10 Reasons Why You Should Learn Magick

Magick. Qabalah. Tarot. Meditation. Ritual.

What exactly is all this stuff? And, more importantly, why should you bother
learning about it?

Magick is the yoga of the West. It's a system for making a human life more
perfectand can steadily and consistently bring profound, transcendent
meaning to your life. In the process of developing one's entire being, it
manifests an incredible range of additional benefitshere's ten of them. Any
of them alone could be more than enough to make Magick the central pursuit
of somebody's life.

(These ten reasons correspond to the ten Spheres of the Qabalah. You can see
them mapped together in the traditional arrangement at the end of the post.)

10 Ecstasy
Magick is a lot of fun. Consider the highs that come from yoga and meditation
practice, the thrills of ritual, the deep satisfaction that comes from intellectual
study, the unshakable pride and confidence that comes from making steady
progress in a spiritual disciplineand seeing that progress reflected in every
area of your life. The path of Magick is, in large part, the pursuit of altered
states of consciousnessbliss, ecstasy, Gnosis.

9 Creativity
Magick accelerates lateral and creative thinking. It allows you to tap the
source of unconscious inspiration to come up with new ideas and vivid dreams
of new possibilitieswhether you're an artist, business person, investor,
student or in any profession that can benefit from creative problem solving,
insight and intuition.

Through dream work, "astral travel," trance, attention to synchronicity,

pathworking, the Situationist drive and many, many more techniques, magick
offers methods for allowing your unconscious, intuitive mind to take over and
show you the way. These techniques are the inheritance and birthright of
humanity as a whole, and are available for anybody to use at any time,
provided they have the right training.

8 Focus
Magick and meditation hone your consciousness like a knife. With each
meditation session, each ritual, you develop the most "magical" power of all:
The ability to laser-focus 100% of your attention on one task at a time, instead
of leaving it scattered to the four winds. In our social media and smartphone-
distracted world, nothing could give you more of an edge.

Now, consider the Qabalah and Tarot as an Operating System that runs on top
of a properly focused mind. These systems let you categorize and order the
entire universe into a simple set of symbols, letting your mind hold vastly more
data while having to work less. The net effect is a mind that operates better,
faster and in line with the natural pattern of the universeinstead of at cross-
purposes with the universe.

7 Love
"Love is the Law, Love Under Will" is not simply a catch phrase. It's a core
truth of the universeand a real effect of magick. Practices like bhakti yoga,
invocation, prayer, quietude and, yes, meditation all develop the heart,
creating a deep well of transcendent love for the people around you, all
humanity, all life and the universe as a whole. This is emotional mastery
something that, for all of our technological sophistication, we often need more
than anything.

6 Divinity
The central goal of Magick is the connection to divinity, "God,"
superconsciousness, the Holy Guardian Angelthe words and labels are
meaningless and often too culturally specific. The experience transcends all
names, images and cultural forms. This can come immediately, or after many
years of intensive magical practice. It is the next step of evolution for
humanity. Magick and yoga, combined, assist in its accomplishment.

5 Willpower
Magick will give you immense power. But it's not power over other people: It's
power over yourself. Power to decide what you want your life to be. Power to
have the past, present and future you want. Power to choose what energies,
activities and people you want in your life, and power to create boundaries
with those you do not.

Magick hardens the Willit gives you a clear sense of what you're supposed to
be doing in life, and the strength to do it, no matter what imagined "obstacles"
previously held you back.

4 Control
Magick gives you control over your own existence. Born in accidental
circumstances, a magician molds the random chaos of existence into the Order
they choose, imposing their will upon nature, and finally coming to sit upon the
throne of their own self, basking in the glory that is the life they have
manifested.

This is the true alchemical process.

-1 Letting Go
Bonus Round! As any magician, yogi or psychonaut will tell you, a major key to
life is learning to let go. Regular magical practice develops this abilitycrucial
to weathering and passing through life's most challenging moments.

3 Understanding
Magick shows how everything in the universe fits into place perfectly. What
once seemed like arbitrary chaos is now revealed as divine order, and all of the
pieces are shown to fit perfectly. It is from this Understanding that true
compassion comescompassion for all beings, including one's self.

2 Wisdom
The more Magick you do, the less Magick you have to doas you understand
the nature of the universe to be change itself. This opens the way of the Tao,
of not-doing, of manifesting by non-action. This is Wisdom.

1 Enlightenment
Finally, transcending all techniques and structures, is the passage into the
enlightened state hinted at or expressed openly by spiritual teachers
throughout human history. While the path of magick is not necessary for
proceeding directly here, it can provide a useful scaffolding for touching the
numinous and then re-structuring it into a normal life.

Below, you can see these ten spheres mapped onto the Tree of Life and
connected by the 22 Tarot Cards. Each of these spheres and paths offers an
entire range of magical skills to be mastered, psychological integration to be
undertaken, and transformative experiences to be had.

About the following image:

"Cosmic Snowflake" by Frater Achad/Charles Stansfeld Jones (1886-1950).
Reproduced from Grant, Kenneth and Steffi. "Hidden Lore: The Carfax
Monographs." London: Skoob, 1990.