Progeny of the Mind

Even while acknowledging the inseparable unity of the cosmos and the conventional nature of dividing it into Macrocosm (“outer” world) and Psychocosmos (“inner” world), many Magi nevertheless fail to fully grasp the depth of that unity and prefer to separate “spiritual reality” from “physical” reality.

Such a separation renders the mind less effective in which it must use artificial categories like the “materiality of thought” or the “astral.”

The birth of phantoms, the shaping of reality “by the power of thought,” the creative force of imagination — these are seen as special acts, supernatural or, in any case, essentially beyond the natural.

For many Magi a major obstacle to expanding awareness has been the conviction that there exists a separate “physical sight” and a separate “inner sight”; while the credibility of the former rarely gives rise to doubt, the latter at best is seen merely as an experience.

Indeed — does the Magus see a spirit during Goetic operations with ‘physical eyes’ or with ‘inner sight’? The question is perfectly sensible.

And in that lies a most powerful distraction.

On the one hand, Magic is not mere solipsism. While recognizing the Great Spirit as the ultimate reality, it does not deny the importance of the objects of its self-knowledge.

On the other hand — the Magus is primarily action-oriented, and one can act effectively only when fully convinced of the “reality” of the action itself.

Magic also insists that the world is only a product of description, and therefore one can change “reality” only by changing the way it is described.

Yet so long as the mind uses a given description, it plays by its rules, follows its internal logic, and is constrained by it.

The forces that create methods to translate perception into the language of descriptions are great and numerous — Archons, Demiurges, Gods. They ‘compile’ perception, translating its “source code” into images the mind can understand.

The reality accessible to the mind is limited by two factors. The first is the availability of energy. Each current state of mind is capable of working with a certain set of energies, and that set depends on the mind’s prior state, its capacities for perception and interpretation. The second is the convenience of a description. The mind usually prefers not to use all available energies available to it, but only those that seem most “convenient” or “important.” If the first factor is determined by the level of development of the mind, the second is often shaped under the influence of various destructive forces that aim to hinder that development.

Returning to the question above, one can thus say that the Magus “sees” a spirit by interacting with it directly, establishing a connection between his mind and the spirit’s mind, while the way he interprets that interaction depends on a number of factors — the freedom of perception, the strength of his bodily grounding, and mental flexibility. A Magus who claims that he “sees” a spirit with physical sight is no more right than a Magus who says he sees it with “spiritual sight.” Both are merely interpretations of the interaction, and the question is not how that interaction is interpreted but how valuable it is — that is, whether it leads to mental development or to mental degradation.

The Dragon, awakened in the depths of a Magus’s mind, may well manifest in the “physical” world, and a demon called into the triangle of art may seize control of the Psychocosmos — and this is not insurmountable.

The forces with which the mind interacts are both inside and outside it simultaneously, and any conscious action is both macrocosmic and psychocosmic.