First consider that your brain is a learning computer. The more you live, the more your brain can model experiences, whether that means seeing old experiences in new ways, repeated experiences in new variations, or completely new experiences. Essentially, the longer you live, the wiser you become through pattern recognition, memory, reasoning, and intuitive leaps. Wisdom, in turn, is proportional to magical capacity. So you don’t have to do anything other than continue to practice witchcraft and live your life in order to become a more powerful witch over time.
But let’s assume you want to intensify the process and become more powerful quickly. There’s nothing wrong with this. Nietzsche calls it “will to power” and holds it up as the highest, life-affirming value. In his view, life seeks increase; therefore, life seeks power. Then Viktor Frankl modifies this and calls it “will to meaning”: “The basis of Frankl’s theory was that the primary motivation of an individual is the search for meaning in life and that the primary purpose of psychotherapy should be to help the individual find that meaning.” In other words, meaning is the ultimate power and the highest good.
Witches and
other magical people think Frankl’s version is a useful model (one that might legitimately
be called, “self-initiatory” or, in Thelemic terms, “the search for one’s True Will”) because it
is introspective and self-focused. In
order to determine what your “will to meaning” looks like, you have to get to
know yourself in a very intimate way.
You have to go beyond the superficial fears and desires handed to you by
conformist culture and engage with your deep self. You have to really live gnothi
seauton.
This is “Left-Hand Path” because, instead of following someone’s pre-set diagram for how to do this (the defining characteristic of so-called Right-Hand Path spiritual systems), you map your own territory as you go. You explore your inner self with as few presumptions about who you may be as possible. You try to get rid of as many hang-ups and anxieties as you can in order to see yourself clearly and move forward. And you stand before the mirror, naked, raw, accepting everything that you are, whether you have been conditioned to see those characteristics as ugly or beautiful, shameful or admirable.
Even though
this is painful and sometimes scary, doing it makes you exponentially more
powerful, psychologically, magically, and sometimes even physically. But how, in a practical sense, do you begin?
If you like the idea of this approach, here are some ideas from my own
teachers:
1. Follow lust and desire. This
is your GPS toward pain, power, and therefore meaning. Your deep self calls to you through longing. Pay attention. You may not be in a position to satisfy your
lusts (and I use “lust” here in a way that encompasses far more than just sex,
more like “that which makes you burn with desire”), but you should let them
lead you into the darkness of your personal wilderness. As Doreen Valiente writes in her beautiful “Charge
of the Goddess,” “[I]f that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee,
thou wilt never find it without thee.”
Or, as Jung put it: “One does not become enlightened by imagining
figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
This is, incidentally, why darkness is such a potent symbol for mature schools of the Left-Hand Path—not as some absurd form of reverse Christianity or Sith cosplay, but because it represents, among other things, the absolute open potential of the individual. And the LHP is primarily concerned with self-awareness and self-empowerment. If a so-called LHP group dances around with flamboyant images of devils and demons, often arguing that such figures demand your soul or some other form of submission, they are being superficial and are immature in general. Those images and creatures, whether we consider them to be wholly symbolic or objective, are doorways, opportunities for us to get to know ourselves—just as everyone around us and everything we do are.
2. Seek all expressions of power. Power makes greater meaning possible. And meaning is the highest good. However, “seek all expressions of power” is a complex idea. What is power? First you have to define it for yourself apart from what Hollywood has given you. To become some kind of dark lord in the Sauron-Voldemort sense is not power. They always lose. They are one-dimensional. They have no long-term plan. They’re only reacting to the status quo and trying to disrupt it. What is real power to you? What is sustainable power? What does true power do socially, physically, metaphysically? You have to determine this on your own or it’s not the LHP. Answering these questions leads you into a new world, where the old morality that was forced on you by conformist culture no longer applies. It’s scary to see in a new way. But it’s a requirement if you want to know what your True Will to meaning actually is.
3. Adopt the Symbols and Aesthetics of Darkness (when advantageous). The difficult initiation of Damien Echols, a brilliant man and an insightful ceremonial magician, is illustrative. During the high “Satanic Panic,” he was falsely convicted of murder on very flimsy evidence, to a large extent because his interest in witchcraft and his goth aesthetic made him seem guilty in the eyes of a biased court. In his case, the symbols and aesthetics of darkness worked against him at a critical time (but, we should note, still led him into great power years later).
It's
important to know when and how to appear as the demonic or the
adversary. The Satanic Temple, by
contrast to the young Echols, usually does it right—they know how to use
darkness to break up self-righteous (usually evangelical Christian) assumptions
and draw power. You can
do this in your own life when you want to make cracks in the walls built
around you. It can be very subtle. It doesn’t have to involve a giant
bronze Baphomet statue being installed in front of city hall (although that
remains very amusing).
Speaking of Star Wars (a franchise I’ve come to loathe, but which still
has some good lingering metaphysical ideas), consider the “not from a jedi” scene in Revenge of
the Sith. This is a perfect example
of a subtle use of darkness to empower the self. Here Palpatine uses the power of storytelling
to draw Anakin in and show him that the things he took for granted (the walls
installed by his conformist upbringing) aren’t necessarily true. We think of Palpatine as the villain in this scene,
but actually everything he says is faithful to the lore (as it existed
at the time of Episode III) and bears out in subsequent movies. In Star Wars, the Sith nearly always
tell the truth (well, their truth).
This is an
important form of what is sometimes called “Lesser Magic”—taking a power
structure designed to keep you in a mental prison and subverting it so that you
can be empowered and attain greater meaning without those structures holding
you back. Another great example is the
iconic 1960s “flower power” photo taken
during the “End the War in Vietnam” march on the Pentagon. Instead of reacting to the guns all around
him in a violent way (and thereby affirming the authoritarian power structure), the protester
places a carnation into one of the barrels, taking power away from that gun, if
only for a moment.
This uses a hippy aesthetic. But it’s a great example of the sort of thing that LHP schools teach via the symbols of darkness. It’s not about being terrifying. It's about Palpatine opening Anakin's mind to other ways of knowing and other depths of meaning. It’s about changing the narrative.
4.
Accept Darkness as a Doorway to Mystery. The
witch’s path can get very monotonous and boring. Just look at the number of “Witchcraft 101”
books that all say the same things. We’ve
heard it all before. And most of us will
admit that it’s not the history or exercises or theories or rituals that really
inspire us. It’s the direct experience
of our deities or of types of metaphysical power (sometimes referred to “numinous experiences”). So, as magical practitioners, we typically want
more wonder, more mystery, and less bookkeeping.
The greatest symbol (at least in Western esotericism)
for this “undiscovered country” is darkness.
It precedes all light, all form, all mapping. In the dark, anything might exist or be
possible. Therefore, to become powerful
(and, as noted above, to engage the pattern-recognition capacities of the mind
in new and novel ways), one must courageously step into the unknown. Meditate in darkness. Call on the deities of darkness. Work with darkness, with Yin energy, until
you’re comfortable with it and you can balance darkness and light in your personal
experiences.
There are many other ideas and principles that come into play when a witch decides to seek will to meaning. And it’s not easy because conformist culture can react violently to any challenge to its hegemony. However, it is the straightest and quickest route to becoming powerful. It will change you and the world around you in very dramatic ways.
Suggested Starting Points:
Out of
the Shadows: an Exploration of Dark Paganism and Magick, John Coughlin
Uncle
Setnakt’s Essential Guide to the Left-Hand Path, Don Webb
Transcendental
Satanism, Matt Zane
The
Devil’s Dozen: Thirteen Craft Rites of the Old One, Gemma Gary
Man’s
Search for Meaning,
Viktor Frankl
The 48
Laws of Power, Robert
Greene