Gratitude: the Art of Putting a Full Stop

Namely, each differentiated action must be completed in order to pave the way for subsequent actions. Accumulation of unfinished actions not only slows movement but also leads to loss of Power, since each of those unfinished acts constantly demands an influx of power.

For the Magus, the skill of completing actions is important both strategically and ritually.

On the one hand, only by putting a full stop to one sentence is it possible to begin the next. Until the full stop is placed, the battle is not over, and therefore further progress is impossible.

On the other hand, any reception also requires giving: when one receives something fully, the recipient, along with the acquisition, partakes in the desire to give that was the other pole of the process: for someone to receive, someone else must have given. In giving something, the expansive side of the process shares its expansiveness, and the receptive, attractive side acquires that “desire to give.” Therefore, to complete the process it is necessary that this newly acquired impulse also be acted upon — that is, the one who has received must also give something.

This idea underlies the concept of gratitude — not only as sacrifice but in the sense of the act of completing any deed.

That is, for a ritual to be complete, it must include a “letting go,” which is most effectively realized precisely in gratitude.

Moreover, gratitude is not simply a formal act accompanying any reception; it is, as we have already seen, the condition for ending the process itself, the rupture of the bond between giver and receiver. This idea, though obvious, is of enormous importance. Ingratitude, so widespread in the modern world, is one of the reasons for people’s low Power levels and the confusion of their movements.

In its profane sense this notion has flowed into a practice common to many strands of Magic (or rather — witchcraft): charging for magical services, which is explained by the fact that a fee interrupts the connection between the “magus” and the “client.” Tradition speaks unequivocally against this view, asserting that paying with ‘material’ for the ‘spiritual’ is unequal; in effect it amounts to mutual consumption, and is therefore Qliphothic by its very nature. At the same time, it is clear that, first, in the case of “social” Magic the client pays the operator with their time and, second, it is precisely gratitude that constitutes the equivalent payment, since the “spiritual” is paid for with the “spiritual.”

For the same reason any making of a magical item has always been well compensated — the craftsman who received payment for his work lost his link with his creation, and it passed, including energetically, into the ownership of the recipient.

At the same time it is known that fortune-tellers do not accept thanks — and this too is understandable, since the severing of connection caused by gratitude disrupts the seers’ link to those streams of information to which they are connected. Nevertheless, for deliberate actions gratitude remains an essential component of completion.

Gratitude must be present in every action involving receiving. It is no accident that religious acts and prayers abound with thanksgiving to God (to the gods) — by doing so a full stop is placed on one reception, and thus the road is opened to the next. In other words, by thanking the Higher Powers for some gift one thereby opens the possibility of another gift, and so on.

For the Magus gratitude is also an important skill that ensures more effective movement — it distinguishes his Way, adding freedom and independence, and thus eases the flow of Power.