Descriptions:
Video Description
Psychologists sometimes use the words magical thinking as a warning sign, but in this video Lyam Christopher gives it a different meaning. To an initiate, he says, speaking about magic as if it were mere coincidence and superstition is a quiet signal that the real workings are not yet known. It is not an insult, simply a signpost on the road, pointing toward a deeper way of seeing.
The heart of the teaching is both playful and profound. Things like equal rights, gender, and even personhood are not solid objects we can find in the world, he says. They are ideas we agree to use because they help us live, but no concept is intrinsically real. The trick is to proceed as if these ideas matter while remembering they are invented, not to pretend they are solid facts carved into nature.
That same light shifts how magic feels. Real magic does not push a button and force a result; it stirs the pot and nudges the larger process, trusting that what emerges will be harmonious and alive. We may still speak as though a ritual caused an effect, but the initiate knows the truth is softer. Letting go of magical thinking does not end the practice. It opens the door to a wonder that cause and effect could never quite contain.
Full Video Transcript
Okay, this week we are talking about magic again, of course. And this time it’s about magical thinking. And this is something that a psychologist would sort of diagnose you with if you had some kind of mental problem, possibly, especially if you had some kind of psychosis or something like that, or schizophrenia. Magical thinking can often come along with that. And quite frankly, when people contact me through emails, the way they talk about magic or their lives,
indicates this sort of magical thinking okay and not that it’s I don’t really
see it as a mental illness magical thinking is kind of normal but when you
talk about magic in terms of magical thinking what it indicates to an
initiate is that you are not yet an initiate if you are speaking about it in
terms of magical thinking that might sound strange okay so if you are if
you’re talking about magic in the way that we think about magical thinking
okay if you talk about magic and you do it in a way that makes it symptomatic of magical thinking
that indicates that you don’t really understand how the magic works okay magical thinking is very
much like superstition it’s not really hard to figure that out but we’re going to go into it
what it looks like this is sort of a guide you know if you want to be able to portray yourself
as an adept you you would not speak in terms of magical thinking when you talk about magic
Okay, kind of a heads up for how to do it. Can you fake it? No, not really. You can’t fake initiation. An initiate will always know eventually that you are not the real thing. But it’s kind of a heads up because when you talk all over the surface of magic, the adepts know that, oh, it’s not the real deal here. Hasn’t experienced it yet.
So the real question, the main question is, when you talk about magical work, I think many people
are proceeding from the assumption that when I do a ritual, it brings results. Okay. I know that
sounds strange to maybe even imply that the ritual itself doesn’t cause the results. Okay. So it’s
kind of like the idea in most people’s minds about magic, of course, is if I do this, if I cast this
particular spell a particular result is going to happen okay and that’s how it works you know i do
the ritual and i get an effect cause and effect okay that’s not how it works and yet we do magic
and we do appear to get results okay so it’s okay to um speak about it in in terms of cause and
effect if you um because in the relative world we speak that way okay but if you speak of it in
terms of cause and effect as though that cause and effect is literally real then the initiates are
going to know that you you don’t know what you’re talking about okay so i want to get into like well
what’s wrong with magical thinking then exactly and how can we how can we avoid it no how can we
see past it how can we see through it that’s the most important thing so we have examples of
unhealthy magical thinking i just kind of poked around the web and found various pop psychology
discussions of magical thinking and what psychologists are saying about magical
thinking. And so if you’re delusional or if you have a schizophrenia or something like that,
that’s very often characterized by magical thinking. And these are sort of symptoms of
the sort of unhealthy types, right? If I wear this color, bad stuff won’t happen. So putting
on a particular color of obsessive compulsive disorder is very similar to magical thinking.
especially if you’ve ever seen the movie as good as it gets the jack nicholson character
is obsessive about many things and one of those things is he won’t step on any cracks
and so when he’s walking down the street he’s very careful not to step on
cracks because something unfortunate might happen or something like that right and so he stays off
the cracks because and magically he’s thinking that if i step on a crack something some misfortune
is going to come about. Superstition, right? Seeing hidden messages in everyday occurrences.
That sounds like divination, doesn’t it? Are the psychologists telling us that divination is
psychologically unhealthy? And you know, on some level, it is psychologically unhealthy. There’s
a way of proceeding about divination so that you can see through the act of divination and you
don’t simply take it at face value yeah well i guess we’ll get at that i don’t know if i could
really break through what it means to see through magical thinking uh this is an effort to do so
and you hear this all the time if you talk about misfortune the thought is that you are tempting
the gods to rain down misfortune upon you if you mention it or the or the thought is that well if
you’re talking about something um unfortunate then you are in effect um doing the law of
attraction and now something bad is going to happen to you or or could happen to you because
you’re attracting it law of attraction right yeah law of attraction is a type of magical thinking
and i would say yes symptomatic of um misunderstanding magic okay i’m not going to say
it’s a mental illness because magical thinking is kind of normal actually as we will see knocking
on wood to keep a bad thought from happening um now if you are in a meeting at work and you
mention something uh unfortunate and then you knock on wood to show everybody that you are
you know that you care you don’t want to you don’t you don’t want it to happen that’s one thing
pretending to be superstitious just to send the message that oh heaven forbid that should happen
right so that’s not so if knocking on wood when you’re with somebody to to convey that is by no
means uh indicates that you are guilty of magical thinking but if you really believe that knocking
on wood can prevent misfortune um yes if you literally believe that then you are engaging
in magical thinking which is somewhat delusional on the surface of it so what is magical thinking
the somewhat delusional belief that one’s thoughts words or actions can influence events in a way
that defies conventional logic or scientific understanding that sounds like magic doesn’t
it oh it is often seen in children as a normal developmental phase but can be pathological in
adults if it significantly affects behavior or functioning notice how the definition doesn’t
even imply that we outgrow it okay so whoever wrote the definition understands that um i think
this is a this is a paraphrase definition but um uh whoever came up with these these various
diagnoses or whatever they understand that magical thinking is quite normal and even healthy okay but
when it’s taken literally as i would say it becomes a problem it becomes superstition it becomes
possibly obsessive compulsive and it misunderstands what true magic is and the
psychologists go on to give examples of healthy magical thinking these don’t seem very much
different they seem just slightly more maybe religious i don’t know i i avoided a car accident
today some someone must be watching over me the belief in a guardian angel magical thinking and
yet if you practice golden dawn magic the main purpose in the outer order is to achieve the
knowledge and conversation of the holy guardian angel and upon entering the inner order that’s
the primary pursuit is to achieve the knowledge and conversation of the holy guardian angel
and ideally when you reach the inner order that’s what heralds the entry into the inner order
ideally anyway i think you know people enter adeptship and then they pursue that knowledge
but they’ve gotten a glimpse of whatever that is okay but the the main thing about achieving the
knowledge and conversation of the holy guardian angel is to see through that experience or that
concept or that image whatever that is right um is to um understand how that imagery arises and
works not to take it literally and and literally say i have this angel thing hovering nearby
okay let’s see uh avoiding the number 13 some buildings even have no 13th floor still yeah
that’s kind of fading from the world i think to some degree um yeah but uh thinking that the
number 13 is unlucky um i certainly don’t don’t and the funny thing is i engage in some numerology
and because i do kabbalah and uh of course in the jewish ancient jewish traditions um number 13 is
sacred because it’s the number of lunar months in the year 13 i’m not sure where that comes from
there’s a story from the da vinci code about the knights templar i’m not sure where that’s where
that’s i think the number 13 might be considered unlucky maybe because uh pagans revered it as
sacred because of the number of lunar months in a year and then anything pagan was evil and
therefore the number 13 brings misfortune and the devil using a lucky pencil to take tests
people have lucky charms or they have a lucky sweater or you know something like that or they
have something with some sentimental value and whatever they take it out and look at it it
reminds them of something and it conjures up the imagery of that place or whatever this is a very
real thing especially with scents you like you smell it you have this particular scent and then
it takes you back to that place. This is quite normal actually, isn’t it? But of course, to have
a lucky pencil that makes you perform better on tests, or so you believe, that would be considered
magical thinking. And it’s not considered unhealthy to engage in that practice. Okay, now we’re going
to step on some toes here. What goes around comes around. Whatever you send out, you get back times
three magical thinking is that true what goes around comes around is that the way karma works
i’ve done a video about that and the proposal is that ultimately that is not how karma works
okay but i’m especially fond of whatever you send out you get back times three like uh that’s like
oh you’ve been a naughty witch now you must suffer three times as hard as the uh as the
suffering that you’ve caused or something like that, as though there’s a punishing force out
there. That is not how karma works. Yeah, but that’s a subject for another video, which has
already been done, actually. If I visualize success, it will happen, okay? Now, the interesting thing
is that we already know that visualizing certain things has an influence and appears to cause
stuff to happen. We know there’s something to this if we’ve done magic successfully before,
okay but what i’m pointing out here is that to literally literally believe that the visualization
itself is causing the event to happen okay that is not it okay it doesn’t mean that if you
visualize something that nothing’s going to that has no connection to what’s happening okay but
there’s a large aspect of the entire universe that’s being ignored in the belief in the linear
cause and effect between action and then effect cause and drawing a line straight from cause to
effect that kind of cause and effect does not exist ultimately but it’s okay to proceed as if
it does it’s healthy it’s normal it’s kind of the way the nervous system works okay and the important
thing is that we have to be able to see through the standard notion of cause and effect in order
to see how magic really works. Okay. So big takeaway there. Okay. So you can just think
about the standard notion of cause and effect that we entertain because the way our nervous
system functions. Okay. That is not accurate. It does not exist. Okay. And then you can ask
yourself, well, what really happens when I do this ritual and then a result pops up,
that’s not cause and effect. The answer is no, it’s not. Okay. Then what actually happens?
and you start delving into that what’s actually happening then if i’m not directly causing
something okay it’s not hard to figure this out though we’ll get into that in a little bit
i saw 11 11 on the clock it must be a sign i don’t know what that means maybe somebody can
explain what 11 11 means in the comments i don’t know i know in kabbalah 11 is the number of the
kripoth i’m not sure that has anything to do with the 11 11 i’ve been seeing in memes and things
like that uh and of course the numerology you know they’re believing that if i if i’m seeing
the numbers out there that must mean um the universe is communicating with me right so once
again that’s not an invalid way of seeing the universe but to believe it’s literally true is
a problem okay there is some the universe is trying to tell me something directly okay that
is not what is happening it’s nice to say it that way okay but that is not what is actually happening
okay is something communicating you can see it that way okay is that really what’s happening
no in fact whatever you look at is it really happening that way no no we actually don’t
really know how it’s happening but we can develop more accurate models for how things come into
manifestation yeah we can do that and we can get better and better results based on those models
but the linear cause and effect is not a very good model for for working magic okay it’s more of the
It’s more of a logic that you would use when you’re playing
billiards or bowling or fixing a car or something like that.
Right.
Working with purely physical back and forth forces, but purely physical
back and forth forces that, that appear to be going back and forth.
But once again, that’s not really what’s happening.
Every time I think about my mom, she calls me.
You must have a psychic connection.
Yeah.
I love the word psychic.
And I keep saying we need to rescue the word psychic from the psychics because
psychics tend to engage in magical thinking and say oh it’s like i’m causing it to happen it’s
like brain waves are shooting out of my head and then or something like that right uh are do these
psychic connections exist i would like to say yes but not in the way that we think they do and
probably not in the way that we want them to i would like to be able to send beams of energy out
of my head and cause things to happen with those beams of energy right is that the way it happens
and so one of the points i’d like to make in this video is that uh magical thinking perpetuates
suffering when it’s taken literally and it’s important to mention it then too because
students of magic you know contact me and they talk about their magical work in terms
of magical thinking which first of all lets me know that they don’t understand how the magic
works yet okay and yet um at the same time they are also usually suffering from something they
are in a cycle of suffering they’re trying to get out of it by using magic and if you use magical
thinking to work magic you’re going to screw things up most likely yeah so thinking in terms
of magical thinking in order to work magic is not the way to do magic i’m afraid this video is
becoming less and less clear but we’ll see if we can clear it up in a moment i guess the point is
that when you are engaging in magical thinking and you take it literally then bad things can
happen continue to happen in your life it is not your ticket out of suffering if you think that way
then there is the magical thinking that is hidden in plain sight so we have scientists who are very
objective thinkers and they think that they’re not superstitious at all and yet science is
completely infested with superstitious beliefs what on earth is potential energy and what is
energy for that matter i don’t quite understand or the you know the belief that there are various
universal constants there don’t seem to be any constants at all actually when you measure the
constants they appear to fluctuate but these are you know beliefs and dogmas of science
or of economics the idea of tins taffel tins taffel stands for there is no such thing as a
free lunch everything has a price and i love that one because it’s very faustian right because um
and many students of magic they contact me and talk speak to me in terms of oh yes i know that
magic has a price and sometimes i’ll even refer to it as a price there’s a price you must pay for
entry which is the sacrifice of the ego um and they speak to about it in faustian terms so i can
in order for you to um get something you have to give something and it’s an economic model of
transaction okay and i guess at the essence of that is the belief that i did this for you
now you owe me score keeping right and action reaction i did this for you now you react and
give something back to me and then i give something back to you and you give something
back to me like um and that’s fine there’s nothing wrong with that but the belief that
being owed something is literally real is superstition it just simply does not exist
okay now when you engage in these transactions stuff still happens that makes it seem as though
the give and take responsibility is there, that much is certain. Okay. So, and of course,
many of us find that in order to have more, we give more. So it seems like, oh, if I’m giving
people and more generous, I get more things. And maybe I even get it back times three is something
about to start. But of course, that is not how it works. In other words, it’s like the universe is
really happy that you gave it something and it’s going to give something back to you. No, that is
not how it works economics is a deeply flawed system of of thinking and uh that’s okay though
when you if you study economics it’s just important to be able to see past it to see through it
and not get caught up in it because it’s the standard economic theory is is riddled with
suffering oh my god it’s just toxic actually unless you can see through it that was just a
coincidence i was doing my tarot work and it predicted something was going to happen and sure
enough later something sort of like that happened later on right and then somebody comes along and
said that’s just a coincidence right um the interesting thing about saying it’s just a
coincidence it betrays a belief that things are random so the belief in randomness randomness
And I find it interesting because if you really try to find this force called randomness to prove that it exists, you won’t be able to. Try it. You will not be able to find any evidence that randomness exists because basically the randomness seems to rely on cause and effect thinking and the more closely you try to find a direct causal link between any two things, the less you will find it.
you simply will not find it all you’ll find is repeating patterns and things like that
patterns that appear to repeat okay but no direct causal relationships arise anywhere in the
relative world actually that’s a very important point too because if you can let go of the idea
of standard cause and effect you begin to appreciate a different dimension of reality
possibly and then the real magic comes comes out oh this is really gonna rub people the wrong way
now um so beliefs in ideals fairness human rights or even gender the belief that gender is real
that like it’s somehow intrinsically real okay or the belief that um equal rights is actually a
thing okay it doesn’t mean that the concept of equal rights is unimportant but it’s very
important to acknowledge that it doesn’t seem to exist where is it i can’t see it anywhere
let’s try to find it oh my god it’s not real doesn’t exist right that doesn’t mean we don’t
proceed as though it exists okay but we must acknowledge that it is a an invented construct
um maybe based on some kind of deeper principles sure fine whatever based on love you know but at
the same time um we must remember that all of the concepts that we deal with none of them are
intrinsically real none none at all it’s impossible for a concept to be literally or intrinsically
real and we we come down to things like personhood when you see a person you see oh yeah that’s what
another person i’m a person she’s a person right um but if you really look there’s basically a
it’s a a collection of physical forces interacting harmonizing and arising in this thing that i’ve
or this this swarm of phenomena that i have now labeled a person okay when you really begin to
wake up you can see there there’s nothing intrinsically real about any of the concepts
that i hold on to there are no people in the world you can observe animals living this way
can be quite liberating to watch that too in order to go out and defecate in the yard a dog
just goes just goes out you have to open the door of course the dog just goes goes out there and
then defecates it doesn’t have to become a dog to do that it doesn’t have to become a person
to do anything it doesn’t have to become somebody to to achieve something it just happens okay and
we suffer terribly because we feel like we are people with that like the person is real and
another person has obligations and it has to do it this way it has to do this and it has to live up
to expectations of what a person is there’s no such thing there’s no such thing now it is very
important though to respect what happens in the relative world and that people you have to respect
that people around you believe that personhood is real okay fine and we can we can play along
and pretend it is it is real because what we accomplish with that concept can be quite
beautiful but regardless it is still not real it is constructed in fact it’s sort of fabricated by
the nervous system and the reason we might think it’s intrinsically real is because we it almost
it’s almost as though the nervous system out of habit is creating a person it’s been doing it for
about a million years with us right uh and so out of habit all human nervous systems everywhere
create this person this persona right and then they believe it’s real and once you compulsively
believe it’s real oops then you have ego which does not exist okay neither does the persona okay
but it’s it’s very helpful to engage with these concepts like personhood and
to use them for a particular result let’s say or an apparent result and but
not to take them as intrinsically real to see through them when you could do
that then you and then you you die it’s like well I’ve always been dead or I’ve
always been alive you know that’s there’s no there isn’t really any me to disappear only this
collection of swarm of forces whatever is going to eventually you know fall apart or do what do
what it does but nothing truly ever ends the concept goes away but the concept was never real
to begin with okay when you can really start to see that in your bones then the enlightenment
it sets in and it can be quite scary if you’re not ready for it right um cause and effect one
thing over here causing something to happen over there doesn’t happen that way and i think i think
i have an easy way of explaining that so remember that when you engage in magical thinking you just
tend to believe i do something over here and it causes something to arise over there okay that
never happens that way it doesn’t work even if you are shooting a cue ball at a at an eight ball
and the cue ball hits the eight ball and the eight ball goes in the side pocket okay you from the
ultimate perspective you did not cause that to happen or the cue ball did not cause the eight
ball to sink you can already see the cause and effect starts to fall apart like well who caused
what like i did it or the cue ball did it or the if see if you analyze everything in a hyper
analytical way it’s like where no all the causes and effects and possible that we can assign to
things they they they disappear they keep they keep going out of reach we can’t seem to find
any cause and effect anywhere because in reality things are not doing a back and forth and bumping
into each other and getting action reaction no things are just arising this can be a very hard
thing to understand especially if you have already been conditioned by a life
of hard knocks where your life is is filled with action and reaction I can’t
believe you did that to me I’m gonna do this to you now oh now you’re gonna you’re
gonna fight back aren’t you yeah well okay I’m just gonna hit you harder now
what makes you think I won’t destroy you you know all this drama that we have
that that is based on a false belief a belief in cause and effect and when we
see through that it goes away and then what are we left with nothing nothing all right so let’s
let’s talk about how magic really works all right so we have uh we’re going to go back to the model
of metaxi and that is the way the supposedly the way the ancient greeks saw the universe
it wasn’t just spirit and body or spirit and matter um in in between spirit and matter where
there was the soul realm okay and we can see that as its own realm and in kabbalah it’s very easy to
see that as a combination of spirit and matter and the two are now vibrating together okay um
but remember in in non-dual philosophy all is one more or less all is really non-dual okay
and spirit and matter are really part of the same thing okay but when spirit and matter sort of
emerge from that one thing and are looking at each other oh now we have some possibility for drama
right and as they sort of interact and interpenetrate and and create patterns of
vibration between each other then we get manifestation and all of its craziness okay
so that’s what’s actually happening and for our purposes here um living pretty much in the body
let’s say um as that’s the way it seems anyway um when we do a ritual over here and get another
physical result over there notice what we’re doing we’re leaving out all the other stuff that’s going
on okay so if we only think of ourselves as body and so and something happens in another body over
there well where’s the soul level where’s the spirit level okay now in order to engage with
magic as it actually happens we have to take these deeper levels into account okay and to understand
this we go to a diagram of the neophyte temple of the golden dawn okay because this channel is
largely about golden dawn magic from the perspective of an initiate and quite frankly the
this channel is mostly about getting past magical thinking okay so in other words how to appreciate
magic as an initiate because really what you’re doing in the outer order work is you are moving
from the level of magical thinking into the realm of magic as it actually is okay and so when you
talk to an adept in terms of magical thinking they automatically can see that’s oh doesn’t have it
yet that doesn’t get it yet doesn’t understand yet okay as you can see here this is the neophyte
temple, and you can see there’s an east up above, there’s a south, there’s a west, and there’s a
north, and there’s an altar in the center, that black square with the cross and triangle on it,
and there are people standing around in various places. There’s the hegemon, there’s the Tadahos,
there’s the Stolistes, and there’s the Hyrus, and the Keryx, and the Sentinel, and on the DS in the
east, that’s at the very top in the east, you got various temple officers in the center of those
officers is the hierophant okay the hierophant represents the um the unmanifest it’s the
invisible okay if you’re standing in the temple you’d be able to see the hierophant but pretty
much that that raised platform because those are stairs going up there okay and he sits on
a throne in the east and uh the hierophant sitting in the east like that represents
osiris before the sun comes up in other words he represents osiris in the underworld okay
not manifest osiris osiris in his unmanifest state okay and so the whole thing about magic is
is drawing things from unmanifestation into manifestation okay or from the underworld into
the surface world let’s say right and so you can see if that’s the case then the neophyte temple
the whole neophyte ceremony money is the key the whole neophyte ceremony is the key when you learn
how this this temple setup works it shows you how magic works okay so in order to cause something to
manifest then you would have to somehow access it in its pure potentiality in that place to the east
okay where the hierophant sits right and have it somehow come down into the temple space and take
on some kind of form how do we do that we do that by dancing or by circuit
circumambulating okay in other words we do that through drama and that’s why a
ritual supposedly can cause cause something to manifest okay to arise okay
and so it’s almost like if the performance on the temple floor is good
enough beautiful enough within that beauty then arises the spirit of beauty let’s say and that’s
the spirit of tifareth or the spirit of of osiris risen osiris rising might say the golden dawn the
namesake of the golden dawn um so if something is is enacted in that space of manifestation
that is beautiful then beauty sort of arises from the underworld and then takes on some kind of
manifest form okay it kind of has to do that it’s if uh and of course um there’s an element of
authenticity to that if you just imitate something beautiful it doesn’t quite work somehow that
beauty that you’re enacting has to be soulful it has to come from within so there has to be an
element of prayer to it an element of transcendence an element of empathy of compassion these things
that move us beyond ourselves these are all involved in this sort of ritual act okay so
notice how then if i’m standing on the temple floor um simply grabbing one piece of temple
furniture and hurling it into another piece of temple furniture um that’s not magic okay that’s
simply me uh working with um attempting to work with material forces okay the real magic is if i
if i do something with the temple furniture and it causes an influence to um arise from the
underworld let’s say or or or descend into my temple space um and then sort of become a presence
there that is the magic okay and i guess you know people do that in churches all the time or they
they pretend to you know they they uh they’re singing a song about jesus or something like
that and then they try to raise your hand as though i feel jesus touching me something like
that so um uh and of course that can happen like for real okay in other words is there such a thing
as jesus uh you know descending like a ghost well no there is such a thing as a sort of saving grace
or a saving grace experience that sort of then erupts and that kind of basically is the same
thing as osiris stepping down from the ds in the east and uh entering the temple space as a presence
and that presence of the osiris current then causes all kinds of or appears to cause all
kinds of things to happen okay um but not in the standard cause and effect way where you’re
simply pushing one piece of furniture into another and then say i have a result now there’s always um
the uh the appeal to the deeper planes of existence and the reliance upon those deeper
planes of existence to enter the temple space and facilitate the transformation that you desire
so what that means is it’s not a cause and effect thing you’re simply directing it’s almost though
when you do something in your temple space you’re stirring the pot okay and if you stir it in in a
good way let’s say if you’re if it’s a very good let’s say artsy or or aesthetic or um take it
does the magical formula correctly in which case there’s an element of beauty and sincerity and
drama to it then something may arise it’s like stirring the pot and then something kind of
bubbles up from down below it’s like oh something has manifested from the unmanifest right so that’s
how it more that’s that that’s really how the magic works and whatever comes forth from the
underworld or from the deeper planes of existence or whatever um we really don’t have control over
that can be a hard pill to swallow okay but what we do know is that doing certain you know ritual
enactments tends to have a consistency element to it you know there’s the same types of beauty
can arise maybe uh if i do the magic correctly okay now that brings a whole new spirit to the
idea of doing magic correctly though because simply following the formula and expecting a
result to come from that formula is absurd you do the formula and then the result might come from
the deeper planes of existence okay this is what we call vertical causality so if you you’re trying
to make change and you think your ritual is the thing that’s doing it that’s horizontal causality
and that’s magical thinking it doesn’t happen that way um the but if you do a ritual and expect that
to hopefully stir the inner planes of existence to sort of arise with some kind of presence that
sort of orchestrates some new kind of direction in your life or new things happening right
then you’re doing magic and that’s that’s more there’s a different kind of causality it’s a
vertical dimension let’s say okay we say horizontal and vertical simply because we um
we’re trying to think on maybe four dimensional terms or five dimensional terms and we’re using
a two-dimensional model to do that i think you guys can figure that out and you have to remember
that the temple space pretty much works that way too uh it it’s pretty um the key is to working
with it this way it’s like well you have to acknowledge that raised platform in the east as
a place of unmanifestation which is not very clear to anybody in the hall unless you know the secrets
of magic okay and it makes it very dramatic when the hierophant actually gets up off the throne
and walks to the candidate and when he says i come in the power of light i come in the mercy of light
the light hath healing in its wings it’s a pretty dramatic part of the ceremony
and when the hierophant approaches the candidate the candidate is kneeling
in i think he’s kneeling to the east of the altar um there are those two pillars there uh they look
like um an upward pointing triangle and a downward pointing triangle the one on the right is the
white pillar as you can see and the one on the left is the black pillar to make this clear there’s
a station there called the hegemon with the little crosses okay that’s a person the uh it’s a temple
officer who stands there and the pillar on uh the pillar to his left or what the the pillar to our
right is the white pillar and the pillar to our left there next to the hegemon is the black pillar
and that represents the duality of manifestation why am i saying this so we have that line there
that indicates where the um the higher level officers are they’re all they’ve all achieved
pretty much a station in the underworld and they’re simply sort of kind of
disembodied consciousness that’s all they can do is observe what’s happening
in the physical world without really causing anything to happen there they’re
kind of I don’t know even like trapped there right but they have the power to
descend into the world by simply stepping off of getting up off their
throne and then entering the temple space okay now the interesting thing
thing about that red line that indicates the division between unmanifestation and manifestation
okay now we can’t just reach into unmanifestation and grab something and pull it out doesn’t work
that way right because nothing in unmanifestation can be grabbed we can only grab at other things
in the physical world okay and that’s and whenever we try to make something happen by grabbing at it
that is not an act of magic per se an act of magic or true magic would be to not do that but to appeal
to the higher level or a deeper deeper level existence and have that deeper level existence
then come and orchestrate that change somehow okay kind of the way that a flower is born or that
or the way a hurricane erupts sort of just kind of i don’t know by itself and yet there’s some
kind of deeper force that is sort of causing it to happen okay from a deeper level that’s the
vertical causality and here we have um how do we know that this negative plane of existence
uh this how do we know that this unmanifest level of existence is there okay well the boundaries
this the extra dimensional boundary between this world and that world um are apparent to us simply
through the duality of light and dark okay by the extremes of existence and the black pillar and the
white pillar in the temple symbolize that okay if we function in our thinking only in terms of the
black pillar and the white pillar we are engaging in magical thinking and we are lost we are
suffering okay and so usually what magical thinking involves means that well i’m going to
just walk up and grab the white pillar and pick it up right and then go over to the black pillar and
just beat on the black pillar until it it gives me some kind of result that i want okay or i can
grab the black pillar and go over to the white pillar and beat up the white pillar and until
some kind of result comes out that i’m happy with right that’s kind of the way that that
magical thinking works we tend to think of the universe in terms of i do this to the universe
and if i do it right it’s going to put out for me okay or if i you know if i if i pleasure my
subconscious in just the right way like a really good uh wife it’s going to then you know put out
and please me or something like that right um that is the way that people tend to think when
it’s there’s magical thinking involved okay that it’s that horizontal level of causality the real
magic is the vertical level of causality okay where the black pillar and the white pillar or
the extremes of manifestation simply serve as a vibrating medium through which the descending
power of osiris or whatever that is right can manifest can appear in some kind of beautiful
dramatic form some kind of virtuous form okay and so when the hierophant descends into the temple
uh the hierophant passes between the two pillars and of course that indicates that
something is appearing in the temple space that is not really a part of the standard law of laws
of manifestation okay uh that’s the orbits beyond that right and when it emerges into space it takes
on a form of course which is dependent upon the black pillar and the white pillar because
anything that happens in the world is all full of black pillar and white pillar interacting in
some kind of weird pattern or something like that right so in order for anything unmanifest
to manifest it must um clothe itself in a weave of black and white forces let’s say okay this is
what tantra actually means by the way tantra means weave weaving of threads like pretty much like
okay um and so tantra acknowledges that the universe is an interaction of extremes okay
and that in order to make things happen from a deeper level we have to allow them to clothe
themselves in those extremes okay and then they can retreat back into unmanifestation again and
then disappear kind of the way that people supposedly do when they you know incarnate
and reincarnate okay all right so did that ritual cause stuff to happen okay so yeah if you want to
talk to an adept and you want to try to pass yourself off as somebody who knows how magic
really works you would not really talk to the adept as though um i did this ritual and this
is the result that came out of it okay because that would be the same as taking the black pillar
and beating up on the white pillar until the white pillar puts pulls puts out for you right that um
and a better way maybe to explain this is to say that the man the ritual you do itself that’s not
the magic okay i’m not saying that’s the only way of looking at it but it might be better to think
of the the ritual work that you engage in all these magical formulas and words of power and
imagery and you know imagination work and and movement and temple furniture and all that stuff
that isn’t the magic okay the magic is happening all the time it’s already here your life is
already in the process of emerging from unmanifestation into manifestation and disappearing
back into unmanifestation again it’s already happening all around you so all this ritual
stuff and this prodding and these magical formulas these are really ways of stirring the pot it’s
already it’s already stirred up okay there’s already stuff happening but these are ways of
getting it stirred up in a particular way so that you are now tweaking that flow of manifestation
okay and of course when we do that we don’t know what’s going to come out of those depths
okay ritual magic or spell casting or whatever it doesn’t really work that way you might end up
getting something pretty close to what you wanted but of course that’s possible right but what tends
to happen is that you’re invoking everything that comes along with it from the depths and if you
have a lot of unprocessed karma you’re going to get all the stuff that comes with it so if you do
ritual for money you’re going to get wealth karma coming out of the unmanifest okay but the
interesting thing is that the clearer you get the less let’s say the less karma you have to process
the easier it is to always get pleasant results more or less okay the only here’s the catch though
nothing in manifestation is ever 100 pleasant there’s always something karmically working
itself out which is always means there’s going to be some kind of tension and drama going on
it’s kind of it’s kind of the way the world works okay so if you think you could get pure pleasure
out of magic no never you can’t get pure pleasure out of anything there’s always going to be some
kind of traumatic tension involved okay this is why when you go to sleep and dream at night
all dreams have an element of discomfort to them okay of course even if you’re playing in a dream
you know play uh when when children play you know games there’s always tremendous drama involved you
know there’s and and suffering and um the fun part is that we know it’s not literally real
okay that’s a heads up to us nothing actually is literally real we could learn something from
children possibly right uh yeah that doesn’t mean we’re going back to childhood though because
children desperately want to be adults and so i wouldn’t want to be a child because why would i
want to be somebody who wants to be an adult i’m not interested in being adult nor am i interested
in being a child these things don’t exist right so no that ritual did not cause stuff to happen
it stirred the pot and then something apparently began to emerge into manifestation
that’s what’s happening the interesting thing then is that no matter what you do you’re always
stirring the pot in some kind of way and of course now what we’re learning then is how to stir it
skillfully okay not so that we get pleasant results all the time that’s impossible but so
that we can um have the universe process its karma let’s say in a way that causes the least suffering
and maybe even the most pleasure in the process so it’s like you know like an endless adventure
and discovery and uh that kind of thing right yeah so doing a ritual to get cash i hope that now
takes on an entirely different complexion another way to look at this okay is um uh there’s that old
i guess it’s a zen story about a teacher who who says um you don’t understand what i’m saying
because when i’m pointing at the finger you’re when when i’m pointing at the moon you’re looking
at my finger what the teacher is trying to say is that you keep looking at the words that i’m using
you keep looking at the gestures that i’m making and all the words i’m using and the gestures i’m
making are pointing towards something you need to be looking at what i’m pointing at not not towards
my finger okay and it’s kind of funny too because if you have if you have a dog and you try to point
somewhere um the dog usually doesn’t know what pointing means and they look at your finger like
it’s something very important okay and so if you look at a ritual as that ritual is the important
thing and it’s what’s causing the good result you’re guilty of looking at the
finger okay and if you don’t look at the finger and you look at the moon what
what’s the moon well the moon is simply the unmanifest so in the teacher when
the teacher pointing somewhere the teachers pointing at what you actually
should be doing you’re not doing this ritual to cause a result you’re doing
this ritual to stir the pot and then basically tweak the manifestation
process so things can arise in a more harmonious way even though they are still dramatic and still
sometimes painful and full of tension whatnot but in a way that is more yeah more pleasant
for the most part more interesting and even faster in other words you evolve faster whatever that
means okay but you can become increasingly enlightened let’s say you
can get enlightened faster because life is already pushing us towards
enlightenment it’s inevitable okay but magic is a way of getting there faster
yeah well that’s what I’m proposing anyway that’s just say it that way is
not literally true just be careful with that okay but of course because there’s
nowhere to get okay um because what we’re pointing at when we point at the unmanifest is the there’s
something very important about experiencing manifestation as it arises that there’s there’s
the enlightenment experience right there okay and it doesn’t mean it’s pleasant all the time
well i’m hoping i got at that a little bit but you can see how um tremendously powerful i hope
You can see how tremendously powerful having a temple space, working with magic circles, how doing circumambulating on the floor like that, walking between the black and white pillars, and thinking in terms of the rising sun in the east and the setting sun in the west,
and thinking about standard cause and effect
and about a different kind of cause and effect,
about things arising from a deeper dimension
instead of you over here making that happen over there.
That’s the real magic.
The real magic is stirring the pot
and tweaking your manifestation process
and not really knowing what you’re going to get,
but having faith or trust
that it’s going to be better it’s going to be more harmonious it’s going to be more interesting
it’s going to be faster it’s going to be a faster and more vitalizing experience maybe a thriving
type experience yeah well but to get there you have to let go of magical thinking what we will
notice here is that we we still proceed to do magic um as though magical thinking is real as
though it’s real but it’s not you know and when i do something and i speak about having the effects
of that ritual happen um i might speak of them as though the ritual caused it but i’m always going
to speak of it in a way that indicates that i understand that it is not truly called directly
causing that to happen over there it’s simply stirring the pot and tweaking the manifestation
process and oh lo and behold i got some kind of result or i appeared to anyway okay okay uh
hopefully that makes sense um if it didn’t just scream at me in the comments alright until next
next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher