Liber Null & Psychonaut: An Introduction to Chaos Magic - Peter J. Carroll 1987

Enchantment
Liber LUX

Magical will may exert its effects directly on the universe, or it may use symbols or sigils as intermediaries. The creation of direct effects, like prescience in divination, represents a high point in the art and is just as elusive. Making things happen by either method is referred to as the art of enchanting or the casting of enchantments.

From a magical point of view, it is axiomatic that we have created the world in which we exist. Looking about himself, the magician can say “thus have I willed,” or “thus do I perceive,” or more accurately, “thus does my Kia manifest.”

It may seen strange to have willed such limiting circumstances, but any form of dualistic manifestation or existence implies limits. If the Kia had willed a different set of limitations, it would have incarnated elsewhere. The tendency of things to continue to exist, even when unobserved, is due to their having their being in Chaos. The magician can only change something if he can “match” the Chaos which is upholding the normal event. This is the same as becoming one with the source of the event. His will becomes the will of the universe in some particular aspect. It is for this reason that people who witness real magical happenings at close range are sometimes overcome with nausea and may even die. The part of their Kia or life force which was upholding the normal reality is forcibly altered when the abnormal occurs. If this type of magic is attempted with a number of people working in perfect synchronization, it works much better. Conversely, it is even more difficult to perform in front of many persons, all of whom are upholding the ordinary course of events.

In trying to develop the will, the most fatal pitfall is to confuse will with the chauvinism of the ego. Will is not willpower, virility, obstinancy, or hardness. Will is unity of desire.

Will expresses itself best against no resistance when its action passes unnoticed. Only when the mind is in a state of multiple desire do we witness the idiot agonizations of will-power. Pitting oneself against various oaths, abstentions, and tests is merely to set up conflicts in the mind. The will always manifests as the victory of the strongest desire, yet the ego reacts with disgust if its chosen desire fails.

The magician therefore seeks unity of desire before he attempts to act. Desires are re-arranged before an act, not during it. In all things he must live like this. As reorganization of belief is the key to liberation, so is reorganization of desire the key to will.

In practice, many difficulties can be gotten around by using various types of sigil. The desire is represented by some pictorial glyph, by a wax image to be wounded, bound, or healed, by the characters of a magical alphabet, or by some image in the mind's eye.

All these serve as a focus for the will. Concentration on these spells should be augmented by some form of gnostic exaltation to cast the enchantment.

When considering any form of enchantment, remember this: it is infinitely easier to manipulate events while they are still embryonic or at their inception. Thus does the magician turn that aspect of Chaos which manifests as causality to his advantage, rather than oppose it. The desire then manifests as a convenient, but strange, coincidence, rather than as a startling discontinuity.

The will may be strengthened by one other technique aside from the concentrations of magical trance, and that is by luck. The magician should observe the current of his luck in small, inconsequential matters, find the conditions for its success, and try to extend his luck in various small ways.

He who is doing his true will is assisted by the momentum of the universe.