It seems to me…
02 – It seems to me…
It seems to me, from a lifelong immersion in the culture of my times, that a fundamental principle of science is that the universe is not alive. Life is thought to be rare, and as far as anyone can tell at the moment, limited to this planet. Life is understood to be only and necessarily organic.
Magick, on the other hand, has always seen life everywhere, in everything. Life, and consciousness, are known to pervade nature in all Her forms.
It may be a bit extreme, but on the whole fair to say, that for science the universe is basically masculine and dead, while for magick the universe is feminine and alive. For science, life is an aberration, an accident, an add-on and an afterthought to a superbly abstract creation. For magick, life is the point, the reason, the very stuff of an intensely personal creation, although finally it is just as abstract.
The difference between science and magick in the end is between an impersonal, dead, and essentially pointless creation, and a living, personal, intentional creation.
Psychology, as it is taught in school and practiced in offices and institutions, is of the scientific persuasion. Psychology is the name given to the scientific study of consciousness. The systematic magickal investigation of consciousness has no name of its own. It must, perforce, borrow a name from science, and call itself magickal psychology.
The Four Attributes of a Magickal Universe
1. everything is connected
2. everything is significant
3. everything is alive
4. everything is divine
The connections between things are subtle and therefore hidden from common view. These connections form the basis for magickal practice.
The significance of every created force and object leads the magician to treat everything with respect. There is no such thing as a casual attitude in magick.
The life force includes sentience of some kind, awareness in some form, the constant implication of responsibility, duty, right action, appropriateness — dharma. There is a natural and appropriate way-to-be inherent in being alive. Fire burns, wind blows, waters flows, earth supports; seasons turn, night and day alternate; lions roar and rend, cattle chew their cud and birds fly. Each force and object was created with qualities and consequences of being. Each has its place. Each endures in its proper path. Each affects the others.
Everything is divine. Everything flows from the same, single source. Everything comes from No-thing. Every thing partakes of that same mystery. From the divine love, the divine will, and the divine energy, everything is formed and made, given life, meaning and connection, and ultimately gathered up and withdrawn once again into the mystery of No-thing, a divine cycle of out-breath and in-breath.
It is this cycle of out-breath and in-breath that is the energy and secret of emergence and return, descent and ascent, manifestation and apotheosis.
It is this circular process, this rhythm, that is the secret knowledge of the magician. It is the secret that contains the mechanism and the reason of being. It is this mechanism that magick manipulates and it is this reason that magick serves.
– Wald Amberstone
Filed under: Tarot Musings, A Cup Full of Tarot on June 19th, 2007
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