Echo of Events

As we have ascertained, each state of the cosmos requires a certain set of elements to be present, and the disappearance of any such element must lead either to a radical change in the overall structure or to the emergence of an «imprint» temporarily filling the resulting void.

This principle applies not only to objects but also to events unfolding in the world.

Any volitional act performed within the system as a whole must align with the system’s developmental logic.

If it does not, the system’s striving to preserve itself in a stable state will prompt the World Environment to create ‘counterforce’ that balances the given manifestation of activity. This phenomenon is well known in Magic as the «return blow», or more precisely, as one of its varieties.

Yet even when an action accords with the “logic of the world,” it still affects the being that produced it.

Two situations can occur here.

The first is another variety of the «return blow», encountered when an influence directed at some object is, for whatever reason, not assimilated by that object and, by virtue of the principle ‘like attracts like’, returns to its source. In other words, if the target is impervious to that influence — either due to the peculiarities of its nature, because of a deliberately constructed defense, or because the influence itself lacks sufficient strength — then the volitional impulse and the vortex it generates, after brief wanderings through the Telesmi, return to their point of origin and seek to rejoin it. There are thousands of examples, ranging from comic to tragic, of Magi who fell victim to such return blows.

The second situation arises when the influence reaches its intended target, no return blow follows, and the world accepts the new state incorporating the action. As the cosmos develops, owing to the cyclicity of that development, after a certain interval it re-enters a state that requires the aforementioned event. In other words, a similar state arises that calls for a similar event, which, if it finds no current expression, generates an reshimo. That is, either a need to repeat the same action appears, or an “impression” is created that the action has been performed again.

Strictly speaking, the latter phenomenon is traditionally called the “echo of events,” although in practice it is often difficult to distinguish it from the other mentioned forms of “repetition” (Neheh).

Magi frequently fail to account for the possibility of an echo, and having protected themselves against a return blow by one method or another, and having convinced themselves it was absent or deflected, they relax — and are unprepared for the echo that falls upon them like a snowdrift.

Moreover, danger may reside both in the “compulsion” to repeat the action and in the reshimo of that action, since the logic of the Magus’s Way does not necessarily coincide with the logic of the cosmos.

To avoid the limiting influence of an echo on his Way, Magi have developed many methods of disidentification and «non-attachment» that allow them to sever ties with past actions while still accepting responsibility for them.

In any case, a Magus must remember that any action he performs will inevitably return to him either as a return blow, as a repetition, or as an imprint, and he must always be ready to respond effectively to such an echo.