Magical Speculation
By Philip H. Farber

(Adapted from a forthcoming book, The Way of Woohoo: Meta-Magick and the Art of Invocation, copyright 2010 Philip H. Farber)

The following is one of the later chapters from a recently completed book. While most of the book consists of practical exercises to explore and develop abilities in the magical art of invocation, this chapter pushes the theory and speculation a bit more than I usually do. I thought it might be a fun read here…

Woohoo is the subtle difference between ordinary and exciting, the factor that makes just another stranger into your friend, your teacher, or your lover. Woohoo is what turns an activity into a passion; it’s what changes noise into song, foot movement into dance, travel into adventure, procreation into eros, and biological processes into a life worth living. Woohoo is the measure of intensity. It’s what continues to draw your attention, moment after moment. It’s what makes a feeling worth having. Like the Tao, true woohoo has no definite form. Your personal way of woohoo cannot be named; it is a flow of experience that changes from moment to moment.


13. Speculation

"Explain this happening!"
"It must have a `natural' cause." \
"It must have a `supernatural' cause." /
Let these two asses be set to grind corn.
-- Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies

So, at this point, we have a model of magick that suggests that invocation is based in the natural tendency of the human brain to create, within itself and without, functioning minds, entities. When thinking about a god or goddess, we use the same systems and functions in the brain as we use for social interaction, processing of metaphor, and self concept. The mirror neurons, default network, and the self-concept areas in the right parietal lobe help to build our internal experiences when we daydream or dream about others and when we define the boundaries of that unique entity sometimes referred to as “myself.” The basic action of invocation involves the mapping of entities with submodalities that signify godhood onto the model that we have for “self.” Instant magick, just add woohoo.

When we theorize that our “spiritual” experiences have some basis in neurology, it may be tempting to decide that such experiences are purely a product of brain chemistry and have no further significance. That may well be the case, if we eventually learn that the electro-chemical reactions of our nervous system represent the most fundamental level of existence. But we already know that they do not. The theories we have explored here, a tiny fraction of what we know about human neurology, are ultimately metaphors that we use to explain the complexity of the clouds of probability that physicists assert compose the atoms and molecules of our brains, just as they do all matter. At some point in the near future, when our understanding of the world further evolves, we may think these theories as crude and primitive as earlier explanations of the luminiferous ether or the geocentric universe. For now, our neuroscientific model can be useful; if we base our practices upon it, we can achieve results that align with our goals and predictions. And while we experiment in this way, let’s bear in mind that what happens in the brain may be only a small fraction of the overall explanation for spiritual, magical, or woohooful experiences.

Even just on the neuro-biological level, the implications may be as miraculous as anything occult science has ever suggested. There are a few really wonderful phenomena that Meta-Magick practitioners regularly report. We’ll call the first one Deep Synchronicity. The most common form of this is when a practitioner “creates” an entity from his or her own personal feelings, memories and experiences – and then later discovers that the name and attributes of the entity are exactly the same as an obscure (or not so obscure) god or demon from ancient mythology. Simple evocations have yielded traditional Goetic demons for practitioners who professed no previous knowledge of the Keys of Solomon. In one case, a practitioner who was seeking advice about what kind of business he could start called up a goddess who claimed her name was Atuma. She stood by a pool of water and showed the practitioner a sign made by touching her thumbs and forefingers together in a downward-pointing triangle. When he told me about it, I recognized the gesture as an Egyptian symbol for water, but the practitioner had no idea about this. We both googled the goddess’ name and learned that Atuma was the name of a city in the ancient Middle East that was sacred to a goddess of the same name. The importance of the city was in the pools of water found in an otherwise arid region. The practitioner’s business, by the way, turned out to concern beverages.

That’s the next phenomenon: the usefulness of information. If you’ve come this far into the book and practiced the exercises, hopefully you have learned some useful things not only about the form of your woohoo, but also about the content of your hopes, dreams, aspirations and goals. Whenever we contact entities in group situations – and reports from solo practitioners also frequently support this – individuals often learn specific information that helps them to achieve their desires: what to do, who to talk to, what to ask, which ritual acts to perform and so on.
Then we get the weirder levels of synchronicity. Some of these can be very specific. For instance, ritual participants may see visions of other places, then, either immediately or in the very near future, find themselves in exactly those places. Or we may think of specific objects, only to find them or receive them after the ritual. Some of this may be simple wish fulfillment, but sometimes these occurrences seem particularly improbable.

Shared experience across space, time, or the boundaries of self and other may occur. That is, an entity may give the same advice, experience, colors, sounds or feelings to two or more people independently. Participants in group ritual may find themselves increasingly aware of what thoughts, experiences, and colors other participants are contributing.

Sometimes we observe odd phenomena related to time. For instance, a ritual may help us to understand something that happened in the past. Or we may become aware of branching probabilities and the outcomes that can result from each. Sometimes objects, ideas, beliefs and even entire realities seem to jump from one probable timeline to another, or from very distant parts of one’s timeline or cloud – from the distant past or the distant future, well beyond the span of the practitioner’s life.

So how do we explain this stuff? Again, I don’t think we have any hard and fast theory that accounts for everything. Maybe it’s all subjective, delusion and hallucination that results from messing around with our brains. On the other hand, maybe subjective delusion and hallucination are important ingredients in the fabric of the universe itself. It’s all illusion, as Hindus believe. Or perhaps there’s some middle ground.

How about a thought experiment? For this experiment let’s stipulate that there is nothing in the universe except stuff – atoms, molecules, matter and energy. Our brains are really just more stuff, atoms and molecules and so on. In this thought experiment, there is nothing that makes human matter any different than other matter. Just for now, imagine that there is no indwelling spirit, ghost in the machine or soul, except that which might exist in all matter; there is no external hand of a non-corporeal being pushing things around. It is all the same stuff – and it seems to have organized itself into “minds,” if none other than the ones associated with the meat in our heads. The mind that you are using to think right now, based in the stuff crammed between your ears, is an amazingly complex device that recognizes patterns and divvies up what it perceives into me, you, him, them, cats, dogs, multi-national corporations, nations, religions, gods, angels, demons and other such entities. Do the entities exist as such until the human brain has recognized them as entities?

Maybe consciousness exists as a continuum and entities are its way of delineating itself. We recognize and delineate other entities, they recognize and delineate us.

Some physicists suggest that our measurements determine what we ultimately perceive as the world. It is theorized that the spin or direction of a subatomic particle is indeterminate until a measurement is made. Not just that it is unknown; the particle doesn’t have a set spin or direction until interaction with the physicist’s consciousness makes it so. One school of physics argues that this kind of phenomenon only applies at the subatomic level. Others suggest that what happens on the subatomic level also applies to the macro level of stuff that we can normally perceive without special instruments. This is referred to in Meta-Magick as the concept of making, which we express with the metaphor, “A path is formed by walking on it.” (57)

The final and possibly most crucial aspect of making is noticing what has been made. Measurement and testing bring the change or entity into sharply defined reality. You have to look back at the path to see that it has been formed. (58)

One interpretation of the physics of making is that at each point of measurement, the thing being measured is not just indeterminate, but actually exists in all possible states, in multiple universes. By measuring, our consciousness decides not only what state the particle or thing being measured will appear in, but which universe we navigate into. This has an interesting parallel with the concept of transderivational search. When transderivational search kicks in, the mind runs quickly through a range of possibilities. If the choices are of memories, then each memory is subject to reconsolidation, and submodalities or content may change as the mind runs through choices, or when we pull a single memory fully into consciousness. By the time it comes into conscious awareness, we’ve chosen a particular reality, a particular universe to inhabit in which the memory, as we now remember it, with whatever quality of woohoo it might have, is true.
If that’s the case, then what we choose for the future, on this unconscious level, can equally become true. That is, our experiments with invocation may carry us into a universe in which we live lives of wonderful woohoo. Notice the emphasis on “unconscious.” The process of transderivational search is guided by the default network, usually outside of our awareness. That’s not to say that we can’t influence the outcome of mental selection – you’ve already done it. By changing state through the process of invocation (or other means), we influence our brains to make selections that reflect that state. Remember? Sad people dwell on sad memories; happy people have happy memories. Anxious people make scary representations of their imagined future; fun people make their future even more fun.

A Zen koan asks “Who is the master who makes the grass green?” We might also wonder about the master who tweaks our submodalities whenever we think.
We can influence the outcome of transderivational search in specific and fundamental ways. As our invoked entities increase in complexity toward full mind-states, they start to develop their own fundamental ways of perceiving and relating to the world. In the realm of human entities, we expect that it helps to think like an engineer to design a bridge, or like a politician to get elected, or like a mathematician if you want to understand advanced physics. Our imagined entities are similar in this regard; we expect that a magick entity will help us to understand or practice magick, that we’ll be thinking of earthier things when we invoke an earth entity, or that Athena, goddess of wisdom (among other things), will help us to make wiser decisions. By creating entities who think or make decisions based on a specific set of presuppositions, we can use these highly detailed mind-states to change our own beliefs about the world. Step into Athena and let your default network choose differently and transport you into the world where wisdom is the highest criteria by which decisions are made. Athena’s criterion may be expressed by the presupposition “All things can be guided by wisdom.” In the mind-state-world of a magick entity, we might find a higher-order rule of life to be expressed as “All things can be guided by magick.”
Perhaps the presuppositions upon which we base our most fundamental beliefs can be altered – or we can transport ourselves into parallel worlds in which fundamental beliefs are very, very different. Some of the operating beliefs in our current universe (assuming you are in the same one in which I’m writing this!) include “matter is solid, liquid or gas,” “two objects cannot occupy the same space,” “gravity pulls down,” “Planet Earth is a big ball of stone with a molten nickel-iron core,” “I am a human being and will be one until I die” and so on. How much of these presuppositions is real, external truth (if there is such a thing) and how much encoded into our epistemology and linguistic structures at a very early age we cannot say for sure. These kinds of fundamental presuppositions cannot be changed by willpower, by wishing them to change, or by consciously trying to change them. If and when we do manage to change them through whatever means, the resulting beliefs may seem as utterly ordinary as the ones they replaced. On a conscious level, it might seem as if nothing has changed, or that we have realized something about the world that has always been that way. Then you get to write a book and convince others that the world has always been this way.

No matter how deeply we are able to change our epistemological basis for reality, the world that results must be at least somewhat internally consistent. That is, whatever the new presuppositions might be, they have to work according to the laws and tendencies of that world. A conscious belief that you can jump off a building and fly in a world where “gravity pulls down” is a basic presupposition – expressed in the very shapes and positions of everything and everyone around you – will probably end very badly. However, in that same world, if “gravity pulls down” can be part of the equation for a glide ratio or the lift necessary for a set of wings to overcome the downward pull, then flight may be possible, according to the laws of that world. Perhaps in the next universe over “levity pulls up” and scientists debate the possibility of manned descent.
Here’s where that quality of wholeness comes into play once again. To be internally consistent, a world-map must be complete. Ultimately, everything in a world-map implies everything else, on some level, however obscure or infinitesimal that information might be. The moon that lights up our night sky pulls the oceans back and forth in easily-observable tides. The tides influence the life cycles of sea organisms, which in turn affects global levels of oxygen, which has impact, small or large, on our general quality of life. All the other planets also exert their influence on the liquids, solids and gases of planet Earth. These influences can be measured with more sensitive instruments than the human eye. Distant stars and galaxies also exert their forces, if only through their influence on the sun. It might take very sensitive telescopes and other instruments to measure the miniscule amount of influence that a distant star might have upon the Earth. Closer to home, the food you eat contributes to regional and global farming practices, availability and economics of agricultural resources, wages of farm and factory workers, the content of landfills, and so on. On the level of information, every person we see or think about plays upon our mirror neurons in ways that influence both state and physiology, however noticeably or minutely. Each of those people is similarly influenced by countless others, who in turn are affected by millions more. Every element of a congruent world-map implies and is in some way dependent upon every other element. The sum total constitutes a system and for a system to continue to function, it must exhibit wholeness.

So once again, here is that full-sensory story that we create inside our heads. Or are we inside of it? Being aware of our part in the intricacies of these worlds and minds within worlds and minds takes our speculation into the realm of mysticism. The pattern of wholeness is repeated again and again, in individual human minds and the mind-states and entities within each of us, in group minds, in the world-maps that individuals and groups create, and perhaps in the entire range of universes, the multiverse, that we shift through from moment to moment. This fractal re-iteration is perhaps not so strangely reminiscent of the Hermetic axiom “As above, so below.”

Another interesting phenomena of this thought experiment occurs after we have explored a variety of mind states of different sizes and complexity. When we invoke and “think from” the perspective of a god/dess, a group mind, or a world-map, the part of the brain that tracks “self” starts to show a little more flexibility. This may be a natural function that helps us to be a useful part of our families, tribes, religions, businesses and nationalities. For our purposes, it is possible to have experiences in which self becomes less important, or perhaps is extinguished entirely, at least for a little while. In contemporary mystical lore, these are called ego-death experiences, although we are probably talking about decreased activity in the right parietal lobe of the brain more than the death of that metaphoric entity of yore, the ego. These experiences give us a glimpse of our place in the greater systems of which we are a part. It is likely, for instance, that increased incidences of such self-less experiences in the 1960s, resulting from psychedelic drugs and spiritual practices, led directly or indirectly to the ecology movement and the peace movement.

The practice of invocation may sometimes (but not always!) rate lower on intensity and novelty than the ego-death of an acid trip, but over time the exploration of numerous entities, both large and small, creates an ability that might be described as “self-flex.” This is the ability to identify with “selves” of more variety and scope and, at will, to suppress the “self” part of the brain to a greater or lesser degree. Traditional devotional practices were considered a path to samadhi, full identification of devotee and god. It may be that identification with a particular deity can decrease activity in that part of the right frontoparietal lobe as we experience the qualities, personality and epistemology of the god/dess.

Until we can start scheduling Meta-Magicians for long-term brain scan studies, most of this remains speculation. However, if you read any of this and formed judgments or opinions about it, hopefully you did so based on the experiments you performed rather than the beliefs you previously held. If you found that you were making judgments about these ideas and have not yet practiced the exercises from the previous chapters, then please place those opinions on hold. Suspend judgment, go back and do the exercises, then re-read this chapter.

@Philip....
Thank you for posting this as it has shed light on where i am right now and given me something to "reflect" on! I trust you will not mind me adding, and maybe elaborate, that anyone here reading and finding themselves in "The Synchronous Universe" for the first time....you have a choice which "coincidences" to follow up on!!!!! I wound up in a great deal of distress,in my youth, when "not punching in the right search requirements on a google search bar"! I take full responsability for the results it yeilded and had some real adventures but....there is a whole universe available online so know what you want.
cautiously,
G

Philip, I'm really taken with what you've written there, which to my mind represents a new paradigm for conceiving of magick, beyond what the Chaos current achieved while building on it and previous models. I wish I were able to attend your forthcoming workshop, but circumstances render that impossible, at least this time round. I look forward to reading and playing with your new book.