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Help me make an exercise to show mages what a system is.
Teaching magick in person is easy. I can connect a system to you and explain what it is. If you can’t recognize connections, I can help you quiet your energy, and tell you when I connect and disconnect, so you can learn how it feels.
Sometimes, to get someone to notice a connection, I’ll need to make it so large and noticeable that it’s really a mild attack. But in person, that’s still easy to do.
But that doesn’t work in writing. So I’m trying to figure out how to talk you through finding a system, if you’ve never seen one before. It will probably take a few tries before I get the exercise quite right. On the plus side, you’ll get to see me reason about how magick works right here, as I write.
Finding a System
Getting a system to connect to you is easy: Do a ritual, or just focus on a symbol. Use an established magickal style, like Thelema or Enochian. Not a non-magickal religious tradition, and not something you made up, because those probably won’t have systems associated with them.
The hard part is noticing the system’s connection. Especially if it’s a style of magick you already practice, you’re probably always connected to those systems, so its connection won’t shift your energy, meaning it won’t be obvious. If the system has already adjusted your energy signature to align to its signature, there’s nothing to notice.
But an unfamiliar system will have an unfamiliar signature. So, do a ritual for a style of magick you don’t normally practice, or get a symbol and focus on it as you think about connecting out to the forces it relates to. Once you get an unfamiliar system to connect to you, the connection should be obvious.
You can make it even more obvious by steadying your energy: Do an energy meditation, not to raise energy, but just to get control of it, and hold it steady. (If you’d like a visualization, click here). Do that, then make the unfamiliar system connect to you, as above.
Now, here’s the thing to remember: What you’re feeling are the connections from the system, not the system itself. If you think instructions, the connections will pick it up, and the system will respond to them. But realize that you’re still one step away from the system. To find the system itself, you’ll need to follow the connection back to the system, but that’s semi-advanced direct magick.
At this point, I want to say “Send the system this message: Requesting basic instructions,” but I realize I haven’t shown you how to send messages to systems. So let’s leave that for version 2 of this exercise.
Before you disconnect, focus on the idea that you’d like to connect to this system again. Focus on the system’s signature (the feeling of its connections), and assign it any name. Hopefully*, this will tell your mental muscles that handle communication to record the system, so you can reconnect whenever you want. If my friend Joe lead the ritual, I might just call it “Joe’s ritual system,” the name isn’t important as long as it’s unique. Then, to get it back, I’d engage the mental muscles for communication and ask them to be connected to “Joe’s ritual system.”
*I say hopefully because this requires those mental muscles to be awake and engaged, and if this is your first time communicating with a system this way, they may not be. This is just one of the things I’m debugging in this exercise.
Thanks
Thanks for helping me with this. If you try this, please leave a comment, even if it’s just “Got confused halfway through — what do you mean by X?”
If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.Tags: Ethereal Software
Do you have any particular systems/sofwares that you think would be good to use for a first connection?
Hi Pablo, right now, I’d recommend the ethereal software associated with any established style, aside from ones involving malicious spirits (like the Goetia). Enochian, Reiki, Thelema, etc would all be good choices.
Honestly, I’m not terribly happy with this answer. In the coming months, I’ll be working on a better one, hopefully involving ethereal software specifically designed to train people and tied to a symbol I make. But I’m not there yet.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Seems like there should be some energy constructs/etherial software which is ‘wading pool’ level — created so it does not blow away the rank initiates. Then a jump ‘up’ to the more dynamic ‘structures’ once a practitioner has a better handle on things.
I mean, I’m not expecting to float a penny or comprehend the Universe in all it’s glory on the first handshake but… just seems like there should be something in place — before trying to shake the beard of Odin or Cthulu or whomever (or whatever) or even the basic reiki stuff.
There are a few things going on. First, a lot of ethereal software was designed for spirits to use, and we’re welcome to use it if we can handle it, but they’re not going to add anything to make it easier. (That’s most of the stuff I use).
Second, most ethereal software was designed for use by initiates. So you work with people already using it, you learn their rituals, and you do what they did. It wasn’t designed for a DIY internet-trained mage.
Third, most ethereal software seems to be designed for solving the problem, not teaching you the underlying skills to use other ethereal software. So, you get energy healing styles where you only send one instruction (“heal the person”), and the software handles the rest. As opposed to software that walks you through learning to send commands, starting with making an obvious connection you can see.
That’s something I’d like to put together for everyone, if I can. Probably sometime later this year, as I start writing (and blogging) my book, and after clearing some of the magick research projects I’m working on for myself.
You mention in the article not to make my own systems. Is there any particular reason? What makes systems work, anyway?
Good question. My answer is here: https://magickofthought.com/2012/03/building-your-own-systems/
Actually, I just remembered that I used to do a little work with psionics. Does this count as an energy-manipulation system?
I’m not actually sure. My guess is that it relies on ethereal software. But, as I sometimes do, I’m going to ask you to tell us the answer: After you learn to recognize and use ethereal software, go back to some of your psionics work, and tell us how it’s implemented.