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This series is about seeing magick accurately, so you can see how it works, improve your skills, and learn new techniques quickly.
Today: How to make a quiet connection so you can accurately sense signatures, without disturbing whatever you’re connected to. This is the most important part of sensory connections, and will let you see magick more clearly than most mages.
If you haven’t read the rest of the series, start with the first post.
Why Make Quiet Connections
Magickal sensory is more like touch than sight. In order to sense anything, you must connect to it. A quiet connection is like a gentle touch: It lets you sense what’s there without disturbing it.
What “Quiet” Means
This quiet, gentle touch requires 2 things:
- Not pushing with your arm.
- Moving your fingers slowly.
In terms of a connection, “not pushing with your arm” means “don’t send energy through the connection.” I emphasize this because many mages primarily use connections to send energy. You can’t sense if you are sending energy; you would only see your own energy.
“Move your fingers slowly” means “low, steady activation.” Activation is the power inside your connection that makes it move, rather than the energy that the connection delivers. Activation has the signature of the structure it powers (your connection, in this case), and it flows like heat, from highly active structures to less active ones. If your connection has too much activation, or suddenly changes how much activation it has, it will disturb the structures you’re connected to.
How to Make Quiet Connections
Making Your First Connection
If you don’t make single magickal connections yet, see this post for instructions. Also, click here for some good general info on connections.
Not Sending Energy
The key here is to control your connections separately from everything else you’re doing by making a visualization just for the connection. It should mesh with the visualization you use energy: If you visualize energy as water, you might visualize your connection as a hose; visualize energy as light, and your connection might be a glass tube; and energy as electricity might go with a connection as a wire. Remember, you’re just directing your unconscious, so use whatever speaks to you.
Here’s how to use that visualization to make a connection without energy:
- Make the connection normally, by touching your leg, sending energy from your hand into your leg, then moving your hand a few inches away while sustaining the energy flow. (This was the exercise from the previous section’s link).
- Use your connection visualization, with the energy going through it.
- Visualize the energy flow stopping, so the energy stays in your chest and doesn’t flow down your arm. It’s not enough to stop visualizing the energy; you need to visualize the energy stopping. While you do this, maintain the connection visualization.
That last step is important. Even when you make connections without actively sending energy, keep track of your own energy to make sure it doesn’t accidentally flow get into the connection.
Testing It
If it worked, you should be able to resume the energy flow visualization and feel the tingling of the energy in your leg, as though you were touching your leg. It may take a few tries to sustain the connection properly, just start from step 1 if it doesn’t work.
Want another test of your connections? See this post.
Don’t Drain
Remember, just let your connection absorb the energy or activation that naturally flows into it. Don’t try to suck it up like soda through a straw. That will drain them, which is not only not nice, but is also ineffective for sensing signatures. When you drain, you draw in a particular signature (the signature you drain will match your connection’s signature), which means you just see that signature, not the signature that they actually have.
Low, Steady Activation
That covered how to avoid sending energy along the connection (not pushing with your arm). Now you’re ready to use low, steady activation (move your fingers slowly).
A reminder: Activation is like energy inside the structure of your connection that makes it move. In the examples above, activation isn’t the water / light / electricity that your connection carries. Rather, it’s the heat inside the hose / glass / wire that makes its molecules vibrate. Like heat, activation doesn’t exist separate from the activated structure. Heat is an emergent property of the vibrating molecules, and activation is an emergent property of the moving structure.
Start by creating a visualization for the activation. Since it’s essentially the energy inside your connection (as opposed to the energy flowing along it), your energy visualization is a good place to start. Seeing activation as the luminosity of the connection, or visualizing the molecules of the connection vibrating, are good places to start. For me, activation feels like breathing, and low activation feels like holding my breath in my mind, though my body still breathes normally. Simpler visualizations are better, since we’re combining a lot of visualizations here.
Follow the exercises in the last section to make a zero-energy connection to your leg (or anywhere else). Also, use your energy visualization to make sure your leg doesn’t have a lot of energy, so you can feel the connection instead of the energy’s tingling. Then use the activation visualization to make your connection less activated. Move the connection around (visualize the hose (or whatever) moving a few inches inside your leg), change how activated it is, then move it again. If the connection is too activated, you’ll feel a mild energy sensation in your leg (tingling, shifting, etc). If it’s not activated enough, you won’t be able to move the connection, and you’ll feel a mild energy drain(if you haven’t felt it before, it feels like energy, but cooling instead of heating).
To keep the activation steady, just continue to consciously keep the activation low. You don’t need to focus on it, but you need to keep it somewhere in your thoughts. If you become distracted, or stop thinking about the activation, it will return to whatever your default level is, which is usually higher than you want.
Next
That’s the first step of making good sensory connections, and probably the most important step. Using a quiet connection lets you see magick more clearly than mages who don’t consciously control their connections, which is most mages. Over the next few posts, I’ll show you how to see more details by using smaller signature building blocks, multiple connections, and a few other tricks.
If making quiet connections is new for you, take a few weeks to become comfortable with them before continuing with this connections series. It’s important that these steps are easy, and that you can maintain the connection for a few minutes, before adding anything.
The best approach is to use quiet connections as you practice other skills. Learning to awaken your hibernating mental muscles is a good next step, as it will help you learn all your other skills faster, including sensory connections. And leave a comment if anything isn’t working for you.
Other posts in this series:- How To See Magick Clearly (February 10, 2011)
- Sensory Connections - Step 1: Quiet Connections (February 24, 2011)
- Sensory Connections - Step 2: Seeing Smaller Connections (March 10, 2011)
- Sensory Connections - Step 3: Seeing New Signatures (March 16, 2011)
- Sensory Connections - Step 4: Seeing Areas (March 24, 2011)
- Finding Where Mind Meets Body (March 30, 2011)
Tags: Connections