Thoughts on Magical Identity | Part 1

A few people asked me to list the five most influential books on my path as a magician. Reflecting upon it, I realised, books indeed have been incredibly important on my journey so far. Yet, to a lesser degree because they ‘shaped’ me, and to to a much larger degree because they helped me validate curious first-hand experiences I had made. Books are truly magical tools, especially for making sense of the world in ways that otherwise would remain occult to us. They are powerful interventions that help us question what we thought was true or obvious, as well as to create a sense of inner community beyond the boundaries of time and space (‘Ah! So you experienced this as well - like two thousand years ago?’). However, in my humble opinion, none of the books that knocked me off centre would have worked this way, without the most essential ingredient all books rely on in order to create change within us: that is the raw substance of our own first-hand experience. And for magicians specifically, this means first-hand magical experience.

I have written about some of my own liminal magical experiences elsewhere: my ten year training at Imbolc, burying myself in a coffin and encountering my Holy Daimon, crossing the Abyss and encountering many powerful contacts in the Inner Library. What I have never shared though is the following experience. I thought I might offer this up, instead of a list of books, as a slightly more personal gift to whoever has interest in it. I’d like to call out that it is not at all a special or highly ad- vanced form of magical experience. It is amongst the most humble ones, open to all of us, every night of our lives: a dream.

This particular dream is more than twenty years old now; it happened long before I acquired any significant real-life magical experience in daylight. During that night, I was catapulted out of a previous dream-sequence, and very abruptly found myself on a vast, bright stretch of high desert dunes. I remember the piercing bright sky above me, and the rolling waves of golden sand reflecting the light back into the heaven.

I walked amongst the sand dunes, and after a while I found myself standing on top of a particularly large one. I was about to walk on, when I spotted something in the sand. It was a dark object, and as I bent down, and pushed the sand aside, the top of a black stone altar emerged. I dug further, and a black chalice, a dagger and other ritual items emerged from the sand. All of them had been buried intentionally at the peak of this giant sand dune. In fact, I realised, they had not been laid to rest for good, but simply temporarily covered with sand - until their owner returned. It then struck me: this was a temple still in operation, still in use, that I had accidentally stepped into.

Suddenly, and I have no clue how it happened, my mind caught up with the events that had happened in these desert dunes before I had arrived there. I could taste the magic that had been performed here, just by touching these paraphernalia I could feel their previous work inside of me - and suddenly I saw the silhouette of their owner standing on top of the dune where I was standing at that very moment. Let me be clear: that person did not appear in my dream, rather my mind’s eye looked back in time, saw the man standing in my place, working his magic on the altar - and for a moment his and my figures began to blur.

Never in my life before or after did I witness something so powerful and evil. Even now, so many years later, recalling the presence of that magician makes me go all silent on the inside. I compare the ‘emotional imprint’ I received from him to e.g. the Nazi ancestors who lived in the country I live on now. And still - the unwavering readiness to work through, with, and inside the realm of evil of this black silhouette on top of the desert dune is beyond comparison. Most likely any attempt to compare is foolish in itself - for who is to tell that this silhouette was human on the inside? Anyway, I am not telling the story of this dream to resolve a mystery, but to make a point about how our journey of becoming can be traced back to few significant events. For me this dream was one of them.

I awoke the next morning and could feel beyond the shadow of a doubt that this ‘place’ I had stumbled into in my dream indeed existed somehow somewhere. It was clear that this was not the usual download of mental images that happens overnight, this had been way too real and foreign. I began to think of it as an acci- dent, a bug, a flaw in the dream-matrix, that had made me a part of a sequence I didn’t belong into. But more importantly, following that night a single clear conclu- sion formed in my mind: If such condensed, pure evil exists out there somewhere and if it is actively working magic, how do I begin to think of my own magical path in relation to it? Of course, at the time I did not have a clear answer. Yet, a few fragments were obvious: If ever I met this magician again, I’d be done in a heartbeat, unless I became better - and much better! - at handling significant amounts of power. I needed a thick skin, experience to uphold it, and most importantly a space I could operate within that was not intruded by any kind of fear or self-doubt.

So this became the journey of my first ten years as a magician. As I went through the many changes that were part of this experience, I never had a clear mental image of who I’d like to become coming out of it. In fact, I never really be- lieved I’d come ‘out of’ this process of becoming any time soon. However, each step on this journey happened with one eye still fixed on the silhouette of the magician I saw on top of that dune. Whatever I intended to do or learn next, I always asked myself: Is it necessary to be ready to face this being again? For many years, my path was very much defined in antagonistic relation to this dream-figure. And however much I despised who he (or it?) was, in my heart I knew, I needed a lot of the same qualities in order to stand up to him one day: the ability to walk without fear, to hold power tightly, to endure pain, to numb emotions when unnecessary, to concentrate for long periods of time, etc. We both needed to become Saturn - but different sides of the same coin. For while he and I would be forged by similar forces, I was deliberate to put them to use in the opposite direction that he had been working on top of that sand-dune.

I guess, sometimes our identity can emerge from the most unusual places? Much more than a goal in itself, it can become the byproduct of a more meaningful journey we find ourselves entangled in… In this example, for a few chapters of my journey, who I was busy becoming actually had very little to do with what I personally wanted or desired. Rather it was determined by what I believed I had to get ready for one way or another, and pretty much despite any of my personal dreams or agendas. They say ‘common enemies unite’. In the same vein, a good enemy can make us grow quicker and taller than we would have ever attempted to do without them. So here is to all the things foreign and forbidding - and to us knowing how to treat them with respect.