The Path to Mastery

In the Western Tradition of Magick there is an event known as ‘Crossing the Abyss’, which marks a certain milestone in the magician’s magical career. However, due to a considerable dearth of information on the subject the general conception of the phenomena ranges from undergoing a personal depression to an actual dragging of the unfortunate into Hell. However, based on my own personal experience and that of others, I can tell you that crossing the abyss is a metaphor for a process of realization. The realization is not specific to a particular tradition or even the magical mindset, but is a personal event recognized in various forms thoughout history.

The Path of Mastery
The path of Mastery in the Western tradition is not to be understood as a system of trials and rewards. Rather, it is a process of growing understanding, often undertaken without conscious choice, that results in the ability to perceive reality as the Absolute reality. Let me clear up a small point of common definitions here. Awareness is defined for the purposes of this missive as the original state of mind, before it mistook the emerging personality construct for itself and identified with it. It is the receptive state of not-knowing. Consciousness is the state of recognition of an object, whether it is a rock nearby, a memory or an itching of the earlobe. Mind is defined as thinking about an object.

The problem with the everday “waking” mentality is that everyday consciousness as defined above puts the entire world into an “us and them” context. We recognize Steven’s shoes, my keys, her groceries and so forth. A subtler problem is the nature of this mine/not mine distinction because it is an artifact of the ego, a self-sustaining mechanism that keeps the mind in an egocentric context. In essence, the world is divided into “me” and “not-me”. However, when one recognizes that one’s thoughts, possessions and tasks to perform, as well as those of everyone else in this world and indeed all of the universe are nothing but objects in consciousness, it is a complete liberation. You have thoughts, but you are not your thoughts. You have possessions, but you are not your possessions. You have tasks, but you are not your tasks. The recognition that all save the base Awareness are merely objects of consciousness, mere constructs removes feelings of attachment. Fundamental changes in perception take place, as ownership issues are deprioritized or fall away completely.

States and Stages
A recent review of the NewAeon publication provoked a memory of an observation I made in the past. One commonly misunderstood aspect of initiation is the nature of consciousness itself. Consciousness is not monolithic, and changes in consciousness often manifest in surges curiously reminiscent of waves beating on the surf. During the rites and meditations it is possible and even necessary to exalt consciousness, but all too quickly this fades although insights or partial manifestations of this state may linger. The 7=4 initiation is an example of this. However, people including even many promising adepts often mistake a temporarily elevated state of consciousness for a stage of consciousness, the former being temporary and the latter being either a permanent evolution or revolution of understanding. These are not to be understood as separate phenomena, but rather a scale starting with a “peak experience” state, moving through a plateau stage of increasing indwelling with this new understanding and finally reaching the stable state of permanent assimilation.

The successful attainment of a state is not necessary for the eventual attainment of a stage, but serves to "grease the wheels" in a metaphysical sense by providing the glimmer of Understanding necessary. It is safe to say that an initiation does not provide for attainment, but serves to reflect recognition of an attainment or to provide that state that serves as a guidepost for the eventual stage of development. The achieved state should be a goad to further effort, not the signal that it is time to necessarily stop and integrate new knowledge into a presumed whole on the way to Mastery. The admonition to "Invoke Often" also applies to achieving these exalted states again and again, so that the adept can plateau and eventually stabilize at the new stage.

Silent Witness
As mentioned above, the essential awareness that is the characteristic of Mastery is that all phenomena, even the perception of the personal self are objects in consciousness. For example, when enjoying the scent of a rose it is easily understood that the aroma we are experiencing is nothing more than chemical stimulation of certain centers of the brain, and that emotional connotations and memories are also understood in the same sense. Similarly, the perception of time is an object of consciousness; when thinking about tomorrow we are doing that thinking in the here and now. The ability to experience the universe with the prime awareness is often referred to as the Silent Witness or the Impersonal Witness. This awareness of the Self is an experience that a stupendous vastness, an absolute silence, a complete impersonality, and a singularly clear but absolutely uninvolved awareness of everything. One is merely a witness, a silent and unchanging witness. This is a direct insight, not the result of a conscious thought process but rather of a metaconscious process.

The Crossing
The concept of the Abyss has been so filled with flowery and turgid prose as to be almost deliberately misleading to the reader. The experience of the Abyss is the emergence of the feelings of disgust, fear and confusion that are a necessary part of growing to Mastery. Just as a child experiences fear and anxiety during separation from the breast of the mother at one stage of development and follows it later with fear and anxiety as they learn to cope with communicating with others and their burgeoning emotions, so does the adept face their trials. Consider that your mind is attempting to let go of the boundaries of self and not-self, of the distinction between yesterday and tomorrow, and the underlying assumption that the ego is not actually the self and you will understand why this is so terrifying. It is among other things the death of the ego, or to be more specific the exclusive identification with the ego.

In some cases, these fears and anxieties are anthropomorphized to some degree in the manifestation of Choronzon. The actual manifestation is specific to each individual, but the process for overcoming it is straightforward. As a object in consciousness, silence and acceptance of this manifestation (or the unembodied manifestations of the fears Choronzon represents) are the means to not defeat him, not to temporarily become him (as Crowley wrote) but to accept him. Acceptance becomes integration, and the beast at this level is gone.

Magister Templi or Master of the Temple (8°=3°)
“The principal business of this grade is to obtain a perfect understanding of the Universe. The essential Attainment is the perfect annihilation of that personality which limits and oppresses his true self. The Magister Templi is pre-eminently the Master of Mysticism, that is, his Understanding is entirely free from internal contradiction or external obscurity; his Word is to comprehend the existing Universe in accordance with his own Mind. This grade corresponds to Binah on the Tree of Life.”

The above quotation is the “classic” definition of the Master of the Temple, the basic enlightened state. However, while elegantly written it is not terribly straightforward in what the hallmarks of the Master is. For one, the assertion that the attainment is “the essential annihilation of that personality which limits and oppresses his true self” must be clearly misunderstood as potentially dangerously misleading. The process of evolution toward Mastery is essentially a process of synthesis and growth, where the presumed whole becomes part of another larger whole. As we mature, we move from identification of the self from the body as children but later identify the self with the ego. The body didn’t disappear, but we no longer exclusively identified with it. As we learn to confront and assimilate those repressed qualities of our natures, they too become part of the larger and integrated whole. So the process continues, integrating more and more of our minds including the spectrum of conscious and unconscious, achieving greater unities and arriving at more and more essential understandings of self.

At the stage of the experience identified with the birth of the Master of the Temple, the individual has an experience of the Silent Witness. In other words, the individual has an experience of an awareness without dualities such as now and then, his and hers, and most directly self and not-self. While the poverty of language does not fully convey the meaning of the experience, the essential experience removes boundaries, so that there is only the timeless moment of now, with no perception of self or not-self; the essential awareness, unchanging and unattached, recognizing all as objects of consciousness only, independent of intellect, memories or desire. The result of experiencing the absolute in my case was a feeling of detached serenity and intense flash of the classic “Eureka! I found it!” feeling when one receives a flash of insight. Others have described it as emptiness, bliss, a feeling of love for all things or an insight into the ultimate truth. In my case as well as in most of the other individuals whom I have encountered sharing this experience, it did not initially manifest in ritual or meditation, but rather manifested during the day during the most mundane of tasks. This is not to say that the meditations and ritual and not necessary pre-requisites, but that they serve to create the path. Only after the path exists can you walk on it. As previously stated, this is a state of consciousness. By definition this is a temporary experience, but an experience that can be repeated and in fact must be regularly.

The remainder of the classical definition of the grade of the Master of the Temple flows as a consequence of this experience. The observation that understanding is free of internal contradiction reflects in many cases work that should have been accomplished during the 7=4 period, where the conscious and unconscious elements of the mind have been integrated so far as possible. The reference to external obscurity reflects his growing awareness in consciousness that external objects are (along with internal ones) merely objects of consciousness, and this understanding requires a complete re-examination of the Universe in light of this development as the former symbols of consciousness are integrated as signs in the mind. Note that this grade like all others is a transitional stage, not to be confused with some eternal and unchanging; in many ways, this grade is a signpost that the work has well and truly begun, it will eventually flower into that of the Magus or even the Ipsissimus, but this is a continuum of experience that under the right conditions is self-correcting and self-sustaining.

Magus (9°=2°)
“The Magus seeks to attain Wisdom, declares his law, and is a Master of all Magick in its greatest and highest sense. His will is entirely free from internal diversion or external opposition; His work is to create a new Universe in accordance with his Will. This grade corresponds to Chokmah on the Tree of Life.”
The grade of Magus is the result of the Master continuing to regularly reach this experience, over time the process developing as a plateau consciousness. During this interval, the formerly peak experience of the absolute awareness intrudes more and more regularly into waking consciousness during period of mundane or magical activity. Consciousness continues to evolve and integrate this new understanding. The definition above states that part of the Work is to create a new Universe in accordance with his (or her) Will. The other part of the Western tradition also provides that the Magus must pronounce a suitable Word to initiate a new Aeon.

Nicely put, but flowery language always trades elegance for meaning. The Magus synthesizes his new understanding of the universe into a whole. To the Magus, this Word (or system of magick, or whatever the Magus chooses to encapsulate the essence of their new understanding), is then passed to others. This Word to others is only a symbol, and not the awareness of the Master. When the Magus was starting their magical career, they used magical seals, correspondences and other symbols to bring about developments in their consciousness, and the Magus returns the favor by providing new symbols to the emerging generation.

The advantage of this approach is that the symbols presented to students change over time, staying current with the times, and are more readily acceptable to modern minds. This in part explains why the Chaos Magick paradigm is more popular than the ceremonial traditions of the past or even the modern resurrections of older religions. the mentality of man changes over time, and symbols once of great value must be re-interpreted and new symbols defined that will be understood.

Ipsissimus (10°=1°)
“Beyond the comprehension of the lower degrees. An Ipsissimus is free from limitations and necessity and lives in perfect balance with the manifest universe. Essentially, the highest mode of attainment. This grade corresponds to Kether on the Tree of Life.”
This stage marks the culmination of the experience begun by the Master of the Temple. Here, the understanding achieved as a peak or plateau is not completely integrated into consciousness. With a unity consciousness, there is no further boundaries between self and not-self. Indeed, “All is accomplished”.


“From Many, to One, to All”
Frater Tehiru
Michael Aaron Eckhard

A Tesseract Walkthrough

Now that everyone has reviewed the introductory material on this topic, it is time to actually work on navigating within a tesseract. As previously stated, a tesseract can be "unfolded" into eight (8) cubes in the same way that a paper cube can be unfolded into a calvalry cross. Now, having determined the vertices of the cubes in the method described previously, we end up with a table looking like this:

5	4	12	13	7	6	14	15
7	6	14	15	3	2	10	11
3	2	10	11	1	0	8	9
12	14	10	8	13	15	11	9
4	6	2	0	12	14	10	8
5	7	3	1	13	15	11	9
5	7	3	1	4	6	2	0
5	4	12	13	1	0	8	9

This is not terribly informative at this point. However, when the eight cubes are drawn out, the results are more informative. Please take a moment to review the below image, and note that I have left the eighth cube out of the drawing for clarity:

This drawing was created by sketching out the eight cubes, arbitrarily taking three cubes and stacking them on each other. For simplicity, I refer to these cubes as the base column, with the cubes being numbered (from the bottom) Base 1, Base 2 and Base 3. Similarly, the other four cubes shown are designated North, South, East and West cubes. The final cube (not shown) is referred to as the Transfer cube.If you look at the drawing, you will note that the cubes have been arranged so that the faces that touch another cube have the same numbers on their faces. For example, the east cube touches the Base 1 cube along the face 5,4,6,7 and the west cube touches the north cube along the face 2,6,0,4.

Now here comes the tricky part. The North, South, East and West cubes are not fixed in their positions. Note that these can be "rolled" up the Base Column to touch the central or upper cubes as well. This does not reflect that they are actually rolling, but that they are actually touching those cubes simultaneously. Let's take an example. Suppose that a visitor to the bottom Base Pillar cube decided to walk west into the West Cube. The visitor decides to climb up to the ceiling and go through it. From an outsiders perspective, the visitor would now be standing on the 6,7,3,2 face of the second cube in the Base Pillar! Someone who has watched the conclusion of the movie Labyrinth will immediately see the possibilities of movement inherent in the topography of a tesseract.

To clarify, now that the cubes for this example have been labeled we are left with the following table:

Base 1	5	4	12	13	7	6	14	15
Base 2	7	6	14	15	3	2	10	11
Base 3	3	2	10	11	1	0	8	9
East	12	14	10	8	13	15	11	9
North	4	6	2	0	12	14	10	8
South	5	7	3	1	13	15	11	9
West	5	7	3	1	4	6	2	0
Transfer	5	4	12	13	1	0	8	9

Next blog will detail the transfer cube!

Ritual Keys

A key is typically defined as a means of gaining or preventing entrance, possession or control of a location or process. A ritual key as it pertains to psychology, theurgy, mystery schools and magickal practice is a technique involving deliberate actions with appropriate intent, to provide additional meaning or potentials to various operations. The use of ritual keys can provide a number of advantages to an individual who understands proper usage.

A ritual key has similarities both to sigils and to programming by dint of the process of deciding how a given procedure will unfold. Many sigils are created by deciding what operation(s) are necessary for a given effect, such as “first, invoke my servitor, then have him find my target, and then have him attach him”. This is essentially a short program of three steps. Similarly, a ritual key may be constructed by use of a sigil or other method, but the core operation is deciding what sequence of steps will be taken and what method they employ”. Unlike a servitor which can be expected to manifest some degree of intelligence, a ritual key is a program in that it will activate according to the instructions given.

Advantages
One advantage of having a ritual key is a heightened degree of precision when creating an effect. By identifying what particular mechanism of operation will be employed, and process in which that principle will work, a specific operation can be programmed to operate consistently. An excellent illustration of this example are the ubiquitous icons that litter the desktops of computer users everywhere. When I click on a particular computer icon, the computer locates the operating files for Microsoft WordTM, loads them into memory along with any associated library files, and executes the program itself.

A similar but distinct advantage of the use of ritual keys is that common operations can be activated without having to engage in a ritual. Rituals can be very powerful, but consume materials and require time not only for the ritual but for setup and takedown. If we consider a banishing of a sacred space as an illustrative example, it is possible to use a ritual key to create this effect, rapidly and without use of a ritual, as the operator can essentially “shortcut” to the desired application. With a specific series of gestures, words or a combination, an operator may choose to immediately generate a specific effect provided that ritual key is invoked with intent. In this example, I have used a ritual key of a specific gesture and word (with intent) to banish and area and create a sacred space for other ritual use. This technique allows for “quick draw” utility both for attack and defense if the situation warrants it.

A final advantage when using a ritual key is that it can allow for greater emotional energy to be used in actual ritual for the actual ritual purpose and less for what are often considered preliminaries. A typical magickal worker maintains a certain amount of emotional and etheric energy at any given time, and magickal operations require this energy in order to maintain focus or power a specific effect. If we consider a ritual cleansing of a home or other building in this context with an estimated duration of 20 minutes, it allows one to spend more time on the ritual cleansing of the structure and less time on opening the ritual. By essentially preprogramming the preliminary or parallel elements of the ritual, more of this emotional and etheric energy can be directly expended on the task at hand. The ability to wring more “spell points” out of a given magickal operation can be a potent advantage, with group workings of workers with differing symbol sets being an obvious example.

Example
Steven wants to be able to generate a “spoiler” on an individual whom he suspects is attempting to leech his energy field. The method he has chosen is to generate a field of disruptive energies, a discordant cacophony of energetic noise that he feels will confuse and discourage his attacker, and make it difficult to create a link and which will tend to erode under the chaotic environment. Normally Steven requires a few minutes to “ramp up” for an operation, and he is concerned that by the time he is ready to activate this effect, the connections will already be made. Consequently, he designs a ritual key which is activated by a specific hand gesture and the word “no”, while concentrating with specific intent. Steven practices this for several days, consciously creating this aggressive intent while using the desired word and gestures until he feels he has assimilated the procedure and is ready to do so in the real world. When out in his daily life, he encounters his antagonist and with intent makes the gestures and pronounces the word “no”, and the effect materializes without the normal meditative time Steven requires.

Tesseract Magick Part IV: Tesseract Magick and the Enochian System

In recent months, I was introduced to a gentleman online who was interested in exploring the concept of Tesseract magic in the context of the enochian elemental tablets. An adept of the method pioneered by Benjamin Rowe in his excellent essay Enochian Temples, he was interested in expanding on the original method to fully encompass some potentialities of the system. I was intrigued by the idea, as my personal Great Table introduced in a previous posting had not been fully realized.

After some experimentation with the enochian elemental tablets, I was contacted and the failures he had encountered were detailed. It was resolved that he would continue to experiment, but that both of us would continue to explore the reasons for the difficulties being encountered. Having a general familiarity with the system, I began a systematic analysis of the enochian elemental tablets. In the course of my research, I undertook a mathematical analysis of the elemental correspondences of each of the squares in all four elemental tablets.

The enochian tablets in total are by definition a representation of a magical universe, presumably balanced among elemental forces of air, earth, fire and water. They are not. This is a bold statement, so I will explain in more detail. Mathematically, a balanced representation of four elemental forces where repetition is allowed (for example, a square with two faces being associated with Earth) but there the order in which those faces are colored is a type of combination. Mathematically, the number of combinations of four elements in sets of four where repetition is allowed but the order is important is 256. That is to say, a 16x16 grid of 256 squares is necessary to contain all possible combinations of elemental forces. By way of contrast, each enochian elemental tablet consists of a 12x13 grid of 156 combinations, which is approximately 60% of the number of squares required. Similarly, the entire enochian tablet containing all elemental tablets is likewise far too large to represent a balanced magical universe. Similar review of the Tablet of Union does not correct these errors. By definition, I submit that the underlying premise of the elemental tablets is flawed; it does not represent a balanced conception of the universe, and anyone with a tablet of paper and a free evening can verify this.

This discovery led to the creation of what is now referred to as the tesseract Great Table. Essentially, the Great Table is a 16x16 grid of tiles, with elemental forces associated with each face of each individual tile and consequently a balanced representation of the elemental forces of the universe. The Great Table is conveniently broken into four subtables with each subtable having lesser elemental angles like their enochian counterpart (fire of fire, water of air, etc.) and also inherently follows the mathematical and mathemagical connectivity structure of a tesseract.

As always, I invite discussion.

Tesseract Magic Part III: Operational Notes

The original Tesseract ritual as designed by Ebony Anpu was a working designed to essentially destroy this universe, shunting the caster to a new universe. Consequently, the caster might over the next week encounter their friend Steven, who has always had long brown hair and brown eyes. However, in addition to years of memories with Steven as just described, the caster might indeed have a duplicate set of memories where Steven was taller, with short black hair and different colored eyes. The ritual in question is not available except in the crudest and most incomplete versions on the Internet, as the creator and his students decided that the ritual was dangerous and not to be casually disseminated.

The ritual as it was originally created demonstratably works, but is not without inherent dangers. The original version was limited not in power but in scope; the caster could indeed shunt themselves to new universes but control was extremely limited, the caster could essentially get a new “version” that was dramatically better or worse than the previous with no recourse but to cast the ritual again. Finally, there was the issue of being able to do very little else in terms of expanding the corpus left by Ebony Anpu due to lack of understanding of the true mechanics of a tesseract. This is no slur on the work of Ebony Anpu; the mathematics of a tesseract were available at the time, but the true understanding of the actual architecture and it's connectivity were largely accessible only to a handful of university faculty.

At this point it is necessary both to summarize the first two portions of this document and place them in context to the overall operational schema of the expanded practice of Tesseract Magick. In Part I, the hypercube was illustrated and the base table was presented, along with an overview of how the base table illustrates the connectivity between the cubes, faces, edges and point of the tesseract. The base table and the tesseract illustration are sufficient to turn a tesseract. I have been experimenting in this fashion and I have enjoyed a higher degree of control regarding the new conditions I am wanting to jump to. The reason for additional control appears to be in the cubes. By standing on one cube with a known (and undesireable) set of conditions, one can move through cubes with changing conditions, changing them as you go. Note that a cube in a tesseract has six (6) faces like any other cube, so up to six circumstances can be undertaken, although normally the number of circumstances desired for change is smaller. This is one of the projects I would like to work with others to develop a concrete methodology on.

Part II concerns what is loosely called the Great Table, formed of four elemental tablets of 16x16 square configuration. The table has been published, but in actuality there is a second version of this table consisting of a single 16x16 square. Both tables have elemental attributions like the Enochian tablets. However, at this time these two versions are being reviewed. The two forms of the great table are two expressions of the same concepts, as both are designed to reflect a balanced magickal universe of air, earth, fire and water elemental energies, with each 4x4 grid (the base table) being numbered from 0 to 15. Now, the number of possible combinations of four elements where an element can be on more than one face is permissible and where the order the elements are displayed in is 256. This corresponds perfectly to a 16x16 grid formed of [4] base tables, each laid out in a manner similar to the Enochian elemental tablets. The purpose of the great table in either configuration allows aids in the projecting of elemental energies outward. As this is essentially working notes I shall be by necessity brief.

When projecting elemental energies for various purposes, the Great Table is of great value. Two primary methods are being reviewed at this time. The first method is to locate the square on the 16x16 grid with the designed alignment of elemental energies. When the square has been located, a sigil is drawn over the entire 16x16 matrix, with at least a single point located in each sub-table that is being invoked. I should have an example of this available shortly. For convenience, the numbers allocated to the various squares are replaced in a manner I shall presently post.

Alas, I shall have to continue this later.

Tesseract Magick Part II: The Elemental Tables

Tesseract Magick Part I: Intro and Navigation

Tesseract Magick is the name given to a ritual and a small body of knowledge that was originally created by Ebony Anpu and later carried on but not expanded on (to my knowledge) by the various Hawk & Jackal groups. Some material is out there on the internet, but in this case the primary ritual was deemed too powerful for the untrained to use and was wisely set aside. However,Wade Long retained a personal copy of the complete ritual. A former student of Ebony, he has the only physical handwritten copy of the ritual taken directly from Ebony's original. Since Wade had continued to use the ritual, along with the Rosslyn grove it was possible to have a solid understanding of the rituals and how it works based on the understanding of the creator. Unfortunately, that understanding of the tesseract was incomplete. This is no slight to Ebony Anpu, as I have enormous respect for his accomplishments and body of work. However, the available research on hypersolids simply wasn't available at the time. Consequently, his body of work could have been so much larger and encompassing.

The concept of Tesseract Magick was originally developed and promulgated by Ebony Anpu and continued by various groups and individuals since his death. A tesseract is what is referred to as a 4-cube or hypercube, loosely defined as a fourth-dimensional equivalent to a standard cube. A three-dimensional cube has (8) vertices, (12) edges and (6) faces. By comparison, a tesseract has (16) vertices, (32) edges, (24) faces and in fact can be “unrolled” into (8) cubes the same way a standard cube can “unroll” into a cavalry cross.

Let us consider how a tesseract is constructed. For convenience, the (16) vertices of the tesseract have been labeled from 0 to 15. If you look at the bottom of the image you can easily locate point 0, and a quick examination will reveal that vertex 0 connects to points 1, 2 and 3 to form a face. However, the layout of a tesseract can be very difficult to follow, and people unfamiliar with the intricate layout of this figure may have trouble. Luckily, there exists a simple chart that can reveal the construction of a tesseract and more importantly the relation of those components to the other portions of the tesseract.

The figure to the right is referred to mathematically as an adjacency matrix, which I will refer to as the base table for convenience. The base table can show one how to verify all faces and even cubes in the tesseract and their relationships to each other. Let us now learn about the relationships that can be discovered using this table.

Using the base table, it is easy to identify all of the 24 faces of the tesseract. All rows and columns reflect a face, so for example vertices 5,4,12 and 13 form a face and vertices 5,7,3 and 1 form a face as well. Please take a moment to review on the tesseract drawing to verify you understand. Now that you have verified the vertices of 8 faces, we can discover the others.

On the base table, a 2x2 grouping of squares is also a face, so for example vertices 8,9,10 and 11 form a face as does 10,2,6 and 14. Note that as you move from right to left, these faces “wrap around” back to the other side. For example, the square labeled 5 in the top right wraps around to 1,9 and 13 to form a square. For your convenience I have shown small squares to help illustrate this for you, inserting more “phantom base squares” to aid in understanding. With the (16) additional faces now shown, we can now identify all faces on a tesseract.

To find the eight cubes within a tesseract the method is even simpler. Every 2x4 grid of squares are the vertices of a particular cube. The image below shows them in two colors for easy reference.

It should be understood that it is also possible to determine all vertices that connect to any given vertex. In this case, taking the north, south, east and west neighbors will show these relationships. For example, vertices 14,2,8 and 11 are directly connected to vertex number 10. Again, please verify of the tesseract illustration to verify this.

ERRORS ON THE PATH

I have been engaged in meditation and the occult for over twenty years, and a recent conversation with a friend provoked a realization in me. My friend had commented that a certain person was studying a certain occult subject under the tutelage of one in the community with great enthusiasm and was making fair progress. What had provoked his comment to me in the course of conversation was the observation that this young person was eager to learn this or indeed any techniques they came across, but my friend was curious as to what purpose this new knowledge was going to be practically used for.

This is an unfortunate situation and bears some elaboration. In the occult traditions as in many walks of everyday life, there are those people who identify with the appearance as compared to the substance. We have all encountered individuals who relate accounts of their great learning, their many and varied accomplishments, and even their superior understanding. In the occult community this often manifests as frantically attempting to learn as many techniques or magickal traditions as possible. Do not misunderstand me; the acquisition of knowledge is commendable and to be encouraged, and people who dedicate their time to acquiring knowledge better themselves in a variety of ways. However, what is more important than the gross knowledge that one can accumulate is the integration of that knowledge and assimilation of this learning. While almost every occult practitioner is at least passing familiar with a few traditions, I would suggest that concentration on a few subjects in depth is ultimately more useful than a Jack of All Trades who learns the superficial details of many at the expense of deep knowledge of the few or the one. This certain person was interested, but not in the learning; instead, this person was interested in acquiring banners and flags to show their accomplishments, be it a degree from a nature religion, a recognition of familiarity with Diaspora traditions, background in various ceremonial traditions or ancient theurgic traditions.

The drive for titles, degrees and/or certificates was the driving mentality, not the acquisition of knowledge for assimilation and use. By identifying with the external trappings so far as they pertain to recognition by others or the even more dangerous identification of these trappings to the sense of self, this individual demonstrated a basic lack of understanding. The self is not your persona, your emotions or your intellect; your true self is a awareness independent of anything that you can perceive. More directly, whatever you perceive cannot be you.

Let me be clear so there is no misunderstanding between us. Real magick is internal, and concerns the path to the self. What people call Magick is not Magick. The tools, techniques and rituals, even faith are parlor tricks you pick up along the way. At best, these tools, techniques and rituals give rise to siddhis, but even siddhis are byproducts of development and not the goal. Concentration on the external or the parallel may indeed increase your occult worth in the perception of others (or yourself) but by its very nature is self limiting. Magick is a tool that one uses not for inflating the sense of self, but as a tool for realizing the self.