On Magick
How does one do Magick? Aleister Crowley said that "Magick is the Art and Science of causing change in conformity with Will." If you stop and think about it, he was right on the money with that definition. Magickians do their thing by striving to achieve this, that, or the other thing, regardless of how they do it. Arthur C. Clarke said that "Magick is any significantly advanced technology," i.e., any technology so advanced over what the observer understands or can replicate that it seems to be supernatural. Anton Szandor LaVey pointed out that small children use Magick successfully all the time: "See that little girl playing with her dolls? She is conjuring herself into the mother she will become when she grows up. See that little boy playing at being a fireman? He is conjuring up the breadwinner and head of a family he will become as a grown man." Basically, all goal-oriented behavior is, by that definition, Magick; all goal-oriented attitudes are, by that same definition, Magickal by intent. Therefore all living organisms are Magickians, for all living organisms display goal-oriented behavior as long as they live, whether it be the reflex drawing-in of air so their bodies can extract from it the gases needed to fuel their metabolism, the putting-down of roots by plants to extract soil nutrients or the emitting of chemicals by those same roots to ward or kill off neighbors or rivals who crowd them a little too closely; the behavior involved in feeding, fighting, fleeing, and romantic involvements of animal life; or any other sort of behavior at any level on the part of any organism necessary for its continued existence and the propagation of its genes (or the protection, education, and nurturance of the genes of its cousins, which comes down to the same thing).
But Magick, with a capital "M," is usually considered to involve actual paranormal phenomena as its means of achieving its goals, such as action at a distance (i.e., with no apparent physical connection between the Magickian and the results of his/her Workings), the sort of thing which, however, quantum mechanics seems to explain. The Western Ceremonial tradition achieves such results by invocation of the Gods; shamanism apparently does this through the direction action-at-a-distance of the shaman him/herself. With reference to my earlier entry on this blog Semper Fi - What makes for a successful shaman?, this seems to require a lack of alienation among the shaman's/Magickian's mind, body, and the universe at large, whether that is a permanent and non-contingent condition, originally brought about as the result of deep physical or mental wounds, or a temporary and contingent one brought about by ritual practice.
The thing is, the Gods are simply various aspects of God, the universal Intlligences that inform all Creation and all the living world. As I said in Semper Fi - Mars Gets Autotuned! | Universe Today, the beings of the Lovecraftian Mythos are among those aspects of Creation from which we have become alienated, including, for example, our own bodies as well as anything outside them. Shub-Niggurath, for example, is the Intelligence of cosmic biodiversity, the swarming life-forms making up rain-forest ecosystems such as those of the Amazon Basin and other areas of the world, and, by extension, of the universe as a whole, and perhaps even of the infinite multiverse. In similar wise, Nyarlathotep may be to the cosmos as a whole what Hermes-Djehuti was to the Greeks: the Divine Messenger Who carries information from everywhere to everywhere else and enables decipherment of its meaning, the great Trickster Who is there to remind us that no matter how much we think we know or how great we are, there's always Somebody a lot bigger, more knowledgeable, and meaner, Lord of Thieves and Protector and Comforter of orphaned and abused children, Lord of Wisdom and the One Who brings us knowledge of the scariest, deepest realms of the Deep Unconscious of both ourselves and all Creation. Yog-Soth is the All-knower, the Keeper of all knowledge, the cosmic equivalent of the Librarian at Unseen University in the city-state of Ankh-Morpork on Terry Pratchett's Discworld. And so on.
Not to say that any of these beings are cuddly and cozy. Think, for example, about the Amazon Basin -- a place where deadly pathogens abound, where great anacondas that can easily kill and devour a man whole live, where there are Brazilian Wandering Spiders and pretty little frogs with venom that can disable you within minutes and kill you shortly after. Think about Spider Woman -- She is the Creator of the Multiverse, the begetter of all things, Whose webs are hung with golden galaxies without number. But if She is the All-begetter, she is also the All-devourer, Who spins Her creations only to devour them again when She is done with them, so that they may provide the raw resources out of which Her next cycle of Creations can be spun.
Similar considerations apply to every one of the Mythos beings, and to numerous other entities Who are great enough to be considered Gods, but too frightening for most of us to want to confront or invoke. All of Them are universal Intelligences of one or another aspect of God, and every one of Them can be and usually is utterly terrifying. The Archangel Michael is an excellent exemplar of such beings, as is the Goddess Kali. They are not beings which most of us want to meet down a dark alley at midnight -- or, for that matter, at high noon in the middle of Times Square, either. Beautiful and terrible, They inform all Creation with Their Intelligences, and are absolutely necessary for the existence of life itself -- but no one in his or her right mind considers any of them cute, cuddly, cozy, or harmless. They are anything but. And that is Their terror -- and Their glory. And the Magickian Who, in spite of his or her understandable, rightful dread, nevertheless invokes Them, the shaman who comes to know Them, thereby achieves an awareness of a far larger universe, or a multiverse, the rest of us will never know, and abilities that the rest of us only dream of. -- And, of course, all the hell that goes with them.
This is the ultimate goal of the fully mature human being, one who has attained to the status of a Protector, the one who is the wise and protective grandparent to generations, perhaps to the whole living world, and not just to his or her own restricted genetic lineage: to become truly whole in mind, soul, and spirit by de-alienating him- or herself from those Deep Gods, those Aspects of God which most of us want nothing to do with because they are so terrifying, uniting both intellect and psyche, science and Magick, to become the Whole Human who, like the eponymous Kim of Rudyard Kipling's novel of that title, thanks "Allah for both sides of my head."
But Magick, with a capital "M," is usually considered to involve actual paranormal phenomena as its means of achieving its goals, such as action at a distance (i.e., with no apparent physical connection between the Magickian and the results of his/her Workings), the sort of thing which, however, quantum mechanics seems to explain. The Western Ceremonial tradition achieves such results by invocation of the Gods; shamanism apparently does this through the direction action-at-a-distance of the shaman him/herself. With reference to my earlier entry on this blog Semper Fi - What makes for a successful shaman?, this seems to require a lack of alienation among the shaman's/Magickian's mind, body, and the universe at large, whether that is a permanent and non-contingent condition, originally brought about as the result of deep physical or mental wounds, or a temporary and contingent one brought about by ritual practice.
The thing is, the Gods are simply various aspects of God, the universal Intlligences that inform all Creation and all the living world. As I said in Semper Fi - Mars Gets Autotuned! | Universe Today, the beings of the Lovecraftian Mythos are among those aspects of Creation from which we have become alienated, including, for example, our own bodies as well as anything outside them. Shub-Niggurath, for example, is the Intelligence of cosmic biodiversity, the swarming life-forms making up rain-forest ecosystems such as those of the Amazon Basin and other areas of the world, and, by extension, of the universe as a whole, and perhaps even of the infinite multiverse. In similar wise, Nyarlathotep may be to the cosmos as a whole what Hermes-Djehuti was to the Greeks: the Divine Messenger Who carries information from everywhere to everywhere else and enables decipherment of its meaning, the great Trickster Who is there to remind us that no matter how much we think we know or how great we are, there's always Somebody a lot bigger, more knowledgeable, and meaner, Lord of Thieves and Protector and Comforter of orphaned and abused children, Lord of Wisdom and the One Who brings us knowledge of the scariest, deepest realms of the Deep Unconscious of both ourselves and all Creation. Yog-Soth is the All-knower, the Keeper of all knowledge, the cosmic equivalent of the Librarian at Unseen University in the city-state of Ankh-Morpork on Terry Pratchett's Discworld. And so on.
Not to say that any of these beings are cuddly and cozy. Think, for example, about the Amazon Basin -- a place where deadly pathogens abound, where great anacondas that can easily kill and devour a man whole live, where there are Brazilian Wandering Spiders and pretty little frogs with venom that can disable you within minutes and kill you shortly after. Think about Spider Woman -- She is the Creator of the Multiverse, the begetter of all things, Whose webs are hung with golden galaxies without number. But if She is the All-begetter, she is also the All-devourer, Who spins Her creations only to devour them again when She is done with them, so that they may provide the raw resources out of which Her next cycle of Creations can be spun.
Similar considerations apply to every one of the Mythos beings, and to numerous other entities Who are great enough to be considered Gods, but too frightening for most of us to want to confront or invoke. All of Them are universal Intelligences of one or another aspect of God, and every one of Them can be and usually is utterly terrifying. The Archangel Michael is an excellent exemplar of such beings, as is the Goddess Kali. They are not beings which most of us want to meet down a dark alley at midnight -- or, for that matter, at high noon in the middle of Times Square, either. Beautiful and terrible, They inform all Creation with Their Intelligences, and are absolutely necessary for the existence of life itself -- but no one in his or her right mind considers any of them cute, cuddly, cozy, or harmless. They are anything but. And that is Their terror -- and Their glory. And the Magickian Who, in spite of his or her understandable, rightful dread, nevertheless invokes Them, the shaman who comes to know Them, thereby achieves an awareness of a far larger universe, or a multiverse, the rest of us will never know, and abilities that the rest of us only dream of. -- And, of course, all the hell that goes with them.
This is the ultimate goal of the fully mature human being, one who has attained to the status of a Protector, the one who is the wise and protective grandparent to generations, perhaps to the whole living world, and not just to his or her own restricted genetic lineage: to become truly whole in mind, soul, and spirit by de-alienating him- or herself from those Deep Gods, those Aspects of God which most of us want nothing to do with because they are so terrifying, uniting both intellect and psyche, science and Magick, to become the Whole Human who, like the eponymous Kim of Rudyard Kipling's novel of that title, thanks "Allah for both sides of my head."