Magick of Thought

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Alex is trying the obvious connections from my book’s ethereal software. His text is italics, my reply is normal text:

This is cool. I’ve discovered your blog a couple days ago, and just tried this command right after connecting to the software and asking it to give me obvious connections. I think i noticed it connecting to me the first time because of the sigil becoming kind of alive, pulsating. May be some optical illusion though. At first, i didn’t notice clearly the obvious connection, but i certainly noticed a change when i asked the software to withdraw the connections.

Awesome! Thanks for taking the time to write about this.

That’s probably an optical illusion, something to do with how you were staring at the sigil. It hasn’t happened with any of the other testers (as far as I know), and the software isn’t doing anything to the eyes or visual cortex.

I tried engaging and withdrawing the connections a few times, and noticed it kept a certain connection that i felt at the front of my head at all times, while switching on and off another stronger one that centered on my chest, but felt kind of on the whole front of my body, when i asked it to give me obvious connections.

Yup, that sounds about right. The software makes connections to your mind so it can communicate with you. That’s how all ethereal software works, actually. That communication connection stays the whole time you’re using it. Then the obvious connection turns on and off when you give the command.

It seemed to me that the obvious connections were flooding me with energy (that felt pleasant, by the way), and tried asking the system if it was giving me energy. I didn’t get any clear answer.

Yes, that’s basically what it’s doing. The connection is full of energy, that’s why it’s obvious.

(For anyone really digging into direct magick: The connection has a high level of activation, not energy, and strongly maintains its own signature rather than adjusting to the user’s signature. That’s what makes it obvious.)

(For everyone else: There are some subtle distinctions between energy and other magickal structures. They matter when you’re building techniques. But if you’re just trying to get the gist of what’s going on, “energy” is close enough.)

And don’t worry that you didn’t get a reply from the software. That’s not until Book 2, the sequel to the one I’m writing now.

Nevertheless, i tried asking it to give me obvious connections without sending me energy, which made a fainter result, and then to give me obvious connections the way it did the first time, which felt stronger again. I also noticed that once i phrased the command “stop all connections”, but meaning just the obvious ones, and it was able to tell my intentions, not stopping the connection in my head.

This all sounds good. I’m not surprised it read your intent, as communication happens in concepts rather than words, so if you were thinking about the obvious connections when you said “all connections,” you probably sent that concept.

Another thing is that i was starting to feel a bit of a headache, and i asked the software to make the connection to my head gentler. I kept feeling an intensity on my head, but it stopped hurting. Was that supposed to work like that?

That sounds like a good result, so I’ll go with yes. A lot of these behaviors are the defaults provided by the spirits who made the software, it’s just how they always make software. So I didn’t previously know it did that, but that doesn’t surprise me.

Last thing, when i asked it to prepare my mind to communicate with it, the connection on the front of my head seemed to surround my head to come from all directions (sidewise in a ring, not from above or below) and then kind of went into the background, making itself less obvious to me, but still being there.

Here’s the interesting thing about these sensations: They don’t necessarily correspond to specific connections. Sure, intensity tends to correlate with the amount of energy, though it has more to do with the signature (or type) of the energy than the actual amount.

These sensations come from your ethereal muscles, not the nerves in your skin. Your ethereal muscles notice connections and create sensations to communicate that experience. But do those sensations mean a literal “this is where the connection is”? I don’t know. They could also be a metaphor, like how we visualize white light to tell our ethereal muscles to move energy around, knowing full well that there’s no white glow involved.

So, it doesn’t surprise me that those connections were less obvious than the obvious connection. I’d expect that, actually. But what do those specific sensations mean? I couldn’t say — it has to do with how your brain interprets the messages from your ethereal muscles.

I’d like to ask you if what i experienced makes any sense to you, regarding the way you programmed the software, or if you can tell some way i’m deluding myself in the results i perceive to get. I’m not that good in telling what’s really happening from what i’m imagining (i suppose that’s a huge part of the reason why i’m here).

Thank you for your teaching!

Thanks for using what I write, and for sharing your experiences!