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Lesson 5: Having a Magickal Attitude

Well, as the title implies, this lesson is about the attitude you must maintain in your life if your magick is to be successful. This is a short list so don't be too distressed. The only possible problem is that this list is absolutely critical. Skipping one of these needed qualities will result in the failure of spell after spell after spell. However, many of these qualities are easily gained with experience.

I'm going to list these in order of necessity. Some may feel that one quality is more important than another, but most agree that this is usually the list of most needed qualities.

• One word: Will
• A knowing, not a believing
• A sense of non-doubt (the only way I can describe it)
• The ability to visualize
• The ability to do many things at once
• The ability to almost think something, but not quite
• Arrogance

I state that one needs arrogance because it's pretty arrogant to think that actions that we do here are going to carry over to the Gods and affect them, just as their actions will affect us.

I'm going to elaborate on the above points for a while since they could use some additional definition.

Will:

Will is the key to all magick, not the person (ha, ha), the attitude. One must have the will to do things, the will to drive it through the æthers to the rest of reality. Without this ingredient, you may as well recite poetry for all the effect your spells will have on reality.

(Tangent time) Some of you may ask which reality, and that's okay. I'm talking specifically about this reality. It's this plane that many of us wish to affect with our magick, to bring what we desire into our lives. Whether it is for the betterment of ourselves as people, the betterment of our skills as providers or what ever else you will to change. It would do no good for you to cast a spell to make yourself a better person if what you need is a spell to bring more money to you. However, this is a subject for another time.

In order to do one's will, one must know what one wants. By this I mean that one must know those deep areas of oneself to see if what the Conscious mind wants is what the Subconscious mind wants and what the Superconscious mind wants. Once one feels the desire is in harmony, one must be assured that it will cause as little harm as possible to others. Again, while this is a topic for another time, it is vital that one always be aware of it. While it is possible in my experience to override what those other areas want on a regular basis, it's not something that one can do all the time or with impunity. Knowing with the conscious mind that having a better job will lead one to having more money is great, but if other parts of your conscious mind simply want the boss' job, then casting all the spells to find another job will ultimately fail if you don't know that you want to see the boss fired and you sitting in his office.

This is one reason why I stressed that one must know one's own mind. Using the above example, if you knew that Subconscious wanted your boss's job, it would be easy to meditate and get the Subconscious focused on getting a better job, rather than on what it wants. But you must FIRST know what those deep parts of you want, meaning the Subconscious and Superconscious.

There are also two kinds of willpower that I'm speaking of here. One is the desire for something, be it an object or a goal, and the other is the force of spirit to push that desire into reality (with the medium of a spell) despite opposition.

Simply desiring something is not all that is required, this must be a desire that makes everything else become a minor want in the background of your life. This desire should, at best, be a complete obsession in which attaining that desire is the only goal you have. Nothing else matters outside of gaining that object that one wants, or that knowledge, or what have you. This should be the only thing that is worthwhile in your life.

There are those who can't maintain that level of desire for long without slipping over into true insanity and obsession. In the case of the Magickian, it is possible for the practitioner to be able to desire something that completely for a relatively short time period, then end the spell and go on to another want/desire for a while. It is also possible that they simply go on with their lives after that, safe in the knowledge that they will get what they want.

The point of this is the Will that drives everything. How many times have you been thinking of someone and that person has called you? How many times did you get what you had been dwelling on eventually? My mother dwells on how "righteous" her children are and how they MUST follow the Profit (yes, I'm being catty in regards to the Mormon Church) and she is deathly afraid that someone will fall away from the Church, and eventually I did. She also dwells on how she can get messed up by the world and the people in the world, and so she is getting messed by them.

If you show me someone who has everything in their lives going wrong, I'll show you someone who doesn't know what they really want. Aleister Crowley called this level of knowledge and will one's True Will. It's much easier to get something to happen if one knows their True Will, than if they continually try to do things counter to that Will.

"A Knowing, not a Believing"

This is going to be somewhat hard to explain, but try to stick with me here.

To know something, to accept fully that it is an unquestioned fact, one that does not change at all, no matter how many outside influences come to bear on it. Knowing that the sun rises in the East, knowing that the moon is a rock, knowing that the air is what we breathe are all examples of a knowing that is unquestioned, and thus they focus us and are unchanging.

A person who is outside who knows the sun rises in the east, who is lost and confused with no direction can orient themselves by the sun (which is in the east) and find their way home if they are skilled enough. By knowing that the sun is in the east at that time of the day, they can at least extrapolate where home should be in relation to their last known position.

However, if the sun were to rise in the west sometimes, the east sometimes, the south west sometimes and so on, knowing would move into the realm of believing the sun rises in the east.

A belief is something that can or cannot be proved. It is something that is subjective and sometimes personal in nature. It changes depending on the circumstances of the observer. A lot of times a belief will have "as far as I know" attached to it.

Knowing implies doubt to your psyche and subconscious. Doubting translates into failure at some levels because the circumstances can change and what was true one moment may be true no longer, and thus failure is imminent.

So when I say that a Knowing is important, for me it is the second most critical thing there is. Without knowing that magick exists and that you can do it, knowing that your spell will work, you could fail. If you only believe in your magick or spell, you are already setting up yourself to fail. There is the doubt in the back of your head that is saying, "this could change" and "it may not be true."

Knowing that your spell is the key. It's a hard one to master because we have been taught all our lives to think that magick is the realm of fantasy and myth, that magick does not exist in the "real" world. We have been taught to trust only that which we can see, touch, taste, smell and hear, because that is all we know about. We may have been taught about faith as children, but it is the rare person who can retain that innocent faith as they grow to adulthood in this world.

Well, I say bunk. There are any numbers of senses, but one must understand that just because we know those senses exist it does not follow that we will understand the input from those senses. Let me give you an example of this.

Empathy is becoming one of the more common abilities that people have. I'm not sure why this is, but when asked, most people will be able to tell you that they can feel what others are feeling, even when they don't know what is going on. Look back into historical documents or personal journals and you will probably find that this is not necessarily so among a large percentage of the populace.

Just because we are developing this sense, it does not mean that the instructions will be coming along any time soon. I'm sure when our primordial ancestors walked out of the ooze and had stew for dinner (read The Princess Bride if you don't get the reference) they didn't know how to coordinate their limbs and didn't know what that "touch" sensation was either. They didn't know that this thing, with it's point, would hurt you if you touched it, and they didn't know that it only hurt if you touched it and put pressure on the sharp part, so forth and so on.

So, empathy is something that we have to know, rather than believe. Magick is the same way. There seem to be more and more people who are able to sense magickal energy and know that it exists, but without that knowing, the magick will not be there.

Please understand something about my personal philosophy (tangent time and background info on Daven). I know that all of us are more than we seem to be. I know that we all are gods and goddesses in training. This world is our training grounds where we came, voluntarily, to learn how to use our incredible gifts and to learn different lessons. Because of this, the world around us seems to be real and complete. We look like we will cease to exist when the body dies, and it looks like there is nothing happening outside of us that we cannot observe.

Yet I have come to understand something, because we are gods and goddesses, it is possible to tap into that knowledge and understand how the true reality is put together. It is not this place, nor our bodies, nor our senses. These are the training films used to get us to understand ourselves. We can re-write the script and the film to suit our needs at any moment. If I need to learn a lesson in humility, something will happen to me to force me to be humble. If I need to learn what it is like to have a spell fail, then all I need to do is to doubt that magick exists.

Did you get that? "Believing" something implies failure, and because it implies failure at some point it will fail, if only to teach us what it is like when it does fail. But if we are writing the scripts as we live, then knowing magick exists will make it so. This then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is one of the core parts of my personal philosophy, and it is also a part of just about every magickal tradition there is. Part of the advice of almost every school is to never doubt the magick or the spell, to have faith in it and to know it is working. Well, this goes directly to this part of a magickal attitude. The knowledge that the magick is there, working and the spell will be successful is critical.

I don't see energy flows, I don't see magick when it goes out of me, I don't see energy that is raised. I can feel that energy, like silk against my skin, and I get goose bumps when it flows, but I know the energy is there and that I can tap into it. Thus, I am able to do so. If I only believed that I could do that, most times I wouldn't be able to touch it at all.

So, on to the third component in a magickal attitude!

The ability to visualize:

This is one of those skills that you either have, or develop, or you do without it. It's not that hard a skill to develop either, and many of you are developing it now, or have in the past.

Why do I count this as one of the critical skills? Well, it's easy. Not all of us have the ability to see the energy that is flowing around, or see the spell we just cast as it starts operating. In many cases, we have to visualize that energy flowing around and into our desired end in order for it to have an effect. For instance, I can't "see" it with my third eye or my real eyes (I'm somewhat headblind), but I can see it in my mind's eye with my visualization. As long as I can visualize it, I can make the energy go where I want it to go.

Additionally, many spells in the current crop require someone to be able to see the end or the goal in their mind's eye in order for it to be "set" correctly. In other words, you can't see the spell working; you have to see it done. And once again, in order to do that you must be able to visualize.

If the goal can be seen while the energy is being called to feed the spell (since energy can't be created or destroyed, you are actually calling it from someplace and channeling it into the spell), then the energy starts flowing into the shape of what the outcome will be.

Let me give you an example. If I cast a spell to get an A+ on my exam, calling upon whatever forces I think are appropriate, and I can see my exam paper with a big red A+ at the top, the energy flowing into the spell SHOULD start moving very specifically. It should energize me so I have the stamina to do the studying needed and retain the knowledge, it should start making a "filter" to highlight the information going in and what I already have to make retention easier, as well as making recall of that same information much easier. It should set up "data dump conduits" to the Akashic Record and the Collective Unconscious so I can access the information there if I need to during the test. It should start making a pool of energy so that I remain awake and alert during the exam. All of this should happen without my direction, IF my visualization of the GOAL is accurate enough.

Then it's simply a matter of studying as I normally would. I did not see the means for me to get the A+, I did not see the shunts and spells and components that the spell set up to allow me to get that A+, but I saw the end. If my visualization has been accurate enough, my will strong enough and so on, then when I get that paper back I should have my A+ on it.

This is one of those spells that give a boost to what is already there, and help a process that is already existent along, kind of like Nitrous Oxide being pumped into the cylinders of a car that is running flat out. It gives a powerful boost to what is already there, but this does not mean that you can just let the spell do it all on it's own, there will still be a lot you have to do.

Still in all, being able to visualize the end result is one of the keys. Without being able to do that, just about everything else is useless. It will help, and you may ultimately get an A, but not the A+ you need.

So how does one go about honing the visualization skills? Well, there are several methods that one can use. But really it comes down to practice. One must get into the habit of being able to visualize things down to the smallest component on a regular basis.

You can do visualizations during your meditations, in which you simply think of a common object you have, like your rings. Imagine them in as much detail as you can get, from the feel of them, to the scratches and nicks on the surface of the ring, to the smooth inner side to any writing on it. See it suspended before you in three dimensions, and larger than you are. Move yourself around the ring and through it, inspecting all sides of the ring. Then actually look at the physical counterpart and see how accurate you were.

Doing exercises like this consistently will hone your visualization skills. The next step from there would be to visualize something you want, a feather or a stone, in as much detail as you can, and do that consistently again, then finally things you would have in spells. Scenes and places are good things to visualize and so too is objects. Consistent practice will help you with this skill.

I personally used the medium of Role Playing Games to hone my visualization skills. In most RPG's, the master of the game, the person controlling the story and all the people in the world except the player's characters, describes scenes to the players that they are interacting in. After a few months of having scenes described to you, even the most unimaginative person will be able to visualize a circus ring down to the last hay stem laying under the feet of the lion. Then it's a matter of being the master yourself, and keeping in mind, clearly, not only the scene that the players are in, but also what else is going on in the rest of the world. Being able to describe the various scenes is a huge help as well.

Which brings us to our next key:

Multitasking.

Keeping in mind that once you start a spell, that usually you are not doing ONLY that spell, being able to multitask is a real benefit. Look at it this way:

If you are working at a job, chances are that you can't start something and go until it's done. Normally you are waiting on other's to finish one part of a job, so that you can take that part and put your effort into it, to give it back to them and so on. It's the rare thing where you can sit down and devote as much time to one thing as needed to get it worked out.

Add into that normal family life, and when you leave work and come home being able to shift gears and focus on your family with the same intensity you just gave to the job, run here and get that and do this laundry and so on, and once again, you can't afford to give all your attention to one thing until it's done.

Well, in ritual magick, you MUST give all your attention to one thing, but you won't be able to finish it immediately. Other components and parts must be added at appropriate times for the ultimate outcome to follow the pattern of your will. The skill in being able to focus everything you have on THIS spell, to help it along and give it more energy, then shift gears completely, and give that same attention to THAT spell, all the while keeping in the back of your mind the fact that the spell is still working and going on, without interruption, and still going to work out. And being able to do all that while still not letting those thoughts distract you from what you are doing NOW is a real help.

Okay, so far this sounds impossible, right? Not so, as magickians have been doing this for centuries now. Every magickian of renown, every one of them had these skills and more. They were able to ignore the fact they spent their last copper on this component for the spell, and focus on JUST this spell, rather than worrying about their empty bellies. They were able to focus on the spell so that it became the only thing in their universe. Then when that spell was done, they were able to just as thoroughly drop that awareness and focus on something else.

It's a skill that many of you have, I bet. Being able to focus on driving, being able to focus on a song, being able to focus on a book, and so on. Don't worry that you can't do those simultaneously yet, that takes time and practice. For now, just focus on one thing to the exclusion of everything else. Find that thing in your life that you can "tune out" the world while you are doing it. Then start expanding that to other aspects of your life. Don't strain and grunt, because that makes it harder. Relax and let yourself be caught up in the activity and forget about everything else. Allow those cares to fall away until all that is left is you and the activity you are doing.

That is the essence of this exercise and skill. It is a form of meditation and self-hypnosis, and a purposeful tunnel vision. You can practice by doing your meditations and your exercises in focusing your concentration.

And the next skill flows out of this one.

The ability to think something, but not quite.

This is a skill that I picked up on and it shocked me when I did. I knew there was a thought in the back of my mind, a little voice that would whisper "this is not real, you are fooling yourself". While I could hear it, I would not let it bubble to the front of my mind, where I would end up thinking it.

Did that make sense? I have tried to explain this concept to others and most were unable to understand what I was talking about. This is another of those critical skills, since if you know your subconscious is thinking that this ritual, this spell is fake, you HAVE to prevent yourself from thinking it or you will mess up the spell/process you are working on.

You would not believe the amount of things that the subconscious thinks and considers, that you never think of or hear. That is because most times the subconscious is simply busy assimilating information, having emotions, filing input from your senses and all the other jobs that it does to be able to shout loud enough for you to hear its many comments about what you are doing. But every now and again, there will be one or two comments it can make that escape and affect you.

Because of that, you need to know when one of those thoughts is coming, and then not allow it to leave your subconscious. This can be done.

The process for hearing these thoughts before they are thought and quashing them is a series of stages really. The first stage is to allow the thought to come to the front of your head, and then take immediate steps to counteract that thought.

For example, if one has been taught from childhood a particular prejudice concerning weight, race, religion, or any other thing, when circumstances cause the prejudice to come into effect, you must then take immediate steps to minimize that thought or negate it completely. If the thought was something along the lines of "they are lazy no-good people..." then you must append to the back of that IMMEDIATELY "but that's a stereotype and many ____ are wonderful human beings."

What this process will do is start bringing to the forefront thoughts that have been affecting you like that for some time, so that you think it in words, instead of thinking it in feelings as you normally would. Once the feeling or thought can be articulated, you can take steps to correct that thought.

After a while, you will get a feeling when one of those thoughts is "waiting in queue" as it were. You will "feel" a thought waiting to come out, and you can simply not let through. But sometimes it will be a good thing to let that thought flow so you can see the "shape" of negative thoughts.

I occasionally get thoughts about being scared when I see a police officer on the road. This is due to some really bad incidents when I was younger. I know that potential for being scared is there, and I know that if I let that fear out, it will resonate on the Astral Plane, and it *may* draw the policeman's attention to me. Which will then cause him to pull me over and then I will get even more scared and so forth and so on, becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy.

So the solution is to not feel that fear. I know what the mental "flavor" of thoughts and feelings like that are, from experience. So I see the policeman now, I taste the "flavor" of one of those "fear thoughts" and I refuse to allow it to come to the front of my head and affect me.

It's this "pre-echo" that I'm talking about. When I asked about this phenomenon among a group of spell casters I belong to most of them could relate to what I was talking about. It's another skill that will develop with practice and meditation. In many ways it is a compartmentalization of your conscious mind, but in this case it can be a good thing. In many ways it is burying your head in the sand and ignoring something you don't want to see, but this is only a detriment if you never go back and deal with that thought in the first place.

All this brings us to another critical skill, although there are those who would argue that this is not a skill so much as vanity.

Arrogance

I know that this sounds more like a disadvantage than a skill you have to have for a magickal attitude, but trust me; this is one quality that is good in small amounts. The caveat of course is this quality can get you in severe trouble if you don't watch it.

So, you have to have a certain amount of arrogance. Most often this means that you have a total knowledge that your magick will work, that you are very good at what you do, and that you can handle whatever comes your way. But along with this are a few dozen notes of caution.

Make sure that you actually do know what you are doing. Getting into a situation because you were too confident to read the manual is one of those things that will cause most magickians to laugh at you, if you survive. So, read through the directions a few times, think about what you want to do, make sure you have what you need to do it with, THEN be confident you can handle the spell.

In magick, as I have said in many other place, knowledge is key and trust in yourself is primary. Knowing that you can do is just as important as knowing that the spell is doing.

Another caution is that you have to acknowledge those who have more actual experience than you do in their areas of expertise. Granted you may be an absolute grand master in your own area, but when meeting someone who has more knowledge in an area you know little or nothing about, you have to respect that knowledge, while at the same time not allowing them to disrespect your knowledge.

For example: I'm on an email list of a whole bunch of Druids and we talk about Druidic philosophy and history and spirituality. On that list, there are many who have been practicing Druids for 40 or more years, who are accounted masters in their fields. There is one gentleman who is a natural scholar and has studied the Celts and their social structure for over 20 years at this point. He knows the history of the Celts and their society, as do few people I have met. I acknowledge him as a master of history and someone I could learn a LOT from, just as he acknowledges me as a master of Magick on that same list, and someone HE could learn a lot from.

Recently a young lady came on the list and decided to make trouble. She started spewing facts that were counter to 90% of the lore we have access to, and I took on the job of correcting some of her more obvious mistakes specifically with Magick and Ritual while other members covered areas of their own expertise. She countered not with facts and references but with the accusations of the group being elitist and "more expert than thou". She actually appears to have thought that we would not stand up for our individual areas of expertise.

In private, I stated to another Druid (in response to her accusation that we were trying to be "the experts") "aren't we? I have about 20 years of experience in magick, parapsychology, metaphysics, psionics, ritual and meditation. I have twice the practical spell-casting knowledge of anyone on this list and about 4 times the book knowledge. Doesn't that qualify me to call myself an expert?"

This is the kind of arrogance I am talking about. Not false humility, not a sense of worthlessness, but a true acknowledging of your skills and abilities as compared to other people. Knowing what you do know, and more importantly knowing where you need to increase your skills.

For instance, in this class, I am speaking as an expert in most things, but you will notice that if I don't know something, I say so. If I am familiar with some aspect of a tradition or path and not familiar with the deep teachings, I also say so. I know that there are those on this list who have twice my experience with (fill in the blank) style of magick, but I also know that there are things they can learn from me. I acknowledge both states and I don't let my arrogance in being a generalist interfere with my humility in one specific aspect of magick. I know there are things I still need to learn.

This is the arrogance I speak of, the arrogance of excellence.

But then, it's not arrogance; it's statement of fact.

All these skills together make up a magickal attitude. It is an attitude that can be carried around and over into all aspects of your life. In today's world, being willing to stand up and say, "I don't know" is just as valued (in some places) as a willingness to step up and say, "I can do that."

Don't confuse this attitude with morals. They are two completely separate things, and each magickal system has it's own set of morals and their own moral structure.

Wiccan magick, for instance, says that one MUST only use magick for non-harmful purposes. By that ethical and moral structure, you can use magick to bring money into your life, but you can't use it to punish someone who has harmed you. However, Satanic magick states that it is entirely acceptable to ensure that someone who has wronged you will get what s/he deserves, especially if s/he have wronged you in some way.

So, it is up to the practitioner to find out what ethical/moral structure is imposed by the Magickal School being studied. A portion of the ethics will be daily life as well as the appropriate circumstances for the use of magick as well as if it can be used for personal gain etcetera.

Once a comfortable set of ethics are or created or studied the practitioner is free to concentrate on the structure of the magick rather than dwelling upon the background of the magical school. Skills such as visualization and will power, the ability to think in a certain way, and specific spells can be the focus of study.

Make no mistake; those ethics will be called into question multiple times during throughout the life of the practitioner. This is normal and good for it requires the practitioner to redefine his ethics on an almost daily basis. However once the general shape of your personal ethics are defined, any ethical crises of conscience should not alter those ethics that much. If they do, you should and must reexamine your path, something is wrong.

For example in contemporary Christianity it is considered wrong to kill. Because that is one of the basic ethical believes of the system, 90 percent of the time it is not called into question. However, there are specific instances where it is acceptable for Christian to kill in modern society. For example, as a member of the Police force or during times of war as a member of the military it may become required to kill in the course of duty. This puts the onus of responsibility for the decision on the individual Christian. It is those differences that cause so much conflict between individuals in the same ethical system.

So, the practitioner must define those gray areas inside him/herself on a case-by-case basis. Once one's personal ethics are defined, then all the other attitudes can be enhanced. It is hoped that most people going into magickal study will already have some experience in stubbornness, in daydreaming, in thinking things in the back of their mind, and so on. However, it is understood that in many cases this will not necessarily be so. This is why most schools of magickal study will give exercises to students, to build and strengthen those unused portions of the brain.

This is also why skill in magick relates directly to skill in Astral Projection and vice versa. It is why some of you are experiencing spontaneous astral episodes during the exercises for this class. It is the same set of skills. These episodes may get more intense when we move on to the direct energy manipulation exercises and the exercises designed to show you if you have "second sight" or the ability to see into other realms like the astral, or the ability to see auras. If you find this disturbing your waking or sleeping please let me know.

Do not think that once you learn one system of magick or morals that you can drop it all and suddenly begin believing a set of other morals that are either contradictory or drop key pieces of belief out of your structure. For instance, most people who currently follow a Wiccan morality set had a hard time dropping the "nudity taboo" that is common in most other morality sets, such as Christianity. It took them a long time to be able to discard that fear of being seen without clothes on, the fear of ridicule and that feeling of unattractiveness. I know it took me a long time to do that, but nudity is demanded by the Wiccan morals, especially in the magickal practice.

The point of this part is to remind you that there WILL be a time of adjustment to a new set of morals and beliefs. One should not rush it and should use this time to study the system in more depth, as well as adjust the thinking of the practitioner. Meditation is, once again, the key to this time. It is also one thing I'm speaking of when I talk about the "Dark Parts" of the mind that the new practitioner MUST know in order to function properly.

Okay, having pointed this out to you all, I'm going to share the "Magickal Laws" now. This is the set of laws that are used in MOST styles of magick. This is what has been passed down to us from other times, and it is based in Witchcraft and Hedge-Witchery, with a good leavening of Ceremonial and Hermetic Magick thrown in. These laws are what have been observed in magick, which is why they became laws. However, like everything else, they are ultimately subject to your control, if you are strong enough. If you want your magick to obey these laws, then you simply need to decide that it is so.

This is taken from a document that I found on AOL a long time ago, and as far as I know is not attributed to any author. If any one does know the origin, please let me know and I will be happy to amend this document.

I'll add my thoughts to these in parentheses at the end of the "official version".

Magical Laws

1. Law of Knowledge: to effect/affect a thing you must know the thing. The more you know about yourself the more you can know something else. (This law is in action mainly for humanity, not things. The more you know a person the more you can affect the actions of that person. The more you know yourself, the greater chance you have of affecting others and knowing others. This is one of the main reasons I harp on "know thyself" so much to my students.)

2. Law of Identification: with your will you can become anything- be one with anything. [Our only tool is the brain] (I would assume that this is would apply to being able to project and become that thing, astrally. However, having never seen this in action I don't know. My wife points out our occasional overlaps during study of the occult as a refutation of that statement. We have meditated together on one subject and begun fusing into one person regarding thoughts, opinions and feelings about that subject. In fact my family calls us Meric and Airy instead of Mary and Eric.)

3. Law of Contagion: anything that has been in contact with something else maintains contact with that thing through the ether. (One would add that this is intimate contact. Some magickians go so far as to say that anything that was in contact with something just a split second retains this etheric connection, but I don't give credence to this. I can see how it COULD be, but I don't agree with this stance. This law would apply if I took the shirt of someone I wished to cast a spell on, since they have been in continuous and intimate contact for an extended period of time. However, taking a portion of the ground where they have stepped would NOT. Still, to each their own. This is why the masters of various schools demand that you safeguard your tools and materials when not in use.)

4. Law of Names: knowing the True Name of something defines the action you take to focus a function on that thing. (Obviously, this applies to living animals. Keep in mind that names vary from culture to culture. This is also the "truename" of the soul.)

5. Law of Cause and Effect: under exactly the same conditions using the same actions you will always obtain the same results. (This is one of those principals that should be unstated, however, some people include this as a law, when it is a principal of the universe.)

6. Law of Infinite Data: there is more in the universe than we can sense or know. Learning never stops. (Some go on to include that knowing as much as possible about the subject will give you greater control and power over it. Just knowing that someone is called Charlie is not necessarily enough, however, knowing that Charlie is a gay male in Connecticut USA, who enjoys sitting in the woods alone while in women's dresses, would give you enough information to be able to locate his "record" in the Akashic record and do some research on what would affect him the most.)

7. Law of Association: if a thing reminds you of something else it can be used as a simulacrum for that something else for magickal purposes. (This is also called the "Law of Sympathy" or Sympathetic Magick. If this herb reminds you of the shape of this organ, it can be used to affect that area of the body. Things like killing a figurine of a buffalo in a ceremony would ensure a successful hunt. In witchcraft, this is probably the most commonly used law.)

8. Law of Infinite Universes: change your perspective in one area and you change your universe. There are always three choices available. (I don't think this could be seen as a magickal law, but many do see this. I do believe in multiple universes, and thousands of choices at every impasse, but we may not be aware of all of them. Plus, too much will depend on the choices of others. However, when you can apply this magickal law, tremendous changes in YOUR psyche can occur. For example, being hung up on your work, and deciding to change your mental outlook about opening your own business can result in a multitude of opportunities being available to you that were not before.)

9. Law of Invocation and Evocation: there are forces outside and inside of you that you can tap and direct through your brain. (Which again, should be one of those unstated things, but let me define these two terms really fast: Invocation; inviting forces outside of your self to have an effect on you and your environment. Evocation is using your will to affect yourself and your external environment. When dealing with extra-planar beings, one wants to be on the invocation side of the equations, since inviting them spreads goodwill.)

10. Law of Pragmatism: if it works, it is true. (This is one of those rules that everyone knows, but no one talks about. It's the basis of Chaos Magic, and for most of my system of magick, which you will learn about during this course.)

11. Law of Predestination and Free Will: events are predestined, each person chooses whether and to what extent to participate in them. (I used to believe in this law, but circumstances have shown me how fragile this "law" is. September 11th only occurred for us, on almost every other world I know of, this never happened. So, there must be SOME principal that explains this. Perhaps, "Free will can overrule Predestination. Participation in events or not can change human-made events.")

12. Law of Polarity: everything contains and implies its opposite. (One of the principals of Hermetic Magick, also known as the Law of Balance. If you push on someone very hard in one direction, they will try to compensate in the opposite, and eventually they will swing to the other extreme.)

COROLLARIES:

a. As above so below. You can extrapolate the universe from one atom. (One of the laws of Hermetic Magick, as found on the Emerald Tablet.)

b. Rhythm serves as a counterbalancing pendulum. (Which correlates with the Law of Polarity above.)

c. "Chance" is a Law, which tends to be ignored. (It's ignored all the time, but one must NOT come to rely on it.)

d. "Time" is a function of perspective, subject to the aggregate psychological outlook of your society. (If one can gain perspective by Astral Travel, you will realize that space is a function of time, and both are artificial constructs of our perceptions. Closer to home, one who lives a strictly agrarian life like the Amish is attuned to a seasonal clock, for them time passes much more slowly than for someone in New York who had continual deadlines in their job.)

e. Matter is a function of energy; energy can be converted but not destroyed. (However, we can usually only convert matter into energy through burning, not the other direction with the exception of turning our food into new cells to replace old ones. When we learn to do that, we truly will be the masters of the universe.)

f. The combination of any two energy forms will result in a third energy form more complex that the combination of the original two. (Also known as a gestalt, in which the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. Normally this happens accidentally, rather than in a planned form. However, on the Astral Plane, this is not only possible, but it occurs all the time. It all depends on the world you wish to work on.)

g. Even though there are always three choices available, you can always think of another one. (and hopefully another and another and another....)

h. There is no such thing as a wrong emotion, just an incorrect interpretation and manifestation thereof. (If you become angry for some reason, look at the cause and your response to it to control how you react. Most times you can't control what someone else does, but you can control how you react to that circumstance.)

i. Don't take yourself too seriously; you are a physical function of a very young race. And Life is a lowlife clever practical joker that loves to piss on your plans - keep your sense of humor. (I know of no circumstance in which humor in a ritual caused catastrophic consequences. NO one has ever been hurt for laughing. The worst I know of happening is that the ritual had to be started again. Other than that, most times I hear the Gods laughing at me as well.)

j. It may not matter 10,000 years from now, but if it affects you it matters. Understand it and react accordingly. (This corollary tends to get overlooked these days. One is assumed to be able to ignore the immediate reactions and see the "big picture", and ignore the fact that it makes us uncomfortable NOW. However, if it affects you, then it is real. One must understand this in order to completely function in a magickal mindset.)

k. Don't pee in the beer. (Always good advice, meaning "don't shoot yourself in the foot" by setting up artificial barriers with things like "I can't" and "I shouldn't". Have confidence in yourself, and others will have confidence in you as a result.)

That's it for now - your assignment will follow.

Assignment:

As you have been charging your batteries with Moon, Wind and Earth energy, now it's time to do Water. You have several choices at this point in how to do it, but one thing I want you to do before you start drawing this energy is I want you to completely ground.

Go through the grounding/centering ritual, but when the energy runs out into the ground, cut the connection before that energy comes back. Draw energy ONLY from the water until you fill yourself back up. Then reconnect your Ground and let any energy come back into you. Dump all that energy into your battery and sever all the connections.

The purpose of this is so you have no distractions with other energies as to what the energy feels like to you. Also I want you to know exactly what it feels like to have all your energy gone, so you know the difference between energy depletion and a potassium imbalance for example.

Another set of exercises I want you to undertake as you can is to ground into other objects besides the Earth. Ground into the Air and dump your energy there, ground into a tree, into a cat, so on and so forth. Those of you who have access to snakes I want you to ground into them. I have found in my experiences that animals generally shunt energy to and from themselves without thought, and that snakes simply cleanse energy you put into it. For example, giving a snake energy from a contaminated sword as you are cleansing it will result in the snake giving you back only energy, with no qualities or contamination at some future time.

However, I would like those of you who are grounding into other animals to be very careful. You can hurt the animal if you give too much energy to it, or energy of the wrong type.

Last exercise: I know that all of you have been working very diligently on charging your battery, now I want you to completely drain it. Drain that energy into yourself and keep it there for ONE day, allow your battery to stay discharged for that time. Then, dump all that energy back into the battery later.

This is to get your body used to transmitting/holding/storing/moving great amounts of energy. Normally you will have huge amounts (on the order of 20 to 50 times the amount of energy in your battery) moving in a spell, and you HAVE to know your physical reactions to that amount of energy. The time to find out that moving energy like that through you will result in all your energy going with it is NOT in the middle of a spell that requires your concentration. You HAVE to know what physical/psychological effects there are going to be on you, and what kind of personality effects you will have to compensate for during the day when you have that much energy in you.

I would suggest doing this last exercise on a weekend so that if there are adverse effects you can compensate for them in a controlled environment.

Some things to do if the energy starts overwhelming you is:

Ground it all out to the Earth Send all the energy back to your battery Eat some bananas and Gatorade to rebalance your electrolytes and potassium. Have someone who is experienced in doing this on hand to help you. Take a shower and let the extra energy drain away into the drain.

If you do start "loosing it" you can put all that energy back into your battery, or into another one. You could also dump it into your car. I know that sounds daft, but trust me, those of us who have been dumping energy into our vehicles on a regular basis over time we wind up with a sentient car.

As to your journals: Write the results and your feelings and experiences to these exercises down, especially your reaction to holding that much energy in you for an extended period of time. It is possible that you won't have much of a reaction, but it is just as possible that you will have a major reaction. It is important for you to know this and be able to have something to refer back to.

Those of you, who are conducting personal research into various schools of magick, continue to do so. Everyone should read "True Magick" by Amber K in preparation for out next class. If you cannot read that book specifically, any book dealing with Wiccan Magick should do, as they are based on the same principals.

I would like to see your reactions to the preceding energy exercises, however I understand that you will probably not have time to do all these and turn it in. So send in what you can.

And finally, I should apologize to all of you. I have been being plagued by many real life issues and have not been able to make it to the interactions. Do not think that this means I do not care or that I won't answer questions. Far from it, any of you who have questions can email me directly at daven@davensjournal.com with your question, and I will assemble them into one "extra" lesson for posting to the email list. It is outside the scope of the class, which is why I call it extra, but it will still be part of this class. Depending on the amount of questions I receive, I can't promise they will be regularly spaced throughout the course. The first could be two weeks, and the next a month later, and the next two days after that.... So on and so forth.

Other than that, have fun and keep your sense of humor.

Daven

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