Posts Tagged ‘Connections’

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Effective Magickal Shielding (Part 1 of 4)

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

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How to remove connections from draining spirits.

HL asks:

When I am awake I’m able to hide or defense most times. But I have difficult to protect myself during sleep. I perform astral LBRP before sleep and I always hide before I sleep. I also use physical string to circle my bed, but somehow it doesn’t work.

This was a problem I had for years, too. Even after I could protect myself well during the day, I had nothing at night, and every morning I’d have to remove connections from draining spirits.

There are 3 parts to solving this problem:

  • Cleanly removing connections from spirits.
  • Closing potential connections while you’re awake.
  • Keeping them closed while you’re asleep. (This will span 2 posts, for the simple and advanced methods).

Why start with protecting yourself while awake, when HL asked about protection while asleep? Well, when you’re bothered at night, often it’s because you didn’t remove the connections a spirit made during the day. You notice the drain the next morning, and think it’s a sleeping problem, when really it’s an awake-shielding problem. Since I don’t know which of those steps HL needs (and it could be more than one), we’ll cover all of them in this series.

Today: Removing connections cleanly during the day.

Removing Connections – The Plan

Connections carry energy (and do some other things). To drain you, a spirit makes a connection, and uses that to remove your energy. We want to remove the connection so the spirit can’t drain your energy.

“Hold on,” you say. “Can’t the spirit just make another connection and resume draining?”

Yes, it can. But if you consistently remove connections right away, before the spirit can drain you, then they’re not getting any benefit for their effort. It’s like ignoring a bully. They’ll move on to easier prey.

I walked a friend, V, through this process recently. She can feel energy, but doesn’t do a lot of magick. I’ll use my notes from that for this post.

Step 1: Finding Connections

Before you can remove the connections, you have to find them.

First, quiet your energy. Not so that you’re low energy, but so that your energy is steady. If you visualize energy as a white light, visualize the light staying a constant level, and think about wanting to keep your energy steady.

Look for anything inside yourself that’s not in your signature. Think about wanting to find other signatures, and let your mind guide you to where they are. (If you don’t quiet your energy, the noise it makes will make it hard to spot foreign signatures).

Like most people, V doesn’t clean herself out much, so she had a ton of structures with foreign signatures in her. I had her remove them. (Just think about pushing them outside you). Most will go easily, but any that are part of an active connection  will resist you (“active” = someone is using that structure, like the draining spirit).

Grab those connections that are resisting. (Visualize grabbing them with your connection). Congratulations, you found the draining spirit’s connections.

Not sure how to visualize a connection? Take your visualization of energy, and visualize connections as something that naturally carries it. Wires for electricity, hoses for fluids, etc. Not sure why I don’t have a definitive visualization that everyone should use? See this series.

Step 2: Remove the Connections

Follow that connection outside of yourself. Just visualize your connection moving along the spirit’s connection until it’s outside you. (There’s a (somewhat advanced) technique to this. I’m fairly certain V doesn’t know it, so I’m not sure how far she followed the connection. If you can’t get all the way outside yourself, that’s OK, the plan will still work).

Your mental muscles know how to do a lot of things, but breaking a connection is usually not one of them. So we’ll need a 2-step visualization to guide them, using two steps your mental muscles already know how to do:

  • First, visualize using your connections to enter theirs. This gives you better leverage.
  • Then visualize using those connections (that are inside theirs) to break theirs apart.

Now, remove the part of their connection that’s inside you (like in step 1). It should be unsupported now, and come out easily. If it doesn’t, try breaking the connection again.

Step 3: Did They Reconnect?

Often, by the time you notice a connection, the spirit has already been draining you for a while. They’ve decided you’re a good target, and make another connection immediately. Use the same procedure to notice and remove that connection, before they get a chance to drain you, and they’ll probably decide you’re no longer a good target.

Sometimes they’re more persistent. So keep checking every minute for 5 minutes, then every 5 minutes for a half-hour, then every half-hour for the next 24 hours. (Not set in stone, just some good rules of thumbs). Remove any connections they make. Show that you’re a pain to drain, and not worth the effort.

Step 4: Restoring Your Signature

Do you feel better? If yes, skip this step. If no, then the spirit drained you long enough that your energy is in a weird signature. (Imagine signature as paint color. If you’re normally green, and the spirit drains all your yellow, then you wind up with blue energy, and feel weird).

First, go back through your head and body removing any foreign structures, like you did in step 1. Then, do an energy meditation to build energy in your normal signature. If you’re somewhere safe, where you don’t expect draining spirits to be around, grounding (releasing your energy to the area around you) can also help, but if you’re out in public, it can attract more draining spirits.

Click for more on grounding.

Step 5: Closing Potential Connections

This is how you prevent connections in the first place. Someone better at making connections than you are at preventing them can still connect, so you’ll still need to know how to remove them. But this will cut down on how many spirits can bother you.

I’ll cover this in the next post (see “Posts in This Series” below). Until then, see Shielding for Beginners to get started.

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Posted in Beginning Conscious Magick | 2 Comments »

Better Connections: How Models Solve Problems

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

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This post is a response to Ananael’s post on Magical Links.

Splendid! These kind of conversations are why I started blogging.

I want to talk about 2 things: Why I don’t trust magickal laws, and how understanding how connections are made leads to better techniques.

By the way, I say “connection” rather than “link.” I think they refer to the same thing, but I’m going to use my term just in case they don’t.

Why I Don’t Trust Laws

I don’t trust the Law of Similarity, the Law of Contagion, or the Law of Opposites. Because they’re not laws. They’re curiosity-stoppers, like phlogiston.

If you’re not sure what those laws are, read Ananael’s post, his explanations are great.

Here’s the thing: They’re not laws.

Note: Ananael is explaining what historic writers said, not positing his own theories. So I want to be clear: I’m not calling Ananael wrong, I’m calling those historic writers wrong.

Gravity is a law. It doesn’t say “things fall.” It says

F = G (m1 x m2 / r^2)

Without the equation, you’re not really explaining anything. If your law just says “Most things fall, but helium balloons don’t,” it’s just stating what you already know.

Laws without details are curiosity-stoppers. They make you comfortable with your lack of understanding, but they don’t eradicate your ignorance.

By the way, I love that Ananael made an operant equation. That’s what I’m reading next.

Ananael’s analysis of the Law of Opposites is spot on: It doesn’t tell you which things are “opposite,” and combined with the Law of Similarities, it basically says “everything affects everything,” which is useless.

But the same is true of “similar.” It’s not precise enough to make predictions or develop new techniques.

Ananael uses a photograph as an example. He’s right, photos are useful for making magickal connections. But why are current photos best, and an old photograph less so, and a digitally altered photo even less so? Same with a person’s voice: The more altered, the less link-able. Why?

Don’t tell me “Because those are less similar.” That’s just a statement that “In general, things that are more similar are better,” like “In general, things fall.” Why?

And more importantly: How can we overcome that limitation, and use an altered photo for a good connection?

These questions aren’t rhetorical. Answers in the next section.

Calling it a law makes it sound like we know what’s going on. We don’t. That’s why I don’t trust laws without equations.

You Need the Moving Parts

In 2008, I wanted to understand magickal connections so I could easily connect to anyone, and prevent them from connecting to me. It’s useful in a lot of ways, but mostly, I wanted to understand how connections work.

So I made some connections, to mages and spirits I knew, people with normal photos, people with altered photos, etc. Then I made a second connection to that connection and followed it from me to them, to see all the steps.

Here’s what I found:

Connections based on a picture, voice, or similar go from you to several systems* to the other person. (Connections based on touch go directly from you to the person, but they’re not the focus of this post).

“System” is my term for any force you channel when you do magick, like what energy healers channel, or the force that responds to your rituals and affects events. They all share some common features, like responding to a standard word-based communication technique (it’s at the bottom of that post).

When I say I followed the connection to a system, I don’t mean I imagined a system between me and the person. I mean I made a second connection, moved it along the connection I’d established with the person, found a structure, and interacted with it to verify what it was.

If you ask a system what it does (“Requesting basic instructions”), it will tell you. That particular system makes connections based on the person’s energy signature (which I just call that their “signature”).

Next question: How do you get the person’s signature? My guess: Another system.

I made more connections, watching for systems connecting to my mind. Another system connected briefly each time I made the request. It connects to what you’re focusing on (pictures, voices, etc), finds out the person’s signature, and passes it to the other system to establish the connection.

Summary:

But wait, there’s more. This system is event-based. Explaining it sounds awkward, but it’s connecting you to the person from the event of having the photo taken. Here’s how it works:

If you ask for “the person in this photo,” the system says “that photo has been altered, there is no person in the photo.” If you don’t specify the request, it appears this is the default.

But if you ask for “the person present at the event of this photo being taken,” then it figures out what you mean and adjusts for the alterations.

To get good connections via old or altered photos, refer to the event.

Better Connections for Rituals

Time for a prediction.

Say you only have an old or altered photo of a person. If instead of just focusing on it during your ritual, you first make a connection like I described above, then focus on that connection as you do your ritual, your magick will work better.

Specifically, the system that responds to your ritual will use that connection, rather than trying to make its own. Since the default connection-making behavior fails in the case of altered photos, you are giving it a good connection where it otherwise wouldn’t have one, producing better results.

But wait, there’s more. Different kinds of magick require connections to different domains. A domain is a type of structure, like physical, mental, a person’s connections to various systems, etc. Healing magick needs a connection to the physical domain, banishing needs the magick domain (where their connections to systems, spirits, and other magickal structures live), and so on.

By default, these systems connect you to a person’s magick domain, except for connections based on their voice, which default to their physical domain. (No idea why, that’s just what it does).

So, if you make a connection using a picture (magick domain) and want to do energy healing (physical domain), the system handling your magick will need to transition that connection’s domain. That’s complex. So it will only get it partially right. That’s my guess for why magick is weaker when you use certain kinds of connections.

You could use this to say “Healing magick works better with a voice-based connection,” but that’s boring.

Instead, I say “Transition to the correct domain to make a better connection.” (Which will raise your L coefficient in Ananael’s equation). By shifting the small-scale signature of your magick-domain connection, you can trace to the person’s physical domain.

That transition is advanced. I had to practice each step before I could do the whole thing. But it’s optional, and you should get good results with a solid connection to the person, even in the wrong domain. (Your system should shift to the right domain for you).

So, here’s my prediction for maximal magick success:

  1. Connect to the person by focusing on their picture (or whatever) and giving an event-based instruction.
  2. Transition that connection to the proper domain. (Intermediate direct magick, but optional).
  3. Maintain that connection during the ritual, focusing on it whenever you refer to the person.

Try it out, let me know how it works. If you need details on any step, leave a comment.

Misc Thoughts

Some other thoughts while reading Ananael’s post that didn’t fit anywhere:

The hoodoo trick of connecting to a physical object, then putting it somewhere the person will connect to, is very cool. I’ve done this with jewelry, sinking connections in to enchant a pendant, so I can connect to the person’s physical domain easily (for protection). It works well.

There’s a difference between using a connection to send your own energy (only a fraction goes through) and using it to alter their structures (works well). Why? I could say “connections have resistance,” but that doesn’t explain anything more than saying “energy only has a fraction of its power over a connection.” The real answer gets into the difference between energy and activation, which is a whole post unto itself.

@Barrabbas (in Ananael’s comments): Connections based on symbols use the same systems I covered, and their goal is to connect you to a third system associated with the ritual style that symbol belongs to (the “symbol’s system”). The first system gets the signature of the symbol’s system, and either gives you that signature, or gives it to the system that makes connections, which connects you to that system. Once you know the system’s signature, you can just use the second system, skipping the symbol-to-signature step.

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Posted in Ritual Magick | 4 Comments »

Finding Where Mind Meets Body

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

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My girlfriend, Lisa, has been using the techniques in this series for a few months. She can connect to a single domain (her mind, her body, her mental muscles, etc), but she can’t follow the paths between domains. Instead, she jumps to the next domain, guessing at its signature. This has some limitations:

  • If she doesn’t know a domain’s signature, she can’t find it. I can show her where it is, but you might not have that option.
  • Many techniques require manipulating the paths between domains. Examples include deeper-than-energy healing, consciousness integration, and mental activation. If you can’t trace those paths, you can’t manipulate them.

This post explains how to trace paths between domains. It’s for Lisa and anyone else who jumps instead of tracing.

Note: A path is one or more connections. Think of it like co-ax cable, with many wires bundled together. A path can also be multiple connections that go through several domains in series, like going from your mind to a system then to a spirit. If that confuses you, just replace “path” with “connection” and you’ll get almost everything in this post.

If you haven’t read the rest of the series, start with the first post.

Why Trace Paths Across Domains

If you want to see how your mind connects to your body, how your mental muscles connect to your brain, or how a mage uses a systems, you need to trace paths from the first domain (your mind, your mental muscles, or the mage) to the second (your body, your brain, or the system).

I trace paths for just about everything I do, including:

  • Exploring anything I haven’t worked with yet: Tracing all the paths lets you see how each part interacts with the whole.
  • Finding the systems that another mage uses, so I can use them too. (Particularly useful for learning psychic talents, which always require systems).
  • Deeper-than-energy healing: You need to work with the paths between energy and the deeper layers.

Basically, it’s a fundamental skill you’ll use everywhere. It lets you see and understand magick better, and it’s required for any technique that works with multiple domains, which is most of them.

Learning To Trace Cross-Domain Paths

Seeing a path within one domain is easy. It only has one signature, and as long as you align your sensory connection to that signature, you can see it.

The hard part is tracing paths across domains, where the signature shifts.

Before we can talk about this, we need a bit of notation: Say a connection goes from point A (in domain A, with signature A) to point B (in domain B, with signature B), transitioning the signature as it goes. Halfway across, the signature will be (roughly) 50% A and 50% B, which we’ll call 50/50. Closer to A, it might be 75% A, which we’ll call 75/25. Very close to B, it will be 10/90. Make sure you have that before going on.

So, you align to signature A, then start tracing. Remember, you can only see signatures that you’re aligned to. At 90/10, you can still see fine. At 80/20, you can see OK. But by 50/50 or so, there’s not enough of signature A in the hybrid signature for you to see clearly, so you lose track of the connection. That’s where I used to have trouble, it’s where Lisa has trouble now, and it’s where lots of mages can’t see magick clearly.

Here’s how you learn to trace paths:

  1. Connect to both ends of the path (A and B), so you know the two signatures.
  2. Make a third connection to side A, and align to signature A.
  3. Move it along the path a  short way, to maybe 90/10 or 80/20, so you can still see the path. (Alternately, you can make a fourth connection a bit down the path).
  4. Re-align to the signature at that point (remember to broaden first, adding signature B into your connection, then align it).
  5. Trace a bit further, then re-align, until you’re through the path. You’ll feel the connection you have to point B when you’re done.

For better results, align all the scales of the signature you work with, from large to small. Align even the parts of the signature that don’t change (it will give you a better overall alignment). It’s OK if you can’t align all the scales at the same time, but do each scale before tracing the connection further. By aligning each step better, you’ll make it easier to trace the rest of the path easier.

Lisa imagines this as walking through a canyon, passing different layers of rock as you ascend, and making a smooth shift from one layer to the next.

General Path Tracing

Often, you’ll only know the starting point (signature A), but not the ending point (signature X). The technique is the same, but for step 4, use the general broadening technique from last post (for broadening when you don’t know the other signature). I’d recommend getting good at general broadening (meaning it’s easy and doesn’t tire you) before trying this.

Harder Cases

If you’re tracing a connection that a malicious spirit is intentionally hiding, it will often go from you (domain A) to someone else (domain B) then to the spirit (domain C). The last connection has zero percent of signature A. To trace it, you need to realize you’ve arrived at point B, then use general path tracing to find the spirit’s connections, and start tracing those to point C. It’s easy once you have experience tracing paths, but I wouldn’t recommend it for your first try.

Mastering Path Tracing

Like sounding out letters when you’re first learning to read, tracing paths will be slow at first, because you’re consciously training your mental muscles how to trace a path. But, like reading, with enough practice it will become fast, automatic and unconscious.

I find it easier to practice a skill when I’m using it to accomplish something, instead of just practicing to practice. So practice tracing paths until it becomes comfortable (but still slow), then use path tracing as you do other magick. (See the list of in-depth guides to the left for ideas).

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Sensory Connections – Step 4: Seeing Areas

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

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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.

So far, we’ve been learning to accurately read a signature at a single point. Today, I’ll show you how to see regions (like an entire joint, the region of your mind that directs your mental muscles, etc) by splitting a sensory connection.

If you haven’t read the rest of the series, start with the first post.

Why Split Your Connection?

One connection tells you the signature at one point. But to really understand how magick works, you need to see all the moving parts, which often have different signatures. To see all the moving parts, and all their signatures, you need to split your connection.

Here are a few ways I use networks of connections every day:

  • For energy healing, I use them to view the entire injury, which often spans multiple tissues. For example, energy healing for an inflamed knee requires energy matched to both tendons and cartilage.
  • To check for holes in my shielding. You can’t do that with a single connection to a single point. You need to see the whole shield.
  • For telepathic communication, you need to copy the signatures of a region of someone’s mind into your mind. One signature at one point won’t work. You need all the signatures.

Networks of connections also let you influence tissues and structures at multiple points, which lets you shift their signatures better. This helps you do energy healing, activate hibernating mental muscles, and drive other changes more effectively.

Most of my magick uses networks of connections, because most magick involves multiple moving parts. Once you learn to see areas instead of points, you will use it for most of your magick, too,

How To Split Your Connection

First, there are 2 ways to split a connection:

Method one: To see small-scale signatures, split one large-scale connection into multiple small-scale connections, each with part of the large-scale connection’s signature, and each going to the same point. If you’ve been following this series, you’ve already done this without realizing you were splitting a connection.

This post is about method two: Splitting a large-scale connection into multiple large-scale connections to view different points.

Each of those large-scale connections will be made of multiple small-scale connections. That scale-based splitting should be handled unconsciously and automatically by your mental muscles now.

If you still have to focus to see and align to small-scale signatures, practice that while you learn a practical skill (like energy healing, shielding, psychic intuition, etc), then come back in a few weeks.

To learn it:

  1. Make a connection to something you can work with easily, like your arm, mind, mental muscles, shielding, etc.
  2. While focusing on the spot that your connection goes to, try to also look at another spot near it. Think about using the same connection to look at both spots. Your mind will know it needs to split the connection.
  3. Align each connection to the signature of its spot. They will be similar but not identical.

Practice this until it’s easy, then try looking at 3 or 4 points. This should take about 2 weeks, practicing 5-10 minutes a day.

That just set up a few connections, not a whole network, but the important part is it taught your mind how to split connections. Now we can use that to make a network:

  1. Connect to the same thing as the previous step 1.
  2. Think about wanting to see the entire area (the whole muscle, area of your mind, etc). Your mind knows it needs to make connections throughout the area.
  3. Slowly sweep through the area and align the connections to their signature.

Steps 2 and 3 require your unconscious to translate a general goal (“Align these connections to the right signatures”) into a lot of specific actions (aligning each connection). That’s why you practiced on one connection at a time first: To train them. Now that they know how to align one connection, you can tell them to align a bunch of connections, and they’ll do it accurately and quickly. But without the training, it probably wouldn’t work.

Next

We’ll use all these techniques to trace connections through signature shifts, so you can see where connections lead even if you don’t know already. This lets you see how all the different domains (mind, body, systems, mental muscles, etc) interact, which lets you understand magick more fully.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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Sensory Connections – Step 3: Seeing New Signatures

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

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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 see structures you aren’t looking for by broadening your connection’s signature.

If you haven’t read the rest of the series, start with the first post.

Why Use Broad Signatures?

Say you want to see how your mental muscles connect to your brain, so you can improve how quickly and accurately they respond to your thoughts. Each of those domains (your brain and your mental muscles) has a different small-scale signature. The connections will transition between the two, so you need a sensory connection with both signatures to see the connections between your mental muscles and your brain, or between any two domains.

A few other uses of cross-domain connections:

  • How energy affects physical cells.
  • How systems put thoughts into your mind.
  • How energy healing at distance works.

How To Do It

Pick two domains you already work with that connect to one another, like a system and your mind, your mental muscles and your mind, or an energy healing system and your body.

Make two connections, one to each domain, viewing the smallest scale signature that’s easy for you. Feel how the signatures are similar and how they’re different. Then think about both signatures as you make a third connection.

To verify that the third connection has both signatures, connect it to one domain, look for paths to the other domain, and follow them. If you can follow those paths to the other domain, and look at the other domain with that 2-signature connection, you did it right.

If you have trouble, practice viewing signatures at a small scale more, then try this again.

Small-Scale Broadening

Remember small-scale signatures and connections? The small-scale building blocks add up to large-scale signatures. You want to broaden with small-scale signatures, not large-scale ones. Here’s why:

First, a few details on broadening signatures. Say each large-scale signature is made of 4 building blocks, so large signature A is made of small signatures a, b, c, and d, and large signature Z is made of small signatures w, x, y, and z. If you combine large signatures A and Z, you get one new signature (AZ). But if you combine the small signatures, you get 4×4 = 16 new signatures (aw, ax, ay, az, bw, bx, and so on). I’ll call these “mixed signatures” because they mix the two domains’ signatures.

Cross-domain connections use those small mixed signatures. To see those connections at a small scale (which lets you see them more accurately), you must also have those small mixed signatures.

To broaden at a smaller signature like this, use the exercise above, but look at each of the two domains’ smaller-scale signatures. This will become easier as you practice viewing smaller scales and broadening signatures.

General Broadening

Sometimes, you won’t know what domain you’re looking for. Maybe you’re doing something new, using a new system, or working with a new person. When you don’t know what signature you’re looking for, you want to broaden your sensory connection’s signature generally.

Here’s how generally broad signatures work: Most domains share small-scale building blocks. By adding together building blocks from a lot of domains, you’ll usually wind up with a general signature that can connect to any other domain.

To do it, think about your sensory connection’s signature, plus the signature of one domain. Add them like we did before for the 2-domain signature. Repeat until you get a clear picture of the new domain.

Aligning to a Signature

Broadening a signature adds new signature building blocks. Some of them won’t be useful, making your connection harder to use. We’ll fix that by aligning its signature.

To align a signature: At the smallest signature scale you can use easily (not the absolute smallest you can use), feel which signatures connect to the structure you’re looking at, and which don’t. Just focus on which small-scale signatures are giving you feedback, and which don’t feel anything. The ones that don’t feel anything aren’t connecting. Tell the mental muscles that handle connections to get rid of those signatures that aren’t connecting.

Eliminating signatures will simplify your connection. To align even better, repeat the exercise at one or two scales smaller.

In general, if I say that you should “align to a signature,” I mean first broaden your signature generally, then align that broadened signature. You wouldn’t align without broadening first, because there are no building blocks to discard.

Aligning to signatures (after generally broadening) lets you accurately see new domains, which is the first step to working with them. That’s why it’s one of the core skills of direct magick. Even for domains you use a lot, aligning to the signature at a smaller scale can help you see them more clearly.

One thing to remember: Aligning to a new signature is tiring. Rest until you’re not mentally tired (a few hours or a day, usually), then do it again. After 2-3 times, you’ll find the new signatures much easier to use.

Next

How to split your connection so it can see an entire area, not just a single point.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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Sensory Connections – Step 2: Seeing Smaller Connections

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

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

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 see small connections that you normally miss so you can understand intricate magickal mechanisms.

If you haven’t read the rest of the series, start with the first post.

Why See Small Connections

Think of connections like paint brushes. Finer brushes give better detail. Anything that handles detailed information needs small connections. To understand one of those mechanisms, you need to see its small connections.

Here are some examples:

  • Your mental muscles talk to your mind through small connections.
  • When energy healing affects physical cells, it goes through many layers of structures and small connections.
  • Systems (for psychic intuition, energy healing, etc) connect to your brain with small connections.

Smaller Connections are Essential to Shielding

To use the atom metaphor from earlier, if I use molecule-scale connections to establish my shielding, there will be atom-scale holes that I never see. If you use atom or smaller scale connections, you can go through those holes, making my shield worthless.

For more, see Bypassing Magickal Shields.

How To See Small Connections

You see small connections by seeing their small signatures.

To use the atom metaphor again: Molecule-scale connections have molecule-scale signature. The atom-scale connections that make them up have atom-scale signatures. Once you can see the atom-scale signatures, you can see the atom-scale connections.

For more on scales of connection and signature, see here and here.

How To See Small Signatures

Look at a signature you know well, like the energy in your head or body. Quiet your other thoughts and focus on seeing it (or feeling, hearing, etc). Get comfortable in that mental posture. Then ask “What are the building blocks?” You should see the signature split* into its building blocks.

You’re not actually splitting the signature apart. You’re just seeing the building blocks as separate items. The signature itself is unchanged.

If that don’t work, ask in a way that resonates with you. You can visualize the signature splitting apart, then relax to let your mind show you the building blocks. A friend asked “How does the signature split so it can align with someone else’s signature?” and said the building blocks looked like “an impressionistic watercolor.”

Once you can split the signatures, practice with your signatures until it becomes easy. Then practice with signatures you don’t know as well: A system you use, a friend’s energy, spirits you work with, etc. When that becomes easy, you’re ready to use smaller-scale connections, and you’re ready for the exercises in the next post. If you practice for 5-10 minutes a day, this should take 1-2 weeks.

Using Smaller Connections

Smaller connections take more effort, but give you a clearer picture. There are 2 main ways to use them:

  1. Look around at the scale you used before. When you find something interesting, think about the signature building blocks to get a clear view at that smaller scale. You can do this after completing the exercises in this post.
  2. Use the smaller-scale connections all the time. This lets you see small connections and structures you didn’t know were there and weren’t looking for. It’s more useful, but requires additional techniques to learn. We’ll cover those in the rest of this series.

Continuous Improvement

Seeing smaller scale signatures isn’t something you do just once. You’ll do it many times, each time seeing more structures more accurately. Every few months, repeat this exercise, starting with the smallest scale you use, and going one scale smaller. It’s also great for finding clues when you’re stuck.

Next

How to see structures you aren’t looking for by broadening your connection’s signature.

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Sensory Connections – Step 1: Quiet Connections

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

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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:

  1. 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).
  2. Use your connection visualization, with the energy going through it.
  3. 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.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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How To See Magick Clearly

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

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Sensory connections are your eyes. They let you watch your magick as it works, so you know what actually happened, and how it differed from what you expected to happen. They let you see the current state of everything  you’re working with, so you can diagnose illnesses, shield properly, and recognize spirits. And they let you watch the techniques of other mages you know, so you can understand, copy, and improve on them.

The better your sensory connections are, the more you can see. If you don’t use sensory connections yet, this series will teach you everything you need to get started. If you already use sensory connections, this series will give you some tips to use them better.

This post is an overview. Don’t worry if you can’t do the techniques I describe, the rest of this series will teach you how. Also, give yourself a few weeks to work through this series. It’s harder than the steps that came before, but I promise, it’s worth it. Once you can see all the pieces that make your magick work, you’ll learn much faster, and you’ll be able to create more noticeable, reliable changes in the world.

How Magickal Sensing Works

You sense signatures. Signatures aren’t just for energy. Remember that everything has a signature.

Say you’re connected to a magickal structure, which might be a spirit, another mage’s connection, a magick muscle, etc, but you don’t know which it is. You can figure that out by looking at the small-scale building blocks of the signature*. Each type of structure has different signature building blocks. With practice, you’ll learn to recognize the building blocks of each domain, which lets you figure out what you’re connected to quickly.

*For a review of signature scale, see this post.

At larger scales, you can see additional details of the structure. For example, if you’re working with physical tissue, the medium-scale signature tells you what type of tissue it is (muscles, tendons, nerves, etc), and the large-scale signature tells you the state of that tissue (inflamed, torn, healthy, etc). But you can only view those medium- and large-scale signatures if you first align your connection’s small-scale signature to the small-scale signature of the structure you’re viewing.

How Sensory Connections Work

Sensory connections absorb a little bit of energy. Specifically, sensory connections absorb it passively. Think of energy like water pressure or heat: It flows from a structure with more energy to the one with less. By making connections with less energy than the thing they connect to, you will passively absorb a little energy. This is different from draining connections, which grab and forcibly remove energy. Think of sensory connections as passively noticing the fragrance that a rose is already giving off.

One note here: “Energy” has 2 meanings. The one you’re probably most familiar with is the energy that flows through your body, along connections, and gets delivered in Reiki-type healing techniques. I think of that energy as flowing on top of structures. The other meaning is the energy inside a structure. That energy doesn’t flow around. Instead, it makes the structure move and interact with other structures. When you sense the signature of most structures, you’re absorbing this internal energy, not the energy that’s flowing on their surface. To avoid confusion, I call this second type of energy “activation,” because it’s what makes a structure active.

I’ve been told that last paragraph is the most challenging in this post. Don’t worry if you didn’t get it, I’ll explain it again before we use it.

A single sensory connection detects a particular signature in a single spot. To watch any interesting magick, you’ll need to watch many signatures by making a complex connection out of many single connections. Also, you’ll need to watch those signatures in many places to understand how all the different pieces move and interact, so you’ll make many of those complex connections throughout the structure. When I say “sensory connection,” I usually mean this set of complex connections. When I mean a single connection for a single signature in a single point, I’ll try to say “single connection.”

Summary: Making Good Sensory Connections

A good sensory connection:

  • Matches the small-scale signature of whatever you’re looking at.
  • Uses many connections at each point to detect all the small-scale signatures you’re interested in.
  • Repeats that set of connections at many points to assemble a good picture of whatever you’re looking at.

This series will walk you through how to do each of those items, plus a few others.

Learning Sensory Connections

This series will show you skills that I developed over a couple of years. Each time I encountered parts of magick I couldn’t understand, I developed a new piece of sensory connections so I could continue moving forward.

Don’t try to learn everything in one go. Practice the exercises in one post until you can do it if you focus, then practice that skill while you learn some other technique, like shielding, energy healing, influencing emotions, etc. (Look at the bar to the left for some ideas). After a few weeks, once that part of sensory connections becomes easy, come back to this series for the next step. In this series, do each post in order, since later ones build on earlier skills.

Next

Check back next week for the first set of exercises to learn sensory connections so you can watch your magick more accurately.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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3 Things You Might Not Know About Signatures (But Should)

Saturday, January 8th, 2011

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Most mages think of an energy signature as the feeling of the energy when you absorb it.

That’s true. But there’s a lot more to signatures. And learning it will help you do magick better.

Here are 3 things you probably don’t know about signatures that will make you a better mage.

1. Everything Has a Signature

Most people think of signature as in “energy signature.” But every magickal structure you work with — connections, mental muscles, systems, and so on — has a signature.

Connections carry energy that matches their signature. If your connection doesn’t match my energy’s signature, my energy won’t flow through it.

Shielding only blocks connections with its signature. If you don’t shield against connections with my signature, you won’t block my connections.

The structures that makes up your mind have signatures, too. Not on the scale of “your frontal lobe has this one signature,” but on the scale of “these couple of nerves have one signature.” Each structure to energy matching its signature. When energy affects your mood, that’s because it energizes the right nerves to put your mind into a relaxed state.

An energized structure emits energy in its signature. So, if your mind is in a relaxed state and you build energy, that energy’s signature will match your relaxed mind’s signature. Everyone’s mind is similar, so that signature will also relax other people. That’s one way you can influence emotions with magick.

2. Signatures Are Like Rocks

Rocks are made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of…

You can break signatures down in the same way. Get small enough, and everything you work with has the same atomic signatures.

This is important for matching someone else’s signature, which you’ll use to see magick, to heal, to bypass shielding, and for most other techniques.

When you match (or “align to”) a signature, you’re making your signature look like theirs. The key is scale. You get OK alignment at the scale you’re using, good alignment at larger scales, and poor alignment at smaller scales. Magick is more effective the better aligned you are, which is why experienced mages practice working with very small-scale signatures.

Energy interacts with structures that have the same small-scale signature building blocks. That’s why your connection can carry several signatures of energy: They all have the same building blocks. If the building blocks aren’t aligned, then the energy won’t interact with that structure. That’s why some energies affect your magickal structures but not your body.

3. The Better The Energy, The Less You Notice

The tingly, warm feeling of energy happens when energy is shifts the signature of your nerves. That means you have to make energy that can interact with your nerves (meaning it has the same small-scale signature), but has a different large-scale signature. If you want to do that, make energy that’s aligned to one part of your body and move that energy somewhere else, or have a friend make energy aligned to themselves and send it to you.

Same with connections. When you feel a connection, you’re really feeling that connection change the signature of the part of you that it connects to.

You won’t feel anything if a connection or an energy is properly aligned. There are 2 ways to do it:

  • Align the small scale signature to the person’s magickal structures, not their body. Now it won’t affect their nerves, and they won’t feel anything.
  • Align the small scale signature to their body, and align part of the large scale signature to their nerves. Now the energy won’t change their nerves’ signature, so they won’t feel anything.

You can do this while doing an effect on a person’s nerves (like for energy healing) by making the signature influence their nerves toward a particular state, rather than just moving the nerves’ signature around semi-randomly to produce the tingling.

(Also, experienced mages will notice aligned energy and connections, but it doesn’t have the tingly feeling).

Novice mages want to feel energy, to know they’re doing it right. But eventually, you’ll know you can make energy, and your goal will become to make aligned energy. And that means you’ll want to make energy that no one notices.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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How To Hack a System

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

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Initiations are the gatekeepers of magick. Before you can channel the Reiki system, you need an attunement. Before you can initiate someone else, you need another couple attunements. Golden dawn and other ritual styles are similar: Many levels of initiation, each with its own rituals, capabilities and price.

This post will show you how to bypass those gatekeepers.

Part of the initiation is social convention. Before someone will train you, you need to be part of the group. I can’t help you with that.

But initiation has a magick component, too. If a style requires initiation, the systems behind that style only work with initiated mages. They won’t talk to outsiders. This post is about bypassing that, so you can work with any system from any magick style.

This post builds on the rest of the series. Start with the first post here. Also, this is intermediate direct magick (the rest of the series was beginning direct magick). You’ll need good control of connections, the signatures of those connections, and your own energy. If you’re not there yet, click here to see where to start.

How Initiation Works

Hacking lives in the differences between the big picture on how something works and the details of how it works.

You already know the big picture: Systems only work with initiated mages.

Here are the details: Systems work best with a mage whose mind is aligned to the system’s signature. Some systems will work with you anyway, and even help you align your mind. But systems that require initiation only work with mages whose minds are aligned to their signature.

That’s the point of the initiation ritual: An initiated mage (who can work with the system) initiates you. The system aligns your mind using the procedure from the previous two posts. Once you’re done, you’re aligned enough for the system to accept you.

Levels of initiation work the same way. The better aligned your mind is to the system’s signature, the higher level you are with the system.

You can see how the techniques in the previous two posts let you initiate yourself, as far as the systems behind a style are concerned. But that’s a lot of work if you just want to use a system once. Here’s how to quickly align your communication to a system’s signature for a single session.

Matching a Signature Temporarily

Earlier, I said that systems only work with a mage whose mind is aligned to the system’s signature. Really, that’s a bit of a simplification. The system doesn’t know what signature your mind uses. When the system connects to you, it uses a connection in its signature. If you can communicate using that connection, you can use the system.

There are 2 ways accomplish that. Neither is the “easy way.” One requires less technique but more effort, the other is faster but more advanced. That trade off happens a lot. Here are the options:

  1. Change your mind’s signature to match the system. That’s what we did in the previous 2 posts. It’s the less skill, more effort method. It’s also semi-permanent (which is good in some cases, bad in others).
  2. Create a connection that translates between your signature and the system’s signature. That’s this post. It’s the quick but more advanced technique. Also, it’s temporary, so it’s best for hacking a system once, not using a system every day.

Translating a Signature With a Connection

A translation connection translates between 2 signatures. One end works in one signature, the other end works in another. Put in a message with signature A, and you’ll get the same message in signature B. The connection translates for you.

Don’t think of it like translating words, idioms, or anything at a language scale. We’re translating signatures. It’s like adapting computer connections, going from a PS/2 (the old round keyboard connectors) to USB. A friend explains it as connecting two sculptures, one of smooth clay and the other of angular metal, by making a series of small transitions between the two. The translation is closer to a re-arranging of wires than going from French to English.

The translation connection lets you bring the system’s connection (in its signature) into your mind (in your signature).

How To Make a Translation Connection

  1. Find the signature of the system (or whatever you’re translating to). To do that, connect to the system with a normal sensory connection.
  2. Make a connection with your signature on one end and the system’s signature on the other. To do this, you’ll need to know how to align to the system’s signature.
  3. Smooth the transition throughout the connection. You want a lot of small adjustments, not one big jump. Hold both ends of the connection in your mind, trace from one to the other, and split any large shifts into a series of small ones.

How To Hack a System

Connect to the system using a translation connection. It will handle the rest. Here’s why:

When you connect to a system, it follows that connection back to your mind. That’s how it finds you to read your thoughts. We need to get the connection that the system makes to translate between your signature and its signature. You do that by connecting to the system with a translation connection.

When the system traces your translation connection, it adds that signature shift to its connection. (See the Technical Note at the bottom for why). Now the system’s connection translates between your signature and its signature, so your messages show up in the system’s signature and it responds as though you were initiated.

That’s it. Just use a translation connection instead of a normal one.

Is it really that easy? Well, yes and no. Once you can make a good translation connection, yes, you can use almost any system you want. But making a good translation connection is intermediate direct magick.

The key is scale. Remember, signatures have scale. Large-scale signatures are made of small-scale signatures, in the same way molecules are made of atoms, which are made of protons and electrons, and so on to smaller scales. If you match at the atom scale and the system checks signatures at the molecule scale, you’re all set. But if the system checks at the proton scale, it will notice that you’re not aligned.

Here’s the rule of thumb: If you can align at a smaller scale than the system’s users normally work with, you can probably hack it. If not, you probably can’t.

In my experience, systems that are intended to be used by groups of people are easy to hack. They can’t require perfect alignment or new initiates wouldn’t be able to use them. The Golden Dawn or Reiki systems are good places to start.

What To Do Once You’re In

Once you have access to the system, send it this message: “Requesting basic use instructions.” Most systems have a readme, and that’s how you get it. It will tell you the commands the system accepts, what they do, and generally how to use it.

Make sure to ask for the “use instructions,” not just “instructions”, because most systems have one general readme and another for someone preparing to use the system.

Practicing Hacking Systems

Before you can hack a system, you need to find it. To do that, focus on a symbol associated with the system’s style. You can find the symbols online or at your local occult shop.

Start with a system known for friendly spirits. Reiki, Enochian, something like that. Not the Goetia.

Technical Note on Translation Connections

For advanced mages curious about the details of translation connections (feel free to skip this if that’s not you):

Connections don’t carry energy. Instead, one end absorbs the power, and the other end uses that power to emit energy. Think of it like heat flowing through metal, or how a rope transmits pulling (it can transmit the force without the rope itself moving much), not like how a hose carries water.

Connections, and all other magickal structures, have a signature. It only absorbs power from energy matching its signature (it absorbs some power from energy that partially matches its signature). When powered, it emits energy in its signature.

A translation connection has 2 signatures, one on each end. One end absorbs one energy signature, powering the connection. Power doesn’t have a signature; it just flows through the structure, eventually powering the other end of the connection. (Power flows more efficiently, losing less of its pressure and drive, if each signature shift is small. That’s why you want to make a smooth path, meaning a lot of small signature shifts, instead of a few big jumps). The far end of the connection produces energy matching its signature, which is different than the signature of the energy that came in.

When you trace a connection, you’re tracing each signature shift that happens along the way. If you don’t, your connection winds up with a different signature than the one you’re tracing, and you won’t see the connection (or the thing it leads to) clearly. This is why the system’s connection takes on your signature shift when it traces your translation connection.

Making Better Translation Connections

Connections are made of many smaller connections, like how rope is made of twine which is made of thread. A rope-scale connection carries a rope-scale signature. The twine-scale connections that comprise it carry the twine-scale signatures that comprise the rope-scale signature.

Translation is an approximation. You are making a signature that looks like the other signature. The smaller you can match it, the better the approximation. To translate a signature well, you’ll want to use small-scale connections to translate the small-scale signatures. To improve your translation, focus on going to a smaller scale.

Most systems reserve some functions for high-level initiates. Things like initiating others and high-level techniques for that style. It separates newcomers from high-level initiates by how well their mind is aligned to the system’s signature. To access the advanced functions, you’ll have to translate more smoothly and at a smaller scale so the system’s view of your mind through the translation looks like an experienced user, not a newcomer.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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