Balance and Compromise

The Way of the Magus constantly runs along the razor’s edge between two chasms, each of which is ready to swallow him.

Therefore achieving equilibrium is one of the Magus’s key skills.

At the same time, parasitic inhabitants of the Psychocosmos are not idle and insert, instead of constructive equilibrium, a destructor in the form of the idea of “compromise.”

We have already said that biners, within which the World-process is realized, can be neutralized in three different ways: 1) by finding a compromise, or an androgyn — that is, a unit including elements of each of the biner’s poles; 2) by integrating, i.e., finding a unit that will sum the biner’s poles within itself; and 3) by balancing on the edge between the poles. It is precisely the last option, accompanied by the maximum difference of potentials, that creates the greatest possibility for the Magus’s movement.

Despite society’s generally positive attitude toward compromises, in Magic this method of neutralizing biners is the least effective, because the resulting androgyn lacks independent vitality apart from its poles that produced it, although it is more real than either pole. In fact, the manifested world is composed mainly of androgynes of various biners. Thus, for example, water is an androgyn of oxygen and hydrogen; each of its molecules consists of atoms of those gases, yet at the same time water, although it can be split again into those gases, loses all its properties. Salts are androgynes of acids and alkalis, twilight is an androgyn of day and night, green is an androgyn of yellow and blue, and so on.

It is clear that creating an androgyn is a mutual neutralization of the poles of the original biner and creates a situation with a minimum of free energy, and therefore with minimal potentials for development.

The Magus, by contrast, strives to generate as large an impulse for movement as possible — therefore neutralizing biners by creating androgynes is not suitable for him. Magi try to avoid compromise whenever possible precisely so as not to halt their movement.

Integrating biners, although more appropriate for Magi, is not always the most effective method. As a final goal, integration implies completion, and therefore — cessation of movement. Integrals are encountered less often in the manifested world than androgynes and are always somewhat conditional — the integral of hydrogen and oxygen would be the abstract category “gas”, of acids and alkalis “a reagent”, of day and night “a day”, and of blue and yellow “white”. We have already said that this approach is more characteristic of mystics seeking unity behind multiplicity than of Magi who strive to preserve multiplicity within unity. Integrating biners is the Magus’s ideal goal, but that does not mean it is his only course of action. By integrating dualities, the Magus transcends them and thus opens up possibilities for further movement. But the movement itself is born on the brink, in balance.

It is precisely balancing on the razor edge of the Threshold between the poles of a biner that produces, on the one hand, composure and sobriety so necessary to the Magus in his struggle, and on the other gives movement a push to his movement. The Magus does not consider green a compromise of blue and yellow; for him blue is an independently valuable quality, as is yellow, and green too; the Magus does not see it as possible to focus on neutral elements — he is always one foot in day and the other in night, and only thus, without being blinded by the day or enchanted by the night, can he find the strength for his Way through infinity.