or path to initiation may be, without exception he has to respect this universal lawfulness in his conception of God. The Christian will worship our Lord Jesus Christ as his highest ideal,
attributing to him the four fundamental qualities or basic aspects that are manifest in the omnipresence. These fundamental qualities are: Omnipotence, Omniscience or wisdom,
all-love or charity, and immortality. The magician will not regard his Christ as a manifestation endowed with only one quality, but regarding the universal laws in
analogy to the four elements, he will revere him as the highest Divinity. The same may be applied to the followers of Buddhism or any other religion. Provided the magician works correctly after having matured in magic, he will establish his God-principle on these four fundaments with their basic qualities corresponding to the elements, and these four fundamental aspects of his
Deity will represent his highest concept of God. The concept of his God does not have to be linked to any person alive or past; it also can be expressed in a symbolic way. Fundamentally it is absolutely the same thing whether the magician thinks of Christ, Buddha, a Devi, a sun, a light or a flame as a symbol of his supreme Godhead. It is not the imagination that matters here, but the quality that he imputes to this imagination. In any case, no matter what the religious faith or ideology, the imagination of God has to be the highest, the dearest, the most precious and the most venerable of all things above which
there cannot be any kind of“super-God”. The communication with his God can be effected by the magician in four different ways:
1. in the mystical passive manner,
2. in the magic active manner,
3. in the concrete manner, and
4. in the abstract manner.
The true magician ought to be master of all these four methods and it is left to him which of them he will choose for his future permanent connection.
The mystical passive manner of unity with God is a privilege granted to most of the saints and all the believers to whom the Divine principle manifested itself somehow in ecstasy. As the magician does not know in which form God will manifest to him, the kind of manifestation will be expressed according to his religious faith. In the instance of a Christian,
this may happen in the form of a symbol such as a white dove for the Holy Spirit, in the person of Christ himself or in the shape of a cross; all this is, however, of secondary importance. The main point is the quality of the Divinity that manifests itself to the respective person. How strong and pervasive this manifestation of God to the individual will be depends entirely in the measure of his mental and psychic maturity. This kind of manifestation will be experienced by all persons in whom a state of bodily rapture or ecstasy has been produced by deep meditation or by prayers. All the mystics, theosophists,
bhakti-yogis, etc., regard this kind of manifestation of God as the attainment of their aims . As history offers so many instances of this
mystic unity with Christ-Go, I deem it superfluous to dwell on minute details.
The second kind of revelation of God is the magic-active one, peculiar to most of the magicians. The well-trained magician will try to come near or in touch with his deity by invocation. This kind also may be spoken of as a form of ecstasy which, however, in contrast to the previously described concomitant manifestation, is being produced deliberately, step by step. In this kind of manifestation, which is the interior, the spiritual part of the magician rises up to God half-way and the later comes to meet him half-way down. This invocation f the Deity in the magic active manner is a theurgic or a real magic form which a magician is allowed to use only when he has gained the right measure of maturity. The manner of invocation is absolutely individual because there does not exist any concrete method.
The mystic-passive as well as the magic-active invocation of God can again be carried out I a concrete or an abstract form. The concrete invocation imagines God in a certain shape,
whereas the abstract invocation is based on the imagination of the abstract idea of the divine qualities. The practice of the possible Divine revelations is very simple. Supposing that the magician is meditating in the akasa principle, that is in a state of trance, about God and its qualities, and when the expected symbol of God makes its appearance
during this meditation,
then one can speak of a mystical-passive kind of revelation. But when the magician wit the help of his plastical imagination, whether outside or inside of himself, invokes the single qualities of his Deity, regardless of his imagining these qualities in a concrete or an abstract form, then it all turns out to be a magical-active invocation of God. He whose development has reached this point can attain not only to the mystic passive, but also to the magic active union with God. I prefer the methods of the concrete and abstract forms that can be managed by every magician. An excellent exercise preliminary to the concrete manifestation of the respective Deity is to put a picture, a figure, or any symbol of the respective Deity in front of you. Sit in the asana posture staring intensely at the picture until an effigy of God appears before your closed eyes. While staring at the picture of the Godhead the magician is worshipping, he can perceive it afterwards on any white surface nearby. The visualization of the Godhead is an excellent prelude, allowing the magician to make the image of God appear before him.
This preliminary step is to be repeated until the magician is able to imagine his deity as being alive at any time in any position at any place without the slightest effort. Then he can combine the picture he imagines with the corresponding Divine qualities. At first he will not succeed at once in coordinating all the four fundamental Divine qualities he has been meditating about in the previous step with the picture in his imagination. He will therefore concentrate on one quality after the other. The concretization of the Divine quality in the imagined picture is very important and has to be repeated many time until the magician’s deity actually can be perceived by him as endowed with the four fundamental qualities. If the magician achieved this, he must imagine the object of his adoration
not as a mere picture, but as a living being, acting, irradiating with such an intensity as if his personal God were standing real and alive in front of him. This is the so-called concrete union with the Godhead outside the own Self. The more frequently the magician follows this method, the stronger and more effective will be the visual and sensuous Deity before him. When he feels to have put all he knows about God’s conception and realization into the object or picture of his devotion, then he may think of his living Deity, which appears before his eyes with all the brilliance of the four basic qualities, as entering and filling his body, thus occupying the space of his soul.
This has to be repeated by the magician until he feels the Godhead so strongly in himself that,
losing his personal consciousness, he gets the sensation as if he were the Deity he had imagined. By frequent repetition repeating this union with the Godhead, the magician adopts the qualities condensed in his imagination, and now it is no more the personal Self
that is acting through him, but his Godhead doing so. Thus he is experiencing the concrete union with God, union with his personal God, and it is no more his consciousness, his soul or his spirit, but the manifestation of God’s Spirit that is speaking through his mouth. Here the magician is uniting himself with his God, becoming God himself for the time of the duration of this unity, sharing all the basic qualities of the Godhead he is united with.
The method of concreted union with God is of the utmost importance for the magic practice,
since a magician ought to be able to contact any Godhead whatever, irrespective of the creed,
in this manner. This practice is indispensable in theurgy as well as in the conjuring magic, as
it is the only way for the magician to bring about the union
with a Godhead at any time,
forcing the lower beings to execute his will. It is evident that in this manner a magician can unit himself with the Godhead to such an extent that all the properties and powers indwelling the concreted Godhead that he is psychically united with become peculiar to him too, and continue being his qualities even though severed from the imagination. The adepts call such
Divine qualities magic capacities or powers or siddhis.
If the magician masters the performance of the concrete union with his Godhead, he is going to realize the abstract form of the unity with God. In the beginning he may link the conception of God to an auxiliary conception such as light or fire, but later on he must refrain from doing so, projecting nothing else but the quality first outside, then inside of the own
Self. The aspect of the Divine quality has to be connected the organ corresponding to the elements, e.g., omnipotence is experienced in the head, or love in the heart. By repeating this exercise frequently, one becomes identified with the abstract idea of God to such a degree that there is no need of any imagination of a region or a part of the body. Next, the four basic qualities can be combined into one idea that permits the introduction of the highest form of our conception of God.
By repetition, God’s manifestation is deepened so much that one feels oneself God. This unity with God must be so deep that during the meditation there is no God,
neither within myself, nor without, subject and object being melted into one another so that there is nothing but “I am God”, or as the Indian in his Veda puts it, “Tat twam asi” (That thou art).
Arrived at this stage, the magician has completed his magical development in the astral form,
and any further exercises will serve the purpose of deepening his meditations and to strengthen his godliness.
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