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As a kid, I’d watch This Old House with my dad. We’d watch carpenters and craftsmen fix up a house. They’d make it look easy.
Part of making it look easy is knowing how to use the tools. They all had hundreds of hours using circular saws and miter boxes, nail guns and levels and everything else.
But part of it is simply having the tools. Because I don’t care how good you are with a hammer, it’ll never work as well as a nailgun. And neither will cut wood as well as a saw.
This is the problem I have in sharing direct magick: Mental muscles are my tools, and if you haven’t awakened them yet, the techniques simply won’t work.
Remember last post, where I talked about shielding against physical connections? The technique was, “Engage the mental muscles you use for shielding, and engage the mental muscles you use for physical effects. Find all your connections on the physical domain. Close them.”
I’ve already awakened all those mental muscles, so I can engage them in a few seconds. While focusing on those mental muscles, I think the sentence, “Find all the open connections on the physical domain.” I wait about 10 seconds, and receive an image of my body with a few lines to show connections. Then I think the sentence, “Close those connections,” and in under a minute, I’ve set up the shielding.
Easy. Except that it’s not, because the first step isn’t really, “Engage these mental muscles.” For most mages, the first step would be, “Awaken those mental muscles,” or more likely, “Learn to awaken mental muscles, and then awaken the ones you need for this shielding.” Which takes months or years, and is much harder than learning to direct mental muscles, close connections, and all the other steps that went into that shielding technique.
And this is the problem I have in sharing direct magick: If I tell you to get your nailgun, or your athame, or your gold ring with Enochian lettering on it, you know what you need,and you can order it online. But if I tell you to engage these two mental muscles, what does that really mean? How do you know you’ve even got the right ones? And how do I know that you, dear reader, understand the difference between engaging your mental muscles vs just squinting your eyes and imagining really hard?
The problem is, the tools are hidden in your mind. They can’t be bought in stores, and can’t even be gifted from teacher to student. Every mage has to awaken their own mental muscles. It’s the first direct magick skill I really mastered, and it’s not easy.
And yet, I’m confident many of you will learn the basics of awakening your mental muscles. Some of you will master the more advanced techniques, as well. And so, I’m writing a self-initiation for direct magick, focusing on awakening your mental muscles, and learning to engage and direct them. It’s part of my effort to build direct magick into something approachable and at least moderately beginner-friendly.
It’ll be a major portion of my first book, and I’ll be posting a draft in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.Tags: Learning Magick, Mental Muscles
Because of my Aikido background, when I teach energy magic, I begin with unbendable arm, which is what Ki-Aikido uses as its prerequisite for Kiatsu, its energy healing technique. Since the unbendable arm is testable physically, it is a good introduction. How does one teach unbendable arm? You could glance at Aikido literature for a wealth of techniques (e.g., imagining a water hose, or having the teacher move energy in the student’s arm, or imagining a reaching for some infinitely distant object, etc.). Kiatsu begins with the elementary technique: have the student healer make unbendable arm and then touch the injured area, so that the “ki” flows through the area. As you have said, that is not a very advanced or effective curative method, but, if done right (i.e., with the student not faking the arm by just making it rigid) it is an elementary way of introducing the manipulation of energy.
Thanks for writing, Jim. This isn’t really what I’m talking about with “mental muscles,” but it’s always nice to hear what works for readers. Welcome to the blog.
I am very new to magician and I findt your blot very interesting. But it is hard to tell if I’m doing it right.
Thanks. And yes, that’s one of the problems with a lot of magick: How do you know if you’re doing it right? Even with rituals, how do you know if you did the right internal work to make the ritual have the magickal result you’re looking for? I hope the book I’m working on will help, by stepping you through the process. Other than that, I’d recommend following the step by step guide, and in particular for a novice, focusing on mental posture.
And welcome to the blog, and to the world of magick.