Welcome to Metaphysics of the Real. This is your host, Oliver St. John. Sophia is our Guiding Light.
This episode is drawn from a new book, soon to be published and titled Magick Here and Now. In the introduction we make it clear that ‘ordinary life’ is a very serious obstruction to magick and yoga. This will be explained. We then move on to a discussion of the magician, since there can be no magick without a magician and so far as initiation goes everything must start from the human state. The second part concerns the question of what a magician really is? Some of what we will reveal might be quite surprising to some. The third part of this episode moves on to Magick as Science and Art. As well as dispelling some false notions including populist theories about magick as ‘occultism’, we will explain some little known facts about what magick really is.
The music, ‘Invocation’, was composed and played on guitars, five-string electric bass, keyboards, Egyptian and Turkish drums by myself, Oliver St. John.  

Metaphysics of the Real, Episode 6 Part One: Magick and the Real (Introduction)
As we are going to talk about magick and the magician, it needs to be made clear that we are concerned here with the Real. We are not interested in exploring imaginary worlds, as is the way of the occultists, who do not do or think anything that is beyond what is in reality completely ordinary. We do not refer to the ‘real world’ in the conventional meaning of that, which limits the Real to what is called ‘ordinary life’. This so-called ordinary life is a very modern concept that was completely unknown to the ancients who wrote down and encrypted in artefacts the traditional sciences that we now call magick or magical arts. Magick is best understood as a very necessary support to yoga, especially in the present time; by yoga is not meant here ‘yoga for health’ or even postures and breathing exercises but the means of knowing the Real or absolute, with steps or gradations along the way to that supreme goal. While the means are not supernatural, experiences along the way might include that, though such results should never be seen as the goal. Ordinary life, which excludes both the sacred and the supernatural, is one of the most formidable obstacles to magick and yoga—practitioners who fail to realise this know not what they are doing and will only follow out a self-isolating path to increasing self-delusion. Ordinary life will be explained here concisely:
Modern man has become quite impermeable to any influences other than such as impinge on his senses; not only have his faculties of comprehension become more and more limited, but also the field of his perception has become correspondingly restricted. From this severe limitation arises the notion of ‘ordinary life’ or ‘everyday life’. This is a life in which nothing that is not purely human can intervene in any way, owing to the elimination from it of any sacred, ritual, or symbolical character. Everything that surpasses conceptions of that order is, even when it has not yet been expressly denied, at least relegated to the domain of the extraordinary, and is regarded as exceptional, strange, and unaccustomed.
This is a reversal of the normal order as represented by integrally traditional civilisations where the possibility of spiritual influence goes without question. As ‘ordinary life’ involves a more or less total reversal of the normal or traditional order of things—an order we have not seen for many centuries in the West—it is, as should be completely obvious to those who have observed modern civilisation without prejudice, a completely abnormal state of affairs.
We must make it very clear we are not in any way concerned with changing the social order let alone changing the world or ‘saving the planet’. Our world always changes, as its nature is impermanence. Humanity is likewise defined by the fact that it is subject to birth, growth, decay and death, as are all other creatures on earth. Our subject here is magick and the Real, which means we are going to discuss various ways of escaping such limitations—that means being ‘more than human’. It is admitted that we must firstly pull ourselves up and away from the abyss of demonic or sub-infra influences to realise what being human can really mean. Like the Golden Ass of the second century novelist Apuleius, we will take a beating from life until we learn to overcome the demonic nature in us. Only then does the real journey of initiation begin. We are speaking of demonic forces are we not? Do we refer to supernatural entities? These are not ruled out but everyone experiences the direful afflictions of fear, greed, anger and lust when these take human form. That is how we see them. Such afflictions easily become addictions, for all the hell we suffer as a consequence. These feelings link us to the sub-infra forces previously referred to, on the lower threshold of the subtle plane of non-physical forms perceptible to the mind. By sinking to their level we enter the worlds they control and are controlled by them. They are not in any way kind, though charm, flattery and seduction are their primary weapons; on the contrary, they are very cruel and unforgiving. Hell is not a place it is a state of mind.
Access to the world of magick and traditional sciences depends on the application of the Hermetic axiom As above, so below. That is to say, the microcosm, of which man is a symbol, is known through such applications as a reflection of the macrocosm, the greater universe. It does not stop there, although much that has been written on the subject goes no further. Admittedly, a cosmology can take us a long way but if we desire to transcend all limitation then we cannot separate magick from metaphysics. 
Metaphysics, in the way we mean to use this term, embraces all that is beyond even traditional sciences to realise in any full sense. Metaphysics is ‘beyond the physical’ and so nothing to do with the chemical state of the body or brain, or the psychological domain. It refers to the infinite, unlimited universal doctrine that can only be known metaphysically. As it depends from a supra-human source, it can never be a branch of philosophy or some other science. Philosophy and the other modern theoretical sciences were originally derived from metaphysics and not vice versa.
Symbolism is the only way to convey metaphysical reality without direct knowledge; language itself comprises a set of symbols. Ancient languages, with all their subtlety of etymology, roots of words and phonetics, are nonetheless well equipped to symbolise metaphysics, which is solely concerned with principles that amount to pure knowledge. Such principial knowledge is most adequately set down in the Hindu Vedas and Vedanta. Such knowledge is not in any way derived from an individual author, as is the case with all Western philosophical theories. With the Vedanta, the goal is always that of pure knowledge: untransmissible, infinite and absolute reality. That is what we mean by ‘metaphysics’.
This knowledge is not then in any way apprehended by reason or argument as it is derived from a supra-human source. All dialectics of the ancient sciences, including Hermeticism—something that in itself has been confused with profane science—form only an outward veil of that which is truly esoteric, which is inevitable. Magick and yoga when separated from the metaphysical principles from which they were derived as applications become degraded; there are hundreds if not thousands of books that seek to present magick and yoga as means by which any person can obtain very ordinary goals. In this morass of darkness (or ignorance) there is no certain ground. We will provide the means by which those who are qualified to become practitioners may build a citadel and a tower of defence against this malevolent tide, so that a Great Work is even possible.

Metaphysics of the Real, Episode 6 Part Two: The Magician
The Magician is the beginning and the end of every story. Why is that? Because every magician is an ass. We are using ancient Egyptian symbolism here. One way of understanding this is that every magician is an ego, and that means an ‘I’. As an ego, the magician begins at least with a firm conviction that this ego, this ‘I’, is totally separate and distinct from all other egos. As there are so many other egos in the universe, it seems like a good idea to set out to become a very exceptional ego. Also, the ass is a beast of burden. The magician, through learning and observation, sees that this is so for most other humans. However rich, poor, powerful or weak they seem to be, they are all tied up with something or the other. First and foremost so long as they are born they will surely die. The magician will then discern that asshood is temporary but no less ignominious for that.
Only the most exceptionally deluded among us think that they are free. This is why becoming a magician carries a certain allurement for some of us. While there are many today who would deny that anything supernatural comes into this, or that anything supernatural exists at all outside of some ass’s imagining, if we take that away from magick it becomes something very ordinary—and that defeats the object of becoming a magician in the first place.
Given the dominance of reductionist material scientism in the world today it can seem strange even to be writing or speaking about something called magick—we take it as understood we are not here interested in the stagecraft of a conjuror or illusionist anymore than we are interested in the world of politics or advertising. And yet ever since the defrocked French priest Alphonse Louis Constant coined the term ‘occultism’ as descriptive of what he did and wrote about, magick—which in its modern sense is inseparable from occultism—is very popular indeed.
I should note that Alphonse Louis Constant (8 February 1810—31 May 1875) is better known through his books as Éliphas Lévi.
It is true that the popularity waxes and wanes over time but like anything else figured by the Moon, the eclipse is ever the herald of a bright new beginning. Alphonse Louis Constant fired the imagination of a nineteenth century intelligentsia that sought to recover a lost tradition; at the same time they were hell bent on learning secret knowledge. Magick (or magic) was then regarded, as it still is today in many quarters unless it is being psychologised out of existence, as the domain of charlatans, lunatics and heretics.
Of course, the popularisation of something inevitably means that whatever value that thing possessed at the outset will be lost. Or at least, it will turn out to be unavailable. All efforts to make magick acceptable and indeed useful to all and sundry must mean that while ‘something’ may well be out for sale, that something is no longer what it was. Thus, as occultism is increasingly explained away in the reductionist terms of psychology, sociology and politics, the real secrets are more secret than ever. What is being sold is a counterfeit. The magician is then revealed in inverse aspect, as an ego ‘I’ but with a great many attachments including university qualifications and a lucrative career as an academic that also has a rôle to play as a community leader, artist, ‘healer’ or ‘right-on’ political activist—take your pick. The links between magick (or the occult) and traditional sciences, which are the real ground from which modern magick developed, is entirely removed. While the popularisation started with a group that sought to recover a lost tradition, several generations further along the same class of intelligentsia, whether intentionally or otherwise, are seeking to completely wipe out all tradition and real knowledge.
We have said that the magician is the beginning and the end of every story, so what of an end to this? We are not speaking here of destruction—that belongs to the latest generations of charlatans, the psychological apologists, entrepreneurs and sociological adventurers. The ego ‘I’ is not an end in itself, though it may seem that way if we take into account the ‘magical’ propaganda issuing from the sales departments of today. Ancient cosmologies place a figure that we can call Universal Man at the centre. Universal Man is not an ego or ‘I’ as such and is not even a human being, though the mistake is a common one to make. This figure depicts cosmic consciousness embodied and that means a Great Mind that is omniscient and all-powerful. As human beings, clearly we are neither of those things. And yet the Lord of the Universe is also that Magician that we mentioned as the start and end of the story. This becomes clearer if we add that the end is with the beginning.
What does this mean? In St. John’s book of Revelation 22: 13 it is declared:
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
This is well known to esotericists as it concerns the coming of the Lord at the end of time—that is to say, a return to truth. However the deeper meaning has no concern with time; it is not about a state of affairs that will come about, past or future, but is eternally now.
The book of Revelation, as with the rest of the New Testament, was written in Greek: ego eimi alpha kai Ω ...
The ego ‘I’ in this case does not refer to an individual human being, and we must understand that the conventional meaning of ‘ego’ has suffered some degradation in that it is often taken to mean the mind with its various thoughts, feelings and identifications. The Sanskrit ahankara for example, which is the nearest equivalent of ‘ego’, is not even knowable by the mind as it is the higher principle of what becomes, through modifications, the mind and senses. The ahankara or centre of the individual sense of ‘I’ requires deep meditation to know and first the self must be separated from memories, thoughts, feelings and perceptions. This is Patañjali Yoga. However, in the case of the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of all things, this is the declaration of Universal Man at the cosmic level. This is also referred to in both Hindu and Hermetic texts as the Lord of the Universe at the level of Pure Being. The manifestation of visible nature is accomplished through the divine power or Shakti, always personified as a feminine deity. In reality, the Lord of the Universe and Shaktimaya are one and not two things—likewise in Christianity we have Christ and Mary the holy mother of God, her son.
The principal sacred word of power in Gnosticism is IAO, and this is sometimes considered to express the divinity ‘I am the Alpha and Omega’. Certainly, there is no error in thinking that invocations of IAO refer to this supreme cosmic power. So far we have not ventured upon the ground of the Absolute, only its expression by name and form.
With magick and yoga, we are concerned with a cosmology but all the same, this must not be separated from the supreme principle beyond all names and forms, the eternal, infinite, absolute. In most religions, God (with name and form) stands for this Absolute, as its expression.
In Sanskrit scriptures the language is very exact. There is Brahma Saguna, ‘the absolute with name and form added’, and Brahma Nirguna, ‘the supreme absolute beyond all names and forms’. It is the latter that must be the starting point for any ritual or meditation practice, and not merely an afterthought! It is also the supreme Real that constitutes the final or ultimate goal. Hence, ‘I am the Alpha and Omega’.
With regard to this First and Last we must bear in mind that time and the apparent passing of all things in nature through sequence and perpetual change, birth, decay and death, is something that conditions and defines human existence and that has no absolute reality. The infinite, in the metaphysical sense of the word, is not subject to time, space or any limiting conditions. It is here and now. It is not born and it does not die. The human heart, for all the protestations and anti-spiritual refutations that can be heard today, knows this and will never be satisfied with adoration of nature alone or, as is so often the case now, the worship of purely human artefacts and things.
In the Hebrew and the Hermetic Qabalah—which is a completely separate development from the Kabbalah of the rabbinical tradition—the absolute is called AIN, which means ‘negative’. This is frequently mistaken for ‘zero; nothing’, especially by those who have followed certain Buddhistic schools. It is far from nothing or non-existence for the Absolute necessarily contains all possibilities latent within Itself. This will be explained in the following chapter.
It will be understood now that our Magician, the ass, which is where we started, is far more than a mere human or an animal if only he is able to realise it fully. The ego ‘I’, through determinations, is the centre of human individual consciousness. This is a reflection at a secondary level from the real ego or Self called Atma in Sanskrit. All magick is ‘black’ if the supreme principle is not known, not sought for or is willingly denied.
It should be noted that for this reason all our conventional sciences are of the order of the black magicians, even when the products and applications of such sciences seem to help us or otherwise create spectacular and impressive phenomena.
After another short break, we will resume with Magick as Science and Art.

Metaphysics of the Real, Episode 6 Part Three: Magick as Science and Art
Before we can practice and understand magick, we need to dispel any false notions we might have learned along the way. The twentieth century was a fertile ground for charlatans who loved to ‘play a game of magick’, pretending to be masters equal to at least Swamis in the Hindu tradition or even avatars. One definition of magick that has really caught on within occult circles and, perhaps owing to its reductionism, has become widely known, is this from Crowley’s book Magick:
“Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.”
The reader will understand how wide of the mark this is when we get on to explaining what magick really is. Aside from the fact that it leads on, through reductionism, to the notion that magick is any kind of action (karma) at all and is done all the time even by the most ignorant person was something the author was aware of but unable to deal with. In the book where this appeared he tied himself in knots trying to get out of the trap he had set. We will not waste more time on this but we should consider that so far as ‘change’ goes, which only takes place in the relative or causal world—that world that is the governing condition for the human mind and body—the real agent of change in the universe is called called Shaktimaya in Hinduism and Tantras.
In whatever name and form she is known and invoked Shaktimaya controls the prakriti or ground ‘substance’ of the universe and is therefore the ultimate Cosmic Power. When even the slightest change is brought about—bearing in mind that devotees may often ask boons—there is a change, no matter how very subtle, in the entire universe. It bears some thought but to go into this in any way deeply would lead us too far from our subject. To think that magick is only about change and causation limits it to a very narrow field, especially if we are so ignorant as to imagine we might use it to gain some kind of supremacy over all other beings in the universe.
The brilliant French metaphysician René Guénon had no time for the dangerous notions of occultism unless he was exposing it, but he made frequent references to ‘magic’ in his books.
It will be helpful to note that for the most thorough exposé of occultism and spiritism, from whence occultism after the time of Éliphas Lévi was greatly influenced, see Guénon, Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion (1921) and The Spiritist Fallacy (1923), both of which are published in English by Sophia Perennis.
It is important to understand that when Guénon used the term ‘magic’ he specifically meant ceremonial evocation and even necromancy, always referred to within traditions as the ‘black arts’. We are not concerned with such things here and that is not what we mean by our use of the term ‘magick’ so we will now go on to explain exactly what we do mean.
Even Advaita Vedanta, the supreme Non-dualism in Hinduism, has it that the knowledge of the vedangas or traditional sciences, counted as six, is essential at the beginning and is what makes a competent student. Among other things, expressly living a truthful life, the competent student is also one who performs the daily and seasonal observances. The traditional sciences are as follows: pronunciation and articulation; rituals; grammar; etymology (for the explanation of sacred texts); prose, or versification, and astrology. If we put these into our own frame of reference we will gain a well-rounded picture of what is meant by magick:
1. Ritual sonics; the magical voice and mantras
2. Rituals
3. Correct use of language—we need to be precise
4. Qabalah, Gematria and etymology
5. Versification—creating invocations
6. Astrology
Obviously we cannot provide here a single textbook that will lead the reader step by step to practical knowledge of all these sciences. We must refer the reader or listener to our previous works. Some of it has to be learned with the assistance of a guru. The word ‘guru’ is used here in preference to ‘teacher’ as the Sanskrit term guru means far more than a teacher in the ordinary sense.
One has to become immersed in these traditional sciences. We have to put astrology into practice. We must not only use the language of the stars we must also think in that language. This brings us to a most important point, which is that we must learn to think magically at all times. Magick is a highly specialised field of knowledge and practice but we cannot compartmentalise it as though it were separate from the rest of our lives. To integrate magick very thoroughly in that way means abandoning cherished notions we may have, and even self-identify with, so that our mind or magical circle is clear of all inimical influences. All too often book-learned occultists think that all they need do is learn a ‘banishing’ ritual mechanically and everything else will be done for them. Even if it were done for them, they would be in no way prepared to see their pet fancies demolished.
We need to understand then that by clearing the magick circle of all inimical influences we are not speaking of mysterious elemental forces within nature, we are speaking about the purification of the mind, which requires setting things in order. This special ordering is the exact meaning of the Sanskrit rit, from where the word ritual is derived, ‘to set in place’. One must then relinquish such things as membership of a political party and any socialistic ideals as all such are irrelevant and destructive to the aim of our magick, which to support yoga or divine union.
We can go further than this. There must be total social independence and disinterest in politics. It is not possible to think magically and at the same time to allow our selves to be controlled by such things, which operate outside of the true being and that are opposed to its dharma or integral nature.
So how do we think magically? In the first place, it must be already innate within the person, and is one of the ‘qualifications’ needed so that a spiritual practice may be in any way effective. Unless all political and social ideologies are rooted out the ability will never come to bloom in the individual. This rooting out cannot be achieved through a sort of violent act carried out upon the (imagined) self. It has to come about through knowledge and realisation. This is why those who cling to such ideologies cannot do magick or yoga effectively—the knowledge required cannot possibly gain a foothold owing to the poisoning of the mind that is being continually reinforced.
In the second place, we must have knowledge of the six vedangas or traditional sciences. The Sanskrit word vedanga means literally ‘part of the Vedas’, that is, it is an application of the knowledge implicit in the sacred scriptures. Without this knowledge it is not possible to understand the symbolic language. That is to say, we cannot read ancient scriptures, of no matter what tradition, and make any sense out of them. We will not even be able to read the transitory events of what we fondly imagine to be ‘our lives’. According to the Vedanta-sara the student needs to have all this in place before he even sits down to meditate. Yoga then is not, or should not be, separate from traditional sciences—and that is what we mean by magick.
The difficulty with providing examples of magical thinking is that in reality this is about the whole being, not only the individuality as mind and body but also the integral being, which includes the subtle domain as well as the physical, and with all its possibilities. By this is not meant in any way the very limited field of the human psyche, as that is understood by the theories of psychology. As soon as we give one or two examples we automatically restrict our range severely. All the same, as an example must be given, we will mention divination.
The word ‘divination’, as with all other aspects of the sacred sciences, has suffered a great deal of abuse in recent times. In fact, in taking a brief look at a standard Oxford dictionary, the prejudice of those who compile these things reaches proportions that can only be termed as malicious—that is to say, there is an agenda to destroy all traditional knowledge forever. Divination is there taken to mean—at best—as no more than prediction of a future event, as with a weather forecast.
The Latin divinare does not only mean ‘to predict’, as it is said by those who also wish to assert that ‘magical or supernatural insight into future events’ must be fraudulent, as if that was beyond dispute. It should be fairly obvious that there is a common root with divine, which means ‘of the sacred’. In Sanskrit the word for what we call a god or an angel, deva, is almost identical. To divine something is in no way limited to guesswork or intuition in the conventional sense, however inspired that may be. It is to obtain true knowledge of whatever the object is, and this is in accordance with some of the ancient methods of Samyama Yoga.
As an aspect of traditional sciences, divination by Tarot provides perhaps the most excellent example. The symbolism of the Tarot, if we look at the earliest printed deck, the Marseille Tarot, is irrefutably alchemical in nature and this is why it has been linked with ancient Egypt, since Hermeticism was the portion of knowledge that survived and was carried out far beyond the borders of that land. It is a very common error to suppose that divination by Tarot means that one must resort to the conventional ‘intuition’, which is no more than imagining that the first thing that comes into your head must be correct. One should first invoke the requisite powers governing the operation before asking the question and then using the ‘dignities’, by which a card may be evaluated according to elemental and other correspondences. It is seldom realised that there is nothing to be gained in producing an ‘instant answer’; one must meditate on the meaning and contemplate the symbolism. In fact, the knowledge may not come about fully until some time after the divination. One must constantly evoke and re-ev¬oke the symbolism, and consider how it relates to the question. Even if the question is quite mundane, far more may be realised than a simple ‘should I do this or should I do that?’ It is possible that knowledge gained may be of a truly esoteric import, and this becomes possible because magical thinking, which allows all symbolic possibilities, has been employed.

That brings Episode 6 of Metaphysics of the Real to a close. The music is my own composition called ‘Invocation’.
Thank you for your attention.
Sophia be-with-us forever.