Basic Sigil Magic - Phillip Cooper 2001

White Magick
The Psybernomicon

Through the remainder of this book we will examine the concept of color in magick. Associations are built up around colors, so we will examine different types of magick by their respective colors. Each color corresponds to areas of activity, normal and magical, that come under the heading of that magical color. The colors may be used in magical work as an aid to focusing your mind by varying the color as it is conjured through the four gateways of power to suit the intention of your sigilization ritual.

White Magick

The nature of the white power is sudden change and magick itself. White magick also governs astrology, intuition, inventiveness, miracles, esoterics, sudden promotion, your wishes, willpower, convulsions, cramps, disagreements, spasmodic diseases, disruptions, fits, hiccups, and drugless healing.

White magick acts as a prism that helps you find your own personal magical color, sometimes known as Octarine.¹ Use white magick until you discover your own color for yourself. Uranus is the planet of the white power, the planet of origins and beginnings. How does anything begin? Quite simply, it begins in the mind as a thought. By thought, I mean an original thought—the type of thinking that is uniquely yours and no one else's. There is a world of difference between conscious thoughts—in other words, thinking "about" something—and pure original thought. Original thinking exists only for the person who conceived the thought and for no one else. This type of thinking is difficult to describe. It has to be observed and understood if you are to gain the full value of the white power. Every new invention, piece of music, and line of poetry is the direct result of original thought. There are those who imitate, and those who truly think. Everyone has this capacity, but few use it. This robs people of the opportunity to be themselves.

White magick is the power of being. "Being what?" you may well ask. Being yourself! To be yourself and realize your full potential, you must strive to be original—to be yourself. That's why the search for your "real" self is so important. At best, most humans are a poor reflection of everyone else's ideas. Confused and blind, they desperately try to make this image real, with predictable consequences. All failure and lack in life is largely due to people simply not being themselves. It is inescapable.

You may have heard the expression, "Why don't they think for themselves?" Think for yourself. Throw out dogma, superstition, and blind acceptance of the obvious and be yourself. It is the key to success. When you are being original—in other words, yourself—you draw on the vast potential of your subconscious mind. Stillness and being you produce power. Now you can see this explained in terms of magick. For magick explains everything to those who use it in original ways. I suggest that you forget all previously held paradigms and ideas about magick. You will find that, in reality, they were never any use to you.

Accept nothing without thought, both original and conscious. The general attributions of the white power are quite sensible—galaxies and nebulas are very apt. It was by looking up at our own galaxy, the Milky Way, that humankind really began to think about its place in the universe and its relationship with the stars. At first, there was no order or discernible pattern, but there was the beginning of many ideas and postulations. Original thinking was being applied. Something had caused these stars to appear and that something was deemed to be God. Later on, humans discovered that God also lay within their own being.

From a purely practical point of view, white power should be used in all self-searching operations. It is of the utmost value in finding out who you are and what your capacities are. Along with the visual image of galaxies or stars, you can use other attributions, such as a single point, representing the singularity found in the Big Bang theory.² In this model, all lines and geometric shapes emanate from a single point. As you move in any direction, you will draw a line, but the single point is the beginning. Uranus, or the white power, indicates how a person will deviate from the norm in a birth chart. Its aspects tell if a person will be constructive and inventive, or if they will be eccentric and disruptive. In any case, it shows how such a person will exert the ability to be different. White magick also indicates the powers of intuition and what is intuitive original thought. Intuitive thinking can be developed by the white power.

One further attribution is that of the magician, able to transform and/or transmute. The white power is your link to the Godhead, enabling you to become a dominant and authoritative, and occasionally even humorous, personality. In times past, magicians had to hide their faces. They became jongleurs, conjurers, or street magicians. They had to go underground during the persecutions and witch hunts for a time, with their real persona hidden and secretly kept. The surface transformation, however, was simply a means of portraying their secrets to those who recognized them.

All true magicians are capable of putting on a cloak of anonymity, of hiding behind some innocuous face when necessary. Magicians are contradictory figures. They are spiritual and adept, and show a balance between desire, passion, and real involvement in physical needs. They can be priests and, conversely, in need of a priest, although they do nothing that is actually sinful. The ability to change, as if by magick, to adapt to any person or situation, is a part of the magician's very special legend. They are also associated with Uranus and the white power. The white power gives you, your magician-self, the ability to be original and the ability to be self-motivated in the truest sense of the word. Magicians are set apart from the common herd by right. Little wonder that early magicians were credited with godlike powers. They are not gods, but have contact with the gods. They are not bound by religious affiliation, but are clearly aware of spirituality. It matters not what kind of spirituality they project, because they can be chameleons and respond to whatever is expedient.

Above all, the magician is a messenger from the gods to humankind. It is through the magician-self that those who created or formed this physical universe and our planet, and who experimented with human forms, can transmit their will and their guidance. The magician is an intermediary, a role that religions later adopted as their own, interceding with the sky people, as did so many of the great civilizations of the past.

In its more mundane aspect, white power indicates the psychic ability inherent in all of us. It thus represents psychic power and energy that can be recognized and used. This ability can be used in a small and personal way, or expanded to help others on a far larger scale. It is being used that is important.

White power will highlight this ability, whether this is recognized or not. Once the psychic link has been forged, white power will ensure that the flow of energy is constant and replenished after use. If the power is used for the benefit of others, this "topping-up" effect will continue. However, once any psychic power is used for other purposes, especially those designated as "evil," the power will still be given, but eventually will build up to a point where it will turn on the user.

The point is clear. When used for good and for the benefit of others, the magick we all possess within us will be controlled, as it were, by the white power. White power is the arbiter.

¹ Terry Pratchett, whose "Octarine" has become the eighth color of Chaos Magic. Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic: Phantasy-Magic, Humor and Fiction (London: Corgi, 1985).

² Gerald J. Schueler, Enochian Physics: The Structure of the Magical Universe (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1988), p. 196.