High Magick: A Guide to the Spiritual Practices That Saved My Life on Death Row - Damien Echols 2018
Know Thyself
Final Thoughts
That sentience I referred to in chapter 19 is always there, no matter where you are. You just have to be open to seeing it and hearing what it has to say. Magick doesn’t typically speak to us with lightning bolts or clouds parting or bushes burning or a booming grandfatherly voice or any other method popular in ancient books or modern movies. Well, it can — but that’s usually not how it’s going to work. In my experience, magick more often sounds like your own voice communicating quietly in the depths of your heart, in corners of your consciousness, and in the hidden aspects of your spirit and soul. It lets you know when you’re on the right track, and it certainly tells you when you’re going astray. But it can take a while to get the hint, to read the signs.
My main advice is to pay attention to everything, inside and out. Remember that as far as magick is concerned, the dividing line between internal and external is merely conventional. Again, it’s not helpful to get too attached to the results of your magick, but you can always ask for signs, especially when it comes to guidance for a particular matter. If you do so, be open to answers of all types. They may come to you in the form of that inner voice I spoke of, or maybe just as a wordless, gut feeling. You might begin seeing a particular color that has special significance to you everywhere you look, or you might receive an unordinary visit from a particular being — a type of bird flying overhead that means something to you personally, for example, or an unusual stranger on the bus. If you ask for a message, let everything in and discover what magick is trying to communicate about the situation.
At this point, I hope you have experience using magick for all sorts of reasons: blessings, protection, divination, guidance, and so on. Please keep in mind that one of the main reasons to practice magick is for the health of your energy system, and focusing on that purpose will bring benefit to pretty much everything else in your life. Magick makes your aura stronger, your mind clearer, and it cleans and activates your energy centers. Over time or due to lack of use, our energy centers become stagnant or blocked, and we need to clear them out in order to be able to channel more divine substance. In some ways, this is the essence of what magick is all about: channeling more energy, chi, prana, formless fire, or whatever else humans have known it as. Ideally, we’re able to draw on more and more energy as we age, but to develop this capacity it’s important to maintain energetic hygiene and respect the value of the fundamental practices of magick. If you want to advance as a magician, it’s crucial that you continue these techniques throughout your life. Don’t let the simplicity of the preliminaries and foundational practices fool you; without them, the advanced practices are mere words and gestures.
Don’t let the simplicity of the preliminaries and foundational practices fool you.
Olympic atheletes don’t just train every now and then, or get warmed up just minutes before the competition starts. They train like their lives depend on it: every day, relentlessly, no matter their mood or situation. Anyone who wants to grow as a magician and enact changes on the physical plane should do the same. Doing magick becomes something like a reflex to the well-trained mage. It’s fine to read books on magick and have conversations about it, but just talking about food won’t fill your belly and satisfy your hunger. Real change and progress can only happen through practice and the trials of your own experience.
In this book, I’ve presented the very basics to get you started, and hopefully you’re well on your way by now. Remember that the journey belongs to you. You come to this work with your own intentions, gifts, karma, and energy system, and your discoveries will be yours and yours alone. When we talk about the Great Work in magick, it all starts with mastering the basics and finding which techniques (and variations on those techniques) work best for you. That doesn’t happen overnight, and it takes a lot more time and effort than most people will ever devote. But those who do will find treasure beyond imagining.
Magick requires personal responsibility and your own authentic involvement on the path. Magick is for people who aren’t content with what the world is selling them — or tries to — every day. Many people would rather give their spiritual authority to others — to religious leaders, ancient holy books, or even to governments and science. These people derive comfort in believing that others can do their work for them; it alleviates their anxiety to think that everything has already been mapped out. Magick doesn’t offer this. There’s no room for dogma or underdeveloped displays of devotion here. Magick is not a religion, and magicians are not devotees as much as they are artists, scientists, and explorers of the multidimensional network of divine energy.
Inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi some thousands of years ago were the words “Know Thyself.” Some people say that this aphorism comes from an even older inscription in the Luxor Temple in Egypt that said something like, “Know thyself so that you might come to know the gods.” All around the world, the magicians of old knew that the secrets of the external universe are found within, that we are a reflection of that universe, and at the same time we play a co-creative role in the endless unfolding. By exploring the so-called interior, we come to understand how the so-called exterior operates, and the more we understand the overall, interdependent process, the easier it is to shape and direct. As above, so below; as within, so without.