Magick, is it All in Your Head?

Hey There!

We've all heard it before right? 

"Oh magick isn't real... it's just wish fulfilment"

Well... yeah. Of course it's wish fulfilment... its what allows you to manifest your desires in the first place! But every time we see something witchy going on in Hollywood, it's people sitting in circles of candle, chanting or moving in weird ways making magick happen... but when we do that in person, we often realise something profound.

What's going on on the outside is just the surface level...

The REAL magick is happening to us internally... within the deepest recesses of our bodies, within our energetic field and within our mind. If we take the Hermetic Maxim As Above So Below, we are a microcosm of the cosmos... a reflection of the universe itself.

Countless Occultists throughout the years have delved into psychology as a means of explaining aspects of the craft. Even the infamous Aleister Crowley was renowned for integrated psychological practices into his work, with many other Occultists even believing his channelled being Aiwass was a manifestation of his own subconscious mind.

Today, we're going on a journey, deep into our own minds to explore the role of psychology and the brain in magick. We know just how convoluted this topic can be, and it often brings up a huge divide between the Traditionalist magick practitioners and Modernists... 

But, if you're ready to transcend the divide... we're going to explore the origins of visualisation and mental imagery from a neuroscience perspective and then an Esoteric one... bridging the gap between Spirit and Science.

Sources

Pearson, J. 2019: The human imagination: the cognitive neuroscience of visual mental imagery. Nat Rev Neurosci 20, 624–634

Machine, A. Ishai, J. V. Haxby and L. G. Ungerleider. 2002: Imagery of famous faces: effects of memory and attention revealed by fMRI. NeuroImage 17. Archived 2006-08-21 at the Wayback Machine

Ratey, J. J., Galaburda, A. M. 2002: A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain. Vintage Books: United States 

Koenig-Robert, R. & Pearson, J.  2019: Decoding the contents and strength of imagery before volitional engagement. Sci. Rep. 9, 3504

Naselaris, T., Olman, C. A., Stansbury, D. E., Ugurbil, K. & Gallant, J. L. 2015: A voxel-wise encoding model for early visual areas decodes mental images of remembered scenes. Neuroimage 105, 215–228

Wildoak, P. 2012: By Names and Images: Bringing the Golden Dawn to Life. Skylight Press: Great Britain

Rinpoche Y, M. 2019: Meditation is easier than you think. [Video] [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thcEuMDWxoI [Accessed 12/20]