Meditation and Its Relationship to Magick

   Meditation, which will become part of your daily life if you are serious  about any form of magic, is often tedious and unrevealing, until the  mental knack which permits a change of inner focus to take over can be caused to happen at will. The skills of magic are concerned with control. Initially it must be gained over the various levels of  awareness which you must be able to enter at will, so that you can visit  the innter realms of symbolic reality: but more important, so that you can return to the everyday world with your memory and consciousness intact. Students can waste several years before the inner "click" of the
door opening is perceived. There is a knack to it, once gained, never forgotten, but without it you have no hope of making real any of the other aspects of magical work. Later on this same self-discipline and control is extended across a wide span of aspects of the work. The persistance to continue with mastering the basic arts, grasping the significance of symbols, the inner meaning of mythology, communication  with the Gods and working with their power for change all follow this  initial control over your state of mind.

   In earlier times it was taught  that the mystery of the symbols and ritual forms would lead the student into the correct mental state, and so it does, but today's serious occult teachers prefer students to be able to meditate, make inner journeys, understand mythology and its power before going on to the more ceremonial parts of the study. An ability to direct your mental state will produce safer and more coherent results than a head full of lists of correspondences, learned parrot-fashion without understanding. In practice, both methods are used, more or less hand-in-hand, but without the mental control a novice may not be aware of what he/she is really trying to achieve, because he/she cannot perceive or intuit what is happening around them on the subtle, magical levels. Without conscious mind-focus these are invisible and incomprehensible to him/her.

   Magic works through symbols. If you show the inner a particular color, number of candles, or the outline of a talisman you will be asking for a particular sort of response, which may well be given to you in symbols or colors or letters or the appearance of a certain animal in your dreams, but this will be meaningless and useless to you unless you understand what is being shown to you. It is rather like foreign language phrasebooks which give you the phonetic words for a particular question but do not show a similar explanation for the possible answers!

   Like mastering another language, magic requires study and practice, not the occasional dip into a tourist's phrasebook. Until you have mastered the basic elements of magical techniques any answers you get may be incomprehensible to you. (Aurian's note: THIS IS WHY THE BASIC MEDITATION, RELAXATION & VISUALISATION EXERCISES ARE OF SUCH IMPORTANCE!)

  These exercises are aimed at teaching you to make the important shift of consciousness into a state wherein magical reality can manifest and explain itself.

   Each aspect of the basic exercises helps to train your inner occult muscles, and open up deeper levels of your psychic awareness. This works in two main directions. One allows you to FOCUS very exactly upon one subject, setting aside all mundane concerns, and the second allows a much deeper awareness and understanding to bring forth clear answers to questions, or insights into symbols.You will gain what are called "realisations"; that is, certain ideas or concepts are 'made real', are understood fully and suddenly. Quite often, realisations are about quite minor matters. Links are suddenly formed between pieces of information which you may have had in your head for a long time yet the instant they are put together, a whole, much larger piece of the picture becomes clear. You often want to say "A-ha!", and a sort of 'click' is heard in your head. This may not happen every time you sit down to meditate or each time you perform a ritual, but gradually you will get to recognise these realisations when they do occur, and also the conditions in your physical and mental state which cause them to happen most often. Once this stage is mastered you will be able to gain great benefits from every meditation session, each inner journey will offer up valuable treasures and all your rituals will be more effective.

    Until you are able to gain realisations from your meditations it is pointless going on to more elaborate or ritualistic practices, as  whatever good they might do for you will be missed, simply because you don't know what you are looking for. Certainly begin to fill up your data bank with the mythology of your homeland, or any other which calls to you. Muse over the stories, retell them to your children, or friends, or silently as you go to sleep, relive them. Gradually these will also begin to unravel their sacred mysteries. Walk in the natural places, even if they are small public parks...Listen to the sounds and calls of animals. Look closely at the bark, the shape, the structure of trees so that you will recognise them in winter, or discover them in visions.
  There are many traditional secrets concealed in the names and natures of trees, yet they can be understood with patience.

   Study books too, so that the words and interpretations of others, the pictures they have painted of ancient civilisations, of distant places and untamed regions fill you inner perceptions, to be recalled at need. Do not take anyone else's word as 'gospel', at least, not for yourself.  Experience is the true teacher of magic, nothing else will have the same value. Certainly accept those ideas which have been received in dreams or vision, or researched and interpretated from ancient sources as a starting point, but be willing to make your own revelations. Gradually you will find those illuminating flashes of realisation and deep understanding become more frequent, and their coming can be predicted by the way you approach each question. Knowledge will begine to flow to you, and in that is the seed of wisdom.

~Marion Green~