Conserving
Magical Energy
by Ian
Elliott 2-5-13
We all
contain magical energy, and this energy is unique to each of us. But due to conditions of modern life, all of
our magical energy is deployed in habits, habits of perception, of feeling, of
thinking and doing. Very little is left
over every day for exploring our magical heritage. This is why most spell books on the market
are not much help in casting spells.
They take a cookbook approach which assumes that people as they are have
sufficient magical energy available to make them work. They don’t.
In order to
access our own magical energy, we must begin by saving little amounts of energy
which we otherwise fritter away each day in wasteful habits. This is the starting-point of the Inner
Craft. It is a very small door, like the
door Alice went through into Wonderland – she had to take a magic cordial first
to make herself little. It begins, in other words, with small efforts.
Conserving
magical energy requires patience. It
takes a while to save up sufficient energy to make a difference. However, we are so used to our typical energy
states, which run in cycles, that we recognize a difference in them almost
immediately after starting efforts at conservation. We may suddenly worry that we don’t seem to
be worrying so much anymore. This sounds
silly, but we are so used to our own ups and downs that it takes all of a
witch’s Power to Dare to venture into this unknown territory.
Here is a
general map of our familiar territory, which we will be
leaving behind:
1 – Cycles
of worry and anxiety.
2 – Cycles
of small nervous movements.
3 – Cycles
of inner talk.
4 – Cycles
of negativity.
5 – Mental
and material clutter.
6 – Patterns
of perception.
These are
the main areas of our life which commandeer and squander our available magical
energy. The simplest one to start with
is the second, small nervous movements.
When the witch sits, he or she is still.
This is the power of the North, the Power to Keep Silent, as expressed
by the body. Regular exercise is
necessary in order to remain still in a vibrant, poised manner. The witch notes the situations under which he
or she tends to begin scratching, or tapping the foot, or whichever motion is
involved. If this occurs while sitting
in a chair, the witch gets up immediately at the first sign of it, and does
something else. It is no good waiting
until the train of habit runs you over; as soon as you see it approaching, you
must get off the track. This requires
the cultivation of vigilance.
The first
item on the list above may seem necessary to running our practical lives and
avoiding financial or some other form of ruin.
If I don’t worry, how will I pay my bills on time? The answer is to sit down daily, preferably
in the morning, and make a list of daily obligations. Plan on paper, or on the computer, and spend
some time every day reviewing your plans.
If you have a long-standing problem, such as finding adequate employment,
do something every day towards solving it.
Then, when you feel you have done enough for that day, close your
planning book. If there are tasks to
perform, do them. But by evening you
should feel free to relax your practical self and see to other dimensions of
your existence.
Eliminating
clutter in your life, item number five, supports practical planning. Go through your closets and shelves and
dresser drawers, and examine all your papers and other stored items. You may find something useful to your current
needs. Use what you find, or give or
throw it away, or sell it. The mind
keeps track of everything buried deep in closets, even if you have forgotten
some of those things consciously.
Dealing with them, finding a use for them, not only opens up new
opportunities in your life, it unties little energy knots that you may have
carried around for years.
Clutter also
occupies time. We typically over-commit
ourselves to meetings, projects, visits, and other entanglements which fill up
our already busy schedules. It isn’t
necessary to be busy all the time in order to live a full life. On the contrary, the more we do or promise to
do, the less freedom we possess to explore new paths. The multi-millionaire J.P. Morgan complained
that he always felt hemmed in by his busy commitments. Practice saying things like “I’ll have to think
about it” instead of immediately saying yes.
Inner talk,
item number three, generally takes either of two forms. I call these the rehash and the
rehearsal. The rehash involves repeating
mentally conversations held recently, perhaps modifying the responses one made
in order to appear cleverer or more compassionate to oneself. We wish we had said something more, so we say
it in our minds afterwards. A certain
amount of review of our behavior after the fact is a healthy habit, but a
little goes a long way. Obsessively
revolving past conversations, or imaginary extensions of them, consumes an
enormous amount of energy and increases our feeling of dependence on how others
see us.
In the other
direction we have the rehearsal. We
think about an upcoming event, an encounter with someone perhaps, and we begin
talking to that person in our minds.
This can be more or less hypothetical, as of course all thoughts about
the future are hypothetical to some degree.
Here again, there is a fruitful use of this habit, as when we are
planning what we will say in a job interview.
But too much last minute ‘cramming’ is usually counter-productive. Plan what you will do and say, then lay it
aside and direct your attention to other things.
When a witch
feels caught up in the rehash or rehearsal, he or she identifies it first,
thinking “that is the rehash” or “that is the rehearsal,” and then turns the
attention to the surroundings, or some other present reality, such as a
book. Here as elsewhere, it is a matter
of knowing when to stop.
The fourth
item, cycles of negativity, must be approached in a two-step process. If we have habits of making sarcastic jokes,
we may justify this by seeing ourselves as witty persons. Encouraged by the laughter of others (which
may have only been polite), we may feel that we have a reputation to uphold as
comedians or critics. Or perhaps we
dislike political correctness and see ourselves as rebels when we make remarks
some find offensive. Or we may see
ourselves as heroic figures motivated by righteous outrage to tilt at
windmills.
The first
stage of saving magical energy by not squandering it in expressions of negative
emotion is to discover what self-image, or images, we are using to justify such
expression. If your expression takes
place in a social setting, you should consider the possibility that less
grumbling or joking from you will be a relief to your usual audience. If you express negativity in private, perhaps
cursing other drivers or your computer, see yourself doing it and how absurd it
would look to someone else.
Once you
have deflated the justification for your negativity, it will be easier to work
on deflecting the expression itself.
Here again, think of the approaching train: you must see it chuffing
along towards you from a distance and jump off the tracks well in time before
it sweeps you up. In other words, you
must become familiar with your cycles of energy wastage so you will know when
to break them. Habit cycles are like
chains, and every chain has a weakest link.
Finding the weak link is the key to breaking the chain.
In doing all
these things, the witch should avoid the feeling that the Inner Craft is a
goody-goody ethical pursuit. It is
nothing of the kind. We want access to
free energy, and in order to get it, we must become misers of energy. We must bear in mind that all our energy is
already deployed, and our only hope of breaking free from our energy
strait-jackets is by saving little bits of it, one bit at a time.
Once we have
become vigilant with these five items it will be time to turn our attention to
the subtlest and, potentially, the most powerful form of conservation, changing
patterns of perception. We perceive all
the time, and our way of looking at and listening to the world is a habit of
such long standing that changing it is a most subtle affair. It is necessary to have the other five areas
well in hand before attempting this last, sixth one. If we go for the sixth item prematurely, we
shall achieve some novel effects, but before long we will drop it as an
interesting exercise which goes nowhere.
The Inner
Craft distinguishes between directing the attention to where the eyes are
pointing, which it calls looking, and spreading the attention from that,
extending it to perceptions lying to the side of where our eyes are pointing,
or above or below where they are pointing.
The eyes do not move to these things, just the attention.
In the same
way, changing perceptual patterns involves extending the attention to
background sounds as well as to sounds we are currently focused on. We generally listen to background sounds
sporadically and then shut them out if they are annoying or fail to interest
us, as with muzack in a store or elevator.
The witch takes in all available sounds continuously, for this saves the
energy habitually employed in blocking them out. It takes much more energy to ignore
peripheral sights and sounds than to include them in attention. This is the secret of this form of magical
energy conservation.
Attending to
things to the side is called gazing in the Inner Craft. We can gaze to the side of an object, such as
a television screen, or we can switch our eyes to the side of the screen and
gaze back at it. If you practice
switching back and forth from one form of gazing to the other, you will feel a
sensation starting in the back of your head at some point. Something will open up back there. Don’t try to make this happen, or you will
become involved in imagination. Just be
aware when it does happen on its own.
When you
close your eyes to go to sleep at night, you will see little lights and
patterns produced by the gentle pressure of your eyelids on the retinas. These are called phosphenes. Generally we ignore them and just go to
sleep. This is probably for the best,
for if you follow them with the attention, you may or may not drop off. But it isn’t necessary to keep your eyes open
all day until it is time to go to sleep.
If you observe animals, they spend a good deal of time with their eyes
closed. This is especially true of cats,
at least as far as my observation goes (I am a cat person). You should rest your eyes two or three times
during the day, and as you are not doing so to take a nap (though you may fall
asleep anyway), you can observe your phosphenes. This is called “reading the book of the
eyelids” in the Inner Craft.
You may
find, while your eyes are closed, that your hearing becomes more acute. You can play with this sensation by opening
and shutting your eyes at intervals. Do
this while sitting or lying at home, or while a passenger in a car or train,
looking out the window. Don’t try it
while walking or driving!
Exercises of
these sorts increase our use of the ears and relax somewhat our over-reliance
on the eyes. In particular, extending one’s
visual attention to the side (or above or below) of where the eyes are pointing
tends to relax the muscles at the outer sides of the eyes. These are typically tensed because we are
using our eyes to track on objects, as though they were searchlights. Pueblo Indian chief Ochwiay Biano (Mountain
Lake) once remarked to the psychologist C.G. Jung that “The white man’s eyes
have a staring expression; they are always seeking something…they are always
uneasy and restless …We think they are mad.” [1]
From being searchlights, the eyes can become passive windows, taking in the
whole visual field as it is presented.
When the
muscles at the outer sides of the eyes relax, the witch will feel a peculiar
energy entering there, an energy carrying feelings
and what might be called
‘wordless knowledge.’
Another way
of taking in the whole visual field at once is to keep our headlessness in
view. [2]
Did you know you were headless? You knew
this when you were a small child, before you were told that ‘the baby in the
mirror’ was you, yourself. At that
point, we began to ignore the little we could see of our heads without using a
mirror or other reflecting surface: perhaps a blob for the nose, eyelashes in
bright sunlight, or a cowlick hanging down in front. If we keep those sensations in view, we will
stay in contact with the whole visual field.
Losing those sensations, we tend to alternate between thinking and
looking. We feel that we are shut up in
our heads, looking from moment to moment out of two portholes at the world
around us. If we keep our headlessness
in view, we shall think and see at the same time, as Janus the threshold
guardian does at the Pagan’s front door, looking out and in at once with his
two faces. We shall live on the outside of our bodies.
There is
much more to this part of the Inner Craft dealing with perceptual patterns,
such as noticing shadows. Cars at midday
roll along over their shadow carpets without casting them back from the wheels. When we walk home in moonlight, the moon
keeps pace with us. When we cross our
eyes looking at two candles placed side by side at eye level, a third candle
appears between them, combining their colors and features. These are only a few out of many perceptual
patterns which help to release our magical energy; but it is unnecessary to
mention all of them, since practicing a few of the basic ones already mentioned
will inevitably lead to all the rest.
If you take
the six items above in the recommended sequence, you will be able to integrate
the Inner Craft in your daily lives, and in the Circle you will hum with magical
energy.
Bibliography
HARDING, D. E., On Having No Head;
Zen and the Re-discovery of
the Obvious.
London and New York, Arkana, 1986.
JUNG,
Carl, Memories. Dreams, Reflections, New York, Vintage Books,
1965.
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