Magickal Mystery tour
Before I delve into my past and experiences, I feel like it's important to set a foundational understanding of a few occult concepts that many of you are going to scoff at. I'm not here to convince or convert anyone. All I ask is that you have an open mind and maybe look into things for yourself if you're interested. I'm far from an expert, and the following is just a quick and dirty summation of various concepts that are relevant and necessary for what we will discuss later. I have a Resources section that has a list of books, websites, and YouTube channels where you can find great sources of information about all of the esoteric topics I'm about to discuss from people much more knowledgeable and experienced than myself.
Magick
Let's start with the big one: magick is real. Notice, I spelled magick with a k. It's a tradition started by Aleister Crowley, infamous occultist and founder of Thelema, to differentiate real magick from fantasy and stage magic like the kind Harry Houdini or David Blaine performs. Real magick doesn't work anything like it does in fantasy entertainment. Real magick, in fact, is both an art and science that's been around forever. Every culture on Earth has practiced it formally in some form, and many still do. Many of our most famous scientists, philosophers, saints, and leaders in history were open practitioners. In fact, magick is a fundamental part of who we are, for we are all both physical and spiritual beings. Everyone on Earth performs magickal acts every day without even realizing it. Religious practitioners perform rituals and acts of white magick through prayers, lighting candles, communion, petitioning saints or deities, and so on; though they may think of it in different terms. Everyday people subtly affect the world around them through their subconscious. The very act of breathing, from a certain perspective, could be labeled as a magickal act, as breathing is how we take in and release energy. The only difference is magickal practitioners (however they choose to label themselves) consciously and deliberately manipulate these energies according to their intention and will to achieve a result, be it material or spiritual. There are many many ways of approaching magick, but to give you the very basic cliffs notes version, magick can be broken down into two main categories: high magick and low magick.
High magick is often referred to as ceremonial magick or theurgy. It's focus is on using incantations, rituals, visualization, breath and energy work to more closely align our spiritual selves with the Source (the Devine, God, whatever label you want to use). High magicians refer to it as the Great Work. The goal of our lives is to spiritually evolve until we graduate to the next level of existence and break free of the cycle of reincarnation. Christians think of it as entering the gates of Heaven. Eastern belief systems often refer to it as reaching nirvana or achieving enlightenment. High magicians are all about achieving that in their current lifetime.
Low magick is often referred to as practical magick, natural magick, or thaumaturgy. Low magick uses the natural energies of nature and the world around us to bring about results in the material world. In other words, it's using magick to improve your life or manifest things in the physical. This type of magick is the kind most people think of when they think of folk magick or witchery. Despite being referred to as "low magick" there is nothing "lesser" about it. The physical world is just as important, and has just as many lessons to teach us to help us improve ourselves, as the other planes of existence.
The Planes of Existence
Speaking of which, there are multiple planes of existence. This is important to know in the context of clairaudience, because many of the beings I speak with live on one of the other planes of existence. Various traditions have different views on how many planes there are and how they're broken down, but I'm going to use the break down that seems to be the most general and agreed upon.
Physical Plane- the physical world we all live in and experience daily using our senses.
Etheric Plane- the level of reality between the physical and astral (concrete consciousness). Everyone has a physical body and an etheric (spirit) subtle body which consists of the aura and what a lot of eastern traditions would refer to as chakras or energy centers. People who experience out of body experiences are actually in their etheric body (their spiritual body). Like a ghost. Permanent death (referred to by magicians as the Second Death) is when the higher self (your soul) separates from the etheric body and moves on. There are other beings, such as the Fey (yes, they're real) for example, that exist as etheric entities in the same way that we are physical. For them, the physical body is the more subtle one.
Astral Plane- This is the plane of concrete consciousness that exists between the etheric plane and the mental plane. This is where our consciousness, dreams, and visions come from. The astral is the most important plane for practitioners because it's where magickal energies become manifestations; or in other words, where magick goes from intention to reality. It's also possible for the consciousness to use the astral to travel to other places and times (astral projection).
Mental Plane- To quote John Michael Greer from his book The New Encyclopedia of the Occult, "The mental plane is the plane of meaning, pattern, and the laws of nature and mathematics." This is where stuff starts to get way too complex and weird for human brains to grasp.
Spiritual Plane- The plane outside of space, time, and human understanding. This is the end goal for all of existence.
What's the Point?
Which brings us to the very basic point of it all- reuniting with the Source. In the beginning there was the Source. There are literally thousands of different terms and names for it throughout human history and beliefs, but for the sake of simplicity and clarity we're just going to call it the Source. The "big bang" happened. The Source divided itself into all of existence. A tiny piece of that divine nature went into everything. The whole point of existence is growth, learning, and experience. Eventually, all of existence will return back into that one, single Source. It will become the repository of all experience, all knowledge, all time. Modern science sees this demonstrated in the very cosmos they explore. We know the universe is expanding outward. They also hypothesize that, eventually, the universe will begin to retract as well. We are all connected by the universal consciousness. We're all from the same Source, and eventually, we'll all be reunited into one. Not just humanity, but all of existence. That's the purpose of all life: to grow, learn, and experience. Our souls are eternal. As we evolve, we change. We grow from physical beings into, eventually, purely spiritual beings. As we evolve, it becomes part of our purpose to help those behind us- because at the end of the day, we're all one. This is a very important concept to grasp, because it's why other beings/entities/whatever would even bother communicating or interacting with us in the first place, outside of screwing with people because they find it amusing. Being a dick is a universal concept, apparently.
