Two Lessons I've Learned
People who have been around me in occult communities know that I have a love for giving a rant about two topics concerning the fundamentals of magic.
There are very few things I am certain of—much less with regard to magic and the occult. However, there are two things I am certain of.
These are those two things.
Lesson One
The single most important act you can ever undertake as a witch, magician, druid, santero, manbo/oungan, or any other kind of magical practitioner is this: You must decide that you are a magical practitioner.
In so doing, you have granted yourself the ability to create magical spaces, at minimum within yourself.
Unless you do this, magic will be inaccessible to you—full-stop.
Lesson Two
Per Lon Milo DuQuette:
Magical tradition informs us that, on the material plane and in normal waking consciousness, symbols are symbols and living things are living things. On the magical plane and in visionary consciousness, symbols are living things and living things are symbols.1
When we create a magical space, the magical tools we are using cease being symbols and become living things. They gain agency and are able to act on our behalf. As pertaining to the content-focus on this site, Angelic/Enochian Gematria, numbers and words are symbols as well. When they become living things, they can grant agency to symbols as our representatives, and all of these allies can work on your behalf.
Symbols as living things take on the character of their meanings; symbols are nodes of meaning, sometimes overlapping and intersecting other nodes—and when a node of meaning overlaps the semantic territory another node, it can stand in for either power base. The deeper your comprehension of your own internal web of correspondences (which often can be informed and improved by examining the correspondences of the Western Esoteric traditions), the more the whole of reality becomes your ally.
The more you understand about how things are connected, the more you and the whole of existence can conspire together towards the accomplishment of your Will.
Footnotes
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Lon Milo DuQuette, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot ↩