City Magick: Urban Rituals, Spells and Shamanism - Christopher Penczak 2001
Reality
The Three Rs
MAGICK IS A SKILL AND A DISCIPLINE. City magick is a peculiar brand of this craft, working with the same natural, ambient energy found all around us, but finding these energy reserves in the most unusual places. To work with the power of the city, you have to understand some basic magical concepts. You need these building blocks before you can create your magical house. You wouldn’t attempt to study a particular area of science, like organic chemistry, without understanding the introductory chemistry course. Magick is the same. Magick is an esoteric science, but it is also an art, full of creativity and expression. True craftsmen in this discipline balance art and science with spirituality. Magick embodies all three.
Like reading, writing, and arithmetic from more traditional schools, magick has three basic building blocks—its own three Rs: reality, rapture, and ritual. Not every practitioner of the magical arts will know them by these names, but the concepts are familiar to all who walk between worlds. By understanding these concepts and how they work in more traditional arenas, you can understand how they apply to this brand of urban mysticism.
Reality
Reality is the form in which we perceive ourselves, our environment, and all those with whom we interact. Reality is our structure. Most people define reality as the physical universe, a place defined and measurable, containing matter, energy, the laws of physics, and linear time. Reality is only the things discovered by the physical senses or those scientific instruments that heighten our physical perceptions. Basic rules apply to reality. Matter is arranged in tiny interlocking particles. What goes up, must come down, thanks to our friend gravity. Earth always revolves around the Sun. Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. These things are immutable. They are only immutable, however, in this reality.
The physical universe is only one perception of reality. Granted, it has been the dominant perception of people on Earth for several thousand years. Physical, three-dimensional reality is one portion of the reality spectrum. Think of a shadow. Shadows are a part of us. If shadows are conscious, however, and only pay attention to the flat ground and other shadows, they will live in a two-dimensional world of darkness and light. As we do simple movements, we change the shadow’s reality. If the shadow doesn’t see us, however, it doesn’t know why some things are changing. If it looks beyond the shadow realm, it sees a more complex being to which it is connected, and a more complex world of color and three-dimensional form. We are but shadows of something more intricate. This “something” is still us, it just exists on another level. Some people call it the divine or higher self, or Holy Guardian Angel. Many more things exist in these nonphysical and nonvisible levels of reality. Some people call them planes, dimensions, or worlds, but they all refer to the same ideas.
Many mystical systems are used to define these levels of reality. The most basic starts with the physical and nonphysical, lumping everything that doesn’t fit into physical, linear space-time into the nonphysical, spiritual realm. Shamanic traditions often divide the realms into the physical middle world, the underworld below us, and the upper realm, or sky world. Each is filled with various mythological characters and contains different powers. The tree symbolism is strong here, with the middle world as the trunk, the underworld as the roots, and the sky realm as the branches and leaves. More complex systems, particularly using the tree symbolism, are plentiful. Norse traditions say Odin made the universe by placing the nine worlds of their cosmology in the World Tree. The Hebrews and ceremonial magicians speak of the Kabalah, the Tree of Life, defining reality as a neat map of ten different spheres and the various paths connecting them. More modern concepts of seven, nine, and thirteen dimensions come to us from the lightworkers of the New Age movement. No matter what you choose to call them or how you categorize and characterize them, they are all different areas of reality.
One thing common to all these models is the ability to find new realities. In each of these traditions, someone was able to perceive and even travel to these realms and bring back new information. The information is colored by the tradition’s own history and outlook on the world, and the limits of the explorer’s experience in them, but so much common ground is shared between them. The mystic of the community is called to traverse these worlds and open perceptions to this new realm. The mystic goes by many names, depending on the culture, tradition, and role. The shaman is the most accepted in these practices, but witches, Druids, seers, priests, and mages play a similar role as intermediaries between the physical and nonphysical realms. The link between these traditions is simple—magick. Magick draws them together. Each one relies on a form of magick, making changes through their contact with unseen forces. I find that all these traditions work with the core elements of shamanism. The shaman’s role, moreover, crosses into other areas associated with seers and healers. My own practice of magick and witchcraft is intimately tied to the roots of what we now call core shamanism. Some traditions rely more upon the psychic medium, rituals, or otherworldly journeys, but they all create change on the physical level of reality by working in another layer of the reality spectrum.
All of these other levels of reality have rules and customs, but, since they are not physical, the dynamics working there seem very fluid and insubstantial to the normal linear mind. Travel there is often not physical, leaving the traveler with a dreamlike impression of the realm. Everybody can perceive these levels, and probably has at one time or another. We touch upon other realities during our dreams. Intuition and other natural, psychic gifts are senses that may not work in our physical definition of reality, but they are real and point the way to new levels of existence. Perception is the key. Perception is nine-tenths of reality. The other portion of reality is affecting us, but we are unaware of it. If we do not acknowledge it, then, for our personal reality, it is not there. We are multidimensional by nature, existing in this world and many others. Remember our relationship to our shadow. We will never realize the scope of our being if we choose to close off and block out these other realities. An openness to a new view of reality is the hallmark of the magician.
Although mystics often have a calling or strong gifts opening the way to other worlds, everybody can work with them on one level. If you’ve picked up this book and want to be a part of the magick around you, you probably already have what you need. Anyone can open to it if they really want to experience new realities. I’ve seen some of my students who were completely unconvinced of other magical realities have very moving experiences. I don’t know if they changed their beliefs, but the experiences did affect them for the better on some level.
Hallucinogens have been used as tools for opening the doorways of perception by people who follow magical traditions and pop cultural trends. Unfortunately, many people who do so recreationally write off their experience as a good or bad “trip,” not realizing that the world they saw exists beyond the effects of whatever drug they took. The door is open. It’s your choice whether to keep it open, or even to remember where it is. These are tools. They shouldn’t become crutches. They may help you achieve your goal, but you should never grow dependent upon them.
In most Native American cultures, the shaman of the tribe had the most spirit helpers and traveled to the other worlds more frequently than any other. Each member of the tribe, however, had some helping spirits. Each could partake in a form of vision quest or initiation, working with the spirit world. It was not an exclusive right of the shaman, but the shaman was considered the expert in these realms. The entire tribe was empowered. For those of us living in the Americas, living on the land of the Native Americans for better or worse, I see us adopting these principles as more and more people come to pagan and New Age circles seeking to connect with the magick. I think this is the best hope we have for the future survival and success of all.
Once you understand that there is more to reality than meets the eye, or any of our sensory organs, then you can start experiencing the other realms through meditation, magick, and journeying. Your perceptions and abilities will open up to fit your new model of reality. When working with the forces of the city, you will learn to walk the streets of the hidden cities, those realms existing side by side with normal reality, like any other nonphysical realm. Now you’ll know where to look for the magick there.