I find myself wondering how often I will title an article similar to this, as it has happened that I have felt like this before.
This article continues a series of experiences which I have been having over the past few weeks/months.
To be quite honest, the experiences are beyond words. I struggle to find ways to describe them. As such, there will be no clever prose or flowery imagery here for any sort of emphasis. I have notes which I hastily typed upon my phone as different events progressed, and I’m simply expanding upon whatever I felt at the time into full sentences here. Even images will not capture the essence of this, so there will be few.
In Magia, we have the concept of a tree.
We say that Humans are a tree, we say the path of growth we undergo is a tree, we use the structure of a tree for our binding practices.
What we are doing is recognizing a pattern. It is the same pattern as in the Katabasis articles I have written.
We have is what is Lesser, what is Greater, the Blending of the Two Worlds, and finally the Production of a Fruit.
As one progresses through the stages of Enlightenment, they follow the same pattern. Magia contains the Mountain cosmology. It is a series of 6 stages that describe successive experiences of awakenings. Each cycle of the Mountain cosmology is itself also part of this tree pattern.
The first time you go around the mountain it is from the perspective of the Lesser looking toward the Greater. The second time it is from the perspective of the Greater looking toward the Lesser.
The third time is from the perspective of each side Participating equally. Thus, the name for this and the previous article.
The fourth time I can, of course at this time, only speculate on. But logic would seem to follow that, as the Fruit is always Silence, it would somehow be experience without perspective.
Within this pattern, at a certain point we say we “Cut Down the Tree”, meaning we cut off this growth at the roots, and use the tree itself as a staff to walk the forest. However, this does not mean awakenings stop happening. Instead, it is the moment you’ve moved past the drama of Enlightenment itself, finding yourself the Centerpoint of all. However, this is a topic for a different article. Instead, here we are focusing on events surrounding my third time around the Mountain.
A friend has been staying at my home for a few days.
They recently separated from their partner, and I offered them a spare room so that they could have some space while figuring out new living arrangements. They are also a Magia practitioner.
My first inkling that something was happening was media repeating me. This sort of synchronicity has happened many times before, but when it picks up I begin to take notice.
I’ll say something, moments later the TV or radio will say the exact thing that I just spoke. Sometimes it happens simultaneously.
Concurrent with this, my friend started to report that I would say whatever they were thinking moments before they were about to say it. They also reported a strange familiarity with media they had not seen before, but that I had. They had definitely never watched quite a few things we were consuming, yet the feeling of familiarity persisted.
Even stranger, it seemed to be based on my physical proximity. Were I to leave the couch and use the restroom the feeling would leave. When I returned, the feeling returned.
[As I am writing this article, having just typed the word “returned” twice, the music which is autoplaying randomly in my headphones sang the word “returned” twice.]
This continued for a few days until I had to leave to go to a convention. My friend left my home while I was gone, returning that weekend to take care of my dogs. They had been experiencing some uncomfortable feelings around their recent breakup and other life events, so I suggested that while I was gone they go into my “Occult Room” and place the small statue of Ganesha on the altar, and ask for relief from these troubles.
A suggestion they enthusiastically followed.
While on the road trip to the convention, my mind wandered to the nature of Magic.
I’m not sure why this occurred, but when threads like these begin to unravel I’ve learned to not interrupt them and just let them play out in whatever way they lead.
The Mystery of Magical Reality was heavily present in my thoughts the whole time. I began reading the autobiography of an Author and Magician whose work I enjoy, which I had spontaneously picked up as reading for this road trip, and found it amusing that it contained an “about the author” page at the end.
When we arrived at the convention we went out to dinner, and one of my friends pulls out a deck of cards for a drinking game. A simple task: pull an Ace, take a shot.
The cards are shuffled, a few are drawn, an Ace comes up. The cards are handed to me.
I decline, saying I’d rather not drink. Another friend, further down, says to go ahead and play and if I draw the Ace he’ll take the shot for me. I, jokingly, warn that “I am a wizard”, and that if he agrees he’ll be taking the next 3 shots. He agrees. I have joked about this sort of thing with this group of friends before, mainly when we are winning at slot machines in the casino.
Without looking, I draw a card.
Ace.
The cards are passed onward, and when they get to my friend who offered to take my drink he laughs and draws a card.
Ace.
The cards are passed back around. The person in front of me draws a card.
Joker.
I say “oh, those probably shouldn’t be in the deck. Don’t worry, I’ll get the other one out”. Again, completely joking. Without looking, I draw a card.
The other Joker.
The cards are passed again and arrive at my friend who is now taking two drinks.
Ace.
Four shots are poured. He has three. One of which another friend graciously offered to take for him.
I’m sitting in a room at the convention watching presenters give their panel on the ghost hunting TV show they host.
I begin having a vision, and then another. Two visions, simultaneously.
The first is of an illuminated surface. It ripples like water, though it is uniformly lit.
Within this illuminated surface, I see the outline of a human being appear.
The demarcation of the soul. I have an inherent feeling that this is, if we could call it any thing, the perspective of “The Source” looking toward its “Reflection” and finding the “Soul” of a person contained within it.
The second is of the nature of magic, and its playing out as a story (or Drama, as we would say in Magia). My mind moves to a specific magical practice within the tradition of Magia. This practice specifically produces visions, in the form of a Katabasis or Underworld Journey, and upon finishing it the events experienced in the vision will then play out in one’s life over the next few days/weeks.
What I am seeing in this vision is the Mystery of Magical Reality, and how Reality manifests out of the Darkness of the Unconscious in the exact same fashion that a vision unfolds within this specific practice.
The Magic comes prior, before anything is done at all. The enacting of a magical act or ritual is then the rehearsal, preflight briefing, or microcosm (the Lesser). Next comes the actual playing out of the events within one’s life (the Greater). When dramatic events happen, synchronicities and unexplained coincidences, we’ve arrived at the action of the Magic (The mixture of the Two Worlds, Participation). Finally, silently, the intended goal is achieved (The Fruit).
The visions end and I have returned to the convention, hastily writing further notes on my phone and making a mental task to do a cosmological binding later.
Returning home from the convention, I find myself uncomfortable, as I have been contemplating and begun enacting some major life changes. My recently single friend has elected to stay with me again for a few days, finding they needed further space while they work out new living arrangements.
I decide on a prescription of magic for myself:
I’m a bit ill from the convention, I could use some healing.
I want my life changes to go well.
I find too much nervous energy and I want to get rid of it.
My head is clouded and I want some clarity.
I decide I will banish Fire, invoke Air, and do the previously-mentioned Magia practice to heal myself and have my life changes happen smoothly. I invite my friend to practice with me at the same time.
I start with a Magia ritual, identifying myself and surrounding the room with blazing stars.
Next I perform the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram to banish Fire. Following this, the Lesser Invoking Ritual of the Hexagram to invoke Air.
[Since doing this ritual, I have felt very calm and am continuously burping.]
I move to doing my regular, daily, Magia Unbinding practice.
I now create a sigil to represent my multiple varied intentions for the other, visionary Magia ritual, and then lay down to have the vision.
I will not relay the full contents of the vision here, though I will confirm that they have already begun playing out in my actual life.
However, the most interesting part of the vision was a gigantic spider, as large as a building, which released thousands upon thousands of tiny spiders upon the landscape. Within the vision these tiny spiders manipulated my body, such that it was positioned into a shape which matched the sigil I created for this ritual.
When I opened my eyes, my actual physical body was in the same position.
I did not consciously move it into this position. Nor did I feel it moving while my eyes were closed.
I am sitting on my back porch with my friend who is staying with me.
[This part is posted with the enthusiastic consent of the friend who experienced it with me]
It is a lovely evening and we are just enjoying the weather while the dogs run through the yard and listening to music. One of my dogs is sitting near my feet. I think he has had an upset stomach, as he as been eating grass and walking around with his head down. I have three dogs, and all of them are in their teens, getting up there in years.
As the music plays, I feel an overwhelming happiness come over me.
I am showing my friend music they hadn’t heard before, in this particular case the band Walk off the Earth’s Beatles Medley.
“All you need is love…”
As the song progresses, I have the realization that something is happening.
The now-familiar feeling that an awakening of some sort has begun.
I look to my friend sitting across from me. My expression must have been shocking, as I see their eyes go wide.
“Here comes the Sun, and I say…”
The music comes to its climax as the chorus of Hey Jude blasts from my phone speakers.
“Na na na na na na na…”
I realize I am experiencing some sort of transcendent state, and more so SOMETHING is telling me I can share it with my friend if I want to. Nothing “spoke” to me to tell me this, just something from the Silence expressed that this was the case.
“Judy judy judy judy…”
I look at my friend and tell them this, and ask their permission. They agree.
I lock eyes with them for a moment, and then embrace them in a hug as I pull them closer.
“Na na na na na na na…”
I feel them begin to shake.
A vision washes over me.
It as if we are two lantern-buoy afloat on an ocean of light. The pilot-wave of consciousness.
I withdraw from my friend.
They are physically shaking and trembling and can’t find words to speak.
I feel like I am glowing like the Sun.
After making sure they are ok, I suggest they take notes of their experience. A thing which was moments ago just a concept in which they were interested has become dramatically real in an instant for them.
Whatever is happening to me is not finished.
I reach down to my dog at my feet and begin petting him, feeling light from me wash out over him. I tell him I love him and I rub his eyes and his ears and his fuzzy head. He gets up and walks off.
I look at my friend and, jokingly again, point to myself about to say “Wizard”, but that is wrong somehow.
“Magic” is the word I am looking for.
MAGIC.
or Magia.
I’m not sure in this moment.
Whatever “I AM”, is in this moment is best described, and in fact ONLY described, by the word “Magic”.
Not person, wizard, magician, prophet, avatar, deity… the only word that describes it is “Magic”.
The already overwhelming feelings I am experiencing are still growing.
I absentmindedly let the phone autoplay to the next song.
From the speakers blares out “I’ve got the Magic in me…”
I have not heard this song in years, and YouTube has a habit of leading my autoplays in one and only one direction, so I have no clue why this would have been the next song to play beyond Synchronicity of the moment.
But the experience is not over yet.
I am being hit by successive wave after wave of Bliss, to the point it is making me dizzy and shaking.
I stand up and walk out from the covered area of the porch and to my amazement I see that it is
EXACTLY SUNSET.
Sunset being an incredibly important moment in Magia, the point where Two Worlds meet and touch.
I rush back and grab my phone and take a picture.
This is the only image for this article.
The feelings continue to build, to the point I find I can no longer stand.
I am on my knees before the setting Sun and further waves crash over me.
I find myself alight with the Ecstasy of Creation.
I do not have words for these feelings.
I am experiencing the Ecstatic Joy and Bliss of the Creation of the Entire Universe from its very first moment up until this very instant, as a continuing and instantaneous process.
Love for the entire Universe, the whole world, fills me. Love in the fashion of a parent and guardian, a willingness to do absolutely anything, to give anything, for it.
The rest of the experience… I cannot even attempt description.
Later that evening, synchronicities persisted.
My ill dog seemed to be in perfect health, up and about with his head high.
Another of my dogs found a ball which had to have been stashed away somewhere for years, and continually brought it to me to throw for him. A playful attitude he has not had since he was a puppy, over a decade ago.
My friend, who experienced this with me, previously lived with a baseline level of anxiety which has been completely gone for the past few days.
I suggested they thank Ganesha and also do a cosmological binding, which they have done.
[Again, posted here with their consent.]
I wonder what is next.
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