Magick & Mysticism
Journal
Entries of an
Empirical Mystic
©1994-2008
Antero Alli
When I was about seventeen, I made a private vow never to become anything or anybody when I grew up. This private pledge was a heartfelt response to what I saw as a vapid persona problem plaguing most of the teenagers I knew who seemed hypnotized by the spell (promise?) of premature adulthood. It seemed most kids my age were in a big rush to become somebody. Whether that somebody was the "self-image" of their own creation or the public image of what others expected from them, the very idea put me off. There was a vulgarity in trying to encapsulate the mystery of their being into some understandable concept that seemed absurd to me. In high school, they called it an "identity crisis." To me, it was an ridiculously white, Judeo-Christian mental construct to shroud the embarrassing fact that they did not know how to live their lives yet. Who could blame them ? Nothing in High School taught us how to survive in the real world. When I realized this, I also realized that I was on my own.
This vow to "be nothing" inadvertantly initiated a specific self-defining perspective through which the rest of my life would gather momentum and focus. By not becoming anything, I was naively yet sincerely confessing my fervent adolescent devotion to what ancient Kabbalists call "ayn sof", what Buddhists call the "Illuminated gate of the Void" and what the Book of Tarot names "The Fool." In other words, the mystical impulse had found a home inside me. A primary long-term, side effect of this impulse has been and remains, a growing familiarity with the distinct possibility that the very core of my being is made up of this nothingness. I feel, touch and sense my "center" as a condition of pure potential energy -- void of form, shape or color. There is also a developing sensibility of ordinariness about this revelation: I am nothing and it is nothing special.
Another early motivation to "not become anything" was out of pure pragmatic glee. By not identifying with any one concept of myself, a type of psychological freedom emerged. I loved the idea of not being anybody while simultaneously being able to do many things; a worthy trade-off. Over the next twenty years, my lifestyle exploded into a wild spectrum of activities; the writing and directing of plays for the theatre, authoring six books, an eight-year career as a psychic aura reader, playing piano for dance classes, performing as a professional clown, creating a ritual technology, producing films, Etc. It seems that my early devotion to the potential state naturally lent itself to a prolific output of diverse activities. (This indulgence of personal history is a necessary prelude to this article on Magick and Mysticism, as it tracks the philosophical origins of the author who also happens to be the subject.)
The Mystic and The Magus
For the sake of semantics and to clarify my own bias, I now draw distinctions between the mystic and the magus and, between mysticism and magick. The mystical path is primarily devotional, a path of the heart. Mystical tendencies encourage one to yield, acquiesce and eventually surrender around forces one experiences as greater and more intelligent than one's person. The mystic is carried by a genuine lack of concern for the outcome of destiny, producing a wisdom for letting things happen and flowing with the forces that be. Mysticism is any sensibility encouraging direct openess to and merging with the unknown universe on its innate terms, through reverence of mystery.
Magickal work is essentially self-determined wish fulfillment anchored in the will to power. Magick is rooted in the development of those volitional skills enabling one to effect change in the outer and inner worlds according to ones will, that is to say, on purpose. The magickian works to utilize the forces of nature to fulfill his/her intentions and often does so with the use of magickal tools, ie., ritual implements, herbs, incantations, sigils, etc. Tendencies of both the mystic and the magus exist within everyone at various degreesof realization and interaction. (When the terms "mystic" and "magus" are used hereafter, they refer to (pre)dispositions within us rather than any pure type. My own predilection, for example, is primarily mystical with magickal leanings; an empirical mystic, if you will.)
Aleister Crowley's magickal axiom, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law... love is the law, love under Will," speaks precisely for the magickian's alignment with Will as a superior principle under which love, or devotion, serves. Crowley's life and profuse literary heritage remain a chief prototype for many a magus today. On the more mystical end, there was another individual by the name of William Butler Yeats (who, along with Crowley, was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) whom Crowley discounted as an ineffective magickian. How right he was ! Yeats, of course, was not so much a magus as he was a mystic. One has only to read his lavish poetry and his experimental no-plays to ascertain this much. No doubt Yeats considered Crowley's written poetry limp and lame by comparison. These two historical figures easily personify the polarity of mysticism and magick, from which all real gnosis and praxis spring forth.
I don't think there are any pure and thus, exclusively mystical or magickal practices per se. Rather, I perceive two basic approaches to the numerous bodies of available esoteric knowledge which all seem to be diverse responses to life's mysteries. The magus, not unlike the scientist, approaches mystery as a relative phenomena to be understood in gradation through a series of repeatable experiments with predictable results. The mystic, like the priest, relates to the absolute nature of mystery as a process to participate in and eventually, to be sacrificed to through an act of conscious surrender. Both bias' have their own distinct values.
The Shaper and the Shaped
For example: the mystic approaches ritual-making in a completely different manner than that of the magus. Mystical rituals (ie., the traditional liturgy of the Catholic High Mass, native American Sundance ceremonies), engage the celebrants in the physical, emotional and mental preparations necessary to move and inspire within the heart a love for creation and, the revelation of unity therein. Energy is generated and assimilated. Ritual magick (ie.,the Gnostic Mass of the O.T.O. and the Crowleyites, Golden Dawn ceremonial magick) trains the aspirant to command those forces necessary to evoke the desired effect(s) of the individual and/or group involved. Energy is focused and then, directed to a target or a goal.
Those who have innocently experienced the values of both orientations know their distinct influences on their own psyches, as well as in those group minds who live accordingly. It's as if each approach encourages the development of a different type of person. Any personality, to some extent, is shaped by a prolonged influence of either and of each. To grasp the quandary, we re-focus down to the example of a single moment that I'll refer to as "acceleration", any marked intensification of lifeforce in the body. When this happens, there are basically three ways to respond and thus, define ourselves in relation to acceleration:
1) resistance: contracting away from the experience, we tighten and otherwise withdraw our will and consciousness from having the experience; you deny or avoid the experience (self-denial is the boss)
2) control: directing the experience according to our will, we grow more aware of gaining influence over the energy itself; you control the experience (you are the boss)
3) service: yielding to the experience, we allow the will and consciousness to blend with its energy; you serve the experience and its innate direction and force (the experience, or situation, is the boss)
All three responses are self-defining destinies. In resistance, we learn the self-knowledge of our limitations -- how far we are willing to go with a given force. In control, we discover enough understanding to manage the forces by shaping their direction towards self-determined ends. In service, ongoing intimacy with the energy itself reveals outcomes simultaneously unpredictable and uncontrollable -- we are moved and shaped by the energy itself. Apparently, all three responses exist at various degrees of realization and interaction at every acceleration point in our lives. Using these three responses as a model, read the extent of your own bias -- the degree it stems from the magickal (control) and/or the mystical (service). Resistance to acceleration seems innate to the challenges of both realms.
Such Gorgeous Oppression
I confess a greater liking for the third "service" response even though I am culturally conditioned "as a man" to exaggerate the second, more "controlling" option. The first "resisting" option is usually the more interesting of the three, insofar as it's ability to expose work to be attended before any real control or service can ensue. Working to face and express resistances, augments the flow of the forces. Even though I am more innately mystical, I have spent far more time in the control response. This has had the effect of creating an ongoing friction between my "essence" and my "personality" levels, from which the birth of a "soul" has been midwived. In mundane terms, I've been a controlling, manipulative person most of my life while harboring a closet mystic within. In other words, I'm a "false" magus and a true mystic learning to come to terms with myself.
One effect of maintaining a greater external control over my life has been a marked increase in personal understanding. For many years, understanding was utterly paramount to my physical, emotional and psychic survival. Understanding myself and my place in the world helped solidify a sense of my niche, if you will. You understand something and you know where you are; there's power in that. In retrospect, I see how I've exaggerated the importance of my understanding and the niche it created until the power of my placement corroded into the bleak paranoia of isolation. I had outdone myself, in other words. Realizing this has helped me begin seeing through the paranoid tendencies embroiling most magickians I meet while enlivening the compassion to live amongst them.
Outdoing oneself is probably an occupational hazard for any practicing magickian. Too much "doing" tends to manufacture a kind of psychic shielding effect, creating the illusion of invincibility masked by an increasingly calloused and jaded attitude. As one continues suffering "the illusion of ones certainty" one cuts off fresh incoming experience, which might be incongruent to and thus essential for challenging the resiliancy of ones conceptual paradigm.
An older magus from a well-known magickal order and temple (who'll remain anonymous), initiated me to my own process of "undoing" this false magus. Life, as I knew it, rapidly unraveled like a ball of misplaced yarn. Whatever understanding I had accumulated was lambasted at the very core of my being. Anything not innate to my being was subject to the shock of more undoing. I realized how my coveted understanding was a form of gorgeous oppression; beautiful yet hopelessly byzantine. My "being" had been terrorized and tyrannized by my own understanding, in other words. It was in response to the psychological shocks administered by this magickian that the truer mystical nature of my being began to emerge. Upon encountering its emanation, the magus retracted in displeasure and eventually disappeared from my life. This magickian's own elusive, "disappearing persona" suggested a true magus (in essence) at work, while its false mystic personality seemed as undone by my mysticism as I was, by its magick. We do not have much to do with each other, anymore.
Corrosion of the False Magus
The magickian's dismantling of my pretenses continues inside my own efforts to wake up. Occasionally, I'll notice how crafty and cunning my understanding has become, what it does just to maintain control over my frightened, overwhelmed being. This happens when my need to be understood is over-awed by my need to understand. Re-read the previous sentence. I'm beginning to see how this unchecked need for comprehension is a pain in the neck, a self-imposed impediment to the kind of direct realization necessary to the life of my very soul. As the false magus corrodes away, I am left feeling a greater need TO BE SEEN, rather than the more heady need TO SEE. There's a lot of catching up to do.
The soul craves real mystery just as much as spirit burns the lamp of real understanding. Other side-effects of excessive spiritual understanding are noticed in the absence of imagination and humor, two traits conspicuously missing from the otherwise astute Gurdjieffian schools of esoteric self-knowledge. Humor and imagination are symptomatic of a human soul at work without which, a dismal fate awaits any practicing mystic or magickian no matter what they know or who they are. (James Hillman in his compilation of classic essays, BLUE FIRE, extrapolates on this critical distinction between the solar-dominant spirit of understanding and the more lunar-based, imaginative feeling domain of the soul.) When the spirit has been over-emphasized, it is the soul that hurts and seeks healing.
Antero Alli: Bio, Books, Writings , Films
ANTERO ALLI, BIO
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