Natural Magic - Doreen Valiente 1998

Magic of the Mind

What does one need to work magic?

Many of the old books called grimoires, secretly handed down through the centuries, tell their readers of most elaborate requirements for the rites of magic. They describe consecrated swords, wands, pentacles and so on, together with rare incenses and other strange formulae. But the greatest adepts in the magical art have also made it clear that all these things are but the outward trappings. The real magic is in the human mind.

Cornelius Agrippa, one of the most famous magicians of olden times, says in his writings: “Unless a man be born a magician, and God have destined him even from his birth to the work, so that spirits do willingly come of their own accord—which doth happen to few—a man must use only of those things herein set down, or written in our other books of occult philosophy, as means to fix the mind upon the work to be done; for it is in the power of the mind itself that spirits do come and go, and magical works are done, and all things in nature are but as uses to induce the will to rest upon the point desired.”

The mind, then, is the greatest instrument of magic. Nor do we need to go back to the middle ages in order to see it at work. One of the most remarkable public demonstrations of what the ancients would certainly have called magic was given on 12th September 1954, at Orillia, Ontario, Canada.

The magician on this occasion was Dr Rolf Alexander, a New Zealander who graduated in medicine at Prague, and later became a pupil of the famous and mysterious philosopher, Gurdjieff. The witnesses of his demonstration were the Mayor of Orillia and more than fifty other leading citizens. Moreover, proof that what they saw was no illusion is provided by a series of independent press photographs.

The demonstration took place outdoors, and consisted of disintegrating and dispersing clouds by the power of the mind. One of the observers was asked to select a group of cumulus clouds. This was then photographed. Another observer was asked to indicate a particular cloud from this group as the target. Dr Alexander concentrated upon this target cloud while the photographers continued to take pictures at intervals. The experiment commenced at 2.09 pm. By 2.17 pm the target cloud had disintegrated and practically vanished, while other neighbouring cloud-groups remained in the sky. As Dr Alexander pointed out in his book, there can be no collusion between a man and a cloud. (The Power of the Mind, by Rolf Alexander, MD, Werner Laurie, London 1956).

In 1956 Dr Alexander came to Britain and repeated his successful experiments in disintegrating clouds at Holne Tor, in Devonshire and on Hampstead Heath. His efforts were photographed and televised, and an article about him entitled “Cloud Buster”, by Fyfe Robertson, appeared in Picture Post, in the issue dated 30th June 1956.

The magic and mystery of the human mind, and its hidden powers, have intrigued philosophers throughout history, from ancient Egypt to the most modern laboratories for the study of parapsychgology—a number of which, incidentally, exist in officially materialist Russia. Parapsychology means that which goes beyond the science of psychology, as generally accepted. It is a modern synonym for psychical research. Both terms are simply long words for things we can’t explain.

Hitler was very interested in the study of occult powers. During the Second World War, he set up a special department to investigate them. This was known as the Tattva Department, from an oriental word tattva, meaning one of the subtle powers of the universe which are characterized as fire, water, air, earth and aether.

On the side of the Allies, covens of British witches gathered together at Lammas, 1940, screened by the trees of the New Forest, in order to work their rites against Hitler’s threatened invasion.

We generally believe the findings of modern psychology with regard to the dual mind of man, conscious and subconscious, to be a great modern discovery. Yet the ancient Egyptians explained the human entity as being composed of a number of principles, which is certainly a comparable idea. The Egyptians taught that man was sevenfold. They told of the khat, or material body, which when mummified and entombed with the proper rites became a sahu, or glorified body, by means of which a link could be preserved with the departed. But man also had a non-material body, the ka, or astral double, and another mysterious vehicle, the khaibit or shadow. His vitality and emotions dwelt in the ab, or heart; and incidentally our way of regarding the heart as the seat of the emotions derives from this belief of ancient Egypt. The vitality itself was called sekhem. The rational soul or mind of man was symbolized as the ba, represented as a human-headed bird. His divine and imperishable spirit was called the khu, a shining essence of light.

Psychologists of the school of Jung consider that to the principles of conscious and subconscious mind should be added a third, the superconscious, or Greater Self. This is evidently analogous to the khu of ancient Egyptian belief.

Today, psychologists are looking at ancient myths and legends with new eyes. They perceive in the stories of descents into the shadowy underworld, hell, or Hades, an analogy with the depths of the subconscious mind. Rising upwards into the shining heights of heaven is analogous with contacting the realms of higher consciousness. Man bears heaven and hell within himself. This again is an old tenet of occult philosophy, namely that man is the microcosm, or little universe, and all that is without him is also within.

Before we can work magic, we must understand what magic is and what we are. We have seen that magic is the power of the mind, for good or ill, and we must look into the mind to find the true magical instruments. The great injunction of the Greek Mysteries, which were derived from the Egyptian, was Gnothi se auton, “Know thyself”.

The pre-eminence of Egypt in magical matters is shown by a saying of the ancient world: “Ten measures of magic were given to the world. Egypt took nine. The rest took one.”

If, therefore, we wish for instruction in magic of our western European world, we will do well to look towards Egypt. There was a connection between ancient Egypt and ancient Britain, as Egyptian beads found in the barrows of the Salisbury Plain area prove. We know today that Britain’s prehistoric stone monuments, particularly Stonehenge, are much more sophisticated structures than was previously thought. The possibility is that both ancient Egypt and ancient Europe, especially the British Isles, derive their oldest culture from a common source now sunk beneath the waves, the wondrous Atlantis.

Great though their traditions are, the ways of the East are more suited to the peoples of the East than they are to western bodies and minds. It would be a pity for us to long for the treasures of India and Tibet, and ignore the riches to be found as the rightful heritage of our own races of the west.

Many people take up the study of occultism because they want to develop psychic or magical powers, in order to change their lives. There is nothing wrong with this, provided they understand one thing: the only way you can really change your life is by changing yourself.

One often encounters people who have an attitude to magic which assumes, more or less, that if only they could find the way to make some mighty talisman that would grant all their wishes—or at least, enable them to win the top dividend of the football pool—everything would be different. But it wouldn’t; they themselves would still be the same and with the same personal problems still hung about their necks. For instance, a silly woman who was always making herself miserable over some man would be just the same, poor or rich. A man who was perpetually greedy and discontented would still be discontented, however much money he had, because he didn’t know how to be happy.

There is an old saying: “The adept owns nothing, yet he has the use of everything.” The meaning of this is that the adept knows that everything in the world may be at his service, to use and enjoy for the good of himself and others—yet it is only loaned to him for a time, by the powers of nature and destiny. It came originally from nature and to nature it will return. Pondering upon this truth, the adept ceases to be selfish and greedy. Knowing himself to be forever linked and united with the Cosmic Mind, he ceases to be insecure—subconscious feelings of insecurity being the roots of selfishness and greed. With a liberated mind, he is able to draw to himself the things he needs, by developing will-power, imagination, concentration and faith.

In the late eighteenth century there lived a remarkable man called Mehmet Karagoz. He was known as the Wizard of Albania. People from all over Europe and Asia sought his advice and told stories of his supernormal powers. He was born in the wild and remote mountains of Tartary, and his father was a shaman, a magician-priest of the primitive religion of those parts.

When he was a young man, Mehmet seemed to be so lacking in natural ability that his father felt unable to have him initiated, thinking that the youth was incapable at that time of following his father’s vocation. Instead, the old shaman gave Mehmet a piece of practical instruction: “Believe in the possibility of what you intend to do, hold it strongly in your mind, and it will happen.” He told his son to practise constantly and one day he would find that the power had indeed developed and was his.

This instruction of his father’s was the foundation of Mehmet Karagoz’s magical career. He travelled widely in search of knowledge and eventually settled in Albania, where he founded his own occult school and became one of the most famous and most mysterious of adepts. He used no rituals, but worked entirely through the powers of the mind.

But how are the powers of the mind to be awakened? We are told much of the great importance of will-power, concentration and so on; how can these qualities be developed?

Much depends on how much in earnest people really are and on how much time they are prepared to give to the pursuit. There is a great difference between willing something and just weakly wishing it. For instance—will you spend an evening in meditation and study, or can you just not resist watching that show on television? Do you want to buy that book that may teach you something valuable—or must you spend your money instead on the latest fashion, or a few rounds of drinks with the boys? Only the persons themselves can answer these questions.

However, if you really want to commune with your own inner mind, there are certain times which are particularly useful. One of these is at night, when you are on the borderline between waking and sleep, and this is a time when ideas can be suggested by you to your subconscious mind, with a great degree of success.

The discoverer of this method was Charles Godfrey Leland, the great American collector of folklore, and one of the most original minds of his day. His book entitled Have You a Strong Will? first appeared in 1899. It was subtitled: How to develop and strengthen will power, memory, or any other faculty or attribute of the mind, by the easy process of self-hypnotism.

Leland was an old man when he made this discovery, and its great benefit to himself, as recorded in his letters, made him put it into a book. His process involves no dramatic struggles for will-power, but rather a gentle and cheerful resolution to develop the qualities you desire. Then at night, when you are lying comfortably in bed, and just on the borderland of sleep, saying to yourself over and over again, as if repeating a lesson, that tomorrow you will be more strong-willed, cheerful, better-tempered, or whatever quality it is that you desire.

Pass into sleep with this idea in your mind, and it will grow in the depths of your subconscious like a seed planted in the earth. Persistence in this practice will encourage its growth and its ultimate flowering in your life. Leland found, too, that he could awaken new faculties of awareness in himself by this method, which as a writer and artist he found extremely valuable.

In a letter to a relative, written in 1897, he said:

I begin to realise in very fact that there are tremendous powers, quite unknown to us, in the mind, and that we can perhaps by long continued steady will awake abilities of which we never dreamed. Thus you can by repetition will yourself to notice hundreds of things which used to escape you and this soon begins to appear to be miraculous. You must will and think the things over and over as if learning a lesson, saying or rather thinking to yourself intently, “I will that all day tomorrow I shall notice every little thing.” And though you forget all about it, it will not forget itself and it will haunt you, and you will notice all kinds of things. After doing this a dozen times, you will have a new faculty awakened.

That famous occult fraternity, the Order of the Golden Dawn, was naturally interested in the powers of the mind. In addition to the knowledge lectures and rituals, a number of papers on various subjects were circulated among members, which were called “Flying Rolls”. The following are extracts from one of these papers, entitled “A Few Thoughts on Imagination”. It is dated 1892, and was written by “Resurgam”:

The uninitiated interpret imagination as something “imaginary” in the popular sense of the word: that is, something unreal. But imagination is reality.

When a man imagines, he actually creates a form on the astral or even on some higher plane; and this form is as real and objective to intelligent beings on that plane as our earthly surroundings are real and objective to us.

This form which imagination creates may have only a transient existence, productive of no important result; or it may be vitalized and thus used for good or evil.

To practise Magic both imagination and will must be called into action. They are co-equal in the work. Nay more, the imagination must precede the will, in order to produce the greatest possible effect.

The will, unaided, can send forth a current, and that current cannot be wholly inoperative; yet its effect is vague and indefinite because the will unaided sends forth nothing but the current of force.

The imagination unaided can create an image, and this image must have an existence of varying duration, yet can do nothing of importance unless vitalized and directed by the will.

When, however, the two are conjoined, when the imagination creates an image and the will directs and uses that image, marvellous magical results may be obtained …

N.B. Whilst it is always lawful and advisable to consult with a higher adept before any important magical work, yet in every other direction absolute secrecy must be maintained, as it tends to decentralize and dissipate the force if it is talked of to others.

Some “Notes on the above paper” were added by “Non Omnis Moriar”, in which he said:

Imagination must be distinguished from fancy; from mere roving thoughts, or empty visions. By it we now mean an orderly and intentional mental process and result. Imagination is the creative faculty of the human mind, the plastic energy, the formative power.

In the language of the esoteric Theosophists, the power of imagination to create thought forms is called Kriya Sakti, that is, the mysterious power of thought which enables us to produce external, phenomenal, perceptible results by its own inherent energy when fertilized by the will.

It is the ancient Hermetic dogma that any idea can be made to manifest externally, if only by culture the art of concentration is obtained; just similarly as an external result of action produced by a current of will force.

Some very important magical principles are contained in this paper. The significance of the ancient symbol of magic, the pentagram or five-pointed star, is that of spirit or mind ruling over the world of matter. When drawn as it should be, with one point upwards, this topmost point symbolizes spirit, the unseen, while the other four points represent the four elements, fire, water, air and earth, which the ancients regarded as making up the manifested world.

The ’Flying Rolls’ of the Order of the Golden Dawn have now been collected, edited and published by Francis King, under the title of Astral Projection, Ritual Magic and Alchemy (Neville Spearman, London, 1971).