Samsara is as Malleable as Clay: A Basic Primer for Practical Magickal Practice.

 

By Cheryl Costa

 

Magic is a topic that fascinates us.

Stage magic dazzles and entertains us. Stage magic, as you know, is cleverness and the art of illusion.

Of course there is a high-tech Computer Generated Images (CGI) that we see in modern motion pictures—the proverbial movie magic.

Then there is magic that we read about in fairytales. It’s a powerful magic usually wielded by sorcerers and the ever present stereotype wicked witch. Magic in storybooks is theater-of-the- mind, made real by the powerful prose and most certainly our own imaginations.

Then there is a real life Magick.

Of course most people will tell you that magick is simply make-believe. They will assure you that such things do not exist. Then there are people who believe in the power of magick. Usually these are people who don’t practice magick, nor do they really understand a thing about it. They are happy to bend your ear and tell you that magick is dangerous and not to be fooled around with.

They also frequently say those who practice magick are evil. Then there are many other people who believe that only a divine being can manifest genuine magick.

Still others are skeptical, but they leave the door open for real magick.

Unfortunately they frequently expect real-world practitioners to perform great and powerful feats. They almost always want over-the-top and overt demonstrations. Yet many of these people are less than impressed when a genuine practitioner demonstrates some small feat that defies the laws of physics. “It’s not good enough,” they say. In fact it’s never good enough for them. They almost always label it a parlor trick.

The reality of the matter is that Samsara, aka Reality, is a construct, therefore it is in effect malleable.

I once read a passage in one of Robert Thurman’s books where he described experienced lamas literally immersed in the art of manipulating the “machine code” of reality. Magickal adepts have been doing this sort of thing for millennia.

Buddhist and Magickal practitioners alike understand that there is a Great Common Consciousness, which we’ll call the Higher self. We also both understand the idea of the dualist view. An adept refers to our aspect of the great consciousness as the Younger Self and our day-to-day human view as the Talking Self.

The basic technique of magick is simply enough in theory. It only requires communicating our intention from the Younger Self to the Great Consciousness (Higher Self) for manifestation. That sounds like a “prayer” doesn’t it?

Bottom line, all efforts to manifest something through supernatural means works through this mechanism. Some might call the Great Consciousness by a God or Goddess name, or by perhaps a Bodhisattva name, but the principle is still the same; ultimately we are simply trying to get our intention communicated to the Higher Self or Great Consciousness.

In the movies we’re taught that great sorcerers read aloud powerful spells from venerable ancient books of magic. Such a scene makes for great drama but falls short in terms of actual magickal technique. I’ll take three old ladies with rosary beads over the great sorcerer reading verbose spells. Why?

Communication to the younger self is on a more primitive level. Verbose language doesn’t cut it! The younger self is communicated to with symbols, play acting, music and dancing. Think of it as a non-verbal game of charades.

For example: You want to have a new bicycle manifest in your life. A better technique is to cut out a lot of photos of the bike you want and stick them up on you mirror, your doors, and even the wall across from your toilet seat. Put the pictures up any place where you can observe the photo in a relaxed state of mind. The other approach would be those three old ladies with the rosary beads. Why?

Reciting the prayers is mantra. Repetition of mantra is a time honored technique for quieting the mind. So now we reach the crux of the matter.

If we are trying to divine or remote view information from the Great Conscious-Higher Self or trying to impress a request for manifestation of something in reality, the key to both scenarios is quieting the mind.

Other time honored methods are drumming, ceremonial dancing and as previously mentioned reciting a mantra of any sort. Lastly, Meditation is an excellent way to do what all the other methods eventually do, quiet the monkey chatter in your mind long enough to non-verbally communicate an intention from younger self to higher self.

In summary: Quieting the mind is the primary requirement for working high magic. The quieter the mind, the crisper the non-verbal imagery required for excellent manifestation.

Experienced adepts understand that quieting the monkey mind chatter is what’s it’s all about!

 

Cheryl Costa is a Syracuse, NY resident and a native of Corning, NY. She’s a veteran of two military services and retired from Lockheed Martin. She’s a published playwright , mystery writer and current pens the weekly newspaper column: New York Skies for the SyracuseNewTimes.com.

 

Photo: (source)

Editor: Dana Gornall

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