Jimmy Two-Hats
What others regard as supernatural superstition or the science of psychic warfare is real magick to Pagans--whether it's the spells of Wicca or the black and white of occult magic, witchcraft and wizardry are part of our heritage. Real magic should be part of what we do, but are we doing it right?
I'm probably not a very good Pagan because I'm far more interested in magic than in religion. I don't worship anything, even though I believe supernatural beings are real. I at least am more in harmony with the beliefs of those who cherish the Earth and living beings than I am with those who claim dominion over it and think that a correct decision might include its destruction. So that puts me in the Pagan camp, but just barely. I'd say I live somewhere on the outskirts of the village; my work has more to do with the forces behind Pagan beliefs than it does with the ceremonies and the trappings of those beliefs.
I know that the physical trappings of rituals can be very efficient, with effects that qualify as legendary in scope--but most of them, like the crystal rods of Wyrd Science and the wands, athames and chalices of Wiccan ritual, are effective only in imagination. Pagans are for the most part cargo cultists worshiping the memory of something their ancestors knew as real, like children who play with empty guns, not even knowing what they could do if loaded. Now and then, somebody gets a tool that really is charged, and for a little while things happen. Then they don't, and the person who thought himself a mage decides it was all silly and explains it away.
These old ceremonies and sacred objects, even if imperfect or fashioned from ordinary things, will eventually draw the attention of other beings. The ancient beings upon whom these ceremonies should be focused may actually participate, putting their own energy into what happens, but if the people involved have no clear purpose for that energy the effects will be unruly and pointless, and the beings who provided that power will either withdraw or use the connection for their own purposes. Whether it is good or evil is of little consequence, because the beings involved are not human and do not have motivations of human beings. In the end, if we do not follow the correct path, the contact fades until we do. Magic circles filled with worshipers can become as empty of magic as a church full of Christians on Sunday morning.
Christians have dominated the world for quite a long time now, partly because it's in their religion that they should and partly because Pagan religions don't include this as a goal. That wouldn't have occurred to us, because to us religion is a personal thing. Pagan groups aren't so organized. Many Pagan circles are very newly formed, built on incomplete traditions and using invented bits to fill the gaps. Pagans don't have the hunger to control the world and don't want to live at the top of the food chain. Our agendas are amorphous and confused, which is part of what I like about being Pagan.
But there has to be a balancing force in the world. People who believe in the power of life and a continuing cycle of worlds, rather than a grand destructive cleansing, need to actively work in those same old realms that no one officially believes any more. Pagans need to reclaim what belongs to all people. We live in a world where leaders go to war because a God whispers in their ear that they should. Magic is a very powerful and very subtle thing, easy to disbelieve and easy to abuse. If the only people who really do this are the ones who believe that the destruction of the Earth is inevitable, it seems to me like a course we shouldn't follow. There has to be a balance.
In the early 1990's when I began studying Wicca, there were many public debates in the community literature over what Wicca should become. I wish I had kept those magazines. Wicca was experiencing a flood of new interest, as a religion, and many who had been in the practice for a long time already spoke out against that. These people were adamant that Wicca was not a religion, social gathering or a ceremony of worship; to them, Wicca was the practice of magic. These people were quickly shouted down. I felt very sad about that, because I knew from what they were saying about their own workings that we knew the same things. Some covens still talk about raising cones of Power and make a token effort to manifest the Watch Towers, but the usual focus today is self-discovery. I have no interest in that. For the old witches and warlocks, raising a cone of Power was a genuine event; it raised a vortex of energy that the members of the coven could see and feel, something they could imbue with a group purpose and send out into the world to accomplish a goal. Without that Power, it's all just empty ceremony. With that Power, the ceremony isn't even necessary.
When I was about twenty years old, I read most of Aleister Crowley's writings. I found them not a little disturbing, but I looked hard in the strange things he said for something of value. The one thing that stuck with me was what he said about the Wheel and its secret (one example: Line 7, Chapter 2, The Book of the Law). That was apparently the key to all things. I puzzled over it for months, thinking perhaps that by staring at the symbol he had scrawled (reproduced accurately in the book I was reading, just as he had drawn it during his writing trance) I might somehow absorb what it really meant. After coming to no greater understanding from that approach, I gave it up and discarded it as useless.
I still have mixed opinions about Crowley and his books, but after forty years of following the broken trail, I look back through all the flowery imagery and stilted language and see many of the things I now know. It's true to me now that all men and women are stars; and it's equally true that the secret of the Wheel is the key to magic. But, I see it in much simpler ways, and I don't think it should be secret.
I can now read line three of the first chapter, "Every man and every woman is a star," and see that as what it means: that we are beings of light. Others would probably disagree, but that is what I see: it is not a moral statement. We are not angels or demons. We are very powerful beings of energy who enjoy playing around with physical bodies. We have strange abilities that people describe as magical and most of us do not express.
Some of what Crowley says is confusing because the Book is a channeled work, partly his voice and partly someone else speaking. The meaning of the word "I" skips around a bit, sometimes from sentence to sentence. Line 7 in the second chapter has special meaning for me because it does not seem to be him speaking. I am the Magician and the Exorcist. I am the axle of the wheel, and the cube in the circle. "Come unto me" is a foolish word: for it is I that go. I have an interpretation that seems to work pretty well, based upon the things I know that aren't said here, though I'm sure plenty of Golden Dawn people think differently.
I am the one who summons (Magician) and the one who casts out (the Exorcist). I am the axle of the Wheel (the origin of the special Power I've been mentioning, that light energy we're all supposed to have but don't know it yet). ". . . . And the cube in the circle." This should represent the four quadrants, the four elements with which any of us should be familiar, and the magical force behind their simple physical manifestations. The circle should also be familiar. In American shamanic traditions it is often a naturally formed circle, something found rather than built, but it is also something created through visualization, something that extends to infinity, embracing the world with magical power instead of shielding from it. Simplistic interpretations aren't simple. "Come unto me" is a foolish word: for it is I that go. Another example of that, I suppose. It isn't a call to worship. We've seen summoning presented as bringing something else here, but it wasn't the old interpretation. In the old days this was a way to travel, to go to the places where the gods and goddesses dwell and learn directly from them. Of the thirty or so destinations of the old Sumerian system, the holy cities where adepts went to study, only a few were here on Earth. The remnants of that old shamanic system exist all over the planet today, but aren't seen in this way.
The Wheel is a common Pagan symbol. To my people, the Medicine Wheel represented four seasons, four directions, four spheres of human life, and four elemental powers of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth. Interpretations varied from nation to nation, and today these beliefs are a bit scrambled because of the many gaps in the chain of generations (people who were eliminated from our shamanic lineages by bullets and nooses). In some beliefs, only four powers are recognized. In others there are five, the fifth element represented by the hub of the wheel. Some describe it as Wind or Wood or Spirit, but it represents the essence of life and consciousness. This fifth element has often been a secret reserved for the high priests and priestesses, the key to actually making things work in a magical sense. The fifth element is actually us, or more actually a special force that is expressed through us. The secret that has been so closely guarded from us is that we are the catalytic force that makes things happen--we are the beings of light who can change the world.
Today, most of us don't burn brightly enough to make a difference. We live lifestyles that destroy our energy rather than build it to usable levels. We were taught that we were powerless, and we are because we live to make it so. All that can change. Today, learning these things requires turning loose of what we know as our own traditions, because no Pagan system is complete on its own. There's been too much damage and too much suppression over the years; too much was lost. The Path is still alive, though. Holding to a structured belief, whether that structure is Pagan or Christian or scientific, holds us back because we will be constantly searching for ways to substantiate what we already think is the truth. We are not accustomed to belief systems that have barely enough structure to hold themselves together, constantly testing everything whether it's old or new or unknown. In the old Path you do things, and things happen, and you try to understand. The Path starts with learning to stand still.
There's very little logic to this method and in the beginning it makes no sense, but it has its roots in what we already practice as ceremony--in the vision quests and ordeals of shamans and the trances and meditations of wizards and monks and even in the symbolism of the Green Man who disappears into the woods. We learn by imitating others, and in this instance that system works well: we learn by mimicking the trees.
If that sounds silly to you, I certainly understand. It will remain silly unless you do it. Real magic is a very powerful force. All it takes is a few people who know. The rest of the beings of light are welcome to play games and pretend other things-- I think it would be nice to have a world left when the game is done. The rest of us are here to keep the balance.
Born and raised twenty feet off the Trail of Tears; as a child was prone to running around naked under the full moon looking for magic and aliens. Half Scot and half Indian and now much older, interests basically unchanged; last living Heyoka of the People of the Fast Water Canoes. Driver's license expires in 2012.