The Breath of Death

No matter how much is said about the inevitability of death, or its finality, the overwhelming majority of people are convinced that “everyone will die” — except themselves.

Flirting with death, extreme sports, the inner sense that “there is still time” for any achievement and that one can begin to act “tomorrow” — these are clear evidence of that confidence.

It is obvious that such an attitude toward life and death is a basic condition for predators’ survival, yet, like all banal truths, a proper attitude to death proves in practice to be extremely difficult to attain.

Nevertheless, without this pivotal awareness, not only is any Magic impossible, but indeed any responsible, conscious life.

One who does not clearly realize (and not merely intellectually, but truly realize it with one’s whole being) that there is no power in the world that could guarantee that one’s life will last beyond the present moment will never escape the confines of being a victim.

All bravado before death is, in reality, aimed only at dulling the chill of its breath, which blows through every crack in the cosmos.

All spoken acknowledgments of death’s inevitability are likewise meant to drown out the inner voice of the terrible words: “I will inevitably die.”

And that utterance is precisely — the Magus’s first step.

Only later will an understanding of dying as a transition and the study of disembodiment follow, which, nevertheless, do not annul death’s finality. Only later will terrifying details and perspectives of the post-mortem mind be revealed, and the dangers of its clinging to the real world, but the first decisive step that turns a person into a Magus will remain awareness of one’s mortality.

Only when asked the common, crude question “what would you do if you had three days left to live,” a person sincerely answers: “nothing in my life would change; I live each day as if it were my last,” does one truly become a Magus.

And after this pivotal step, whatever the Magus does, wherever his Way may lead him, and whatever battles fate may offer, a sense of life’s fragility and the inevitability of death will become an invaluable ally in his undertakings.

And flirtations with death will seem ludicrous, and cowardly displays of boldness before it will seem absurd.

Fear of death does not abandon the Magus, but this fear loses its power over him. For death is absolutely inevitable and therefore can be regarded as a settled fact, which means allowing one to take up other concerns that, in its presence, gain special meaning.