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prayers, names of powers, fancy candles, crystals, five-pointed stars and the like have an
intrinsic power which works by itself, and it is only necessary to be
initiated into all the details and hey presto! - you can do it. I believe this is (mostly)
wrong. Symbols do have magical power, but not in the crude sense implied above;
magical power comes from the conjunction of a symbol and a person who can bring that
symbol to life, by directing and limiting their consciousness through the symbol, in the
manner of icing through an icing gun. Magical power comes from the person (or people),
not from the superficial trappings of ritual. The key to ritual is the manipulation and
shifting of consciousness, and without that shift it is empty posturing.
So let us concentrate on magical consciousness, and how it differs from the state of mind
in which we normally carry out our business in the world. Firstly, there isn't a sudden
quantum jump into an unusual state of mind called magical consciousness. All
consciousness is equally magical, and what we call magical depends entirely on what we
consider to be normal and take for granted. There is a continuum of consciousness
spreading away from the spot where we normally hang our hat, and the potential for
magic depends more on the appropriateness of our state for what we are trying to achieve
than it does on peculiar trance states. When I want to boil an egg I don't spend three days
fasting and praying to God; I just boil an egg. One of the characteristics of my "normal"
state of consciousness is that I understand how to boil an egg, but from many alternative
states of consciousness it is a magical act of the first order. So what I call magical
consciousness differs from normal consciousness only in so far as it is a state less
appropriate for boiling eggs, and more appropriate for doing other things.
Secondly, there isn't one simple flavor of magical consciousness; the space of potential
consciousness spreads out along several different axes, like moving in a space with
several different dimensions, and that means the magician can enter a large number of
distinct states, all of which can be considered different aspects of magical consciousness.
Lastly, it is normal to shift our consciousness around in this space during our everyday
lives, so there is nothing unusual in shifting consciousness to another place. This makes
magical consciousness hard to define, because it isn't something so extraordinary after
all. Nevertheless, there is a difference between walking across the road and walking
around the world, and there are differences between what I call normal and magical
consciousness, even though they are arbitrary markers in a continuum. There is a
difference in magnitude, and there is a difference in the "magnitude of intent", that is,
will. Magic takes us beyond the normal; it disrupts cozy certainties; it explores new
territory. Like new technology, once it becomes part of everyday life it stops being
"magical" and becomes "normal".
We learn the "magic of normal living" at an early age and forget the magic of it; normal
living affects us in ways which the magician recognizes as magical, but so "normal" that
it is difficult to realize what is going on. From the point of view of magical
consciousness, "normal life" is seen to be a complex magical balancing act, like a man
who keeps a hundred plates spinning on canes at the same time and is always on the
point of losing one. Magical consciousness is not the extraordinary state: normal life is.
The man on the stage is so busy spinning his plates he can spend no time doing anything
else.
A characteristic of magical consciousness which distinguishes it from normal
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