What is Magic?

This biography for spiritual New Age internet readers includes books from many diverse religious traditions, since the principles of New Ageism have always been present in mysticism no matter what its trappings.  Some of the best Christian spiritual writing is contained in the collected sermons of Meister Eckhart, a fourteenth century German priest and spiritual genius who was tried for heresy (naturally).  Another valuable Christian source which appeals to metaphysical New Age readers is St. John of the Cross, a sixteenth century Spanish priest who produced a large body of spiritual literature and poetry.  His principle works are Ascent of Mount Carmel and Dark Night of the Soul.  Also highly recommendable is The Way of a Pilgrim by an anonymous nineteenth century Russian peasant, who journeyed around Russia meeting very interesting people and practicing a form of meditation which has become quite popular even with practitioners of New Age spirituality.

Buddhism is very close in spirit to the New Age, sharing many occult beliefs such as reincarnation and enlightenment.  Chogyam Trunpa’s books are highly recommended for people who want an introduction to Buddhist thought, with Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism containing the best explanation of Buddhist principles for beginning explorers of the spiritual realm.  Trungpa’s Shambhala is one of the best books of spiritual awareness in the Buddhist tradition.  Another highly recommended writer is Jack Kornfield, all of whose writings are excellent but whose Path with Heart is perhaps the best explanation of enlightenment.  Also worthy of attention are New Age online celebrity Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, which not precisely Buddhist is strongly influenced by Buddhism and presents a good picture of what enlightenment really means. 

Paganism in the north is a recent phenomenon and therefore there aren’t yet many books on pagan beliefs for intelligent readers.  Although there are some anthropological studies of pagan religion in other cultures, there are very few exegeses of native paganism by sympathetic authors for people who want to learn witchcraft.  One exception are the books by Martin Prechtel, an American who lived among the Tzutuhil Maya of Guatemala for many years and became a practitioner of Mayan shamanism.  His book Secrets of the Talking Jaguar is a good explanation of Mayan shamanic training; and his book Long Life, Honey in the Heart explains Mayan paganism from the point of view of a devotee.   Modern examples of intelligent paganism are represented by the books by members of the Findhorn community in Scotland, who were among the first practitioners of channeling nature spirits and devas.  The Findhorn Garden book, written by the founders of this community, is the classic in this field.   

            The very best book for the spiritual astrology beginner (and also one of the least expensive) is Ronald Davison’s Astrology.   This book starts from scratch and presents the multiple ramifications of astrology in very simple language, using an ingenious system of keywords to identify important concepts and keep the reader from becoming mired in complexities.  When the reader is ready to assimilate more detail, The Astrological Aspects by Charles Carter is the best book on the subject of planetary relationship (learning what the planets mean in combination).  A good cookbook-style guide to interpreting you personal horoscope for more advanced students is Alan Leo’s Key to Your Own Nativity, which gives interpretations for all the little bits and pieces which make up a horoscope; and also what factors should be taken into account when considering horoscopes and astrology in various areas of life such as marriage astrology, profession, children, and so forth.  The problem for tyros is to not become bogged down in detail; and Marc Edmund Jones’ The Essentials of Astrological Analysis gives several techniques for getting a handle on the meaning of a horoscope (or if you will, a life) as a whole; i.e., cutting through the welter of detail to get down to the person’s basic motivations and drives.

The Progressed Horoscope, by Alan Leo, is the very best explanation of this area of predictive astrology for doing horoscope readings.  Noel Tyl’s series of books on how to interpret transits are among the best explanations of this type of predictive technique and are well worth studying.  For information on relationships astrology, the best book is Ronald Davison’s Synastry, which discusses astrology relationships and the techniques used in deciding compatibility from the horoscopes of the people involved.   For more advanced students of astrology and horoscope, the most important theoretical books on astrology ever written are the Astrologia Gallica series by Jean Baptiste Morin de Villefranche, which were produced in the seventeenth century and are still extremely valuable today.  The most important books in this series are Books 18 and 21, which together explain an approach to recognizing the most important elements in a given horoscope, and how to interpret them for an astrology profile.  For a survey of the entire gamut of astrological knowledge as it appeared in the last century (at least up until 1976) Geoffrey Dean’s Recent Advances in Natal Astrology covers the territory exhaustively, and with critical commentary intended to separate the wheat from the chaff.  For psychological astrology, you cannot do better than Bob Makransky’s Thought Forms, which is written with a spiritual New Age readership (not merely astrologers) in mind. 

There is probably more baloney written about real witchcraft than any other topic on earth.  Most books on the subjects of mysticism and magick, particularly those from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, are mostly empty talk.  Many of the wiccan magick books you find on the New Age shelf at bookstores are lists of the trappings of magic without any of the core.  They list spells for this and spells for that, but give no information on how to make a magick spell work.  Fortunately, just in the past forty years, some very valuable books on magick have been published, largely from shamanic sources.  The alpha and omega of modern witchcraft theory and practice are the oeuvres of Carlos Castaneda.  Castaneda was a Peruvian anthropologist who, while working on his doctoral dissertation for UCLA in 1961, stumbled upon a Yaqui Indian magician named Don Juan Matus.  Don Juan took Carlos as his apprentice and introduced him to ancient Toltec magick which has far-reaching implications for the future of the human race.  This white witchcraft consists of training in an alternate form of cognition than that which we learn from our society, which is the first step in trying to learn witchcraft.           

Castaneda’s work has sparked a firestorm of controversy.  It has been thoroughly rejected by the academic community, which is not surprising considering the bigotry, intellectual persecution and rejection of real magick which characterize present-day academia.  However, Castaneda has also split the New Age community into pro- and anti- factions.  The things he says are so off-the-wall, and so alien to most people’s everyday experience of the world, that unless you yourself subscribe to white witchcraft and have had similar experiences (as I have had) it’s difficult to understand – much less accept – the premises of Castaneda’s teachings.   Moreover, there are internal inconsistencies in the books which critics point out in the effort to discredit him, even though Castaneda himself said that part of what is witchcraft is erasing one’s personal history and covering one’s tracks.   Also the fact that Castaneda was a womanizer is cited by his critics to deflect attention away from his message, although Castaneda himself certainly took no pains to hide that facet of his personality.           

Everyone has to decide for themselves what they will believe and take as truth.   Like many white witches, I pretty much take Castaneda at face value because everything in his books which I have been able to verify from my own experience has proven correct.  My own spiritual path came out of discoveries I made while tripping on psychedelic drugs and plants.  These experiences – together with my own personal discovery of witchcraft and spells - affected me profoundly and left me with lots of questions which I needed to resolve, and the only place I’ve found useful information on this subject is in Castaneda’s books.  Moreover, my one meeting with Castaneda in person did more than impress me.  It utterly floored me.  I know for a fact, from my own experience with him, that this man was, at the very least, a most powerful magician; whereas all I’ve seen amongst his detractors and critics are phonies and liars.  Wholly apart from the wicca magick, Castaneda’s books contain the most cogent analysis and critique of everyday life that I’ve ever seen.  Most of the information about the nature of the self, reality, time and space, and the body given in my writing originates in Castaneda.  The corpus of Castaneda’s works actually constitute a map – an indispensable map of magick for the spiritual traveler.  This map describes the way stations (in Castaneda’s nomenclature, positions of the assemblage point) along the spiritual path.  These are all places – or better said, peak moments in the life of anyone who wants to learn magick – when large parts of the lower self are shed and new facets of the higher self are revealed.  At these moments the seeker permanently reaches new levels of wisdom and power.  Some of these places, such as Stopping the World and Seeing the Human Mold, are well-known and are described elsewhere in spiritual literature under different names.  For example, Stopping the World is known elsewhere as samadhi, satori, or kensho.  However other places, such as the Place of No Pity, Losing the Human Form, and Silent Knowledge, are described nowhere else except in Castaneda’s books.  I can aver the existence of some of these places from my own personal experience; others I am still shooting for.  If you are going on a journey, it is helpful to have a clear map devised by those who have passed that way before.  Castaneda’s books are the best map I have found.  I trust the spiritual information they contain unreservedly.   You would do well to do the same.   My contacting spirit guides  use Castaneda’s system as the basis for the training they have given me.  They employ his concepts and nomenclature, but with their own slant on the subject and their own techniques.  Castaneda’s training depended heavily upon the nagual teacher Don Juan’s presence.  What my spirits are trying to do is to present a heuristic system which will enable people to work on their own, under the direction of spirit guides and nature spirits rather than a nagual teacher.   Somebody, somewhere, some time, somehow has to stand up for the truth, no matter how unfashionable that is or how unpopular it makes the person.  Castaneda was smeared and vilified for the precise same reason that Freud was smeared and vilified:  what he says cuts too close to the truth.   Freud and Castaneda pointed out certain vistas that society doesn’t want you to see.  They realized certain facts which society doesn’t want you to realize.  If the human race is to survive, it had better get to work fast on finding some new intent, because the intent it’s following now is the intent of self-destruction.  What Castaneda has brought us is the most important new information which our civilization has received in the past several millennia.  It will take the human race several centuries more to reconstruct the edifice of white magick which Don Juan described to Castaneda.  It’s about time we stopped the endless, mindless babbling and posturing, and rolled up our sleeves and got to work; and Castaneda is the obvious place to begin.             

If you’re only going to read one of the Castaneda books, or if you just want to dabble in learning witchcraft, I suggest reading the third book of the 10 book series, Journey to Ixtlan.  This book presents the most important concepts for the general spiritual seeker.   Otherwise, if you are serious about becoming a magician, you should read all the books in order, starting from The Teachings of Don Juan through The Active Side of Infinity.            Additionally, Castaneda left behind an organization devoted to promulgating one aspect of Don Juan’s teachings which he calls Tensegrity.  This is a set of physical exercises used to conserve and enhance one’s personal energy.  I would describe them as similar to Tai Chi but more intense and angular.   He wrote a book on this subject, Magical Passes, and sponsored some videos which illustrate how these exercises should be carried out. 

The only other how-to books on white magick which I would recommend are those of Franz Bardon, particularly his first book Initiation into Hermetics, which is available as a New Age download from the Magical Almanac ezine files.   This book is very much in the occidental tradition of magic and is more what the reader might expect of a book on magic – wands and pentacles and magic robes and circles and incantations and past life regressions and so forth.  However, unlike most such books this one imparts a good grasp of the core concepts of magic – namely self-analysis and self-hypnosis.  I would say that Bardon’s books are better for dreamers and my books are better for stalkers.  Magic is such a personal issue, however, that it’s good to read different takes on the subject to create a praxis of one’s own. 

Going to War:  Use a Mars hour. At this time you should light a red candle, visualize the person you are praying for as if he or she was standing right in front of you looking you in the eye.  If you are doing this for yourself, visualize yourself in the midst of war with a feeling of calmness, courage, and confidence in your own abilities.  Take a deep breath and blow all your worries and doubts away and leap forward with abandon!    Spread your arms wide and cast a white light of protection around the person (or imagine that white light is descending from above to surround and protect yourself).  Imagine that the person is standing calm and self-assured inside this white light of protection.   Then wish the person well and bid them well on their way into the light. 

Conflicts / firing employees, etc.:   Use a Mars hour.  Light a red candle for courage.  If it’s a matter of standing up to someone and telling them off, imagine them standing right there in front of you and speak exactly what’s on your mind calmly and assuredly, with no gloating, anger, or personal feeling at all.  Imagine yourself tearing off the ties which bind you; jump forward out of the situation which is holding you back and spring into the light of freedom!  

Scat Spell:  (to cast out demons, banish negative thought forms, and get rid of bothersome people):  Use a Saturn hour.  Light a black candle, take a deep breath, and imagine yourself confronting the oppressive person or situation with cold detachment and indifference.  It’s important that you have no sense of gloating, or a desire for vengeance, or for anything more from this person.  Then throw your arms outward forcefully and decisively as if to cast off the oppressive person or situation.  You can also jump up and down and shake your body vigorously to shake the person’s bad vibes off.  You don’t visualize something bad happening to the person, but rather feel how happy and light you feel now that person is gone or that situation is behind you! 

            Example:  to get rid of a lover who has outlived his / her usefulness: at the correct moment light a black candle and imagine your ex is standing right in front of you and telling you that they’ve decided that they’ve had enough of you.   Don’t feel rancor; feel relief.   It’s important that you don’t do this C.V. in a mood of anger, particularly if your ex is a vampire who is sucking your energy by provoking your anger.   You have to call it quits in the C.V. – not take pleasure when they get their comeuppance (as you do in normal daydreaming).  Take deep breaths, or jump up and down and shake your body, until you are calm and in command of yourself.     Then imagine taking your erstwhile lover’s hands in both of your own; look him or her squarely in the eye; and say in your own words and using your own sentiments, “It’s had its good times, hasn’t it?  But now it’s time we each went our own way.”  Then wishing him or her the best of luck in their future journey, turn around, wipe your hands of it, walk away and don’t look back. 

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Asking favors:  Use a relevant hour (sun for father / boss; moon for mother / employee; Mercury for children / neighbor / coworker; Venus for female friend or lover; Mars for male friend or lover; Jupiter for advisor; Saturn for old or difficult people).   Light a white candle and look the person directly in the eye.  Calmly and confidently explain why you need this favor from the person.  Give your reasoning and (if possible) explain how doing you this favor will be beneficial to them also.  Imagine them granting your desire with cordiality and generosity; smile at them and shake their hand; then walk away and forget about it (i.e. after doing the C.V. don’t bring the favor up yourself of your own accord; wait until the proper moment to approach the person arrives on its own momentum).           

Love Spell:  Use a Venus hour (straight women or gay men can use a Mars hour instead – particularly if sex is more important than companionship).   At this moment light a pink candle and imagine that you are right there in front of your beloved (or if you don’t have a beloved, a beautiful stranger).  Look him or her directly in the eyes; take his or her hands in yours; and say everything that is in your heart.  Then listen to what he or she has to say; let the thing flow as it will.  Then embrace and kiss as if it were really happening right now, and feel yourself filled with joy and happiness!  Then with a sigh, squeeze their hands, wish them well, and let them go. 

Both the Asking favors (above) and Love spells are essentially the same thing as bewitching the person; except casting spells are usually only done once, at a favorable astrological time; whereas bewitching is carried out on a daily (or even moment-to-moment) basis for a while to build up pressure, before dropping the procedure and turning one’s mind to other things. 

Money Spell:    Use a Jupiter hour.  At the chosen time light a green candle, take a deep breath, and vigorously shake your body to shake off all your money worries.  Imagine that you have plenty of money for all your needs and never need to worry about money ever again!  It’s better not to focus on money qua money, but rather on what you need the money for; that these needs are being abundantly met; and you are joyous and positive about your future!  Feel how happy and satisfying it makes you that you have such abundance that you can be philanthropic and give money to others who need it and to help save the earth (it’s important that you see yourself as being wealthy enough to give money away, rather than imagining yourself pigging out)!  Feel how great it feels to be free of money worries forever!

Enlightenment / wisdom / knowledge Spell:  Use a sun hour.  At this moment light a white candle;  take a deep breath, and imagine that all barriers separating you from other people and the world around you have dissolved, and you feel a white light enveloping you with joy!  Then:

Feel that you are truly connected to the universe;That you have been chosen to save the world; That you have been chosen to reach out to every being that comes in contact with you;That your love knows no bounds and gives you joy such as you never thought was possible. 

Health:  Use a moon hour.  At this time light a white candle and imagine yourself (or the person you are praying for) to be healthy, happy, and full of zip!  Whatever activities may have been curtailed by your illness, imagine yourself renewing them with increased verve and enthusiasm!  Feel yourself brimming with vigor and energy, do a little dance of joy and thanksgiving for your healing! 

Success in Studies:  Use a Mercury hour.  Light a blue candle at this moment, take a deep breath, and imagine that you are in school and are feeling confident and pleased with your understanding and progress!  See yourself reciting in class and feel that you are making a good contribution to the class and have the esteem of your teachers and classmates!  You are so happy to be in school because you are learning so much and are having lots of fun!  

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After the spell is cast it is best to forget about it (insofar as you are capable of doing this) rather than to keep ruminating / fantasizing about it (which tends to dissipate the power of the spell).  Once the intent has been set up by the C.V., the only way to make it happen, to let the Spirit free to do your bidding, is to drop the concern completely.  What locks the Spirit up – keeps it from helping us – is our inability to just let go and abandon ourselves to it; to just trust it to come through for us. 

            Master magicians are able to just drop an obsessive concern because they have their true feelings so finely tuned that they can switch them off and on at will.  They are not as wrapped up in their desires and feelings as are average people.  They don’t have such an ego stake (success / glory versus failure / shame) in the outcome of anything, so they can throw their attention completely behind a desire, and just as completely release it.  Average people can’t do this – they cling, and cling, and cling to their desires and thought forms.  They don’t know how to let go.  They don’t have the discipline to be able to just drop something without looking back.  So what average people have to do is to trick themselves: after setting up an intent through obsessive concern, they should then arbitrarily choose some other area of their lives to become obsessively concerned about, and shift all their intense, obsessive desire to this other area.

What follows are merely suggestions and examples.  You must adapt the model to your own taste, to create spells that are meaningful to you, personally.  The important thing is to imagine your desire coming true in the now moment.  This means imagining yourself to be in the midst of your desire coming true, rather than being a detached observer (as you do in normal fantasizing and daydreaming).  For example, in casting a love spell you must imagine yourself to be looking the other person directly in the eye and talking sincerely to them, and listening to what they have to say, rather than viewing them from a distance (as you do in romantic or sexual fantasies).

As you cast the spell, imagine in your mind’s eye your desire coming true right now, and let yourself feel all the joy you would feel if that were indeed the case.  In other words, Creative Visualization is a matter of hypnotizing oneself (if only momentarily) into believing that your desires are already true.  This is how we reach out to the probable realities in which we realize our desires:  by breaking the hypnotic spell of our obsessive moods of unhappiness; by giving hope a little elbow room in there, so it can nudge its way through the gloom of our customary self-pity.  Hope is the fuel that propels desire lines forward.  This means faith not in ultimate success, but in ultimate self-worth.  In the end you have to abide by the dictates of power.  You win a few; you lose a few; that’s the way it goes. 

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A Book of Shadows is merely a collection of spells and rituals.   All thought forms of desire can be considered to be commands to the Spirit; what makes spells special is the attention paid to them (the importance placed on them).  This is why we must not dissipate our intent in casting thoughtless desires out willy-nilly, such as by casual window-shopping or coveting what we see on the TV or internet, or being jealous of other people.   We must focus all our desire on one particular object.  It is precisely by inflaming our desire for a myriad of objects which we don’t even want that society saps our will and holds us in slavery.  Casting spells won’t work if you scatter your intent in every direction at once. 

The difference between spells and rituals is that rituals are done to invoke spirits (i.e. are performed basically to propitiate the spirits – to keep them happy) whereas spells are cast for particular purposes such as wealth, healing, love, etc.  Spells can be considered the same thing as prayers, although prayers normally are directed towards a deity, whereas spells may or may not appeal for the intercession of spirits or a deity. 

Both spells and prayers, as well as positive thinking, can be subsumed under the rubric “Creative Visualization” (C.V.), which is the name for the basic technique involved.  There is nothing “magical” about spells; the words employed don’t matter as much as the intent behind the words.  It is much better if you create your own spells, in your own words, rather than borrow spells from some other source (however if you are invoking spirits then you must be scrupulous in following the wording of the invocation precisely, as well as observing the correct day / time / astrological aspect required, if there is one; and copying the sigil correctly.  This is because some spirits – though not all – are rather exigent in their requirements and demand full attention to what you are doing). 

I, personally, don’t have a book of shadows.  There are certain C.V.’s I do every day, sometimes several times a day (particularly the Enlightenment spell given below).  Most of the time, however, the C.V.’s I do are impromptu – as when I see a rainbow or falling star and cast my customary Enlightenment spell on it.  Ephemeral phenomena such as rainbows, falling stars, dust devils, gusts of wind, etc. are actually the best messengers for taking our spells and prayers out into the universe because they spring to life for a moment and then dissolve back into undifferentiated energy, taking our desire with them.  This is also why spells are cast with a burning candle – to send the desire out there.  But now and again I’ll cast a spell for money or whatever, and at such times I follow the astrological guidelines explained in the article Astrological Timing of Spells, Prayers, and Rituals .

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            Magicians set up an intent by putting 100% of their attention on it.  Whatever their desire is, they have themselves feel an intense longing in their hearts for the object of their desire moment-to-moment, all day long, every day.  With every indrawn breath they draw the object of their desire to them, and with every expelled breath they blow away the obstacles in their path.  They do not permit themselves to think about, or to desire, anything except the object of their intent.  Average people, who don’t have the mental control to be monitoring their thoughts and feelings all day long, can still obtain a similar effect by just intensely desiring something as powerfully as they can.  Desires that have been longed for for many years have enough strength behind them, by virtue of their sheer repetition, to serve as intents (commands to the Spirit).  If there’s something which you’ve desired obsessively for a long, long time, then you have enough intent stored up there already and don’t have to do anything more except to drop it. 

            Once the intent has been set up by obsessive concern, the only way to make it happen, to let the Spirit free to do our bidding, is to drop the concern completely.  What locks the Spirit up – keeps it from helping us – is our inability to just let go and abandon ourselves to it, to just trust it to come through for us. 

            Master magicians are able to just drop obsessive concerns because they have their true feelings so finely tuned that they can switch them off and on at will.  They are not as wrapped up in their desires and feelings as are average people.  They don’t have such an ego stake (success / glory versus failure / shame) in the outcome of anything, so they can throw their attention completely behind a desire, and just as completely release it.  Average people can’t do this – they cling, and cling, and cling to their desires and thought forms.  They don’t know how to let go.  They don’t have the discipline to be able to just drop something without looking back.  So what average people have to do is to trick themselves: after setting up an intent through obsessive concern, they should then arbitrarily choose some other area of their lives to become obsessively concerned about, and shift all their intense, obsessive desire to this other area.

            In actuality, the mental control necessary to maintain one’s attention fixed on a specific feeling all day long, and then to stop thinking about it cold, is not as hard as it sounds.  You can call upon spirit helpers, or even your death thought form, to assist you by constantly reminding you to return your wandering attention to the object of your desire; or to quit thinking about it, as the case may be.

            But it really isn’t necessary to do creative visualization all day long.  Just do what you can, in good faith, on a level you feel comfortable with, and everything will work out okay.  The important thing to remember is that hope is the fuel that propels desire lines forward.  This means faith not in ultimate success, but in ultimate self-worth.  In the end you have to abide by the dictates of power.  You win a few; you lose a few; that’s the way it goes. 

            One further application of creative visualization which is useful in untangling light fibers with other people is to try to remember times when you’ve been angry or cruel to other people.  It would be best to actually go to them personally and ask their forgiveness; but if this isn’t possible you can go to them in your visualization and humbly ask that they forgive you.  Then imagine them forgiving you.  You should humbly visualize yourself asking and receiving forgiveness from anyone you’ve ever felt angry at or have hurt.  This helps in freeing up your karma (unblocking light fibers) that holds you back from opening your heart.

(excerpted from Thought Forms Copyright © 2000 by Bob Makransky.  All rights reserved)

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            Creative visualization is essentially a frontal attack on the doubt thought form, which will fight back with every trick it knows.  Your doubt thought form is what tries to hang you up in “Will this happen or not happen?  Maybe it won’t happen, so I shouldn’t let myself get too excited about it so I won’t feel disappointed if it doesn’t happen, etc. etc.”   Creative visualization is a way of cutting across all those endless circles of doubt, by taking primary joy in the act of visualization itself.  It’s like playing with an imaginary companion:  a child who has an imaginary companion doesn’t care if it’s real or not – he or she just has fun with it in the now moment.  And that’s the attitude you must bring to creative visualization – take primary pleasure in imagining it happening right now, rather than worrying about whether or not it will actually come true in some future.

            The difference between creative visualization and normal daydreaming is that in creative visualization there is no doubt: as in dreaming, the experience is too vivid and intense for doubt.  In normal daydreaming, on the other hand, people don’t really want the fantasy to come true.  They’re afraid of taking responsibility for that probable reality, for having that much power and control over their own destiny.  Ergo, they detach themselves from their desire by projecting it into a future which will never come, instead of knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the probable reality will come true – by living that reality in the now moment, which is what is done in creative visualization.  Successful people are already using creative visualization unconsciously:  they have no doubt about their intentions.

            In creative visualization you are trying to connect with a true feeling (a probable reality in which your desire is realized), whereas in normal daydreaming you are idly indulging in some glory scheme.  There’s no true feeling in most daydreams, just the false joy of undeserved glory.  In creative visualization you are not desiring validation from other people; you are desiring and calling forth a sense of merit and reward from within yourself.  In daydreaming you say, “Everyone applauds me because I am so wonderful”  whereas in creative visualization you say, “Everyone likes me because I like myself”.

            Both creative visualization and normal daydreaming tend to bring about the conditions they visualize.  The trouble is that daydreaming can only bring about conditions in the world of society, not true happiness, because what is being visualized is not true happiness but rather a thought form copy of it.  Daydreaming is phony – it has only glory attached to it, not true desire or true hope.  Both daydreaming and creative visualization are commands to the Spirit, but creative visualization is a command of fulfillment whereas daydreaming is a command of lack. 

             In normal daydreaming you are standing back and watching yourself, applauding yourself, patting yourself on the back.  The “you” in the daydream is just a puppet; the real you is watching this puppet perform.  But in creative visualization, the real you is smack dab in the middle of the action, taking primary enjoyment from being in the scene that unfolds around you, rather than standing back and gloating over it.

            In normal daydreams other people only serve as mute witnesses to how wonderful you are or how right you are; they are mere puppets who are impressed by you, or turned on by you, or repentant at how shabbily they’ve treated you; whereas in creative visualization they’re warm, alive, and unpredictable, and you take great pleasure in being in their company. 

In normal daydreaming you write a rigid script, and usually run the thing over and over again, perhaps making little revisions here and there to enhance your glory; whereas in creative visualization the idea is to get to a point where you are so lost in the joy of it that you are no longer controlling the course that it takes any more – the other people in the scene (if there are any) are making all the suggestions about what will happen next.

            Whereas normal daydreaming is a means of escaping from the rigors of life, creative visualization entails knowing that you called your outer circumstances to you for some reason; and knowing that you can also change that reason if only you don’t lose sight of (feeling for) the ultimate goal.  It means to make a conscious decision to stop obsessing over what you lack and instead focus upon how much you have.   It means to drop your moaning and groaning self-pity and roll up your sleeves and get down to work.  It means reaching out to probable realities in which there is joy, no matter how improbable they may seem at the moment, rather than to ones which will only reinforce your self-pity and self-hatred.  The legend of Pygmalion and Galatea is not a myth – it’s a true story.

            When you catch yourself indulging in normal daydreaming, switch it to creative visualization.  The point is to stop thinking and to let yourself feel; to give yourself permission to feel as much joy as you would feel if your desire were to come true, without making that joy contingent upon whether the desire comes true or not.  Then it really doesn’t matter whether it comes true or not; and this clears the way for it to come true.  Having set up an intent by intense, singlepointed desire, you must then drop the obsessive concern and become indifferent as to the outcome.  The trick to magic lies in the ability to turn the importance switch on and off at will.

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            Since there are some excellent books on creative visualization readily available (e.g. Shakti Gawain’s), we will only summarize two creative visualization methods here:

1)         Affirmations can be spoken aloud, voiced mentally, written down, or chanted.  These are positive, uplifting statements:  for example, “Every day in every way I am getting better and better”;  or “I got that raise I wanted because I truly deserved it!”;  which are repeated over and over.

2)         Treasure maps are collages of photographs or drawings which illustrate us getting what we want from life.  The visual images can also be accompanied by written affirmations.  The visual images are examined and the accompanying affirmations read with the aim of conjuring up the feeling of that image coming true in our lives.

            In using both affirmations and treasure maps, the important point is to get to the feeling of the desire, and not just do it by rote.  To make it heartfelt, you should be in a happy, delighted mood – lose yourself in reverie.  Try to connect with a feeling of intense longing – a pang of sweet anguish – in your heart.  Actually, once you have the intent firmly set up, you can dispense with the visualization (mental imaging) part altogether and just feel the feeling of your desire as a pang in your heart.  This is a more economical way of doing it in terms of energy expended.  The pang feeling is not unlike the feeling of fear, except you feel it in your heart instead of your solar plexus.

            Creative visualization should be done for at least ten minutes or so upon awakening, and again at night before going to sleep.  Try to do your visualization as you drop off  to sleep.  This is difficult at first because the attention needed to maintain an image in the forefront of the mind (importance) is the opposite of the attention needed to enter the dream state (relaxation).  The trick is to drop off to sleep with the feeling of your desire uppermost in your mind rather than the thought forms, which is a lot harder to do, and indeed is the equivalent of astral projection – entering lucid dreaming from a position in wakefulness.  However, if you keep plugging away at it you’ll soon get the hang of it – the necessary balance.

            You should also visualize your desires during the day – just like daydreaming, but in the present rather than the future tense, e.g., “I’m so happy now that such-and-such is happening in my life!”  The secret of creative visualization is to convince yourself that what you are wishing for is already true, and you’re just hanging around for a few minutes in the waiting room while the universe finds it and hands it to you.  To visualize a desire as if it were already achieved means to imagine it happening in the here and now, as if it were taking place in front of you.  You mustn’t set up any contradictory agendas such as, “In the event that this creative visualization doesn’t work for me then I’ll do this other thing.”  You have to put all your eggs in one basket, in the probable reality in which your desires come true, rather than cover your posterior in the event of failure.  The more energy you can bring to bear upon your desire, the faster you’ll start seeing results.  But be patient:  Rome wasn’t built in a day.

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