Empedocles considered love/friendship one of the two great powers setting existence in motion, together with hatred/enmity, because they fuse the four elements together and then disintegrate them. Magicians ever since have worked with the links of sympathy and antipathy (of love and hatred, of compatibility and incompatibility) that animate everything. Empedocles was, at heart, a naturalist, who didn’t try to introduce extra principles into his philosophy. Be he, too, saw that the fusion and disintegration of the elements (chemical reactions, one might say) is something so universal and so fundamental that without it nothing can get done.
The way we do things, the way we say things, matters. The same apologetic arguments we find in Blaise Pascal’s most feverish and haunting pages would be enough to bring a doubter to conversion, yet when coming out of the lips of a cheap street preacher holding a sign, they are often received with distrust, when not with disgust.
The way we do and say things matters in occultism as well. The old texts of magical tradition, and even some old accounts of rituals and supernatural occurrences, are full of the frenzy-stillness dichotomy: some things seem to happen in a state of ecstasy, others in a state of torpor.
My path, both as diviner and as occultist, has been informed by the pursuit of stillness more than by that of frenzy. All the teachers I’ve had the honor to learn from have always required of me to reach a state of calm rather than one of heightened overexcitement.
In divination, there is always a moment of randomness required in order to break the barrier between what the personality thinks it knows and what is actually the case. Arranging the cards (or geomantic points, or whatever) consciously in the order we wish they would come out may teach us something about ourselves, but very little about the reality of a situation. Randomness ensures that our self-consciousness doesn’t interfere with the processof allignment between oracle and reality.
Whether through a frenzy or through calmness, randomness introduces itself into the process by bypassing the limits of our personality’s structure, with its limits and its biases. The choice between the “inspired” moment of frenzy and the “deadened” moment of calm rests on a partially different view of the relationship between individual and whole, between ourselves and the divine.
Ecstasy, which is the process of leaving oneself behind, occurs in both cases, but it occurs differently. By achieving a drunken confusion one simply rams through the walls of one’s personality, achieving contact with what is outside of it. By stilling oneself, one reaches the point within one’s core where individual and divine coincide.
Obviously, once each option is brought to an extreme, it bleads into its opposite. Pure frenzy becomes absence of limits and therefore absence of what is limited, and its movement resolves itself in calm. Pure calm is delivered from all difference from change, so it coincides with pure frenzy.
Western occultism has an idiosyncratic relationship with the notion of sacrifice. On one hand we come from the Abrahamitic tradition, and especially the Christian one, where sacrifice plays a central doctrinal role (God sacrifices himself) and where the concept of sacrifice has often been used as a club against dissent or to elicit guilt and compliance.
On the other hand, the occult revival of the XIX century, especially but not only in its Crowleian branch, was incapable of integrating this concept in a positive way, largely as a form of juvenile reaction against the previous tradition. If the universe is pure and blind bliss there can be little place for sacrifice except in the most illusory sense. As long as occultism remains largely the occupation of misfits and oddballs, it must retain this juvenile attitude toward sacrifice (which largely explains the philosophical paucity of so much of the occult world).
But sacrifice comes from the Latin ‘sacer facere’, ‘to render sacred’. As such, there can be no spiritual path without sacrifice. Even the most atheistic and chaotic paths must render something sacred, whether it’s themselves and their ego or some abstract philosophical concept. Once something is made sacred, the rest is sacrificed to it as a means to an end, and thus also rendered sacred as a consequence.
In magic (and in religion as well), power can come from two sources: from formulas that have been solidified into a metaphysical building over the years (or centuries) or from contact with a direct source. In reality even the former path, if it is functional, must have had some direct contact at least at the beginning.
Therefore, much of one’s magical training consists in bridging the gap that exists between oneself and the source, that is, between micro- and macrocosm, between individual and universal. The aim is always to be able to embody the universal within oneself. To do so, we must necessarily sacrifice our singular nature, that is, we must empty ourselves of the decades of junk that have been filling our individual vessel since we were born, so that a higher power may come down and occupy it: after all, a pitcher must be emptied of muk before it can be filled with water.
This process necessarily implies sacrifice. As we grow up, we accumulate big and small vices, big and small dysfunctions and illusions, and anyone who has lived long enough and has developed enough self-reflection can probably recognize at least some of them as they keep reemerging.
All this needs to be purged from the system. In other words, it needs to be sacrificed, to be rendered sacred. One of my teachers’ mantras was “Offer it to the Divine“. It took me some years to understand what she meant. Whenever some of my vices, some of my illusions, pains, dysfunctions presented themselves, it was easy to simply abandon myself to them, to live them out in the solitary confinement of my individuality as a sort of chosen doom.
But “Offer it to the Divine” was the key to leaving that solitary confinement, of bridging the gap between the small world and the large world. It went beyond despair and guilt and all the typical associations of the word ‘sacrifice’. It required no judgement. It only required for me to stand back, allowing the sun to shine on that lower part of me.
This, I later learned, is the inner equivalent of what happens during rituals, when we sacrifice something to whatever power we are working with. It is part of what allows that apple offered to that spirit to be more than just a tip of the hat to a recipe found in a dusty grimoire.
A reader contacted me and we started chatting a little on magical training. One of his observations, which I found quite interesting, is that most schools require learning meditation as one of the first steps in occult development, and he was wondering if meditation is really necessary to occult development.
The first thing we need to clarify is what kind of meditation we are talking about. The influence of Blavatsky’s orientalist flavor of Theosophy has made it so that, when we say “meditation”, we tend to mean Eastern techniques. In reality, most cultures developed some form or other of meditation.
Western Platonism, for instance, developed its own form following Plotinus’ doctrine (already implicit in Plato) of “remove everything!” (aphele panta), whereby one strips naked of every specific determination of mind and soul, until he reaches a state of peaceful union with the divine.
This doctrine has been developed by some Christian mystics, especially of the German school, and is still very much present in all the iterations of Neoplatonism that have occurred throughout history (for instance in the Renaissance period). I am currently translating Robert Fludd’s treatise on geomancy, and his advice on how to prepare for divination essentially boils down to Plotinus’ aphele panta doctrine.
This is not just “high magic” stuff (I don’t believe in a high/low magic dichotomy). Even in folk magic, such as certain strands of Italian witchcraft, discursive forms of meditations are used (reciting the rosary, for instance, or using certain mantras). Let us also not forget that all religions have their own forms of meditation.
So why does most occult training start with meditation? In itself, meditation does nothing. It serves no necessary purpose outside of itself, in the sense that it is a sovereign technique. One can simply practice it for its own sake, as a form of spiritual dignification.
However, magic is largely about becoming fit vessels for a power higher than our own. Aside from its intrinsic benefits, meditation, in its various forms and with its various possible aims, is one of the techniques that shape our personal vessel to become more fit receivers.
Many times, within a ritual setting, meditation is practiced as a preparatory step, especially to visionary magic (but really, most magic is at least in part visionary). It is a way of starting the operation with a blank slate and to create an interruption between our daily preoccupations and the ritual.
Finally, meditation famously trains the “monkey mind”. Since our mind is one of our most important tools, we don’t want it running around, slinging crap at passers-by and hurting itself by sticking a finger in a wall socket.
Occult training is a balancing act, and while it is not true that anything goes, there is space for adaptation (if there weren’t, there would be only one occult path in the whole world, which is patently not the case). Meditation is NOT necessary, just like prayer, offerings, divination and many other things. But it is a tried and true set of tools for the journey.
I am an ecumenical troll: I will pour salt wherever I can regardless of political, religious, ethnic and gender affiliation, IF what I see is a sheer display of stupidity. This is one of those cases.
As most people will know by now, a certain oddly-colored politician has been reelected into office. Amongst the predictable TikTok meltdowns that were caused by the event, one peculiar trend caught my eye: that of witches sending him curses, either to make him croak or, and I quote, “having him willingly resign from the office so that Harris can take his place.”
Let us pretend for a second that this is how politics works (if it did, most politicians would dread winning an election more than losing it). What never ceases to amaze me is the complete detachment from reality that informs the witchcore scene.
Magic used to be the logical next step on the path to wisdom after mastering the worldly sciences. Now it’s a hobby for people with funny hair who need to unlearn anything resembling critical thinking in order to be able to tell themselves in front of a mirror that they are “witches”.
In large part this is due to the process of specialization and separation of knowledge that occurred after the scientific revolution, which virtually left no space for magic in the curriculum of the wise. This has led to two opposite tendencies developing: the “science confirms our eternal truths” tendency and the irrationalist tendency.
The “science confirms our eternal truths” strategy is typical of many XIX and XX century occultists. It makes no sense. Science is an open and ever-evolving body of theoretical and practical understanding which would survive even if it threw its most well-established theories overboard. If “scientific theory X is actually a reformulation of our eternal occult wisdom”, what does it say about that wisdom when, in 500 years, that theory is disproven and science moves on to the next one?
The scientific path is generally characterized by a flattening of magic onto (pseudo)scientific rationality. The irrationalist path, on the other hand, is characterized by the abandonment of all logic and understanding. It is typical of most milquetoast magical practitioners nowadays. This is the path that leads people to say with a straight face that you can manifest the result of an election and you can substitute sage with a piece of paper with “sage” written on it.1
This kind of irrationalist magic is the variety practiced by the TikTok witches sending curses to Trump. Rest assured that curses do exist. They mostly require some kind of contact with the victim, and even then almost no one can pull them off.
Even from the point of view of sending influences at a distance, Trump is as loved by those who voted for him as he is hated by those who didn’t: from a purely numerical standpoint, these influences cancel each other out, with something left over in his favor.
Finally, whether one likes it or not, the movement he leads has its own well-established etheric egregoric presence, which was created not just internally by those who support him, but also just as much externally by those who loathe him. A simple study of the life of Donald Trump, and even of the last months, shows that it would be very hard–not impossible, but hard–to hurt him, either physically or esoterically. Do you seriously think you lighting a candle and regurgitating formulas from a grimoir you bought on Etsy is going to change the course of humanity?
MQS
Substitutions CAN be operated in magic, but they are an art in an of itself, and require understanding ↩︎
Fludd describes the importance of purification, meditation and other practices in preparation to geomancy.
3. How a Geomancer Should Prepare Himself, So That the Intentions of His Mind May Be Clearly Emitted, and May Be United With the Senses by Means of Reason
It is thanks to our senses that we can see the geomantic points. Then, we compare these same points to the celestial [bodies] and the elements with our imagination.1 Finally, the hidden virtue, both of these points and of the figures arising from them proceeds from the correctness of the intellect, both active and passive,2 and consequently from the mind.
From all this follows that the human body must be regulated and governed in such a way that its more intellectual part may not be drowned by too much intercourse with the flesh, or become dulled, and that the imaginative or fantastic spirit may not be rendered dull and impure.3
Therefore, before this work is approached, let our fantastic spirit be clean, pure, unmoved and untroubled by cares, so that it may be made worthy of being trusted by the mind and intellect. Thus, such a spirit, most suitable for divination, will receive the light of the rays of the mind without any hindrance, and will depict the objects of truth in a mystical manner, as if in a mirror, and will cause the sensation and movement of the body to proceed exactly and to the degree to which the effect of the mind itself tends.4
When, therefore, we are safe and healthy in body, and not disturbed in mind, not weighed down by food or drink, not suffering from want or poverty, and not ruled by any vices of lust or anger, let us enter into this area of prophecy. Let him also who wishes to use this art keep his spirit pure, both by quiet and religious meditation, and by moderate and temperate diet according to nature.5
This preparation is necessary for him who desires to foretell the truth of future things, either by the geomantic art, or by any other method, since without it no one can access true divination, for he who is languishing in a fantastical spirit6 will not attain the desired end, but will judge confusedly and indiscernibly.
Similarly, when we are filled with wine, our imaginative spirit, as if submerged in noxious vapors, hides and distorts the glory and truth of the rays of the mind, no differently than a thick cloud, or the earth raised in the middle of the air region, shields the glory of the sun from the eyes of the beholder, and produces a refraction of its rays. In this manner falsities will appear instead of truths, and in the very portion of the cloud the objects of the sun will be seen changed into an iridescent or multi-colored substance, and many phantasms will appear in the air, which are not such as they appear.7
Hence they say that the vassals of Amphariaus,8 as Philostratus testifies, ordered one who wished to divine future things, and to receive the oracles of God or of the mind, to abstain from food and wine for a whole day, or even for three days, if this could be conveniently done.
Thus we read that Ezra and Daniel, and even Moses himself, before they came to God, abstained from their wives for three days and washed their clothes: and so they did all this, at the command of God himself, of which we read Exod. 19 and Ezech. 44.9
And so also must he who desires to devote himself faithfully to this form of divination, be delighted not with carnal intercourse, but with spiritual union, not with wine, but with the light of the mind’s milk, not to be lavished with worldly riches, but with the infinite affluence of the divine intellect, not with junk, but to be filled with spiritual food.10
In an old French manuscript on occult Geomancy I found a confirmation of the above in these following words: “Before you get to the projection of the Geomantic points, I would like you to understand that they are not counted. Indeed, if you do this, nothing good or profitable will result from it, since this is knowledge based on the soul, and therefore the number of points is to be found in the will of the soul, and in no way be established according to the appetite of your senses.
It behooves him, therefore, who undertakes this work, to begin nothing, unless his heart is at peace, and his conscience is whole and healthy, and his spirit and soul are not troubled by any disturbances, so much so that he would not even wish worse for another than for himself.11
Finally, having been prepared in this way, let him trust in God, the teacher of knowledge, and beseech him with prayers, that by the power of that knowledge he may reveal to him the truth; having therefore carefully completed these things, it will be necessary to proceed immediately to the projection and arrangement of the points, etc.”
This author in no way disagrees with our opinion, but rather, on the contrary, seems to agree exactly with it.
4. It Is Not Sufficient for Divination That the Body and Flesh Should be Well Ordered. It is Also Necessary That the Rays of the Internal Soul Be Gathered Together
As concentrating a force generally increases its strength, so also it begets great weakness when it is dispersed.12 Thus we see that the rays of a candle in a confined room illuminate a place in a wonderful manner, since the narrowness of the place compresses and contracts the rays emitted by the flame to each other, so that they have a greater power in illumination. However, if that candle is placed in a larger room, its light is greatly weakened and darkened, because of the dispersion of its rays in a wide area.
In the same way, then, the soul (whose candlestick is the human body) spreads its rays in this or that business, nay, in infinite external things, for example, in lawsuits and legal affairs, in the art of medicine, in the care of family matters, in pain and sadness over a lost cause or the death of a friend, in anger or some unexpected adversity, in some art or knowledge and others of the like, or if he is also affected by the intercourse of concupiscence, the vice of drunkenness, the indulgence of gluttony, or other temptations of the flesh, he will be very weak and have little power to illuminate the body.
But truly, if all these soul-rays are reduced from external affairs to the internal economy of the Microcosm, and are drawn back to their center from the multitude, the force of the soul will be united, and that body, which was formerly dark and gloomy because of the rays, will be illuminated in a wonderful way, and thus the prophetic power in man will be far more effective than it was before.13
However, this reduction of the expanded rays of the soul into one cannot take place without the purification of the body, which is done in the manner mentioned above. As a result it is necessary above all things for him who wishes to claim the name of truth in Geomancy, that his soul should once again turn and reflect its scattered rays upon itself; since the chief virtue of this science consists in the illumination of the soul, in so far as true things are seen in its divine light, as in a mirror of truth, and are explained by the external observation of points in a mystical way through the guidance of the soul that turns its attention to this.
The concept of the ‘intellectus agens’ or Active Intellect is key to Neoplatonist spirituality both in Europe and in the Arab world, and has many similarities with some kabbalistic concepts. Generally, the Active Intellect was a universal form of intelligence that is not confined to one’s individual nature. Whether Fludd is referring to this or simply to the more active faculties of the human soul is unclear to me. The gist of his argument, however, is that the occult sciences, including Geomancy, rest on the highest principles, which makes them hard to access when one is not pure. ↩︎
Imagination is depicted here as a valid aid to understanding, as long as it is in its pure form and not just mere fancy. ↩︎
To put it simply, the body and the lower faculties of our nature must be ruled in such a way that they move in unison with the higher. Once this is accomplished, divination may take place successfully. ↩︎
Old medicine was of the idea that an appropriate diet could only be prescribed based on one’s nature. There was no one-size-fit-all. As for meditation, Fludd is unlikely to refer to those forms of meditation that entered into the Western consciousness thanks to theosophy’s Eastern dabblings, and that have become commonplace today. The West used to have its forms of meditation. ↩︎
possibly meaning someone who gives in to their fantasy without ruling it appropriately ↩︎
It is impossible to read this passage without being reminded of Plato’s myths, especially that of the cave. ↩︎
Here Fludd interprets passages from the Bible as episodes describing some higher form of divination. In a way, this is very true. ↩︎
Here Fludd proposes a series of alternatives to ‘lower’ forms of pleasure that may seem rethorical at first, but on closer inspection aren’t. Such ‘substitutions’ are typical of many occult training curricula. ↩︎
Ill-wishing is part of the things that weigh the soul down. ↩︎
The same pressure applied on a wider surface disperses it. ↩︎
This process of ‘unification’ is the same that has been typical of Neoplatonism since (at least) Plotinus, and which has been described, within a Christian context, by the German mystics (Meister Eckhart and his disciples) who described the Seelengrund (ground of the soul) as the point of contact of the individual soul with the universal presence of the divine. Fludd, living at the end of the Renaissance and its exaltation of humanity, gives us a slightly less mystical version of this idea, one geared toward increasing one’s knowledge through occult practices. ↩︎
Not every question is fit for divination, and as diviners who get approached by people, discernment and, if necessary, gate-keeping is among our rights and duties. I say this not because I want to feel part of a superior caste of priests, but because our practice should be informed by two great principles: the well-being of our querents and the honor of our art.
It is perfectly fine to ask questions out of mere curiosity or for fun, but the ultimate decision on whether a question shall be put to the cards rests with us. I, for one, have dodged more questions about controversial politicians in the last couple of weeks than in the last couple of years altogether, largely because the question, when boiled down to its essential meaning, was “Is it true this politician I hate is a spawn of Satan?”
Such questions are unanswerable not merely because they are idle, but because they are ultimately unverifiable: unless you are that politician’s cleaning lady you have few ways of verifying my answer. Furthermore, consider this: if my answer is anything except “yes, you’re absolutely justified in your hatred,” the person is going to be inclined to dismiss my answer as superstitious nonsense. Why, then, whould a positive answer be of any value?
But unanswerable questions are not just those that belong to the “is it true that my particular preferences are absolutely valid and I don’t ever need to question them?” category. Some are more tragic. Recently I got asked something heart-breaking: “Is my life still worth living?”
No matter how we slice it, THIS is an unanswerable question, which doesn’t make it a meaningless string of sounds. On the contrary, it is a clearly formulated cry for help. As someone who has been struggling with depression since my teen years and has gone dangerously close to the edge on more than one occasion, I resonate strongly with it. But the fact remains that divination is not the tool to solve this issue.
I refused to open the cards on this question, obviously, but suppose I had, and suppose that, predictably, the cards had shown me the absolute mess that is this person’s life: does this make their life less worth living?
There is no answer. In this case, not because we cannot verify the details (I could easily point at the cards and say “your career is in shambles and your family life is a museum of red flags”) but because the reality of the situation has no bearing on the answer. Worth is subjective. The exact same set of circumstances that might drive someone to walk into a lake with stones in their pockets would be taken by someone else as life throwing a little challenge their way.
Therefore, in this case the question would translate as “What is your personal opinion on what makes life worth living and do you think I still meet those criteria?” I don’t think anyone would be foolish enough to even consider taking such a responsibility for themselves.1 It is much wiser to talk to the person, encourage them to open up and direct them to an appropriate source of (medical) help.
Again, though, the fact that the question cannot be answered does not imply that there isn’t a deep, real, visceral experience behind it. It is just that divination is not the way to go. It is like asking a pair of scales to measure whether you are pretty.
MQS
Furthermore, people in a seriously distressed state are especially prone to esoteric influences, and would to better to avoid them, even if it’s just a simple card reading ↩︎
This post is inspired by a forum page I was reading where various people whose whole magical practice consists in casting the defensive spells were comparing notes. One thing that often amuses me is that many people who are looking to get into magic often start by practicing random rituals which are either plucked off the internet (trust me bro) or taken from old books (it’s old so it’s true).
Even supposing that these rituals are effective (no, your wanting it to be effective is not enough for it to be) practicing them outside of the cultural, philosophical and magical framework within which they were conceived can be extremely dangerous if it is not done with full knowledge of the facts pertaining to it and by supplementing your magical knowledge with your reasoning ability to work out its inner mechanism. This is why I advocate for magicians to study philosophy and logic, among other things.
The first thing these people will rush to is defensive magic, their reasoning being that defensive magic can do no harm. In fact, it’s good for you! How can it not be? There are some words that unfortunately evoke unwarranted feelings of safety. ‘Nature‘ is one of those words. People hear “It’s natural” and immediately assume it’s good. Know what is natural? Ebola. But people in industrialized countries have a romantic notion of nature due to how distant it is from them–they can afford such a romantic notion, since usually nature is allowed into their lives in small, sanitized drops of color.
The same goes with the word ‘defensive magic’. It must be good if it is just for defense! After all, defense is good: That’s why we take karate lessons and install cameras on the front door. This, people think, is the equivalent of defensive magic.
Yes, defense is good. So is hygiene. After all, while hygiene now falls mostly under the cosmetic industry, it was once a matter of defense: cities with running water and plumbing had healthier citizens who could defend themselves more effectively. And what is hygiene, at its core, if not defending the body against certain biological threats?
Still, most people would agree that taking antibiotica every day without a reason, or washing your hands every few minutes is not only silly but detrimental. Our body exists in a dynamic balance with the forces outside of it, and neutralizing those outside forces will inevitably lead to our body being incapable of resisting them. The same is true for our soul. Magical hygiene is a thing, and it does contain certain solutions to keeping a good equilibrium. So how do we know if something is good?
The one thing we need to ask ourselves when looking for protection is: protection from what? What am I doing that requires protection? To put this into perspective: a welder’s mask protects his face from flying sparks. Do you need such a mask? Are you in danger of being blinded by flying sparks? Unless you are a welder, probably not, and even if you are, you probably don’t need it the whole day.
Most people have a certain inborn resistance to low-level magical threats, often supplemented by whatever protection derives from the religion they practice, so long as it’s a traditional religion with established rituals and prayers. This basic package is usually enough for anyone who is not a practicing magician. There is no point in people going around casting Banishing Rituals for no reason.
One universal law, maybe of magic, maybe of life, is: if there is no problem, don’t try to implement a solution, lest you cause an imbalance that only the presence of the problem itself can solve, thus inviting the problem to present itself.
The more we advance in the magical path, the more we are going to be on the radar of the odd inner-world larvae, and perhaps worse, the more we are going to need to keep the defenses up, and this will usually involve an always unique combination of strategies that are always specific to the kind of work we are doing.
