What is magick?
Magic is commonly defined as the use of power to exert influence over people and events. Magicians are believed to be able to control the supernatural world and conjure up and command spirits to do their bidding. Some magicians have special ‘allies’ or helping spirits, sometimes in the form of animals (an owl or cat being the most popular.) Some cultures believe magicians to have the power to shape-shift into animals, to fly, and to control the weather. Magicians are believed to have knowledge of how to make magical potions and charms that can cause any desired effect, and are also said to have powers such as seeing into the future.
Magicians themselves say that the true purpose of their path is to know oneself, and the acquisition of magical powers is at least incidental and probably a serious diversion from the spiritual intention of the Work. To walk the path of magic you need to uncover what has been previously hidden both in yourself and in your understanding of the forces of nature. The magician's art is in learning how to explore and develop your own self-actualisation. A true magician does not use powers to be better, wiser, more advanced or somehow superior to others. True power comes from within your own inner world, including your weaknesses and your strengths, your shining heights and your shadowy depths. To attain this power, you have to align yourself with the flow of natural energies and harmonise your existence with the natural world. This leads to a co-operative and careful use of power rather than to the dangers of imposition and delusion.
To be a real magician means learning to see the ‘something else’ that is inherent in everything with which you come into contact. This ‘something else’ is given various names such as ‘soul’ or ‘meaning’ or ‘energy’ but by whatever name, it involves a language of in-sight into your deepest nature. As well as enabling access into worlds of dreams and myths, magic enables a magician to have a compelling presence in this world.
Most simply, magic is easily defined as a way of making things happen that you want to happen. The more relevant question is: which ‘you’ wants what to happen? We are fragmented beings, much of the time at the mercy of our subpersonalities. Like the different players in an orchestra without a conductor, they play only for their own needs and not in harmony with the other parts. Becoming the conductor with your inner orchestra is the first real initiation into magic. It means that you are, at least some of the time, in control of your life.
The second great initiation is becoming the composer, the creator of the music. This is not as difficult as it sounds, you know the experience already. It's what could be described as ‘thy will not my will be done’, surrendering the ego to the divine Self, often experienced in those times when you just know what you are doing is right, on track, at one with everything.
Magic shows you that you are already a fully resplendent being. You are the creator of your world and collectively of the reality we create together. Magic enables you to see the mirror of your own true nature which the world offers you each and every moment. Magic is being in the moments in the here and now, the first aim of all systems of spiritual attainment, Eastern and Western. Magic is being able to say ‘this is my life now’ – and realise it is true whatever you are experiencing. At the bottom line, magic is the royal road to the only goal of the Work – the leap to freedom.
Magick spelt with a ‘k’ is a term popularised by Aleister Crowley to define the ‘science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with the will’. It aims to distinguish spiritual practices – real magic/magick as described above – from stage magic or illusion, but of course much ‘magickal’ work is done under the name magic without the ‘k’. Some ‘magicians’ don’t want to be associated with such a controversial character as Crowley. There is also the mistaken belief that to follow the path of ‘magick’ you have to accept that ‘Liber AL’, Crowley’s text for the New Aeon [or Age] but this is not necessarily so as the way of magick stresses that each individual has to find their own truth.
For an increasing number of people, magick is seen as deeply connecting them to a way of understanding and moving forward in our continually more complex and ‘broken’ world, the key being to find one’s ‘true will’ and focus on making that the central purpose of one’s life. As it says in AL: ‘every man and every woman is a star’.
Ignoring all the cultish and pseudo-religious accretions to this path is difficult these days but at core it is a highly credible and viable future blueprint for humankind. The intention is to create a world based on love directed by the will, where every person finds their ‘true will’, their own inner ‘star’ to follow, and then focuses their life on aiding others to also find their ‘true will’ or life purpose. Sounds fantastic but unlikely considering the current state of the world, but you never know! Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be the Whole of the Law.