Serpent of Wisdom: And Other Essays on Western Occultism by Tyson Donald

Author:Tyson, Donald [Tyson, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: occult, esoteric, western ritual magic, western occultism, beginner
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2013-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

[contents]

8

Sensory Metaphors

I intend to discuss here the nature of reality. The concept of real and unreal held by a magician is quite different from that of the average person. Those of us who work magic for any length of time are invariably forced to change our understanding of reality, and the deeper we venture into the philosophy of magic, the greater our sense of what is real diverges from that of society at large. I will try to avoid being too abstract in this essay, but some grasp of the magical perception of reality is required in order to comprehend certain aspects of the occult, such as the true nature of spiritual beings.

When we are born, that part of our brain that holds our identity is a blank slate, waiting to be written on by the impressions of our physical senses. As we age, we acquire more and more experiences, and these are stored as memories. We are the sum of our memories. Take them away, as happens sometimes in severe strokes, and we cease to exist. Our body continues, but it is no more than a physical shell. It is not who we are. Who we are is undifferentiated super-consciousness, acting through the filter of our various levels of memory, which shape and define that consciousness, limiting it into what we know as our personal identity.

We can never conceive anything apart from the input of our senses. That is the tragedy of the human experience. Try to conceive of a thing that is not based on your prior sense impressions and you will see that it is so. You cannot do it. If you think of a monster that has never existed, you will see that it is built up of familiar parts that you have learned about through your senses—skin, teeth, legs, eyes, ears, a tail. It will be certain colors, will emit sounds, will have a distinctive smell, be rough or smooth to the touch. We simply cannot imagine anything other than sense impressions.

Even when we try to imagine completely abstract things, we can only hold them in our minds by translating them into familiar sensory models. This is the reason we cannot picture higher dimensions of space, but must use three-dimensional models to suggest them. It is a fundamental, inherent limitation of human consciousness, part of the very nature of what we are.

Even more startling the first time it is understood is the realization that the entire universe that we know and everything it contains exists only in our mind. That is not to say that another level of the universe might not exist apart and independent of our awareness, but if so we can never know anything about it. That is the key insight. We are prisoners of our own perceptions. Our consciousness is based on perceptual information, and the universe for us exists only in our mind.

You may have heard about Plato’s cave. The Greek philosopher Plato wrote in his dialogue The Republic that

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