A shift in perspective of reality where mystery and symbols hold power and the key to providing answers and knowledge which can alter reality.

I find myself thinking of this more, magick, as an idea, an addition, one of value, in my practice.

Continuing to be happy with this definition of it, my understanding and ways of wanting to make use of and work with it continue to evolve.

Helping to define it further may be a part of this.

Unpacking the definition, or looking at it in more detail, may serve this purpose.

When I mention a shift in perspective of reality, what kind of perspective am I talking about?  If we substitute the word "viewpoint" instead of "perspective," the definition starts out by saying that magick is a change in viewpoint of reality.

I know I wanted my definition to capture all iterations of magick I could think of, magick with a "k" so as to distinguish it from stage magic.

If we do not believe in magick, cannot shift our viewpoint to accommodate it, it becomes hard to see it or view it, and we just dismiss what may be signs of it actually occurring when they occur, again assuming we believe in it or any of its possibilities at all to begin with.

I connect magick with the sacred feminine, the understanding that the universe always has a love for us, not bound by any requirements or conditions other than us just being.

Magick represents the agency we can implement as we feel, and therefore believe in, this love present for us from the universe.

I focus on where power comes from in the definition, by omission and implication that it does not come from brute force or amassing monetary wealth.

Summarily speaking, magick first and foremost empowers us through symbols and mystery, actually through not knowing, not through the power of might or financial gain.

Linking it with us having an untraceable memory of truth within us, where each of us are trying to remember and follow this truth, whether consciously or not--the truth that we are the universe itself, as well as an individual expression of it--magick shifts us closer to this reality, away from the material world, and in definition intentionally focuses us, and assigns power, here.

When we shift into a different viewpoint of reality as mentioned above, or begin to entertain this as a possibility, we are opening a door into an older perspective of the world, moving back the veil of mundane reality; we see into greater possibilities and options than we might have imagined before; and we align ourselves more genuinely with ourselves, doing what was once a natural act, that of honoring the mystery of life.

Without mystery there can be no life as we know it.  Without not knowing, how can we know?  That is impossible.  Our relation to not knowing, or mystery, needs to be looked at, for if we are not having a conscious relationship with what we do not know, symbolized and designated as mystery, then this relationship will evolve on its own and in some ways summon the demons of ignorance to come out and play and wreak havoc on our refusal to acknowledge their source: we can never know ultimately as human beings without honoring mystery, and by sacrificing our belief that we can know all, we honor it.

When we ultimately shift our perspective or viewpoint of reality, we are sacrificing the desire to know with the fact that we do not know, and this opens the door to other ways of knowing, perhaps ironically.  When we surrender to the mystery, that we do not know, accept this as a reality, that we will never know everything as human beings, then doorways open into the unconscious and other possibilities of knowing.

When we consciously honor the mystery, we allow the universe to provide answers and knowledge in the form of inspiration, symbols, insights, and synchronicities.

Our unconscious opens to us, and the mystery of life honors us honoring it, providing us with guiding signs.

A shift in perspective of reality where mystery and symbols hold power ... this means honoring the mystery of not knowing, allowing the unconscious knowledge we hold or the need for meaning we have to emerge symbolically.

These unconscious symbols, which can emerge from within and without, are a closer representation and representative of that ultimate truth we are trying to remember and are ultimately guided by, that we are the universe itself and an expression of it.

As we allow another way of knowing to emerge, through honoring mystery and surrendering our belief that we can know all, we are gifted with the reminder of who we are, as powerful means of knowledge unfold, as we ultimately feel the embrace of the universe itself, gifting us the knowledge: the means of knowing through other ways comes from us, more natural and whole.

... this being the story of a wizard, the second part ... it began in Return of the wizard.

He was dreaming for quite some time, but not long enough to die and come back again; for him that ancient and repeated cycle of slumber and awakening had occurred for many eons, but not just now again.

He was on his tower, literally, a winged dragon of black wings and dark ethereal body, not looking much like a wizard now, save for his ability to think and try and act as one.

What?!  Oh.  I must be dreaming.  And this strange one again.  Where I am the last One I sundered.  As if out of guilt, as if out of something I missed, this last dragon of mine becoming me, or I the dragon.

There was a primal force in his nature, as this creature, more feminine in the serpentine ways he felt ... the licking flame and tongue of fire wanting to come forth, the instant ability to spring himself up from Earth and take flight, the way he seemed to fade in and out, happening more in his body than his wings, a vaporous mist himself, black plumes of ...

A strange noise outside awakens him.

That and the memory of his quill.

All on his face now, the ink, as he awakes and catches sight of himself in the fragment of mirror hanging closest to his table.

Catching the light--that strange noise again.

It sounded like a thunderous rooster, yet not quite one, and almost mechanical.

He scrubs the ink from his face, not becoming too red from the process.

His face changing from light to shadow and back again as the curtained window reveals itself in brief gusts.

There, now.  If only I can discover the ink remaining on my manuscript.

He glances and sees it there, enough to fill in the missing lines and continue again.

At least, at some point.

He looks out the window, adjusting to the bright light finally, holding the curtain back as the wind slowly dies.

His spell of containment and self-illusion he intentionally fades for a moment from around the tower, surprised but not quite bewildered at what he sees on the ground, a somewhat smaller vision for his height in the tower--diminutive metal wagons or inventions of colors, of metal, with small wheels, one invention larger and longer than the others on the gray road, a thunderous HONK-ing from it as it seems impatient to move with the others, their prompt reply coming in their own diminished sounds.

He lets go the curtain, blinking his eyes momentarily, then closing them again, rendering the spell once more.

He has not survived eons in the tower without a few abilities to cast lasting spells, those which continue even when his cycles of death and birth repeat themselves.

Whatever and whenever might be outside, to him it appears as when he first took to the Other realms of death and rebirth.

That is, however long he keeps up the spell, it does.

Dropping the veil of illusion for these instances after awakening, this became an unnerving experience for him almost every time now, more so as the eons have passed.

Settling into himself once more, he sits down in the tower again.

Copyright © 2021 Mark Newlon. All rights reserved.

(Continued in Wizarding 101.)