True Will & The Enduring Seed Of Stillness

כ" בטבת תשס"ח
Grael 21

Knowest thy will truly ...

R. J. Stewart (who is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors), in Living Magical Arts, writes:

The effect of [religious - my addition] magic is limited according to your own belief and understanding of reality; so rigid is this law that it may be stood upon its head by the experienced magician to prove that understanding of reality is only limited according to the effect of magic. What must be emphasized in this context is that we are dealing with the genuine or true beliefs of an individual or group; what we assume we believe, what we think is our understanding of reality, and what we actually do believe, are often radically different or even contradictory to one another. One of the effects of magical training is to fuse these two levels of belief and understanding into one balanced conceptual model ... a model that is open ended and without specific limits. During the early stages of magical development and training, in which the individual is often emerging from a period of skepticism or anti-religion, this conflict is very apparent. The law of belief in magic is not merely a matter of auto-suggestion, credulity, or self-reinforced delusion; it runs far deeper than such superficial manifestations. In old fashioned terminology it is one of the great secrets of the universe, taught as 'be what thou wilt, if thou knowest thy will truly'. Our history is full of sciences, achievements, even empires, built upon systems, practices and beliefs now known to be false, yet such systems worked very well for those who believed in them. This was not due to delusion on the part of the believers, but because the power of belief is more potent and active than the object or system believed in. Expressions or forms change ceaselessly, but consciousness is eternal, and has an enduring seed of stillness at its core.