The term “will” can be quite opaque for people, due to the general use of the word, which conjures up images of stony faced determination, with an expression reminiscent of the battle with constipation. In a magical sense this is not very helpful.
I think it helps to go back to the idea of intention.
Intention is that subtle turning point within a person where decision is made, and where resting in that decision with quiet resolution (in the sense of any conflict resolved at this level), we head toward the object of our intention. But intention is somewhat timeless in its peace, and for that reason is actually more key to magic than will.
However, due to that very subtlety and timelessness, intention has a passive quality which is immensely powerful in its essential being, but does not directly belong to the world of action. For this reason, we can become nonplussed in the face of resistance.
Will is the capacity to act decisively against resistance, informed by intention (and this is where we lose the constipated look). In this sense it is more like the conventional concept of power (capacity to do work), even in the sense of physics. We need will to deal with life effectively, but we most essentially need intention to make it magickal, to make it “true”.
True Will is something else again.
True Will exists in those areas we term subconscious and unconscious, as thelema refers to something nearer to deep desire (which is why Austin Osman Spare used the term inherent dream). This doesn’t preclude the conscious realisation of our True Will (which is our real work thelemically), but it explains why the discovery of the True Will is such a magickal and creative thing, and why we need to explore our desires and deeper nature. This is also why “Do What Thou Wilt shall be then whole of the Law” is not just about doing what you consciously want, but about finding what you truly desire and dream of, and living with true intention, taking action (or inaction) on that basis, in the world where we do work.
I was having a nice conversation with my husband recently about magic. I love that my husband is a relative newcomer to Paganism and magic, but he has managed to circumvent that whole “have to find a box to fit myself into and get all the right bells and whistles before I can hope to do magic or call myself a Pagan” thing.
I think that is so cool, because there is so much pushing the other way in Paganism, partly I think because people are insecure and want to “belong”, partly because we have the hangover of ritualistic occultism as an inheritance, partly because there are parts of neopaganism that want very very badly to be taken seriously as “real religions”.
I’ve been there and I’ve done that, though it was a long time ago in a pre-internet age. I was delighted when Paganism and magic became more open and individualized, though some people are still crying about that.
About time, and a breath of fresh air it was too. It took me a long time to listen to myself and my own heart, to cultivate intuition, and to trust my own inner senses. I’d like other people to get it a lot quicker.
Self-doubt and over-trying are understandable. It’s what most of us do, and if we haven’t got a physically present mentor then searching for what is actually just our own natural self in everything that isn’t us is what we often do, until we finally come home to our real beginning, waiting there all along. You also have to be honest with yourself, and an amount of self doubt is healthy at first.
Knowing how much effort, search and striving it takes many people to find that non-striving thing, you have to ask yourself, is there a simpler way? Not that search and effort is a bad thing, but you don’t want some kind of Protestant work ethic, some high church where form outweighs content, or something akin to an academic course with a presumed rubber stamped certificate at the end. Difficult doesn’t equal more real. That really isn’t spirituality, and it ain’t much of a life either.
An awful lot of people who approach magic and Paganism are sincere. They are really looking for something, or feel a calling there, an aspiration. And that is enormous, because what people are doing is discovering spiritual intention, and spiritual intention will carry you through. It gets answered.
Gently exploring intention should I think be one of the foundation practices of magic. Never mind the endless, grinding practices of honing the will and sharpening the imagination (it shouldn’t be grinding – and if it’s grim it really isn’t doing it), intention really is a key, because energy follows intention, and intention gets answered. I think people understand intention better than they understand will, without fetishizing it, or turning it into a kind of psychic constipation. Just my opinion.
Visualization is another thing. We all know that imagination and visualization are important in magic. But not everyone imagines visually, or at least clearly. However, everyone visualizes just fine for themselves. Visualization truthfully is a stand in term for all our inner senses, and frankly in my book, feeling is the royal inner sense. It is the tone that is modulated into other sounds, the lamp that lights the projector. It might be different for you but the point is, in your practice, it’s how you work that counts. What it all transmits is (yup) intention. So playwith it, it’s not a university course, and no one is going to give you a degree, and no one of any sense is going to judge your inner experience but you.
Ritual is another one of those things which people can get hung up on. Again, not surprising: you can see what happens in ritual, you can enumerate it, reproduce it, get it “right”. Ritual gives us a sense of certainty, the sort of finished certainty which isn’t actually like life. Part of me loves ritual like I love old books, beautifully landscaped gardens, or well arranged museums. There is art and craftsmanship there. And it is an art of potentially great beauty and undoubted efficacy, but once you’ve got it, it gets to be, well ritualistic. Of course any good ritual is one that works as simply as possible for you, but some things are meant to fall away, and some things aren’t needed. When you’ve learnt to roller skate, you just go, and an amount of ritual is crutch and learning tool, an amount is just elegant movement. Ultimately the dance should be how you and life move.
One of the most fruitful things from my point of view is the practice of discovering what you truly hold dear in yourself and in life, and doing that without the restrictions of received, inherited teaching or training. This is also like investigating, with more than just one part of yourself, one’s inherent sense of “the good”. It’s a foundation which I think everyone needs in one form or another, and it’s something which we instinctively try to do anyway.
My own sense of magic I understand in terms of relationship and interrelationship, pattern, holism and intelligence. Energy has inherent intelligence, and magic is intimately wrapped up with the process of change. Magic changes the world, and it changes us. The process of change and becoming is intelligent. It is a language that ultimately speaks both “us” and the world. We are in a miraculous process of communication.
Such is an inherent part of magic. All that calling and asking – that’s real for me. And the listening, and the practice that helps you find the amplification of the subtle, and the translation capacity of your own inner senses – that’s real for me. If you can pray or wish as purely as a child can, then you can do magic. The gods of the heart are not distant or unconcerned. We have real relationships with them, and when you understand that, that is when things really start to flow.
Above all, the key to magical living is the opening of the heart in my view. That is something that can only happen in its own time, though knocking on the door has its place. The head is full of obstacles and pictures of the world that are upside down and back to front. It is through the heart that we see and hear truly, and that is within everyone (or you could say that everything is already within the heart).
But you know nowadays if someone asks for leads on books for a beginner on magic, I recommend stuff which makes some “hardcore Pagans” hiss. And I do it because it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks, I think it works as simply as possible, in the easiest and most balanced way, and that’s what people need. They need something they can start to make their own, not something that will brand them “one of us”.
So if you want a guide to visualization that will lead you into magical processes that you can work with in your life right now, try Shakti Gawain’s “Creative Visualization”. Yes it’s “new age”, and it’s brilliant, accessible, and beats any occult reference material on the subject I’ve ever found.
If you want a basic primer on magical theory that as simply as possible shows how magic can be a life affirming spiritual practice, try Marion Weinstein’s “Positive Magic”. Sure she isa little whacky, and says some silly things about some subjects, but there is plenty of subtlety and coherence in her work, and her ethical basis is sound and clear. Spell work, the poor relation of “high magic”, actually has a very luminous and open ended potential for spiritual growth.
If you want to explore energy work (and you will in any case once you start practicing), try learning a simple and free flowing technique like Reiki*. You’ll get to play and experience all kinds of things about intelligent energy, relationship and intuition, and you’ll do it quite naturally.
And if you want to find the “big” mystical stuff, study the many different wisdom traditions there are in the world. It may or may not be what you are actually looking for. You may be surprised (or not!) at what counts for you at the end of the day.
Above all though, you follow your heart, develop intuition, and love. I really do believe that the truth is simple. It’s all the wrong questions that are complicated. In light of that, many solutions can be very fast, and some instantaneous.
If in doubt, heal. Healing is the lingua franca, the Rosetta Stone, of mysticism.
I’ve always been a very emotional person by nature. Not the extrovert emotion of those who take life as a stage, but emotion and feeling have been the bedrock of my life, and what I identify with most readily. I have no regrets about that, it has been an asset in terms of an inner navigation system, one that I couldn’t override without suffering for it eventually, but it has also been a liability at times.
I also love the logic and order of scientific thinking, first principles onwards, but science was something I loved as a child, so it was actually far from unemotional for me. I very much liked Gurdjieff’s dictum that to make knowledge your own you had to approach it intellectually, emotionally and instinctively all at once. Part of the reason I read relatively slowly is because I don’t want to only make an intellectual relationship with a subject. Once I’ve made a relationship with a subject then it is in a sense part of me, and then the alchemy begins, slowly in its own time, beyond immediate conscious attention.
I have found though that it is a necessity to not identify with emotional states in a fixed fashion, because there problems can lie. I would also agree with Gurdjieff again, that negative emotional states are amongst our most key and pressing problems.
My tendency is to identify with emotional states, to take them as being compellingly myself, or a compelling part of myself, often backed up by physiological reactions to things such as stress. When that is really not working it can get to be a closed loop of painful emotion, negative mental structures and physiological stress response driving each other and drawing out what ought to just be transient into a negative confession of selfhood. It gets to inaccurately define me and the world. I’ve been at that place too many times in my life, even if emotion takes me much better places too.
I have a different take on emotion now. It’s still important and a great potential asset to happy living and functioning. It is still my de facto guidance system; blocked or shocked feelings do not enable intuition, whereas calm, positive feeling (not just emoting) is the ground of intuition, and intuition is tremendously important.
Now I view emotion as like a landscape, with areas that are conducive to different things, and areas that are essentially toxic. Whereas at one time I would have found myself in an area of emotion and felt helpless to move due to identification and physiological response (and so just had to “wait it out” and make the best of it), now I realize that it is not me, and I can walk away to a better place. This isn’t cutting out on feeling, it’s choosing the quality of feeling I want to reside with. This not only makes intuition more feasible, but gives intention free space. Reaching this kind of space has been one of the benefits of visualizing levels of experience in alternative ways.
So where I can, I now say this: build your house of peace on the emotional land you choose, follow intuition and free your intention.
This is what works for the kind of magic I participate in.
Life is not all easy, and sometimes we need to visit difficult terrain to release its power over us, and to heal. But that’s a work to do, not a ditch to fall into. So even if you need to do that work, you don’t need to live there. You can start living freer and happier right now.
,Photo by Ashley Dace via Wikimedia Commons, used under CC 2.0 license
I’m fond of saying that the key to a good full Moon is pure spiritual intent. Full Moon is a time when “the gates are open” so to speak, and psychic high tide has arrived. People react to this differently; it can be a very beautiful time, but it can also be a stressful and trying time for people, as the high level of energy seems to energize unresolved things in the psyche and bring them nearer the surface, putting people under internal pressure. We see this reflected in popular culture in the association of full Moon on the one hand with romance and natural beauty, and on the other hand with fantastical tales of vampires, werewolves and supernatural horror. But it is a time of good potential, and one of the times when Witches are particularly invited to do magical work for good:
“Whenever you have need of anything, once in the month, and better it be when the Moon is full ……”
The Charge of The Goddess
This time when the psychic gates are open seems to be waiting for us to make the conscious choice for the positive, to make positive intention.
In the solar year too, there are times when the “gates are open”, and the “veil between the worlds” is thin, between this world we are familiar with, and the otherworld of spirits, faeries and angels, ghosts and devas, the shadowy and the luminous. Halloween is certainly considered to be such a time, and is known to Witches by its older name of Samhain (roughly pronounced “sowen”), a Celtic fire festival accompanying the end of Summer and the beginning of Winter. Sure enough, the ghastly associations spring forth into popular culture again, along with the prankster merry making of modern times. The older festival has associations both more practical and more spiritual, as Winter draws near and communication between us and the spirit world is traditionally easier, while the community gathers around the fire. Astrologically it is the time of Scorpio, the sign of death, rebirth, sex and unquenchable life, the sign of the scorpion, the eagle and the phoenix or dove¹. In one last flourish the life of Nature seems to withdraw, as if into sleep or meditation, though life never really leaves, and Winter has its ecological attendants in life forms, and a beauty all its own. The Sun sinks lower in the sky (even as the Moon arches higher in the Winter nights) and the worlds of wilderness and cultivation draw in on themselves.
At this time of open gates, different tides and winter fires, again I say that we are invited to pure spiritual intention, and the special blessings of a time.
Happy Halloween.
¹ According to the astrologer Alan Oken, one of Scorpio’s symbols is the dove, relating to its purest spiritual form. He also recognizes the phoenix as one of its symbols, relating to its capacity for transformations, regeneration and rebirth. The eagle and the scorpion are better known symbols for the sign.
I’m reminded at Full Moon that this is a time for focussing on clear intention. I realized years ago that intention was a key to “coping” with the Full Moon (I say this as that was often a hard time to get through for me), that positive intention at the time of the Full Moon could and did transform a day.
Intention is certainly one of the keys of magic. I was taught that will and imagination were the cornerstones of this discipline when I was younger, but I do find “intention” more nuanced as a term than “will”, which can give us erroneous images of determined concentration, Nietzschean supermen, and a kind of straining for something, which is so far from the reality of will. Will it is, but intention describes the actual process more clearly for me with less baggage. Intention (and will) is light and subtle, and therein lies its immense power. Intention is possible with choice and awareness, awareness is its quality and choice is its pure action. It does not need resistance or force to manifest, only choice and awareness. The lightness and simplicity of its process is its key.
The Full Moon is also a time that many Witches make a special connection with their gods and goddesses, with Deity. The Full Moon is also understood as a time when the “psychic gates” are open to the Astral realm, and so this process can be facilitated. The Full Moon can be both beautiful and difficult for people, and I believe in part this is due to the opening of this gate, for the Astral can be both like a mirror for our mental and emotional states, and a conduit for the Higher and greater Wholeness, according to our work and intention. The energy at Full Moon in circle is deeply meditative and peaceful I find, yet a very high level of energy which seems to be asking to be used for work. I believe this is a time when we have a special opportunity to have connection and oneness with our Higher Self, our sacred, luminous Self. According to our work, and our clarity and purity of intention, we may have this communion with the Divine, and manifest this quality of luminous connectedness.
photo credit Kabir Bakie – image under creative commons license
Summer Thunder 