CHAPTER 1

MAGIC AND THE MIND

We do not affect fate by our magical operations, we affect ourselves; wereinforce those aspects of our nature which are in sympathy with the powers weinvoke.

—Dion Fortune

There have been many excellent definitions of magic given over the years bymetaphysicians and those who study esoteric tradition, but the best (andcertainly the most complete) that I have read is Murry Hope's:

Magic is concerned with the conversion of universal energies into practicalfrequencies that can be utilized according to the needs of the occasion. Theseenergies in themselves are totally neutral, having no affiliation with anybelief, system or personality either here on Earth or anywhere in the cosmos,their manifestation at the magical level being coloured entirely by the natureand intention of the user.

Hope's definition makes it clear that the practice of magic is essentiallynonreligious. You need not hold any formal (or even informal) religious beliefsin order to practice it. This doesn't mean, however, that spirituality plays nopart in magic. On the contrary, there are important magical techniques whichdepend upon spirituality for their effectiveness. But the means of expressingthis spirituality—whether you choose to work with deities or not, for instance—mayalways be freely chosen.

MAGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY

To practice magic is to set a goal and to perform actions symbolic of itsachievement. Symbols have a profound effect upon the human psyche, a fact wellknown to psychologists and politicians. Since magicians have always made lavishuse of symbols in their work, it might be assumed that they, too, areconsciously aware of their impact upon mind and heart. But this isn't always thecase. Many magicians do not understand the mechanism whereby psychologicalchange produced by the use of symbols translates into desired external results.For them, magic is purely a matter of formula, strictly adhered to. As aninexperienced magician who wishes to attract a lover, for instance, you mightread in some magical text that to burn a pink candle for ten minutes every dayfor a week will produce the desired effect. So you purchase a candle anddutifully burn it according to instructions. Your operation will almostcertainly fail, however, because you haven't yet learned that it is thepsychological work that accompanies magical (symbolic) action, not the actionitself, which produces results.

The great magicians have always recognized the link between psychology andmagic. In modern times, the practice of one discipline has frequently led to aprofound interest in the other. Dion Fortune, for instance, was a psychoanalystbefore she was a magician:

As soon as I touched the deeper aspects of practical psychology and watched thedissection of the mind under psycho-analysis, I realised that there was verymuch more in the mind than was accounted for by the accepted psychologicaltheories. I saw we stood in the centre of a small circle of light thrown byaccurate scientific knowledge, but around us was a vast, circumambient sphere ofdarkness, and in that darkness dim shapes were moving. It was in order tounderstand the hidden aspects of the mind that I originally took up the study ofoccultism.

Israel Regardie, another great name in modern magic, was first a magician, thena practicing psychologist. He was quite specific about the links between the twodisciplines when he wrote in 1938:

Analytical Psychology and Magic comprise in my estimation two halves or aspectsof a single technical system. Just as the body and mind are not two separateunits, but are simply the dual manifestations of an interior dynamic "something"so psychology and Magic comprise similarly a single system whose goal is theintegration of the human personality. Its aim is to unify the differentdepartments and functions of man's being, to bring into operation those whichpreviously for various reasons were latent.

This may sound somewhat abstract to the reader interested in practical magic,but in fact the fusion between magic and psychology of which Regardie speaks andits result are of great importance to magicians on a practical level.

HOW MAGIC WORKS

To understand how magic works, you must first understand the difference betweenthe conscious and the unconscious minds.

We are all very familiar with the conscious mind, which is your ordinaryeveryday walking-around consciousness. When your body goes to sleep at night,your conscious mind goes to sleep as well, and your unconscious mind wakes up,becomes active, and begins to communicate through dreams which your consciousmind may remember upon waking. The same process occurs during meditation whenboth your conscious mind and your body are stilled: your unconscious mindbecomes active and begins to communicate through waking visions, hunches, orsignificant insights. Given the opportunity, your unconscious mind is a goodcommunicator. It constantly sends helpful suggestions to your conscious mind inthe hope that they will be heeded and acted upon.

To practice magic is to reverse the process. As a magician, you set a goal withyour conscious mind, and attempt to communicate your desire to your unconsciousmind in the hope that it will heed and act upon it. Provided your communicationis clear, your unconscious mind will take the instructions it is given and goquietly to work to produce the desired result in material reality. We don't knowhow the unconscious accomplishes its task, only that it does. What you need toknow as a magician is how to clearly and directly communicate desire to yourunconscious mind. The unconscious does the rest. This is the essence of magic.

There are as many methods for communicating desire to the unconscious as thereare people who wish to use them. Provided only that the communication is clearand direct, there is no right way or wrong way to give instruction to theunconscious. There are, however, some archetypal communication techniques whichhave proven effective for magicians for literally thousands of years. It isprimarily these techniques—or variations thereof—on which we will concentrate inthis book.

THE IMPORTANCE OF...