Of Magick

In the beginning, there was nothingness. As nothingness, there was no being, no conception. Rather, in the beginning there was total absence of force, and in that absence there was the great potential for force; not-being a kind of fecund vacuum through which being, and conception would necessarily spring because vacuum can only be temporary, nothingness is only absence, and cannot be defined of itself. For nothing to exist, the existence of conceptual non-existence must be, though there is, of course, nothing to conceive of it.

Infinite nothingness intrinsically was or became, though we can never know which, a force in and of itself. The tension of vacuum: of empty space, though there was no space. Not yet, though in the lack of space there simply ~was~ something, because there was nothing. So this tension, this vacuum, this infinite nothingness, collapsed into itself and opened an unfathomable void, and within this void was the great potential for all things because now there was space to hold it, and it was empty, and space that remains empty necessarily draws into it things that take up space. In the beginning, though, there was space but not yet things. Though this space with nothing to hold created yet another kind of force: the drawing in force. And because of this drawing in force, and because of the tension this drawing in force created, things began to coalesce throughout this new force called "space", which had not yet previously existed until the infinite nothingness collapsed and opened and allowed for it to be.

Things coalesced, and began to encounter another force, a colliding force, for when there is something drawing in and things being drawn in, there is now the potential for collision. Things collided with other things, sometimes forming larger things or reshaping into different things, which continued to collide, and now there were the forces which conceived of the polarity of size, of weight, of form and formlessness, of stability and instability, and so it went in this way until eventually this space became filled, in a way. Not completely filled, not overfilled, but filled in a kind of balanced way where the tension between objects held them at a kind of intelligible distance, and they began to change.

Some of the very large things that came to inhabit this empty space formed in ways that mirrored the initial conception of space, the force of drawing in, and the force of colliding. These new forces were more worldly, in a way, and the result of these forces acting on one another, pulling and spinning in a kind of now-terrestrial cosmic dance was what we call "life": objects conceived from forces at cascading levels of action, forces which exist in varying states of tension, which are always seeking balance in a kind of never ending elliptical see-saw. Objects which were now capable of channeling the greater forces around them and enacting movement, reproduction, respiration, division, and so on and so forth.

So now, at least within some objects, though perhaps in different forms within all objects, were representations of these forces. Now we consider what we call World.

The World is an emanation of the forces at the beginning. Though it was not present at the beginning it is now present, and within it are We, the perceivers. We are those who are capable of narrating what has occurred up to, during, and after this point. The World is a reflection of a force that we call Time, a complicated polarity constantly both tugging and shifting, which encompasses the polarity between other celestial bodies: the Sun and the Moon, the other Spheres including those well beyond our ability to see and measure, as well as bodies here in the World. We exist in the World, the umpteenth order result of the original forces. In the World are We, which we now call humans, as well as many other beings, too many to name. Each being has a vital purpose in the balancing of the forces that emerged from infinite nothingness, which is enacted both within and without what we call the World simultaneously, because Everything is like the reflection of two mirrors facing each other with the same thing reflected in a progressively smaller and blurrier way into infinity, and what happens at the level of Force outside of worldly existence happens also within it, and the inverse is true as well.

We can comprehend the tension between forces best through the concept of polarity: we imagine well two things pulling against one another. The reality of Everything, though, is that there are always many, many, perhaps millions of permutations of emanations of the original forces tugging and pulling in perhaps millions of directions at once. It is not just light and dark see-sawing, but every shade and hue of perceptible and imperceptible light in between shifting their levels of expression at all times. Balance, however, is maintained throughout such complexity by the Beings in the World (and well beyond, through the entirety of Everything in all phases of existence) undertaking Action relevant to their purpose. Imbalance happens occasionally necessarily, for without imbalance the concept or force of balance could not exist, and because of the complexity of the emanations of forces existing in so many iterations all at once, minor imbalances still enable Life and Existence to continue so long as they are rectified by that which regulates. Let me give you an example.

A being whose Worldly purpose is to spread seeds, aerate soil, be food for other beings, and manage types of vegetation that may otherwise dominate an ecosystem through feeding on them is quite likely to engage in the actions of digging, chewing, procreating, and hiding. Imagine, though, that because this being lives most of its time underground, and the things that most often eat it spend much of their time in the air, that there could be weather events or other factors that may limit the amount of beings around to eat the digging beings. In this instance, there might become too many of the digging beings, and they might destabilize their home, the grassland. In most cases, this would be rectified somehow: perhaps another predator would come as now there's lots of easily accessible prey, perhaps a fire would break out and kill off some of them leaving room for the grass to regrow with the next rain.

Yet, of the creatures who fulfill their purpose without necessarily conceiving of it, they engage in the actions of fulfilling their purpose and nothing else. This means that they are less likely to change their behavior even when that behavior is a detriment to many beings. Humans are meant to solve this, for We are those who can not only perceive and measure, but conceive of difference: what if this grassland had less rabbits? What if more trees were added here to stabilize the soil, and give more home to the hawks? We can consider what it would be if something changed. We are meant to be stewards, great regulators, for almost no other beings have this skill of conception. It is We who are responsible for shifting the behavior of other beings: we train fruit to grow fat on trees, we train birds to feed on that which falls, we fulfill niches which aren't fulfilled. And for a time, we did our job well: balancing ecosystems, all the while being able to Perceive the forces at work underneath them, naming these forces and honoring them. When we knew the forces at work beneath the actions of beings, beneath the actions of ourselves, and we knew that our role was to hold them in tension to allow the continuation of Worldly and Otherworldly Existence, we were capable of making adjustments through more than just physical action. That we could perceive of the forces underlying Existence, and conceive of difference, it made us special: we were a race of beings that could utilize our awareness to manipulate that which manipulates in turn all Existence. We could do magick.

The four elements of the occult system are not what they are because of a gross misreading of the supposedly superior atomic periodic table of elements, nor because those who originally laid out their magickal system systematically in the so-called Western tradition truly believed literally that all things were made of these substances, but because they were the four – really five, we'll get to that – vectors through which humans kept balance. Fire to remove that which was excess: too many dead standing trees, too much dry grass. Water: bring it here, move there, alter the way it sinks into the environment, what drinks it, wash things. Earth: create tierra prieta to bring fertility back to leached soils, plant trees to bring shade, use mud to shape homes and vessels, track other beings by their imprints in soft earth. Air: capture its movement as in sails, funnel it through a vessel to create noise, vibrate it with one's voice, force its movement for an end. Finally, the fifth element of Aether or spirit became the name in the Western system for the communication with that which is not currently incarnate in body, or using one's own aethereal projection into spacetime to manipulate that which one could not physically touch, to make subtler corrections to ecosystem, or communicate with beings who were not phsyically incarnate. In other disciplines these actions are described differently, but the same principles remain.

That We could not only manipulate the physical but access and manipulate the non-physical made us excellent stewards, for a time. And yet, the skill of conception of difference or newness and the perception that enabled the naming of forces led to a side effect: the ability to then determine that one force or another was always inherently more desirable, and one force or another was always to be avoided. For example: age is a great regulating factor that once all beings were subject to. Bodily incarnation is not meant to last forever, and it is necessary for age to slow us, to shift our purpose from that of physical action to more passive contemplation and the sharing of gained knowledge and wisdom with others. The balance of young and old in a community regulates the kind of actions taken, the kinds of listening that is desired. Thus, many Peoples who honored their elders behaved in much more regulated, sustainable way than those who did not. For those who did not had decided, generally, at a certain point that aging was Undesirable, or Bad. To be avoided. Therefore, they derided their old and said "you have nothing of value for us" and acted without wisdom. This is but one example of how We have come to pretend We are not at the mercy of the forces which maintain balance, and have as such created such Wordly imbalance, which of course has cascading effects towards Everything, though we cannot know truly how intensely these will be seen elsewhere.

Thus, magick is not something We created, but is something We are uniquely capable of. Magick is the ability to listen to the humming of Everything, to identify imbalance and determine if it is We or some other regulating factor that must step in. Magick is sometimes the keeping of a garden and that alone, and sometimes the creation of great incantations and intensive workings with incredible rippling effects. Magick can work for Us, too, but we must be cautious for we are ultimately subject to the cost all things must pay in the end. Our Will must ultimately reflect that of Everything, in our workings which utilize the Aethereal as well as all of our mundane workings in the physical: our workings of Earth, of Water, of Fire, and of Air.

Thus let us know when to sow seeds and when to engage with that which whispers only to the furthest recesses of our bodies. Let us learn All Things in relation, in infinite relation, and We with them. Let us humble ourselves within the great hall of mirrors, and seek to make out that which is being reflected. Let us heed the old words, the writing in the shapes and shadows of gnarled roots of the old trees, and let us first and foremost learn again what it is to truly do Magick.