Techniques and Methods

The key attitude in Magic toward the Way as a state, a form and mode of being that consists of a set of ordered, interrelated and systematized actions, is developed in the delicate balance between a lighthearted, relaxed ‘going with the flow’ and an anxious ‘practice’ of “techniques.”

On the one hand, the Magus is always oriented toward activity, actively “provoking” reality to manifest its potential, its energies, and their awareness; on the other hand, this intervention is not violence, not contrived or arbitrarily imposed upon it.

The necessity of ordered actions, which in the language of Magic is called their ritualization, also implies methodological rigor in these actions and therefore requires building a certain repertoire of schemes and approaches to such actions. In the narrow sense, the Way also implies a combination of methodological approaches applied and adapted to the specific situation in which the Magus’s mind finds itself.

It follows that, on the one hand, the Magus doesn’t fixate on searching for new “techniques” or “rituals,” but on the other hand, he cannot reinvent the wheel each time. The whole point is correctly determining when and which approach is ripe and thus can and should be used.

Learning Magic is, on the one hand, familiarity with standard ‘skeletons’ — schemes for solving typical ‘ideal’ problems and the accumulation of Authority — but on the other hand, the development of understanding, the sense of which method to apply in a given situation and how to adapt it to the situation.

The need to adapt the ‘standard approach’ is ubiquitous: “ideal” situations, “distilled conditions” are abstractions, and every new battle is a new deployment of forces which, although it may be “similar” to what has come before, is never identical to any previous one.

Ignoring Tradition and creating “new systems” can be dangerous because the approaches developed may prove too particular, valid only in a narrow range of conditions, whereas methods tested over millennia offer more possibilities and are more readily adaptable to a wide range of situations. At the same time, pedantry and copying “ancient techniques” are also fraught and can fail to account for new conditions in concrete situations, and therefore can lead to unexpected or opposite results to those anticipated.

The Magus’s mind must be disciplined, yet flexible; critical, yet tolerant; founded on experience, yet open to free creativity. The Magus does not copy “techniques,” but uses methods, and each of his Rituals is unique, although entirely traditional.

Moreover, it does not matter which ‘ritual’ we mean — a set of psychophysical exercises, evocation, meditation, vision-seeking or the Hunt. The Magus always combines methodological grounding with Authority, of his approach with a free flow of Power.

Magic must be learned deliberately. It seems to us that to be born is already a condition for existing. But to be born is merely to receive existence. For existence to become life, it must be cultivated. And for life to become aware — magical — one must learn even more and with greater persistence. One must not fall into the illusion that the Way is ‘natural’ as something that comes “by itself.” For the Way to become natural, one must first study it thoroughly and diligently; and to understand that the Way was never lost, one must first search for it diligently.