A few years back I was a presenter at a conference on the Western Magical Tradition held at the Findhorn Foundation Community in northern Scotland. Both practitioners and scholars of various forms of magic came from all over Europe and North America to attend. Like so many conferences in which there are more speakers than anyone knows quite what to do with, the afternoons were taken up with panels in which five or six presenters are jammed together and given a few nanoseconds each to present the breadth and depth of their knowledge before being exposed to questions. As you can tell, though I've both been on and seen some very good panels, I'm not fond of the form.
At this conference, one afternoon panel provided a bit of unexpected drama, though I imagine not in a way the organizers appreciated. It was a panel for which the theme was "What is magic?" As I recall, there were four or five panelists, and the first speaker was a man who had written a beginner's book on magic and spirituality. His definition was that magic was very simple, a kind of "playing with energies" that everyone could do. This went uncontested until the last panelist had his turn to speak. He was a well-known and respected author of many books on magic, as well as a competent practitioner. He had been quite visibly restraining himself from saying something until his turn came, but then he practically leaped out of his chair in agitation and said, "Magic most certainly is NOT playing with energies!" Then, shaking his finger at the first panelist, he proceeded to verbally demolish him, stating that magic was anything but simple, and that it was a deep and profound discipline that was not for everyone. He let it be known in no uncertain terms that his fellow panelist had no business speaking in this conference if he was going to spout drivel. This in turn led to a shouting match between the two which eventually led to the organizers' coming on stage and shutting the whole thing down.
I hadn't realized till then how much fun a conference of magicians could be!
I have to admit, though, that even after that, the definition of magic remains elusive to me. The word magic is used loosely in a number of different ways and contexts, from the excitement and wonder of a romantic evening to stage illusions to the profound spiritual disciplines of alchemy and hermeticism. If I say I'm a magician, then just exactly how am I describing myself? What really is magic? Perhaps behind the disciplines and the rituals, the techniques and procedures, it does come down to a play of energies innate in all of us, though now I might think twice before saying so on a panel!
I once had a conversation with a non-physical being to whom I asked this question of the nature of magic. He seemed puzzled and asked me what I was talking about. So I explained to him what I had in mind and he said, "Oh, you mean life!" Another being was more helpful, but only just. "When you pick up a glass of water," he said, "for you it's simply an act of will. You wish the water and your body responds by picking up the glass. It seems instantaneous to you. But at the level of your cells, a great deal more goes on in the form of energy exchanges and molecular alterations, all of which you don't experience. What you call magic, with your rituals and correspondences, is to us equivalent to these molecular activities at a cellular level whereas what we call magic--the magic of the soul, if you wish--is like the direct experience of will and its consequences. We will and it is done."
Nice trick when you can do it.
At the heart of what this being was saying was relationship between two states for which will was a bridge. In his case, the bridge was direct, but in our case, the relationship or connections needed to be built up between ourselves and the object of the magic, hence the use of ritual or correspondences. The image was like the difference between teleporting directly between San Francisco and New York on the one hand and traveling from one city to the other through a series of connecting railway links. His point was that as we were able to form deeper and better connections or relationships, our magic would change. It was a matter of the wholeness in us matching the wholeness of the cosmos.
Thinking of magic as relationship and connection has been helpful to me, more helpful than thinking of it as ritual or alchemical processes on the one hand or playing with energies on the other. More precisely, it gives me a starting point in thinking about magic and the making of magic. I can think of it, for instance, not simply as the use of the will to produce effects in the world but as the forming of relationships or connections co-creatively with the world that have consequences, hopefully desired ones.
Why is this important? Because I believe as human beings we need to move to a partnership model of our relationship with the rest of creation, not simply for moral or spiritual reasons but because it works better. It is closer to the truth of things. If I think of magic as the projection and imposition of my will upon the world, whether through the astral light or the etheric plane or some other intermediate dimension, I am acting as a separate agent. I am not really engaging the world. I am acting upon it but not with it. I am making links through corresondences and rituals, but I am not making wholeness. I am not participating. In the end, whatever the success of my magical operation, the world and I remain separate. We remain strangers to each other.
Whatever magic is or can become, I believe it calls us to be not just in the world, or even less to have power over the world, but to be with the world in spirit and in wholeness. It is a "with-it" magic.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
No Muggles Here, Part 2
This is the second letter I've sent out to the Lorian mailing list. If you are interested in receiving such letters, please let us know at info@lorian.org. Most of the comments I'll make here on this blog will be different from the letters.
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NO MUGGLES HERE, Part 2
In my last letter, I said that we are all magic-users, not, to use J.K. Rowling’s term for ordinary mortals in her Harry Potter books, “muggles.” I use the term “magic” here not in any metaphorical sense or as a way of expressing the wonderment of life, but as a statement of fact. Magic describes a way of relating to life, and it’s a relationship we all have and express.
If I believe that the world is only what I can see, touch, hear, smell, or taste and that the appearances of things are the sum total of reality, then this magic won’t make any sense. But it will still operate. I cannot avoid being a magic-user, though I can be an unmindful, unaware one.
A usual (though not the only) way magic is defined in the Western esoteric traditions, is as the shaping of events in the physical world in accordance with the will, imagination, thoughts, and feelings of the magician. Other definitions may include partnering with beings and forces of the spiritual worlds, that is, the use of inner allies.
Both these definitions assume the existence of an “inner world,” a world of life and energy existing behind the appearance and surface of things. This is a world our senses cannot directly reveal. Actually, we experience exactly such a world everyday in our thoughts, our feelings, and our spiritual experiences. Magic is based on the simple idea that this world within ourselves is connected to and in fact part of an energy field that is part of the world around us. In effect, like amphibians, we live in two worlds, one that is revealed through our senses and which we can thus call a “sensible” world and one that is revealed through means other than our senses and thus could be called “supersensible.”
Magic can be nothing more or less than the result of the relationship between these two worlds, a relationship we all have. This relationship can be relatively unconscious and automatic, one to which we give little thought or practice, or it can be the focus of our attention, one that we work on to develop skills and capacities to make it conscious and deliberate. Most of what we call “magical training” is designed to do the latter, and it doesn’t have to take place in any kind of esoteric or occult setting. Courses in positive thinking, in motivation, in coaching, in advertising and marketing, all deal with ways of enhancing the power of our attitudes, beliefs, will, thoughts, and feelings to affect not only our own lives but outcomes in the world around us.
It works because we are all interconnected. The inner world possesses a “Commons,” just like the commons of old New England villages, a shared space that all within the village can use and participate in. We each have our “private homes,” our bubbles of sovereignty and subjective identity that are unique to each of us, but these radiate into, and receive from, and participate in the “energy commons” of which we are all a part. We are individualized but not isolated.
The participatory nature of this common energy world we all share gives us great power to affect the world around us, beyond the physical actions we may take. It’s what truly makes us magicians and not muggles. My thoughts and feelings about another person don’t necessarily remain locked up in my own head, for instance, but can become part of a local energy commons that that person shares; they can be taken by that person into his or her individual energy field and have an effect. Depending on the nature of my thoughts and feelings and upon the strength of the other person’s sense of sovereignty and well-being, this could have a positive or a negative affect.
The invisible, supersensible energy world and the visible, sensible physical world are deeply intertwined and are reflections of each other. One is not necessarily the product of the other; nor are they completely hierarchically related. Each affects the other in an ecology of mutual co-creativity. For this reason the nature of our magic is both physical and non-physical. But when magic works, when synchronicities occur, when manifestation happens, when outer things change because of inner changes we’ve made, it’s because a shift in the inner energy world has very likely caused a corresponding shift in the outer visible world. And the reverse is true, that outer changes can cause changes and shifts in supersensible energy conditions.
I am a fairly good natural singer. I can carry a tune, and people don’t run screaming from the room or cover their ears when I sing. I have a friend, though, who is a trained opera singer, a soprano, and the power and range of her voice, as well as its effect on those who hear it, is amazing. My singing is like hers only in the fact that we both open our mouths to let sound come out.
We are all magic-users; we are all part of the supersensible Commons and participate in that Commons in ways that affect our world. But we are not all trained magicians, with developed skills of imagination, will, attunement, and lovingness.. There are many systems of training that a person can engage with to develop the skills and capacities that work with this innate relationship we all have. Lorian offers in its classes one kind of training.
However, a trained magician in the sense I’m using the term may not know any esoteric or occult knowledge but simply have a dedicated and practical sense of participating in a loving, imaginative, and disciplined way in the world around him or her. Some of the best magic-users and manifestors I know, for instance, wouldn’t know an occult lodge from a movie theater and have never heard of any Mystery or esoteric tradition. But they can shape the world around them in loving and blessing-filled ways for the benefit of all who come into their sphere of influence, empowering others to recognize the richness and power of their own individuality. In their presence, the Commons we all share blooms with possibilities and an invitation to success.
What better magic is there than that?
Blessings,
David
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NO MUGGLES HERE, Part 2
In my last letter, I said that we are all magic-users, not, to use J.K. Rowling’s term for ordinary mortals in her Harry Potter books, “muggles.” I use the term “magic” here not in any metaphorical sense or as a way of expressing the wonderment of life, but as a statement of fact. Magic describes a way of relating to life, and it’s a relationship we all have and express.
If I believe that the world is only what I can see, touch, hear, smell, or taste and that the appearances of things are the sum total of reality, then this magic won’t make any sense. But it will still operate. I cannot avoid being a magic-user, though I can be an unmindful, unaware one.
A usual (though not the only) way magic is defined in the Western esoteric traditions, is as the shaping of events in the physical world in accordance with the will, imagination, thoughts, and feelings of the magician. Other definitions may include partnering with beings and forces of the spiritual worlds, that is, the use of inner allies.
Both these definitions assume the existence of an “inner world,” a world of life and energy existing behind the appearance and surface of things. This is a world our senses cannot directly reveal. Actually, we experience exactly such a world everyday in our thoughts, our feelings, and our spiritual experiences. Magic is based on the simple idea that this world within ourselves is connected to and in fact part of an energy field that is part of the world around us. In effect, like amphibians, we live in two worlds, one that is revealed through our senses and which we can thus call a “sensible” world and one that is revealed through means other than our senses and thus could be called “supersensible.”
Magic can be nothing more or less than the result of the relationship between these two worlds, a relationship we all have. This relationship can be relatively unconscious and automatic, one to which we give little thought or practice, or it can be the focus of our attention, one that we work on to develop skills and capacities to make it conscious and deliberate. Most of what we call “magical training” is designed to do the latter, and it doesn’t have to take place in any kind of esoteric or occult setting. Courses in positive thinking, in motivation, in coaching, in advertising and marketing, all deal with ways of enhancing the power of our attitudes, beliefs, will, thoughts, and feelings to affect not only our own lives but outcomes in the world around us.
It works because we are all interconnected. The inner world possesses a “Commons,” just like the commons of old New England villages, a shared space that all within the village can use and participate in. We each have our “private homes,” our bubbles of sovereignty and subjective identity that are unique to each of us, but these radiate into, and receive from, and participate in the “energy commons” of which we are all a part. We are individualized but not isolated.
The participatory nature of this common energy world we all share gives us great power to affect the world around us, beyond the physical actions we may take. It’s what truly makes us magicians and not muggles. My thoughts and feelings about another person don’t necessarily remain locked up in my own head, for instance, but can become part of a local energy commons that that person shares; they can be taken by that person into his or her individual energy field and have an effect. Depending on the nature of my thoughts and feelings and upon the strength of the other person’s sense of sovereignty and well-being, this could have a positive or a negative affect.
The invisible, supersensible energy world and the visible, sensible physical world are deeply intertwined and are reflections of each other. One is not necessarily the product of the other; nor are they completely hierarchically related. Each affects the other in an ecology of mutual co-creativity. For this reason the nature of our magic is both physical and non-physical. But when magic works, when synchronicities occur, when manifestation happens, when outer things change because of inner changes we’ve made, it’s because a shift in the inner energy world has very likely caused a corresponding shift in the outer visible world. And the reverse is true, that outer changes can cause changes and shifts in supersensible energy conditions.
I am a fairly good natural singer. I can carry a tune, and people don’t run screaming from the room or cover their ears when I sing. I have a friend, though, who is a trained opera singer, a soprano, and the power and range of her voice, as well as its effect on those who hear it, is amazing. My singing is like hers only in the fact that we both open our mouths to let sound come out.
We are all magic-users; we are all part of the supersensible Commons and participate in that Commons in ways that affect our world. But we are not all trained magicians, with developed skills of imagination, will, attunement, and lovingness.. There are many systems of training that a person can engage with to develop the skills and capacities that work with this innate relationship we all have. Lorian offers in its classes one kind of training.
However, a trained magician in the sense I’m using the term may not know any esoteric or occult knowledge but simply have a dedicated and practical sense of participating in a loving, imaginative, and disciplined way in the world around him or her. Some of the best magic-users and manifestors I know, for instance, wouldn’t know an occult lodge from a movie theater and have never heard of any Mystery or esoteric tradition. But they can shape the world around them in loving and blessing-filled ways for the benefit of all who come into their sphere of influence, empowering others to recognize the richness and power of their own individuality. In their presence, the Commons we all share blooms with possibilities and an invitation to success.
What better magic is there than that?
Blessings,
David
Saturday, September 8, 2007
The Boundaries of God
Imagine a world in which prayer works, without fail, all the time. What kind of world might that be?
At first glance we might think it would be a paradise. Who among us hasn't wished at one time or another that a prayer might be reliably answered? We may have prayed for the healing of a loved one--or for our own healing. We may have prayed for help at a time of crisis. When all other resources have been exhausted, how nice to know we had prayer to fall back on to resolve our problems.
But consider this a little more. Suppose some white supremecist living in the hills of Idaho prayed that all people of color turned white, and they did. Or suppose an African-American prayed that all white supremecists would turn black, or in a fit of artistic humor, turned green, or paisley, or purple with orange polkadots and a feathered crest.
Suppose I prayed my kids never grew up and left me. Suppose my parents had prayed that about me, condeming me to eternal life as a ten-year old, always living at home, always following their rules.
Suppose we prayed there was no death. Where would we have room for all the people, all the squirrels, all the mice, all the geese, all the bacteria that never, ever died?
If all prayers were routinely, reliably, perfectly, unquestionably answered, we would be living in hell.
OK, so we may not want a world in which all prayers are answered. What about some prayers? Would it be ok if some prayers were reliably, perfectly, unquestionably answered? But which prayers? Whose prayers? Well, mine, of course... But yours? Can I trust your prayers where I'm concerned? For that matter, can I really trust my own? Am I wise enough, knowledgable enough, loving enough, farseeing enough that I can guarantee that the consequences of my prayers will be reliably, unquestionably good?
I should probably be grateful (and I am!) that God grants some prayers and not others!
But which prayers does God grant? How does God decide? Is there something I can do--a good deed slipped under the table when no one's looking, perhaps--to influence this decision?
A favorite way of thinking about God is that God is omnipotent, the very definition of all-powerful-ness. But in fact, God has boundaries.
At times in my life I have lived in earthquake-prone areas, like Southern California or the Pacific Northwest. I've ridden through a few tremors in my time. It's an odd sensation to feel the earth, ordinarly so stable and placid, suddenly move like the ocean beneath your feet. Even more disconcerting is the realization there is no place to go that will be stable, for in that moment the very thing that normally defines "stable"--the bedrock under you--is dancing and shifting. Unless you could levitate, no place is safe in that moment.
This sense of vulnerability and loss of foundation can affect people in strange ways. I've had friends who long after an earthquake has become memory--and even when it did very little damage--still suffer from stress and fears awakened by that moment when the most stable thing in their lives--the ground on which they lived--became active and unpredictable.
What if the ground of all being were similarly unstable and unpredictable? What if there were Godquakes? What if we didn't know from one moment to the next if we would exist at all or what form we might exist in? What would my life be like if I could be a human now but a minute from now I might turn into a duck or a fish or a parameceum, or if I'm David today but tomorrow I could be Dorothy or Tom or even George Bush? What if at this moment I'm a caring, loving person, but an hour from now I turned into a violent, sadistic killer--or vice versa?
There certainly is change in our lives, and in fact, a loving person can--and sometimes does--fall into rage or fear or insanity and become a monster. But underneath all this is a confidence that our fundamental beingness is secure, held in safety and love by God. In fact, it's testimony to how much the earth is usually seen as the most secure, foundational presence in our physical lives that we use it as a metaphor for the most secure, foundational presence in our spiritual lives: the Ground of all Being.
But unlike the earth, we don't have "Godquakes" in which that foundation is lost. This is not to say we don't go through experiences that can profoundly shake us and upend our most cherished thoughtforms and beliefs, but this is not the same as losing the foundation of our beingness and of our existence itself. I can be shaken and transformed through an experience but even in my transformation, I remain human. I don't become a giraffe.
So God has boundaries. They are the boundaries necessary to provide the ground for our being, for all being. They provide the confidence that I will remain human and the birds outside my window will remain birds. They are boundaries set by the nature of things, by the need of creation for a fundamental stability, coherency and integrity. And God, to be God, cannot abridge or overrule those boundaries (though God can work miracles by acting within the boundaries in ways we might not expect).
I would like my prayers to be answered, but God has to work within boundaries. The latter may prevent the former. There are boundaries I cannot change, but there may well be boundaries I can. And if I change some of the boundaries I have created or participated in creating with others, that may open up possibilities that God can flow through and work what seem to be miracles. My fear or hatred for a person is a boundary to ways we might cooperate and even partner together, for instance. But if I change that boundary to love, who knows what may happen?
That Shiites fear and hate Sunnis or that Arabs fear and hate Americans fuels conflict in the Middle East. Our fears and hates set boundaries for us, and God cannot just remove them without our participation. I can pray for peace all I want, and it will not happen. But if I change that boundary in myself from fear to openness, from hate to love, then a whole new condition exists. Now the boundaries are there to include, not exclude, and in that inclusion, God can indeed work miracles of peace and blessing.
God has boundaries, and more often than not, we are those boundaries. If we want our prayers to be answered, we might begin by exploring the boundaries we can change, which may mean changing ourselves.
At first glance we might think it would be a paradise. Who among us hasn't wished at one time or another that a prayer might be reliably answered? We may have prayed for the healing of a loved one--or for our own healing. We may have prayed for help at a time of crisis. When all other resources have been exhausted, how nice to know we had prayer to fall back on to resolve our problems.
But consider this a little more. Suppose some white supremecist living in the hills of Idaho prayed that all people of color turned white, and they did. Or suppose an African-American prayed that all white supremecists would turn black, or in a fit of artistic humor, turned green, or paisley, or purple with orange polkadots and a feathered crest.
Suppose I prayed my kids never grew up and left me. Suppose my parents had prayed that about me, condeming me to eternal life as a ten-year old, always living at home, always following their rules.
Suppose we prayed there was no death. Where would we have room for all the people, all the squirrels, all the mice, all the geese, all the bacteria that never, ever died?
If all prayers were routinely, reliably, perfectly, unquestionably answered, we would be living in hell.
OK, so we may not want a world in which all prayers are answered. What about some prayers? Would it be ok if some prayers were reliably, perfectly, unquestionably answered? But which prayers? Whose prayers? Well, mine, of course... But yours? Can I trust your prayers where I'm concerned? For that matter, can I really trust my own? Am I wise enough, knowledgable enough, loving enough, farseeing enough that I can guarantee that the consequences of my prayers will be reliably, unquestionably good?
I should probably be grateful (and I am!) that God grants some prayers and not others!
But which prayers does God grant? How does God decide? Is there something I can do--a good deed slipped under the table when no one's looking, perhaps--to influence this decision?
A favorite way of thinking about God is that God is omnipotent, the very definition of all-powerful-ness. But in fact, God has boundaries.
At times in my life I have lived in earthquake-prone areas, like Southern California or the Pacific Northwest. I've ridden through a few tremors in my time. It's an odd sensation to feel the earth, ordinarly so stable and placid, suddenly move like the ocean beneath your feet. Even more disconcerting is the realization there is no place to go that will be stable, for in that moment the very thing that normally defines "stable"--the bedrock under you--is dancing and shifting. Unless you could levitate, no place is safe in that moment.
This sense of vulnerability and loss of foundation can affect people in strange ways. I've had friends who long after an earthquake has become memory--and even when it did very little damage--still suffer from stress and fears awakened by that moment when the most stable thing in their lives--the ground on which they lived--became active and unpredictable.
What if the ground of all being were similarly unstable and unpredictable? What if there were Godquakes? What if we didn't know from one moment to the next if we would exist at all or what form we might exist in? What would my life be like if I could be a human now but a minute from now I might turn into a duck or a fish or a parameceum, or if I'm David today but tomorrow I could be Dorothy or Tom or even George Bush? What if at this moment I'm a caring, loving person, but an hour from now I turned into a violent, sadistic killer--or vice versa?
There certainly is change in our lives, and in fact, a loving person can--and sometimes does--fall into rage or fear or insanity and become a monster. But underneath all this is a confidence that our fundamental beingness is secure, held in safety and love by God. In fact, it's testimony to how much the earth is usually seen as the most secure, foundational presence in our physical lives that we use it as a metaphor for the most secure, foundational presence in our spiritual lives: the Ground of all Being.
But unlike the earth, we don't have "Godquakes" in which that foundation is lost. This is not to say we don't go through experiences that can profoundly shake us and upend our most cherished thoughtforms and beliefs, but this is not the same as losing the foundation of our beingness and of our existence itself. I can be shaken and transformed through an experience but even in my transformation, I remain human. I don't become a giraffe.
So God has boundaries. They are the boundaries necessary to provide the ground for our being, for all being. They provide the confidence that I will remain human and the birds outside my window will remain birds. They are boundaries set by the nature of things, by the need of creation for a fundamental stability, coherency and integrity. And God, to be God, cannot abridge or overrule those boundaries (though God can work miracles by acting within the boundaries in ways we might not expect).
I would like my prayers to be answered, but God has to work within boundaries. The latter may prevent the former. There are boundaries I cannot change, but there may well be boundaries I can. And if I change some of the boundaries I have created or participated in creating with others, that may open up possibilities that God can flow through and work what seem to be miracles. My fear or hatred for a person is a boundary to ways we might cooperate and even partner together, for instance. But if I change that boundary to love, who knows what may happen?
That Shiites fear and hate Sunnis or that Arabs fear and hate Americans fuels conflict in the Middle East. Our fears and hates set boundaries for us, and God cannot just remove them without our participation. I can pray for peace all I want, and it will not happen. But if I change that boundary in myself from fear to openness, from hate to love, then a whole new condition exists. Now the boundaries are there to include, not exclude, and in that inclusion, God can indeed work miracles of peace and blessing.
God has boundaries, and more often than not, we are those boundaries. If we want our prayers to be answered, we might begin by exploring the boundaries we can change, which may mean changing ourselves.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Introducing Lee
In June of 1996, the Findhorn Foundation, an international spiritual center and community in the north of
The centerpiece of the celebration was a ritual combat between the God of Light and the God of Dark. The former was played by a friend of mine, William Bloom, who is one of
The next day, for reasons I no longer remember, there was a shuffling of accommodation among the conference speakers. To my delight, I found myself sharing one of the community
Out of that fortunate shift of accommodations has come a friendship I have treasured for many years now. Our long acquaintance has only confirmed for me the sense of power and depth I felt with Lee when I first saw him draw the Dark God into our midst that Solstice night. Not that there is anything "dark" or negative about him. He is unquestionably one of the most compassionate, loving, light-filled people I
Indeed, I think of Lee as an esoteric and shamanic Indiana Jones, lacking only a hat and whip, either of which I
Lee listens more than he speaks. But when he does get to talking, my gosh, what stories he can spin. My favorite concerns a time when he was working one night in his study, thinking and envisioning about the Pawnee tradition of putting sacred meteorites in their medicine bundles. The next morning, he stepped out of his house and discovered that a small meteorite had landed during the night right in front of the steps leading up to the house.
Synchronicities and magical happenings like this seem to follow Lee the way cats follow fish. It is the mark of a man deeply integrated with his world.
--From David's foreward to Lee Irwin's Alchemy of Soul: The Art of Spiritual Transformation.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
David Introduces himself more fully
The first introduction I made below was really testing the blog. Now I need to say something more about who I am.
I've been lecturing and teaching about spirituality since 1964. From 1970 to 1973 I was a co-director of the Findhorn Foundation Community in northern Scotland and the creator of what became their educational program. I left Findhorn in the company of several friends and together we founded the Lorian Association in 1974, a non-profit spiritual educational organization. I continue to work for Lorian to this day. Along with my colleagues, I design courses on incarnational spirituality, magic, and working with spiritual forces and non-physical allies. We offer a Masters Degree in Contemporary Spirituality. Most of my teaching these days is online, but I also do face-to-face workshops. As I mentioned earlier, I also write a regular letter for our mailing list. For further information, please go to our Lorian website, http://www.lorian.org/. If you want to receive the letter, called David's Desk, write info@Lorian.org.
I am the author of several books, most of which now are out of print (though new ones are coming from Lorian Press). They include Everyday Miracles; The Call; Parent as Mystic, Mystic as Parent; Emergence; A Pilgrim in Aquarius; and Blessing: The Art and the Practice. I also have a manual and deck of cards for working with manifestation projects called, simply enough, The Manifestation Deck, and a book of Christmas and fantasy stories called The Story Tree. The latter are available from Lorian Press through the Lorian website. I am currently finishing editing a manuscript on my own training and work with the inner realms called Apprenticed to Spirit. God willing, it will be published by Riverhead Books in 2008.
I live in the Seattle area with my wife Julie and four kids ranging in age from 24 to 12.
As I said below, it is a great pleasure and honor to do this blog with Catherine. Come January, 2008, I trust you will all run to the nearest bookstore to purchase her new book; I can hardly wait for her next work on Jesus and healing to come out. It will be terrific. Yes, I'm a fan!
Catherine Introduces Herself
I'm the host of this blog and author of the book you see at left, published by Shambhala and coming out in early 2008.
Raised Catholic, I practiced Tibetan Buddhism for many years. About a decade ago, I began to gravitate toward Christian hermeticism. I am particularly interested in magical healing and currently at work on a book about Jesus as a healer.
I'm also the author of a romance novel. It was originally called The Age of Miracles, but when Shambhala reissued it last year, they renamed it Beyond the Abbey Gates.
When not writing my own stuff, I supplement my income by ghostwriting business and self-help books. I'm single (widowed, actually), and live in Chicago.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
The Real Life Alchemist in Harry Potter
Speaking of Harry Potter, one of the minor characters—Nicholas Flamel--was a real alchemist who lived in the 14th century—which would have made him over 600 years old by the time the Potter books take place! Here’s how I tell his story in On Becoming an Alchemist.
In 1365, or thereabouts, Nicholas Flamel, a young scrivener living in
The volume was hand written on some strange material that looked to Flamel like shavings of tree bark. It was divided into three sections of seven leaves each, and every seventh leaf was covered with hand-painted images. The first page named the author as “Abraham the Jew, Prince, Priest, Levite, Astrologer and Philosopher” then went on to rain down curses on anyone who dared to read further, unless he be a priest or a scribe. Though probably not the kind of scribe this Abraham had in mind, Flamel figured he was covered by the exemption, and went on reading.
He gathered that the book was a self-help manual for Hebrews who were having trouble paying their taxes to the
There were, however, some beautiful illuminated figures illustrating the prima materia. One depicted a young man with winged feet whom Flamel took to be the god Hermes/Mercury. An old man with a hourglass on top of his head and a scythe in his hand was chasing after Mercury. Next came a picture of a flower with a blue stem and red and white petals, growing on a mountain top, surrounded by dragons and griffins. After this came a picture of a rose bush growing near a hollow oak tree. From the base of the rose bush sprang an underground stream. Many people were digging, trying to find the stream, while one man was trying to weigh it. The pictorial narrative concluded with an image of soldiers killing babies and collecting their blood.
Flamel made painstaking copies of the puzzling illustrations and showed them to every scholar he could find. Most of them were clueless, and scoffed at the notion of a philosopher’s stone. But one, a physician named Anselm, claimed to know exactly what the symbols meant, and went on to offer explicit instructions. He said, for example, that quicksilver (mercury) could only be fixed—that is, deprived of volatility—through a six year decoction in the blood of very young children.
Alas, Anselm’s exegesis proved “more subtle than true.” Flamel writes that it “sent me astray through a labyrinth of innumerable false processes for one and twenty years, it being always understood that I made no experiments with the blood of children, for that I accounted villainous.”
After twenty one years of being stuck at the very beginning, Flamel reckoned he’d better seek out the source of the text. Perhaps in
Now, at long last, he knew where to start. After three more years “pondering the words of the philosophers and proving various operations suggested by their study” he was at last able to prepare the basic ingredient. Once that was accomplished, the rest turned out to be so easy he “could scarcely miss.” He need only follow the book’s instructions word for word. On
Did all this really happen? Hard to say. All historians know for sure is that Flamel was a real person who died in 1415 and was buried at the Church of St. Jacques-la-Boucherie. According to the inscription on the gravestone, Flamel, a scrivener, made numerous gifts to charity, including endowments to various churches and hospitals in
Monday, September 3, 2007
No Muggles Here, Part 1
In my work with the Lorian Assocation (http://www.lorian.org/), I write a biweekly letter that is sent to anyone on our mailing list who requests it . I may share some of those letters here in this blog, though this is also an opportunity to explore other topics as well.
To start off my contribution, though, here is the latest letter I've sent out, the subject matter of which seems perfectly appropriate to The Hermeticist.
====================================================
I don’t know if your family is a fan of Harry Potter. Mine is. As the books have come out over the years, we have enjoyed more and more J. K. Rowling’s engaging tale of the boy wizard and his friends. In fact, my youngest daughter and I have made a ritual of attending the midnight release parties at our local bookstore whenever a new Potter book has come out. When our four kids were younger, we would all gather in the living room and listen while my wife read the latest installment. It was fun and exciting. Rowling tells a great yarn.
In Harry Potter’s universe, the world is divided into magic-users, known collectively as wizards and witches, and non-magic-users, known as muggles. Much of the fun of the books comes from reading the author’s invention of new words and terms; as neologisms go, muggles is about as good as it gets.
The big difference between Rowling’s fictional universe and ours is that, however fun a word it is, there are no muggles here. We are all magic-users.
Now I’m not talking about fantasy magic, the kind that Harry uses or a wizard in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Stories, while fun, deceive us about magic by turning it into something implausible. We come to think of magic as wizards hurling thunderbolts and flying through the air.
But there is an everyday magic that surrounds us that is so common, even in its occasional unexpectedness, that we don’t pay attention to it. And I’m not talking about the “magic of life” or the “magic of our senses” or any other metaphor for the wonderment we can find in life.
Here are some examples. I’m about to say something, and someone else says the same thing before me. I’m thinking of a friend and she calls unexpectedly. I need to see someone and I accidentally run into that person in a store. I need money that I don’t know how to get and a check arrives out of the blue in the mail from an unexpected source.
Here’s a true story of magic at work. A friend of mine wanted to buy some special bells for her mother but could not find them anywhere. One afternoon she phoned a friend but accidentally dialed the wrong number. The person at the other end turned out to be the clerk in a gift store she had never heard of. More importantly, this store turned out to be the sole importers in the whole city of these special bells.
We call these kinds of events synchronicities, manifestations, good luck, God’s hand, or coincidences. We see the way people long married can complete each other’s sentences, and we talk about them “being in resonance.”
What all these kinds of events and experiences have in common is that something intangible—a thought, a desire, an intent—is having an effect upon something tangible. The immaterial and invisible is affecting the material and the visible. For example, one day I had to give a lecture in the city at a place that is notorious for having very limited parking as one has to park on busy city streets. It was raining, and I was not anticipating a long walk from wherever I could park back to the lecture hall. So I visualized an empty parking place right in front of the hall. When I got there, though, all the parking spaces were full, but on a hunch, I went around the block. Nothing was available, but as I came in view of the lecture hall again, a car pulled out right where I had visualized my parking place. I was able to park conveniently right in front of the hall. An invisible, intangible thought in my head had a visible, tangible consequence.
We can call this coincidence, but it happens time and again in everyone’s life in one way or another. Our thoughts, feelings, intents, desires, wishes, fears, and hopes have a way of manifesting, the invisible world becoming visible.
The evidence is that life responds to us; it configures to our inner nature, to our thoughts, feelings, and spirit. This is real magic.
Why does it do this? How does it happen? What makes this magic work and create a response? Over the centuries, people have come up with different theories: the law of attraction, or the power of thought, of imagination, or of the will. All of these undoubtedly contribute and are part of this magic. At the same time, we all have examples of when they don’t work, of when we thought positively about something and it did not happen or wasn’t attracted or when our will or imagination did not bring about the result we wished.
The point then is not that there is no magic but that it operates more holistically than we may have thought. It isn’t just the law of attraction or the power of thought or the use of the imagination. Other things may be involved, at least some of the time. And if you think about it, this makes sense. Life responds to us as whole beings, not just as thinking beings or feeling beings or imagining beings. What evokes a response at a given moment may be a mystery; we may have to do some attentive observation and experimentation to gain clues about what works for us and what doesn’t. Each of us may come to this magic uniquely, based on our particular individuality; what works for someone else may not work for us because we are different people. But what is certain is that life will and does configure to us. It does respond. Who we are affects and shapes the world we experience. We are the makers and unmakers of worlds. This is everyday magic.
Experiment with this. Try it out. It may not for you be as straight-forward as thinking, “I want that new car,” and it will appear. How magic works for you may operate differently based on your unique relationship with life, the way your interiority and inner nature relates and configures to the world and vice versa. But your magic will work for you and is working all the time. Be a scientist of your own invisible world and investigate to find out how.
The first step into using your magic may be the same for everyone. I believe it is. It consists of simply acknowledging to oneself, “I am not a muggle. I am a magician.”
To start off my contribution, though, here is the latest letter I've sent out, the subject matter of which seems perfectly appropriate to The Hermeticist.
====================================================
I don’t know if your family is a fan of Harry Potter. Mine is. As the books have come out over the years, we have enjoyed more and more J. K. Rowling’s engaging tale of the boy wizard and his friends. In fact, my youngest daughter and I have made a ritual of attending the midnight release parties at our local bookstore whenever a new Potter book has come out. When our four kids were younger, we would all gather in the living room and listen while my wife read the latest installment. It was fun and exciting. Rowling tells a great yarn.
In Harry Potter’s universe, the world is divided into magic-users, known collectively as wizards and witches, and non-magic-users, known as muggles. Much of the fun of the books comes from reading the author’s invention of new words and terms; as neologisms go, muggles is about as good as it gets.
The big difference between Rowling’s fictional universe and ours is that, however fun a word it is, there are no muggles here. We are all magic-users.
Now I’m not talking about fantasy magic, the kind that Harry uses or a wizard in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Stories, while fun, deceive us about magic by turning it into something implausible. We come to think of magic as wizards hurling thunderbolts and flying through the air.
But there is an everyday magic that surrounds us that is so common, even in its occasional unexpectedness, that we don’t pay attention to it. And I’m not talking about the “magic of life” or the “magic of our senses” or any other metaphor for the wonderment we can find in life.
Here are some examples. I’m about to say something, and someone else says the same thing before me. I’m thinking of a friend and she calls unexpectedly. I need to see someone and I accidentally run into that person in a store. I need money that I don’t know how to get and a check arrives out of the blue in the mail from an unexpected source.
Here’s a true story of magic at work. A friend of mine wanted to buy some special bells for her mother but could not find them anywhere. One afternoon she phoned a friend but accidentally dialed the wrong number. The person at the other end turned out to be the clerk in a gift store she had never heard of. More importantly, this store turned out to be the sole importers in the whole city of these special bells.
We call these kinds of events synchronicities, manifestations, good luck, God’s hand, or coincidences. We see the way people long married can complete each other’s sentences, and we talk about them “being in resonance.”
What all these kinds of events and experiences have in common is that something intangible—a thought, a desire, an intent—is having an effect upon something tangible. The immaterial and invisible is affecting the material and the visible. For example, one day I had to give a lecture in the city at a place that is notorious for having very limited parking as one has to park on busy city streets. It was raining, and I was not anticipating a long walk from wherever I could park back to the lecture hall. So I visualized an empty parking place right in front of the hall. When I got there, though, all the parking spaces were full, but on a hunch, I went around the block. Nothing was available, but as I came in view of the lecture hall again, a car pulled out right where I had visualized my parking place. I was able to park conveniently right in front of the hall. An invisible, intangible thought in my head had a visible, tangible consequence.
We can call this coincidence, but it happens time and again in everyone’s life in one way or another. Our thoughts, feelings, intents, desires, wishes, fears, and hopes have a way of manifesting, the invisible world becoming visible.
The evidence is that life responds to us; it configures to our inner nature, to our thoughts, feelings, and spirit. This is real magic.
Why does it do this? How does it happen? What makes this magic work and create a response? Over the centuries, people have come up with different theories: the law of attraction, or the power of thought, of imagination, or of the will. All of these undoubtedly contribute and are part of this magic. At the same time, we all have examples of when they don’t work, of when we thought positively about something and it did not happen or wasn’t attracted or when our will or imagination did not bring about the result we wished.
The point then is not that there is no magic but that it operates more holistically than we may have thought. It isn’t just the law of attraction or the power of thought or the use of the imagination. Other things may be involved, at least some of the time. And if you think about it, this makes sense. Life responds to us as whole beings, not just as thinking beings or feeling beings or imagining beings. What evokes a response at a given moment may be a mystery; we may have to do some attentive observation and experimentation to gain clues about what works for us and what doesn’t. Each of us may come to this magic uniquely, based on our particular individuality; what works for someone else may not work for us because we are different people. But what is certain is that life will and does configure to us. It does respond. Who we are affects and shapes the world we experience. We are the makers and unmakers of worlds. This is everyday magic.
Experiment with this. Try it out. It may not for you be as straight-forward as thinking, “I want that new car,” and it will appear. How magic works for you may operate differently based on your unique relationship with life, the way your interiority and inner nature relates and configures to the world and vice versa. But your magic will work for you and is working all the time. Be a scientist of your own invisible world and investigate to find out how.
The first step into using your magic may be the same for everyone. I believe it is. It consists of simply acknowledging to oneself, “I am not a muggle. I am a magician.”
David Introduces Himself, Sort of...
My name is David Spangler. It's an honor to join with Catherine in this blog. I believe she has written one of the finest books on alchemy and hermetic magic, On Becoming an Alchemist; it's a pleasure to join with her in exploring spirituality and magic in this space.
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