Gnothi Seauton: where is your place of power?

 

Many years ago, when I was first learning the Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram, I wrote to Donald Kraig about the crazy things I was seeing at the edges of the circle, far crazier, I felt, than anything I’d ever witnessed during my study of the lesser pentagram and hexagram rituals. He very patiently (with his usual kindness and humor) wrote back that whatever I thought I was seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking, or otherwise experiencing during performance of the SIRP was unimportant. The important thing was being consistent in daily practice without letting astral garbage distract me. I took that advice to heart, as I did with everything he told me over the years, and eventually the visions subsided. But this taught me something important about magical practice: one’s perception of personal “power” or “energy” are largely subjective.

In fact, I will go so far as to say these perceptions are part of a practitioner’s unverified personal gnosis (UPG). What seems powerful and meaningful today can seem the opposite tomorrow and vice-versa—depending on a lot of factors, not the least of which include emotions, diet, weather, astrological moment, state-dependent memory, pattern recognition, imaginative capacity, comprehension, related reading, invisible friends, dream journeys, and personal wyrd. I think this is why Kraig, in Modern Magick (and in person) always stressed keeping detailed records of daily practice. You won’t know which factors regularly contribute to your power unless you examine how it rises or fails to rise in space and over time.

This sounds complicated, but it’s just a matter of paying close attention to yourself and staying consistent. I’ve written about avoiding pretentious, repetitive “grinding” from poorly written occult manuals. That’s not what I’m talking about here. Rather, I’m pointing out that no ritual (or, for that matter, true book of magic) reveals its secrets right away. One has to sit with it, practice it, and see the world through its perspective. Then gradually, like getting to know a person, it opens up and you start to see its inner nature. This takes patience and work.

Still, no one who has seriously engaged in occult study would deny that some form of tangible “energy” exists and can be directed through ritual. Moreover, there are some days when you feel magically or energetically filled up with that energy and some days when you don’t. If you look carefully, you can predict these peaks and valleys to a limited extent.

For example, say you know you’re going to have a heavy day at the office. You’ve gradually come to understand that eight hours of paperwork behind a desk makes you feel drained. You never do much magic on those days, preferring instead to just go home, make dinner, watch a show, and get to bed. This would be a valuable insight about one of your personal “valleys.” You probably wouldn’t plan for the culmination of a major grimoire evocation on a day like that. Alternately, you might feel that midnight is the loosest, most open, time for you to be “magical.” Maybe midnight is one of your “peaks.”

As with time, so with space. You may come to believe that a particular public garden or rotary park or monument or area of a museum is the best place for you to do certain surreptitious acts of magic. Whether or not that has always been the case or will be so in the future is an open question (since it will depend, at least partly, on your subjective, personal gnosis). But for now, that’s what it is. So that may be where you leave an offering or charge a sigil, etc.

Urban magicians immediately think of their magical chamber (or the corner of their studio apartment where they keep a second-hand coffee table covered in crystals, figurines, and other tacky brick-a-brac). Well and good. But your main place of power doesn’t have to be your altar or anywhere in a space you have to pay for once a month. You don’t even need an altar (regardless of what occult social media seems to think). All you need is to feel that “energy” rising at a particular location and moment and to believe that it is.

So where is your place of power? Mine is very unobtrusive, hidden in plain sight, but real to me nonetheless. You can find yours by paying attention. Then you will have a true magical secret that is wholly your own. And, as Don Webb once wrote, “The more of you that is in your magic, the more powerful your magic will be.” He also liked to say that the secret of magic is that it causes change in the magician. Put both of these ideas together and you get spiritual dynamite. You light that fuse by knowing yourself, which is the main idea of this entry.