NMR ISSUE 54

Aspect in Astrology
Bardic Source Book
Because I am a Witch My Love
Blessing for a Child
Complete Book of Spells, Curses
Earth Magic
Fetish Stones
Finding Your Totem, Discovering Your Guardian
Gleanings 54
How to Use Magick with a Straight Face
Kingdoms of the Faerje Realm
Language and the Doctrine of Signatures
Mountains, Meadows and Moonbeams
New Twist on Tinctures
On the Invocation of Eris:
Pagan Nudity
People of the Earth:
Shapeshifter Tarot
Teen Witch:
The Great Spirit Goddess
The Lore of the Oak
The Samhain Host: Remembering the Dead
The Sun Goddess:
The Well of Remembrance:
To Light a Sacred Flame:
Worship of the Goddess: The Lost Art

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How to Use Magick

With a Straight Face

By Scot Rhoads

Part 1

Introduction

With the advent of the New Age, many people are airing great new ways to change your life for the better. These ideas are based on the premise that we have total control of our lives on some level. All we need do is reach that level with our desires. This is, of course, the big challenge. You can read millions of words on that subject. Why is there so much information? Because achieving this kind of control is a very individual thing. There are so many different ways that each person could write his own book. To succeed, everyone must find his or her own path. The reason there are instructions at all, though, is because each can find guidance in the successes of others. Magick is one of these many guides.

This book is very short because it concentrates less on the myriad details of magick and more on how to find your own path. The task is never as easy as it sounds, but it is not complex, either. With straight -forward exercises (good, honest work on your Self) you will achieve whatever you desire. We all have this power. The way we use it is not by gaining a new ability, but by getting out of the way of the ability we already have. This book outlines the basic blocks and the kinds of things to do about them. As with any advice, it is up to you to honestly assess your own situation and discover what works best for you. Remember: achieving your personal Power is everyone's path in life. You will succeed; it is only a question of when. This book is designed to bring that success more quickly and, overall, more easily.

Many people these days still appeal to the "booga-booga" aspect of magick: "We will grant you incredible powers to use on whomever you please if you send us money." As we enter into the New Age of understanding, people are learning that occult powers are actually a natural part of everyone's life. It is our goal to help this process along. We hope to teach newcomers what magick is about. This book is written not only to inform, but also to circumvent the psychological barriers set up by living in a mechanistic society. The mechanistic paradigm (the idea that each person and object is totally separate from the rest of the universe except through physical interaction) precludes magick (non-physically affecting one's environment). The magickal paradigm states that your beliefs create your reality. This choice is like contemplating eating blowfish. When you analyze it, you can conclude that adopting either paradigm is stupid. Since you can't please everyone else, pick the one that you like best. If (and only if) the magickal paradigm appeals to you, then choose it. Then the trick is to get out of the mind-set that says magick is impossible. We hope that you will try some exercises to prove to yourself that magick works. Once you have done so, then you are on the way to achieving anything you desire.

Power

Power can be a very misleading term. The way most people mean it is in the sense of "power-over." People recognize power as the ability to get others to do what you want, especially when these others have different ideas. This is not Power (with a capital `P') at all. When you rely on someone else to do something for you, you give your Power to him. This is very different from doing something with someone, then both parties gain. But, to believe that you must force or trick another is to say that you need this person to do something that you cannot. You may steal their power (lower case) but you give away your Power.

Power is, among other things, the innate ability to bring whatever you truly desire into your life. When you "make" others manifest them for you, you create blocks in your own mind. These blocks say `I cannot do this myself', which obstructs your Power. This is "giving away your Power."

When you "take your Power," you accept responsibility for your life. This is not guilt or martyrdom; it is honestly assessing your life and recognizing your successes and failures. Give yourself credit for even the smallest success and recognize that you can overcome every obstacle. You then allow your Power to express itself. What you need comes to you; projects work for you.

We often think of many obstacles as insurmountable. For instance, many believe the lottery to be their only desperate hope of escaping poverty. Such people give away their Power. And why shouldn't they? Everything they've experienced reinforces this. Our society is rooted in the mechanistic paradigm (all causes and effects have a physical link), which precludes a belief in Power. How is one to know that this concept works? How can it work, when it is so different from what we are accustomed to?

Our society has a concept of "Reality" as an objective existence of which we are all a part. When two people have different ideas of the nature of some detail, at least one is Wrong. We all have a fear of being Wrong. When we are Wrong we miss out on things and people don't like us as much. Therefore we desperately strive to be "Right" It turns out that Right is what ever those around you happen to feel that it should be. It's as if they all took a vote when you were out of the room. Right changes all the time: from: preservatives are harmless, to: preservatives cause cancer; from Stalin is a great leader, to: Stalin was a monster; from Ptolemy explains the forces of the universe perfectly, to Newton explains the forces of the universe perfectly, to: Einstein explains the forces of the universe perfectly. The philosophy of science calls this evolving "better" (or at least different explanations. Yet, while these ideas hold sway, people call them "Reality."

Just how reliable is Reality? We all live our lives using our individual concepts of Reality to get along. We update them as we see fit. But few will fundamentally change their concepts. We are sure that, although we may not have the details, we certainly have a feel for the basics. Anyone who disagrees with the mechanistic paradigm, for instance, must be missing at least a few marbles. Such a person is irrational in a universe that we know to be rational.

Is the universe truly rational? Science has pursued the mechanistic paradigm down to the smallest scale, particle physics. Here it fails to explain the universe. The building blocks of Reality do not behave rationally. If you drive a car from one side of a mountain to the other and you have a choice of two tunnels, you will drive through one of them. If a single electron has a choice of two holes in a plate to pass through, it will go through both. You can plot the speed and position of your car to the limit of the accuracy of your instruments, but you will never be able to do both to that electron.

When you observe this mythical car, it is a solid object. If it were not, it would not be a car. If you drove it around, then tested to see if the car were not solid and discovered that it wasn't, what would you think? Around the turn of the century, scientists figured out that light acts like a wave when you test for a wave and like a particle when you test for a particle. In the regular world it must be one or the other. The two are as mutually exclusive as a non-solid car that you can none the less drive. Mysteriously, light was behaving like both. Eventually, scientists concluded that light doesn't work like the universe we are used to. The act of observing light defines its character. This is called wave-particle duality. Later in the century, scientists found that atomic particles, the building blocks of all matter, behave this way, too.

Now imagine that you can find no evidence that this car crosses the space between where you see it and where you saw it last. Suppose the car isn't actually "there" when you're looking—the act of looking brings it into "existence." What would you think if noticed that your expectations seem to have an effect on where it turns out to be? This is awfully strange, but it is the kind of universe that particle physicists find. "Looking at" a subatomic particle "brings it into existence." Also, scientists are finding that whatever kind of particle they expect to find in an experiment, tends to be there. This is starting to look less like brilliant theory and more like an effect of the observers. They are no longer separate from their experiments. It turns out that the universe doesn't actually work the way we've always assumed it does.

This is the nature of matter on the smallest scale, and it doesn't make sense in every day life. This does not mean that we should abandon our present ideas of how to live. Keep what works ("If it ain't broke, don't fix it"). Particle physics won't affect how you drive through tunnels, for instance. But, if you accept physics, the epitome of the mechanistic paradigm, this means that our mechanistic ideas of how the universe works are fundamentally incomplete. In other words, the mechanistic paradigm is not the whole story.

Big deal. What does this mean in a practical sense? The world seems to work just the same as it did when the mechanistic paradigm was unchallenged. But what if our preconceptions dictate what we are aware of? It is a common trick to set up a group of people for startling event and see how many will overlook a strange inconsistency. In one instance, a teacher took a student off into an adjoining room on a pretext. There was the sound of an argument and a crash and the student ran out through the room. One of the other students suspected a set up and she was the only one who noticed that the teacher's accomplice was carrying a bone.

A much more dramatic example is the story of Magellan's ships. When the explorer landed in Tierra del Fuego, the natives, who had never seen Europeans before, recognized them as funny looking men in funny looking little boats. Magellan soon found that the natives were unaware of the large ships that carried them there, though they were impossible to overlook. The natives had seen men and small boats before, but they had never seen a large ship. Such a thing was outside of their experience and therefore outside of their comprehension. Their eyes must have seen the ships, but their brains did not. The natives gathered to try to see them, staring intently at where they were supposed to be anchored. Soon the local shaman could discern the barest outline, which he described to the others. Eventually they could all perceive ships.

Who can say what we make ourselves unaware of? It is only after we've expanded our perception that we learn how limited it was before. We can't go around indiscriminately "expanding our consciousness." What we choose to believe is based on our desires. If you are happy with what you believe, there is no reason to change. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Change is challenging and even if you succeed, it may well be unpleasant. If you feel unable to overcome obstacles in your life (and you really want to), then you have nothing to lose. Magick will only expand possibilities. If it's all a crock, you've lost nothing. If it's true, you can do anything you're willing to work for. It is a draw-win situation. The only way you can lose is to make your choice out of fear. Don't let the opinions of others influence what you choose to believe. Don't give away your Power. Everyone else is in the same situation you are, so when it comes to your own life, there is no greater authority than you. If you're interested in magick, try it and see for yourself if it works for you.