On Authenticity in Magic

As humans, we are spirit-generating and spirit-interfacing beings, whether we choose to work as magicians or not. Just like most people cannot stop their mind from thinking, so we cannot stop our imagination from attracting or creating spirits.

The nature of an ecosystem is that once you are a part of it, there is no more stepping out of it. The system runs through you. It grows, meanders, evolves not with you as a counterpart, but as an integral component.

That is the human condition regarding its relation to the spirit world: To interact with the spirits, we do not need to shift or alter our consciousness. Just like we host millions of bacteria in our gut with whom we coexist, so on a spiritual level we are continuously interacting with a broad weave of spirits, coming and going, moving with the tides of time. What we can do, is to learn to become conscious of these processes – and then to engage with purpose in this already present, effervescent exchange.

In the East, the path towards such conscious spirit interaction is often marked by the idea of inflation. I.e., what blocks our current inability to literally see the forest of spirits before the trees, is that our selves have begun to cling on to too many ideas, objects, and experiences. We have become inflated. Our sense of self has swelled into an amoeba-like form of I, Me and Mine, always hungry to accumulate more within the perimeter of our selves that is already stretched to the breaking point.

Many forms of the Eastern paths are thus marked by the practice of letting go, of reducing to what we cling to and identify with. Once our self becomes leaner and lighter, once our self turns from a tower of accumulated thoughts and beliefs into a transparent cloud, we can begin to see the world around us, without getting in our own way. Phenomena reveal their true nature to us, once we have reduced the phenomena of our Self.

Inflation-free, rootless, victorious over all: 
there is nothing else to accomplish. 
With such realization devils are pacified.
Moreover, it is self-occurring self-pacification. 

Noncognizant stupidity in the realm of phenomena cognized as objective is deluded by grasping.

– Machik’s Complete Explanation, London: Snow Lion, 2013, p. 297

In the West, the path of liberating ourselves from the ecosystem we were born into took a slightly different turn. Looking at more than two millennia of spiritual practice in the West, the central position in its armoury of spiritual tools is firmly held not by techniques of non-thought, but by prayer.

Nuns, monks, folk-men, and noblemen all have searched for this path: Of casting their self aside entirely, not even taking the time to dismantle the illusions it is caught up in, but instead seeking to direct their gaze directly and immediately into the light and presence of Divinity. Where meditation dismantles the idea of any counterpart, of any form of dialogue, prayer is the epiphany of dialogue, as it is a human’s attempt to directly converse and commune with the being that resides beyond all forms of creation.

If we juxtapose root-practices of East and West in such an exaggerated way, it is to make one point clear: Neither of them is the way of the magician.

We said the human condition is a hive, is being a legion of spirits. As magicians, we hold no intention to escape this state. Our journey is not one towards divine transcendence or even ethereal sublimation. As magicians, explicitly, we do not attempt to escape the ecosystem of creation we have been thrown inside, woven inside. Rather, our path is to begin to see and empower ourselves so that we can consciously engage from within this chaotic, mesmerising, beautiful, painful cycle of creation and destruction.

To achieve this, we will happily blur the artificial lines between East and West, between meditation and prayer, between becoming transparent and becoming illuminated. We walk our path without any sense of pride or prejudice, but open to stealing from anywhere. As long as it serves our purpose of becoming an empowered part of the weave of creation, by working in close collaboration with the spirits.

So at times we might aim to gaze into the Light of Divinity. At other times, we might aim to become weightless and to reverse the process of inflation. Yet, none of our practices ever aim at becoming lost to the world, but to affect change from within it.

Magicians are the ultimate agents of creative involution. Where other spiritual traditions have erected stairways to heaven to escape the ruthless wheel of creation, we happily take another ride. To be a magician, you have to be in love with a deeply flawed and often cruel creation. Otherwise, what would motivate you to invest all of yourself in it?

This informs the essentially opportunistic attitude of the magical path: The mage’s training for months if not years might follow strictly the same patterns as e.g. a Buddhist or Christian monk adheres to; only to suddenly branch off and apply everything that has been gathered and learned not to step back from creation, but to step deeper into it.

This opportunistic pattern can partially explain the confusion that marks the nature of the magical path. The dichotomies it has been artificially trapped and become entangled in are countless: Whether it was defined relating to a dominant spiritual culture (orthodoxy vs. heterodoxy), relating to a social position (mainstream vs. underground) or relating to the purpose of its ritual approach (folk vs. high magic, theurgy vs. goêteia, etc.).

Now, to bypass these dichotomies we might need to shift our attention away from techniques and towards attitudes: We might need to stop trying to sharpen the characteristics of the magical path by differentiating its outer practices, its social position or its relation to power. Instead, we might want to begin examining the inner human qualities, which we as practitioners need to master, precisely to not get trapped in dichotomies such as the above.

Why would this matter, you might ask? To concentrate on the inner attitude towards one’s work, rather than the work itself? – Well, let me answer with an observation: These days it is easy to come across people who have spent years delving into magical practices, and yet do not have the simplest clue about magic.

While such a statement will make me sound terribly aloof and arrogant, it is actually not an extraordinary thing to observe at all. Magic in this respect is no different from any other liberal art or craft: One can easily waste a lifetime studying it, without ever coming to embody it. These days, many people have gone into the business of perfecting a persona as an artist or magician, without ever creating something worthwhile being called art or magic. One can curate an identity of being on the edge, of being out there, attuned to the weird and Other, while actually doing nothing but remixing other people’s accomplishments. Or not even that.

This is actually not a problem at all; unless people, who major in the business of publicly or privately curating their personas, would actually want to become authentic magicians. Because when we begin to be authentic, out of pure necessity of the process, we cease to curate.

Becoming authentic means we stop having a choice. Not even in the stillness of our heart, alone with ourselves. Especially not then. Being authentic means that the expression of who we are stops being a product. Instead, it becomes a byproduct of our pursuit, of our struggle, our million failures, and few successes in seeking a genuinely authentic voice. And in this expression, if we get lucky, we will tangentially touch truth. Not capital-T-truth, but lower-case truth: the ephemeral, delicious, precious moment, when we see eye to eye with the world we are woven into. Strangeness looking into the eye of strangeness, Divinity being perplexed about the miracle it encounters in itself, a wonder faced by a wonder.

This is the human position in a world filled to the brim with miracles, many painful, some pleasant, all of them poisonous. They are poisonous, not as in the poison of death, but as in the venom that induces the breaking away from what currently is. The venom of stepping into Otherness. Standing in this poison, drinking from this venom day by day, gently and slowly guides us towards Charon’s low boat, that safely will ferry us from this shore to the other, when it’s our time.

If we choose to be on this journey, there is no need for questions of persona, identity, belonging, or even community. If we choose to be on this journey, we will always be by ourselves, but we also hold the privilege to be no one but ourselves.

Our essential tools on this journey - our version of a compass, a Swiss-army knife, and a pair of battered boots - will not be found in books on magical techniques or ritual detail. (These are indispensable on the journey as well, but inversely to times long gone they are now present in abundance.) Rather, our traveling tools will be found in learning how we hold ourselves against this world, as it breaches the perimeter of our beautifully curated egos and splinters our sense of self again.

The tools of authenticity lie embedded in the unimpressive quality of being able to call us back into the present moment with all of our (magical) senses. They are found in the silent quality that allows us to reconnect with our (magical) sight, taste, hearing, and overall sensing, right at that moment when the house of cards that we call our Self comes down again. Standing wide awake with all of our senses, surrounded by the debris of the certainty we lost, counts among the most magical of all life skills.

As we will see, becoming authentic in magic means we work forever nakedly. No dressing up in tradition, no shielding by other people’s Truths, no path paved for us out into the open. Only the big black door of ‘Here & Now’ in front of us, and the Moirae’s question if we dare to touch its handle.