I must say, the occult is quite exciting in its skill ceiling. In the book, it is now on week 3, but like every week achieved in it, there is a foreword. The practice will come tonight, but so far i’m at that point of the week 3. Reading this foreword explains essentially the effects and physiological and energetical aspects of opening up primary energy centers (or chakras). Namely, it also describes Kundalini which is achieved after years of practice, and why the previous practices of week 1 and 2 were made, for what purpose. Of course, I didn’t exactly practice Kundalini yet nor is it the purpose of this book, as said by the authors themselves.
There is also a myriad of ‘warnings’ not to do one single primary energy center over the others as it can cause various side-effects, truthfully it only makes me more excited about it rather than putting me off. Possible painful feelings, tingling waves, surges, stinging sensations, tickling, and so on? On one hand it’s annoying to read a pile of warnings, but on the other hand, hell yeah.
Now, i’m not childish either and these are only warnings of what can happen and only mostly happen for a small duration of time and then you get used to awakened primary energy centers, ‘bad’ side effects only really happen because of lack of common sense not to just develop one center and not the others.
But it made me realize once again the following.
Mastering any art has a high skill ceiling. But I would almost be tempted to say that magic and any related fields of practice have an infinite layer of skill. There is always something new to learn, to apply, to appreciate. It makes you go deep into an ocean only to realize there is always more below, and more, and more again.
We believe standing at the top of a vector (namely, the earth) makes us the most important part of all of that shape, but this is a misuse of language, there is no top or bottom, there is only a whole, and individual parts that make up that whole.
How can one be at the “top” of the earth if he cannot explore the rest of the water, which constitutes 71% of the earth and is largely inaccessible to mankind because of water pressure? Height does not mean awareness of the length there really is, and what lies inside of it. But I digress.
I’ll focus back on the topic of magic and the seemingly ever-expanding nature of it. Especially since I mostly gave in my previous posts my experiences with not so many ‘thoughts’, which is a part of the title of this journal-like thread, as such, time for a little bit of philosophizing for once.
Millenia, dozens of millennia precede us in this field, and all of the past knowledge has been for some part recovered and transmitted publicly or privately, or even independently rediscovered. It is possible.
I made use myself of the principle of barbarous words of powers even before I came to learn what it was, before I even could put a name on it. Of course, I wasn’t the first one to make use of them whatsoever, and they existed much much earlier than I, nothing new under the sun here. I would bet i’m not the first one to use it in dreamwork either.
Probably another person in history who did not publish his findings or received enough recognition so that we’d know of it already used it to exit dreams other than I. Or perhaps even in our modern age, this information exists and I simply did not search enough.
It is highly difficult to invent anything that has never been tried. My point is, if something like this can be rediscovered, then ANYTHING lost can be rediscovered as long as it still exists within the human substrate set of capabilities, one just needs to seek and experiment enough.
For something to be created, it requires material. If something was created, then, material was used. Which means that, the same origin material used for creating it exists. To create the discipline of energy work requires the possibility of doing energy work. And so even if we forget energy work through several centuries, if that material of which was used to create that discipline remains, then it surely can be rediscovered. One could even argue that everything’s to-be-discovered status is inevitable as long as there are actors to discover it.
There is a certain undying aspect in the practice of magic, present independently of all ages of history. It just shifts form, name, and framework according to its century, and ends up as the most antifragile thing in human existence. Antifragile, as in feeding from chaos and striving from it, even. It survived inquisition, it survived dogma, monotheism, modernity, mass-disaster scales, diseases, wars, book-burning, it survived worldwide wars, conquests, it survived ostracization, it survived obscurantism. To this day there are still practitioners.
I came a long way as I see it, and yet i’m objectively still at the start, hahaha. Before even that started, I didn’t even believe in the occult. Then later on, I was intrigued by the possibility of it. Much later, I came to experiment it. This is a form of evolution. The incredible thing, and while i’m not often emotional including not in my writing, is that the occult is an evolution in everything.
In every single possible way of a human being, the occult changes you into a higher version of yourself. You go from ignorant and hollow, following the same script and believing you have no inherent power, that nothing has meaning, or that life is just hell and you simply await passing to the other side if there even is one, in that state of mind. Life as mundane, ordinary, and boring, a mistake. We feel something is missing though we don’t know what.
You go from that sad state of affairs, to being a person exposed to such a magnificent light outside of Plato’s Cave, to then becoming one who makes use of the blinding light outside, until you realize you see more clearer in it than you did in a non-blinding environment. And then one day you learn to integrate it, to integrate magic into your existence. With each answer you get, you receive more questions. But all of that assumes you can accept to be blinded first.
Evocation, invocation, energy work, sigils, cartomancy, baneful magic, alchemy, banishing, necromancy (not the one in fiction), dreamwork, astral projection, remote viewing, bio-feedback, divination, trance, psychometry, precognition, ESP, psychokinesis, telepathy, communication with animals, with nature, with the astral, scrying, warding, and even a few ones I won’t even mention for I think they would receive much skepticism even around here, and are incredibly potent, but I will say, they were recorded, and buried just as quickly. This doesn’t cover half of it, but there are so many disciplines in this field.
I am no master nor adept. But one does not need to be a cook to appreciate good food; in this case, one does not need to be a master to appreciate all of that is available in the occult. All of these domains can be mastered, and all reinforce one another I feel like.
There is such a profound beauty in that even someone as unappreciative of abstract beauty as I am, can only come to be awed by it. Being inexperienced in the first place can also have some level of beauty in it, because it opens the so many doors to places you didn’t even know existed, everything is possibility then.
Years of learning and practice, decades of mastery, a lifetime of experience. I know absolutely nothing, and in that fact I know everything. Many including myself are lacking time in the long-run, or short-term, sometimes we create the necessity of mastering this or that as soon as we can. But nonetheless, it’s one of the rare arts that I believe you can never tire of learning about or practice, once you really make use of it.
Can I master each and every one of the domains that exist on the occult out there? I don’t even know, perhaps not in this lifetime. I kind of wish I would. I just don’t know if there is enough time to do it in this lifetime, probably not, lol. Wielder of all, master of none as the saying goes. A jack-of-all-trade cannot have a specialty by definition. Oh well, I will still be content of just mastering a few ones that I resonate with the most.
I hope one does not misinterpret what I write with some sort of conflation and that i’m some sort of superior mage, no, in general those who have to claim it are no superior mage at all, even then, does it matter? Truthfully I think the label of seeing oneself as a master, outside of the domain of selling books and getting street cred with people willing to be clients, may even be useless.
Why does it matter if you believe yourself to be advanced or not, if you keep advancing anyway? There is always more to learn.
It is much more complex than it appears at least in the bigger picture, though the specific domains aren’t that complex once you learn how to use them. It is also its main mechanism of defense with the use of sounding ridiculous, of using secrecy to preserve its existence and use. It sounds unfathomable, strange, worrying, or even useless. Pseudo-science, ‘satanic’, ‘evil’, the reputation of the occult is its main way of protecting itself. Of being handled only by those who, through their merit and research, become worthy of wielding it.
I would perhaps even be tempted to say that there is a fundamental disposition which cannot be separated from the condition of an individual, which determines his ability to use the occult. An individual’s innate orientation, psychological and spiritual readiness, beliefs, intellect, biology as well since it is difficult to practice magic from scratch if you’re half-dead on the floor.
This isn’t to say that only a specific category of people can use magic out of everyone (since all have that capability), but it means more precisely that there is only a specific category of people who will dare, and come to know, appreciate and understand how to use it and how not to be lost in obsession, in delusion, in wishful thinking and so on.
I am not sure if it sounds very clear, but basically, even assuming magic ends up in the hands of a profane, a profane can only make a profane use out of it, if that makes sense, so basically I would say the occult defends itself very well on its own, by essence.
What normal joe can spend entire hours reading, entire days practicing, entire weeks reassessing, entire years seeking, and an entire lifetime of evolution in that field? The day to day life and fitting in, being like everyone else, living in comfort of thought and life in the cave of Plato are much more important to him, for him to gain genuine interest in the occult seems very unlikely, at best it would be what I call false occultism. The diluted occultism seen in most social media.
I would say that a good magician has, though in a non-exhaustive list: critical thinking, discipline, curiosity, willing to experiment, to practice, introspection to some degree for the occult is inherently a self-exploration, perhaps an introverted nature. Ambition, at the very least in wanting to become more than the practitioner was yesterday.
Because solitude is the best furnace of transgression and innovation there is, it pays its price with loneliness, ostracization and eccentricity.
I would say as well, a willingness to adapt, to change (obviously), to requestion pre-established mainstream dogma as other traits. A willingness to be different, and to separate from a common, entirely ordinary life, or at least, a willingness to have something outside of this ordinary life.
There are other points I would have appreciated to talk about, such as secrecy in the occult (still uncertain if I will mention it further), the importance of practice coupled with thought (philosophy) and conceptualization, and the necessity to first accept the possibility of ordinary results after certain events, rather than automatically attribute them to an extraordinary outcome (my last thread as of writing is a living example of that). But i’ll see, who knows. Further writings of my experiences will be given, probably, at least.
If I had to summarize all of this, magic is very magical.
” when there are so many preparations required in truth. Ability to not think and just feel? Yeah I don’t think it’s baseline for most people.
. Confusing in a good way, my brain’s processing power is struggling to keep up but I’m here for your deep insights!