Magickians have many purposes, some of which even a Christian might recognise and understand. Like getting a job. Or getting a girl. Or becoming wealthy. Or... or... or...
The litany of wants to which a Magickian might pander, on behalf of which he might he go before the face of the universe and make his demands, are as endless as the list of causes which sends a Christian to wheedle, plead, bribe and cajole his God in 'prayer'.
The great difference between the Magickian and the Christian is not in his wants but in how he goes about to satisfy them: the Magickian invokes and then commands, the Christian begs and weeps. But whatever the method the object is the same, to make reality conform to whatever is wanted, sought after, desired. And after much thought, I have come to the conclusion that the Magickian and the Christian are alike in this also: that what is wanted, sought after, desired is, in general, shit.
The wonder of it, to me, is that both the Magickian and the Christian are not immediately stamped out of existence in the instant they present their various litanies of delusory desire before whatever they consider is capable of satisfying those desires (be that, in the case of the Chaote, the endless flux of possible events, or, in the case of the Thelemite, the Unborn, unintelligible, amoral Artist concerned only with an aesthetic project that exceeds any possibility of human comprehension). So far as I can see the former cannot care, and the latter does not care, for the wants of the hubristic insects that come before It to make their ludicrous demands.
Chaos Magick has never held any appeal for me. Its formlessness places too great a weight on the human imagination and the human will, a weight so great that will and imagination both are bent back upon themselves, resulting in either impotence or the confusion of the endless, meaningless, chatter of the lower self with the implacable, Imperial, True Will.
The Magickian who discovers his True Will and with knowledge and conviction sets it in motion in the world through Ritual will see reality run like water through his hands, will shape the world like soft clay to the shape of his inspiration.
Such a notion will sound to most of you like complete nonsense. But most of you are not Magickians.
David Blane is not a Magickian. Those fools who play with tigers and make airplanes disappear for money are not Magickians. They are at best masters of illusion and idolaters of the self. The true Magickian is necessarily alone and his work proceeds in darkness. If it's discovered at all it remains, as do the writings of visionaries such as Nostradamus, and the writings and works of the alchemist, unintelligible and incomprehensible. They are, in the truest and most absolute sense of the word, nonsense. The alchemists tried to turn the lead of the human soul into the gold of Divine Spirit. Nostradamus, Dee, Kelly, possessed by their inner vision, wrote as they were compelled to write. And whatever their secret will was, it was not communicated in what they left behind. Which is just as it should be.
Nostradamus left behind him a series of writings the meaning of which is still debated; debates which are meaningless. What his writings meant to Nostradamus cannot possibly be known, what they mean to others in the present is irrelevant to what first motivated him. Dee and Kelly left behind a series of invocations (the Enochian Calls, still used by present-day Magickians) and other cryptic writings. What they meant to Dee and Kelly can't be recovered. What they mean to others in the present is their own affair, dependant upon what the Calls are used for - but, it seems to me, what they are used for is no more than the satisfaction of those wants and needs that are common to us all, turning the gold of Divine Spirit into the lead of everyday concerns, alchemy in reverse, as foolish as asking why rain is wet.
The working of real Magick (as opposed to the entertaining illusions of magicians) requires that the Magickian comprehend and be intimately familiar with the True Will, which is no more than what he actually and really wants, seen as it is and not as he wishes it to be. You might wonder how a Magickian can confuse what he wills with what he wants - but the True Will does not derive from the consciousness which is only the latest and most recent evolutionary development of Man, but from the roots of the ancient and savage crocodile-brain of old. When Man first stood erect he was neither decent nor civilised and his wants were not sophisticated and refined appetites but crudely ferocious lusts; the will to conquer, to possess, to destroy; the unfettered satisfaction of a physicality that had no conscience and no remorse, that was devoid of pity and regret.
Do you imagine that lions grieve for the zebras they kill and eat? That wolves pity lambs? And the True Will is of that time and of that kind, since it is the fundamental orientation and commitment of a man's entire person, not what he has been taught to believe about himself and what he ought to be, but what he actually is.
What he is, is what drives him. What he wants, is determined by what he believes he ought to be - which is why a man may confuse what he wills with what he desires.
The True Will might also be called the Deep Will, or the Hidden Will. What hides it is the ceaseless chatter of the lower self, the self concerned with social necessity, with the demands of the everyday: the mortgage, the car payments, a sick child, an unsatisfactory marriage, the office secretary you're desperate to fuck but daren't speak to, envy of co-workers, lust for a neighbour's wife. An endless chain of febrile, fatuous wants that binds us from the moment we learn to identify ourselves as 'I' to the moment we disappear into death.
The infernal chattering of the lower self. Magickians are human too - and just as subject to this inner babel as anyone else. Which is why the Magickian who would work real Magick must find some way to annihilate his own inner voices, to still them utterly, and so become able to reach past what ought to be to what actually is, past convention and doubt and the civilising affect of self-disgust to a silence so deep that the impact of a falling leaf on the surface of water is loud enough to shatter worlds.
It is this silence that the Thelemic tradition of Ritual Magick refers to as the 'knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angels'. It's this silence that I've elsewhere referred to as 'an absence balanced upon a vacancy surrounded by utter emptiness', it's this silence that I wait for in my moments of solitude, that I invoke in my Ritual work, this silence that I have contemplated through the many months that have gone by in which Ritual work has appeared to play no further part in my life.
Ritual directed toward things, toward material goals, is often thwarted by the very hunger for results that originally motivated the Ritual act. Ritual that has no object but the Ritual itself becomes a form of spiritual masturbation. It produces nothing in the world and binds the will in ever decreasing circles around itself that result only in stagnant impotence.
Ritual succeeds when it is worked with conviction and conscious intent directed toward some specific end, and the less material that end the better. What could be less material, more irrational, less comprehensible in terms of a reason predicated upon means and ends in a world thought to be comprehensible, than the annihilation of the self that seeks to understand and control?
Kill all rational thought. Murder it with silence.
