Squares and Matrices

Magic squares are one of the oldest and most widely used practical systems — that is, a method that allowed one to extract, to “purchase,” certain energies from the world’s potential.

In China and India, in Japan and the Arab lands, and of course in medieval Europe, the creation and use of both numerical and alphabetical squares with various properties and purposes was a distinct and significant branch of the magical arts.

Both Abramelin, Agrippa, Kircher, and Dee devoted considerable attention to this area of matrix magic. Judging by the presence of an “antipsychotic” Jupiter square on Albrecht Dürer’s engraving “Melencolia I,” by the sixteenth century magic squares were also being used for therapeutic purposes.

Squares are used as amulets, they are employed in evocations, sigils, and new Names of power are derived from them; finally, their construction became a common mathematical exercise, a training of logic and attentiveness.

Since the realizational activity of these forms is evident and their cultural-traditional significance great, let us attempt to clarify the mechanism by which this activity operates.

Two such mechanisms are known.

First requires certain knowledge, as well as mental activity of both the creator and the one who applies the square. The essence of this mechanism consists in directing the mind itself into a given matrix through direct contact with the apparent semantic field of the square. One might say that this is a psychological mechanism.

From the standpoint of this mechanism, a Magic square is a method of “short-circuiting,” of creating mental loops, based on immersing one in various symmetric or palindromic structures.

Even simple numerical squares, for example one of the oldest — the Lo Shu square (3 by 3 cells), attested in Chinese sources from the 22nd century BCE and corresponding to the European Saturn Square — are capable of powerfully holding the mind and focusing it in a particular direction.

At the core of the squares’ influence on the mind is precisely their matrix structure: the harmonious matrix of a square “resonates” with the corresponding structures of the psyche, activating them and facilitating the flow of energy through them.

For the “launch” of this mechanism of influence, the square, of course, must be engaged with by the mind: read if it is alphabetic, or calculated if it is numerical.

At the same time, as with other sigil-based amuletic structures, the action of magic squares is not reduced merely to capturing the conscious mind and its direction.

The very creation of such sigils is a creative magical act that activates various energetic currents independently of the involvement of the intellectual/conscious component of the mind.

Therefore the second mechanism of the squares’ action pertains to influencing the balance between the potential and actual modes of existence, to changing the tension of probabilities of particular events.

Just as Runic sigils open possibilities for the activation of particular vectors, magic squares create in the space of probabilities a field that facilitates the activation of certain matrices.

For a Magus it is very important to understand that, regardless of how clearly both the creator of the square and its user comprehend the nature of that matrix and the specifics of its operation, a correctly made square will exert its influence. Naturally, the strength of that influence varies according to the Power and Authority of the square’s creator, the material on which it is inscribed, and other conditions, but, like any operative symbol, the square is inscribed into the fabric of reality, modifying it in this case in the aspect of matrix assemblages.

Therefore both the art of creating and the application of such structures demand great responsibility, and in skilled hands magic squares can become an invaluable aid to the manifestation of realizational activity and to the mental development.