You have found the Fire Page of Jasperwocky, a digital Paranormal Investigator, coming to you from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Here, we will take a look at magick -- the art of affecting change in Reality by force of will while accessing the boundless pool of the Universe's mental energy, as discussed on the Home Page, where you can go by clicking on the big "J".

(This website is a class project for the Santa Fe Community College media arts course: "Web Page Construction" taught by Professor Darlene McElroy. Thank you for visiting! If you like what you see, be sure to check out Jasperwocky's demented sister-site, "Jeckyllwocky." If you really like this site and you need website design services, please drop me an e-mail, attn: Jay French, jayswebdesigns@yahoo.com)

As discussed on the Home page, the Universe, as an electromagnetic energy-ocean, is a very fluid realm which is subject to the creative forces of mental energy. On the Earth Page, two methods of creating are identified: 1) A morpho-genic ("morpho" for shape and "genic" for creative) energy field, working at the quantum level; and 2) Probabilities being manipulated over time by sheer force of will. I also said that these two methods are probably aspects of the same thing; certainly, they are interdependent. Here's why: The quantum realm operates by probability. At our level, the desired effects would more probably be affected by a re-arrangement of existing factors over time, rather than by spontaneous creation. In any case, what we're talking about here is magick. (I've spelled magick with a "k" to distinguish it from "magic" as the performance-art of illusion.)

While a whole website could be devoted to this topic, I'll try to keep it "down to a small roar." So, at this point, I would like to introduce a few concepts from Chaos Magick as portrayed in Peter J. Carroll's books Liber Null & Psychonaut, Liber Kaos, and PsyberMagick. There are many books on magick, of course, but Mr. Carroll's writings are not only clear and incisive but tie back to the current scientific explorations of Chaos Theory and Quantum Mechanics.

As you may have surmised by now one of the forces of which we are speaking is chaos, and how can we affect chaos but through probability? As Mr. Carroll poetically says, ". . . For the universe is mad and arbitrary in her ways. Nothing is unchangeable except change itself. . . . Yet the Great Goddess Chaos will lend some of Her power to those who can become Her favorites" (p. 59, Liber Null). As capricious as the Universe sometimes seems, we still can see that mental energy, struggling for self-awareness, is there; Mr. Carroll calls this "Kia" and defines it as follows: "Kia is nascent energy seeking form. It has been called the Great Desire, the Life Force, or Self-Love" (p.60, Liber Null).

So, on a practical level, how is magick performed?

The short answer is: by concentration, emotional fortitude, and the temporary over-coming of disbelief. Mr.Carroll's answer is: "Altered states of consciousness are the key to magical powers. The particular state of mind required has a name . . . Gnosis [in other words] [s]topping the internal dialogue . . ." Gnosis is achieved by means either inhibitory (i.e. sensory deprivation) or excitatory (sensory overload such as tantric rituals). "It is during these moments of single-pointed concentration, or gnosis, that beliefs can be implanted for magic, and the life force induced to manifest" (p.31, Liber Null).

The longer answer is a crash-course in magick

1. Banishing rituals -- The magician must protect him/herself from hostile occult forces (see malevolent trans-dimensional beings on the Air Page); banishing rituals also help the magician resist obsessions (mental illness) and help focus the magickal concentration needed for the other intended spell-casting work.
2. Magickal Rituals -- The magician's use of talismanic weapons, spell-casting gestures, visualized sigils, word spells, and magical trance.
3. Magickal record -- Usually referred to as a Book of Shadows or a grimoire, the magician's recording of magickal operations is a historical reference, a record of personal progress and thereby acts ". . .the surest guarantor of success . . . and, most significantly, a goad to further effort" (p. 23, Liber Null)
4. Sigils -- Through the creation of these symbolic signs, the magician's will is stimulated to work subconsciously, bypassing the mind's will to not fulfill desire; (this happens, ironically, in order to reduce anxiety of failure). The magician prepares a magickal sigil and forgets about it.
5. Dreaming -- By successfully working with his/her dreams, a magician will have access to several skills: divination (see the Water Page), communication with trans-dimensional entities, and spirit-journeying, i.e. out-of-body experiences (see the Aura Page). The magician must record his/her dreams, by keeping a bedside notebook and pen and recording the dreams immediately upon waking. Lucid dreaming, awareness that you're dreaming while you're dreaming, will soon follow. The magician selects topics for dreaming, first by visualizing objects before sleep; and then, as this succeeds (seeing those objects in the dreams), the magician will select topics for divination. Finally, the magician can choose to dream of exteriorization or out-of-body experiences.

Two more points that Mr. Carroll has to offer are indespensible:

1. Enchant Long & Divine Short:

"Spells cast well in advance can take advantage of the copious chaos in the interim, but that same chaos will tend to reduce divination to a shambles" (pgs.18-19, PsyberMagick).

This even applies to the past. A lost object can be retrieved by deciding where you want to find it and then spell-casting for that to happen. As long as you can convince yourself that it is possible and you will it; don't confuse the issue by conjuring it to appear in a spot that you already turned up empty, unless you can exercise a great deal of mental control, effectively making your memory very hazy.

2. The Double Catstrophe Surface Model shows that to become an illuminated magician, you must skate a thin path between power and knowledge, lest you become trapped by either unwise-power usage or untested-knowledge.

Key: x=power, y=knowledge, z=illumination,

a=illuminated magician, b=powerful but unwise mage,

c=ivory-tower mystic, d=beginner

correspondences . . .

Recommended Page