Magic Question

Here's a simple exercise. Ask yourself this one question:

Just how good can life get?

Then dare to imagine the answer.

Do it again. And again. And again!

Why?

Because if you can't do this exercise, you can't do Magick. If you can't imagine how you want your life to be, you cannot tell the Universe what you want.  If you don't know what you want, there is nothing to manifest. Simple as that.

Real music, real Magick

A lot of music today … [the] living energy has become sanitized.
~ Jimmy Page, 2009 interview with Neil McCormick

One of the characteristics of stage magic is the use of distraction so you won’t see what’s really going on. While the coin is being retrieved from an ear or a woman is being sawed in half, the magician’s hands are constantly moving, cards are being flipped from a distance to fly through the air, the sexy assistant moves things around the stage. The stage is set in deep shadows and bright lights. Swirling capes and smoke and mirrors mask and distort what you see so that you only see what the magician intends for you to see.

The idea is to misdirect your attention. You aren't supposed to notice that there is engineering used to create the trick that leads to the "magic".

There is nothing Magick about it, of course.

Now consider this: How much of what I have just described would also describe today’s music performances, onstage or video? Spotlights and smoke, explosions and flashing lights. Bizarre hair and makeup, risqué costumes and stage sets that mask and distort. Giant display screens to make sure you are looking at exactly what you should be, so that your attention is directed away from the music itself.

At the very core of this phenomenon is the sorry fact that there's very little Magick to most of the music out there these days. Oh, it's entertaining all right. There might even be some catchy tunes. But is it great music or is it the aural equivalent of junk food?

The full quote from the Jimmy Page interview of 2009 is this: " A lot of music today, they work electronically, tidying everything up, but that living energy has become sanitized. In Led Zeppelin we managed to do some of those major albums in three weeks. People today can't understand that. It's beyond them."

When it comes straight from the soul, creativity can flow from the musician with no need for the help of visual diversion. When you, the audience, eliminate the bells and whistles, the lights and distractions, does the music you listen to have the living energy - the Magick - that will make it worth listening to for the next fifty years?

A steady diet of junk food will eventually kill you. I'm pretty sure a steady diet of sanitized, junk music will eventually shrivel your soul. How's that for food for thought?

Neil McCormick interview of Jimmy Page 2009

Neil McCormick in May 2014:  Do you really need me to tell you how good they are? We’ve been listening to this music for more than 40 years and it never gets old.

Let Me Go, Lover!

“Oh let me go. Let me go. Let me go lover. Let me be, set me free from your spell”
~Joan Weber, written by Jenny Lou Carson and Al Hill. Covered by Patti Page, Teresa Brewer and The Lancers, Billy Fury, Peggy Lee, Hank Snow, Dean Martin, Kathy Kirby and no doubt others... not to mention Lucille Ball.

Mage Music 90

That song was really popular back in the day. Let me go, lover. A heartfelt plea, begging for the freedom to get on with life.

Of course, it’s a mistaken concept, as appealing as it may seem. Nobody attains freedom by relying on it to be provided by someone else. Only personal choice gives freedom. Only personal choice breaks the chains.

I started out to write this blog post because I woke up the other morning with that song in my head. To my knowledge I hadn’t heard it anywhere in the days before. I figured it had manifested as an earworm for a reason.

I had some ideas about what to say - but I said them in the first two brief paragraphs, above. Nothing more would come. The song didn't go away. Darned annoying but I lived with it a few days anyway. Till today, when I realized what was really going on in the back of my head.

All this writing that I've been doing here - it wasn't for you, it was for me. Sorry. I needed to work out some concepts the hard way – by making them concrete through writing, and by firing them in the furnace of public view. The blog was perfect for that.

I woke up with the song in my head because it’s time to pull the pot out of the fire.

What pot? What is the woman talking about now?

My last post was about how I came away from the most recent Led Zeppelin remasters feeling like they were a good-bye. That was really the beginning of my coming to understand that I, too, have to move on. Mage Music -- the blog -- isn't my creative goal and it never was. Mage Music has been my testing ground. 

I wrote that I knew all things have a perfect time to be, and that there is a time for moving on.

So yeah, that's the message my subconscious -- or maybe the Universe -- was giving me. It's time to say so long, though not good-bye. I'll have things to talk about here in the future, but my focus is going to be on writing the book I've been wanting to write all along, about creativity and Magick.

So the pot's been fired, and I'm looking at it closely to see what other work needs doing. There are flaws, but I think the concept will stand. I will need to remaster the blog but that's no problem. Better artists than me have seen the need for doing that. 

Maybe now that blasted song will let me be. 

Science meets Magick

And what is magic, pray tell?
It is the after-echo of the Divine Word which created the world... And as it retains certain characteristics of its genesis, magic... can be used to alter the created world,
~ Mercedes Lackey, House of the Four Winds

Mage Music 89

If you follow science news releases, you'll be seeing a trend lately. Science keeps catching up to Magick.

Of course science calls it "discoveries", but what is happening is that scientists are merely using their self-imposed disciplines of thought and proof to verify the principles that Mages have acted on since, well, since there were Mages. Meaning since there were humans.

The "discoveries" of Ellen Langer, PhD, professor of psychology at Harvard University, can be read about in a recent New York Times article, What If Age Is Nothing but a Mind-Set?. Dr. Langer studies what Wikipedia calls "the illusion of control, decision making, aging and mindfulness theory".

It's no illusion.

Magick may describe the source one way and Dr. Langer's studies another, but the differences are merely those of different trails that lead to the same mountain. Different journeys, same end. Dr. Langer calls it the Power of Possibility. We call it Magick. Same same.

Dr. Langer uses science to examine the very things we've been talking about here on Mage Music, using a different approach to explain how hidden decisions made by the subconscious and thoughts (and vocabulary) shape the world we create whether we realize it or not. Dr. Langer focuses on the powerful physical effects of the placebo in the real world and goes on to set up situations for others to change their own reality -- including the "magic" of reversing the effects of aging and disease.

How is this different than desire + will + ritual = Magick? There is no difference... it's a matter of choice.

You can pay mega-bucks to be treated by Dr. Langer or you can take your destiny in your own hands, but either way, you have the power of the possible. Either way or any way, you are the one who creates your reality.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. As the song goes, there's still time to change the road you're on.

Exercise Your Magick Muscle

"Everything you do in life, I don't care, good or bad - don't blame God, don't blame the devil, don't blame me, blame you. You control everything! The thoughts you think, the words you utter, the foods you eat, the exercise you do. Everything is controlled by you."
~ Jack Lalanne, "Godfather of Fitness" (1914-2011)

Mage Music 81

Click HERE to view video

If you've been reading this blog, you know what to do. Isn't it time you started doing it? With apologies to those who have been practicing what I preach, I want to have a firm talk with the rest of you who are thinking about Magick, toying with the idea of Magick, dabbling with the notion of Magick but who have never taken the first step by actually doing Magick.

It's hard to take first steps. It's hard for a baby to walk, too. But a baby crawls before walking. She learns to stand, she tries out a few steps  - and doesn't worry for one moment about falling down.

A baby builds up her walking muscles over time. It's no different for you and your Magick muscle.  You are the one who does the Magick, so you're the one responsible for building up that Magick muscle.  Get on your exercise outfit, and let's get going. Yes, yes, I know there's not a physical muscle involved, but truly, the same principles are involved.

One and two and bend and stretch...

The first thing to remember is that Magick is a process, and your life is a whole interrelated system, not a series of discrete incidents. No change in reality is going to work out the way you want if you think you're going to change one thing without understanding that everything else in your reality is changed, too. It's all connected.

It's all One.

Magick in your life means that everything you do is touched with Magick. If you are a musician, the world is all about sound and rhythm and silence. If you are a painter it's about color and space and form. So, too, with Magick: A new way of thinking about one aspect of your reality leads to breakthroughs in all areas of your reality. 

When you exercise the Magick muscle, it is more than just the abilities of a Mage that are strengthened. Magick isn't just about filling the holes in your life with things you want, it is about changing your whole life.

Three and four and breathe in deeply...

Once you have embraced the notion that changing one little aspect of reality changes everything, you can take advantage of the fact that exercising your Magick muscle to do a little Work has effects well beyond that Work. Your life is a complex weaving of threads - tug on one and the whole fabric of reality twitches. Or, if you like a different metaphor, your whole life resonates with the pure sound of one note.  It really helps to know which thread to twitch and which note to play, of course. Exercising the right Magick muscle means you don't waste time building up the strength of your left eyebrow if you aim to play guitar at Royal Albert Hall.

Only you can know which little Work to start with. I can't tell you which one, no one can. This blog and the best examples of the Masters should empower you to take control over your own life's choices - not choose for you. You can accept advice that helps you think about your approach, but your choices are influenced by your own values and goals and must reflect your own needs and desires. Thus everyone's first and subsequent Works necessarily will be as different as there are people performing them.

Just like with any beginnings, start with something simple and something small. Lift a one pound weight and build to the hundred pounder. Learn scales before plunging into Kashmir. And don't forget to breathe in deeply.

The science and the art 

There is science before art.  There is technique before creativity.  There there are rules to learn before going crazy with the Magick of it all. Masters break the rules all the time, but you can't consciously break rules if you haven't learned them. If you break them by accident and create a beautiful work of art - well, so can a million monkeys. Build your muscles as you learn how to fly, then break through the bonds and let your strength carry you on powerful wings to your heart's desire.

The first rule: Know yourself. Unflinchingly. Lovingly. Fully accepting it all - for to be human is to be flawed. You can't change what isn't there. You can't change that which you don't know - or refuse to know - exists.

It begins with this and this begins with you.  

Something simple and something small.  The first step, the beginning. Learn who you are. Become aware of the thoughts you think, the words you utter, the foods you eat, the exercise you do, every choice you make and why you make it. Everything is controlled by you, whether you are aware of it or not, but the first exercise of your Magick muscle is becoming awake to who you are.

A stab at movie making

And I have to say, what a lot of work for 14 seconds worth of video!  I think I'll stick with writing.

Click HERE to see the video!

Magick 101

It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results.
~ William Burroughs, Essay in Contemporary Artists Magazine

Mage Music 75  

Here it is, everything you need to know, the whole of Magick in one list.

• Understand what Magick is and can do
• Identify your desires
• Engage your will
• Prepare and execute the perfect ritual
• Step into the new reality
• Cement the new reality

What it is

Bare bones: Magick is purposeful use of the raw energy of the Universe. No, not raw as in bare-skin naked. Raw as in not pre-processed, pre-digested or pre-packaged.  Raw as not things, but the stuff things are made of.

Bare as in without covering, without disguise. Unvarnished, without the trappings of mumbo-jumbo that cause confusion. The stark core of power and nothing else.

Magick at its most fundamental: That's where you start.

Honestly?  Anything else is unnecessary. You might think all the people and organizations that speak of What Magick Is and say they know How Magick Works are going to tell you what you need to know, but they aren't. They're only going to tell you their version of things, their niche. And in doing so, they steal potential from you - they steal your power.

This is not to say that there is nothing offered by such groups, but of course the moment you take someone else's truth for your own, you have replaced your own pure truth with something less pure. A cracked, imperfect version, one that serves others as much as yourself. Or maybe serves them more.

Magick is an art, not a religion. Magick can be art.  Knowing truth and expressing it doesn't require a guide. The truth is inside of you. You have direct access to truth and power, all you have to do is take it for yourself.

It's not easy walking that path, though. Everyone is eager to tell you where you're wrong and wants you to do what you're doing a different way. Everyone else is the expert, except for you - but it's your Magick and others can't make your choices for you any more than you can do so for them.

It's lonely walking that path. It’s easier to lean on others, even if their truth isn't yours. But the creation comes from inside you, not outside.  If you are paying more attention to the outside than the inside, you won't be able to find, much less fan, the flame of your own muse.

So you start with the fact that you already know everything you need to know, that you have all the tools you need to have, that you can develop what you need by yourself by doing.  You simply need to locate the path inside you and use it.

The more a person develops the skill set needed for Magick, the greater the Work can be.

Magick is purposeful use of the raw energy of the Universe

Magick works the same for all living beings that have the ability to consciously make choices in this Universe. Where there is purposeful creativity, there is the potential for Magick. The law of Magick is the law of deliberate creation. This is different from the laws of other physical objects in the Universe, even of other living beings, because the law of Magick is one of conscious creation.

The law of Magick opens the physical self to the infinite energy of the Universe.  Theoretically, there are no limits to what Magick can manifest, but in practice what is actually possible to manifest is limited by what a finite being can express of the infinite. Obviously the one can only contain a minuscule fraction of the other, just as cupped hands can only hold a minuscule fraction of the contents of the oceans. 

But... a Mage pushes the envelope of what is possible.

The law is this: As above, so below; as below, so above.  Think on that for a bit while you listen to the music of a Mage.

Interlude: Fiction

For something different today, here is a short story for your enjoyment.

Small Stuff

By Lif Strand (c) 2013

It had been raining all afternoon and evening, raining for so long that I didn't notice when the hammering on my metal roof finally stopped. Now all I could hear were the drops plinking from the broken gutter into a bucket just outside, a bit of a breeze soughing through the crack where the door sat crooked in its frame, and the snores of my dogs and cats.

It wasn't long after midnight. I wanted to call it a day, but couldn't, not yet. There was a nervous energy keeping me awake. I was way too restless to sit still much longer, way too jumpy to sleep.

I stared at the words on the page of the book in my hands. They didn't make any more sense now than they had an hour ago. I set it carefully on top of the precariously balanced stack of reading material that had already been rejected tonight.

I was seated at what was supposed to be my dinner table, but there wasn't enough room on the painted black surface for a soup bowl, much less a dinner plate.  I often ate just standing up at the kitchen counter.  I’m unrepentantly uncivilized that way.

Before me, instead of china and crystal and linen, were the tools of my trade and the debris of my life - maybe one and the same. An empty juice glass, safer for me to use for wine than stemware was. A crumpled foil wrapper with one piece of luscious dark chocolate left. A brass pipe-to-hose connector that I needed for a project, but that I couldn't remove from the 2” length of pipe it was attached to no matter how much I wrestled with it. An eBook reader. Three – no, four – crooked stacks of library and second-hand store books with bookmarks and post-its bristling from their pages. And my spiral-bound notebooks. With the words. The fiction I was compelled to write that was actually thinly disguised… well, let’s face it. Spells.

The notebooks were grimoires, okay? My spell-books. But hidden, like I was, by being right in the open.

You know why – don’t deny it. This is not a world where true magic is welcome any more, if it ever really has been. Ironic though, isn't it, since pretend magic is everywhere. Robed masters wield powerful forces on movie screens. Fae and demons and elementals splash the covers of new releases on the bookshelves. Vampires and zombies and werewolves populate video games. Rock bands with their painted faces and light shows out-flash Las Vegas magicians. Websites channel the wisdom of angels and disembodied spirits. The world is full of all that. But no one really thinks any of it is really real, right?

I’m all too aware, though, that these days are no different from the days when they burned witches at the stake – just not so messy. Magic stuff is okay as long as it is fantasy. Really real magic is not something to fool around with – not in the open, not now, not ever.

Inconveniently for my peace of mind, I have magic in me. I’m too afraid to ever let even a hint of it seep out where anyone else could figure out what I am doing. Not even my family knows. Consequently I don’t know a thing about it - which makes me wonder if I’m not just insane and delusional instead. Though they say if you think you might be crazy you probably aren't.

Can I trust that?

Here’s the problem: One day I found out that I could do magic. It freaked me out then and I’m still freaked out for all kinds of reasons. It’s not so much that I’m afraid of being stoned or burned at the stake like in the olden days – that doesn't happen where I live, though it’s never a good idea to discount the possibility. It’s more likely, though, that I’d be locked away somewhere with the other whackos. Or worse. I didn't really know what worse was, but I feared it.

♦

The lead-up to my discovery started out so innocently. I mean, come on – I was a good Catholic girl for years, and sure I fell off the wagon, but I’d passed through the drugs and sex and booze stages of rebellion and had settled down to more or less responsible adulthood. More or less because I was still not normal of course. Back then I still wanted to grow up to be a writer, and writers are never considered normal. But that’s another story.

Then after all I’d been through, when I finally thought I was settling down, there was this… thing, this albatross on my back. Demon? Nightmare horror? Devil?

Okay, she was my business partner. Pamela and I were – oh hell, I don’t even understand it. We were going to make lots of money through the junk business. That would be junk as in other people’s discarded treasures, not as in drugs.

I've been in business with partners before. Sometimes actually made money. Pamela wasn't even my first female partner. The last partnership hadn't gone well but I had higher expectations this time. I always did. The problem was that I hadn't learned from the last time. I was… oh… not the weak link, but the gullible one. The one who wanted to play it straight with a con-man (or woman) partner.

But unlike my other partners, good or bad, Pamela scared me – I don’t know how else to put it. Although she was physically bigger than me that wasn't the scary thing. I’m tallish for a woman with average build, but I do have a few muscles. Pamela was only a few inches taller. Well, and she was broader, too. And rougher.  Not that any of that mattered, since quite honestly I’m just not into violence, physical or otherwise.

Okay, I just now lied - I can be plenty violent if pushed to it. The problem is that I can’t control it and then someone gets hurt. While it’s no biggie for me to be hurt, I feel bad when I calm down after I've done that to someone else. So my preference is to control myself – not the other person – in situations where I get pissed off. It’s just safer for everybody. Sometimes, though, I get pushed too far and then all I know how to do is strike out – and whatever I hit, I hurt bad. I don’t hit with my fists, you understand – I hit with my mind.

Not magic. I mean, I didn't think it was that then, or maybe I did but I didn't care because it worked. And that was dangerous – not because it bothered me so much to hurt others (come on, they deserved it) but because that let people see me. And that could bring a world of hurt on me, or so I’d believed ever since I could remember. I don’t really know why, I just have always known it was that way.

On the other hand, it was a fact that my business partner scared me, badly enough that I was getting even more scared of myself. And so I had to stop her.

I know - you want to know what she was doing. But I can’t really describe it. It wasn't the poor business practices (well, that was part of it but not an important or insurmountable obstacle). It wasn't that she didn't listen – unfortunately that seemed to be normal business practice for the partners I got involved with. It was something that she was doing to my head. It was a control thing. It was a weight on my soul, an unrelenting pressure that... heck I can only say it felt like I was constantly fighting being turned into not-me.

Talking it out was the mature thing to do, but it didn't achieve a thing. Pamela was offended and wounded, she said. I was mistaken, she said. I was a hurtful person, she said. Don't sweat the small stuff, she said.

Yelling at her didn't work either. The mature talking it out always devolved into horrible fights. Each time I’d win the arguments but somehow she won the battles. The atmosphere afterwards was oppressive – the miasma just got thicker and darker. She unrelentingly dragged at me when we fought, sucking my energy. I’d go home afterwards totally exhausted, feeling filthy and violated and confused - yet I was unable to stay away from her. She would call me up and demand I show up to work and even though I didn't want to go back there with all my heart, I did go.

I tried to avoid her each time, but that was hard – I mean, we were in the same small rooms, going through the same stuff, having to discuss what we’d do with each item. She kept a lot of it. I can’t explain how that worked – we were supposed to be selling it all, right? But somehow the good stuff wound up as her personal property. And me? I got to where I didn't want to touch any of it because it represented her and the foulness that was working into my flesh.

I got all defensive. I tried to block her out but I couldn't. And I was dreading what was coming – I could feel it, that being backed into a corner feeling, the one that I knew – I knew – would end up badly because this time there was the added element of her specifically, of Pamela and the thing she was doing to me – the thing she was. I didn't want to name it, but I knew. Deep inside something in me recognized it, all right. Laugh if you want, but she was dark and ugly, and whatever she was, she wanted something from me that I didn't want to give up.

I’m not calling what she was doing evil, because as scary as it was to experience, it still felt like the actions of any living thing that needs to eat. No one wants to be the thing being eaten, but that doesn't make the thing taking a bite out of you evil.

I didn't call what she wanted to take from me magic, either – I didn't admit to magic then. Heck, I can’t even call it magic now - I can barely talk about it at all. I mean, I am unable to tell you any more than what I have already of what Pamela was doing. I literally cannot describe to you what I did to stop her, either, and I did stop her. It’s really weird, but when I try to force it out – well, those words just will not come out of me. A bummer isn't it, given that I’m a writer these days.

Believe me, it isn't writer’s block.

I can talk around it, though. I can say what I came up with in a general way. I can say I just got pushed to the point of such desperation that I did a small magic.

It was like discovering fire, the wonder of it that the first humans must have felt. It was the first time I’d consciously done magic and the first magic I’d ever done that wasn't reflexive fear-biting. Imagine that. Just like those first people with fire, I found this thing all by myself and just like that, it changed my world.

It wasn't hard but it was the most frightening thing I've ever done – because irrefutably, absolutely, incontrovertibly I had used magic on purpose. And that’s the most I can tell you. All those grimoires I've written since? They don’t really tell how to do magic – they are words that dance all around the subject, just like I’m doing now. They’re like recipes from famous chefs that only contain the main ingredients and no real instructions, so that the dishes are still theirs alone.

But back then, when I did magic for the first time I couldn't have told you about it anyway. That’s because I didn't really know what the heck I was doing.

And then I did. And that freaked the hell out of me.

The on-purpose magic thing I did was not meant to hurt Pamela, amazingly enough. I wore out a lot of brain cells trying to figure out my situation while I was stupidly still involving myself in the ugliness every day. The drive to and from work took me an hour and a half each way, plenty of time for thinking – on the way there building myself up and quelling the sick feeling in my stomach, on the way home recovering and quelling the sick feeling in my stomach. But I did finally realize that I had to know what I wanted, as opposed to what I didn't want. That’s a lot harder than you’d imagine, especially when there are bad things happening that you want to stop right away.

You see, magic works on what you want - not what you don’t want. It’s obvious, really – but most people just don’t get it. Suppose someone asks me what I want for dessert, and I say, oh anything but fruitcake. Well, I’m a chocolate lover. I almost always want something chocolate for dessert, unless it’s a cinnamon roll. So if I say anything but fruitcake I might be spared from that nastiness but it doesn’t mean I’ll get chocolate. I mean, I might get mincemeat pie (oh yuck) or lime Jell-O with fruit cocktail mixed in. When it comes to magic, what you have to do is be specific about what you want. I say I want German chocolate cake, I get German chocolate cake. See how that works?

So I wanted Pamela to do… what? Go away? How would I go about making that happen even if I could do it? And besides, what about my investment in the business? How would that get dealt with? And did I really want to hurt her? Yes. No. Not at the expense of my own soul. Fear-biting was one thing, but on-purpose, premeditated harm was a bit much.

Too many questions, no resolutions. I kept coming back to a niggling idea that it wasn't about her, it was about me. It took days of driving back and forth before I had my duh moment.

Oh man, this is hard to write – you have no idea. It’s so… slippery. But here it is: I didn't really give a shit about Pamela. I didn't care what happened to her.  I didn't want to change the world, I didn't even want to change her.  All I wanted was personal peace of mind. What I wanted was mental silence and still waters where there had been roiling lava mud pits of icky emotion. Such a small thing, really, but wow.

I got it finally.  I had to do magic on myself, not on Pamela. And why not? It’s my own life I wanted to change – I didn't give two hoots about hers. I didn't need for her to just go away because that might not get me what I wanted. I needed me to be happy again, or as close as I could get to that elusive state.

So I found myself suddenly clear that doing an act of magic would fix things. Me, the one who had never dared think that way before. And then I did it.

And how did I do it? Good try – but I can’t tell you. It involved ordinary things found in any kitchen, just a few little things for a short and sweet ritual, and the clear intent and… hell. I just used magic to shut myself of her. I slammed a door, not on myself, but between us – a door she didn't even have to know about. And then I put the key – the thing I made from the kitchen stuff – away somewhere safe, a place I could forget about it even as I knew it was secure. And there was the magic, right there. The putting it away from me with a knowing: What I had done would do exactly what I wanted. It was extraordinary, it was real and powerful. It was mine, a thing that I had done. And I knew it was done.

From that day on Pamela was gone from my life. Oh, she lived in town still, but she and I didn't say a word to each other for several years after that moment of magic in my kitchen. I didn't avoid her, she just wasn't there. Where did she go, what did she think? I have no clue and I don’t care. What happened to the business? I don’t know. Maybe she’s still doing it. No one talks about her to me, and I don’t ask. Every so often we see each other at community functions and she nods her head pleasantly and her eyes slide right off of me.

♦

That was ten years ago. Since then, I've become a writer, though what I write about for money is a lot more boring than magic. Since then I've thought a lot about magic.  I write about magic a lot – notebook after notebook of what I have figured out, and not a bit of it useful to anyone else because none of it will ever see the light of day.

Since then, I've done it again. It's such a small thing, that magic.  A small thing - like an atom that you split apart and the world changes.   

Review

“Will is another word for animate energy.”
~ William Burroughs, Crawdaddy Magazine, June 1975

Mage Music 60

There are quite a few new readers of Mage Music now, so this week I’m presenting a review of what this blog is all about. The review will not only serve as introduction to those who haven’t read the posts from the beginning (shame on you), but for those who've been here all along but maybe have forgotten some of the basic concepts.

Forgetting, of course, would only happen if you aren't practicing what you’re reading. But that’s a lecture for another time.

About Mage Music
I began this weekly blog because I was personally interested in exploring the music/Magick connection, specifically as demonstrated by the work of Jimmy Page. Mr. Page himself has stated that his music reveals who he is, and I found this to be a fascinating concept that felt intuitively correct as well as significant - a clue not simply to the mystery of that very private man, but about where his music comes from and what it is.

Mage Music, it must be emphasized, is not about Jimmy Page. It is about exploring the concepts involved with manifestation of new states of being in this reality through use of creative acts, such as music. I use Mr. Page’s music because it is so clearly full of Magick.

It is my intention to present an understanding of what Magick is and how it works in the real world in a way that is free of the constraints of traditional customs or beliefs of Magick and religion. To do this I explore the basic concepts that underlie all traditions.

Sometimes music helps explain or fleshes out things I’m discussing, in which case I offer a playlist. But not always.

About Magick and Music
The spelling, “Magick” has been in use since the mid 1600s. I spell the word that way, and I capitalize both “Magick” and “Mage” in this blog to not only to emphasize their use as metaphysical terms and to differentiate them from descriptors of the acts of illusion such as performed on stage, but also as a form of respect.

Magick is a process of desire+will that brings about change in reality, and desire+will are focused through ritual. According to the culturally influential and innovative artist and novelist William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), it is self-evident that the assertion of will is the primary moving force in this universe. All discussion of Magick in this blog derives from that assumption.

This means that any “rules” of Magick are the same as for all living beings that are capable of choice in this Universe (choice is a result of desire+will). Thus Magick works the same for Mages as for anyone who uses the process, and further, the laws of Magick are laws of deliberate creation. They are different from the laws of other physical objects, even other living objects, because they are laws of conscious and on purpose behavior. As Mr. Burroughs has said, there are no accidents in the world of Magick.

Music and all creative acts are very similar to Magick in how they work. Music, in particular, is worth looking at because it involves the same parts of the brain as Magick - and the effects are, in many ways parallel. Music is so natural and such an integral part of human consciousness that it amounts to another non-verbal language, one that expresses concepts that words cannot express.

Music used as a ritual of Magick is powerful stuff.

About Mages, You and Magick
Anyone can perform Magick. With sufficient desire and will, and focused through a correctly designed ritual, Magick is available to all as a way to purposefully manipulate the energy of the Universe, that is, change the stuff of which reality is made. As used in this blog, the difference between a Mage and anyone else who creates change through Magick is the level of proficiency. A master is a person who has complete knowledge or skill in an accomplishment, technique, or art - a Mage is a master of Magick.

To master music to the point of someone such as Jimmy Page is a matter of powerful desire and will, and a tremendous amount of time and effort. The music is the ritual that focuses that specific desire and will. Mr. Page has reached a level of proficiency that allows him to manipulate the music as he desires and wills without having to consciously think about it. This is not something that comes about accidentally or overnight, and it is the mark of a master.

Whether or not Mr. Page is a Mage is his own business, as whether or not you or I practice Magick is ours. What is important is to know that the concepts presented in Mage Music can be applied successfully to life itself, because Magick is a process of life itself.


About the Author
A professional non-fiction writer of government documents for the last ten years, I have decided to branch out into areas that are more speculative and closer to my heart. To that end I write weekly posts here on Mage Music and occasional posts on another blog, Spiritual Horsemanship. For a person with an open mind, the two blogs may be synergistic.

I also have completed my first novel, which touches on music and Magick. More on that another time.

It is no accident that I have chosen to live in New Mexico, a.k.a. the “Land of Enchantment”.

About the Artwork
All artwork on Mage Music is created by the author unless otherwise noted. Sampling has been purposefully limited to small portions of pre-existing images and, in using the samples for non-commercial educational purposes only, seeks to avoid infringement of photographer’s copyright.  You are welcome to share Mage Music images.

Mage Music generally also avoids using full face images of living persons due to the subject matter of this blog. Therefore, any resemblance to a living person found in a Mage Music image is in the eyes and mind of the beholder.

Disclaimer
You will see this at the bottom of the Mage Music blog:

Magick is a matter of personal responsibility for beliefs, choices and actions. No one is required to believe, choose or act in any way other than he or she wills. No one else is responsible for the beliefs, choices or actions any human takes but that human alone.

That said, understand that what is expressed on this blog is a matter of the author's personal opinion, and these expressions of personal opinion are not recommendations for the readers' beliefs, choices or actions but merely food for thought.

I don't know everything
And I don't know the only thing
But what I do know...
I KNOW.

In Closing

Your comments are welcome - I know what I know but I don't know everything.  Please keep comments on-topic.  I reserve the right to remove any comments that I have decided are are too stupid or ugly or boring to sully our minds.

Walk in Beauty.

SymbolicallyYours

“…knowing the notes isn't enough. You have to know how to play them.”
~ Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

Mage Music 55

Designing ritual is like building a skyscraper, as I discussed in the last post.  Both require solving one finite component of a complex issue at a time.  Both ideally begin with a strong foundation upon which a sturdy framework and solid layers are constructed, and only at the end is the ornamentation added.  Of course, neither ritual nor a skyscraper must absolutely be constructed that way, but if they're going to support any real weight at all for any length of time, it's best to start from the bottom up and do it right.

A structural engineer or architect works from specifications that can be generally known in advance. The specs for location, materials and the construction methods can be codified, and there will thus be similarity in basic construction from one skyscraper to the next if they are constructed within the same time period.

The challenge for a Mage, however, is that the components of ritual will not be known well enough for specifications to exist, and rituals with similar goals may not be similar in appearance at all. This is because rituals are generated from and are an extension of the Mage and the components have meaning of personal rather than external significance.

Ritual objects

Ritual should not be confused with ceremony, which is a series of acts performed according to a traditional form. Ritual of Magick must be new in essence every time it is performed because all facets of the world in which the manifestation is to occur are constantly changing. Owning the ritual - generating the symbolism personally - is key to successful Magick. This means that simply adopting the use of symbolic objects and acts from other rituals that have no personal meaning for the Mage most likely will not generate the intended result.

When it comes to ritual - and Magick in general - one Mage's truth does not have to be truth for the next. Furthermore, what the rest of the world believes to be true doesn't have to be truth for a Mage's either. Good thing, since much of the world won't even admit that Magick exists other than as stage tricks.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell defined a symbol as an energy evoking and directing agent. He said that symbols have three aspects: that of the thinking mind, of the unconscious mind, and of the "ineffable of the absolutely unknowable". The first aspect can be consciously known by the Mage, the second can be felt through emotion, and the third is known only indirectly as a Mage's connection with the energy of the universe.

As a symbol, the physical specifications of a ritual object are not as important as how pure, personally meaningful and emotionally loaded the object is for the Mage. While anything will do, obviously some objects will not work in a ritual - either because they don't have physical form or because the physical form is inconvenient or perhaps doesn't even exist. No matter, because it's the meaning of the symbol to the Mage that is the important thing.  Unfortunately, not only does meaning have many layers, it is a squirrely thing that can't exist nakedly on its own in the human universe. With the meaning changing as the Mage changes and the reality of the world changing as it will, it's obvious why the old adage of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) applies. The successful Mage has to develop symbols that he is attracted to and that he can manipulate without losing the meaning of as the ritual progresses.

This is why a Mage who works through music needs to own the music - ownership not in terms of the law of man but in terms of the law of Magick.  It's not enough to simply know the notes and to play them well.  A Mage musician has to know the notes as he knows his own soul, and to perform them each in a place made sacred by intent, without error of desire or will, and freely offered to the Universe.

♫

Here are links to two versions of the same song, When The Levee Breaks, yet with so different a sound they could be different songs. Of course, part of the explanation for the difference is that the kind of music Led Zeppelin was doing wasn't invented yet - but what's more important is how Led Zeppelin made this song their own. This is how the Magick comes.

YouTube Playlist

When the Levee Breaks, Memphis Minnie (1929)

When the Levee Breaks, Led Zeppelin  (1971)

I Can’t Hear You!

"...we would cry because of the intense beauty of the music, and nobody would have dreamed of disturbing the magic."
~ Ravi Shankar

Are you really listening?

Mage Music 48

I always recommend not actually looking at the videos that I link to in Mage Music.  I suggest only listening to them. That's what I do - I play YouTubes and DVDs without looking at the screen. I'm in it for the music, and music can't be perceived with eyes. 

Why does a musician so often close his eyes when in the deepest throes of musical passion?  It's because seeing interferes with the music experience.  If that's good enough for musicians like Jimmy Page, it's good enough for me.

The biology of perception

Hearing is so important that it develops even before a person is born.  Amniotic fluid is a good conductor of sound and a fetus can hear the mother’s heartbeat as early as the third or fourth month. Sounds can affect fetal heart rate, and research has shown that music can cause changes in metabolism in fetuses and babies. Some prospective parents, aware of this, play music to help their unborn child’s intellectual and emotional development. 

Of course there's nothing to see in the womb, so it's logical that eyes don't develop fully till after birth.  A baby is born only able to see things within about a 12" range - just enough to find a mother's nipple.  It takes a while before vision fully develops in a newborn - yet a baby can hear perfectly well right from the start. That's because hearing is crucial to development and survival of the individual and the species - and not just humans.

How important is it?  All this planet's complex organisms that have both eyes and ears evolved the ability to voluntarily close the eyes but not the ears. In other words, we have evolved a mechanism to choose not to see, but we haven't evolved one to choose to not hear.  There are eyelids, but not earlids. Hearing is such a fundamental sense that it is always on and we can hear under all kinds of circumstances, even sometimes while unconscious.  We can even receive sound through our bones.   

The parts of the brain involved with hearing are very closely connected with the parts involved with survival. The “reptile brain”, the limbic system, is the oldest part of the brain (in terms of evolution) and is the most primitive. It works on automatic responses, not intellectual decisions. That’s where emotions and immediate reaction to danger is handled, that’s where memory is processed.

And that's also is a big part of the brain that deals with music.

Visual illusion

To see or to hear, that is the question
Sound is so important to us and yet vision is such a brain-hog. Something like eighty to eighty five percent of our perception, learning, cognition and related activities are vision-oriented and involve parts of the brain that deal with conscious thought. When we see things, our brains fill in gaps of knowledge that then direct - and even overpower - the other senses and even our thinking. That’s why optical illusion can be so successful – our eyes can trick our brains into believing something is true that isn't. Even knowing that the bathroom floor in the image to the right is a trompe l’oeil (literally, fool the eye), we might hesitate at stepping onto it (click on image to enlarge).

If vision hogs the brain then we sometimes need to shut down visual input. That's when the eyelids come into play. For instance, people squint when trying to focus on an idea, or close their eyes when trying to identify something is by touch. That's why when people want to savor a sound, smell or taste - or increase the intensity of an experience like sex or music - the eyes so often are closed.
The sound of music
Sorry for putting that ear-worm in your brain - here's a link to a YouTube to make it go away (Down By The Seaside). Now that you've clicked on the link, I've got a bit of homework for you. Watch the video carefully. Read the lyrics. Look at the pictures. Now play it again and don't watch it. Close your eyes, sit back and listen. The second time around I promise you'll hear more. This is the way to hear music.

The ability to explore and share knowledge of the  fundamental nature of being and the world - the "metahuman" or "metaphysical" level of existence - is possible because of human language, which is sound based. But while language has brought humanity beyond itself,  it is still a human invention to communicate about reality as it relates to humans, that is, the finite. Music, on the other hand, connects to the infinite.

The Sufi master, Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927), wrote the following: 

What we call music in our everyday language is only a miniature from that music or harmony of the whole universe which is working behind everything...   Music is not only life's greatest object, but it is life itself.

Or, as Hermann Hesse put it in his book The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi), the world is sound, a microcosm of the whole spiritual cosmos and thus music can reproduce the entire spiritual content of the world.

Music is too important not to hear fully.

Vision or music - but not both  
Basically, if you watch a video, the sensory distortion provided by the predominance of vision means that you are cutting off a significant percentage of your ability to hear the music. The sound waves still enter your ears and make your ear drums vibrate, your brain still receives the input from your inner ear, but the majority of your brain is involved with the signals that are being received visually.  In essence, your brain “ignores” most of the received auditory input. The part of the brain that that processes emotion – and the emotional interpretation of music – is barely engaged.

In other words, you aren't really hearing much of the music if you’re watching a music video.

And if you aren’t hearing the music, you’ll never get the Magick that's in it, will you?

Additional reading:
What Happens in the Brain to Make Music Rewarding?
"...the brain assigns value to music through the interaction of ancient dopaminergic reward circuitry, involved in reinforcing behaviours that are absolutely necessary for our survival such as eating and sex, with some of the most evolved regions of the brain, involved in advanced cognitive processes that are unique to humans.... The integrated activity of brain circuits involved in pattern recognition, prediction, and emotion allow us to experience music as an aesthetic or intellectual reward."

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Evolution is an ascent toward consciousness
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (May 1, 1881- April 10,1955)

Mage Music 47

The anniversary of the death of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is coming up in a few days. One of the world's greatest thinkers and philosophers, few people aside from theologians and students of religion have heard of him, although his work has had a vast influence on science and the arts.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest. The Catholic church denounced almost all his work during his lifetime and long afterwards, declaring it offensive to doctrine.  This included the theologian's teaching that original sin was not something brought about by an Adam and Eve, but that rather was part of the state of all finite matter from the beginning of time, well before any Adam and Eve showed up on this planet.

Teilhard de Chardin wrote that evolution is directional, with all matter constantly increasing in complexity as it leads to higher forms of consciousness, with human consciousness evolving in complexity as well. He postulated that a sphere of thinking ("noosphere") would develop when humans have evolved to global human consciousness and self-awareness, this being part of the evolution towards an Omega Point or the sphere of God.

Even though Teilhard de Chardin was forbidden by the church to publish his writings, documents were secretly passed around and discussed until after his death, when his incredible (but challenging to read) book The Phenomenon of Man was published.

Teilhard de Chardin has been described as a truth-sayer and even a prophet. I would say, bringer of light.


The Power of Magick

What does a Jesuit priest and theologian have to do with Magick? Teilhard de Chardin wrote that human spiritual development is founded on the same universal laws as material development. He described matter as evolving towards consciousness, and consciousness evolving towards a god-state. He understood that the all-that-is is one continuum, that the difference between the infinite and finite is a matter of degree of contrast rather than an exclusionary opposition.

In other words, as above, so below - a basic tenet of Magick.

Magick is not a religion, and it is not in conflict with religion because they both are about connecting with the energy that forms all of reality - the Universe, God, Great Spirit, Source or whatever you choose to name it. The stuff reality is made of is the energy that Magick uses to change a Mage's reality. It is what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin believed all the finite universe was naturally evolving towards.

Let the Magick - or anything that works for you - connect with that energy. Use any tool that feels right help to evolve your own consciousness.  Let any ritual that speaks to your heart take you there.

Passion Play

Redlining the passion gauge

“…years ago in days of old, when magic filled the air.”
  ~ Ramble On

Mage Music 45

Back in the day when hot cars were as all-consuming as the new music brought to us courtesy of such guitar marvels as Jimmy Page, we talked about redlining.  It had nothing to do with smarmy financial practices and everything to do with living on the edge.

The term redline comes from the red bars that are displayed at the high end of a car’s tachometer.  If you were drag racing, street racing or just getting off the stoplight fast because you felt like it, you wanted those RPMs to be high to deliver the most power.  Winding the engine up to the red line got you the maximum possible from the engine at the risk of blowing it up.  It was dangerous, it could be costly.

It was worth it.  We couldn't help ourselves - we were passionate about the cars and the music and pushing the envelope.

Passion

On the emotional tachometer, passion is the human redline.  It’s not something that can ever be truly satisfied because it’s not like a desire for ice cream that goes away after you've had a banana split.  Passion is enduring and powerful - and when you mess with passion, you are in a handle-with-care state of being.

If you're a Mage, though, you can't avoid passion - it is actually two-thirds of the process of Magick.  

Desire can range from mild thoughts to an all-consuming lust for something.  Will - the drive to do something about that desire – can range from barely there to an unrelenting force.  When combined desire and will are at the high end of the emotional range, they earn the label of passion. 

You don't have to be a Mage to intuitively understand that any ritual of Magick needs to have some oomph behind it.  No one would expect a ritual to amount to much if the Mage only kinda-sorta wanted to, and only more-or-less felt like doing it.  With a car, high octane fuel provides more compression before detonating. Passion is high octane fuel for Magick.

But like with a car engine, redlining passion is risky.  Powerful surges of emotion are like powerful surges of adrenaline or high octane car fuel – they have to be burned off before they blow up the engine.  With adrenaline you have to take physical action.  With powerful emotion at the level of passion you have to feel it, surrender to it and let it take you where it will because if you try to control it you risk blowing up. 

Here's the tricky part:  The powerful surges of passion are barely controllable, and yet a Mage must channel passion through the ritual, the controlled component of Magick.  The Mage must have the technical ability to do justice to the music, and that ability must live in muscle memory so it doesn't constrict the flow of passion.  The skill (technique) must be such that the Mage doesn't think about the musical instrument as much as let it be played directly by the passion.

It's simple but...
If Magick was easy, everyone would be a Mage.  If channeling passion through a musical instrument was easy, everyone would be a Mage Musician. Magick is simple but it is not easy.

"That's my lifetime achievement - that people would be inspired by the music."

~ Jimmy Page, Echo music award 2013

Mage Music and music lovers everywhere congratulate Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin on receiving the Echo music award.  Believe me, we're inspired.

Devolution Device

Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est: And thus knowledge itself is power 

~ Sir Francis Bacon, Meditationes Sacrae (1597)

Mage Music 42

Back in Merlin's day Magick was still an accepted scientia, that is, a form of knowledge.  Today scientia is understood to be a discipline with exclusionary rules rather than of direct and personal knowledge. Magick has been reduced to the sleight of hand of Las Vegas, which is no Magick at all.

Magick is scientia in the original meaning of the term.  Knowledge of the true nature of Magick persists, though modern science can't explain it.  These days if a thing isn't science then science says the thing is fiction, and that makes the scientia of Magick harder than it has to be.  Of course, Magick never has been easy, truth be told - not even for a Merlin. After all, Magick taps into the foundational energy of the Universe, and if that isn't a challenge then what is?

Ironically, humans have an intuitive knowledge of how the Universe and its parts work because not only do humans live in this Universe - they are a microcosm of it. How could humans not understand Magick, then? We only have to look within.

Do Not Enter

Science has made fiction of Magick in self-defense, even though Magick is an extraordinary and yet natural process of human manipulation of energy that works perfectly well. Magick has an impact on reality that can be directly known, if not exactly duplicated, measured and quantified. So what does it matter if science can't explain it? 

It matters because what Sir Francis said is absolute truth: Knowledge itself is power. How could anyone have control over anyone else if everyone could have knowledge... and thus power?  Ideas like that give entities that are in positions of control (governments, religions, science and other institutions) the willies - it's bad enough to them that there are artists loose out there.   

We have no Merlin these days because people with true knowledge threaten the social, scientific and political status quo, and wielders of true scientia can't afford to be blatant about it.  There isn't an Inquisition any more, but history warns us that there are plenty of ways of dealing with Mages that are darned effective besides inflicting physical pain, as traditional as that has been.

Still, there's no stopping scientia.   Discretion may be the name of the game in these modern, so-called "enlightened" times, but there still is Magick and there still are Mages. Some of them just don't use the same tools of the trade as Merlin did.

Two for the price of one

“We went in there with such a will....”

     ~ Jimmy Page, BBC interview 2007

Mage Music 40

There are a couple of things I want to talk about very briefly today.  They really should be two separate posts but oh well. This week you get two for the price of one.

Leveraging
There are two ways for a person to move a very heavy object:  Work at it really, really hard or use leverage.  Smart people don’t sweat it if they don’t have to, and Mages don’t get very far without being smart.

A Mage would have to be very, very powerful to generate all the energy required from his own person to manifest most of the monumental works of Magick.  Even if he was very, very powerful, the continued effort to fuel Magick that way sooner or later would consume him. We've seen more than one Mage musician flame out that way.  Thank the gods (or name your deity of choice) that a smart Mage can leverage power by tapping into the energy of the infinite.

Giving up the need to control, giving up specificity of process in favor of letting the Universe provide answers while still using desire and will to focus the energy through ritual is not as easy as it sounds.  It requires a master-level juggling act of Magick to pull it off.  I think we all agree that Jimmy Page is capable of that.

Most musicians would make playing at the highest level possible the primary goal for a one-off performance like the O2 Concert.  It would be a “have to do” thing - yet ironically, having to put forth a best performance makes it harder to reach.  That kind of pressure can lead to performance anxiety, to fatal doubt that undermines Magick by weakening the will.

They - Jimmy Page et al - didn't do that, though. Instead,  they went onstage with the desire to live in the musical moment, using their will to follow their hearts the way they always had.  Rather than attempting to force the manifestation, they felt their way to their desired end by following the sound and letting it lead them to the Magick.  In letting the music be their master, they opened to the infinite and let the energy pour in.  And we heard it as Mage music.

But was it really Magick?

What if Magick was just a fiction, only existing in novels about kids with lightning bolts on their foreheads, or TV shows featuring professional wizards who consult with skulls named Bob?

What if there was no such thing as Mage music?

Nah.

We know Magick exists because we hear it for ourselves when we listen to the music of Jimmy Page. We recognize it personally when the Mage himself creates it right in front of our eyes (or ears). We know Mage music because we experience it.  We live in it and because it becomes part of ourselves we don't need anyone else to tell us when it's there. We know Magick is real because we feel it.

When the music sings in our own souls and we resonate with it and are brought out of ourselves to something more than these physical bodies because of it - that is Magick.

That is Mage music.  Thank you, Mr. Page.

Let There Be Light

“…she held the image…strong within her mind, demanding of the Light that what she saw must become the world's truth. Because she desired it. Because she willed it. Because the world itself must bow to the will of the Lightborn".
~ Mercedes Lackey: Crown of Vengeance

Mage Music 37 

In science fiction/fantasy novels, Mages are always getting involved with battles, conjuring deadly forces to kill enemies with a flick of the fingers, a twitch of a wand, or a circle in chalk on the floor. They blast mountains to gravel, change the courses of rivers, generate blizzards from balmy spring days, bestow Magickal powers on inanimate objects and even take over the minds of the unwary and unshielded. Certainly all good tricks, but such conjuring is truly the stuff of fiction, not real Magick. 

That's not because it is absolutely impossible to do those things, but because the immense power needed to generate those kind of changes of reality is just an impractical - and darned tough - way to use Magick.  Even the most powerful Mage is courting failure when attempting to go against the forces of entropy in the Universe - or even the desires of living things. Which is not to say that a Mage can't do some pretty impressive stuff. It's just that changing the world that way is using the wrong end of a lever to move a rock. There are easier ways to go about Magick that will, in the end, get you where you want to be.

The reality of the reality of Magick

Think about it: Here's an army of orcs, here's the brave, solitary Mage facing that ugly bunch. Fiction would tell you that the Mage will use Magick to force the orcs to stop their advance. The reality is that the most powerful control a Mage (or anyone) has is of himself*- meaning the Mage isn't going to be using Magick against orcs at all.

So - do the orcs get to pound the Mage into mush? Actually, no - in the real world, the Mage changes his own reality to one in which there are no orcs doing damage. Um... if there were actual orcs in this world for a Mage to deal with, of course. Metaphor, okay?

But wait!

I know you are objecting - because what I've described might sound a bit... wimpy - and likely at least one of your objections probably goes something like this: If the Mage's reality is changed to orclessness in a new reality, are there still orcs storming the castle in the old reality?

Probably. Maybe. It depends on whether you subscribe to the infinite Universes theory or not. Still, one soul incarnate in one body experiences one reality at a time in finite existence.  Magick is about purposefully choosing what that reality will be like. Even Mages can't change realities they aren't experiencing (and that means Mages can't experience the reality of another living being without becoming that being, which would mean not being the Mage any more...).  And this means that the best Magickal leverage for a Mage is to simply create a reality where orcs aren't an issue.  For him, the Mage.

Perhaps this version of Magick is not something you'd like to spend time in a movie watching, but it's the way things really work.  Look around you at the reality you live in. If Magick was used like a super-power, things would be a bit different than the reality we are currently sharing.

What are Mages for if not to stop orc armies? 

And why do we think they should be stopping armies of orcs, anyway?  Aren't orcs living beings that have their own desire and will?

Well, no.  Orcs are fictional.  I'm talking about this plane of reality, not theirs.  Faced with the real-world equivalent of orcs, a Mage needs to leverage energy, and that comes about through knowing the true goal, the true desire, and using the true desire with will and ritual to bring about change in the Mage's reality.  And the true desire can only be that of the Mage, not that of the castle or anyone else.

A fine point, but a crucial one.

If the castle is to be safe from the charging orc army (or the Mage's equivalent of orcs) the Mage must exist in a reality where it is already safe and has always been safe and always will be safe.  Orcs are not part of the picture.  To do this, the Mage is the one who must know in his body, mind and soul what existence in a reality of safe castle feels like, must know without a doubt that this is the reality for the past, for the now and for the future, and must bind it with ritual that will make it so.

And then it's the Mage's reality that changes - and how the energy of the Universe brings that about depends on factors beyond any finite Mage's ability.  Orcs?  Who cares.  That army may be just charging the castle to get to the Black Friday sale.  It doesn't matter what the orcs do because in the Mage's reality the castle is safe, if not orc-free.

What Mages are for in this reality

Fantasy is a wonderful thing, though as a friend of mine just said the other day, it can be frustrating reading about those Gifts that none of us have.

Except we do have them.

Not to the same degree, not every gift for every person - but we all have Magick in us and the ability to change our own reality.  We can't help it - it goes with the human package.  The difference between Mages and the bulk of humanity is that Mages choose their reality and the rest of us pretend we have no choice and let reality happen to us.

Thank goodness, then, that real Mages are living breathing conduits to the energy of the Universe.  They may be manifesting their own realities, but in doing so Mages open portals to the Light for us. Even if we don't choose to step through, we can still bask in the Light.  I've said it before and I'll keep saying it here:

Light bringers - that's what Mages are for.

That's no small potatoes, either.

♪

* I use the masculine pronoun but understand it includes the feminine.  I'm a female, and I don't exclude my gender, just am going along with what's easiest.  The he/she, him/her way of writing is kinda kludgy, and I just can't make myself like using "their" when what I really mean is his/her, you know?  Yeah, okay, sometimes I do, but give me a break here.

Vision Quest

How far did they go?
"As far as our imaginations would carry us."

~ Jimmy Page, from Brad Tolinski's Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page

Mage Music 35

Vision: "the act or power of anticipating that which will or may come to be". 

Vision drives everything.  Every normal person has a belief system that describes the world is and what their place is in it.  Belief is the basis for vision of what will be.  Even if they're not conscious of having any vision at all, still people's decisions are influenced by their vision.  Their emotions arise from that vision.

Vision guides and shapes human lives.  The vision may not be based on "truth" - it may in fact be totally unrealistic - but it still guides and shapes decisions and emotions, and vision is the paradigm against which success and failure are measured.

The range of vision is infinite
For most people personal vision is small - that's not a value judgement, just a statement about scale.   Vision is derived from what is believed to be possible, and for most what is possible comes from what has existed or what is known.  Their vision goes not much further than the basics of everyday life.  As "small" as this vision may seem, it is still something extraordinary - few, if any, animals have the capacity for extensive vision.  

Moving along the range of possibility of vision, there are creative people - such as artists - whose vision is broader.  Their vision involves imagination and goes well beyond the basics of everyday life into areas that push the envelope of what is known and accepted.  Success is measured against the internal vision as well as external factors, such as how well the creation is received by peers and audience.

Sages, Mages and other grand visionaries are at the other end of the scale.  Their vision encompasses that which may never have been, and includes the improbable and the impossible.  These are the Masters who don't require external validation - their Work may never even be seen by others.  Their measure of success is how close their Work comes to fulfillment of their personal vision.  What they produce may be so different as to be frightening, so frightening as to be threatening, so threatening as to cause others to want to cast them down.

Vision Quest

Vision is always changing and growing as the human who holds the vision changes and grows. Sometimes, however, the vision is just a seed, an idea with no flesh.  Sometimes the holder of the seed has no idea of how it will grow or what it will grow into.  Sometimes that person only owns the desire to find out.

A vision quest is a search for the clues that will allow the seeker to find answers.  For those with small vision, the goal is to find one's life purpose: Who am I, why am I here, where am I supposed to be going?  For those with greater vision, the goal is to find the purpose of life:  Who are we, why are we here, and where are we going?  

For the Masters, the goal is to find the Way that will allow them to move life along.  For the Mage, the goal is to create a new reality.

For the Mage Musician, the Way is through the vision of the music.  How far can the vision go?  As far as the Mage will allow the vision to carry him.