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What is magick? - A personal perspective

This article is about what magick means to me personally. I don't want to get too caught up in meta-physical theories about how magick works, but rather would like to consider how one approaches it, and what practicing magick means on a personal level. And what I am writing about here is not simply the art and science of 'spellcraft', but rather magick as a way of life - as a kind of personal religion. I do not claim that this article is in any way a comprehensive answer to these questions, but I do believe that I have a certain insight to offer, which may be of some use or interest to others.

 

I would like to begin by describing a memory from my early childhood. I was standing in the playground of my primary school when one of the other children asked me what my favourite colour was. The question vexed me, and this vexation persisted in one form or another for many years. This may seem strange to you as the question appears to be a simple one, but bear with me. What vexed me was this: I did not have a favourite colour, and more than this, I did not see why anyone should have a favourite colour. To my innocent and as yet unformed mind any one colour seemed to be as good as any other colour, and was at a loss to find any frame of reference by which to judge their relative values. I didn't say that of course, I said my favourite colour was blue, because I was a little boy, and little boys like blue.

 

The reason why this seemingly innocuous event caused me so much vexation was that it caused me to ask myself another, more fundamental question. It was this second question which persisted in my mind for years to come, worrying me greatly, and it was this: 'who am I?'


I felt like I was different from the other children, and this difference was embodied in the fact that they had a favourite colour, and I did not. I felt that there was something missing within me, or at least that the knowledge of something within me was missing. I came to think of myself as a lost soul. That thing within me which was I was missing, that entity which my mind searched for but could not find, that place from whence such things as favourite colours might naturally arise of their own accord, was what I thought of as 'self'. I have since come to think of it as the 'mythical self'.

 

For years my mind turned inwards upon itself, as I tried, often despairingly, to find myself. But in the end it wasn’t introspection which gave me my answer, it was the precise opposite, it was, if you like, extrosception.

 

As I grew older and more mature began to understand and empathise with other people more fully, and to think more objectively about the question which had haunted my younger years. And what I came to realise was this: Nobody has a favourite colour until they choose one, and the choosing is largely arbitrary. Of course there is no material reason why little boys should like blue, nor why little girls should express a preference for pink; it is merely a convention. A convention partly imposed by adults, and partly embraced by children themselves as they look for ways to define themselves against the immensity of the world around them.

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The actual issue of favourite colours here is indicative, but not structurally inherent to the point in hand. The old academic debate about the relative importance of nature and nurture in what makes us ourselves is misleading, as it disguises the fact that the 'self' has no objective existence, only the subjective existence to which we ascribe it through the act of naming and discussing it. To borrow a phrase from earlier "that place from whence such things as favourite colours might naturally arise of their own accord" does not exist, because 'such things' do not occur of their own accord at all, but are the product of often arbitrary and meaningless, but most certainly conscious decisions.

 

The problem is that what was once conscious slips into the subconscious, and we become deluded that the sum total of these unpremeditated and unschooled decisions is actually some inherently extant 'I', which we become not only loathe, but actually incapable of contradicting.


This is the same truth recognised by the Buddhists, who deny that the self has any objective existence. In this the science of the magi is in complete agreement with the eastern philosophy. Where the two diverge is in the prescription of action based upon this understanding. Whereas the Buddhist, being what we would term a mystic, seeks to sweep aside the veil of illusion and dwell in pure spirit, beyond the relevance of vulgar notions such as self, the magus seeks to take the pure theory of such an understanding and create from it an applied science.

 

This, then, is the imperative of magick as I live it: 'Make Yourself' - to be fully conscious of one's role as one's own creator, and for one's reason to wrest control of the process away from one's caprice. Even in such workings as most evidently focus outward to influence external circumstance, the divine light is refracted through the prism of your own 'myth of self', into the myriad colours of the rainbow of manifestation.

 

That is what magick means to me, I hope you found this article of interest.

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