I made a post on this in January of 22 but got long-winded in the intro and my fabulous blog host arbitrarily forbids the editing of some posts, so I’m now posting the short and succinct version I originally planned. I hope it serves you.
What are the. attributes of a treasure, generally speaking?
- It’s a thing of great value.
- Often a concentration, or repository of wealth, or again, value.
- In many cases a treasure must be discovered before it may be possessed. You can’t (usually) go out and buy a treasure, or ask for one (again, usually) on your birthday. You must seek and search and perhaps overcome conflict and hardship in order to find and lay hands on your treasure.
- Once found, located, etc. another process of discovery unfolds, which is determining the nature of the treasure’s actual contents. This is the biggest rush of all for many treasure hunters.
- One definition I found denotes a treasure as “usually from the ancient world”. Now that’s interesting!
- This priceless thing or set of things from humanity’s distant past, the definition goes on, “has been lost to time, no longer known to exist for certain, and must be rediscovered and brought into the light.”! I’M NOT EVEN PLAYING! IS THAT PERFECT?
I’m a total nerd when it comes to mysticism and magical practice (two distinct things btw as I discuss here), and really most things metaphysical. I love digging in for long study sessions and I love running experiments (spells, etc.) for the pure joy of feeling the magic course through me and watching it play before my eyes in the world of the causal, then finally into the manifest real (this reality as we call it).
So, these activities or experiences, at once pursuits and talents, truly are treasures and gifts as far as I’m concerned. As a sort of bonus, they can also teach us a little about how magic works, or at least how it functions, as the true mechanics are likely unknowable within our current capacity for interpreting objective reality.
First Treasure: Psychism
Far more than mentalism (see how clumsy that term feels??), psychism is the naturally occurring set of senses and capabilities manifest in the human being, as part of the psychological and physiological makeup. Psychic abilities are present in the mind and in the body. To some degree attributes are present at birth with other assets remaining latent during infancy and becoming apparent during childhood, adolescence, or even adult life.
Simply put, we all have an array of psychic senses and capabilities, just as we are endowed with mundane senses (unless born with a deficiency such as blindness, etc.) and capabilities, with many of the latter (walking and talking come to mind) coming to fruition with age and instruction.
It’s a reasonable bet that ESP, premonition, empathy, some level of manifestation abilities, are all inherent to Homo Sapien (sapien?) with individuals possessing variant degrees of acuity per category, and sometimes experiencing deficiency due to genetic predisposition, in utero calamity, etc. In other words just as some folks need glasses, some people will have a lesser psychic or mind’s eye vision than others and just as some are born blind, so perhaps one can be born without psychic sight.
Also, in the same way we must develop a bit before learning to speak or walk upright, so to must we grow in some ways before we can recognize empathic or telepathic skills or astral travel. Likewise, some pre-existing condition or developmental trauma may prevent our acquisition of these psychic abilities altogether.
The point here is that natural psychic ability, while not magical in the strict sense, is the first treasure to discover and develop along your magical journey. In centuries past the lore of the era said a person either had psychic talent, or they did not. Similar ideas were advanced about magical ability, though many also regarded magic as a skill that could be learned by anyone of sufficient intelligence. In the present-day we students of the arcane generally understand that both are available to everyone, though in different manners as covered above.
You can and definitely should use your basic magical instruction to enhance and refine any psychic abilities you are currently aware of, and even to awaken any latent potential that will respond to such effort. You have probably heard or read about the notion of developing your magical senses, such as the ability to sense energy as you direct it in ritual or being able to see a person’s aura as you perform a Tarot or other reading on their behalf. These articles of practice and application are part of your psychic composition and hence, jewels within your First Treasure. A lifetime could be spent exploring and pushing the boundaries of sensitivity, ability to project, and more.
Psychic experiences take place typically within and can be categorized under the heading of the Personal Energy Matrix (hereafter PEM). This includes your aura, chakra and meridian system, etheric principal or etheric body, etc. and the term subtle energy(ies) is a reference to any or all of these aspects of your being.
Second Treasure: Natural Magic or Integrated Energy
The Second Treasure I call Natural Magic or, more recently, the Integrated Energy Matrix (IEM henceforth). The IEM is the result of bringing the PEM into work and harmony with the Universal Energy Matrix (You guessed it, UEM from here on.), which in turn simply covers all the energetic forces, currents, pools, and phenomenon outside of and beyond the reach of your energy body or bodies.
At this point, I recognize the need to cover in detail the fundamentals of (mostly subtle) energy systems. I’ll post on that topic soon and link to it from here.
HERE’S THE SHORT VERSION OVERVIEW/RECAP
- Personal Energy Matrix (PEM) is a closed energy system of the human mind and body, including conventional measurements like heat and magnetism but largely composed of the subtle energies of etheric, astral, and other natures. PEM expresses via the acupuncture channels, chakras, aura, brain waves, vital or life force (chi, ki, prana) and a few other processes.
- Universal Energy Matrix (UEM) is the system of myriad forces and connections we candidly refer to as Nature, reality, and so forth. This includes All known and unknown phenomena, events, permutations, et al. We interact with this matrix constantly, usually as a matter of being but sometimes as a conscious decision. In fact you can turn any given moment into a deliberate interaction with UEM by focusing on your breathing (one of many possible examples). Following your breath in, then out relaxes you into state of One, or oneness with the moment, at which point you can start to channel energy from your breathing into your body movements or visualization or any number of things really. In this manner we may achieve integration.
- Integrated Energy Matrix (IEM) Integrating, harmoniously combining, properly joining your own energy with the pulse of the room you’re in or the tides of a waxing moon or just “the vibes” of a creek in the back yard results in a third matrix. This blended state gives you access to greater volumes and diversity of energy than you can achieve with your individual resources and is the basis for much of what has for centuries been called “Natural Magic”.
- A footnote of sorts: We are never truly separated from the great whole. As everything now in existence emerged from earlier states and movements which ultimately derived from the matter and energy “contained” (surely not the correct term) within the singularity present at or before (cringes again – I know that’s not right) the Big Bang. every particle and wave of reality is connected to the rest. God bless, that’s a wretched mess of a run-on. Sorry I’m getting tired so just going to leave it for now.
- Addendum, because two footnotes for a list of three items is just bad form: Combining two or more PEMs will also result in a type of IEM, to be clarified perhaps in a future posting.
In a seed husk exterior (nutshell if you prefer the boring approach.) the Second Treasure is about guiding and directing, perhaps truncating, diverting, transmuting, etc. natural currents and utilizing the same for the working of magic. This is of course precisely what a magician is doing each time he or she sets an intention and begins aligning correspondences with said intention to eventually create the desired outcome.
Third Treasure: Sorcery
Having dealt with the magician’s personal energy field(s) plus the myriad energies of the big, wide world around him/her, what’s left to consider? Names and dispositions, of course!
The remaining type or category of phenomena a magician is likely to encounter, and the substance of the Third Treasure, is the realm of named (and normally unseen) intelligences. Other terms for this category include spirit world, angelic or demonic realm, faerie kingdoms, elemental planes, etc.
I’m talking about those “other” critters who inhabit our world or at least travel through and about it. The souls or spirits of our departed are in the mix as well, but primarily I mean to refer to nature spirits, angels & demons, and beings from the planetary spheres, as these are most often the work force behind the magic we weave, whether or not we are aware of or even believe in such creatures.
Discovery of our Third Treasure is coming to know the words of power that enable us to connect with and perhaps command the named intelligences. It is working with the various species of spiritual beings and learning about the hierarchies that bind them and the laws that drive and regulate their movements through the ether and astral. Such is the domain of the planetary days & hours, and the substance of magic squares and the names we can derive from them.
It’s probably easy enough for you to imagine the invisible currents moving through nature, many of which you can reach out and take hold of as part of a ritual operation. Consider the subjects of Sorcery, these intelligent energy systems our ancestors anthropomorphized and organized neatly for our benefit, as the caretakers or even manufacturers and deliverers of those aforementioned natural currents and processes of force or energy.
Whether or not these beings actually exist, I can’t say because I don’t know. What I do know, and so I will say, is that our universe, reality behaves very much as if the demons, faeries, angels, and elementals of our lore are real, and that’s all that matters. (Last sentiment, if not statement, stolen from Skinner, run through the chop shop, and then shamelessly shared here as if it were my own.)
It’s not difficult, at least I suspect, to see correlation between the mainline Models and the Treasures from my private philosophy. Psychological/Consciousness Model formulae and challenges can both be found within and applied to First Treasure treatises and circumstances, and so on.
I honestly don’t recall if I deliberately kept close to the outlines of the models, or if this is just a lovely example of Princess Serendipity passing through my study. Either way, should you find value in my Three Treasures construct, please take it in part or whole and make it your own, with whatever edits and additions you are led to make.
2 Trackbacks and Pingbacks