Magick of Thought

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At a friend’s shabbat dinner, we wrote short pieces inspired by snippets of old testament. Mine, predictably, discussed discovery and resistance. I hope you enjoy them.

The Climb is Too Far

And yet, we climb. Discovering gravity, and how the force binding us to the earth is also what binds the earth to the sun. Discovering that we are made of cells, and diseases are made of cells, and how, through that knowledge, we can make the sick whole again. Discovering that, through discovery, we can walk on the moon, communicate across the earth, and perhaps someday create immortality.

The climb is too far. And yet, together, we have already come farther than the shepherds of ancient times could have foreseen. Never doubt the power of human curiosity.

(The phrase was from a story of Moses on Mount Sinai.)

Stronger Than Fear

Fear of failure, of what that failure will tell us about ourselves, our futures, of how it will nourish our shadows and doubts.

Fear of success, of even larger goals next time, of having nowhere to hide from the dreams that truly intimidate us.

Fear of working on the worthless, while our true mission withers, and never knowing which is which.

Stronger than fear. We can’t be stronger every day. But the days we are, those are the days that matter.

(The phrase was from a song about Ruth.)

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It’s striking, how writing a book and exploring magick use the same sort of thinking. I have to load the whole problem into my mind, and the most obvious answer is rarely the best.

Which is to say, I didn’t quite get there today. Updates to the next chapter coming next week. Then we’re on to new content.

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Finishing out the chapter on Using Ethereal Software, we have a new section on Disconnecting. As before, the real updates are in the asides. Enjoy!

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

I don’t have a good definition of “direct magick” anymore. This post is me organizing my thoughts about it. If you came for posts on magick techniques, feel free to skip this one.

Initially, direct magick meant “doing magick with your ethereal muscles, without using ethereal software.” To me, it still does, more or less. And yet…

And yet, as far as I can see, manifesting requires using ethereal software. It’s just too complex to hold in your head. But I do lots of manifesting, and I certainly want to include it in my system of magick.

So I fudged the definition. It’s still direct magick if you use your ethereal muscles to prepare the message that you send to the software.

Then I added psychic info to my practice. Which requires letting the ethereal software handle the communication, since I can’t handle communication myself while I’m distracted. So, that definition is sunk.

(Also, I can’t concisely explain why handling the communication yourself is desirable. I so it because (1) it lets me work with lots of different ethereal software, and (2) I want to understand the mechanisms of magick, and the way I do that is to step through those mechanisms myself. But I don’t see those reasons having a broad, visceral appeal in the way that “simplified magick without rituals” does.)

Maybe there’s some other essence of direct magick. I’m driven by curiosity. How does magick work? And I have faith that answering that (well enough to build it myself) leads to good things, like better healing techniques.

I want to connect with the curious. They’re the ones who will push magick to be more than it is right now, same as with all the other sciences.

But I’m not sure that’s the right introduction to my system of magick. Reading through Part 1 of the Initiation, and thinking about the rest of the book, I realize there are two separate things I’ve been calling direct magick:

• The explorations I do, into how ethereal software implements commands, how to do magick with just your ethereal muscles, and so on. This is what I mostly think of as “direct magick.”
• A streamlined approach to software-based magick. That is, doing what everyone else does — sending requests to ethereal software, hoping it can do the manifesting or energy healing — but done without ritual or religion.

I haven’t really distinguished between the two, but I probably should. The first is not at all beginner-friendly — it takes years to be able to produce useful results without relying on ethereal software, and unless you are deeply curious or quite intent on pushing magick beyond what it can do already, the payoff isn’t worth it. Certainly, it’s not worth it on my say-so, it’s only worth it if you can see for yourself that I’m on to something.

I’m realizing, Book 1 should be that simplified method of doing standard magick, sending instructions to ethereal software. A product of the models I’ve developed, but usable without understanding those models yourself. I’m going to keep that in mind as I write Part 2, keep it shorter, with fewer tangents, more open questions rather than fully-explored ideas. Then later, I’ll go back to Part 1 and shorten it too. And I’ll move the foundational questions to the Conclusion, after readers have learned to do magick, when they’re ready to move on to exploring how that magick works under the hood.  Readers who find those questions compelling can move on to Book 2; readers that just want to learn basic magick can stop, not worry about why it works, and just do the manifesting and energy healing that the software is programmed to do (which will hopefully improve with time, as more people read Books 2 and 3 and program in new techniques).

I’m pondering terms. One term for the streamlined magick, another for building new techniques? Just call it all direct magick? What do you think?