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~ Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Mage Music 65
This is the Mage's true art: Like a novelist or a movie producer who creates such fine work that the audience is totally comfortable and willing to suspend disbelief and dive into a secondary and parallel reality of a fictional world, the Mage creates a work so perfectly free of stray and undermining thoughts that he can suspend his own disbelief and enter into a new state of reality. This is the path to the manifestation of Magick.
The disciplined mind of the Mage - the mind with powerful desire and will that stays On Purpose through ritual - doesn't actually repress or block thoughts that would undermine the Magick. Those thoughts just do not even occur, because they have no place in the mental setting the Mage creates. And yet, we all know what it is like to have unwanted thoughts slip in when we least want them. They're bad enough for us, but for a Mage those unwanted stray thoughts can ruin an otherwise perfectly good Magickal ritual.
Not thinking of pink elephants. Easier said than done? Not really. We all dream, don’t we.
I had a dream. Crazy dream. Anything I wanted to know, any place I needed to go...
~ Lyrics from The Song Remains the Same
Dreams are the alternate reality of the sleeping mind, and they are also the imaginings of the waking mind in the form of daydreams. A lucid dream is dreaming with awareness. While traditionally lucid dreaming refers to dreams that occur while asleep, dreaming while awake – if a person is aware of and directing the dream – could be considered lucid dreaming, too.
Dreams are experienced as reality while they’re happening. A Mage must experience the desired changes he wishes to manifest as reality before they can happen. A Mage does this using a process very similar to dreaming. He becomes so fully invested in a secondary and parallel reality that it exists for him in personal experience which then allows him to shift from what has been to what will be.
Not thinking of pink elephants. Easier said than done? Not really. We all dream, don’t we.
I had a dream. Crazy dream. Anything I wanted to know, any place I needed to go...
~ Lyrics from The Song Remains the Same
Dreams are the alternate reality of the sleeping mind, and they are also the imaginings of the waking mind in the form of daydreams. A lucid dream is dreaming with awareness. While traditionally lucid dreaming refers to dreams that occur while asleep, dreaming while awake – if a person is aware of and directing the dream – could be considered lucid dreaming, too.
Dreams are experienced as reality while they’re happening. A Mage must experience the desired changes he wishes to manifest as reality before they can happen. A Mage does this using a process very similar to dreaming. He becomes so fully invested in a secondary and parallel reality that it exists for him in personal experience which then allows him to shift from what has been to what will be.
A Mage's desire and will, focused through ritual, channel the energy of the Universe to manifest a new reality. A lucid dreamer uses desire and will to create a new dream reality without the expectation of carry-over to the waking state.
Understanding lucid dreaming gives the non-Mage a taste of what Magick feels like when it is being worked because lucid dreaming is of the same coin as Magick, only with different expectations and outcomes.
Add a little music into lucid daydreams and the state is as close to what a Mage does to change reality as makes no difference. Try it, you might like it.
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Playlist
These two pieces just popped out at me today. They aren't particularly dreamy - in fact, they're hard-edged and a little scary... but dreams can go that way, too.
Baby Who’s Driving Your Car Jimmy Page & John Williams, 1970
Guitar solo Jimmy Page, Landover May 30 1977
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